Two pages

Just two things about what is great about Nietzsche, in the first two pages of his preface to Genealogy.

1) Fromm, a clinical writer with a workman's lack of imagination, wrote: we are unknown to ourselves. That is the sum of his statement. In comparison, Nietzsche writes a page about how we are unknown to ourselves, he actually writes it several different ways, with different metaphors (the beehive, then 12 bell strokes), with a biblical quote, offers an insight into the difference between "bringing something home" and "experiences". Indeed, at the end of the first aphorism, it is still unclear what he is going to write about, what exactly is unknown to ourselves, but he offers an inkling of greatness, he strings together enough familiar, basic words which he hints to the reader has deeper, unexplored meanings. As I've argued before, that is a quality of a great abstract (I argued it in a scientific context, of course).

2) In the second page, second aphorism, when he begins with "That I still cleave to them today, however, they have become in the meantime..." and all the way to the end of the second aphorism, what amazing sentences he writes, varying in length and complexity, flowing as pristine rivers to the soul. My heart aches to write as he can write.