The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche; Thus Spake Zarathustra, Tr. by Thomas Common. 1911

by Oscar Levy

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers. Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace. Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the present. Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines. Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage, ----To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman: --and who hath fully understood how unknown to each other are man and woman Voluptuousness: --but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my gardens --Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame of living pyres. Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every horse and on every pride. Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature answers. Passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine: --until at last great contempt crieth out of him--, Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which preacheth to their face to cities and empires: ..".

266 pages, Paperback

First published December 25, 2009

About the author

Oscar Ludwig Levy (28 March 1867 – 13 August 1946) was a German-Jewish physician and writer, now known as a scholar of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose works he first saw translated systematically into English. His was a paradoxical life, of self-exile and exile, and of writing on and (as often taken) against Judaism. He was influenced by the racialist theories of Arthur de Gobineau. He also admired Benjamin Disraeli, two of whose novels he translated into the German language.

He studied medicine in Freiburg, qualifying in 1891, and left the German Empire in 1894 to live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

He apparently discovered, or was more thoroughly converted to, Nietzsche in 1905 or 1906 via a patient. The 18-volume Nietzsche translation he oversaw appeared from 1909 to 1913. This large effort has later been criticised as less than scholarly. His collaborators were Francis Bickley, Paul V. Cohn, Thomas Common, William S. Haussman, J.M. Kennedy, Anthony Ludovici, Maximilian A. Mugge, Maude D. Petre, Horace B. Samuel, Herman Scheffauer, G.T. Wrench and Helen Zimmern. Ludovici became his most important follower. In general he found little British support, but A.R. Orage was an enthusiast and Levy found an outlet in The New Age.

Subsequently his life was complicated by having to leave the United Kingdom and his medical practice despite his support for the British side against the Central Powers when World War I broke out. He went back to the German Empire in 1915 and then to Switzerland. Back in the United Kingdom in 1920, he incautiously wrote a preface for an inflammatory political pamphlet by George Pitt-Rivers, The World Significance of the Russian Revolution. He was deported as an alien in 1921. He then lived in the French Third Republic.

Eventually he returned to the United Kingdom; his daughter Maud lived in Oxford, having married the bookseller Albi Rosenthal. His grandson is television sports presenter Jim Rosenthal.

In 2004, his papers were deposited in the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria.

Reviews

[Sahar Pirmoradian]

It's probably one of the books I'll go back to it later - at the moment I couldn't relate myself to it much.

[David]

I didn't read this book, but goodreads wouldn't let me change it. I only read Thus Spake Zarathustra, not the complete works. I'll write more of a review later, because this book needs some serious reflection, like "What the hell did he just say?".

[EAL]

Thus Spake Zarathustra, not the Complete Works (yet).

A lot of stuff I disagree with (with varying degrees of violence), a lot of stuff I don't understand, but overall, like setting your brain on fire. It'll take a while to sink in.

[Robert Core]

For you deep thinkers who want to get in touch with your dark side. Nietzsche will soon have you convinced there is no good in any of us!

[Antonio]

A must