Abstract
It is winter 1876 in Sorrento, the air bright and taut. Nietzsche’s pen is poised for a new direction in his philosophy but first he pauses ‘like a wanderer pauses, to take in the vast and dangerous land through which [his] mind [has] hitherto travelled’ (GM P: 2). This ‘pause’ on the path marks the beginning of the aphoristic style of writing that will characterize Nietzsche’s ‘middle period’; from this point on, thought-as-travel will be less a metaphor than the material practice of thinking outside. As Nietzsche’s connection to university philosophy atrophies, walking becomes thinking. Writing from Sorrento to Reinhart von Seydlitz, Nietzsche imbues his strolling with allegorical significance.