Preface

In 2007 I published a book on Nietzsche’s aesthetics, and it still seems generally decent to me. It was arranged chronologically, and it attempted to trace the development of Nietzsche’s thoughts about art by tracking a number of themes from their inception in The Birth of Tragedy through to their final appearances in the works of 1888, the last year of Nietzsche’s sane life. Given its brief, I believe that it did its job perfectly well. But so much had to be left out! When I finished the book, I found myself thinking altogether more about what wasn’t in it than what was. And so I continued to write. The present collection—which comprises eighteen of my better essays since then, twelve of them new—is the result. The opening essay is where it is because it functions, in effect, as a first pass at many of the issues discussed in the collection as a whole; while most of the remainder are arranged according to an obscure succession of what Goethe would have called elective affinities, a succession whose structure will probably be visible only to me, and even then not very. But that is one of the luxuries of putting together a book of this kind. There is no obligation to produce a through-written argument; no sense that its effects, if cumulative, should also be linear; no requirement, even, that it be internally consistent. Instead, there is the freedom to try things out and to try out juxtapositions that are, or might appear to be, odd or eccentric, but which feel right at the time. Other luxuries include the freedom to write essays that are just as long as they need to be, without regard to the standard demands of the journal article or research seminar, and the freedom to be partial, uncomprehensive, and even blinkered. In availing myself of all of these luxuries, and more, I have played the sybarite here and have enjoyed myself thoroughly in the process.