Genoa, March 22, 1883. MY DEAR FRIEND: I saw "Carmen" again last night—it was perhaps the twentieth performance this year; the house was packed to overflowing as usual; it is the opera of operas here. You ought to hear the death-like silence that reigns when the Genoese listen to their favourite piece—the prelude to the fourth act, and the yells for an encore that follow. They are also very fond of the "Tarantella." Well, dear old friend, I too was very happy once again; when this music is played some very deep stratum seems to be stirred in me, and while listening to it I always feel resolved to hold out to the end and to unburden my heart of its supremest malice rather than perish beneath the weight of my own thoughts. During the performance I did little else than compose Dionysian songs, in which I made so bold as to say the most terrible things in the most terrible and laughable manner. This is the latest form my madness has taken.
Forgive me for writing so often. I have so few people to confide in now. Your devoted F. N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - April, 1883 Genoa, April 27, 1883. DEAR FRIEND:...And last of all came Wagner's death. What recollections did not this news bring back to me! The whole of this relationship and broken relationship with Wagner has proved my severest trial in connection with my justice toward people in general, and of late I had at last succeeded in practising that "indolence" in this matter of which you write. And what on earth could be more melancholy than indolence, when I think of those times in which the latter part of "Siegfried" was written! Then we loved each other and hoped everything for each other —it was truly a profound love, free from all arrièrepensée...Your friend, NIETZSCHE.
To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - June, 1883 Sils-Maria, June 28, 1883. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND GERSDORFF: I have just heard of the terrible blow that has befallen you in the loss of your mother. When I learnt it, I derived genuine comfort from the thought that at least you are not alone in life, and called to mind the cordial and grateful words with which you spoke to me of your life companion in your last letter. You and I have been through some rough times in our youth—rough for many reasons—and it would be only just and proper for our manhood to be blessed with milder, more comforting and encouraging experiences.
As for myself, a long and arduous asceticism of the spirit lies behind me, which I undertook quite voluntarily, though it would not be right for every body to expect it of himself. The last six years have, in this respect, been the years of my severest efforts in self-control, and this is leaving out of all reckoning what I have had to overcome in the way of ill-health, solitude, misunderstanding, and persecution. Suffice it to say that I have overcome this stage in my life—and I shall use all that remains of life (not much, I imagine) in giving full and complete expression to the object for which I have so far endured life at all. The period of silence is over. My Zarathustra, which will be sent to you in a week or so, will perhaps show you to what lofty heights my will has soared. Do not be deceived by the legendary character of this little book. Beneath all these simple but outlandish words lie my whole philosophy and the things about which I am most in earnest. It is my first step in making myself known—nothing more! I know perfectly well that there is no one alive who could create anything like this Zarathustra.
Well, my dear old friend, I am once more in the Ober-Engadine. This is my third visit to the place and once again I feel that my proper lair and home is here and nowhere else. Oh, how much that wishes to become word and form still lies concealed within me! I cannot be too quiet, I cannot stand sufficiently high up, I cannot be too much alone, if I wish to hear the voices that are buried deepest within me.
I should like to have enough money to build myself a sort of ideal dog-kennel—I mean, a wooden hut with two rooms, on a peninsula jutting out into the Silser Lake, where a Roman castle once stood. Living in these peasants cottages, as I have done hitherto, has in the end become unendurable. The rooms are low and confined, and there is always a good deal of noise. Otherwise the people of Sils-Maria are very kindly disposed to me and I think well of them. I board at the Edelweiss Hotel, an excellent hostelry. Of course I take my meals alone there at a price which is not altogether out of keeping with my slender means. I brought a large basketful of books with me to this place, so I am once more fixed up for a spell of three months. My Muses live here; in the Wanderer and his Shadow I have already said that this region is "related to me by blood and something more."...Yours, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - July, 1883 Sils-Maria (The Engadine), July 1, 1883. DEAR FRIEND GAST: How is it that I have not written to you for such an age? I have just asked myself this question. But all this time I have felt so uncertain and irresolute. A breath of illness still hung about me, and so I did not wish to write (unfortunately I have written far too many letters this winter that are full of illness). Besides which a number of things have gone wrong with me, for instance, my attempt to find a summer abode for myself in Italy. I tried first in the Volscian mountains, and again in the Abruzzi (in Aquila). What I wonder at now is why, every year about spring time, I feel such a violent impulse to go ever further south; this year to Rome, last year to Messina, and two years ago I was on the very point of embarking for Tunis—when the war broke out. The explanation must be this, that throughout every winter I suffer so terribly from the cold (three winters without a fire!) that with the coming of the warmer weather a veritable craving for warmth takes possession of me. This year I felt in addition a craving for the society of my fellow men. I mean a human kind of relationship, and particularly for a more human kind of society than I enjoyed last spring. Truth to tell, now that I can look back on it all, my lot during the whole of last year and this winter has been of the most horrible and forbidding kind; and I marvel at the fact that I have escaped it all with my life—I marvel and I shudder, too. In Rome people showed me plenty of kindness and good nature, and those who have been good to me are more than ever so now.
