Monday, August 22, 2011

My Nietzsche

I am sitting here at Starbucks, the one that I now work at, taking my lunch break. I am gazing at the beverage I am drinking. The glace has made my beverage start to sweat. It could be the humidity in the air causing the sweat or just the fact that it is a hot summer day in Austin. This city has taught me so much while living here. I feel a stimulus in intellectual strength among the people I speak to in this city. I know I had it in Reno as well but this just hits differently.

After graduating from undergrad last December I have been trying to keep my mind active and always wanting to learn more. I needed to be challenged. While in undergrad I was introduced to Friedrich Nietzsche in a few classes. One was in a humanities course and the other in a philosophy course. I felt I barely scratched the surface. I need to learn more about Nietzsche. I want to discover Nietzsche in my own eyes. I want to understand him as if we were having an intellectual conversation at a bar. I am going on a grand intellectual journey using Nietzsche.

This journey isn't just about Nietzsche though. It is a lot more than that. I am currently studying for the GRE, which means expanding my vocabulary even more. I also want to practice more writing. I also plan to keep-up with my horrible German skills. Nietzsche is allowing me to do all of this, with a few catches of course. 

I am currently reading Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft translated by Walter Kaufmann into The Gay Science. Kaufmann described this as Nietzsche's most personal book. The book opens with a prelude of prose. 

The poems are in German on the left page and translated to English on the right page. To keep up my horrible German skills I am reading the poem in German and then will analyze what I read in German. I will then re-read the poem in the English translation to see if my German understanding was correct. I will then analyze the poem in English and talk about what the poem means to me.

To throw a curve ball into the mix of this exercise I also challenged myself to use dictionary.com's "word of the day" each day I blog. I will italicize the word and hyper-link the definition. As you can see with the word glace above. When it comes to the 63 poems opening The Gay Science I will include them at the beginning of each blog. I believe that rules can change as well. Join me on this journey as I discover my Nietzsche starting with The Gay Science. Please join my conversation in the comments section. Critique my thought and analysis. Together we will understand Nietzsche.

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