Oscar Levy actually got the only authorised version of Nietzsche's Collected Works done in English. An excellent writer himself [see his various books and essays and introductions on Nietzsche], he assembled a fine collection of English Nietzscheans to put the Collected Works together in fairly good time. Despite all the later translations, I still find the Levy edition the best. I admire him, and am grateful to him.
A quick resume on Oscar Levy from memory: he was born in a part of what was then Germany [and is now Poland] in 1867. Both his parents were Jewish, and his father was a very wealthy banker. Oscar studied medicine, and qualified as a Doctor in the late 1890s, emigrating to England and setting up a Medical Practice there. Ironically, it was one of his patients in around 1904 who kindled his interest in Nietzsche, although he had known of his work before. Not long after he sought to get all of Nietzsche's works translated into English. In the late 19th century there had been a project - authorised by the Nietzsche Archive in Germany - to make a translation of Nietzsche's complete works. It was begun by the Scot Thomas Common, and came under the editorship of the German/Scot Alex Tille. The latter assembled a group of translators, some of whom were from the Nietzsche Archive in Germany. However, the British publishing firm involved went bust and the first four translations done didn't sell well. So the project was in disarray after just four works. Dr Levy stepped in around 1907 and found a new publisher and took over as editor. He replaced some of the Tille translations after getting a group of his own translators together. He worked tirelessly on this difficult project, eventually getting an 18 volume set of the Complete Works together by 1913. This was a superb achievement, and the work still stands up today. Levy had to go to Germany to meet Nietzsche's sister, and had some very difficult negotiations with her [like her late brother, she was not easy to deal with]. However, eventually she agreed to authorise the Levy edition and even contributed some introductions to some of the translations herself. She was fluent in English, something she teased her brother for not being. Of course, since 1945 Nietzsche's sister has been derided for being an unintelligent anti-semite. In fact she was fluent in English and French, as well as being conversant in her brother's philosophy. If she was an anti-semite, why would she have entertained Oscar Levy, who was a very 'out' Jew? Anyway, the Levy edition was completed just before the outbreak of the First War. Nietzsche was often blamed for German aggression, and Levy ably argued against that in print. However, given the anti-German fervour of the time, Levy left England to live in neutral Switzerland during the war. It might be noted that Nietzsche taught in Switzerland and often sojourned there in his retirement. In 1920, Levy returned to England to pick his life back up there, but in 1921 was deported by the government as an 'undesirable alien'. This became something of a cause celebre amongst intellectuals (e.g., GB Shaw), as it was thought Levy was being unjustly persecuted. He went to live in France [that being Nietzsche's favourite country]. With the rise of Mussolini in the 1920s, Levy went to meet him, and was at first impressed with the Fascist leader's ideas, and his love of Nietzsche. However, as the '20s went on, Dr Levy became uneasy with the mob rule of Fascism. With the rise of Hitler, Oscar Levy began to see fascism and nazism as just political versions of militant Christianity - i.e., slave morality. Here was the first critique of fascism from a far right perspective. Remember though, that when Hitler came to power in 1933, Levy was then in his mid-60s. When war was declared in 1939, Levy moved back to England. Being in his early 70s, he was no longer considered a security risk. He continued to live in Oxford, England, where he died in 1946. Much later, in 2004, his papers were donated to the Nietzsche Archive. I haven't read anything about the "stormtroopers stealing his papers", although it is possible that any papers he left behind in France were seized. PS - American troops looted valuables across France and Germany, too, in 1945. Rare (and stolen) copies of Nietzsche's books found their way to the USA, for example. Jim Morrison was born in 1943 to an American Naval officer.
Oscar Levy was a remarkable man. Called a "furious Nietzschean" in his day, he moved in wide circles, was extremely wealthy, worked extremely hard and took risks. He was hounded out of Britain and stood up for free speech. He fairly dedicated his life to Nietzschean philosophy, and his editorship of the CWFWN remains a great achievement. His position as an Aristocratic Radical Nietzscheean has not been gainsaid.
My view is that Kaufmann spearheaded a post-war campaign [linked to the official de-nazification policy] to debunk the Levy edition and the Nietzsche Archive. His own incentive was to replace the Levy edition with his own and Hollingdale's translations [many of which stole from the Levy ones]. Unfortunately for them, they didn't make a complete English translation, and so the Levy one still stands. Time to rehabilitate Levy [and Elisabeth too].
