foolish to insist on being in the right at the expense of love, and not to be able to impart one's best for fear of destroying sympathy. Hinc meae lacrimae.Hence my tears.—Translator.
I am still in Marienbad: the "Austrian weather" held me fast to the spot! Fancy, it has rained every day since July 24, and sometimes the whole day long. A rainy sky and rainy atmosphere, but fine walks in the woods. My health lost ground withal; but, in summa I was well satisfied with Venice and Marienbad. Certainly, never has so much been thought out here since the days of Goethe,Goethe frequently visited Marienbad. and even Goethe cannot have let so many fundamental things pass through his head—I surpassed myself by a long way. Once in the wood a man stared fixedly at me as he passed me by, and at that moment I felt that my expression must have been one of radiant joy, and that I had already worn it for two hours. Like the most modest of the visitors here, I live incognito; in the visitors list I appear as "Schoolmaster Nietzsche." There are a great many Poles here, and, strange to say, they insist upon it that I must be a Pole; they actually come up to me to greet me in the Polish tongue, and will not believe me when I tell them that I am a Swiss. "Your race is Polish, but your heart has turned Heaven knows whither"—thus did one of them mournfully take leave of me. Your devoted, F. N.
To Herr Ob. Rer. R. Krug - November, 1880 Genoa, November 16, 1880. MY DEAR GUSTAV: Here in Genoa I received the news of your bereavement, and I am just writing a few lines in haste and unprepared, as the circumstances of travel permit. But you must regard them more as a sign than an expression of sympathy. By-the-bye, I see from the calendar that it is also your birthday. With what wistful eyes you will look back upon your life today. We grow older and therefore lonelier; the love that leaves us is precisely that love which was lavished upon us like an unconscious necessity—not owing to our particular qualities, but often in spite of them. The curtain falls on our past when our mother dies; it is then for the first time that our childhood and youth be come nothing more than a memory. And then the same process extends; the friends of our youth, our teachers, our ideals of those days, all die, and every day we grow more lonely, and ever colder breezes blow about us. You were right to plant another garden of love around you, dear friend! I should think that to-day you are particularly grateful for your lot. Moreover you have remained true to your art, and it was with the deepest satisfaction that I heard all you had to tell me on that score. A period may be dawn ing which may be better suited to my constitution than the present one—a period in which we shall once again sit side by side and see the past rise up afresh out of your music, just as in our youth we used to dream together of our future in the music we both loved.
I may not say more. My ailments (which still continue, as in the past, to have their own daily history) have laid their tyrannical hand upon me. Whenever you think of me (as you did for instance on my birth day, which, this year, I had completely forgotten), please believe that I do not lack either courage or patience, and that, even as things are at present, I aspire to high, very high goals. You may also believe with equal certainty that I am and remain your friend, With sincere affection and devotion, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
To Rohde - March, 1881 Genoa, March 24, 1881. Thus the sands of life run out and the best of friends hear and see nothing of each other! Aye, the trick is no easy one—to live and yet not to be discontented. How often do I not feel as if I should like to beg a loan from my robust, flourishing and brave old friend Rohde, when I am in sore need of a "transfusion" of strength, not of lamb'sAt about this time the transfusion of lamb's blood had become fashionable in medicine, only to be dropped shortly after wards.—Translator. but of lion's blood. But there he dwells away in Tübingen, immersed in books and married life, and in every respect inaccessible to me. Ah, dear friend, to live for ever on my own fat seems to be my lot, or, as every one knows who has tried it, to drink my own blood! Life then becomes a matter of not losing one's thirst for oneself and also of not drinking oneself dry.
On the whole, however, I am, to tell the truth, astonished at the number of springs a man can set flowing in himself—even a man like myself who am not one of the richest. I believe that if I possessed all the qualities in which you excel me I should be puffed up with pride and insufferable. Even now there are moments when I wander over the heights above Genoa here with glances and hopes like those which dear old Columbus may perhaps have cast from this very spot out over the sea and the whole of the future.
Well, it is with these moments of courage and of foolishness too, perhaps, that I have to adjust the equilibrium of my life's vessel—for you have no idea how many days, and how many hours, even on endurable days, I have to overcome, to say the least.
