This summer I wrote an essay on the "Dionysian Weltanschauung" dealing with an aspect of Greek antiquity of which, thanks to our philosopher, we are now able to get a much closer view. But these are studies which, for the time being only, concern me. I have no greater wish than to be allowed sufficient time to mature properly and then out of my plenitude produce something.
As regards the conditions of culture in the immediate future, I feel the deepest misgivings. If only we are not forced to pay too dearly for this huge national success in a quarter where I at least refuse to suffer any loss. Between ourselves, I regard the Prussia of today as a power full of the greatest dangers for culture. One day I shall myself publicly expose our scholastic organization; as to the religious intrigues which are once more spreading from Berlin to the advantage of the Catholic Church I leave that to others! At times it is very hard, but we must be philosophical enough to keep our presence of mind in the midst of all this intoxication, so that no thief may come to rob or steal from us—what the greatest military feats or the highest national exaltation would in my opinion never replace.
Much fighting will be necessary for the coming period of culture, and for this work we must keep our selves in readiness. Dear friend, I always think of you with the deepest apprehension. May the genius of the future guide and guard you in the way we desire.
Your devoted friend, FR. NIETZSCHE.
To His Mother And Sister - December, 1870 Bâle, December 12, 1870. DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE:...I am gradually losing all sympathy for Germany's present war of conquest. The future of German culture seems to me now more in danger than it ever was...With heartiest greetings, YOUR FRITZ.
To Rohde - December, 1870 Bâle, December 15, 1870. MY DEAR FRIEND: I have not allowed a minute to elapse since reading your letter but am replying at once. I simply wanted to tell you that I felt just as you do and would regard it as a disgrace if we could not get out of this state of longing thirst by means of some energetic deed. Now listen to what I have been turning over in my soul! Let us drag on for another year or two in this University life! Let us accept it as an instructive burden of sorrow which we are obliged to bear earnestly and with surprise. Among other things it will be a period of probation for the art of teaching, by means of which I regard it as my mission to perfect myself. The only thing is I have set my goal a little higher.
In the long run I have become aware of the importance of Schopenhauer's teaching about the wisdom of the Universities. A thoroughly radically truthful existence is impossible here. But what is specially important is that nothing truly subversive can ever emerge from this quarter.
And then we can only become genuine teachers by straining every nerve to raise ourselves out of the atmosphere of these times and by being not only wiser but above all better men. Here also I feel that the very first prerequisite is to be true. And that is why, I repeat, I cannot endure this academic atmosphere too long.
So it comes to this, we shall sooner or later cast off this yoke—upon this I am firmly resolved. And then we shall form a new Greek Academy—Romundt will certainly join us in that. Thanks to your visits to Triebschen you must also know Wagner's Bayreuth plan. I have been considering quite privately whether we on our part should not simultaneously effect a breach with philology as it has been practised hitherto and its aspect of culture. I am preparing an important adhortatioAdmonition.—Translator. to all those natures that have not been completely stifled and entangled in the present age. What a deplorable thing it is that I should have to write to you about these matters and that each individual thought should not have been discussed with you long ago! For, since you do not know the whole apparatus as it already exists, my plan will seem to you like an eccentric whim. But this it is not—it is a need.
A book of Wagner's about Beethoven that has just been published you will find full of suggestions about what I desire for the future. Read it; it is a revelation of the spirit in which we—we!—shall live in the future.
Even supposing we get but few adherents, I believe, nevertheless, that we shall be able to extricate our selves pretty well—not without some injuries, it is true—from this current, and that we shall reach some islet upon which we shall no longer require to stop up our ears with wax. We shall then be our own mutual teachers and our books will only be so much bait wherewith to lure others to our monastic and artistic association. Our lives, our work, and our enjoyment will then be for one another; possibly this is the only way in which we can work for the world as a whole. In order to prove to you how deeply in earnest I am in this matter, I have already begun to limit my requirements in order to be able to preserve a small vestige of private means. We shall also try our luck in lotteries; and, if we write books, I shall for the immediate future demand the highest possible fees. In short, we shall make use of every legitimate means in order to establish our monastery upon a secure material basis thus, even for the next few years, we have our appointed tasks.
