Genre: Biography
Size: twenty-two chapters
Will Durant in his book ‘Fallen Leaves’ writes that to know only the names of philosophers in your twenties is enough; that one’s familiarity with these names might perhaps become the fuel for actually reading and understanding their philosophies later in life. Nietzsche, then, could be the first name that most of today’s twenty-year-olds know of any philosophers (despite it being hard to pronounce; it’s ‘knee-cha’ by the way). So popular, so mainstream has his name become, that Friedrich Nietzsche could almost be considered a celebrity, where some Nietzscheans might even claim a parasocial relationship with him and his radical ideas.
However, I rather avoided Nietzsche when I first got interested in philosophy – probably because of the very fact that he was too popular. So is Socrates a popular philosopher, but you don’t come across many Socratic fans out there, do you? Socrates is soft, Nietzsche is hard and rebellious; the former unappealing, the later worship-worthy.
Being an introvert and soft-hearted,
I deviated more toward Socrates at the start, and later on toward Schopenhauer,
Kierkegaard, and Cioran, whose pessimism and angst deeply related with my late
teens and early twenties struggles for finding meaning or a center to my life. And
also because of their genius: Schopenhauer is terrifying at times; Kierkegaard’s
relentless inquiry into faith is intensely admirable; and Cioran’s poignant and
blunt self-pity and absolute denial of meaning is intoxicating. A bit later in
life, I also became briefly inspired by Baruch Spinoza, for his prevalent philosophy
of ‘learning for the sake of understanding’ and his acceptance of an existence
of a God – my first encounter with a philosopher who wrote kindly about God or
at least about its idea.
Now my little understanding about philosophy as a subject and as an intellectual hobby is hugely credited by my friend Amaan, whose depth of active knowledge and inquisitive understanding still continues to impress me. Although slightly less today as I can now carry a two-way conversation with him than being only able to listen to his monologues before. He glued my scattered understanding of philosophy and philosophers into a coherent knowledge from which I could start exploring on my own. Even Durant’s ‘The Story of Philosophy’ failed to do it, which I struggled to finish.
Anyways, I didn’t know what to expect from this biography. I knew Nietzsche to be a loud-mouth philosopher (as the title of this book suggests), but he never intrigued me. Amaan’s conversations on him, while interesting, fell short to actually inspire me to read him. Until one day, at his shop, I declared my intention of reading him; and after discussing superficially which of his books to read first, I was reminded of this book which I had purchased back in 2021 (with 55% off on a membership card of a stranger that I had just met). I brought the book to Amaan’s shop to read whenever I was alone there. In that week, my last in Quetta before I had to leave for Karachi to appear in my upcoming ACCA exams, I couldn’t read much. And from little that I had read, I wasn’t very inspired either.
That all changed when I began to properly read it (as any book should be read) here in Karachi, twice a day after my morning walk and after lunch at the Metro Café. I read a chapter a day, then as I got more invested in the book, I read two, then three chapters a day; after a week I am now done with the book. And so, I have the daunting task of reviewing it (I’ve tried to delay this part of the review until now, but I can't anymore).
Prideaux’s approach to writing about Nietzsche's volatile and heightened life is quite meticulous and sobering, as she doesn’t allow the wild energy the life lived to flow ragingly on the pages, unfiltered. This biography isn’t a plain narrative of Nietzsche’s life from childhood to death (in fact it starts in his early twenties when he first met Richard Wagner, the famous German composer), but rather a varied culmination of Nietzsche’s life events that were happening at a certain time. While the structure of the book maintains its linearity, it doesn’t cost the book that suddenness and complexity of a life as it happens – which makes ‘I am Dynamite’ a thrilling and as well as sobering, and poignant read, one that really descends into the heart of the reader rather than igniting his mind.
Prideaux research is immense and apt for this book, which is filled with excerpts from the philosopher’s books (respective of the time they were written), his notes, letters, letters sent to him; and also important details of the other figures that interacted with Nietzsche during his life. It took Sue four years to write this book, and the completedness of the end product is truly worthy and appreciated. The prose in this book is also mesmerizing. It’s not scholarly rigid, but also not light, that it contains its weight of the matter and a tone of seriousness with pointed wit and humor according to the book's mood. The prose here is malleable enough to smoothly give place within its sentences the recurrent excerpts and German words along with its translated meanings. All of that while maintaining its elegance and thrill – Prideaux excels with her words, sentences, and structure.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think to write about Nietzsche is not his philosophy – but physical agony. His father dies at age of 35 due to ‘softening of the brain’ and his little brother Joseph six months after. It was as if he was fated, or doomed, for the torments of body in all his life. He starts having the severe symptoms already in his early twenties: severe headaches, repulsion to bright light, vomiting, and feeling of being seasick. Unfortunately, due to lack of attention and ineptness of medical cure of that time, these symptoms only exaggerate as he ages. Much like Gregor’s turning into a giant insect which no one cares to cure, Nietzsche’s health ailment continues to go unnoticed even as they become more extreme. Diagnosed as ‘syphilis’ disease only after the symptoms grow so potent as to attack his brain and cause psychosis, at the ripe age of 44 Nietzsche’s cruel body finally dominates his mind and renders him mad and ‘lost of reason’.
