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Fiction

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Coffee Morning

Stephen McKenzie records a (mostly) friendly meeting between Friedrich Nietzsche, Khalil Gibran and Diotima of Mantinea.

What if Khalil Gibran and Friedrich Nietzsche walked into a café and sat down at a small table together? What if they were friends, at least occasionally – whenever they recognised their human closeness – and enemies, at least occasionally – whenever they didn’t?

Two postgrad students in a large Australian city. One is obsessed by Khalil Gibran, the influential Twentieth Century Lebanese mystical poet and author of The Prophet. The other is fascinated by Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous and greatly misunderstood Nineteenth Century German philosopher and author of Thus Spake Zarathustra. The students know each other from a previous stint in drama school where both were enthusiastic method actors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they tend to over-identify with the subjects of their studies.

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