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Nietzsche struck me like a bolt from the blue in my transition to adulthood. There was one darkly heroic phrase from The Birth of Tragedy that stuck: ein Pessimismus der Stärke, a pessimism that springs from power. Now that I’m rediscovering Nietzsche this dichotomy has lost nothing of its relevance. And I admire, no I love this man for having been able to keep these opposing forces in balance, at least for a while. In my younger years I didn’t read Ecce Homo, partly because the book has such a dismal reputation. Supposedly the fingerprints of the imminent breakdown are scattered all over these pages. Perhaps they are. The shrill voice of an almost absurdly pugilistic Nietzsche is unmistakably there. But in my experience this is not the key in which this book has been written. I’ve read it as a short but pure adagio, a backward glance suffused with elation and gratitude. The author of Ecce Homo is the man whom the Genoese referred to as ‚il piccolo santo�, ‚the little saint�. For me Nietzsche is a bodhisattva, a powerful and fragile human being on the threshold of enlightenment. This intense spiritual energy condensed itself in his ‚amor fati�, this most radical and dry-eyed commitment to life: „I fail to remember ever having made an effort � no trace of struggle is detectable in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature. To ‚want� something, to ‚strive� for something, to have an ‚end�, a ‚desire� in mind � I know none of this from my experience. Even at this moment I look out upon my future � a broad future! � as upon a smooth sea: no desire ripples upon it. Not in the least do I want anything to be different from what it is; I myself do not want to be any different...But thus I have always lived. (�) My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not in the future, not in the past, not for all eternity. Not only to endure what is necessary, still less to conceal it � all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity � , but to love it …� I am happy with my belated discovery of this testament.