Well, this has been a nice chat on marriage with the Lama. With many hearty wishes and greetings to you and your Bernhard, Your devoted F.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1888 Nice, February 1, 1888. DEAR FRIEND: How close you have been to me all this time! What a tremendous deal I have thought out—both trash and wisdom—with you always as the principal figure in my mind! There has been a fine opportunity: the last drawing in the Nice Lottery. For at least half an hour I allowed myself the small and foolish luxury of taking it for granted that I should win the first prize. With half a million it would be possible to reinstate a number of reasonable things on earth. At least you and I would regard the irrational character of our existence with more irony, with more detachment—for, in order to do the things you and I do, and to do them quite well and divinely, one thing is fundamentally necessary, Irony (well, then, for this is the way the world reasons—half a million is the first premise of irony...).
To lack not only health, but also money, recognition, love, and protection—and not to become a tragic grumbler: this constitutes the paradoxical character of our present condition, its problem. As for myself, I have got into a state of chronic vulnerability, against which, when my condition is slightly improved, I take a sort of revenge which is not of the nicest description that is to say, I adopt an attitude of excessive hardness. For a proof of this, look at my last work! Still, I put up with all this with the sagacity of an old psychologist and without the smallest moral indignation. Oh, how instructive it is to live in such an extreme state as mine! Only now do I understand history; never has my vision been more profound than during the last few months.
Dear friend, your physiological computation about the influence of Venice is perfectly right. In this place, where one is constantly hearing so many visitors and invalids discuss the idiosyncrasies of the effects of particular climates, I have gradually learned to grasp the cardinal truth of this question. In regard to the optimum, the realization of our most intimate wishes (our "works"), one must hearken to this voice of Nature; certain kinds of music can flourish no better under a wet sky than can certain plants. The lady who is my neighbour at table has just told me that until two weeks ago she had been lying ill in Berlin, that she had caused the doctors there a great deal of anxiety, and that she was unable to walk from one corner of the street to the other. Now—and she cannot account for the change in her she runs,—she eats, she is cheerful and can no longer believe—that she has been ill. As the same thing has happened to her three times in her life, she now swears by a "dry climate" as a recipe for all spiritual ailments (—for she had suffered from a sort of desperate melancholia). The fact that for years you should have found the effect of the climate of Venice (as a contrast to the climate in which you were brought up) very good for you and a sort of balm oil that calmed you down, is quite correct: I have discussed this vital question with doctors in the Engadine: namely, that a climate when tried as a contrast for its stimulating effect—that is to say when it is ordered only for a given period of time—has exactly the opposite effect when it is lived in for good; and that the inhabitant of the Engadine, under the constant influence of this particular climate, becomes serious, phlegmatic, and a little anaemic, while the visitor to this part of the world leaves it feeling braced and strengthened in all his bodily functions. Moral: You ought, therefore, to be (or have been) only a visitor to Venice. I am really sorry to have to say this and even to see it in the way I do; for so much there is arranged and ordered in such a splendid and suitable way for you that you could not find the same anywhere else. You might try Corsica? I have been told that one can find board and lodging in the small hotels at Bastia for three to four francs a day. So many fugitives from all lands have lived in Corsica (particularly Italian scholars, etc.). The railway line from Bastia to Corte has just been opened (February 1, 1888). The great frugality of the Corsican mode of life and the simplicity of their customs would make people like ourselves feel quite at home there. And how far away from modernity one would feel there! Maybe the soul would grow stronger, purer, and prouder there...(—I can see quite clearly now that one would suffer less if one were prouder: you and I are not proud enough...). Your affectionate and devoted friend, N.
To Seydlitz - February, 1888 Nice, Pension de Geneve. February 12, 1888. DEAR FRIEND: It has not been a "proud silence" that has sealed my lips to everyone all this time, but rather the humble silence of a sufferer who was ashamed of betraying the extent of his pain. When an animal is ill it crawls into its cave—so does la bete philosophe. So seldom does a friendly voice come my way. I am now alone, absurdly alone, and in my unrelenting subterranean war against all that mankind has hitherto honoured and loved (—my formula for this is "the Transvaluation of all Values") I myself seem unwittingly to have become something of a cave, something concealed that can no longer be found even when it is a definite object of search. But no one goes in search of it. Between us three, it is not beyond the limits of possibility that I am the leading philosopher of the age—aye, maybe a little more than that, something decisive and fateful that stands between two epochs. But a man is constantly paying for holding such an isolated position by an isolation which becomes every day more complete, more icy, and more cutting. And look at our dear Germans!...Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have published about fifteen books ( among them that non plus ultra "Zarathustra") no one in Germany has yet succeeded in producing even a moderately good review of a single one of my works. They are now getting out of the difficulty with such words as "eccentric," "pathological," "psychiatric." There have been evil and slanderous hints enough about me, and in the papers both scholarly and unscholarly, the prevailing attitude is one of ungoverned animosity;—but how is it that no one protests against this? How is it that no one feels insulted when I am abused? And all these years no comfort, no drop of human sympathy, not a breath of love.
