Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. His eyesight was feeble and painful, so that he had to accept the help which two friends offered him: one of them was a young student named K?selitz, whom he had jokingly called Peter Gast, Peter the Guest—the surname stuck to him; the other was that Paul Rée, the Jew, with the acute mind, whom he had known for two years. Thanks to their devotion he was able to re-read the notes written at Klingenbrunn; he hoped to find matter in them for the second "Unseasonable Thought." Paul Rée was then publishing his Psychological Observations, reflections inspired by the English and French masters, Stuart Mill and La Rochefoucauld. Friedrich Nietzsche heard this little work read, and appreciated it. He admired this prudent style of conducting thought; he enjoyed it on the morrow of the emphatic ceremonies of Bayreuth, as though it were a repose; and he resolved to study at the school of Rée and of his masters. Nevertheless he always felt the immense void which his renouncement of Richard Wagner left in him.
"At this moment," he wrote, the 20th September, 1876, "I have every leisure to think of the past—farthest and nearest—for my oculist makes me sit idle for long periods in a darkened room. Autumn, after such a summer, is[Pg 196] for me, and no doubt not only for me, more autumn than any other. After the great event comes an attack of blacker melancholy, and to escape it one cannot fly too quickly towards Italy or towards work, or towards both."
He had obtained the leave for which he had asked, and the sole gladness which he had in life was the certainty that he would be free for some months from all professional duties.
He left Switzerland at the end of October. Alfred Brenner and Paul Rée accompanied him. The three Germans went down towards Genoa, and thence took a steamer to Naples, where Fr?ulein von Meysenbug was expecting them.
"I found Nietzsche," she writes, "disappointed sufficiently, because the journey and the arrival in Naples, in the middle of this noisy, clamorous, importunate people, had been very disagreeable to him. In the evening, however, I asked the visitors to take a drive to Pausilippe. It was such an evening as one sees only down here; sky, earth, and sea floated in a glory of indescribable colours, which filled the soul as an enchanting music, a harmony from which every discordant note was gone. I observed how Nietzsche's face lit up in joyous and almost childlike astonishment, as though he were dominated by a profound emotion; finally he gave vent to enthusiastic exclamations, which I welcomed as a happy augury for the efficacy of his visit."
Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had hired a villa—it was an old pension—on that slope which glides rapidly towards the sea, carrying its olives, its lemons, its cypresses, and its vines with it down to the waves. "On the first[Pg 197] floor," she writes, "there were rooms with terraces for the gentlemen; on the second, rooms for myself and my maid, with a big sitting-room for our common use."
She installed her guests in this retreat which she had selected for them; but they had to wait a while before they could enjoy the retired life for which they were in search. A too illustrious neighbour was stopping hard by—none other than Richard Wagner, who, accompanied by all his people, was resting at Sorrento after the immense effort and triumph of Bayreuth.
He showed no signs of fatigue. His days were spent in walking, his nights in conversation. With Fr?ulein von Meysenbug and his friends he held a sort of court.
We wonder if Friedrich Nietzsche had expected thus to find his master before him again? He could not avoid taking part in the walks, and in the evening parties: but he displayed a slight reserve. Whilst Richard Wagner talked of his future projects and of his coming work, and of the religious ideas which he wished to express, Nietzsche preferred to isolate himself with Paul Rée and to talk of Chamfort and of Stendhal. Richard Wagner observed these conversations. Now, he disliked Jews, and Rée displeased him. "Be careful," said he to Nietzsche, "that man will do you no good." Nietzsche did not modify his attitude. He spoke little, or, if he did mix in conversation, displayed a forced liveliness and a gaiety which were not altogether natural. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug was more than once surprised:
"But I never suspected," she writes, "that any change had come over his sentiments, and I abandoned myself with a whole heart to the delights which came to complete those of Bayreuth. The joy I experienced in living in a like intimacy led me to quote one day, as we sat together at table, a thought from Goethe of which I was very fond: 'Happy he who, without hatred, withdraws[Pg 198] from the world, presses a friend to his breast, and thus enjoys that something which men know not nor suspect, that which crosses the labyrinth of the heart at night.' The Wagners did not know this quotation, and were so enchanted with it that I had to repeat it to them. Alas! I did not guess that the demons who also cross the labyrinth of the heart at night and intimately contemplate the divine mystery of sympathy between noble minds, had already begun their work of sowing discord and division."
