Nietzsche and Irish Modernism

Nietzsche and Irish Modernism deftly traces the circulation of the German philosopher’s ideas in Irish culture during the early years of the twentieth century. In doing so, the book demonstrates how Nietzsche’s thought inspired new, disruptive modes of writing, which spoke to local historical circumstances and the predicaments of modernity at large Nietzsche was a scandal, a revelation, an explosive intellectual force. At the time of his death, the German philosopher was hailed widely as a leading emissary of ‘the modern’, but his message of cultural transformation resonated nowhere more powerfully than in Ireland. In Nietzsche and Irish Modernism, Patrick Bixby deftly traces the circulation of the philosopher’s ideas in the work of major Irish writers and, more broadly, the Irish public sphere during the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century. George Bernard Shaw styled himself an ‘English (or Irish) Nietzsche’, as he developed a ‘drama of ideas’ to advance his radical political philosophy. W. B. Yeats adopted an ethos of ‘hard proud gift giving joyousness’ from the philosopher as he sought to establish a national theatre in Ireland. James Joyce playfully, and repeatedly, evoked Nietzsche’s ideas in his fiction, as he surveyed the forms of thought that might remake the conscience of his compatriots. Before long, Irish priests, politicians, and propagandists also summoned the name of the German philosopher as they addressed an anxious period of Home Rule agitation, world war, revolution, civil war, and state building. His thoughts would ultimately come to play a role in imagining a different future for both postcolonial Ireland and postwar Europe. This essential cultural history reveals for the first time how Nietzsche provided Irish culture with resources for new, disruptive modes of thinking and writing, which spoke to both local political circumstances and the predicaments of modernity at large. Nietzsche and Irish Modernism demonstrates how the ideas of the controversial German philosopher played a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of a distinctly Irish brand of modernist culture. Making an essential new contribution to the history of modernism, the book traces the circulation of these ideas through the writings of George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, as well as through minor works of literature, magazine articles, newspaper debates, public lectures, and private correspondence. These materials reveal a response to Nietzsche that created abiding tensions between Irish cultural production and reigning religious and nationalist orthodoxies, during an anxious period of Home Rule agitation, world war, revolution, civil war, and state building. With its wealth of detail, the book greatly enriches our understanding of modernist culture as a site of convergence between art and politics, indigenous concerns and foreign perspectives.