AN NYRB Classics Original In 1869 at the age of twentyfour the precociously brilliant Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed to a professorship of classical philology at the University of Basel. He seemed marked for a successful and conventional academic career. Then the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner transformed his ambitions. The genius of such thinkers and makersthe kind of genius that had emerged in ancient Greecethis alone was the touchstone for true understanding. But h