[December 10, 1885] Nice (France) Rue St. Frangoisde Paule, II, 26. DEAR FRIEND: You may perhaps receive a letter that I addressed to you in Vienna (provided that you left, or intended to leave, your Annaberg address with the poste restante of the principal post office there.) After all, I marvel at the sort of "parallelism" that has characterized our experiences and zig-zag journeys this year—so much indeed that I almost rejoice at the thought, for, as the result of it all, I feel imbued with a general feeling of peace and gentle indifference, which I hope may be your reward also. At present there is not a soul in Germany who has an inkling of what I want, or of the fact that I want anything at all, or even that I have already attained a not insignificant portion thereof. There is not a soul who at heart is either well pleased, or anxious, or distressed, or anything whatsoever, about the "things" that I hold dear. But, after all, perhaps to be aware of this alone is an invaluable piece of insight, and with it one has approached quite near to Epicurus's garden, and above all to oneself—after it, one jumps with a mighty spring back to oneself. Let us continue to do that which we enjoy doing—that which gives us a clean conscience about ourselves; for the rest, silence or gloria, "as God may please."
Something must be discovered and thought out by means of which the next few years may be made secure and no longer full of dangerous accidents. In saying this it is you I have in mind, dear friend. It is quite proper that you should first try Carlsruhe. Whether you succeed there or not, you ought immediately afterwards again to look about you for a quiet haunt. I have come to the sad though obvious conclusion that the depression that would overtake you in the event of another failure ought to drive you to Venice as the only spot on earth that suits you. Although I allowed myself to recommend Nice to you in my last letter, I was quite well aware of the principal obstacle in the way of your coming, and of your reasons for fearing that you would not be enough of a hermit here. Bear in mind, however, that the four months that I probably spend here every year, only make up a third of the year, and, secondly, that for me these four months are precisely my working period, during which I keep out of the way of "mankind," and perhaps of friends as well; above all, consider that the friend you would find here is one with whom one can conclude a strict arrangement, and who takes an almost personal interest in all the conditions, whether of your work or your life. Besides there is this to be said for Nice: it is a place in which one can live the whole year round—you will find it much more exhilarating than Venice in summer, thanks to the cool sea-breezes at night. Nice is, moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, the reverse of Venice, as southern cities go; it seems to me to be worth your while to try it, just to see what the Muses, or the mistral, or the luminous heavens would have to tell you here. Thirdly, you can live more cheaply here than at any other place on the Riviera; Nice is a large open-hearted place, with attractions for all. Prices are naturally higher during the winter; they tell me that during the summer they fall 50 per cent. Nevertheless, even in the winter, I could recommend you some respectable restaurants, where your food would be such as you are used to having in Venice, but if anything cheaper and better. It is a heavenly blessing that you have not got the luxurious tastes of the majority of artists, and that your most estimable life also reveals the virtues of simplicity and thriftiness. Later on, of course, you will be a rich man, but the thing which is all important now is that you should be spared the care of this "later on." Your art requires that you should be free from worry; is that not so, my dear friend? Yours, N.
Nietzsche To His Sister and Brother-in-Law - December, 1885 Nice, After Christmas, 1885. MY DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER: The weather is perfect, and so your "famous animal"*Note by Frau F.N.: "When my brother came to stay with us at Naumburg in the Autumn of 1885, it occurred to us to nickname him 'our famous animal.'" must also assume a pleasant countenance, although it has had many a sad day and night. Christmas, however, was a regular day of rejoicing for me. At midday I received your kind presents, and lost no time in putting the chain round my neck; while the nice little calendar found its way into my waistcoat pocket. But the money must certainly have slipped out, if there really were money in the letter (and mother says there was.) Forgive your blind animal for this! I unpacked my treasure in the street, and something may certainly have fallen out, for I fumbled very eagerly for the letter. Let us hope that some poor old woman was not far off, and that she thus found her "Christimas stocking" filled in the street. I then drove to my peninsula St. Jean, ran a long way along the coast, and at last sat down among some young soldiers who were playing skittles. Fresh roses and geraniums adorned the hedges and everything was green and warm; nothing northern! Then your famous animal drank three quite large glasses of a sweet local wine, and was just the slightest bit top-heavy; at least, not long afterwards, when the breakers drew near to me, I said to them as one says to a bevy of farmyard fowls, "Shsh!
