"The great Panama Canal to France has been opened...” Thus wrote Nietzsche to his friend Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast) on 22 December 1888, jubilant at the prospect of having his works translated into French. The translations would be an opening of some importance, not just a contact between oceans but apparently also an avenue of escape from the frustrations of writing in German for Germans. The move would make Nietzsche a properly European writer. And this enthusiasm coincided, at the end ...