If only this plan would strike you as being at least worthy of consideration! That it was high time to lay it before you is proved by the really stirring letter I have just received from you.
Ought we not to be able to introduce a new form of the Academy life into the world— "And would my powerful longings, all in vain Charm into life that deathless form again—"Goethe's Faust, Part II, Act III. Dr. John Anster's translation. (1864).—Translator. —as Faust says of Helen?
Nobody knows anything about this project, and whether we shall now send a preliminary communication about it to Romundt will depend upon you. Our school of philosophy is surely not an historical reminiscence or a deliberate whim—does not dire necessity impel us in this direction?
Apparently the plan we made as students to travel together has returned in a new and symbolically grander form. I will not again be the culprit who, as on that occasion, left you in the lurch. I have not yet ceased to be vexed about that.
With the best of hopes, Your devoted FRATER FRIDERICUS.
To Rohde - January, 1872 Bâle, January 28, 1872. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: The other day I was approached, through Susemihl, and asked whether I would accept a professorship at Greifswald. But I refused it immediately in your favour and recommended you for the post. Has the matter developed any further? I referred it to Ribbeck. Of course, the thing got to be known here and was the means of my earning much sympathy from the good folk of Bâle. Although I protested that it was not actually the offer of an appointment, but only a provisional inquiry, all the students decided to have a torchlight procession in my honour, declaring that they wished to express how much they valued and esteemed my past work in Bâle. But I declined to accept this demonstration. I am now holding a course of lectures here on "The Future of our Educational Institutions,"Translated and published in Vol. Ill of Dr. Oscar Levy's Complete and Authorized English Translation of Nietzsche's Works (T. N. Foulis.)—Translator. and am making quite a sensation and even at times provoking genuine enthusiasm. Why do we not live together, for all that now surges in my breast and that I am preparing for the future cannot even be touched upon in letters? I have concluded an alliance with Wagner. You cannot think how near we stand to each other now and how closely related our schemes are. What I have had to hear about my book is incredible, but that is the reason why I do not write anything about it. What is your opinion on the subject? Everything I hear about it makes me uncommonly serious, for it is out of voices such as these that I divine the future of my schemes. This life is going to be very hard still.
In Leipzig irritation seems to prevail again. Nobody there writes me a line about it, not even Ritschl.
My dear friend, some time or other we absolutely must live together; it is a sacred necessity. For some while I have been living in a tremendous current; nearly every day something astounding happens, while my aspirations and intentions continue to rise. Let me tell you as a great secret, and begging you to keep it to yourself, that among other things I am preparing a Promemoria about the University of Strasburg in the form of an interpellation for the Reichstag, to be delivered to Bismarck. In it I wish to show how shamefully a great opportunity was lost of making a truly German Educational Institute for the regeneration of the German spirit and for the total extermination of what has hitherto been called "culture." War to the knife! or, rather, to the cannon! Your friend, THE MOUNTED ARTILLERYMAN WITH THE HEAVIEST GUNS.
To Rohde - June, 1872 Bâle, June 18, 1872. MY DEAR FRIEND: As the result of stomach and intestinal trouble I have been in bed for a few days and am still feeling rather seedy today. So do not expect anything exceptionally rational if I now answer your letter after having all sorts of conflicting thoughts and ideas about it. Ah, my dear friend, in such cases the wisest course cannot be discovered by cunning; it is only afterward that one realizes whether one has seized upon the right thing or not. For the case is exceptional, and I do not know by what analogy to decide it. For my part I lay very great stress upon the fact that the philologists will receive a wholesome surprise when you suddenly stand up for me as a philologist. What Wagner in his love for me has written I do not know. In view of the coarse rudeness of our fellow philologist, it will in any case have a different effect from what he expects. It is on occasions like these that the invisible conspiracy against the spirit becomes visible. But what they will least expect, the most terrible feature of it all, will be that a qualified philologist should come to my support. The confidence that this could never happen explains the superlatively impudent tone of this Berlin youth.Willamowitz. I am moreover perfectly satisfied in my own mind that, to do him justice, he is only the echo of the "superiors" who inspire him. As a wholesome warning and to avoid having to deal with these disgusting Berlin Gesundbrunn people,Gesundbrunnen, a suburb of Berlin.