Shsh! Shsh!" Then I drove back to Nice, and regaled myself in princely fashion at dinner in my pension. A large Christmas tree was also lighted up. Just think, I have discovered a boulanger de luxe who understands what cheesecakes are. He said that the King of Würtemberg had ordered one of these cakes for his birthday. It was the word "princely" that brought this to my mind. Ever your loving, F.
Nietzsche To His Sister - February, 1886 Nice, February, 1886. MY DEAR OLD LAMA: Your kind and cheerful proposition has just reached me. If by any chance it could serve the purpose of giving your husband a good opinion of the incorrigible European and anti-antisemite, your utterly heterodox brother and "Jack-in-the-Corner"—Fritz (although Dr. Forster had certainly other things to think of without troubling about me), I would willingly tread in Fraulein Alwinchen Forster's footsteps, and beseech you to convert me into a South American landowner on the same lines and conditions. I must, however, stipulate most emphatically that the plot of land be called not Frederickland or Frederickwood (for, to begin with, I do not wish to die yet and be buried there) but, in memory of the name I have given you—Lamaland.
Joking apart, I would send you everything I possess if it would help to get you back here soon. Generally speaking, everybody who knows you and loves you is of opinion that it would have been a thousand times better for you to have been spared this experiment. Even if that country were found to be ever so well suited to German colonization, no one would admit that precisely you two ought to be the colonizers. The fact that you should be seems to be the result of an absolutely arbitrary choice—excuse the expression!—it is moreover dangerous, particularly for a lama who is accustomed to a gentle culture and prospers and capers about best in such an environment. The whole of this heating up of feelings, constituting as it does the cause of the whole affair, is too tropical and, in my opinion, not even wholesome for a Lama (or to speak more accurately, for the whole of our real family type, whose art lies in the reconciliation of contrasts.) One keeps one's beauty and youth longer when one neither hates nor feels mistrustful. After all, I cannot help thinking that your nature would prove itself more useful in a truly German cause, here in Europe, than over there particularly as the wife of Dr. Forster, who, as I thought once more on reading his Essay on Education, would really find his natural mission as a Director of Education at a place like SchnepfenthalA kind of religious school.—Translator.—and not (forgive your brother for saying so) as an agitator in that anti-Semitic movement which is three-quarters rotten. The things most urgently needed in Germany at present are precisely independent Educational Institutions, which would actively compete with the slave-drilling education of the State. The confidence that Dr. Forster enjoys vis-a-vis the nobility of northern Germany, would seem to be a sufficient guarantee that a sort of Schnepfenthal or Hofwyl (do you remember?—the place where Vischer was educated), would succeed under his direction. But right out there, among peasants, in close proximity to Germans, who have become impossible, and are probably embittered and poisoned at heart—enough, what a wide field this provides for worry and anxiety! The big stupid ocean between us! and whenever, here, we get news of a hurricane, your brother grows angry and agitated, and cudgels his brains to discover how on earth it ever occurred to the Lama to embark upon such an adventure. I do the best I can to bear up, but every day, and more particularly at night, I am overcome by incomparable sadness—always, simply owing to the fact that the Lama has run away and has completely broken with her brother's tradition.
I have just heard from the Court Orchestra Conductor of Carlsruhe (to whom I had written a line to please poor G.) that my recommendation ("the recommendation of a man whom I admire enthusiastically") had prepossessed him most favourably towards the work, and while I am rejoicing over this news, it occurs to me that you will say, "He is of course a Jew!""This was a mistake." Note by Frau F.N. This, in my opinion, proves how the Lama has leaped aside from her brother's tradition: we no longer rejoice about the same things. Meanwhile it cannot be helped. Life is an experiment; one can do what one likes, and one has to pay too dearly for everything. Onward, my dear old Lama! And may you face what you have resolved to face, with courage! YOUR F.