The line that Val Kilmer speaks at the end of that clip, while reading the Portable Nietzsche [PN], isn't actually in the PN: it is the last line of WP. The cover of the PN used in that clip is much later than 1965. I would guess the edition Jim had would have had the purple cover. I think the cover in the clip was first produced 1970s/80s. It was still in use when I bought the book in 1995. As I discovered in my touted essay on the Nietzschean Jim Morrison, Jim took a lot his Nietzschean perspective from Colin Wilson's The Outsider. That book referenced the Levy translations. I notice Jim uses the phrase "Thoughts out of time and out of season, the hitchhiker etc." Of course, 'Thoughts Out of Season' was the title used in the Levy ed., whereas in the PN Kaufmann references them as the 'Untimely Meditations'. While the Hopkins Sugarman book can't be relied upon too much, they do state that Jim had the Birth of Tragedy in a 'slim volume'. This is unlikely to be the Kaufmann translation, which appears in the larger Kaufmann collection, Basic Writings. It's a long time since I saw the Doors movie. I did prefer the way they treated the early period, with the UCLA etc., although this might be a slight faux pas with the wrong cover of PN. I guess they didn't have a Nietzsche consultant on the movie!
Good question about what to put in a Portable Nietzsche! I suspect that Kaufmann's selection was governed by the knowledge that he would put the works not in the PN into Basic Writings [although both books are far from complete]. If I had to have a stone cold PN, I would certainly have BGE and Twilight in there, as they are fairly compendiums. I would probably put some of BT in there, but not all. I would have Uses and Abuses of History from the UM. Perhaps Daybreak and the Last book of the Joyful Wisdom. And the first book of TSZ. One of the GM essays and maybe some of the sections on the WP dealing with science. Already, this is too much. I'd use the Levy translations because they self cohere with the master index etc., and have an overall editor. You've just reminded me that the best portable collection is 'The Philosophy of Nietzsche', 'Edited, with an Introduction by Geoffrey Clive. Selected from the 18 volume Oscar Levy translation: topical arrangement based on Karl Schlecta's new German edition of Nietzsche's works.' 1965 New American Library - Jim might have used this too. This is far superior to Kaufmann's in every way.
Adolph Hitler is still alive
Ooooogh - sssssh
I slept with her last night Jim Morrison
Yeah
Come out from behind
That false mustache, Adolph Adolph Hitler Poem
I know your're in there
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
You favor life
He sides with Death
I straddle the fence
And my balls hurt
It's semi-autographical too; who's under that false mustache? Jim, like Hitler, faked his own death and went to live somewhere else. Like Jim's hero, Rimbaud, who became a gun runner in Africa. Jim bought Pam a German Luger gun for her birthday. Note Jim spells Adolf as Adolph - the P is for Pam. Jim wrote in the AH poem that the poet sided neither with death nor life: another suggestion of a mysterious and hidden existence. The hurt in his testes might even suggest transitioning. Some think Nietzsche faked his own madness. And yes, even Levy was an exile. And Nietzsche's sister went to South America to found a German colony. Apparently some genetic remnants remain.
What versions of Nietzsche in English did Jim Morrison read?
In a recent discussion I guessed that Jim Morrison may have owned the Collected Works of FW Nietzsche, edited by Oscar Levy. This was suggested by the fact that Jim had asked his parents for this when he was at college, according to Jim's sister, who is a fairly good witness.
I corroborated this by noting that Jim used the phrase 'thoughts out of time and out of season', in a poem, which is close to 'Thoughts Out of Season', the Levy edition's title for what are usually called in other translations, The Untimely Meditations'.
The film, The Doors, made in the 1980s, portrays Jim as reading from a copy of Kaufmann's 'The Portable Nietzsche'. John Ceperich pointed out that the cover shown in the film was later than 1965, the time measnt to be shown. In that book the term 'Untimely Meditations' is used.
So while it is possible that Jim used the Kaufmann translation [albeit with an earlier cover], it isn't certain. I also mentioned that Jim relied on Colin Wilson's book 'The Outsider's treatment of Nietzsche, and that book referenced the Levy translations.
However, given Jim's outlook, I don't think the Kaufmann would gibe with him. Jim was very much a 'hard Nietzschean', unlike Kaufmann's liberal portrayal.
I think I have now discovered the likely book of Nietzsche which Jim carried around with him [Sugarman mentions a 'slim volume' which can't be the Kaufmann] while at UCLA. And that is H.L. Mencken's 'The Gist of Nietzsche' [first published in 1910]. Mencken is much more of a 'hard Nietzschean', and therefore more aligned to Jim's own world view.
The book is an excellent collection of Nietzsche's aphorisms and passages on various subjects [remembering that Mencken had just previously written a book on Nietzsche's philosophy].
I discovered this when a colleague brought this book to my attention and remarked on some of Mencken's idiosyncratic translations, there, or else a typo.
