A Note on the Publication of Ecce Homo
Many who have never carefully read any of Nietzsche’s works have read about two German editions of the works that elicited some sensational but uninformed comments in print. The first was Karl Schlechta’s edition of all of Nietzsche’s books and a selection from his notes, fragments, and letters, in three volumes. But Schlechta simply reprinted the previously published versions of Ecce Homo and need not be considered here.
The second was Erich F. Podach’s book, Friedrich Nietzsches Werke des Zusammenbruchs (1961),1 which offered texts of Nietzsche contra Wagner, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and the so-called Dionysus Dithyrambs that were said to supersede all previous editions. I have shown elsewhere2 how ill-founded Podach’s strident claims are. Here we need only consider his handling of Ecce Homo. He aims to show that “The hitherto familiar Ecce Homo does not exist” (p. 208). This sensational charge has to be met here, even if some readers should prefer to skim the next six paragraphs.
Podach prints the manuscript with Nietzsche’s editorial directions, such as requests to insert or move passages; he reproduces alternative versions of the same passages, including pages that had been pasted over; and he admits that he has “not indicated where whole sections in the manuscript sent to the printer are crossed out. Here some of the texts show plainly that they are variants or preliminary versions, while in other cases [very few] it cannot be decided whether N or Gast [Nietzsche’s young friend who helped him with editorial chores and proofs] has deleted them” (p. 408).
In fact, Ecce Homo was begun October 15, 1888, on Nietzsche’s forty-fourth birthday, and finished November 4. A few days later Nietzsche sent the manuscript to his publisher, Naumann; but on November 20 he mentioned some additions in a letter to Georg Brandes, the Danish critic who was the first to lecture on Nietzsche at a university (Copenhagen); and then he also mentioned additions to Naumann. On a postcard, November 27, he asked Naumann to return “the second part of the MS … because I still want to insert some things,” and explained that he meant “the whole second half of the MS, beginning with the section entitled ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra.’ I assume that this won’t delay the printing for even a moment as I shall send back the MS immediately.” On December 1 he acknowledged receipt of the second half but requested the return of the whole MS, including the additions: “I want to give you a MS as good as the last one, at the risk that I have to be a copier for another week.” On December 3 Naumann replied that he was returning the MS, but “copying it once more I do not consider necessary; I merely should especially recommend that you read the proofs carefully although I shall make a point of doing likewise.” This shows plainly how wrong Podach’s claims are: the publisher found the manuscript finished, clear, and printable.
Nor did Nietzsche keep it long. On December 6, he telegraphed Naumann: “MS back. Everything reworked [umgearbeitety].” And on the eighth, Nietzsche wrote Gast: “I sent Ecce Homo back to C. G. Naumann day before yesterday after laying it once more on the gold scales from the first to the last word to set my conscience finally at rest.”
All this information was given by Professor Raoul Richter in his long postscript to the first edition of 1908, and Richter also described the manuscript: “The manuscript is written clearly and cleanly from beginning to end, so that even every untrained person can read it quickly on the whole, without trouble. Changes have been made either by striking things out (with pencil or ink) or by pasting things over. In both cases the editor [Richter] has copied the original version in order to help provide a basis for a later critical edition. For that, ample use would also have to be made of the drafts and variants found in the three octavo notebooks (…)3 and some separate sheets. Nietzsche’s corrections in the manuscript have been entered with scrupulous exactness; where, owing to lack of space, some additions had to be written in miniature script, they are little graphic masterpieces: so readable is every letter, and so exactly is the bracket of insertion drawn above the line … Slips that affect the spelling or grammar are very rare and probably rarer than in the average manuscript submitted to a printer” (p. 146).
Neither Richter’s probity nor the authenticity of the letters I have cited, and of any number of others that corroborate them, has ever been questioned. Podach simply ignores all of this. Still, two departures of his version from the traditional ones ought to be mentioned here. First, he omits section 7 of the second chapter, which contains Nietzsche’s well-known poem that is sometimes called “Venice,” sometimes “Gondola Song.” Podach prints this section under the title “Intermezzo,” after the second section of Nietzsche contra Wagner. This is understandable, for that is where it appeared in the unpublished first printing of the latter book (1889; I have a copy of that), though not in any published version. But on December 20 Nietzsche sent his publisher a postcard: “I have sent you a single sheet with the title ‘Intermezzo,’ with the request to insert it in N. contra W. Now let us rather insert it in Ecce, for which it was intended originally[!]—in the second chapter (Why I am so clever), as section 5 [sic]. The following numbers will have to be changed accordingly. The title ‘Intermezzo,’ of course, goes.” Two days later Nietzsche wrote Gast similarly. But a few days later he received proofs of Nietzsche contra Wagner that naturally still included this section, and he did not delete it but made some slight corrections in it. Richter printed it in his edition of Ecce Homo, with the corrections Nietzsche had made in the proofs. Podach mentions none of this but says simply that Gast, “for his own glory and the enhancement of Ecce Homo, embodied the ‘Intermezzo’ printed in Nietzsche contra Wagner in the manuscript”. While this is in keeping with the tenor of Podach’s book, it seems sensible to me to include this section in Ecce Homo, in keeping with all previous editions except Podach’s.
