Abstract
How is the allegedly oppressive and marginalizing stellarum influxus, and emanational, theory of influence Nietzschean in makeup? If it reduces the relationship between influence and originality, again, to a theoretical pulley system: the more influence increases, the more originality falls (and vice-versa), how can this be attributed to the work of such a ground-breaking thinker as Nietzsche? As demonstrated in the previous chapter, this model has been widely accepted as the dominant understanding of the term in literary studies; hence it has been left vulnerable to political and methodological attacks by those seeking to undermine the canon of Western literature.
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Notes
- 1.
An archetypal example of this would be Dale Carnegie’s famous How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1936).
- 2.
M. Bell, ‘The Superman and the all-too-human’, in A Concise Companion to Modernism, ed. David Bradshaw (Oxford, Blackwell, 2003), pp. 56–74, p. 56.
- 3.
C. Diethe, Nietzsche ’s Sister and the Will to Power. A Biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2003), p. 96.
- 4.
W. Kaufmann, Nietzsche : Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 412.
- 5.
M. Bell, ‘The Superman and the all-too-human’, in A Concise Companion to Modernism, ed. by David Bradshaw (Oxford, Blackwell, 2003), pp. 56–74.
- 6.
See ibid. Kaufmann outlined a view that Nietzsche was firmly ‘antipolitical’, especially in Ecce Homo, in response to ‘tender’ Nietzscheans, as he held no formal political affiliation, and ‘opposed both the idolatry of the State and political liberalism.’ These tender sorts, argued Kaufmann, ‘infer falsely that he must therefore have been a liberal and a democrat, or a socialist.’
- 7.
Ibid. p. 57.
- 8.
Ibid. p. 59.
- 9.
F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, quoted in S. Burke, The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and Nietzsche (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2008), p. 1. See also F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1968) where he writes, ‘Some are born posthumously’, p. 114.
- 10.
S. Burke, The Ethics of Writing, p. 2 (fn. 1).
- 11.
N. Martin, ‘“Fighting a Philosophy”: The figure of Nietzsche in British Propaganda of the First World War’, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (2003), pp. 367–380, p. 367.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid. p. 368.
- 14.
F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti (trans.) (London, Penguin, 2017), §535, p. 312.
- 15.
Ibid. §1076, p. 586 (emphasis in original).
- 16.
Ibid. §590, p. 590.
- 17.
Ibid. §585, p. 341.
- 18.
Ibid. §614, p. 352.
- 19.
‘I believe in absolute space as the substratum of force: such force sets its bounds and determines its shape. Time, eternal. But neither space nor time exists in itself: “changes” are mere appearances (or sensory processes for ourselves); the ever-so-regular recurrence of these changes establishes nothing but the fact that this is what has always happened … But appearances cannot be “causes”!’ Ibid. §545, pp. 314–315.
- 20.
Ibid. §858, p. 489.
- 21.
H. L. Stewart, Nietzsche and the Ideas of Modern Germany (London, E. Arnold, 1915).
- 22.
Ibid. p. 58. Emphasis added.
- 23.
Ibid. p. 32.
- 24.
Ibid. p. 125.
- 25.
H. D. Lasswell and A. Kaplan, Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry (London, Transaction, 2014).
- 26.
E. Berg, ‘A Note on Power and Influence,’ Political Theory, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May, 1975), pp. 216–224, p. 223.
- 27.
Ibid. p. 221.
- 28.
T. Parsons, ‘On the Concept of Influence,’ The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring, 1973), pp. 37–62.
- 29.
Ibid. pp. 48–50.
- 30.
Ibid. p. 51.
- 31.
Nietzsche , Will to Power, §627, p. 358.
- 32.
Ibid. §647, p. 367 (emphasis in original).
- 33.
Ibid. §480, p. 287.
- 34.
Ibid. §585, p. 431–432.
- 35.
Ibid. §959, p. 537.
- 36.
Ibid. §962, pp. 538–539.
- 37.
Ibid. §987, p. 549 (emphasis in original).
- 38.
Ibid. §995, p. 551.
- 39.
Ibid. §999, p. 552 (emphasis in original).
- 40.
A. Woodward, ‘Introduction Whose Nietzsche,’ in A. Woodward (ed.), Interpreting Nietzsche : Reception and Influence (London, Continuum, 2011), p. 2. Emphasis is original.
- 41.
H. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford, OUP, 1997), Second Edition, p. 5.
- 42.
Ibid. p. xxiii.
- 43.
Ibid. p. 95.
- 44.
Ibid. pp. 8–9.
- 45.
Ibid. p. xxiii.
- 46.
Ibid. p. xxiv.
- 47.
Ibid. p. 93.
- 48.
Ibid. p. 93.
- 49.
Ibid. p. 96.
- 50.
William Giraldi notes, on The Anxiety of Influence, ‘Bloom himself admitted in a 2002 New Yorker profile that when he reread the book a year after its publication, he couldn’t understand it.’ William Giraldi, ‘Bloomian Stride,’ The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Spring, 2013), pp. 175–185, p. 179.
- 51.
Bloom , The Anxiety of Influence, p. 8.
- 52.
Ibid. p. 50.
- 53.
Ibid. p. 51.
- 54.
Ibid. p. 117.
- 55.
F. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, XIX.
- 56.
Bloom , The Anxiety of Influence, pp. 55–56.
- 57.
H. Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York, Riverhead Books, 1994), p. 3.
- 58.
Ibid. p. 7.
- 59.
See ibid. pp. 93–96.
- 60.
Ibid. p. 71.
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Welburn, D. (2020). Influence and Nietzsche. In: Canon Controversies in Political Thought. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41361-3_4
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