In these circumstances one has to live at Nice. This season it is again full of idlers, grecs and other philosophers—it is full of my like. And, with his own peculiar cynicism, God allows his sun to shine more brightly on us than on the more respectable Europe of Herr von Bismarck (—which with feverish virtue is working at its armaments, and looks for all the world like a heroic hedgehog). The days seem to dawn here with unblushing beauty; never have we had a more beautiful winter. How I should like to send you some of the colouring of Nice! It is all besprinkled with a glittering silver grey; intellectual, highly intellectual colouring; free from every vestige of the brutal ground tone. The advantage of this small stretch of coast between Alassio and Nice is the suggestion of Africa in the colouring, the vegetation, and the dryness of the air. This is not to be found in other parts of Europe.
Oh, how gladly would I not sit with you and your dear wife beneath some Homeric Phæacien sky! But I must not go further south (—my eyes will soon drive me to more northern and more stupid landscapes). Please let me know when you will be in Munich again and forgive this gloomy letter. Your devoted friend, NlETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1888 Nice, Pension de Geneve, February 26, 1888. DEAR FRIEND: The weather is sultry, it is Sunday afternoon, and I am very lonely. I can think of nothing more pleasant to do than to sit down and have a chat with you. I have just noticed that my fingers are blue, so my writing will be legible only to him who can guess my thoughts...What you say in your letter about Wagner's style reminds me of an effusion of my own on the subject that I wrote somewhere, in which I say that his "dramatic style" is nothing more than a species of bad style, or rather, no style in music. But our musicians call this progress...As a matter of fact, in this domain of truth, everything still remains to be said—aye! I very much suspect that everything still remains to be thought. Wagner himself, as a man, an animal, a god, and an artist rises a thousand miles above the understanding and the lack of understanding of our Germans. Whether it is the same with the French I do not know.
Today I had the pleasure of being proved in the right over a question, which, in itself, might seem extraordinarily daring: to wit—what man up to the present has been the best prepared for Wagner? Which of us was most adapted to Wagner and most Wagnerian inwardly in spite of and without Wagner? To this question I had for some considerable time replied by pointing to that odd three-quarter imbecile of a Baudelaire, the poet of Les Fleurs du Mal. I had deplored the fact that, during his lifetime, this man was so fundamentally related to Wagner in spirit; I had marked the lines in his poems that were in any way redolent of Wagner's sensibility, to which no form has been given in the poetry of any other man (Baudelaire is a libertine, mystic, and satanic to boot; but above all Wagnerian). And what do I find today? On turning over the leaves of the recently published (Œuvres Posthumes of this author so highly esteemed and even beloved in France, lo and behold, in the midst of invaluable Psychologicis of decadence (mon coeur mis a nu, after the manner of those introspective writings of Schopenhauer and ByronBy Moore and Murray.—Translator. that were burnt) what should I find but a hitherto unpublished letter of Wagner's relating to one of Baudelaire's essays in the Revue Europeenne, April, 1861. Here is a copy of it: "My dear Monsieur Baudelaire, I have called upon you several times without finding you in. You will readily understand how anxious I am to tell you what a tremendous pleasure you gave me by your article that does me so much honour and gives me more encouragement than anything anyone else has said as yet about my poor talent. Would it not be possible for me before long to tell you in person how elated I felt at reading those beautiful pages that described to me—after the manner of the finest poem—the impression I may boast of having made upon a mind so superior as yours? Thank you a thousand times for the kindness you have shown me, and, believe me, I am proud to be able to think of you as a friend. May we soon meet! Yours, Richard Wagner."
[Wagner was then forty-eight years old and Baudelaire was forty. The letter is touching, although it is in such wretchedly bad French.]
In the same book there are a few sketches by Baudelaire in which in a most passionate manner he defends Heinrich Heine against French criticism (Jules Janin). During the latter part of his life, when he was half mad and slowly declining, Wagner's music used to be played to him as a form of medicine: and even when Wagner's name was mentioned to him, "he smiled with joy".
(If I am not mistaken, Wagner only wrote one other letter expressive of such gratitude and enthusiasm, and that was after the receipt of The Birth of Tragedy.)
(Extract from one of Baudelaire's letters: "I dare not write any more about Wagner: people have made too much fun of me. This music has been one of the greatest joys of my life: for full fifteen years I have not experienced such feelings of elation, or rather ecstasy").
How are you now, dear friend? I have vowed to take nothing seriously for a while. Even you are not to believe that I have once again written "literature": this essay was for myself. Every winter now I intend to write just such an essay for myself,—the thought of getting it published is practically out of the question...The Fritzsch has been settled by wire. Spitteler has written. It is not a bad letter. and in it he apologises for his "impudence" (his own word).Spitteler had published a review of Nietzsche's works in the Bund of Berne for the end of January, 1888. It was on the whole well meant, thought in regard to many points it revealed misunderstandings. Nietzsche was pleased with the review as such, although he did not conceal from the editor of the Bund the objections he had to it. When Spitteler heard of this, he laid the points in question before Nietzsche himself. Originally Spitteler's essay dealt only with Nietzsche's earlier writings; when, however, Spitteler became acquainted with the other works he asked the editor of the Bund to return his review which he then extended. This occurred a third time before the essay was finally published in January, 1888. ("Beyond Good and Evil" was never known to Spitteler, that is why it is not mentioned in his review.) This kind of imperfect acquaintance with and rapid discussion of an author's works seemed to Spitteler, particularly in regard to Nietzsche, even then a performance for which he felt he must apologize.
Notes