Own translation of Andrés Sánchez Pascual’s preface to Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo
I felt that the Spanish translator’s preface to Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo deserved a translation of its own.
This writing by Nietzsche, the most original introduction to his work that could be imagined, has been and will continue to be a disconcerting and even enigmatic book. For some it represents the highest peak in the universal history of autobiography; it is, according to them, a sincere, honest, torn book, a book that fascinates by the clarity it casts on a soul, on the history of a soul; it constitutes an act of unparalleled courage, through which someone finally says: ecce homo; yes, here is the man, you can look at him; but do not forget that beneath his human figure hides a god... Here I am, the first spirit of the century, forgotten and despised by all of you; I am unknown, despite my greatness; I am even hastening towards the cross: towards insanity, which will soon drag me into its darkness. But in spite of your forgetfulness and your contempt, ‘I am a destiny’, I am the herald of a new era, ‘I am burdened with an unspeakable responsibility... For I bear upon my shoulders the destiny of mankind’. I am opposed to all of you, I am a bold man who has dared to expose the ‘lie of millennia’ and I have come to announce to you a tragic age: ‘there will be wars such as have never been before’.
For others, however, this writing is also a summit; but a summit of smugness, of excessive pride, an impudence, something that cannot be read without feeling repugnance at every sentence, at every word. Mr. Nietzsche, they think, wants to tell us who he is, so that we do not confound him with any one else. Very well, we are ready to listen to him. But why does he speak so loudly, why does he thunder in our ears with his shouts, with his exclamations, with his insults? What do we care about his trifles, his nonsense? Is it so important that we know that alcohol is bad for him and that ‘one glass of wine or beer a day is enough to make (his) life a vale of tears’? What’s the point of telling us that in hot climates ‘tea is not advisable as the first drink of the day and one should begin an hour earlier with a cup of thick, fat-free chocolate’? Herr Nietzsche thinks that his ancestors were Polish aristocrats; for our part, he can think so. But why does he repeat it so many times? And why does he cast so much mud on Germany and the Germans? Is Herr Nietzsche resentful, he who talks so much about resentiment? Enough, enough; let’s put the book down; let us forgive, it could actually only have been written by a ‘madman’, or, let us be more benign, by someone who was ‘on the verge of madness’.
These are, in outline, the two opposite reactions that this singular book has provoked and will always continue to provoke. But if we look away from the content for a moment to focus on some formal aspects, nobody will deny that this work constitutes a unicum: something exceptional. Firstly, because it represents an irreplaceable opportunity that a famous philosopher, to whom so many influences are attributed, agrees to tell us one by one the genesis of his works, the intentions that move them, the climate in which they were conceived, the influences received. Secondly, because if, apart from the long chapter dedicated to his works, the other four are entitled ‘Why I am so wise’, ‘Why I am so clever’, ‘Why I write such good books’, ‘Why I am a destiny’, something like this must necessarily constitute a case of genius, even if it is a pathological genius. Thirdly, because this book, even with its sometimes profound lapses, is written in a magnificent prose, full of surprising combinations, in a transparent and musical language, worthy of one of the greatest German writers. It is certainly not the ‘“Jupiter Symphony” of German literature’, as an American has pompously said; but it is something that no one will read without being moved, touched, shaken, irritated, and ending up feeling an intense curiosity to know the works of a philosopher capable of writing such an autobiography. In this sense, as has already been said, there is no more original introduction than this one to the man Nietzsche, to the work Nietzsche, especially because it is not one of those ‘introductions’ that simply leave one at the door; on the contrary, Nietzsche grabs the readers with his powerful claw and takes them into the depths of his being.