case of poor _____. Not very encouraging is it? I shall leave Nice at the beginning of next month in order to seek peaceful retirement on Lake Maggiore, where there are woods and shaded groves, and not this blindingly white incessant sunshine of Nice in the spring! The address is: Villa Badia, Cannobio (Lago Maggiore), but before this letter reaches you who knows where I shall be? With love, Your F.
Nietzsche To His Sister - April, 1887 Cannobio, Lago Maggiore, Villa Badia, April 20, 1887. MY DEAR LAMA: Here I am in a magnificent spot, and every morning I marvel at the glory of the colouring. The noble cloisterly nature of the situation and the arrangements also pleases me—and yet I am so out of sorts that I feel as if I could no longer be heartily glad about anything. Nothing comes to me from the outside world to give me courage or strength. My fellow-boarders are incomparably tedious! In that respect I was better off in Nice this winter. There were a few people there who interested me. Our dear mother will have written to you all about it.
And now about yourself, my dear Lama! I was very much impressed by the purchase of this huge piece of land, "larger than many a German principality." But I must confess that I am absolutely at sea about the whole affair. If I understand anything at all, it is that the real owner of that vast complex of territory is that rich Paraguayan who is so friendly with Förster. This would not prevent him from wishing to serve his own interests by means of this "German colony." He is certainly bent on turning it to his own profit. Now the principal thing to me seems to be, not that the colony should be inhabited, but that it should do some business, sell wood, etc. For without that I absolutely cannot see how such a great outlay of capital can get its proper return.
Förster promised to invest a portion of your money securely either in Germany or in Paraguay; but, if I know my sister well, this last portion will certainly find its way before long into the pockets of those numerous paupers.Amongst the so-called colonists there were numbers of people who had lost everything.—Translator. I confess that they are my one bugbear; remember that if anything goes wrong they constitute a most unpleasant element with which to deal. Then they always believe that one has unjustly led them into trouble; whereas success and failure often depend on accidents. To tell you the truth, my dear Lama, your letters do not comfort me in the least. If we were situated as you are we should all write such contented and hopeful letters home—particularly to relatives. I have not written to you about it yet; but I am not edified by the whole affair. In my mind's eye, I can see these paupers, dependent upon your pity, pressing themselves covetously upon you in order to exploit your all too ready liberality. No colony can prosper with such elements; do not deceive yourself on that point. If they were peasants it would be quite a different thing.
Also please allow me to question whether you are so well fitted for colonizing as my brother-in-law so often affirms. Not long ago I was talking to one of your former friends and he declared that we did not even know what colonizing meant. It was an incessant struggle with the elements...and you were as well fitted for it as "lily and rose-branches would be for sweeping a chimney." A fine simile! but very sad for the Lama. Forgive this sad letter, but mother's anxiety on your account has infected me also. I believe she is feeling ill as the result of bad German weather; but the Lama in the atmosphere and the sun of the South holds her head up. With love and solicitude, YOUR BROTHER.
Nietzsche To Malvida Von Meysenbug - May, 1887 [May 12, 1887] Address: Chur (Schweiz) Rosenhtigel Until June 10 afterwards: Celerina, Oberengadine. DEAREST FRAÜLEIN: How strange it is! With regard to what you so kindly said to me at the last moment, I wonder whether it might not prove both refreshing and fruitful for us both once more to join our two solitudes in closest and heartiest proximity! I have frequently thought about this of late, and asked myself searching questions about it. To spend one more winter with you and to be looked after and waited upon perhaps by TrinaThe chambermaid of Frl. v. Meysenbug.—Translator. herself that is indeed an extremely alluring prospect for which I cannot thank you sufficiently! I should prefer above all to return to Sorrento once more (δίς καί τοίς τὸ καλόν say the Greeks: "all good things twice or thrice!") Or to Capri—where I shall play the piano to you again but better than I did before Or to Amalfl or Castellamare. Finally even to Rome (although my suspicion of the Roman climate and of large towns in general is based on good reasons and is not to be over thrown so easily). Solitude in the midst of solitary nature has hitherto been my chief refreshment, my means of recovery; such cities of modern traffic as Nice or even Zurich (which I have just left) in the end always make me feel irritable, sad, uncertain, desperate, unproductive, and ill. I have retained a sort of longing and superstition with regard to that peaceful sojourn down there, as if there I had breathed more deeply, if only for a few moments, than anywhere else in my life. For instance, on the occasion of that very first drive we took together in Naples when we went to Posilippo.
