Nietzsche wrote the first part of this book in ten days on the Italian coast in the winter of 1883, and finished the fourth two years later in a private printing of forty copies. He thought it his deepest work.
It does not argue. It preaches, sings, mocks and tells stories, and it puts all of it in the mouth of a hermit who comes down from his mountain after ten years to say what he has learned. Eighty discourses in four parts: the three metamorphoses of the spirit, the pale criminal, the tarantulas, the vision and the enigma, the seven seals.
Everything Nietzsche is known for arrives here first, and arrives as parable. The Superman and the last man. The will to power. The eternal recurrence, set as a riddle at midnight. And the line about the death of God, spoken not in triumph but by a man who cannot believe the news has not yet reached the marketplace.
This is the Civil Savage Society edition of Thomas Common's translation, complete in all four parts, newly typeset in a 6 by 9 inch US Trade format, 346 pages. Every discourse opens its own page under the roman numeral it has been cited by since Common's edition, the four interpolated poems are set as verse, and the editorial apparatus that clutters most reprints is gone: no introduction arguing with the book, no notes talking over it.
Paperback: perfect bound on cream stock. A workhorse copy, meant to be carried, dog-eared, and marked up.
Hardcover: casewrap edition built for the shelf and the long haul.
E-Book: instant download, delivered to your email at purchase.
Print editions are produced on demand. Nothing warehoused, never out of print.