As far as it is possible to alleviate and mitigate a bad state of health by means of wise living I think I probably do all that can be done in my case—in that respect I am neither thoughtless nor devoid of ideas. But I wish no one the lot to which I am growing accustomed, because I am beginning to understand that I am equal to it.
But you, my dear good friend, are not in such a tight corner as to be forced to grow thin in order to squeeze out of it; neither is Overbeck. You both do your good work and, without saying overmuch about it, perhaps without even being conscious of it, derive all that is good from the midday of life—with some sweat of your brow, too, I suppose. How glad I should be to have a word or two from you about your plans, your great plans—for with a head and a heart like yours, behind all the daily routine of work, petty enough perhaps, a man always carries something bulky and very big about with him—how happy you would make me if you held me not unworthy of such confidence! Friends like yourself must help me to sustain my belief in myself, and this you do when you confide in me about your highest aims and hopes. Beneath these words does there lurk the request for a letter from you? Well, yes, dearest friend, I should rejoice at receiving something really personal from you once more if only not always to have the Rohde of the past in my heart, but also the Rohde of the present and, what is more, the Rohde who is developing and willing—yes, the Rohde of the future. Affectionately yours, N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - April, 1881 Genoa, 10-4-81. When I read your letter yesterday "my heart leaped" as the hymn says—it would have been quite impossible, at the present moment, to have given me more pleasant news! (The book, for which I have gradually developed quite a decent appetite, will certainly be in my hands today.) Very well, so be it! We two shall once more come together upon this ledge of life commanding such a vast prospect, and we shall be able to look backwards and forwards together and hold each other's hand the while to show how many, many good things we have in common—many more than words can tell. You can scarcely imagine how exhilarating the prospect of this meeting is to me—for a man alone with his thoughts passes for a fool, and often enough seems a fool to himself into the bargain; when two come together, however, "wisdom" begins, as well as trust, courage, and mental health. Fare thee well! With my best thanks, Your friend, F. N.
Nietzsche To His Sister - June, 1881 Recoaro, June 19, 1881. Oh, my darling sister, you imagine that it is all about a book? Do you too still think that I am an author! My hour is at hand! I should like to spare you all this; for surely you cannot bear my burden (it is enough of a fatality to be so closely related to me). I should like you to be able to say with a clean conscience, to each and everyone, "I do not know my brothers latest views." (People will be only too ready to acquaint you with the fact that they are "immoral" and "shameless".) Meanwhile, courage and pluck; to each his appointed task, and the same old love! YOUR F.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1881 Sils-Maria, August 14, 1881. Well, my dear friend! The August sun is above us, the year is slipping by, the hills and the woods are growing more calm and more peaceful. Thoughts have loomed upon my horizon the like of which I have not known before—I shall not divulge anything about them, but shall remain imperturbably calm. I shall have to live a few years longer! Ah, my friend, sometimes I have a feeling that I am leading a most dangerous life, for I belong to the kind of machine that can fly to pieces. The intensity of my feelings makes me shudder and laugh once or twice already I have been unable to leave my room for the absurd reason that my eyes were inflamed—by what? On each occasion I had wept too much on my wanderings the day before and not sentimental tears by any means, but tears of joy and exaltation. At such moments I sang and uttered nonsense, filled with a new vision which I had seen in advance of the rest of mankind.
After all—if I could not draw my strength from myself; if I had to wait for words of good cheer, of encouragement, and of comfort from outside, where should I be, what should I be! There have indeed been moments—nay, whole periods in my life (the year 1878, for instance)—when I should have regarded a strong cheering word, a sympathetic handshake, as the comfort of comforts—and it was precisely then that every one on whom I thought I could rely, and who could have done me this act of kindness, left me in the lurch. Now I no longer expect it, and all I feel is a certain gloomy astonishment when, for instance, I think of the letters that reach me nowadays—they are all so insignificant! No one seems to have gained the smallest experience through me, or to have thought about me—all that people say to me is decent and benevolent, but so far, far away. Even our dear old Jacob Burchkardt wrote me a faint hearted little letter of this sort.
