American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

James Huneker provided one of the earliest articulations of this idea when, in 1910, he exclaimed, “Alas! The pathos of Nietzsche’s reality. Reality for this self-tortured Hamlet-soul was a spiritual crucifixion and a spiritual tragedy.”62 The image of Hamlet that emerged in this interpretation often resembled the Hamlet that Nietzsche described in The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche rejected the traditional view of Hamlet as an overly introspective dreamer who drowns in the excess of his own possibilities. “Not reflection, no,” Nietzsche argued, it was “true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth” of a “world that is out of joint,” that brought about Hamlet’s morbid insanity.63 Thus, Nietzsche’s version of Hamlet’s madness and, by extension, the critics’ version of Nietzsche’s madness emphasized the mental and spiritual costs of fearless moral inquiry.

Funny, Huneker likened Baudelaire to Hamlet too (not unconvincingly). Wonder if that was a "thing" with him.