“Full of Gods”: Nietzsche on Greek Polytheism and Culture

Summary

Friedrich Nietzsche died in Weimar on 25 August 1900, after a long and arduous mental illness. For almost twelve years, the once dashing professor and restless thinker had been reduced to a passive, mindless, and almost invisible existence, first behind the walls of mental wards, then in the house of his mother, and during the last three years of his life in a private villa at Weimar under the care of his sister. Physically robust but progressively demented, he was a stranger to himself and to others, largely oblivious to his own identity as well as to his past. His once so powerful mind had been put on hold, as it were, unable to think straight, to recollect, or even to read. Tragically, he did remember that he had written “nice books” and “many nice things.” Even in his darkest hours he continued to be deeply affected by music. During his last years, he slept much of the time and lived in unmitigated apathy. Apart from a small circle of family members and friends, he had next to no visitors and rarely recognized anybody. His connection with his environment was tenuous, amounting to a vague sense of familiarity at best. He was but a shadow of his former self when he died. Still, his death was widely noticed and reported. Who was Nietzsche at the time of his death, and how was he remembered by the rest of the world?