Finally, at the end of Ecce Homo, Podach prints a three-page poem entitled “Ruhm und Ewigkeit” (fame and eternity). Here he follows Richter’s edition, while all subsequent editions have omitted the poem. This did not involve any suppression, although Podach is very scornful of all who have omitted it at this point: the poem has usually been included in the so-called Dionysus Dithyrambs and is readily available in volumes containing Nietzsche’s poems. Podach considers it important—it is not clear why or for what—that Nietzsche wanted to conclude all of his last works with poems. But as a matter of fact, the last two books he saw through the press, The Case of Wagner and The Twilight of the Idols, did not end with poems; neither did The Antichrist; and as for Nietzsche contra Wagner and Ecce Homo, in his last communications to his publisher, Nietzsche asked Naumann January 1, 1889, to return one final poem, and January 2, 1889, to return both. That he did not want them published in their present form at the end of these books seems clear; that he would have revised them, if he had not collapsed on January 3, is possible. But it is no less possible and actually more likely, I think, that he realized that the books would be better without these poems.
After Nietzsche’s collapse, his family decided not to publish any further books by him. The Twilight of the Idols did appear, as scheduled, in January 1889, but the three books written after that were held up. In 1891 the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra was printed, together with the Dionysus Dithyrambs—and published in 1892. By 1895 there was sufficient interest in Nietzsche to include both The Antichrist and Nietzsche contra Wagner in volume VIII of a new edition of Nietzsche’s works. But Ecce Homo was held back, perhaps partly because it might compromise Nietzsche, partly because his sister found it useful to quote from Nietzsche’s self-interpretations when she wrote prefaces for new editions of his books. As long as she knew Ecce Homo and the public did not, her biographies of her brother as well as her occasional journalistic pieces had a special authority.
Finally, in 1908 the book appeared in an expensive limited edition of 1250 copies. It was not brought out by a publisher who had been previously associated with Nietzsche, but by the Insel Verlag; and the title, binding, and ornaments had all been designed by Henry van de Velde in the Jugendstil of that time. There is no English word for that style: one uses the French phrase art nouveau. Nietzsche, who had written Gast, November 26, 1888, that he wanted Ecce to be designed just like Twilight—that is, very simply, with clear print and wide margins and nothing to distract the eye from the text—would surely have found the book hideous. But Richter’s postscript was dignified and informative.
Two years later, in 1910, Ecce Homo was included in the new volume XV of Nietzsche’s works, which along with volume XVI (1911) contained a greatly enlarged and entirely remodeled version of the Will to Power and replaced the old volume XV (1901), which had contained the first edition of the Will to Power. Many libraries acquired only volume XVI, adding it to their old sets: as a result, many sets of the so-called Grossoktav edition4 of Nietzsche’s works lack Ecce Homo. But henceforth Ecce was included in editions of the works and no longer hard to come by. And all editions of the book, except for Podach’s, followed the first edition, except that they omitted the poem at the end.
The present translation follows the standard editions, but the notes and Appendix also offer previously untranslated variants and passages from drafts, along with other information and comments not previously found in any edition in any language. In a way, all this apparatus weighs down a-book written with light feet; but Ecce is not easily accessible, and on a first or second reading the commentary may prove helpful. The form in which it is offered should make it easy to reread Ecce Homo straight through, without any editorial interruptions.
Perhaps one or another reader of the book will react in a manner similar to “Napoleon’s surprise when he came to see Goethe: it shows what people had associated with the ‘Germar spirit’ for centuries. ‘Voilà un homme!’”5
1“The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Collapse” (or, literally, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Works of the Collapse”), Heidelberg, Wolfgang Rothe, 1961.
2“Nietzsche in the Light of His Suppressed Manuscripts,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, II (October 1964), 205-25. This is included in the revised third edition of my Nietzsche (1968).
3Identified in parentheses by their Archive numbers.
4The various editions of Nietzsche’s works are discussed in the Bibliography of my Nietzsche (3.rd ed., 1968).
5Beyond Good and Evil, section 209.