—Translator. every time we produce something new you would, according to Wagner's letter, do something eminently salutary if you described to philologists what in all its earnestness and rigour our position toward antiquity actually is, and above all if you could lay stress upon the fact that it is not open to every potty little philologist—whoever he may be—to have his say in these matters, much less, therefore, to criticise them. Dear friend, I imagine your essay starting off with general observations about our philological work; the more general and more earnest these observations are, the easier will it be to address the whole to Wagner. In your opening you might perhaps explain why you turn precisely to Wagner and why you do not address yourself to some philological body, for instance. You might point out that at present we entirely lack any supreme forum for the most ideal results of our studies of antiquity. Then you might make some mention of our experiences and hopes in Bayreuth and thus justify us in connecting our aspirations in regard to antiquity with this cry of "Awake! for the day is at hand!"Hans Sachs words in Wagner's "Meistersinger." And then you might proceed to deal with my book, etc. Ah, my dear friend, it is ridiculous for me, in this seedy mood, to go and write all this to you. But the principal thing seems to be that we should not forego our intention of addressing Wagner, because it is precisely this direct relationship to Wagner that most terrifies the philologists and compels them most forcibly to reflect. At the same time the slaughter of Willamowitz must be done on purely philological lines. Perhaps after a somewhat lengthy introduction dealing with generalities and addressed to Wagner, you might draw a line, and then with some apologies turn to the execution. In any case, toward the end of the essay your tone must once more become so general and earnest that the reader will forget Willamowitz and remember only that we are not to be trifled with—which will mean a good deal where philologists are concerned. For up to the present day they have always regarded me as a sort of philological joker, or, as I heard a little while ago, a writer on music.
As the essay will in any case be read by many who are not philologists, remember, dear friend, not to be too "noble" in the matter of your quotations, so that the non-philological friends of antiquity may find out where they have something to learn. Unfortunately the tone of my own essay did not allow of any instruction of this sort. If possible, try to wipe out the impression that it deals with creatures in the moon and not with the Greeks. Will your pamphlet cover as many as thirty or forty pages? And are you agreeable to its being published by Fritzsch, or should Trübner have it? Ritschl would be sure to manage that for me. (Ritschl is extraordinarily kind and well disposed to me.) Forgive this foolish letter, dear friend, and do exactly as you feel inclined in the matter. But rest assured that if you do it I shall thoroughly appreciate it. In my present isolated position I may be ignored as a visionary or an ass. But if we stand together, both united by our love for Wagner, we shall arouse a frantic, an egregious amount of attention among the army of philological duffers and rogues.
Your affectionate and devoted friend, F. N.
Nietzsche To His Mother - October, 1872 Splügen, Hotel Bodenhaus. Beginning of October, 1872. MY DARLING MOTHER: This time you are going to laugh, for this long letter is all about a journey and lots of funny things. Half against my will I decided to go to Italy; though it lay heavily on my conscience that I had already written you a letter accepting. But who can resist the capricious manner in which the weather has suddenly become the reverse of what it was! Now it is beautifully and purely autumnal, just the very weather for a walking tour. Or, to be nearer the truth, I felt the most burning desire for once to be quite alone with my thoughts for a little while. You can guess from the address of the hotel printed above that I have been unexpectedly successful.
