Abstract:
From the reading of two books on Nietzsche published in Brazil—those by Heinrich Mann (1940) and Crane Brinton (1942)—the then young literary critic Wilson Martins seeks to show his understanding of the author of The Genealogy of Morals. Emphasizing mainly Brinton’s interpretation, he rejects the truth of Nietzsche’s thought, whom he deems only a “Middle-class intellectual,” a “subtle and literate thinker,” whose ideas cannot justify neither the barbarousness of National-Socialism nor the cause of civilization.
Keywords:
Nietzsche; interpretation; Heinrich Mann; Crane Brinton; truth