Please join the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now for a talk entitled "Friedrich Nietzsche, a Poet, and the French Revolution" by Guillaume Métayer (CNRS). 

Abstract: 
Friedrich Nietzsche took an astoundingly early interest in French culture and especially in the French Revolution. It is one of the haunting themes of his early poems, in particular around 1862. How can we understand this early fascination? What were its sources? Through an investigation focused mainly on the poem “Im Gefängnis” (“In Prison”), dedicated to the legendary account of the death of the Girondins, we will attempt to better understand Nietzsche’s relationship with France and its history, while also identifying the philosophical and ideological implications of his poetic interpretation of it.

Bio:
Guillaume Métayer is a research director at the CNRS within the CELLF (Sorbonne Université, Paris). His research focuses on the reception of the Enlightenment at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and especially on Friedrich Nietzsche and Anatole France and his circle, like the Hungarian woman writer Ottilia Bölöni. He is also a translator of German, Hungarian and Slovenian poetry and the author of an essay on translation (A like in Babel, 2020) and some books of poems.

RSVP for talk by Guillaume Métayer

Hosted by the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now Focal Group, sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Research Unit and co-sponsored by the France-Stanford Center and Stanford Global Studies. This event is part of Stanford Global Studies’ Global Research Workshop Program.