Towards the end of November, Richard Wagner having left Sorrento, Fr?ulein von Meysenbug and her friends were able to regulate their lives with a view to study. They arranged the employment of their time: up to noon, work and solitude; at noon, breakfast; after breakfast, a walk and conversation; in the evening, work and solitude; at night, after dinner, reading. Paul Rée, the only healthy member in this society of invalid intellectuals, read aloud. Nietzsche and Fr?ulein von Meysenbug were short-sighted; Brenner's lungs were affected. Who were their authors? Jacob Burckhardt, whose course of lectures on Greek culture they were studying (a student of Basle had lent his notes); a little of Michelet; Herodotus; Thucydides. A question posed, a doubt expressed, sometimes interrupted Paul Rée's readings; and it was almost always Friedrich Nietzsche who concluded the short debate.
"Nietzsche was indeed the soul of sweetness and kindliness!" writes Fr?ulein von Meysenbug in her charming account. "How well his good and amiable nature counterbalanced his destructive intelligence! How well he knew how to be gay, and to laugh with a good heart at the jokes which often came to disturb the serious atmosphere of our little circle. When we were together in[Pg 199] the evening, Nietzsche comfortably installed in an arm-chair in the shade of a screen; Dr. Rée, our obliging reader, seated at the table on which the lamp was placed; young Brenner, near the chimney-piece opposite me, helping me to peel oranges for dinner; I often said, laughing: 'We represent truly an ideal family; here are we four people, who scarcely knew each other before, who are not united by any tie of relationship, who have no memories in common, and we now live together in absolute concord, in the most complete personal liberty, and in a perfect content of mind and heart.' So plans were soon sketched for the renewal and enlargement of this happy experience...."
Would it be impossible to come back each year to this Italian coast, to call one's friends thither, and thus to found a spiritual refuge, free of every school, of every Church? On the morrow of 1848 Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had inspired at Hamburg a sort of Socialist phalanstery, which became the subject of one of the finest chapters of her book, and remained to her as one of the greatest memories of her life. Friedrich Nietzsche in no wise abandoned his ancient dream of a lay cloister. Thus the memories of the old lady agreed with the hopes of her young companion. Paul Rée and Alfred Brenner did not refuse their co-operation, and the four friends gave the project their serious consideration.
"Already we are in quest of an appropriate locality," writes Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, "for it was at Sorrento, in the heart of this delicious scenery, and not in the close air of a town, that our project was to take shape. We had discovered near the shore various spacious grottoes enlarged by the hand of man, veritable rock halls, in which a sort of pulpit is actually to be seen, which seems to be especially put there for a lecturer. It[Pg 200] is here that, during the hot days of summer, we thought of giving our lessons. We had besides conceived the plan of the school rather on the Greek model than according to modern ideas, and the teaching was chiefly to be a mutual instruction in the Peripatetic manner...."
Nietzsche wrote to his sister: "My idea, the school of the educators, or, if you like, modern cloister, ideal colony, free university, is always floating in the air. What will befall it, who can tell? Already we have, in imagination, named you directress and administrative head of our establishment for forty persons."
At the beginning of spring Brenner and Rée left Sorrento. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug and Nietzsche, now alone together, read to one another, but only a little, for reading tried the eyes of both. They preferred to talk. Nietzsche was never tired of listening to his companion's recitals. She told him of the lofty days of 1848. This he liked and, above all, he liked that she should talk to him of Mazzini.
He did not forget the chance by which he had had the Italian hero as carriage companion in April, 1871, as they were crossing the Alps. No compromise: live resolutely in the whole, the good, and the beautiful.... Mazzini had repeated this maxim of Goethe's to him, and Nietzsche associated it with his recollection of the man. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had known Mazzini in London. She had admired his authority in command, his exactitude in obedience, his readiness to serve every servant of the cause, whether he were called Cavour or Garibaldi. He had paid the price of this humility; for, forgotten in the hour of victory, the exile's ban had been maintained against him alone. Nevertheless, he had wished to end his days in his well-loved Liguria, and he had come there to die, hiding his name and race.[Pg 201] The doctor who took care of him was astonished—he had taken him for an Englishman—when he heard him speak in so pure an Italian. "Look you," replied the dying man, "no one has ever loved Italy so much as I loved her." Friedrich Nietzsche listened to these stories.
"The man I venerate most," said he to Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, "is Mazzini."
