The Scarlet Daybreak: Bilingual English & German Edition

Friedrich Nietzsche

Newcomb Livraria Press

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A new 2023 translation into American English from the original manuscript of Nietzsche's 1881 Morgenröte. This edition is bilingual- the original text is included in the back as reference material behind the English translation. This is volume 4 in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche from Newcomb Livraria Press. This chronological, systematic set of Nietzsche's works is the first ever bilingual "Hauptwerke" or complete major works of Nietzsche published in English & the original German. This work is often translated as "The dawn" or "the dawn of day". This is a poor translation of the original title "morgenrote" which refers to the reddening of the sky in the pre-dawn hours. Morgenröthe, or Morgenröte in the modern spelling, literally means "Morning-Red", a unique German word referring to the reddening of the sky in the twilight hours before daybreak. Rendering such as The Dawn of Day" or just "Daybreak", but this misses the connotations of the word. Dämmerung is "dawn", but Morgenröte is a specific phenomenon of the predawn eastern sky. In Roman mythology, there is a Goddess associated with the Morgenröte- Aurora. In Greek mythology, Homer called this the "rose-fingered Eos". This has continuity into Christianity as the Red Mass, the beginning of two different antiphons in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church at Advent to celebrate Mary who is symbolized by the dawn, traditionally celebrated in the pre-dawn reddening of the sky. While there isn't a direct equivalent word for the pre-dawn reddening, the closest literal translation would be "The Reddening Dawn", but to capture the dramatic tone, I rendered this “The Scarlet Daybreak”. Nietzsche is speaking here of a hope for his own dawn out of the nihilism he was born into –“seine eigene Morgenröthe”. In his initial declaration of war against Metaphysics in Human, All too Human, Nietzsche writes “the will is ashamed of the intellect.” This initial foray into Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the force of the will finally manifest itself as the Willen zur Macht here in The Scarlet Daybreak. Through this lens, he takes on the whole of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian moral continuum. He considers religious experience, particularly Christianity, as a psychopathological phenomenon, an idea he articulates in every single one of his works. His perspective shifts from a Darwinian-Historical in Human, All too Human, to a more phenomenological-psychological approach here in The Scarlet Daybreak.

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, and poet whose work left a profound imprint on modern intellectual history. Born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken, Prussia, Nietzsche was raised in a household steeped in religious tradition, which he would later come to question and critique. He demonstrated exceptional intellectual capabilities from a young age and went on to study classical philology at the University of Bonn and later at the University of Leipzig. Nietzsche's early career as a philologist was marked by his appointment as a professor at the University of Basel at the remarkably young age of 24. However, his burgeoning interest in philosophy soon overshadowed his philological work. His initial philosophical influences included Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, although he would later distance himself from both. Nietzsche's philosophical journey is characterized by a profound skepticism of traditional values and moral systems, leading him to question foundational concepts of truth, morality, religion, and the nature of existence.