Friedrich Nietzsche

“The young professor of classics Friedrich Nietzsche argues that Greek tragedy was born from the union of two opposed forces — the Apollonian dream of form and the Dionysian ecstasy of music — that it was killed by Socratic reason, and that it might be reborn in German music.”

“In nine chapters of short aphorisms, Nietzsche turns from Wagner and metaphysics to a cool, historical, 'chemical' examination of morality, religion, art, society, women and the state — a book, as its subtitle says, for free spirits.”

“After ten years alone on his mountain, the prophet Zarathustra goes down among men to teach that God is dead, that man is something to be overcome, and — hardest of all — that everything returns eternally. A philosophical poem in the voice of scripture.”

“Writing from Turin, Nietzsche settles accounts with the composer he once worshipped: Wagner, he argues, is not a musician but a brilliant actor and a sickness of the age, and Bizet's Carmen shows what healthy, southern, light-footed music could be.”