284 Nietzsche
books, supplemented by new prefaces, would finally find their way to an
audience. Nietzsche considered the five new prefaces to the books from
The Birth of Tragedy through The Gay Science, which had been expanded
with a fifth book, "perhaps the best prose I have ever written" (B 7,282;
Nov. 14,1886). He also felt that they provided "a sort of developmen-
tal history" (B 8,151; Sept 14, 1887) and would allow him to make a
"clean break" with his "previous existence" (B 8,213; Dec 20,1887).
In this year full of prefaces and clean breaks, Nietzsche decided to
undertake a major work with the tide "The Will to Power / Attempt /
at a new Interpretation / of Everything That Happens." From August
1885, when he coined this tide, until his final autumn in Turin in 1888,
he would develop classifications, indexes, and tentative tides. He scrib-
bled down coundess notations on this theme. Later his sister and Peter
Gast took his outline of March 17,1887, as a basis for their compilation
of materials from the immense Nachlass and call it The Will to Power
Nietzsche had been developing the will to a major work, the will to The
Will to Power, since 1885-86, and he tried to organize the events of his
life around this project In early September 1886, he wrote to his sister
and brother-in-law in Paraguay: "I have announced that for the next four
years I will be preparing a major four-volume work. The tide alone can
scare you off: The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values.
I have everything required for this project: fine health, solitude, a good
frame of mind, and perhaps a wife" (B 7,241; Sept. 2,1886).
Nietzsche, whose books of the preceding few years had been collec-
tions of aphorisms and compilations of brief essays on sweeping top-
ics, felt a "compulsion," which pressed down on him "with the force of
a hundredweight, to build up a coherent structure of thought over the
next few years" (B 8,49; March 24, 1887). In moments of depression,
and when he felt especially lonely, the thought of this magnum opus sus-
tained him. On November 12,1887, he wrote to Franz Overbeck that he