Nietzsche To His Sister - July, 1886 Sils-Maria, July 8, 1886. MY DARLING LAMA: I have ceased to be in favour of the idea of living for good in Leipzig or Munich; life in such circles demands too heavy a toll on my pride; and after all, however much I "belittle" myself, I still do not attain to that cheerful and comforting courage and self-reliance which are necessary for the continued pursuit of my path in life—attributes which at all events spring into existence more readily in Sils and in Nice than in the places above mentioned. How many humiliations and acts of foolishness did I not have to swallow down during my last stay in Germany, and without my friends ever dreaming of anything of the sort! No—they one and all "mean well" by me. I endured hours of spiritual depression that I can remember only with a shudder. The humiliating experiences of the autumn of 1882, which I had almost forgotten, came back to my mind, and I recollected with shame the type of humanity I had already treated as my equal! Wherever I turned I was confronted by opinions utterly opposed to my own—to my great astonishment, however, not about Wagner. Even Kohde has refused to have anything to do with Parsifal.
Where are those old friends with whom in years gone by I felt so closely united? Now it seems as if we belonged to different worlds, and no longer spoke the same language! Like a stranger and an outcast, I move among them not one of their words or looks reaches me any longer. I am dumb for no one understands my speech ah, but they never did understand me! or does the same fate bear the same burden on its soul? It is terrible to be condemned to silence when one has so much to say [...] Was I made for solitude or for a life in which there was no one to whom I could speak? The inability to communicate one's thoughts is in very truth the most terrible of all kinds of loneliness. Difference is a mask—which is more ironbound than any iron mask and perfect friendship is possible only inter pares! Inter pares!Amongst equals.—Translator.—an intoxicating word; it contains so much comfort, hope, savour, and blessedness for him who is necessarily always alone; for him who is "different"; who has never met anyone who precisely belonged to him, although he has sought well on all sorts of roads; who in his relationship to his fellows always had to practise a sort of considerate and cheerful dissimulation in the hope of assimilating himself to them, often with success, who from all too long experience knows how to show that bright face to adversity which is called sociability—and some times, too, to give vent to those dangerous, heart rending outbursts of all his concealed misery, of all the longings he has not yet stifled, of all his surging and tumultuous streams of love—the sudden madness of those moments when the lonely man embraces one that seems to his taste and treats him as a friend, as a Heaven-sent blessing and precious gift, only to thrust him from him with loathing an hour later, and with loathing too for himself, as if he had been contaminated and abased, as if he had grown strange even to himself, as if he had fallen from his own company. A deep man needs friends. All else failing, he has at least his god. But I have neither god nor friends! Ah, my dear sister, those you call by that name were certainly friends once but now? For instance [...].
...Now I ought once more to give myself a little rest, for the spiritual and intellectual tension of the last few years has been too severe, and my temper has grown sharper and more gloomy. My health is really quite normal—but my poor soul is so sensitive to injury and so full of longing for good friends, for people "who are my life." Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me—and I shall be cured! Your FRITZ.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - July, 1886 Sils-Maria, Tuesday, July 20, 1886. DEAR FRIEND:...Assuming that you prefer a solitary visit to the places in question, allow me to send a few addresses where you can find cheap quarters. In Rapallo, for instance (whence you will be able to explore Santa Margherita and Portofino) I would recommend the cheap little Albergo della Posta, right on the sea-front, in which the first part of Zarathustra was written. Oh what a joy it would be for me to be allowed to act as cicerone to you there and in Genoa—and you would have to try all my modest trattorias! And we would climb about the gloomy bastions together and drink a glass of Monteferrato on my Belvedere in Sampierdorena! Honestly, I can think of nothing that would give me so much pleasure. This bit of Genoa is a piece of my past towards which I feel respect—...it was terribly solitary and severe...
I have not quite settled down yet here in Sils; these sudden transitions do not suit my health. The printing of my book is oppressing me to the extent of becoming irksome. I shall have complete freedom (and leave to think of something new) only when I see the first finished copy—that is to say, in three weeks per haps. I had to make fresh plans for the fourth page of the wrapper (—I trust the agreement between Schmeitzner and Fritzsch will soon be concluded, provided that Schmeitzner never hears to what extent I am informed as to Fritzsch's intentions.)