Could Fr?ulein von Meysenbug have guessed that her young companion, this young, tender, and enthusiastic German, had just declared war within himself on those instincts of tenderness and enthusiasm which obstructed the clarity of his views?—that Nietzsche, the continuator of Schopenhauer, the friend of Wagner, was now choosing La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Stendhal for masters? Could she have guessed that this friend who dreamed with her of setting up a lay cloister was training himself, during his long walks, to face the melancholy of a life of revolt and of solitude? He formulated the rules of such a life:
You must neither love nor hate the people.
You must in no way occupy yourself with politics.
You must be neither rich nor poor.
You must avoid the path of those who are illustrious and powerful.
You must take a wife from outside your people.
You must leave to your friends the care of bringing up your children.
You must accept none of the ceremonies of the Church.
Fr?ulein von Meysenbug knew at last. One day Nietzsche handed to her a pile of MSS. "Read," said he; "here are some impressions which came to me down there, under that tree; I have never sat down in its shade[Pg 202] without plucking a thought." Fr?ulein von Meysenbug read, and discovered an unsuspected Nietzsche, a critic and a denier. "Do not publish that," she said. "Wait, reflect!" Nietzsche's only answer was a smile. She insisted; the conversation grew animated; they made peace in reading Thucydides.
At the beginning of May, Nietzsche, incommoded by the heat, wished to leave. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug wanted him to postpone his departure in order that he might master his first fatigue before he began the trying voyage. He would not listen to her.
"Nietzsche is really going to-morrow," she wrote to Rée; "you know that when he is thus determined upon something he carries it out, even though the sky sends the most serious warnings to turn him from it. In that he is no longer a Greek, as he is not attentive to oracles. Just as, in the most frightful weather, he starts out on an excursion, so now he goes, tired to death, in defiance of the raging wind which is lashing up the sea, and will certainly make him ill, for he is determined to make the voyage from Naples to Genoa by sea."
"Yes, he has gone," she wrote in another letter. "The charm of Sorrento in flower could not keep him; he must go, but it is horribly painful to me to let him travel thus; he is unpractical and so bad at extricating himself from a difficulty. Luckily the sea is a little calmer to-day.... Alas, there is so much to regret! Eight days ago we had sketched plans for his near and distant future. Was his brusque resolution dictated by a feverish desire to fly from his malady, which he suddenly fancied had some connection with our spring temperature, which is truly a little abnormal? But how could he have been any better elsewhere this miserable spring? I think that at the last moment it occurred to him[Pg 203] that his departure was nevertheless precipitate. But it was too late.... This melancholy multiplication of departures has quite upset me...."
Friedrich Nietzsche went to take a cure at the waters of Rosenlaui. He experienced very little benefit from it, and his immediate future preoccupied his thoughts. In September he had to resume his professorial duties. It was his daily bread, and a daily discipline from which he feared to be freed. But he also knew the horrible ennui of it. He had been given reason to hope that the authorities at Basle would consent to grant him, in consideration of his services and of his illness, a definite discharge with a sufficient pension. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug advised him to retire; his sister, on the contrary, advised him to retain his office, and Nietzsche chose to listen to his sister. But the nearer came the date of his return, the more lively grew his revolt.
"It is a thing which I know, which I feel," he then wrote to a woman who was helping him in his work, the mother of one of his pupils, Marie Baumgarten, "that I have in store a loftier destiny. I can make use of Philology, but I am more than a Philologist. 'I misrepresent myself.' Such was the persistent theme of my last ten years. Now that a year of retired life has made everything so visible and so clear (I cannot express how rich I feel and how much of a creator of joy, in spite of every affliction, as soon as I am left alone with myself), now, I tell you with complete confidence that I am not returning to Basle to stay there. How will it come about? I do not know, but my liberty (Ah! how modest my material necessities are; little matters to me), my liberty, I shall conquer it for myself."
[Pg 204]
His sister came to join him at Basle and lived with him. At first his pleasure was great, but he soon recognised that he could not talk with this girl who was altogether a Wagnerian and quite devoted to the ideas of Bayreuth. Paul Rée was the only man whose company he liked; but Paul Rée was detained in North Germany by considerations of health, and could not, as Nietzsche had hoped, come to Basle.
