American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Expressing the sentiments shared by a generation of early twentieth-century American literary radicals and political reformers, the novelist and popular lecturer John Cowper Powys described his lingering romance with Friedrich Nietzsche: “I cannot see a volume of Nietzsche in any shelf without opening it, and … [I] cannot open it without feeling, just as [I] did at first, the old fatal intoxication.”1 Preferring imagery more suggestive than mere alcohol, Isadora Duncan likened her first encounter with the nineteenth-century German philosopher to the voluptuous joys of the flesh when she recalled that “the seduction of Nietzsche’s philosophy ravished my being.”2 Others described their experience of Nietzsche’s philosophy in spiritual terms. Jack London and Eugene O’Neill were two of the many who referred to Nietzsche as their “Christ” and Thus Spoke Zarathustra as their “Bible.”