...I had almost reached Zurich when I discovered that my companion in the compartment was a man who was well known to me and had been even better recommended the musician Goetz (a pupil of Billow's)—and he told me how much his musical work had increased in Zurich since Kirclmer's departure. But what seemed to agitate him most of all was the prospect of seeing his opera accepted by the Hanover Theatre and produced for the first time. After leaving Zurich, in spite of the nice unobtrusive company, I gradually grew so cold and ill that I had not the courage to go as far as Chur. With great difficulty—that is to say, with a splitting headache—I reached Weesen and the Lake of Wallenstatt in the dead of night. I found the Schwert Hotel bus and got into it, and it set me down at a fine, comfortable, though completely empty, hotel. On the following morning I rose with a headache. My window looked on to the Lake of Wallenstatt, which you can imagine as being like the Lake of Lucerne, but much simpler and not so sublime. Then I went on to Chur, feeling unfortunately ever more and more ill at ease—so much so that I went through Ragaz, etc., almost without feeling the slightest interest. I was very glad to be able to leave the train at Chur, refused the post official's offer to drive with him—which after all was the plan—and, putting up at the Hotel Lukmanier, I went straight to bed. It was 10 a.m. I slept well until 2 p.m., felt better and ate a little. A smart and well informed waiter recommended me to walk as far as Pessug, a place that was imprinted on my memory by a picture I had seen of it in an illustrated paper. Sabbath peace and an afternoon mood prevailed in the town of Chur. I walked up the main road at a leisurely pace; as on the previous day, everything lay before me transfigured by the glow of autumn. The scenery behind me was magnificent, while the view constantly changed and widened. After about half an hour's walk I came to a little side path which was beautifully shaded; until then the road had been rather hot. Then I reached the gorge through which the Rabiusa pours; its beauty defies description. I pressed on over bridges and paths winding round the side of the rock for about half an hour, and at last discovered Bad Passug indicated by a flag. At first it disappointed me, for I had expected a Pension and saw only a second-rate inn, full of Sunday excursionists from Chur—a crowd of comfortably feasting and coffee-sipping families. The first thing I did was to drink three glassfuls of the saline-soda spring; then the improved state of my head soon allowed me to add a bottle of white Asti Spumante you remember it! together with the softest of goat's milk cheese. A man with Chinese eyes, who sat at my table, also had some of the Asti to drink; he thanked me, drank and was much gratified. Then the proprietess handed me a number of analyses of the water, etc. Finally, Sprecher, the proprietor of the watering place, an excitable sort of man, showed me all over his property, the incredibly fantastic position of which I was obliged to acknowledge. Again I drank copious draughts of water from three entirely different springs. The proprietor promised the opening of important new springs, and noticing my interest in the matter offered to make me his partner in the founding of a hotel, etc., etc.—irony! The valley is extremely fascinating for a geologist of unfathomable versatility—aye, and even whimsicality. There are seams of graphite and there is also quartz with ochre. The proprietor even hinted at gold. You can see the most different kinds of stone strata and varieties of stone, bending hither and thither and cracked as in the Axenstein on the Lake of Lucerne, but here they are much smaller and less rugged. Late in the evening, just as it was getting dusk, I returned delighted with my afternoon, although my mind often wandered back to the reception I ought to have been enjoying at Naumburg.Note by E.F.N.: "The touching letter from our dear mother is still extant in which she expresses her disappointment over the fact that after she had made all kinds of preparations, a letter came instead of her son." A little child with flaxen hair was looking about for nuts, and was very amusing. At last an aged couple came towards me, father and daughter. They had a few words to say, and listened in turn. He was a very old, hoary cabinet maker, had been in Naumburg fifty-two years ago while on his wanderings, and remembered a very hot day there. His son has been a missionary in India since 1858, and is expected to come to Chur next year in order to see his father once more. The daughter said she had often been to Egypt, and spoke of Bàle as an unpleasant, hot, and stuffy town. I accompanied the good old hobbling couple a little further. Then I returned to dinner at my hotel, where I found one or two companions ready for the Splügen tour on the morrow. On Monday I rose at 4 a.m., the diligence being timed to leave just after 5. Before we left we had to sit in an evil-smelling waiting room, among a number of peasants from Graubtinden and Tessin. But at this early hour man is in any case a disagreeable creature. I was released by the departure of the diligence, for I had arranged with the conductor to occupy his seat high up on the top of the conveyance. There I was alone, and it was the finest diligence drive I have ever had. I cannot write about the tremendous grandeur of the Via mala; it made me feel as if I did not yet know Switzerland at all. This is my Nature, and when we got near to Splügen I was overcome by the wish to stay there. I found a good hotel and a little room that was quite touching in its simplicity. And yet it has a balcony from which one can enjoy a most beautiful view. This high Alpine valley (about 5,000 feet) is exactly to my taste—pure and bracing air, hills and rocks of every shape and size, and mighty snow mountains all around. But what I like most of all are the magnificent high roads along which I walk for hours at a time, sometimes in the direction of Bernaclino and sometimes along the heights of the Pass of Splügen, without heeding the road in the least. But as often as I look about me I am certain to see something gorgeous and unexpected. Tomorrow it is almost sure to snow, and I am heartily looking forward to it. In the afternoon, if the diligence arrives, I take my meal with the new arrivals. There is no need for me to speak to anyone; no one knows me; I am absolutely alone and could stay here for weeks, sitting and walking about. In my little room I work with renewed vigour—that is to say, I make notes and collect ideas for the theme that is chiefly occupying me at present: "The Future of Our Educational Institutions."