As to Zarathustra, I have just heard that it is still "awaiting dispatch" in Leipzig; even the complimentary copies. This is owing to the "very important conferences" and constant journeyings of the chief of the Alliance Antijuive, Heir Schmeitzner. On that account "the publishing business must for once mark time for a bit," he writes. It really is too ludicrous; first the Christian obstruction, the 500,000 hymn books, and now the anti-Semitic obstruction these are truly experiences for the founder of a religion.
Malvida and my sister were astonished to find Zarathustra so bitter (so embittered); I—how sweet. De gustibus, etc."Degustibus non est disputandum." (About tastes people differ.)—Translator.
Now I am once again in my beloved Sils-Maria in the Engadine, the spot where I hope one day to die; meanwhile it offers me the best incentive to live on. On the whole I am remarkably undecided, shaken, and full of questionings; up here it is cold, and that holds me together and braces me...I shall be here three months, but after that what? Oh the future! Nearly every day I wonder how I shall ever come to hear your music again. I miss it. I know of so few things that thoroughly refresh me. But Sils-Maria and your music are among them.
Your last letter contains a number of very fine thoughts, for which I truly thank myself. Afterward I had another look at Epicurus's bust. Will power and intellectuality are its most salient characteristics. Your ever heartily devoted, F. N.
To Peter Gast - July, 1883 Sils-Maria, 13 July, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: Since my last letter I have been better, my spirits have improved, and all of a sudden I have conceived the second part of "Thus Spake Zarathustra." The birth followed upon the conception; the whole thing was worked out with the greatest vehemence.
(While working upon it, the thought struck me that one day I should probably die from an outburst and overflow of emotion like this: the devil take me!)
The MS. will be ready for press the day after tomorrow morning, and my eyes describe limits to my industry.
If you read the last page of Zarathustra, Part I, you will find the words: "—and only when ye have all denied me will I return unto you."
"Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones, with another love shall I then love you."See Dr. Levy's English Edition. Vol. XI, p. 90.
This is the motto to the Second Part: out of it—as it would be almost foolish to tell a musician, I evolve different harmonies and modulations from those in Part I.
It was chiefly a matter of climbing on to the second rung, in order from this position, to reach the third (the title of which is "Midday and Eternity." I have already told you this; but I beg you most earnestly not to speak about it to anyone. As for the third part, I'll allow myself some time, and for the fourth, perhaps years—) If, now, I ask you again kindly to help me with the correction of my proofs—this request exceeds the bounds of all friendship and decency, and if you cannot contrive to justify me in my request I cannot contrive to make it! Your devoted friend, NIETZSCHE.
To Peter Gast - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, 3rd August, 1883. MY DEAR FRIEND: Epicurus is precisely the best negative argument in favour of my challenge to all rare spirits to isolate themselves from the mass of their fellows; up to the present the world has made him pay, as it did even in his own day, for the fact that he allowed himself to be confused with others, and that he treated the question of public opinion about himself with levity, with godlike levity. Already in the last days of his fame, the swine broke into his garden, and it is one of the ironies of fate, that we have to believe a Seneca in favour of Epicurean manliness and loftiness of soul—Seneca, a man to whom one should, on the whole, always lend an ear, but never give one's faith and trust. In Corsica people say: Seneca è un birbone.Seneca is a rascal.—Translator. Your friend, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To His Mother - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, August, 1883. MY DEAR MOTHER: I have received everything in the way of food and the necessaries of life—unfortunately, too, your letter, which made me feel very wretched. Really, these dissertations on Christianity and on the opinions of this man and that as to what I should do and ought to think on the subject should no longer be directed to my address. My patience won't stand it! The atmosphere in which you live, among these "good Christians," with their one-sided and often presumptuous judgments, is as opposed as it possibly can be to my own feelings and most remote aims. I do not say anything about it, but I know that if people of this kind, even including my mother and sister, had an inkling of what I am aiming at, they would have no alternative but to become my natural enemies. This cannot be helped; the reasons for it lie in the nature of things. It spoils my love of life to live among such people, and I have to exercise considerable self-control in order not to react constantly against this sanctimonious atmosphere of Naumburg (in which I include many uncles and aunts who do not live in Naumburg).
