American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

After the two talked about the philosopher who had meant so much to them, Förster-Nietzsche provided the young cultist with the rare chance to thumb through books in her brother’s personal library. “Imagine what I felt when this devoted lady showed me the dead man’s books …! There was, I remember, … a [French idealist] I had never heard of; but against some eloquent passage of his, in praise of ‘the resolute pursuit of the higher truth,’ Nietzsche had written in pencil in the margin, several times over, the words: ‘in vain’ . .. ‘in vain’ … ‘in vain.’”33 Powys traveled on to Rome, his thoughts now accompanied by a stowaway: Nietzsche’s protest against idealism. His marginalia vexed Powys, leaving him despondent and distracted. The very author who had lifted him to the promontory of his Alpine imagination could just as easily send him tumbling down its slopes. Here he had reached the exquisite capital of Western art, yet the notion that the museums and cathedrals housed representations of universal truth and beauty now seemed like empty idealism: “In vain, in vain, in vain!” rang Nietzsche’s voice in his