How funny! However well one tries to beware of the emancipation of women—it is of no use! I have encountered another classical specimen of the literary female, Miss Helen Zimmern (the woman who introduced Schopenhauer to the English.) I believe she has even translated "Schopenhauer as an Educator." Of course she is a Jewess; it is amazing to see the extent to which this race now has the spirituality of Europe in its hands (to-day she talked to me for a long time about her race)...Your friend, N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - October, 1886 About 400 metres above the sea, overlooking the street leading across the arch of Portofino. Ruta Ligure, October 10, 1886, DEAR FRIEND: Just a line from this wonderful corner of the globe, where I should prefer to see you rather than in your present quarters in Munich. Imagine an island of the Greek Archipelago, arbitrarily covered with woods and hills, which owing to some accident one day swam close up to the mainland and was unable to swim back again. There is certainly something Greek about it; while it is also somewhat piratical, unexpected, covert, and dangerous in character. Finally when at a bend in the road one comes upon a little tropical forest of palms, which makes one feel very far from Europe, it is a little reminiscent of Brazil—at least, that is what my table-companion says, and he has been round the world several times. I have never lived so long in genuine Robinson Crusoe insularity and oblivion. Frequently too I have set great fires burning in front of me. To watch the pure restless flame, with its white-grey belly, rear itself against the cloudless sky with heather growing all round, and the whole steeped in that October blissfulness which is such a master in the matter of yellows. Oh, dear friend, such early autumn happiness would be just the thing for you, as much if not more than it is for me!...Your devoted friend, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - January, 1887 Nice (France), January 21, 1887, Rue des Poncbettes 29. Au premier. DEAR FRIEND:...Ever since the spring of last year, LeviHermann Levi, Conductor of the Court Chapel at Munich. has made the best impression upon me. What I have since heard from another quarter, in Munich, has confirmed the fact that he has neither lost nor wishes to lose a kind of relationship with me (he calls it gratitude); and this holds good of all Wagnerians (although I cannot quite explain it). Seydlitz (now President of the Wagner Society) informs me that they waited for me in Munich last autumn with "feverish tension." Incidentally, in the Engadine, my neighbour at table was the sister of the Barber of Bagdad; do you understand this abbreviated expression?
To conclude—I have just heard the Overture to Parsifal for the first time (and in Monte Carlo!). When I see you again I will tell you exactly what it conveyed to me. Moreover, apart from all irrelevant questions (as to what the use of this music can or ought to be) and on purely aesthetic grounds; has Wagner ever done anything better? This music reveals the very highest psychological consciousness and certainty with regard to what it intended to say, express, convey; it selects the shortest and most direct means to this end, every nuance of feeling being carried to the point of epigram. As descriptive music it is so lucid, that to listen to it is to be forcibly reminded of a shield wrought all over with noble devices, and finally it is full of such a sublimity and rarity of feeling, of experience and of spiritual events at the very basis of music, that it does Wagner the greatest credit; it contains a synthesis of states which to many men, even "higher men," it would seem impossible to unite, and is of a commanding severity, of a "loftiness" in the most terrifying sense of the word, and of an omniscience and penetration that seem to transpierce one's soul with knives—and withal it is full of pity for that which it sees and orders there. This sort of thing is to be found in Dante, but nowhere else. I wonder whether any painter has ever depicted such a sad look of love as Wagner has given us in the last accents of his overture? Your devoted friend, NIETZSCHE.