On the other hand I regard it as my reward that this year has shown me two things that belong to me and that are intimately related to me—I refer to your music and the landscape before me. This is neither Switzerland nor Recoaro, but something quite different; in any case something much more southern— I should have to go to the Mexican plateau on the calm ocean, to find anything like it (Oaxaca, for instance); and then, of course, it would be covered with tropical vegetation. Well, I shall try to keep this Sils-Maria for myself. And I feel just the same about your music, but I am quite at a loss to know how to catch hold of it! I have been obliged to rule the reading of music and the playing of the piano out of my occupations once and for all. I have been thinking of buying a typewriter and am now in correspondence with the inventor, a Dane of Copenhagen.
What are you going to do next winter? I suppose you will be in Vienna. But we must try to arrange a meeting for the following winter, if only a short one—for now I am well aware that I am not fit to be your companion, and that your spirit is more free and more fruitful when I have vanished from your side. On the other hand, the ever-increasing emancipation of your feelings and your acquisition of a deep and proud understanding, in summa your joyful, most joyful industry and development, means so indescribably much to me, that I would readily adapt myself to any situation created by the needs of your nature. Never do I have any unpleasant feelings about you—of this you may be quite sure, dear friend!...With hearty affection and gratitude, YOUR F. N. (I have often been ill of late.)
Nietzsche To His Mother - August, 1881 MY DEAR MOTHER: Sils-Maria, August 24, 1881...I am very well satisfied with my food: Mid day (11.30 a.m.) every day a dish of meat with macaroni; morning (6.30 a.m.) the yolk of a raw egg, tea, and aniseed biscuit (bucolic and nourishing). Evening (6.30 p. m.), the yolks of two raw eggs, a piece of PolentaA national dish of Italy. It is made with maize flour.—Translator. (as it is eaten by all shepherds and peasants), tea (second infusion) and aniseed biscuit. (In Genoa I live much more in conformity with the customs of the inhabitants, in fact as the work people live.) Every morning at 5, general ablutions in cold water, and 5 to 7 hours exercise every day. Between 7 and 9 in the evening I sit still in the dark (I also did this at Genoa, where, without exception, I stayed at home every evening from 6 in the evening onwards; never went to a theatre or a concert). You cannot imagine with what miserly care I have to husband my intellectual strength and my time, in order that such a suffering and imperfect creature may yet be able to bear ripe fruit. Do not think ill of me for leading this difficult sort of life; every hour of the day I have to be hard towards myself. With love, Your F.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1881 Sils-Maria, end of August, 1881. But this is splendid news, my dear friend! Above all that you should have finished! At the thought of this first great achievement of your life, I feel indescribably happy and solemn; I shall not fail to remember August 24, 1881! How things are progressing! But as soon as I think of your work I am overcome by a feeling of satisfaction and a sort of emotion which I never experience in connection with my own "works." There is something in these that always fills me with a sense of shame; they are counterfeits of a suffering, imperfect nature, but inadequately equipped with the most essential organs—to myself, I, as a whole, often seem little more than the scratching upon a piece of paper made by an unknown power with the object of trying a new pen? (Our friend Schmeitzner has understood very well how to make me feel this, for in every one of his letters of late he has laid stress on the fact that "my readers do not wish to read any more of my aphorisms.") As for you, my dear friend, you were not intended to be such a creature of aphorisms; your aim is a lofty one; unlike me you do not feel obliged to let people guess at the interdependence and at the need of interdependence in your work. Your mission it is once more to make known the higher laws of style in your art—those laws the setting aside of which the weakness of modern artists has elevated almost to a principle: your mission it is to reveal your art once more quite complete! This is what I feel when I think of you, and in this prospect I seem to enjoy the fullest bloom of my own nature as in a mirage. You alone have afforded me this joy up to the present, and it is only since I learnt to know your music that this has been so between us.