"I hope that I shall soon learn," he wrote to him, "that the evil demons of sickness are leaving you in peace. All that I wish for you in the New Year is that you remain as you are, and that you remain for me as you have been.... Let me tell you that friendship has never been so sweet to me as in this last year, thanks to you.... When I hear of your work, my mouth waters, for I desire to be with you so much. We have been made to understand each other aright; we always come together, I think, like good neighbours, to whom the idea occurs, at the same moment, that they should pay each other a visit, and who meet on the confines of their lands.... When shall we have a good conversation upon human affairs, a personal, not an epistolary conversation?"
In December he wrote to Rée: "Ten times a day I wish to be near you." Nevertheless he finished his book, or, to be more accurate, he did not finish it, for he preserved the attractive freedom of his notes. It was thus that they came to him, one after another, without any connection; and it pleased him that they should thus remain. His deplorable health prevented him from putting a weft across them, from imposing an order upon them. And what did it matter? He recalled those French writers whose loyalty he loved: Pascal, Larochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, Montaigne. He wished[Pg 205] to leave, after their example, some disorder and some discontinuity in his thoughts. He wished to write a simple book which should call the most urgent enthusiasts back to prudence. Round Wagner and Bayreuth, "beautiful souls" were innumerable. Friedrich Nietzsche, who had just missed being one of these, wished, by talking in the manner of old Socrates, to make them feel the absurdity of their faith. Human, All Too Human, was the title which he had chosen. Right at the end of his conscious life, he recounted the object of his book.
"A torch in my hand," he writes, "and the light not smoky,[1] I have cast a lively light upon this subterranean world of the Ideal. It is war, but war without powder and without smoke, without war-like attitudes, without pathos, without dislocated limbs—all that would still be 'idealism.' Error after error, I took them and placed them on the ice, and the ideal was not even refuted—it froze. Here, for example, freezes 'the Genius'; in this other corner freezes 'the Saint'; beneath a thick stopper of frozen ice 'the Hero'; and, lastly, it is 'the Faith' which freezes, she who is named 'Conviction'; and then here is 'Pity,' which notably grows cold—in fact, nearly everywhere freezes 'the thing in itself.'"
Certainly this work is paradoxical. No one is so ardent as Friedrich Nietzsche, no one has such a belief in his work, in his mission, in the sublime ends of life; and yet he labours to scoff at them. He reverses every thesis that he has hitherto upheld. Pereat Veritas, fiat vita!—he had once written. Now he writes, Pereat vita, fiat Veritas! Above poetry he places science; above ?schylus, that same Socrates whom he had at other times denounced. No doubt it is only a pretence, and he[Pg 206] knows it. The ideas which he expresses are not really his own. He arms himself with irony for a combat which will be short: for he is not an ironist. He wants to find, and is convinced that he will find, an unknown lyricism which shall inspire his great works. Human, All Too Human, is the sign of a time of crisis and of passage, but what a surprising crisis, what a difficult passage! "The book is there," wrote Nietzsche, "to the great astonishment of the prostrate invalid."
On January 3, 1879, he received the poem Parsifal, which Richard Wagner sent him. He read it, and could better measure the always increasing distance which separated him from his old master. He wrote to the Baron von Seydlitz:
"Impression from the first reading: more Liszt than Wagner; the spirit of the counter-reformation; for me who am too accustomed to the Greek and human atmosphere, all this belongs to a too limited Christianity; the psychology is fantastic; there is no flesh and far too much blood (the Last Supper especially has far too much blood about it for me); I do not like hysterical chambermaids. The style seems like a translation from a foreign language. But the situations and their developments—are they not in a vein of the greatest poetry? Never did a musician propose a higher task to his music."
Friedrich Nietzsche, in this letter, did not speak all his thoughts. Certain features of it (no flesh and far too much blood) let us divine, as already active and vehement within him, that repugnance which he was to express ten years later. Nevertheless he loved this incomparable master, and for the first time he was obliged to put clearly to himself the problem of the rupture. He had received the poem Parsifal; should he reply, and, if so,[Pg 207] in what terms? or should he take the more frank and simple course of leaving it unanswered?
His doubts and vexations increased. It is not easy to gauge his condition at this time. He scarcely confided in his sister. His letters to Paul Rée, which would no doubt enlighten us, are not printed.
Since Christmas, 1877, Friedrich Nietzsche had more leisure, his professional work having been reduced by some hours. He took advantage of this to leave Basle every week and wander alone in the neighbouring regions. He did not go to the high mountains; he had little taste for these "monsters" and preferred the Jura, the Black Forest, whose wooded heights reminded him of the places of his childhood.