Instead of 'blonde beast', Mencken had written 'blood beast'.
This immediately reminded me of a line in Jim Morrison's 'The American Night#, which I had found puzzling:
"The moon is a dry blood beast."
In my study of this poem I had put - 'this non-sequiteric line could be explained by Crowley [the Beast]:- "The best blood is of the moon, monthly." [The Book of The Law]. It refers to the 'Starfire' - a supposed ceremony involving the drinking of menstrual blood as part of black magic.'
But this didn't convince me, it seemed too tenuous. It makes far more sense to me that Jim, an avid Nietzschean, read this peculiar 'blood beast' line in Mencken, and used it in his own poem, whether subconsciously or consciously.
Lots of references to the moon, but not any to "blood beast", so I'm pretty sure I'm onto something there. Looking for a connection between Jim and Henry, I came across something very chilling. A Mencken Morrison who was born the same year as Jim and died in an airplane crash the same year that Pam died. Possible that we have a confusion of identities here, which could be related to Jim faking his death. [Morrison, Virginia Mencken (0000.00.00-0000.00.00). HLM's niece, bore HLM's grandnephew, David Mencken Morrison (1943.Mar.??-1974) who was killed in an airplane crash.] http://www.mencken.org/.../text/txt002/mencken-companion.htm
These early commentaries are very interesting because they are nearer in time and temper to Nietzsche. Such books - and translations - of Nietzsche, after 1945, are too infused with the post-war liberal consensus [both left and right] which is completely alien to Nietzsche's Weltanschauung.
Kaufmann's books on Nietzsche and translations, all carry admonitions against the first English Nietzscheans, and against Nietzsche's sister and the Nietzsche Archive. And I think that for most of us, our first experience of Nietzsche was of those post-war translations and commentaries by Kaufmann. In my case, it was Kaufmann and then Hollingdale. It was only after I had worked through those that I started to look at the very first translations and commentaries done in the late 19th and early 20th century. I was prejudiced against them because I swallowed the propaganda. As I got to know more about Nietzsche and realised that Helen Zimmern [a Jewsess], for example, was a friend of Nietzsche's, and that he had wanted her to translate his books, I looked closely at her translation of BGE and felt it closer to Nietzsche's spirit than the Kaufmann. I also noted that Oscar Levy [a Jew] had got Nietzsche's sister's agreement for this translation to be published. Clearly, his sister wasn't the raving anti-semite that we were told. Reading the early translations widely I began to see that these were much closer to Nietzsche's own ideas. Ideas that had been *rejected* by the post-war consensus. So yes, I believe that the post-war translations are largely irrelevant, and have a use only as a comparison to the earlier ones, where any mistakes in the early ones can be corrected alongside comparison with the original German. The format of the Collected Works edited by Levy is the best, in my view. And had it not been usurped it could have continued and been revised according to the original wishes of Nietzsche and his editors.
Nietzsche loved his mother and sister, and they him. They fell out at times, but always fell back in. His sister often kept house for him, and they lived together like man and wife for a time. Elisabeth looked after his finances carefully, something he worried inordinately about. She, like his mother, often read books to him to save his eyes, and his sister helped with his manuscripts, and his publishers. He dealt with two main publishers before publishing his last books himself. He spoke to his sister about her looking after all his manuscripts and founding an archive. Something she did according to his wishes. He was extremely close to his sister [to the point of suspected incest] and they were actually very similar. The problem with the anti-Nazi traducement of his sister is that it paints her as 'evil', and 'tricky', and 'deceitful' and 'bullying': in fact, Nietzsche was like that too - but the anti-Nazis paint him like a saint to make his sister seem worse! Elisabeth, like her brother, was not really the marrying kind [so similar were they]. She did make a late and brief [but eventful] childless marriage to Bernard Forster who was an anti-semite. And Nietzsche was undoubtedly jealous as he really wanted to spend his life living with his sister. When Forster died suddenly, his sister rushed back to her brother who had missed her painfully. True, he variously [and inconsistently sometimes] condemned anti-semitism, but he retained a life long love for the anti-Semite Cosima Wagner. The more I read about Nietzsche's day to day life, the more I realise how important Elisabeth was. Here is an old blogpost, which touches on this, through their letters, although there is much more to find out.
