I n a letter addressed to Lady Gregory on December 26, 1902, William Butler Yeats first acknowledged the onset of what would become a lifelong fascination with Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy: “Dear Friend,” he confesses: I have written to you little and badly of late I am afraid for the truth is you have a rival in Nietzsche, the strong enchanter. I have read him so much that I have made my eyes bad again. They were getting well it seemed. Nietzsche completes Blake & has the same roots—I have not read anything with so much excitement, since I got to love Morris’s stories which have the same curious astringent joy (CL3 284) Less than three months later, Yeats expressed comparable sentiments to the New York lawyer, John Quinn, who had recently gifted him all of the available English translations of Nietzsche’s books: I do not know how I can thank you too much for the three volumes on Nietzsche. I had never read him before, but find that I had come to the same conclusions on several cardinal matters. He is exaggerated and violent but has helped me very greatly to build up in my mind an imagination of the heroic life. His books have come to me at exactly the right moment, for I have planned out a series of plays which are all intended to be an expression of that life which seem[s] to me the kind of proud hard gift giving joyousness (CL3 313)