Gerald Abraham

#2

"In his Blistering Prose, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) uprooted the traditional study of philosophy as firmly grounded in rationality and truth and lay the foundations for the radicalism of twentieth-century Western thought, as it would emerge after his death. Contemporary thinkers have reinterpreted, revised, and repeated Nietzsche's ideas, but no one has transcended them, and today, no student of philosophy can afford to ignore the life and work of this towering figure. In his seminal work, acclaimed biographer Rudiger Safranski integrates philosophical analysis with biographical detail to portray this difficult, often contradictory man with an objective, even-handed grace." "Following Nietzsche's own dictum that "life is a testing ground for thought," Safranski, the author of biographies of Heidegger and Schopenhauer, offers a critical reappraisal of Nietzsche's philosophy by examining the intersection of his life and work, attempting what Nietzsche considered the most important of human tasks: to be "an adventurer, a circumnavigator of the inner world called human.""--BOOK JACKET

#3

This monumental 656-page biography is probably the fullest, most revealing account to date of Tchaikovsky's private life. Poznansky identifies the death of the composer's mother as a shattering experience for young Pyotr Ilyich, a source of deep existential melancholy. His hypersensitivity, forged by a child's feeling of paradise lost, would manifest in neurosis, insomnia and depressive fits marked by "a sense of insurmountable terror." A Yale University librarian, Poznansky explores the composer's obsessive fear of death, his idealized relationship with eccentric, free-thinking patron Nadezhda von Meck, the fiasco of his brief, unconsummated marriage, and his involvement in a homosexual subculture that simultaneously fascinated and repelled him. Drawing on Russian sources, the author refutes the theory that Tchaikovsky's death in 1893 at age 53 was a suicide forced upon him by a conspiracy of former classmates. "The story of a soul finding itself," this remarkable book casts only an indirect light on the relationship between Tchaikovsky's life and art, as the author omits extended discussion of the music. Photos.