this > fornari chronicles how nietzsches attempts to become wagner both the composition of music and the obsession with cosimaended in abject failure. regarding the former attempt, fornari recalls a response by von blow to nietzsches 1872 effort to compose music. in his original query to von blow, nietzsche had described his piece as horrible. if he had expected from this show of humility a more generous assessment, he did not get it. von blow described nietzsches attempt as in fact, more horrible than you may credit; that is to say, not ordinarily damaging, but worse: damaging to yourself, who could not have found a worse way of killing even an excess of spare time than to rape euterpe in this fashion. this blow stung nietzsche so profoundly that he cited it sixteen years later in ecce homo: i composed a counter overture for manfred of which hans von blow said that he had never seen anything like it on paper, and he called it a rape of euterpe. fornari chronicles how deeply nietzsche wanted to rival wagner as a creator of art, and how deeply he failed in this imitation.
France