Murmuring solitude: The Poetry of the Young Nietzche

Abstract

Since his childhood years, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote poems which, to a large extent, he would later use to structure his philosophical work. Another part of his poetic production, however, served a more personal, artistic purpose, with which he tried to conjure up an ev- er-increasing and more painful loneliness. This article will examine how solitude – inherent to the shaping of the fin-de-siècle individual and consubstantial to the self-perception of the figure of the poet – is present in Nietzsche’s writings, particularly in the poems of his youth, which are still unpublished in Spanish and of which we offer a small sample, translated into Spanish. A mere cursory analysis of these early poems provides a glimpse of the grounds of the philosophy of the mature Nietzsche. This analysis will focus on the images, motifs, and sounds through which the young man conveyed his appreciation of loneliness.