Nietzsche in Italy

A fascinating classic account of Nietzsche's travels in Italy at the end of the nineteenth century, where he found inspiration for his major works

First published in 1929, Nietzsche in Italy has never been out of print in France but has never been translated into English until now.

Endlessly fascinating and highly readable, Nietzsche in Italy will enthrall anyone interested in Nietzsche's relationship with the country that enriched his soul more than any other.
 
For fifteen years, after his first visit to the country in 1876, Nietzsche was repeatedly and irresistibly drawn back to Italy's climate and lifestyle. It was there that he composed his most famous works, including Thus Spake Zarathustra and Ecce Homo.

This classic biography follows the troubled philosopher from Rome, to Florence, via Venice, Sorrento, Genoa, Sicily and finally to the tragic denouement in Turin, the city in which Nietzsche found a final measure of contentment before his irretrievable collapse.

Born in Berlin in 1881 to a Prussian aristocratic family, Guy de Pourtalès studied literature at the Sorbonne, married a Frenchwoman, and became a French citizen before fighting on the French side during the First World War. After the war, Pourtalès developed tuberculosis, and while convalescing wrote a series of popular novels and biographies, forming rich and lasting contacts with luminaries in the French literary community, including Paul Valéry and André Gide, as well as pro-French German language writers and poets such as Zweig and Rainer Maria Rilke. Nietzsche in Italy was first published in 1929; it has never been out of print in France but has never been translated into English until now. Pourtalès finally succumbed to his illness in 1941.
Will Stone is a poet, essayist and literary translator. His translations for Pushkin Press include a series of titles by Stefan Zweig: Montaigne, Messages from a Lost World, Encounters and Destinies, and The Art of the City by Georg Simmel. His essays, reviews and poems have appeared in a range of publications including the TLS, the London Magazine, and the Spectator.