In his retrospective preface to the second edition of BT from 1886, “Attempt at Self-Critique,” Nietzsche claims that his “first” work is an “impossible book,” which strikes to the doubled heart of its abyssal problem. It is impossible as a book, as well as being a book on the impossible. This impossibility, marking and yet exceeding the line of interdiction (as does death—at once impossible, absent, and yet everywhere traced through mortal existence), is not simply the opposite of the possible. As Blanchot remarks, we must attempt to think and respond to the impossible as “this non-power that would not be the simple negation of power,” a radical passivity responding to what ruptures and suspends the dichotomy between power (or ability, possibility, pouvoir) and powerlessness. Nietzsche’s book is a work which exposes the impossible; a tragic work of art exposing the abyss of thought in mortal experience.