De Maistre said that Voltaire was the man “into whose hands hell had given all its powers.” This might just as well have been said of Nietzsche, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus. Never has facility of thought been paired with such felicity of expression, such finesse. And bellicosity! “I am not a man; I am dynamite!” Indeed, he explodes our Christian notions of morality, democracy, and equality. He asks much of us, his readers. He preaches amor fati and eternal return and Ubermensch. And Will to Power! He demands we love peace only as a means to new wars; asks us to enter labyrinths, do battle with monsters, stare into the abyss, and hone our capacity for cruelty. Reading him is baptism by fire, and his power is manifest on every page. Sometimes we wonder if his exuberance and egotism and megalomania, deplorable in others but apt for him, were in part due to his impending mental collapse or, simply, inseparable from his genius. Genius is a form of madness?