To Seydlitz - February, 1887 Nice, Thursday, February 24, 1887. Rue des Ponchettes 29. 1st floor. DEAR FRIEND: Fortunately your letter, as far as your own case is concerned, did not by any means prove quod erat demonstrandum; otherwise, however, I admit all you say, the disastrous effects of a grey sky, the prolonged damp cold, the proximity of Bavarians and of Bavarian beer—I admire every artist who turns to face these foes—not to speak of German politics, which are only another form of permanent winter and bad weather. It seems to me that Germany for the last fifteen years has become a regular school of besotment. Water, rubbish and filth, far and wide—that is what it looks like from a distance. I beg a thousand pardons if I have hurt your more noble feelings in speaking in this way, but for present-day Germany, however much it may bristle, hedgehoglike, with arms, I no longer have any respect. It represents the stupidest, most depraved and most mendacious form of the German spirit that has ever existed and what absurdities has not this spirit dared to perpetrate! I forgive no one for compromising with it in any way, even if his name be Richard Wagner, particularly when this compromise is effected in the shamefully equivocal and cautious manner in which this shrewd, all-too-shrewd glorifier of "reine Thorheit""Pure foolishness." This is a reference to Wagner's Parsifal. See my note on the "Pure Fool," page 96, of The Will to Power, Vol. I. Translator.
has effected it in the latter years of his life.
Here in our land of sunshine what different things we have in mind! Only a moment ago Nice was in the middle of her long international carnival (incidentally with a preponderance of Spanish women) and immediately after it was over, six hours after the last Girandola, there followed some more new and rarely tasted charms of existence. For we are all living in the interesting expectation of being swallowed up—thanks to a well-meaning earthquake, which caused howling far and wide not only among dogs. You can imagine what fun it is to hear the houses rattling over one's head like coffee-mills, to watch the inkstands beginning to show signs of free will, while the streets fill with horrified half-dressed figures and unhinged nervous systems. This morning, from about two to three o clock, like the gaillard I am, I made a round of inspection in the various quarters of the town, in order to ascertain where the fear was greatest. For the inhabitants camp out in the open night and day, and it looks delightfully martial. In the hotels where there is much damage, panic of course reigns supreme. I found all my friends, male and female, lying pitifully beneath the green trees, well swathed in flannels, for it was very cold, and, at the slightest sign of a vibration, thinking gloomily of the end. I should not be surprised if this brought the season to a sudden conclusion. Everyone is thinking of leaving (provided of course they can get away and the railways are not all torn up). Already yesterday evening the visitors at the hotel where I board could not be induced to partake of their table-d'hote inside the house, but ate and drank in the open, and but for an exceedingly pious old woman who is convinced that the Almighty has absolutely no right to injure her, I was "the only cheerful being among a host of masks.""Unter Larven die einzige Fuhlende Brust." These words are a quotation from a well-known poem of Schiller's conveying the idea of a jolly fellow being alone amongst a lot of wooden creatures.—Translator.
I have just got hold of a newspaper containing a description of this awful night, which is far more picturesque than the one your humble friend has been able to give you. I am enclosing it in this letter. Please read it to your dear wife, and bear me in mind. Your devoted NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - March, 1887 Nice, Monday, March 7, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: I have just had a visit from a philologist whose previous history has not been unlike my own—a Dr. A., brought up in the school of Rohde and von Gutschmidt and very much esteemed by his teachers—but passionately disgusted with and opposed to all philology. He fled to me "his master"—for he is determined to devote himself absolutely to philosophy, and now I am urging him to go slowly, quite slowly, to make no blunders, and not to allow himself to be carried away by any false examples. I believe I am succeeding in "disappointing" him. I heard incidentally from him, how even in the University of Tubingen, where I pass for the most negative of spirits, my works are eagerly devoured in secret. Dr. A. is half American, half Swabian.
The same thing happened to me with Dostoyevsky as with Stendhal; the most haphazard encounter, a book that one opens casually on a book stall, and the very title of which is unknown to one—and then suddenly one's instinct speaks and one knows one has met a kinsman.Speaking of Dostoyevsky, in a letter to Gast dated 13th Feb., 1887, Nietzsche says: "Do you know Dostoyevsky? With the exception of Stendhal, no one has given me so much pleasure and astonishment: a psychologist whom I agree with." Gast's comment on this is as follows: "Nietzsche's high appreciation of D. has been greatly misunderstood, as if N. had discovered similar lines in Dostoyevsky as in himself. This, however, is not the case. What N. admired in D. was his insight into the depths of certain human souls, his art and the subtlety of his analysis, and the collection of rare psychological material. N. felt that D. instructed him and enriched him as a psychologist, otherwise D. was repellent to his instincts."—Translator.
