Penguin Classics, softcover, 140 pages, condition: new.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) began the composition of this most unusual book on his 44th birthday, October 15, 1888, the last birthday before he believed himself to be the King of Italy, then Napoleon, then God, ultimately sliding into the final catatonic phase in which he passed the remaining 11 years of "life". Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), his last book, has as subtitle Wie man wird, was man ist (How one becomes what one is). It is a final summary of the significance of Nietzsche the prophet written by himself shortly before his ascension.
After his many early and mid-period critical texts and the mid-period and late prophetic books (in which he never revealed all of the visions/emotions he confided to his notebooks), he knew he was due to write a systematic presentation/justification of his new ideas/visions/hallucinations. In his letters to friends and in his notebooks he made plans for a 4 volume summa, but he knew that, even if he had had the time, he was not up to the task. He was exhausted and ill in body and mind, and systematic thought was never his strength. But I also suspect that he knew there was no there there; that is to say, he was riveted primarily by visions and emotions, not by thoughts and ideas. He expressed the visions and emotions beautifully in his prose poems and poetry, but when he went to find ideas and arguments, they were inchoate, at least during his last few years of intelligent life.
In the letters he wrote in Bologna during his last weeks of relative sanity to the two remaining contacts he maintained, he was ebullient, at a new peak above all his previous manic phases - everything was so perfect then, his health, the weather, the music, the food. And one last time he wrote a book - Ecce Homo - in one go, in approximately two weeks (he did this several times during the last 3 years of his more or less sane life). Though he couldn't write his summa, he could write about his favorite topic - the global significance of his role and his work.