What were his thoughts? We may conjecture that he was occupied solely with Wagner and his book. One month, two months had passed, and he had not acknowledged the receipt of Parsifal. Human, All Too Human was printed, and the publisher was waiting. But how should he forewarn the master, how prepare him for this surprising document? His disciples had accustomed him to the most obsequious homage, the most profound intellectual deference. Nietzsche knew that his independent work would scandalise the dovecot of Bayreuth. When the moment for his pronouncement came he took fright. He was as much concerned for the public as for Wagner himself. He was ashamed of the philosophy which he was giving forth as his own. He had written these pages, and he regretted nothing; he had followed, as he had the right to follow, the vital logic which ruled his mind. But he also knew that this same logic would bring him back one day towards a new lyricism, and it would have suited him to disguise somewhat the interlude of his years of crisis. He then conceived a singular idea: he would not sign his book; he would publish it in an enigmatical manner, anonymously; Richard Wagner[Pg 208] alone would know the mystery and know that Human, All Too Human was the work of his friend, of his disciple, who at the bottom of his soul remained still faithful. He wrote out a long draft of a letter which is preserved to us:
"I send you this book: Human, All Too Human; and at the same time I tell you, you and your noble companion, in complete confidence, my secret; it suits me that it should be also yours. The book is mine....
"I find myself in the condition of mind of an officer who has carried a redoubt. Though wounded he is upon the heights and waves his standard. More joy, far more joy than sorrow, though the neighbouring spectacle be terrible.
"I have told you that I know no one who is really in agreement with me in thought. And yet I fancy that I have thought, not as an individual, but as the representative of a group; the most singular sentiment of solitude and of society....
"... The swiftest herald who does not know precisely if the cavalry is coming behind him, or even if it exists."
The publisher rejected the proposal and Nietzsche had to abandon it. At last his mind was made up. Europe was about to celebrate, in May, 1878, the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death. Friedrich Nietzsche decided that he would publish his book at this time, and he would dedicate it to the memory of the great pamphleteer.
"In Norway those periods during which the sun remains all day beneath the horizon are called times of obscurity," he wrote in 1879; "during that time the temperature[Pg 209] goes down slowly and incessantly. What a marvellous symbol for all thinkers for whom the sun of man's future has been obscured for a time!" Nietzsche knew his time of obscurity. Erwin Rohde disapproved of his book, Richard Wagner made no reply; but Nietzsche knew how he was being judged in the master's circle. "The caricaturist of Bayreuth," said they, "is either an ingrate or a madman." An unknown donor (Gersdorff, was it not?) sent from Paris a box in which Friedrich and Lisbeth Nietzsche found a bust of Voltaire and a short note: The soul of Monsieur Voltaire presents his compliments to Monsieur Friedrich Nietzsche. Lisbeth Nietzsche could not tolerate the idea that her brother, pure German at heart, should range himself under the banner of a Frenchman, and of such a Frenchman! She wept.
No doubt some of his friends passed a different judgment. "Your book," said Jacob Burckhardt, "enlarges the independence of the mind." "Only one book," wrote Paul Rée, "has suggested as many thoughts to me as has yours—the conversations of Goethe and Eckermann." Peter Gast remained faithful, Overbeck and his wife were sure friends. Nietzsche did not feel his defeat the less for it "Human, All Too Human" had no success. Richard Wagner, it was said, was amused by the smallness of the sales. He chaffed the publisher: "Ah, ah! now you see Nietzsche is read only when he defends our cause; otherwise, no."
In August, 1878, Human, All Too Human was judged and condemned in the Journal of Bayreuth. "Every German professor," wrote the anonymous author, in whom Nietzsche recognised, or believed that he recognised, Richard Wagner, "has to write once in his life a book to consecrate his fame. But as it is not given to all the world to find a truth, one contents oneself, to obtain the desired effect, with proving the radical nonsense of[Pg 210] the views of a predecessor, and the effect is so much the greater when the predecessor who is put to shame was the more considerable man."
This low style of judgment grieved Friedrich Nietzsche. He now proposed to explain, in a tone of serenity and respect, his attitude in respect to his old masters, Schopenhauer and Wagner. Only it seemed to him that the time for courtesies had gone by, and, after reconsidering his Sorrento notes, he undertook to write a sequel to the thoughts of Human, All Too Human.
