(It is true that throughout this section and elsewhere I have been writing extensively about Nietzsche’s very special and distinguished place in the Russian psyche. I do not see this as repetitive, or redundant, however, as the subject is important, and besides, the present entry explores some different aspects of this subject, as the reader is about to see.)
Nietzsche writes, with brooding irony:
“I have my readers everywhere: in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris and New York--but I have none in Europe’s Flatland-- Germany.” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Preface, 1888.)
This is not the place for me to comment on how exactly he was perceived in each of the places that he names here. (The reader may remember the name of Brandes from Copenhagen, who was, of course, a great admirer of Nietzsche.) But my focus in this entry is clearly no longer on Brandes, but on Nietzsche’s historical readership in one country: Russia, of whose experiences with Nietzsche I have a thorough, and in many cases firsthand, knowledge.
Russia’s experience with Nietzsche has been extremely curious, to say the least. For obvious reasons he had huge censorship problems with the terribly restrictive Tsarist government, and the first Russian translations of his works appeared only in late 1890’s, with an edition of his selected works coming out in 1900; and an attempt at publishing his complete works starting in 1908, but never finished.
This lateness, eventual incompleteness, and a certain inaccuracy of early Russian translations was, however, absolutely unimportant to the intellectually sophisticated Russian reading public, as virtually every Russian Intelligent used to be proficient in both French and German languages, and, considering Nietzsche’s literary brilliance, it would have been ludicrous to read his works in any other language than his own, and his books in German were surely available to those who sought them, and these were a great many. In fact, Nietzsche’s cult started early on, already in the 1880’s, and it never subsided.
As a rather ugly side effect of that intellectual cult of the great German thinker was the sudden flare-up of a general public preoccupation with a pseudo-Nietzsche, that daring super-heroic demon who prophesied the coming of the new great man, superman, the man of the future. In other words, Nietzsche was vulgarized and trivialized, horribly misquoted and misinterpreted, but still he was the word on all lips, the most fashionable name both in the Russian literary salons and in trashy society talk.
There has been a lot of indignation among Russia’s Nietzschean buffs of a more serious persuasion, over the years, complaining about this pre-Revolutionary (pre-1917) Russian trend of dragging poor Nietzsche down into the gutter. But I find these complaints either completely disingenuous or completely uninformed. As I see the situation, any cult of an exceptionally influential personality produces a vulgar pop culture of circus buffoonery and gross caricature, which does not take anything away from the real person among his serious connoisseurs, but rather admirably makes that person a household name and makes everybody interested in finding something new (and frequently something authentic and serious) about this talk-of-the-town genius, this larger than life celebrity.
There is a natural tendency toward isolation [the end] and esoterism [the means] among cultural elites, like there has always been a desire to belong to some restrictive private club among the rich and prominent with a lesser endowment of intellectual abilities and perspicacity. No secrecy veil provides the safe harbor-seeker with better protection than the authentic invisibility cloak of a serious adept hiding behind a popular fashion of the day. In other words, Russia’s bona fide admirers of Nietzsche could enjoy reading Nietzsche’s works and discussing them with their peers virtually unmolested by censorship and intellectual police for this most excellent reason that the public craze over Nietzsche was giving them perfect cover as the censors had given up on stopping something so widespread and were no longer taking seriously something so trivialized.
There were very good reasons why Russia was so ready to embrace Nietzsche as one of her own. Here truly was a fearless genius who spoke his mind about everything of intellectual importance, who was able to give an impetus to Russian thought to impregnate it, to fertilize it, as only genius can.
One particular feature of Nietzsche’s thinking was of enormous concern to pre-Revolutionary Russia. It was his treatment of religion, and Christianity in particular. On the surface, his blasphemous disrespect was clear and unequivocal. When probed deeper, however, it was by no means as simple as that. Some Russians were indeed offended by his perceived blasphemies, but others, including prominent theologians and even priests of the Russian Orthodox Church saw a religious inspiration and even revelation in Nietzsche’s treatment of Christianity. It is well worth our while to examine this subject at a closer range.
Having read the bulk of his references to Christianity, it is fairly easy to conclude that Nietzsche is generally sympathetic toward the person of Jesus Christ.---“The word Christianity is already a misunderstanding: in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.” (Antichrist 39.) However, he is vicious toward Christianity as a religious doctrine, and thus to the effective founder of Christianity Apostle Paul.---
“St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence, which shows itself in all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this way: ‘If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!’-- And, at once, there sprang from the Gospels the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality. Paul even preached it as a reward.”