I read Mencken's 1908 book on Nietzsche years ago, and always thought it exemplified the 'Hard Nietzschean' position [unlike the 'Soft Nietzschean' [SN] position of Kaufmann and Hollingdale]. John Ceperich seemed to counter this when I said it by saying that Mencken was a pacifist. That matters not. Mencken presented Nietzsche's ideas raw and unvarnished which is the requisite for Hard Nietzscheanism [HN]. Whereas SN like to draw a veil over certain of N's ideas, or tell us that N was only being 'metaphorical' - or even cancel some of the ideas - even some of the books! ["The Will to Power is a forgery", they bleat]. HN's lay all the ideas out there, including the stuff on Race, the pro-Slavery stuff, the Anti-Feminist stuff and all the passages which sound [and are] proto-fascist. This is what Mencken does. A comparison of Mencken's Gist with Hollingdale's Reader, will make this clear [can you imagine a section called 'Caste' - as in Mencken - in Hollingdale's Reader?] .
Hollingdale's dates look very tricky. Looks like his cover story dates were just slightly adjusted from Nietzsche's. Niet born 15th Oct 1844. Reg Hollingdale born 20th Oct. 1930 and died 28 September 2001. Niet died 25th August 1900.
my impression is that the Kauf versions were aimed at the American market, and the Holl ones at the Brit. The latter being seen as more pragmatic than the former, and so preferring a less "squishy" Niet, as you say. I got one thing wrong with Reg. While he was elusive, he did appear in a terrible BBC hour long prog on Nietzsche from 2019. This prog played up the Nietzsche wandering lonely as a cloud on the Swiss Alps thing, and made no mention of Peter Gast, nor of Nietzsche's dealings with his publishers. It also both marginalised and maligned his sister. Reg's appearance though still made me think he was a phoney. I find his back story ver unbelievable, as is Kauf's. Kauf's full on attack on the Levy edition, and his own list of his intended Nietzsche translations suggested that he meant to replace the Levy. But I will look into your objection. Essentially, Kauf and Holl translated the whole of the Collected Works between them, but they didn't put them together in a coherent edition, that is my point. And so for all their sniping at the Levy, they didn't replace it. 1921 1980 1930 2001 - that's simple numerology where the number 3 recurs in various multiples in both sets of dates - and where the dates mirror each other, 1921 mirrors 2001 and 1980 1930. 1921=1930 [19 2+1 = 3]. And 2001 =3. 1921 = 13 1930 = 130 = 13. 13= 1x3 = 3. General idea is that the spooks who engineer these culture scams like to sign their work using various coincidences and connections.
Then we have to find some evidence that JDM was influenced by Kaufmann. I have found evidence that Jim was influenced by Colin Wilson's depiction of Nietzsche in his 'The Outsider'. Wilson quotes a letter of Nietzsche's where he says that "I must live a few years longer. I feel a presentiment that the life I lead is a life of supreme peril. I am one of those machines that sometimes explode," adding that Nietzsche "died insane, like a big gun with some trifling mechanical fault that explodes."
This all directly inspires the language Morrison will use when he writes of the moment of Nietzsche's collapse into madness:
"On the third of January, near the door of his lodgings, Nietzsche saw a cabman whipping a horse. He threw his arms around the animal's neck and burst into tears, marking first hour of his madness.
He had purposely contracted syphilis as a student - playing Wagner on an upright for the whores - and carried the germs of chaos all his years. When he at last despaired of embodying in words his entire world of thought, he let those forces sweep 'through him and explode chambers in his brain.
But not before capping his philosophy with that last symbolic act - the final chapter in his philosophy - and wed himself with the act and the animal for all time." I have also indicated that Jim must have been aware of the Levy edition when he uses the 'Thoughts Out of Season' formula, and not Kaufmann's 'Untimely Meditations'. And with Mencken, we have the peculiar formulation "blood beast" which is a *unique* mistranslation, only occurring in one place. This is used directly by JDM in An American Prayer. So this is real literary evidence. Whereas the film The Doors, which shows Jim with a Kaufmann book shows the wrong edition, anyway! Going back to what you say about the Morrison family, it suggests to me that they were traditional, rather than radical. Pictures of Jim on his father's ship show him with short hair and even holding a machine gun at one point. This isn't long before he formed The Doors. Given that this period was when JDM started to read Nietzsche, I wonder whether he would've been so taken with Kaufmann's liberal Nietzsche.
The Universe is always making hints, tellin' us; "Go this way, not that way". It does it with the astrology of coincidences and conspiracies. Billy Boethius and his Idolatry of Nietsky; American Woman - or - L.A. Pie. Guess, The Who? Donna the Mad? Who New. Who fooled you, and why were you Os Born! I slept with Madonna lst night - cherry pie. I got an oscar for my Levy. She can't act, but she can dance. Billy Broad has a boomer wrangled lypo typo. Bloody Beastie! I liked his version and hers. A Tragedy made of a goat's pie, full of magpies - fast and bulbous.
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