Nietzsche Dionysus: The Bacchantes' Gesture

The purpose of this text is to document, contextualise and narrate the occurrences of the formula: "Ich habe [...] bei den Hornern gepackt" ("I have [...] taken by the horns"), throughout Nietzsche's writings. The occurrences are concentrated in a time span between the beginning of 1886 and the summer of 1888, which, as far as his writing is concerned, covers the period from the preparations for Beyond Good and Evil (and the writing of the prefaces for the reprinting of his earlier texts) to the reception of The Case of Wagner. The strategic location and the emphasis with which these occurrences are expressed seem to indicate that they allude to the fundamental obstacle that prevented him from taking his thought further, beyond which the space of revaluation conceptually opens up, and the Dionysian becoming undergoes an acceleration that will not cease until the end of his lucid life.