Taking everything into consideration, you are the only person on earth about whom I could cherish such a wish; besides, I feel that I am condemned to my solitude and my citadel. There is no longer any alternative. That which bids me live, my exceptional and weighty task, bids me also keep out of the way of men and no longer attach myself to anyone. Perhaps it is the pure element in which this task has placed me that explains why it is that I have gradually grown unable even to bear the smell of men and least of all "young men," with whom I am not infrequently afflicted (—oh, how obtrusively clumsy they are, just like puppies!) In the old days, in our solitude in Sorrento, B. and R. were too much for me; I fancy that at that time I was very reticent with you—even about things of which there is no one I should have spoken to more readily than yourself.
On my table there lies the new edition (in two volumes) of "Human-all-too-Human," the first part of which I worked out then—how strange! Strange that it should have been in your respected neighbourhood. In the long "address" which I found a necessary preface for the new edition of my complete works there are a number of curious things about myself which are quite uncompromising in their honesty. By this means I shall hold "the many" once and for all at arm's length; for nothing annoys men more than to show them some of the severity and hardness with which, under the discipline of one's own ideal, one deals and has dealt out to oneself. That is why I have cast my line out for "the few," and this after all I did without impatience, for it is in the nature of the indescribable strangeness and dangerousness of my thoughts that ears should not be opened for them until very late—certainly not before 1901.
You ask me to come to Versailles—oh, if only it were possible! For I esteem the circle of men that you meet there (a curious admission for a German, but in present-day Europe I feel related only to the most intellectual among the French and Russians, and in no way whatever to my countrymen who judge all things on the principle of "Germany, Germany above all"). But I must return to the cold air of the Engadine; spring attacks me unconsciously; I dare not tell you into what abysses of despair I sink under its influence. My body (and my philosophy, too, for that matter), feels the cold to be its appointed preservative element—that sounds paradoxical and negative, but it is the most thoroughly demonstrated fact of my life.
This is by no means a sign of a "cold nature": but you, of course, understand that, my most dear and faithful friend! Always your affectionate and grateful friend, NIETZSCHE. P.S.—Fräulein Salome has also informed me of her engagement, but I did not answer her either, however much happiness and prosperity I may honestly wish her. One must keep out of the way of the kind of creature who does not understand awe and respect.
To Rohde - May, 1887 Chur, May 21, 1887. No, my old friend Rohde, I allow no one to speak so disrespectfully of Monsieur Taine as you do in your letter and you least of all, because it is contrary to all decency to treat any man in the way you do, when you know I think highly of him. If you choose to do so you may, if you like, talk nonsense about me to your heart's content—that lies in the natura verumThe nature of things.—Translator.; I have never complained about it or ever expected anything else. But in regard to a scholar like Taine who is more akin to your own species, you ought to have eyes in your head. To call him "jejune" is, to return to our student's jargon, simply frantically stupid—for he happens to be the most substantial thinker in present-day France; and in this connection it would not be inopportune to remark that where a man can detect no substance it does not necessarily follow there is none, but simply that there is none for him. In the harrowing history of the modern soul, which is in many respects a tragic history, Taine takes his place as a well-constituted and venerable type possessing many of the noblest qualities of this soul—its reckless courage, its absolutely sincere intellectual conscience, its stirring and modest stoicism amid acute privations and isolation. With such qualities a thinker deserves respect; he belongs to the few who immortalize their age. I enjoy the sight of such a brave pessimist who does his duty patiently and resolutely without any need of noise or stage effect—aye, and who can honestly say of himself: satis sunt mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus."A few are sufficient for me; one is sufficient, and even none."—Seneca Epist. Morales, 7-11.—Translator. In this way, whether he wishes it or no, his life becomes a mission, his attitude to all his problems is an inevitable one (and not the optional or accidental one that your own and most philologists are to philology).
