Nietzsche in Italy

A fascinating classic account of Nietzsche's travels in Italy at the end of the nineteenth century, where he found inspiration for his major works

For fifteen years, after his first visit to the country in1876, Nietzsche was repeatedly and irresistibly drawn back to Italy's climate and lifestyle. It was there that he composed his most famous works, including Thus Spake Zarathustra and Ecce Homo.

This classic biography follows the troubled philosopher from Rome, to Florence, via Venice, Sorrento, Genoa, Sicily and finally to the tragic denouement in Turin, the city in which Nietzsche found a final measure of contentment before his irretrievable collapse. Endlessly fascinating and highly readable, Nietzsche in Italy will enthral anyone interested in Nietzsche's relationship with the country that enriched his soul more than any other.



Guy de Pourtalès (1881-1941) was born in Berlin to an aristocratic family who later settled in Switzerland. After attending universities in Germany, Pourtalès moved to Paris in 1905 to study literature at the Sorbonne. He published his first novel in 1910, married in 1911 and, claiming Huguenot ancestry, acquired French citizenship in 1912. During the First World War he served as a translator for the British army in Flanders. Victim of a gas attack at Poperinghe in 1915, he was later diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. Pourtalès soon departed Paris for the slower pace of the Château d'Etoy on lac Léman, where between 1926-1932 he applied himself to romantic biographies of musicians. Pourtalès was prolific as an essayist, reviewer and polemicist, whilst maintaining a vast correspondence with other European writers including Stefan Zweig. In 1937 his autobiographical novel La Pêche miraculeuse finally won him a major literary prize, but the loss of his only son during the battle for France in May 1940 sent Pourtalès into a steeper decline. He died in Lausanne in June 1941.