Inventing a Life 35self Hölderlin's aposde, bringing light to the darkness; however, the
darkness was unable to fathom it.
Lord Byron needed no advocate. In characterizing Byron's character
Manfred, the young Nietzsche employed for the very first time an
expression that later took on a life of its own. He called Manfred an
"Übermensch who commands the spirits" (/2,10). How did Manfred, and
by extension Byron, become such an Ubermensch in Nietzsche's eyes?
Byron led his life the way others might tell a story: he became the poet
of his life in an eminent sense and transformed the members of his
magic circle as though they were characters in a novel. Nietzsche
admired Byron's staging of life and his metamorphosis into his own
works of art. The young Nietzsche, who aspired to impart meaning to
his own life through the inner stage of his diaries, revered geniuses who
not only turned inward but portrayed themselves and authored their
own lives for the public at large. Since Byron's life lent itself to story-
telling by others, he was a worthy subject for narratives.
The sixteen-year-old Nietzsche selected another figure he considered
equally deserving of narrative treatment, namely Napoleon ΓΠ, and
wrote an essay about him in 1862. The essay contended that Napoleon
was capable of ferreting out the hopes and dreams of the people with
unerring instinct and fulfilling them in such a way that, ultimately, "his
boldest coups appear to be the will of the whole nation" (/2,24). It is
unclear whether Nietzsche actually had Napoleon Bonaparte in mind
rather than Napoleon III. In any case, Nietzsche claimed that the latter
also had an effect on the people he governed that made it seem that he
was the historical destiny they had chosen. In his dealings with these fig-
ures, Nietzsche thought his way into their mentalities. With Hölderlin,
he examined the covert potency of impotence. Lord Byron's artistic and
fiill life captured Nietzsche's fancy, as did the magic of political power
he recognized in Napoleon III. In all three of these cases, power
amounted to self-assertion in the domain of fate.
"Fate and History" was the tide Nietzsche gave to an essay com-
posed during his Easter vacation in 1862. He considered this essay so