Let us, my dear mother, do as we have done hither to, and avoid all these serious questions in our letters. Moreover, I doubt whether our Lizzie could have read your letter.
My spirits and health have once more been very much impaired by the fact that the ghastly affair of last year is once more abroad and adding woe to woe. As to the ultimate outcome of it all, as far as I am concerned, ever since last August I have had the most gloomy forebodings. I am now working like a man who is "putting his house in order before departing." Don't say any more about it. I shall not either, and forgive me if this letter has turned out to be such a melancholy effusion. Your son, FRITZ.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, August 16, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: Where do you get all these delightful Epicurea? I mean not only your Epicurea epigrams but everything reminiscent of the air and fragrance of Epicurus's garden that has emanated from all your letters of late. Oh, I am so badly in need of such things including that divine feat "eluding the masses." For, truth to tell, I am well nigh crushed to death.
But let me change the subject.
The fate of the Island of IschiaThe gigantic earthquake on July 28, 1883. makes me more and more miserable, for apart from those features about it that concern all men, there is something in the event that hits very near home where I am concerned and in a peculiarly terrible way. This island was so dear to me; if you have finished the second part of Zarathustra, where I speak of seeking my "Happy Isles," this will be clear to you. "Cupid dancing with the maidens" can only be grasped immediately in Ischia (the girls of Ischia speak of "Cupido".) Scarcely have I finished my poem than the island goes to bits. You remember that the very hour I passed the first part of Zarathustra for press Wagner died. On this occasion, at the corresponding hour, I received news that made me so indignant that there will in all probability be a duel with pistols this autumn.The Lou Ree affair.—Translator. Silentium! Dear friend!
Meanwhile I have drafted out a plan of a "morality for Moralists," and readjusted and rectified my views in many ways. The unconscious and involuntary congruity of thought and coherence prevalent in the multifarious mass of my later books has astonished me; one cannot escape from oneself; that is why one should dare to let oneself go ever further in one's own personality.
I confess that what I should most like at present would be for some one else to compile a sort of digest of the results of all my thought, and thereby draw a comparison between me and all other thinkers up to my time. Out of a veritable abyss of the most undeserved and most enduring contempt in which the whole of my work and endeavour has lain since the year 1876, I long for a word of wisdom concerning myself. Yours, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, August 26, 1883. How your letter overjoyed me once again, my Venetian friend! That is what I call "Lectures on Greek Culture" to one who needs them and not to an audience of Leipzig students et hoc genus omne!And all that class.—Translator.
For a whole year I have been goaded on to a class of feelings which with the best will in the world I had abjured, and which at least in their more gross manifestations—I really thought I had mastered; I refer to the feelings of revenge and "resentment."
The idea of delivering lectures in Leipzig partook of the nature of despair—I wished to find distraction in the hardest daily toil without being thrown back on my ultimate tasks. But the idea has already been abandoned, and Heinze, the present Hector of the University, has made it clear to me that my attempt at Leipzig would have been a failure (just as it would be at all German Universities) owing to the fact that the Faculty would never dare to recommend me to the Board of Education in view of my attitude towards Christianity and the concept of God. Bravo! This expression of opinion restored my courage to me.Peter Cast, commenting on this passage, says: "It is one of the great ironies of Fate, that the same University which had once freely granted Nietzsche the Doctor's degree, could no longer offer him any position when, at a time when his importance seemed established in the eyes of many, he applied to them for admission."—Translator.