And now for the second piece of news: Vienna is coming to Venice and the mountain to Mohammed! What a weight this takes off my mind! Now I see quite clearly the course things will take, your first ceremonious introduction—I presume you will have the courage to make known to the world your new will in aesthetics by means of one or two eloquent essays, and thus obviate misunderstanding concerning the only admissible interpretation of your work. Do not be afraid of confessing yourself vowed to the loftiest motives! Men like yourself must cast their words ahead and must know how to overtake them by their deeds (even I have allowed myself to act on this principle until now). Avail yourself of all those liberties which are still granted to the artist alone, and do not fail to remember that our task is in all circumstances to urge people on, to urge them hence—almost irrespective of whether we ourselves get there! (To my surprise I often find the exhortatio indirecta in my last book;This refers to the "Dawn of Day" (Vol. 9 of the English Authorized Edition). for instance in the 542nd Aphorism "The Philosopher and Old Age"—the direct form of exhortation and instigation, on the other hand, savours somewhat of priggishness.)
So much for today—it is not at all necessary for you to answer this, dear friend. When we meet again you will play me some of your music as an answer (during the last few months it has percolated right into my heart, and, honestly, I know nothing I would like to hear better...). Your friend, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - November, 1881 Genoa, November 28, 1881. Hurrah! Friend! I have made the acquaintance of one more good thing, an opera by Georges Bizet (who is he?): Carmen. It sounded like a story by Mérimée; ingenious, strong, and here and there staggering. A real French talent for comic opera, absolutely uncorrupted by Wagner, on the other hand a true pupil of Hector Berlioz. I thought something of the kind might be possible. It looks as if the French were on the road to better things in dramatic music; and they are far ahead of the Germans in one important point; passion with them is not such a very far-fetched affair (as all passion is in Wagner's works).
Today I am not very well, but that is owing to bad weather and not to the music; maybe I should be even worse than I am if I had not heard it. Good things are my medicine. Hence my love of you!
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - December, 1881 Genoa, December 5, 1881. DEAR GOOD FRIEND: From time to time (how is this?) it is almost a need for me to hear something general and absolute about Wagner, and I like to hear it best of all from you! To feel alike about Chamfort too ought to be a point of honour for us both; he was a man of the stamp of Mirabeau in character, heart, and magnanimity; this was Mirabeau's own opinion of his friend.
It was a great blow to me to hear that Bizet is dead. I have heard "Carmen" for the second time—and once more I had the impression of a first-class story by Mérimée, for instance. Such a passionate and fascinating soul! In my opinion this work is worth a whole journey to Spain—a southern work in the highest degree! Do not laugh, old friend, I do not so easily make an utter mistake in "taste." With hearty gratitude, yours, N. Meanwhile I have been very ill, but am well, thanks to Carmen.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - January, 1882 Genoa, January 29, 1882. DEAR FRIEND: Herr von Bülow has the ill-breeding of Prussian officers in his constitution;This refers to a note that Hans von Bülow wrote to Gast, when returning the Ms. of a piece of Gast's music entitled, "Fun, Craft and Revenge," which Gast had sent him. Bülow did not even trouble to look at the music, and wrote in a strain which implied that he took Gast to be one of the imitatores out of the servum pecus Wagneri. The letter began: "R. W. is a phenomenon, and phenomena don't create schools." Gast thanked him for the information, and returned his letter, saying that he could not show his respect for Bülow more aptly than by regarding his letter as unwritten. Nietzsche agreed with this treatment of the matter.—Translator. he is, however, an "honest man"—the fact that he will no longer have anything to do with German opera music is accounted for by all kinds of secret reasons. I remember his once saying to me: "I do not know Wagner's later music." Go to Bayreuth in the summer and you will find the whole theatrical world of Germany assembled there, even Prince Lichtenstein, etc., etc., Levi,The Conductor. too. I suppose all my friends will be there, my sister as well, after your letter of yesterday (and I am very glad of it).
If I were with you I should introduce Horace's satires and letters to you—I feel that we are both ripe and ready for them. When I glanced into them today, I thought all the expressions were charming, as charming as a warm winter's day.
My last letter struck you as being "frivolous," didn't it? Have patience! In respect of my "thoughts," it is nothing to me to have them—but to get rid of them when I should like to do so is always infernally difficult for me!
Oh, what days we are having! Oh, the wonder of this beautiful January! Let us be of good cheer, dearest friend!