Yet until then, his mind had triumphed every time his body had attacked him. Living increasingly alone, by his later years there was no one to take care of his failing health. Yet still he wrote. He wrote while living in high mountains, and switching between one alluring place to another rejuvenating one. I am reminded of a couplet by Ghalib, ‘There’s something of such magnitude that I’m silent, otherwise what things am I able to say!’ And what things indeed did he write in those frantic, sensational, and exhilarating last years; such manic prowess, such relentless belief, such raw declarations – almost a revelation, if not revelation indeed. Nietzsche’s love for music, books, mountains, thunderstorms and lightening, and very long walks – all aided loyally to him rising to the heights of prophetic claims of utmost ‘true’ statements.
One also learns to rebel from Nietzsche, not only to outward idols that others preach, but against the inward ones that we ourselves fixate on. The first half of this book is only about Nietzsche’s deep relationship with Wagner, his wife Cosima, and their household. Also with Arthur Schopenhauer, whom both him and Wagner idolized with absoluteness. While for Wagner, Schopenhauer’s philosophy inspired in him the greatness of German lineage through the triumph of the will over representation, for Nietzsche Schopenhauer showed him ‘a mirror in which he saw sickness and health, exile and refuge, Hell and Heaven’. Both of them called Schopenhauer ‘our philosopher’. Yet more presently, Wagner himself had a more impactful hold on Nietzsche, in whom he not only saw a teacher, but also a friend, and a father he lost in young age. Wagner’s Schopenhauerian music was vital for Nietzsche without which ‘life would’ve been a mistake’. Moreover, his household and the merry memories Nietzsche made there were, arguably, the most beloved of Nietzsche – that is before he parted his way to become his own Übermensch.
Such ruthless talk back did Nietzsche engage in as he realized how his new found truths (due to his idols’ diverting ideas actions and his own developing beliefs in the opposite) could be established only once the roots of his early convictions were demolished. Nevertheless, while this stark divorce from his early attachments and beliefs were truly liberating and life-affirming, it did however come at the cost of alienation. Alienation not only from Wagner and his household, his own family, but also from the general zeitgeist of the German nation of that time. Not only did Nietzsche reject religions and declared god killed, but he also fought tooth-and-nail against the blindness and slavery of the general masses that he could now clearly witness in abundance. This didn’t discourage him however, which is something we could aspire to as well in our present time. But instead he believed that his new found philosophy of self-overcoming and amor-fati could actually awaken and liberate the individual from the shackles of ‘sklavenmoral’ or slave morality.
But his philosophy aside,
Nietzsche the man lived a most exemplary life! Lost in the drunkenness of his
own greatness, he travelled on high mountains, lived wherever he found peace and
left a place on the minutest of mishap, ate food and drank milk on pennies at
times, and only survived on pension from his university. He published his own
books when others were too scared and unsure to do it, believing mightily that his
words were destined for fame. Gone were his early days where he belittled himself
when no one had praised his first book in over ‘ten months’ since its publication.
While the books he published during his sanity bears much of his core philosophy,
his later books written under the effects of euphoric mania appeal to the
rawness of my heart and to the wildness of my instinct. I dare to one day dare
writing such divinely drunk sentences and aphorisms myself. But for that I’d
have to climb high mountains first, and live there.
After going mad in 1889, at the age of 45, Nietzsche suffers for another eleven cruel years before he dies on August 25, 1900. He is finally freed from his own genius. It is a truly sad event to read about. One almost wishes, or dares to wish, that he could change his heart breaking fate into a happier one. This line from the last chapter eventually broke me to tears: “15 October 1894 was his fiftieth birthday, Naumann (friend and publisher) paid fourteen thousand marks into his account. Finally his books were selling, Nietzsche had no idea.”
When I picked this book from my shelf and escorted it to Amaan’s shop to read, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was even aloof toward it. Little did I know that I would be deeply moved and marked by Sue’s excellent biography of one of humanity’s frontrunning geniuses. I am utterly baffled and in awe of the life that Nietzsche lived and the genius that he was! If only I could tread, even lightly (although I want to go as hard as I could), the rope from ‘being a sick man’ to finally being a superman, a man of my destiny, and a man of living my life to its utmost capacity, and 'becoming who I am' – I would then be proud enough to call myself a Nietzschean. The journey begins by reading his books.
I give I Am Dynamite five stars.
February 26, 2025.