Abstract

Sandro Barbera and Giuliano Campioni’s book, Il genio tiranno (The Tyrant Genius), relates Nietzsche’s philosophy to the thought of Richard Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer, Jacob Burckhardt, Ernest Renan, and Robert Musil by focusing particularly on the figure of the “genius,” of which each chapter considers a different sense or aspect.The first chapter deals with the relationship between the genius and the city. Wagner treated the city as the locus of decline and the annihilation of the subject, referring particularly to the accelerated rhythms of cities like Paris and how they thus become home to décadents and corrupted modern life. Through the artistic experience of Bayreuth, therefore, Wagner aimed to redeem ..