No offence, I hope. But if I knew you only by this one remark of yours about Taine I believe that, owing to the lack of instinct and tact it reveals, I should thoroughly despise you. Fortunately, however, as far as I am concerned, you have proved your self a man in other ways.
But you really ought to hear Burckhardt speak about Taine. Your friend, N.
To Rohde - May, 1887 Chur, May 23, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: It was not nice of me to have yielded suddenly as I did yesterday to a fit of anger against you, but it is at least a good thing that it has all come out, for it has brought me something valuable in the form of your letter. This has relieved me immensely and given a different direction to my feelings against you.
Your remark about Taine seemed to me extravagantly contemptuous and ironical, and the part of me that revolted against it was the anchorite. For this part in me knows from an all too rich experience with what unrelenting coldness all those who live off the beaten track are dismissed and even dispatched. In addition to this, with the exception of Burckhardt, Taine is the only man who for many a long year has sent me a word of encouragement and sympathy about my writings. For the moment I even think of him and Burckhardt as my only readers. As three fundamental nihilists we are indeed irrevocably bound one to another, although, as you may perhaps suspect, I have not yet abandoned all hope of finding a way out of the abyss by means of which we can arrive at "something."
When a man keeps digging deep down in his own mine, he becomes "subterranean" or perhaps suspicious. It spoils his character—hence my last letter. Take me as I am. Yours, N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - November 3, 1887 Nice, Thursday. [November 3, 1887.] DEAR FRIEND: Huge rejoicing over the newly published, revised, and amplified dressing gown! Oh, but how ashamed you make me feel! For every day I felt the need of this article of clothing, especially in view of the wintry weather we have been having this autumn, which is intensified by the northerly situation of my room which looks out on to the garden and is on the ground floor. Nevertheless, I did not dare to have my dressing-gown sent here, because I remembered its dilapidated condition much more out of keeping with Nice perhaps than with your more philosophical Venice. And I am not yet modest enough to show my pride by exhibiting my rags! Ecco!...And now suddenly to sit so much embellished and so eminently respectable, in one's own room—what a surprise!
Everything seems to conspire to make this winter more acceptable to me than previous winters have been. For during previous winters I have been driven off my head not only from time to time, but constantly, habitually (and into Heaven knows what—possibly into the damnable writing of books and literature). I have just been to inspect the room that I shall occupy for the next six months; it is just over the one I have had up till now, and yesterday it was freshly papered in accordance with my bad taste—a reddish brown with stripes and speckles. Opposite to it at a sufficient distance away stands a building painted dark yellow, and above that, to exhilarate me even more, half the sky (which is blue, blue, blue!) Below me lies a beautiful garden which is always green and which I can survey as I sit at my table. The floor of the room is covered with straw; upon the straw lies an old carpet, and over that a beautiful new one. There are besides, a large round table, a well-upholstered settee, a book-case, the bed, covered with a dark blue counterpane, heavy brown curtains over the door, and one or two other things covered with bright red cloth (the wash-hand-stand and the coat-rack)—in short a nice multi-coloured mixture, but on the whole warm and subdued. A stove is coming from Naumburg, of the kind I have described to you...
Even my brother-in-law has been good enough to write to me; we both do our utmost to mitigate the somewhat strained relationship (—he writes about "Beyond Good and Evil", which he had had sent out to him; I did not send it to him—for very special reasons)...Your devoted and grateful friend, NIETZSCHE.