Even the first criticism of the first part of Zarathustra that I have received (written by a Christian and anti-Semite to boot, and strangely enough produced in a prison) gives me courage, seeing that in it the popular attitude, which is the only one in me that can be grasped to wit, my attitude towards Christianity—was immediately, distinctly and well understood. "Aut Christ us aut Zarathustra!Either Christ or Zarathustra.—Translator. Or, to put it plainly, the old long-promised Anti-Christ has come to the fore—that is what my readers feel. And so all the defenders "of our creed and of the Saviour of Mankind" are solemnly mustered ("gird up your loins with the sword of the Holy Ghost"!!) against Zarathustra, and then it goes on: "If he conquers you, he will be yours and he will be true, for in him is there nothing false; if he conquers you, you will have forfeited your faith; that is the penance you will have to pay the Victor!"
Ludicrous as it may perhaps sound to you, dear friend, at this point I heard for the first time from outside that which I have heard from within and have known for ever so long, namely, that I am the most terrible opponent of Christianity, and have discovered a mode of attack of which even Voltaire had not an inkling.It should be remembered that the pioneers of enlightenment always attacked Christianity on the side of its myths, its cult, its priesthood, and regarded Christian morality as unassailable. Nietzsche, on the other hand, attacks the morality of Christianity, and that for biological reasons; because he considers its effects ruinous to the race. Translator. But what does all this "thank God!" matter to you?
What I envy in Epicurus are the disciples in his garden, aye, in such circumstances one could certainly forget noble Greece and more certainly still ignoble Germany! And hence my rage since I have grasped in the broadest possible sense what wretched means (the depreciation of my good name, my character and my aims) suffice to take from me the trust of, and therewith the possibility of obtaining, pupils. You will believe me when I say that I have not written a single line "for the sake of fame"; but I fancied that my writings might prove a good bait. For, after all, the impulse to teach is strong in me. And to this extent I require fame, so that I may get disciples—particularly in view of the fact that, to judge from recent experiences, a University post is impossible. Yours, F. N.
Nietzsche To His Sister - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, End of August, 1883. MY DEAR SISTER: To-day, just as it was three days ago, the weather is perfectly bright and clear and I can survey with cheerfulness and confidence that which I have and have not achieved up to the present, and that which I still expect from myself. You do not know this, and that is why I cannot take it amiss that you should wish to see me on other ground, more secure and more protected. Your letter to _______ made me think a good deal, and the chance remark you made about my condition in Bâle having certainly been the best hitherto, made me think even more. I, on the other hand, judge the matter as follows: the whole meaning of the terrible physical suffering to which I was exposed lies in the fact that, thanks to it alone, I was torn away from an estimate of my life-task which was not only false but a hundred times too low. And as by nature I belong to the modest among men, some violent means were necessary in order to recall me to myself. Even the teachers I had as a young man are probably, in relation to what I have to do, only minor and transitory forces. The fact that I stood above them and contemplated their ideals over their heads—above all these Schopenhauers and Wagners—this is what prevented them from being quite indispensable to me, and now I could not do myself a greater injustice than to judge myself according to these contemporaries whom I have in every sense overcome. Every word in my Zarathustra is simply so much triumphant scorn and more than scorn, flung at the ideals of this period, and behind almost every word there stands a personal experience, an act of self-overcoming of the highest order. It is absolutely necessary that I should be misunderstood; nay, I would go even further and say that I must succeed in being understood in the worst possible way and despised. The fact that those "nearest to me" should be the first to do this was what I understood last summer and the following autumn, and by that alone I became filled with the glorious consciousness of being on the right road. This feeling may be read everywhere in Zarathustra. The dreadful winter, together with my bad health, made me forget it, and sapped my courage, just as the things which have happened to me during the last few weeks have brought me into the greatest danger—the danger of departing from my appointed path. The moment I am now forced to say: "I cannot endure loneliness any longer," I am conscious of having fallen to untold depths in my own estimation—of having deserted the highest that is in me.