To Herr. Ob. Reg. R. Krug - February, 1882 Genoa, February, 1882. DEAR FRIEND: Your songs affected me strangely. One fine afternoon I happened to think of all your music and musical talent and at last I asked myself why on earth you did not get something printed. And then my ears rang with a line from Jung Niklas. The following morning my friend Ree arrived at Genoa and handed me your first book, and when I opened it, what was the first thing I saw but Jung Niklas! This would be a good anecdote for the Spiritualists! Your music has qualities which are rare nowadays. In my opinion all modern music seems to be suffering from an ever increasing atrophy of the sense of melody. Melody, as the last and most sublime art of arts, is ruled by logical laws which our anarchists would like to decry as tyranny! But the one thing I am certain about is that they are unable to reach up to these sweetest and ripest of fruits. I recommend all composers the following most delightful ascetic regimen—for a while to regard harmony as undiscovered, and to collect a store of pure melodies from Beethoven and Chopin, for instance. Much of the excellent past reaches my ears through your music and, as you perceive, some of the future as well.
I thank you most heartily. Yours, F. N.
Nietzsche To His Sister - February, 1882 Genoa, February 3, 1882. Just a few lines, my darling sister, to thank you for your kind words about Wagner and Bayreuth. Certainly the time I spent with him in Triebschen and enjoyed through him at Bayreuth (in 1872, not in 1876) is the happiest I have had in my whole life. But the omnipotent violence of our tasks drove us asunder and now we can never more be united; we have grown too strange to each other.
The day I found Wagner I was happy beyond description. So long had I been seeking for the man who stood on a higher plane than I did, and who really comprised me. I believed I had found this man in Wagner. It was a mistake. And now it would not even be right to compare myself with him—I be long to another order of beings.
In any case I have had to pay dearly for my craze for Wagner. Has not the nerve-destroying power of his music ruined my health—was it not dangerous to life? Has it not taken me almost six years to recover from this pain? No, Bayreuth is impossible for me! What I wrote a day or two ago was only a joke. But you at all events must go to Bayreuth. Your going would be of the greatest value to me. YOUR DEVOTED BROTHER.
To Rohde - July, 1882 Tantenberg, July 15, 1882. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND: It cannot be helped; today I must prepare you for a new book from my pen; you have at most another month's peace before it will reach you. There is this extenuating circumstance, that it will be the last for many a long year—for in the autumn I am going to the University of Vienna to begin student life afresh, after having made somewhat of a failure of the old life, thanks to a too one-sided study of philology. Now I have my own plan of study and behind it my own secret goal to which the remaining years of my life are consecrated. I find it too hard to live if I cannot do so in the grand style—this in confidence to you, my old comrade! Without a goal that I could regard as inexpressibly important I should not have been able to hold myself aloft in the light above the black floods. This is really my only excuse for the sort of literature I have been producing ever since 1875; it is my recipe, my self-concocted medicine against the disgust of life. What years they have been! What lingering agony! What inward strife, upheavals, and isolation! Who has ever endured as much as I? Certainly not Leopardi. And if today I stand above it all with the courage of a conqueror and laden with weighty new plans—and, if I know myself, with the prospect of even harder and more secret sorrows and tragedies, and with the courage to meet them—then no one has the right to blame me if I think well of my medicine. Mihi ipsi scripsi"I have written for myself."—Translator.—that settles it. And so let everyone do the best he can for himself—that is my moral—the only one I have left. Even if my bodily health returns, to whom do I owe this change? In every respect I have been my own doctor, and as everything in me is one I was obliged to treat my soul, my mind, and my body all at once and with the same remedies. I admit that others would have perished from my treatment, but that is why I am so eager in warning people against myself. This last book, which bears the title of "The Joyful Wisdom," will act as a special danger signal to many, even to you perhaps, dear old friend Rohde! It contains a portrait of myself and I am convinced it is not the portrait of me which you carry in your heart.
Well, then, have patience even if only because you must realize that with me it is "aut mori aut ita vivere""To die or to live as I do."—Translator.
Yours very affectionately, NIETZSCHE.
To Madame Louise O. - September, 1882 Naumburg, September, 1882. VERY DEAR FRIEND: Or am I not allowed to use this word after six years?