To Rohde - November, 1887 Nice, November 11, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: I seem to feel as if I still had to make amends to you for something that happened last Spring. And to show you how perfectly willing I am to do all I can, I send you herewith a copy of a work I have just published (but, perhaps, I owe you this book anyhow, because it belongs inseparably to the one I sent last—). No, do not let yourself be estranged from me too easily! At my age, and lonely as I am, I do not feel any too eager to lose the few men who had my confidence in the past. Yours, N. N. B.—About Monsieur Taine, let me beg you to recover your senses. The coarse things you say and think about him annoy me extremely. I would forgive such behavior on the part of Prince NapoleonJoseph Charles Paul Napoleon, Prince, who in his book "Napoléon et ses detractéurs" (1887), also attacked Taine.—Translator. but not on the part of my friend Rohde. It would be difficult for me to believe that the man who misunderstands such severe and magnanimous spirits as Taine (who is the educator of all the serious scientific character in France today) could understand anything about my own mission. Honestly, you have never breathed a word to me that might lead me to suppose that you knew anything of the destiny that hangs over me. But have I ever reproached you for this? Not once, even in my own heart, if only for the simple reason that I am not accustomed to any different treatment from anyone. Who has ever approached me with even a thousandth part of my passion and my suffering! Has anyone even an inkling of the real cause of my prolonged ill health over which I may even yet prevail? I am now forty-three and am just as much alone now as I was as a child.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - November, 1887 Nice, November 24, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: I am enjoying a great blessing this morning: for the first time a "fire-idol" stands in my room: a small stove—and I confess that I have already pranced round it once or twice like a good heathen. Until today my life has been a blue-fingered frosty affair, on the basis of which not even my philosophy stood firmly on its legs. Things are pretty insufferable when in one's own room one can feel the frigid breath of death when one withdraws to one's room not as to a fastness, so to speak, but as if one were drawn back to prison. For the last ten days it has been simply pouring: the rainfall per square metre has been reckoned at 208 litres. This October was the coldest I have ever had here, and this November the rainiest. Nice is still rather empty and yet twenty-five of us sit down to dinner every evening—all of them kindly and wellmeaning people, to whom no objection can be made...
...The fact that Rousseau was one of the first followers of Gluck gives me cause for reflection; for, as far as I at least am concerned, everything the former prized is a little suspicious, as are also all those who prized him (there is a whole family of Rousseau—Schiller belongs to it, and so in part does Kant; in France, George Sand, and also Sainte-Beuve; in England, George Eliot, etc., etc.). All those who have been in need of "moral dignity" fautede mieux have been among the admirers of Rousseau, even down to our darling Dühring, who had the good taste to represent himself in his autobiography as the Rousseau of the 19th century. (Just observe how a man stands towards Voltaire and Rousseau: it makes all the difference in the world whether he says yea to the former or to the latter: Voltaire's enemies—as, for instance, Victor Hugo, all romanticists, even the subtler latter-day sort such as the brothers Goncourt—are all favourably disposed to that masked plebeian Rousseau. And I suspect that there is something of the resentment of the mob to be found at the bottom of all Romanticism.) Voltaire is magnificently intellectual canaille; but I agree with Galiani that Un monstre gai vaut mieux qu un sentimental ennuyeux. Voltaire was only possible and tolerable on the soil of a noble culture that can allow itself the luxury of intellectual canaillerie.
Observe with what warm feelings, what tolerance, my stove has already begun to permeate me!
