For whom am I writing this review? If Nietzsche were by my side I suspect he would want me to start with the following quote from Ecce Homo: "To you, the bold venturers and adventurers, and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon dreadful seas, to you who are intoxicated with riddles, who take pleasure in twilight, whose soul is lured with flutes to every treacherous abyss." If you are, in fact, intoxicated with riddles, take pleasure in twilight, and your soul is lured with flutes to every treacherous abyss (note - Nietzsche says `every' treacherous abyss not `some' or `most'), then this book is for you.

We all know there is a time of transition hovering about age nineteen when the emotions of sensitive souls are heightened and experience is intensified, intensified to such a point that even thoughts and concepts have a highly-charged emotional tone; one's life deepens, exaggerates, strengthens, amplifies, ignites and one borders on becoming an inflamed madman, even if the madness is only known internally. This time of disequilibrium and hormonal topsy-turvy ordinarily settles down into the next phase of life: early adulthood, where the soul pursues a more specialized field of study and then earnestly begins a profession or career.

But for Nietzsche this transitional phase didn't stop; quite the contrary, rather than settling into any conventional groove, the gap of spiritual and artistic disequilibrium grew progressively wider over the years and was eons away from any semblance of `civilized' balance. Additionally, to add fuel to the emotional and philosophical fire, Nietzsche was not only sensitive but hyper-sensitive to music and the arts and had extraordinary linguistic and literary abilities. Thus, we are well to remember all of this when we read in Ecce Homo: "Philosophy as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is a voluntary living in ice and high mountains - a seeking after everything strange and questionable in existence, all that has hitherto been excommunicated by morality."

After an impassioned forward and two intoxicatingly stunning chapters, Why I Am So Wise' and Why I Am So Clever, (each line of these chapters deserve an underline and is worthy of committing to memory) we come to the chapter, Why I Write Such Good Books, and read: "Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows. What one has no access to through experience one has no ear for." So, how can one `understand' Nietzsche when living a conventional life, since living according to convention is itself a life of compromise, that is, not living with full, passion-soaked intensity but life as humdrum routine? This is a question any aspiring reader of Nietzsche must ask.

A self-portrait of Egon Schiele appears on the cover of this Penguin edition, which is most appropriate since this artist courageously and without compromise created a deeply personal expressive style of art causing much controversy in his brief life (he died at 28). Here are a few of the artist's quotes: "I am so rich I must give myself away." -- "To restrict the artist is a crime. It is to restrict germinating life." -- "Art is not modern. Art is primordially eternal."

By his commitment to living with intense zeal in his art and his life, Egon Schiele climbed the Nietzschean high mountains cleanly and fully. This is what it takes. What commitment are you making to live with passion and intensity in your life? If you have not been deeply moved by art and music and have not transformed yourself again and again, what chance do you think you stand in understanding Nietzsche? Perhaps it would be better for you to go on the academic head trip: read Kant and Quine and Rorty and then write papers with all the properly formatted footnotes.

Nietzsche devotes a short chapter to each of his books and then ends with a chapter entitled Why I Am A Destiny. Since this review is of Nietzsche's autobiography, Nietzsche gets the last word, but being Nietzsche, the last word is three quotes. Here they are::

--From the chapter The Birth of Tragedy: "`Rationality' at any price as dangerous, as a force undermining life!"

-- From the chapter Twilight of the Idols: "If you want to get a quick idea of how everything was upsidedown before me, make a start with this writing. That which is called idol on the titlepage is quite simply that which has hitherto been called truth."

--From the chapter Why I am a Destiny: "The concept `sin' invented together with the instrument of torture which goes with it, the concept of `free will', so as to confuse the instincts, so as to make mistrust of the instincts into second nature."