What do these Rées and Lous matter! How can I be their enemy? And even if they have harmed me, I have surely derived enough profit from them, if only from the fact that they are people of such a different order from myself; in this I find complete compensation—aye, even a reason for feeling grateful to them both. They both seemed to be original people and not copies, and that is why I suffered their company, however distasteful they were to me. As regards "friendship"—until now I have practised the most severe abstinence (Schmeitzner declares that I have no friends, that I "have been left absolutely in the lurch for ten years!") In so far as the general trend of my nature is concerned, I have no comrades; nobody has any idea when I most need comfort, encouragement, or a shake of the hand. An extreme instance of this occurred last year, after my stay at Tantenburg and Leipzig. And if ever I complain the whole world thinks it is entitled to exercise its modicum of power over me as a sufferer—they call it consolation, pity, good advice, etc.
But men like myself have always had to put up with the same sort of thing; my purely personal trouble is my declining health, which makes itself felt by a depreciation of my feeling of power and by a lack of confidence in myself. And as, under this European sky, I suffer and am low-spirited for at least eight months in the year, it is a stroke of exceptional luck that I am able to bear it any longer. What I mean by luck in this connection is no more than the absence of such strokes of ill fortune as that of last year—that is to say, that no other stones should enter the works of my watch. For I might perish from the effects of small stones, because at present the watch is most highly complicated and the responsibility for all the most exalted questions of knowledge rests on my shoulders. In summa, to draw some practical conclusions from these generalities, remember, my dear sister, never to remind me either by word of mouth or in writing, of those matters that would deprive me of my self-confidence, aye, almost of the whole point of my existence hitherto. If these things affect and have affected me so much, ascribe it to my health! Cultivate forgetfulness and anything else new and quite different from these things, in order that I may learn to laugh at the loss of such friends! And remember that his contemporaries can never be just to a man like myself, and that every compromise for the sake of "a good name" is unworthy of me.
Written under a bright clear sky, with a clear mind, a good digestion, and the time—early morning. Your Brother.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - September, 1883 Sils-Maria, Monday, September 3, 1883. MY DEAR FRIEND: Once again my stay in the Engadine has come to an end, and I shall leave here on Wednesday—for Germany, where there is much for me to do and to settle. If you should wish to write to me, direct the letter to Naumburg; there in my most natural frame of mind I will rest awhile and recuperate, in addition to eating a good deal of fine fruit. What I shall miss there, as everywhere, is your music. I believe that just as my work makes a stronger and more discomfiting impression upon you than upon anyone else, so everything that proceeds from you has a more soothing effect upon me than upon anyone else. This is indeed a fine relationship between us! May be it is the sort of relationship that might exist between a writer of comedy and a writer of tragedy (I remember telling you that Wagner saw in me a writer of tragedy in disguise); it is certainly true that on the whole I come out of it in a more Epicurean fashion than you do; for thus is the "law of things." The writer of comedy is of the higher species, and must do more good than the other, whether he wants to or not.
This Engadine is the birthplace of my Zarathustra. Only a moment ago I found the first draft of the thoughts incorporated in it. And one of the notes reads as follows: "The beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, 6,000 feet above the sea, and at a much higher altitude above all human affairs." I wonder how the pain and confusion of my spirit affected the tone of the first two parts! (for the thoughts and the aims were already fixed). How strange dear old friend! Quite seriously, I believe, that Zarathustra turned out to be more cheerful and happier than he would otherwise have been. I could prove this almost "documentarily."
On the other hand: I should not have suffered, nor should I suffer still a quarter as much as I have done, if during the last two years I had not fifty times over applied the themes of my hermit theories to practical life, and owing to the evil—yea! terrible results of this exercise—driven myself to doubts concerning my very self. To this extent did Zarathustra wax cheerful at my expense, and at his expense did I grow overcast with gloom.
By-the-bye, I must inform you, not without regret, that now with the third part, poor Zarathustra is really going to be plunged in gloom—so much so, that Schopenhauer and Leopardi will seem like children and beginners beside his "pessimism." But the plan of the work requires it. In order, however, to be able to write this part, what I shall need, in the first place, is profound Heavenly cheerfulness for I shall succeed with the pathos of the highest kind, only if I treat it as play. (In the end everything becomes bright.)