You do not know how pleased I am with this place. Since I have come to know it, Switzerland has acquired quite a new charm for me. Now I know of a nook where I can gain strength, work with fresh energy, and live without any company. In this place human beings seem to be like phantoms.
Now I have described everything to you. The days that follow will all be like the first. Thank God, those damnations known as "change" and "distraction" are lacking here. Here I am together with my pen, ink, and paper. All of us send our heartiest wishes.
Your devoted son, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
To Rohde - November, 1872 Bâle, November, 1872. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: I think we shall be able to survive it. But something has happened here that somewhat depresses me. In our University the philologists hare kept away this winter term. A perfectly unique occurrence which you will interpret in the same way as I do. In one particular case I know for a fact that a certain student who wished to study philology here was prevented from doing so in Bonn, and that he joyfully wrote to his relations saying he thanked God he was not going to a University where I was a teacher. In short, the Vehmic CourtVehmic Court, a secret body exercising jurisdiction in the Middle Ages. has done its duty, but we must not take any notice of it. It is jolly hard though for me to know that the little University should have suffered on my account. We are twenty men short of what we were last term. With the utmost pains I was only able to muster two students to attend a lecture on the rhetoric of the Greeks and Romans—that is to say, one Germanic and one Law student.
Jacob Burckhardt and Ratsherr Vischer enjoyed your essay immensely. I informed each of them of the fine copies you sent me, and I also told Overbeck, Ritschl and the Florentine ladies, Olga Herzen and Fräulein von Meysenbug, of them. I even have two of them in an Edition de Luxe. I wonder whether these copies are as you pictured them in your dream. They bear the title E. Rohde on The Birth of Tragedy and include your two essays. To me these essays constitute a veritable treasure which every author of the past and future will have to envy me. My friend Immerman, here, always says that your stuff is at least as good as mine. In short, they have noticed our Orestes and Pylades relationship Χαλεποίσιν ἐνί ΕείνοισιAmongst the Forbidding (severe) Foreigners.—Translator. and they rejoice over it. What I only mention, because neither of us doubts it, is that many more are angry about it...Have you heard of the Zollner scandal in Leipzig? Just have a look at his book on the nature of comets. There is a tremendous deal on our side in it. Since this production the honest man has been as good as excommunicated in the most shabby manner from the whole of the republic of letters. His nearest friends are renouncing him and he is proclaimed "mad" to all the world! He is seriously declared "deranged," simply because he refuses to blow into the Tantara trumpet of the clique. Such is the spirit of Leipzig's scholastic ochlocracy!
Are you aware, too, that a certain alienist has proved in the most "dignified language" that Wagner is demented? And you are probably aware of the fact that the same thing has been done for Schopenhauer by another alienist.
You see to what measures these ";healthy people" resort. True, they do not decree the scaffold for the discomfiting ingenia, but this sort of sneaking and malevolent creation of suspicion answers their purpose much better than the sudden removal of their enemies; they undermine the confidence of the rising generation. Schopenhauer forgot this dodge! It is singularly worthy of the vulgarity of the vulgarest age...Yours affectionately, F.
