Jean-Michel Rabaté uses Nietzsche's image of a “pathos of distance,” the notion that values are created by a few gifted and lofty individuals, as the basis for a wide-ranging investigation into the ethics of the moderns. Revealing overlooked connections between Nietzsche's and Benjamin's ideas of history and ethics, Rabaté provides an original genealogy for modernist thought, moving through figures and moments as varied as Yeats and the birth of Irish Modernism, the ethics of courage in Virginia Woolf, Rilke, Apollinaire, and others in 1910, T. S. Eliot's post-war despair, Jean Cocteau's formidable selfmythology in his first film The Blood of a Poet, Siri Hustvedt's novel of American trauma, and J. M. Coetzee's dystopia portraying an affectless future haunted by a messianic promise.

Examines Nietzsche's thinking on the virtues using a combination of close reading and digital analysis.

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Excerpt from The Pathos of Distance: A Book of a Thousand and One Moments More than a quarter of a century has passed since I first entered the Cafe Guerbois, on the Batignolles, where begins the avenue de Clichy. A student of music, sans le sou, I lived in a little street that ran off the boulevard des Batignolles, No. 5 rue Puteaux, in a sunless room, at the top of a dark, damp building. I studied finger-problems on a tuneless upright pianoforte. Like the instrument, I was out of tune myself, for I was hungry at least eighteen hours of the twenty-four. Dining, as I grandly called it, was an important event in my day; a bowl of chocolate and a dry roll had to suffice me until the evening. Then what joy! soup, succeeded by the meat of the same, followed by a salad and cheese. The wine cost eight sous a litre; it was sharp, thin, and blue: yet it warmed, and when one is not twenty, and possesses a ferocious appetite, coupled with a yearning for the ideal, the human machine needs much stoking to keep up steam and soul. It was not every day I could afford to sit upon the terrace of the Cafe Guerbois; there I proudly took my coffee and smoked in flush times, after my humble dinner lower down the Batignolles. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.