Walter Kaufmann's (my old teacher) translations are lovely and accurate. R.J. Hollingdale's translations are also excellent. The recent Cambridge U.P translations are state-of-the art, but I'll stick with Kaufmann. If you haven't read Nietzsche, on start with On The Genealogy of Morals, his most "booklike" mature book -- works like The Gay Science (no, not that way, Die Froeliche Wissenschaft, gay as in joyful) are collections are collections of brilliant aphorisms the structure of which is hard to discern. The next book I'd read is Beyond Good and Evil, which has less structure than OGM but more than The Gay Science or some of the other books.
After Kaufmann's older book Nietzsche (also a biography), he most accessible modern secondary work on Nietzsche in English is probably Alexander Nehemas' Nietzsche: Life as Literature. My friend Brian Leiter has a book called Nietzsche On Morality which is very readable and careful without being dull, but I think he makes Nietzsche less interesting than he really is. Still, it's among the best things on the subject.
--- ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
> On 8 Jun, 2007, at 10:28 AM, BklynMagus wrote:
>
> > All this educated chat about Nietzche makes me
> > want to read the old boy. So I ask: which
> > translation into English is best for someone
> > who cannot tackle him in the original?
>
>
> Krell's translation of Hidegger's Nietzsche volumes
> are interesting:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/25ng5v
>
> There is a fellow named Walter Kauffman who has made
> a career out of
> translating Nietzsche. Since I cannot read Nietzsche
> in original
> either, I cannot tell you if he (Kauffman) does a
> good job of it, but
> he is usually well thought of.
>
> I am no Nietzsche scholar, but such lack of
> qualification has never
> impaired my pontifications on other matters, so in
> that vein, I
> recommend that you strongly resist the temptation to
> spend any time
> on Thus Spake Zarathustra. For quotability, laughs
> and fun, nothing
> can beat Beyond Good and Evil.
>
> Enjoy,
>
> --ravi
>
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>
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