Nietzsche To Malvida Von Meysenbug - April, 1873 Bâle, April 6, 1873. DEAREST FRAULEIN:...At Bayreuth I hope to find courage and good cheer once more and to fortify myself in all that is right. I dreamt last night that I had my Gradus ad Parnassum rarely and beautifully bound; the symbolism attached to the binding of a book is comprehensible enough, even if deficient in taste. This is a truth! From time to time one ought to have oneself newly bound, so to speak, by intercourse with good and robust men; otherwise one loses isolated leaves and falls ever more and more to pieces. And that our life ought to be a Gradus ad Parnassum is also a truth which one ought often to repeat to oneself. My Parnassus of the future is—provided I take great pains and have decent luck as well as plenty of time—to become perhaps a tolerable writer, but above all to become ever more moderate in the production of literature. From time to time I feel a childish repulsion toward printed paper, which at such times seems to me simply soiled paper. And I can picture a time when men will prefer reading little and writing less, while thinking much and doing even more. For the whole world is now waiting for the man of deeds, who strips the habits of centuries from himself and others, and who sets a better example for posterity to follow. Under my own roof something very fine is in process of completion, a description of our present day theology, bearing particularly upon the spirit of Christianity. My friend and brother in thought, Professor Overbeck, to my own knowledge the freest theologist now living, and in any case one of the greatest authorities on Church history, is now at work on this description, and will, if I am not mistaken—and we are quite agreed on this point—make known a few terrible truths to the world. Bale looks well on the road to becoming the most suspected of places!...Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To His Mother - September, 1873 Bâle, September 21, 1873. MY DARLING MOTHER: And so our dear aunt has passed away and we are becoming more and more lonely. To grow old and to grow solitary seem to be synonymous, and at last a man is all alone and makes others feel lonely by his death.
It was precisely because I knew so little of my father, and had to form a picture of him from the materials supplied by chance conversations, that his nearest relatives were more to me than aunts usually are. When I think of Aunt Rickchen and the Plauen relatives, etc., I rejoice over the fact that they all remained true to their exceptional nature until they attained to a great age, and were sufficiently self reliant to be less than usually dependent upon external influences and upon the doubtful good will of their fellow creatures. I rejoice over this fact because in it I find the racial peculiarity of those who call themselves Nietzsche, and I possess it myself.
And that is why our good aunt was always so kindly disposed towards me, because she realized how akin we were in one important particular, namely, in this important Nietzschean trait. For this reason I honour their memory by wishing with all my might that when I grow old I may not desert myself—that is to say, the spirit of my forebears.
Do not expect any more from me for the moment, dear mother you who are so very much worried because you always will be so helpful and think kindly of your son, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - October, 1873 Bâle, October 27, 1873. MY DEAR FRIEND:...The green numbers of the Grenzboten have just published a Non plus ultra under the title of "Herr Friedrich Nietzsche and German Culture." All the powers are mobilized against me—the police, the authorities, and the colleagues. It is emphatically declared that I shall be ostracized from every German university, and that Bâle will probably do likewise. It proceeds to inform the reader that owing to a trick of Ritschls and the stupidity of the people of Bâle I was transformed from a mere student into a University professor. Bâle then came in for some abuse as an obscure little University. I am denounced as an enemy of the German Empire and the ally of the Internationalists, etc. in short, a commendable and cheerful Documentum. What a pity I cannot send it to you! Even Fritszch gets a kick or two; they think it scandalous that a German publisher should ever have accepted my work. So you see, dearest friend, our No. 1 has—as Fritzsch would say—"found favour with the public."
Nine Bâle newspapers have now referred to me in all manner of ways, but on the whole much more seriously than that truculent Grenzboten reviewer and humbug. Your ever devoted and affectionate friend, F. N.
To Rohde - December, 1873 Naumburg, December 31, 1873. MY DEAR FRIEND: What a lot of good you have done me with your letter, particularly as I was lying in bed feeling ill after the journey and full of resentment towards life. Really, if I had not my friends, I wonder whether I should not myself begin to believe that I am demented. As it is, however, by my adherence to you I adhere to myself, and if we stand security for each other, some thing must ultimately result from our way of thinking—a possibility which until now the whole world has doubted.
And to this whole world belong even the Ritschls, to whom I paid a short visit and who in half an hour fired a rapid volley of words at me and against me, under which I remained unscathed and, moreover, felt it. Finally they came to the conclusion that I was arrogant and despised them. The general impression was hopeless. At one moment old Ritschl simply raved with indignation about Wagner as a poet, and then again about the French (by-the-bye, I am understood to be an admirer of the French); finally he argued from hearsay, but in the most atrocious manner, about Overbeck's book. I learnt that Germany was still in its 'teens, and therefore I too claimed the right of being something of a boy in his teens (for they also censured my lack of moderation and my brutality towards Strauss). On the other hand, Strauss as a classical writer of prose is completely annihilated, for old Ritschl and his wife say so, and have long since come to the conclusion that even "Voltaire"Another book by Strauss.—Translator. was written in abominably bad style.