Up to the present I have learnt little concerning his position, his reputation and his history; he died in 1881. In his youth things were pretty bad with him; he was delicate and poor, although he came of distinguished stock. At the age of twenty-seven he was sentenced to death, but was reprieved on the very steps of the scaffold, whereupon he spent four years in chains in Siberia amid criminals of the worst type. This formed the decisive period in his life. It was then that he discovered the power of his psychological intuition; nay more, his heart was mellowed and deepened by the experience. His reminiscences of this period "La maison des Morts," is one of the most human books in existence. The first of his works that I read was a French translation entitled "L'esprit souterrain," consisting of two stories: the first a kind of unknown music, and the second a real stroke of genius in psychology—a terrible and cruel piece of mockery levelled at γνῶυι σαυτόν,"Know yourself." but done with such a light and daring hand, and with so much of the rapture of superior strength, that I was almost intoxicated with joy. Meanwhile, on the recommendation of Overbeck, whom I asked about the matter, I have read "Humiliés et offensés" (the only one that O. knew) with the greatest respect for the artist Dostoyevsky. I have also observed how completely the youngest generation of Parisian novelists are tyrannized over by the influence of Dostoyevsky, and by their jealousy of him (Paul Bourget, for instance).
I shall stay here until April 3, without, I trust, seeing any more of the earthquake. For Dr. Falb is warning people to beware of March 9, when he expects a renewal of the phenomena in our district; he also mentions March 22 and 23. Up till now I have remained fairly cool, and have lived with a feeling of irony and cold curiosity among thousands of people grown crazy with fear. But one cannot stand security for oneself and perhaps in a few days I shall be less rational than anyone. The element of suddenness, l'imprévu, has its charm...How are you? You cannot think what a lot of good your last letter did me! You are so brave! Your devoted friend, N.
Nietzsche To His Sister - March, 1887 Nice, Wednesday, March 23, 1887. MY DEAR LAMA: It is now difficult to help me. When one has been at great pains for half one's life to secure independence for one's self, as I found it necessary to do, one has to accept the disadvantages of the situation as well. One cannot have the one without the other. Among these disadvantages is the fact that no one can tell from appearances what are the things I lack. I should like to have a little more money in order, for instance, that in the interests of my declining health, alone, and with the view of avoiding innumerable mistakes in dieting that I am exposed to in restaurants and hotels, I might have my own kitchen. It is also a question of pride; I should like to lead a life that really is suitable to me, and does not look so conventional as that of "a scholar on his travels." But even the five conditions that might make life endurable, and are really not pretentious, seem to me impracticable. I require (1) Some one to superintend my digestion, (2) Somebody who can laugh with me and who has cheerful spirits, (3) Some one who is proud of my company and who constrains others to treat me with becoming respect, (4) Some one who can read aloud to me without making a book sound idiotic. There is yet a fifth condition; but I will say nothing about it.
To marry now would perhaps be simply an act of folly, which would immediately deprive me of the independence that I have won with such bloody strife. And then I should also have to choose some European State, to belong to and become a citizen of it. I should have to consider my wife, my child, my wife's family, the place I lived in, and the people we associated with, but to forbid myself the free expression of my ideas would kill me. I should prefer to be miserable, ill, and feared, and live in some out of the way corner, than to be "settled" and given my place in modern mediocrity! I lack neither courage nor good spirits. Both have remained with me because I have no acts of cowardice or false compromise on my conscience. Incidentally I may say that I have not yet found a woman who would be suited to associate with me, and whose presence would not bore me and make me nervous. (The Lama was a good housemate for whom I can find no substitute, but it wanted to vent its energy and to sacrifice itself. For whom? For a miserable foreign race of men, who will not even thank her—and not for me. And I would be such a grateful animal, and always ready for merry laughter. Are you still able to laugh at all? I am afraid that you will quite forget how to do it among these embittered people.) Moreover I know the women folk of half Europe, and wherever I have observed the influence of women on men, I have noticed a sort of gradual decline as the result; for instance in the