philosopher must prove his learning by
laboriously rehearsing the ideas of all previous philosophers....
Nietzsche avoided both faults. He always assumed that his readers knew
the books, and that it was thus unnecessary to rewrite them. And, having
an idea that seemed to him to be novel and original, he stated it in as
few words as possible, and then shut down. Sometimes he got it into a
hundred words; sometimes it took a thousand; now and then, as in the
present case, he developed a series of related ideas into a connected
book. But he never wrote a word too many. He never pumped up an idea to
make it appear bigger than it actually was. The pedagogues, alas, are
not accustomed to that sort of writing in serious fields. They resent
it, and sometimes they even try to improve it. There exists, in fact, a
huge and solemn tome on Nietzsche by a learned man of America in which
all of his brilliancy is painfully translated into the windy phrases of
the seminaries. The tome is satisfactorily ponderous, but the meat of
the cocoanut is left out: there is actually no discussion of the
Nietzschean view of Christianity!... Always Nietzsche daunts the
pedants. He employed too few words for them--and he had too many ideas.

* * * * *

The present translation of "The Antichrist" is published by agreement
with Dr. Oscar Levy, editor of the English edition of Nietzsche. There
are two earlier translations, one by Thomas Common and the other by
Anthony M. Ludovici. That of Mr. Common follows the text very closely,
and thus occasionally shows some essentially German turns of phrase;
that of Mr. Ludovici is more fluent but rather less exact. I do not
offer my own version on the plea that either of these is useless; on the
contrary, I cheerfully acknowledge that they have much merit, and that
they helped me at almost every line. I began this new Englishing of the
book, not in any hope of supplanting them, and surely not with any
notion of meeting a great public need, but simply as a private amusement
in troubled days. But as I got on with it I began to see ways of putting
some flavour of Nietzsche's peculiar style into the English, and so
amusement turned into a more or less serious labour. The result, of
course, is far from satisfactory, but it at least represents a very
diligent attempt. Nietzsche, always under the influence of French
models, wrote a German that differs materially from any other German
that