Remarkably, many Russian religious thinkers did not take offense at Nietzsche’s attack on Apostle Paul, as though, unlike Jesus, he were not off limits to philosophical questioning and doubt. In fact, they saw in this attack a refreshing new probe into the validity of Christianity as an established religion, quite confident that Christianity can withstand such critical probing and reassert itself in the minds of all of its doubters. Thus, to them, Nietzsche was saving Christianity, by making the millions of disenchanted and disenfranchised former believers think about it, which was the only way for them to come around. The other way: to cease thinking and caring about this subject permanently, meant death of belief, death of Christianity itself.
Nietzsche’s brave criticism of Christianity was also in tune with Russia’s doubts about the Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia, reduced to subservience to secular authority and deprived of dignity and moral standing. I have written elsewhere about Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s New Christianity representing a popular effort among Russian religiously-minded intellectuals to reform Russian Christianity, admittedly failing in its mission and even basic purpose. (I actually believe that Merezhkovsky’s determined effort was definitely influenced by Nietzsche’s thinking on the subject, and, mind you, Merezhkovsky was by no means an atheist, but quite the contrary, an ardent seeker of God’s return to a profoundly disaffected Russia.)
Russia’s infatuation with Nietzsche never subsided during the Soviet era, but kept on flourishing, like some perfect evergreen and ever-blossoming plant. Although his works were not printed between 1917 and 1990, they were still widely available in the original German, to those who could read German, in the English (and other) translations, to those many who could read English, plus of course the old pre-Revolutionary Russian editions were extremely popular too. Regrettably, these were clearly deficient in that Tsarist censorship had edited them pretty heavily, mostly by cutting out all offensive passages. In the post-Soviet era, until the year 2005 numerous reprints had been made of the old editions and old far-from-perfect translations, but then the decision to publish complete Nietzsches Werke in thirteen volumes in brand-new translations was made, and implemented. The commendable effort to present the Russian public with a worthy Russian-language text of all existing Nietzschean works, fragments and other elements of his written legacy, has been moving slowly, but studiously, and at the time of this writing, eight of the thirteen volumes have left the presses. What makes this effort especially noteworthy despite its slow pace, but possibly owing to it, is that it has generated an all new flurry of Nietzsche-mania, which keeps on flurrying all these years and promises not to subside, with an inexhaustible flow of Nietzsche-related books, articles, and literary and philosophical debates, pouring in all the time, with a sympathetic Russian Orthodox Church taking the lead in this newest revival, and Nietzsche is once again the hottest item across Russia, as if replicating the first, pre-1917, craze, but this time on a far more serious and consistently dignified level.
Nietzsche writes, with brooding irony:
“I have my readers everywhere: in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris and New York--but I have none in Europe’s Flatland-- Germany.” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Preface, 1888.)
This is not the place for me to comment on how exactly he was perceived in each of the places that he names here. (The reader may remember the name of Brandes from Copenhagen, who was, of course, a great admirer of Nietzsche.) But my focus in this entry is clearly no longer on Brandes, but on Nietzsche’s historical readership in one country: Russia, of whose experiences with Nietzsche I have a thorough, and in many cases firsthand, knowledge.
Russia’s experience with Nietzsche has been extremely curious, to say the least. For obvious reasons he had huge censorship problems with the terribly restrictive Tsarist government, and the first Russian translations of his works appeared only in late 1890’s, with an edition of his selected works coming out in 1900; and an attempt at publishing his complete works starting in 1908, but never finished.
This lateness, eventual incompleteness, and a certain inaccuracy of early Russian translations was, however, absolutely unimportant to the intellectually sophisticated Russian reading public, as virtually every Russian Intelligent used to be proficient in both French and German languages, and, considering Nietzsche’s literary brilliance, it would have been ludicrous to read his works in any other language than his own, and his books in German were surely available to those who sought them, and these were a great many. In fact, Nietzsche’s cult started early on, already in the 1880’s, and it never subsided.
As a rather ugly side effect of that intellectual cult of the great German thinker was the sudden flare-up of a general public preoccupation with a pseudo-Nietzsche, that daring super-heroic demon who prophesied the coming of the new great man, superman, the man of the future. In other words, Nietzsche was vulgarized and trivialized, horribly misquoted and misinterpreted, but still he was the word on all lips, the most fashionable name both in the Russian literary salons and in trashy society talk.
There has been a lot of indignation among Russia’s Nietzschean buffs of a more serious persuasion, over the years, complaining about this pre-Revolutionary (pre-1917) Russian trend of dragging poor Nietzsche down into the gutter. But I find these complaints either completely disingenuous or completely uninformed. As I see the situation, any cult of an exceptionally influential personality produces a vulgar pop culture of circus buffoonery and gross caricature, which does not take anything away from the real person among his serious connoisseurs, but rather admirably makes that person a household name and makes everybody interested in finding something new (and frequently something authentic and serious) about this talk-of-the-town genius, this larger than life celebrity.
