Nietzsche left his native land in 1886. Now he divides his time between Nice, Sils Maria and Turin, in search of a climate that will ease his nerves, eyes, head and stomach. He’s in voluntary exile; he abominates Germany, its language, its religion and its food. He has gotten rid of God and now he wants to provoke the birth of a new world, inspired by a new aesthetic. But what does aesthetic mean when one has nothing but disdain for architecture and painting? Music, obviously. Nietzsche says he is a musician first and foremost, and that it is because he is a musician that he can be a philosopher. So it is through music that he hopes to blow up both his own era and all of Judeo-Christian civilization. The curious utopia of an inflexible loner, a visionary endeavoring to battle nihilism.

Classical German music – neither Bach’s nor Beethoven’s, which he admires, and certainly not Wagner’s, which he comes to loathe – is not the one that will provide redemption. No, the music of the new world will be Mediterranean; it shall be found in the Dionysian Greek choruses of Antiquity — all traces of which have been erased. Nietzsche’s utopia is extravagant; he himself could only get lost in it. His view of music is irrevocably tied to his terribly tragic fate.

This brief text illustrated with drawings by Frédéric Pajak explores Nietzsche’s tormented passion for music. Familiar with the man who philosophized with a hammer, for nigh on half a century, Frédéric Pajak is fascinated with the singular utopia that Nietzsche, at the twilight of his life, hoped to found, particularly by rediscovering the spirit of Ancient Greek music.