Meanwhile I have been living nearer to death than to life, and have consequently become a little too much of a "sage" or almost a "saint."...Still, such things may perhaps be cured! For once again I believe in life, in men, in Paris, and even in myself; and very shortly I shall see you again. My last book is called "The Joyful Wisdom."
Are the skies bright and cheerful in Paris? Do you happen to know of any room that would suit my requirements? It would have to be an apartment silent as death and very simply furnished—and not too far away from you, my dear Madame...Or do you advise me not to come to Paris? Perhaps it is not the place for anchorites and men who wish to go silently about their life-work, caring nothing for politics and the present?
You have no idea what a charming memory you are to me. Cordially yours, PROFESSOR DR. F. NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1883 Rapallo, February 1, 1883. DEAR FRIEND:...But perhaps it would please you to hear what there is to be finished and printed. It is a question of a very small book—of about one hundred printed pages only. But it is my best work, and with it I have removed a heavy stone from my soul. I have never done anything more serious or more cheerful; it is my hearty desire that this colour—which does not even need to be a mixed colour—should become ever more and more my "natural" colour. The book, is to be called: THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA A Book for All and None by F. N. With this work I have entered a new "Ring"—henceforward I shall be regarded as a madman in Germany. It is a wonderful kind of "moral lecture." My sojourn in Germany has forced me to exactly the same point of view as yours did, dear friend—that is to say, that I no longer form part of her. And now, at least, after my Zarathustra, I also feel as you feel: this insight and the establishing of one's attitude have given me courage.
Where do we now belong? Let us rejoice that we should be allowed to ask ourselves this question at all!
Our experiences have been somewhat similar; but you have this advantage over me—a better temperament, a better, calmer, and more lonely past—and better health than I have.
Well, then, I shall remain here until the 10th. After that my address will be Roma, poste restante. Ever with you in thought and wish, F.N. You have delighted the Overbecks and myself as well!
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1883 Rapallo, February 19, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: Every one of your last letters was a boon to me; I thank you for them from the bottom of my heart. This winter has been the worst I have ever had in my life, and I regard myself as a victim of a meteorological disturbance. The old flood for the sins of Europe is still too much for me; but perhaps some one may yet come to my rescue and help me up to the highlands of Mexico. The only thing is that I cannot undertake such journeys; my eyes and one or two other things forbid it.
The appalling burden which, thanks to the weather, is now weighing me down (even old Etna has now begun to rage!) has transformed itself into thoughts and feelings the pressure of which is frightful; and from the sudden detachment of this burden, as the result of the ten absolutely cheerful and bracing days we had in January, my Zarathustra was born, the most detached of all my productions. Trübner is already printing it, and I myself prepared the copy for press. Moreover Schmeitzner writes to say that during the last few years all my works have had a better sale, and I have received many other tokens of increasing sympathy. Even a member of the Reichstag, a follower of Bismarck (DelbrückRudolf von Delbrück. the Leader of the National Liberal Party.) is said to have expressed himself in terms of the utmost vexation over the fact that I lived not in Berlin but in Santa Margherita!
Forgive this chatter; you know what else I now have in my mind and next my heart. I was very ill indeed for a day or two, and made my hosts quite anxious. I am better now and I even believe that Wagner's death was the most substantial relief that could have been given me just now. It was hard for six years to have to be the opponent of the man one had most reverenced on earth, and my constitution is not sufficiently coarse for such a position. After all it was Wagner grown senile whom I was forced to resist; as to the genuine Wagner, I shall yet attempt to become in a great measure his heir (as I have often assured Fräulein Malvida, though she would not believe it). Last summer I felt that he had alienated all those men from me who were the only ones in Germany I might have influenced to some purpose, and had inveigled them into the confused and wild hostility of his last years.
I need hardly say that I have of course written to Cosima.
As to what you say about Lou, I could not help having a good laugh. Do you really believe that in this matter my taste differs from your own? No, certainly not! But in the case in point there was damned little question of "the attraction of loveliness or the reverse," but only whether a highly gifted human being was to be brought to naught or not.
So the proofs may once more be sent to you for correction, my old and helpful friend? My heartiest thanks for it all. F. N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - March, 1883