I beseech you, dear friend, to be constantly mindful of this one duty; you cannot avoid it: you must once more by word and deed elevate severer principles to a place of honour in rebus muxicis et musicantibus, and seduce the Germans to the paradox, which is a paradox only at the present day: that the severer principles and more cheerful music are inseparable. Your devoted and grateful friend, N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - December, 1887 Nice. Pension de Geneve. December 20, 1887. DEAR FRIEND:...On all sides the chasm has become too great, and I have to have recourse to every possible kind of chastening influence in order not to descend among the men of resentment myself. The sort of defensive attitude towards me taken up by all those people who were once my friends has something annoying about it which is much more mortifying than an attack. "Not to hear and not to see" that seems to be the motto. No one made any response to the Hymn, except Brahms, and he wrote: "J. B. begs to present his sincerest thanks to you for what you have sent him, as also for the honour which he esteems it to be, and the great stimulus he derived from it. With his most respectful compliments, etc."
Only two letters came about the book; but they at least were very fine. One was from Dr. Fuchs, and the other from Dr. George Brandes (the most intellectual Dane of the day—that is to say, a Jew). The latter seems inclined to take me up pretty thoroughly; he marvels at the "original spirit" that is exhaled by my works, and sums up their teaching in the term "aristocratic radicalism." That is well said and well conceived. Oh these Jews! A few criticisms of my "Beyond Good and Evil," sent me by Nauman, show only ill-will: the words "ripe for the psychiater and pathologist" are meant to explain and censure my work at the same time. (Between ourselves, the undertaking I have in hand is so huge and so monstrous that I cannot take it amiss if people on reading my books should at times feel some doubt as to whether I am quite "sane.")...
...I am industrious but melancholy, and I have not yet recovered from the state of vehement irritation into which the last few years have thrown me. I am not yet "sufficiently impersonalized." Nevertheless, I know what has been done, and done away with: all my previous life has been ruled off at this point—that has been the meaning of the last few years. True, my existence hitherto has thus shown itself to be what it actually is—a mere promise. The passion of my last work has something terrible about it. Yesterday I read it with the most profound astonishment as though it were something new. Write to me, dear friend, and let me hear nothing but good news. Your devoted, N.
To Karl Fuchs - December, 1887 Nice (France), December 14, 1887. Pension de Geneve. MY DEAR FRIEND: It was a happy thought on your part to write me such a letter. For almost involuntarily and in pursuance of an inexorable necessity, I am just in the midst of calculating how I stand with men and things, and laying the whole of my past ad acta. Almost everything I am now doing amounts to an underlining of what has gone before. During the last few years the vehemence of my inner vibrations has been terrific; and now that I must ascend to a new and higher form, what I most of all need is a new estrangement, a still higher form of impersonalization. At the same time it is essential for me to know what and whom I can still regard as mine.
How old am I already? I do not know, any more than I know how young I shall yet be.
I look at your portrait with pleasure. It seems full of youth and courage, mingled, as is only becoming, with incipient wisdom (and white hair?).
In Germany they are crying out aloud against my eccentricities. But, as they do not know where my centrum is, it is not easy for them to hit the nail on the head in their efforts to determine where and when I have been "eccentric" in the past. For instance in being a philologist I was out of my centrum (fortunately this does not by any means signify that I was a bad philologist). On the same principle, it now seems to me an eccentricity that I should ever have been a Wagnerite. It was an extremely dangerous experiment, and now that I know I have not been ruined by it I also realize what it has meant for me—it was the severest test of character I could have had. It is certain that one's inmost nature gradually disciplines one's whole being into unity; that passion for which for ages one can find no name saves us from all digressions and dispersions, that mission whose involuntary custodian we are.
It is very difficult to understand such things from afar. And that is why the last ten years of my life have been extremely painful and violent. In the event of your being inclined to hear anything more about this ungodly and problematic history, let me recommend to your friendly sympathy the new editions of my earlier works, particularly their introductions. (Incidentally, let me tell you that my publisher, the excellent E. W. Fritzsch of Leipzig, who has good reason for feeling desperate, is prepared to send copies of these new editions to anyone who promises to write a long article about "Nietzsche en bloc." The more important literary journals, such as Lindau's North and South are ripe for such an article, as a genuine feeling of anxiety and excitement is beginning to prevail concerning the importance of my literature. Up to the present no one has had the courage and inintelligence to reveal me to the dear Germans. My problems are new, the range of my psychological horizon is terrific, my language is bold and German. Possibly there are no books in the German language richer in ideas or more independent than mine.)