Perhaps I shall work at something theoretical meanwhile; my notes for this work bear the heading: A finger-post pointing to the deliverance from Morality...Remain ever true to your friend, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To His Sister - November, 1883 Genoa, November, 1883. MY DEAR LAMA: The thought of being reckoned among the authors! that belongs to the things that make me tremble with disgust. But, my dear sister, just study "Dawn of Day" and "Joyful Wisdom" books whose contents and whose future are the richest on earth! In your last letters there was a good deal about "egoistic" and "unegoistic," that ought no longer to be written by my sister. I draw above all a sharp line be tween strong and weak men—those who are destined to rulership, and those who are destined to service, obedience, and devotion. That which turns my stomach in this age is the untold amount of weakness, unmanliness, impersonality, changeableness, and good-nature—in short weakness in the matter of "self"-seeking, which would fain masquerade as "virtue." That which has given me pleasure up to the present has been the sight of men with a long will—who can hold their peace for years and who do not simply on that account deck themselves out with pompous moral phraseology, and parade as "heroes" or "noblemen," but who are honest enough to believe in nothing but themselves and their will, in order to stamp it upon mankind for all time.
Excuse me. That which drew me to Richard Wagner was this; Schopenhauer, too, had the same feeling all his life...I know perhaps better than anyone else how to recognize an order of rank even among strong men, according to their virtue, and on the same principle there are certainly hundreds of sorts of very decent and lovable people among the weak—in keeping with the virtues peculiar to the weak. There are some strong "selves" whose selfishness one might call divine (for instance Zarathustra's) but any kind of strength is in itself alone a refreshing and blessed spectacle. Read Shakespeare! He is full of such strong men, raw, hard, and mighty men of granite. Our age is so poor in these men and even in strong men who have enough brains for my thoughts!
Do not form too low an estimate of the disappointment and loss I have suffered this year. You cannot think how lonely and "out of it" I always feel when I am in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom you call "good," and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster [...], but of course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods.
But once again, forgive me! I am writing you all this out of the heartiest depths of my heart, and know very well how very good your intentions are where I am concerned. Oh, this infernal solitude! F. N.
P. S.—Stein is still too young for me. I should spoil him. I almost spoilt Gast—I have to be most awfully careful of my Ps and Qs with him.
To Rohde - February, 1884 Nice, February 22, 1884. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND: I know not how it was, but when I read your last letter and especially when I saw the charming photograph of your child, I felt as if you were shaking me by the hand gazing at me sadly the while—sadly, as if you meant to say: "How is it possible that we should have so little in common now, and that we should be living as if in different worlds! And there was a time when—" The same thing, dear friend, has happened in regard to all the people I love; everything is over, it all belongs to the past, it is all merely merciful indulgence now. We see each other still, we talk in order to avoid being silent—we still write each other letters in order to avoid being silent. Truth, however glances from their eyes, and these tell me (I hear it well enough): "Friend Nietzsche, you are now quite alone!"
That's what I have lived and fought for!
Meanwhile I continue along my road; as a matter of fact it is a journey, a sea-journey—and it is not in vain that I sojourned for so many years in Columbus' town.
My Zarathustra has come to an end in its three acts. You have the first, and the two others I hope to be able to send you within a month or six weeks. There is a sort of abyss of the future, something uncanny, particularly in his supreme happiness. Everything in it is my own, independent of all example, parallel, or predecessor. He who has once lived in its atmosphere returns to this world with another face.
But of this one should not speak. From you, however, as a homo literatus I shall not withold a confession: I have the idea that with this Zarathustra I have brought the German language to its acme of perfection. After Luther and Goethe there still remained a third step to be taken—just ask yourself, dear old comrade, whether power, suppleness, and euphony have ever before been united in this way in our language. Read Goethe after having read a page of my book and you will find that that "undulating quality," which Goethe as a draughtsman possessed, was not unknown even to the word-painter. It is in my more severe and more manly line that I excel him, without, however, descending to the coarse mob with Luther. My style is a dance, a play of all kinds of symmetries, and a vaulting and mocking of these symmetries. And this even extends to the choice of vowels.
Forgive me! I shall take care not to make this confession to anyone else, but once, I believe, you alone expressed the pleasure my style had given you. Moreover I have remained a poet to the utmost limits of this concept, although I have already tyrannized over myself thoroughly with the reverse of everything that could be called poetry.
Ah, dear friend, what an absurdly silent life I lead! So much alone, so much alone! So "childless"!
Remain fond of me; I am truly fond of you. Yours, F. N.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - December, 1885