156 NietzscheNietzsche viewed much of his previous writing. Sobrieties are not
intended to be written "for a singing voice," as The Birth of Tragedy had
been: they must be pointed and striking, full of startling insights. The
"strong concentration of all words" that he hoped to achieve lent itself
to the aphoristic form. Nevertheless, Nietzsche was not yet thinking in
terms of a book of aphorisms. In the crucial period between 1875 and
1876, he was still planning a series of Untimely Meditations. He drew up
lists of titles and thematic groupings and wrote to Malwida von
Meysenbug on October 25,1874, that he had amassed enough material
for fifty meditations, which he planned to develop into lengthy essays
over the course of the next few years. Nietzsche was working on this
plan at the same time that he intended to undergo a self-styled detoxifi-
cation program. "How will I feel once I have gotten all of this negativity
and rebelliousness out of me?" {B 4,268). His goal was to grasp "the
whole highly complex system of antagonisms that make up the 'modern
world'" (B 4,269) in order to achieve his own creative goals.
It is unclear what kind of creative activity Nietzsche had in mind. Did
he want to compose music, write literary texts, or develop a philosophy
of life, or was he already dreaming of a revaluation of values and new
'Tables of the Law"? He did not reveal his creative aspirations, and it is
likely that he had not formulated them clearly in his own mind. He knew
for a certainty, however, that he needed to evolve from the kind of sec-
ondary author who writes about others into a primary author about
whom others write.
While compiling in 1875 his material for the fifth Untimely Meditation,
on the topic "We Philologists," Nietzsche remarked in his notebooks: "I
prefer to write something that deserves to be read in the way philologists
read their writers rather than analyze an author. And anyway—even the
most minuscule creation ranks higher than simply talking about the cre-
ations of others" (8,123). Still, he was well aware that he lacked strata-
gems to reach the maturity required to produce his own works: "If I
were already free, I would have no need for the whole struggle and could
turn to a book or project that would allow me to put to the test all of my