The hymn also belongs to this "underlining process." Could you not get someone to sing it to you? I have already been promised its production in many quarters (for instance, Mottl in Karlsruhe). It is really intended to be sung "to my memory" one day. It will survive as a souvenir of me, provided, of course, that I survive.
Do not forget me, dear doctor. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for wishing to remain my friend even in the second half of your century. Yours, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To His Sister - January, 1888 Nice, January 25, 1888. MY DEAR OLD LAMA: It was with great pleasure that I read my brother-in-law's pæan on his "incomparable wife." I am proud of having brought you up—only very few women would have overcome those extraordinary difficulties with such bravery and unassuming cheerfulness. But please let us have a little less modesty! Do not forget that the herd insists on having picturesque people—that is to say, people who draw pictures of their gifts, aspirations, and successes in such bold and obtrusive strokes that they can be grasped even by the dullest eyes. The herd honours everything in the nature of a pose, any solemn attitude,—things from which we two are averse. Only subtle spirits understand the shame of the noble mind, that conceals its highest and its best beneath a plain surface. I feel certain that among all those people over there, only a few have any idea with what little regard for yourself and with what passionate resolution you try to realize your ideals. The only question I ask myself is—are these ideals worthy of so much self-sacrifice? I very much fear you will yet have to overcome many bitter disappointments in your life. Ultimately you will be come a sceptical old woman—without having lost your bravery; and you will be well suited to your sceptical brother. How we shall laugh then over the idealism of our youth—possibly with tears.
Now let me tell you a little experience I have had. As I was taking my usual walk yesterday, I suddenly heard some one talking and laughing heartily along a side path (it sounded almost as if it might have been you); and when this some one appeared before me, it turned out to be a charming brown-eyed girl, whose soft gaze, as she surveyed me, reminded me of a roe. Then, lonely philosopher though I am, my heart grew quite warm—I thought of your marriage schemes, and for the whole of the rest of the walk I could not help thinking of the charming young girl. Certainly it would do me good to have something so graceful about me—but would it do her good? Would my views not make her unhappy, and would it not break my heart (provided that I loved her) to make such a delightful creature suffer? No, let us not speak of marrying!
But what you were thinking of was rather a good comrade [...]. Do you really think that an emancipated woman of this sort, with all her femininity vanished, could be a good comrade, or could be tolerable as a wife at all? You forget that, in spite of my bad eyesight, I have a very highly developed sense of beauty; and this, quite apart from the fact that such embittered women are repugnant to me and spoil my spirits and my whole atmosphere. Much intellect in a woman amounts to very little as far as I am concerned, for this so-called intellect, by which only the most superficial men are deceived, is nothing more than the most absurd pretentiousness. There is nothing more tiring than such an intellectual goose, who does not even know how tedious she is. Think of Frau O.! But in this respect I must admit that Fraulein X. is incomparably more pleasant—but, nevertheless! You think that love would change her; but I do not believe in any such change through "love." Besides, you have not seen her for many years it is obvious that she must have changed in the direction of ugliness and loss of womanliness. Believe me, if you were to see her now—at her very appearance the thought of love and marriage would strike you, as it does me, as absurd. You can take my word for it, that for men like me, a marriage after the type of Goethe's would be the best of all—that is to say, a marriage with a good housekeeper! But even this idea is repellent to me. A young and cheerful daughter to whom I would be an object of reverence would be much more to the point. The best of all, however, would be to have my good old Lama again. For a philosopher, a sister is an excellent philanthropic institution, particularly when she is bright, brave, and loving (no old vinegar flask like G. Keller'sThis refers apparently to the great Swiss novelist Gottfried Keller.—Translator. sister), but as a rule one only recognizes such truths when it is too late.