Kommentar zu Nietzsches “Die Geburt der Tragödie” by Jochen Schmidt, and: Kommentar zu Nietzsches “Der Fall Wagner,” “Götzen-Dämmerung” by Andreas Urs Sommer, and: Kommentar zu Nietzsches “Der Antichrist,” “Ecce homo,” “Dionysos-Dithyramben,” “Nietzsche contra Wagner” by Andreas Urs Sommer (review)

“My patient friends,” Nietzsche exhorted his reader at the conclusion to the Preface to Daybreak, “learn to read me well!” Even though that reader is, as Nietzsche was well aware, “in the midst of an age of ‘work,’ that is, of hurry, of indecent and sweaty haste, wanting to ‘get everything done at once,’ including every old and new book,” different rules should apply to his own writings—“read well, that is slowly, deeply, looking cautiously back and forward, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers . . .” (D P:5). While Nietzsche’s call for patience in the “age of ‘work’” has clearly gained in its urgency since he penned these words in the small fishing village of Ruta di Camogli, just outside Genoa, in the autumn of 1886, the modern reader is nevertheless arguably in a better position than ever to read Nietzsche well. Not only has the critical edition of his works prepared by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari in the 1960s and 1970s provided an accurate version of the texts, it has enabled a universal system of referencing Nietzsche’s texts, and through Nietzsche Source it may be consulted electronically; numerous companions and handbooks facilitate an overview of his philosophy, and a context in which to read any individual work, and the mammoth Nietzsche-Wörterbuch, edited by the Nietzsche Research Group in Nijmegen under the editorship of Paul van Tongeren, Gerd Shank, and Herman Siemens will, when complete, offer an entirely different path for understanding his thought (see Marco Brusotti, “Nietzsche-Wörterbuch, vol. 1: Abbreviatur—einfach,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 35–36 (Spring–Autumn 2008): 184–87).

Aside from the extremely useful Kommentarband accompanying the KSA, however, what has been missing is a comprehensive commentary on Nietzsche’s works, and it is this gap that the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities has undertaken to fill with the first comprehensive historical and critical commentary on Nietzsche’s works in six volumes (or, rather, eleven volumes, since most volumes comprise subvolumes), followed by a further index volume. The aims and scope of this project, set for completion in 2023, and carried out by Jochen Schmidt, Andreas Urs Sommer, and Barbara Neymeyr together with Katharina Grätz and Sebastian Kaufmann, are correspondingly ambitious: in the words of its publisher, De Gruyter’s website and the volumes’ back covers, it “aims to draw together a wide range of existing scholarship, and should considerably enhance our understanding” of Nietzsche. Its approach its twofold: “introductory overviews will explain the conceptual interrelationships and structures in Nietzsche’s writings while also illuminating the history of their production and subsequent reception,” and then “comprehensive annotations will address individual textual passages and their origins, thus providing a new perspective on Nietzsche’s works.” In short, this commentary aims to become “an indispensible basis” for future research into Nietzsche (unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own throughout). (For a presentation of this project, see Barbara Neymeyr, Jochen Schmidt, and Andreas Urs Sommer, “The Nietzsche Commentary of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 42 (Autumn 2011): 100–104.) In 2012 and 2013, the first three volumes appeared: volume 1/1, covering Nietzsche’s first published philosophical work, The Birth of Tragedy, and volumes 6/1 and 6/2, covering the final writings of 1888 and early 1889, including Twilight of the Idols...