There is a natural tendency toward isolation [the end] and esoterism [the means] among cultural elites, like there has always been a desire to belong to some restrictive private club among the rich and prominent with a lesser endowment of intellectual abilities and perspicacity. No secrecy veil provides the safe harbor-seeker with better protection than the authentic invisibility cloak of a serious adept hiding behind a popular fashion of the day. In other words, Russia’s bona fide admirers of Nietzsche could enjoy reading Nietzsche’s works and discussing them with their peers virtually unmolested by censorship and intellectual police for this most excellent reason that the public craze over Nietzsche was giving them perfect cover as the censors had given up on stopping something so widespread and were no longer taking seriously something so trivialized.
There were very good reasons why Russia was so ready to embrace Nietzsche as one of her own. Here truly was a fearless genius who spoke his mind about everything of intellectual importance, who was able to give an impetus to Russian thought to impregnate it, to fertilize it, as only genius can.
One particular feature of Nietzsche’s thinking was of enormous concern to pre-Revolutionary Russia. It was his treatment of religion, and Christianity in particular. On the surface, his blasphemous disrespect was clear and unequivocal. When probed deeper, however, it was by no means as simple as that. Some Russians were indeed offended by his perceived blasphemies, but others, including prominent theologians and even priests of the Russian Orthodox Church saw a religious inspiration and even revelation in Nietzsche’s treatment of Christianity. It is well worth our while to examine this subject at a closer range.
Having read the bulk of his references to Christianity, it is fairly easy to conclude that Nietzsche is generally sympathetic toward the person of Jesus Christ.---“The word Christianity is already a misunderstanding: in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.” (Antichrist 39.) However, he is vicious toward Christianity as a religious doctrine, and thus to the effective founder of Christianity Apostle Paul.---
“St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence, which shows itself in all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this way: ‘If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!’-- And, at once, there sprang from the Gospels the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality. Paul even preached it as a reward.”
Remarkably, many Russian religious thinkers did not take offense at Nietzsche’s attack on Apostle Paul, as though, unlike Jesus, he were not off limits to philosophical questioning and doubt. In fact, they saw in this attack a refreshing new probe into the validity of Christianity as an established religion, quite confident that Christianity can withstand such critical probing and reassert itself in the minds of all of its doubters. Thus, to them, Nietzsche was saving Christianity, by making the millions of disenchanted and disenfranchised former believers think about it, which was the only way for them to come around. The other way: to cease thinking and caring about this subject permanently, meant death of belief, death of Christianity itself.
Nietzsche’s brave criticism of Christianity was also in tune with Russia’s doubts about the Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia, reduced to subservience to secular authority and deprived of dignity and moral standing. I have written elsewhere about Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s New Christianity representing a popular effort among Russian religiously-minded intellectuals to reform Russian Christianity, admittedly failing in its mission and even basic purpose. (I actually believe that Merezhkovsky’s determined effort was definitely influenced by Nietzsche’s thinking on the subject, and, mind you, Merezhkovsky was by no means an atheist, but quite the contrary, an ardent seeker of God’s return to a profoundly disaffected Russia.)
Russia’s infatuation with Nietzsche never subsided during the Soviet era, but kept on flourishing, like some perfect evergreen and ever-blossoming plant. Although his works were not printed between 1917 and 1990, they were still widely available in the original German, to those who could read German, in the English (and other) translations, to those many who could read English, plus of course the old pre-Revolutionary Russian editions were extremely popular too. Regrettably, these were clearly deficient in that Tsarist censorship had edited them pretty heavily, mostly by cutting out all offensive passages. In the post-Soviet era, until the year 2005 numerous reprints had been made of the old editions and old far-from-perfect translations, but then the decision to publish complete Nietzsches Werke in thirteen volumes in brand-new translations was made, and implemented. The commendable effort to present the Russian public with a worthy Russian-language text of all existing Nietzschean works, fragments and other elements of his written legacy, has been moving slowly, but studiously, and at the time of this writing, eight of the thirteen volumes have left the presses. What makes this effort especially noteworthy despite its slow pace, but possibly owing to it, is that it has generated an all new flurry of Nietzsche-mania, which keeps on flurrying all these years and promises not to subside, with an inexhaustible flow of Nietzsche-related books, articles, and literary and philosophical debates, pouring in all the time, with a sympathetic Russian Orthodox Church taking the lead in this newest revival, and Nietzsche is once again the hottest item across Russia, as if replicating the first, pre-1917, craze, but this time on a far more serious and consistently dignified level.
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