Outdoing Zarathustra : Salvador Dalí's rendering of Nietzsche's Übermensch
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Salvador Dalí is mainly known as a painter, but his artistic production expanded to other disciplines, particularly writing. In this dissertation, I examine his written work in relation to Friedrich Nietzsche. The objective of this study is to conduct a reading of Dalí that confronts his work with his boundless existential ambition, and, in the process, offer a particular definition of Nietzsche's Übermensch. I begin with a contextualization of Nietzsche's reception in early 20th century Spain and his direct influence on the young Dalí, who, since childhood, had the intention of embodying the Übermensch. Having established this relationship, this essay is then divided across three thematic chapters: accumulation, affirmation and generosity. In the first chapter, I show how Dalí integrated the entirety of his experiences into his autobiography (conceived as a work of art), and I use the work of Alexander Nehamas to illuminate Nietzsche's philosophy as a tool to make literature out of life. In the second chapter, I focus on the capacity of affirming everything accumulated, with Gilles Deleuze's reading of Zarathustra's dice-throw as an instrument for understanding Dalí's paranoiac-critical method. In the third chapter, I argue that generosity is a logical consequence of the previous two stages, and following Peter Sloterdijk, I show how self-eulogy can lead to munificence. In 1975, Dalí proclaimed that he was "the absolute Übermensch." By his early seventies, he had identified the mechanism of exaggeration as one of the most effective in his life. It was through exaggeration that he self-identified as the Übermensch. However, I argue that such a boastful claim is also an exaggeration, and conclude that he instead falls into the category of artist-tyrant -- practically the same, but less extreme. With this dissertation, I try to propose a new understanding of Dalí that goes beyond any moral judgment of him, as well as contribute a case study of the Übermensch that will hopefully shed some light on such a contested concept.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Guinart, Pau |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Resina, Joan Ramon |
| Thesis advisor | Resina, Joan Ramon |
| Thesis advisor | Falgàs, Jordi |
| Thesis advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Thesis advisor | Hoyos Ayala, Héctor |
| Degree committee member | Falgàs, Jordi |
| Degree committee member | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Degree committee member | Hoyos Ayala, Héctor |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Pau Guinart. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wt930hw3885 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Pau Guinart Lopez
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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