His sister had left him; in September he was leading a painful and miserable life, a few features of which we can apprehend. He was avoided, for his agitated condition gave alarm. Often, on coming out of the University, he would meet Jacob Burckhardt. The wise historian would slip off by a clever man?uvre; he esteemed his colleague, but dreaded him. In vain Nietzsche sought to gather new disciples around him. "I am hunting for men," he wrote, "like a veritable corsair, not to sell them into slavery, but to carry them off with me to liberty." This unsociable liberty which he proposed failed to seduce the young men. A student, Herr Schaffler, has recorded his recollections: "I attended Nietzsche's lectures," says he; "I knew him very slightly. Once, at the end of a lecture, he chanced to be near me, and we walked out side by side. There were light clouds passing over the sky. 'The beautiful clouds,' he said to me, 'how rapid they are!' 'They resemble the clouds of Paul Veronese,' I answered. Suddenly his hand seized my arm. 'Listen,' said he; 'the holidays are coming; I am leaving soon, come with me, and we shall go together to see the clouds at Venice.' ... I was surprised, I stammered out some hesitating words; then I saw Nietzsche turn from me, his face icy and rigid as death. He moved away without saying a word, leaving me alone."
[Pg 211]
The break with Wagner was his great and lasting sorrow. "Such a farewell," he wrote, "when one parts because agreement is impossible between one's manner of feeling and one's manner of judging, puts us back in contact with that other person, and we throw ourselves with all our strength against that wall which nature has set up between us and him." In February, 1879, Lisbeth Nietzsche wrote to Cosima Wagner: had her brother advised her to make the overture? Did he know of it? Did he approve of it? We cannot say. Cosima answered with an imperial and sweet firmness. "Do not speak to me of Human, All Too Human," she wrote. "The only thing that I care to remember in writing to you is this, that your brother once wrote for me some of the most beautiful pages that I know.... I bear no malice against him: he has been broken by suffering. He has lost the mastery of himself, and this explains his felony." She added, with more spirit than sense, "To say that his present writings are not definitive, that they represent the stages of a mind that seeks itself, is, I think, curious. It is almost as if Beethoven had said: 'See me in my third manner!' Moreover, one recognises as one reads that the author is not convinced by his work; it is merely sophism without impulse, and one is moved to pity."
Miscellaneous Opinions and Apophthegms, which formed the sequel to Human, All Too Human, appeared in 1879. But the offence which this second volume might have given was attenuated and, as it were, warded off, by reason of the pity which Nietzsche now inspired in those who had formerly known him. His state of health grew worse. His head, his stomach, his eyes, tormented him without intermission. The doctors began to be disquieted by symptoms which they could not ascertain, by an invalid whom they could not cure. It appeared to them that his eyesight, and perhaps his reason, were threatened. He divined their alarms. Peter Gast[Pg 212] waited at Venice, called to him from there; but Nietzsche was forced to abandon the project of a voyage; he had to shut himself up in his room at Basle behind closed shutters and drawn curtains.
What was to become of him? Rohde, Gersdorff, touched by the wreck of this man of whom they had hoped so much, wrote to Overbeck: "They say that Nietzsche is lost, advise us." "Alas," replied Overbeck, "his condition is desperate." Even Richard Wagner remembered and was touched. "Can I forget him," he wrote to Overbeck, "my friend who separated from me with such violence? I clearly see that it would not have been right to demand conventional considerations from a soul torn by such passions. One must be silent and have pity. But I am in absolute ignorance of his life, and of his sufferings; this afflicts me. Would it be indiscreet if I asked you to write me news of my friend?"
Apparently Nietzsche did not know of this letter. He had written, a few months earlier, among other notes: "Gratitude is a bourgeois virtue; it cannot be applied to a man like Wagner." His happiness would have been great, had he been able to read the identical thought, written by his master, "It would not have been right to demand conventional considerations from a Nietzsche."
Overbeck and his wife attended the invalid. They wrote to his sister that she ought to be at his side. She came at once and scarcely recognised the stooping, devastated man, aged in one year by ten years, who thanked her for coming with a gesture of his hand.
Friedrich Nietzsche gave up his professorship; he sent in his resignation, which was accepted. In recompense for his services he was to receive a pension of three thousand francs.
Lisbeth took him away. He thought himself a lost[Pg 213] man, and expressed his last wishes. "Make me a promise, Lisbeth; let my friends only accompany my corpse; let none who are merely indifferent or curious be present. I shall no longer be able to defend myself, and you must do it. Let no priest, let no one come and speak insincere words over my coffin. See that I am buried like a loyal pagan, with no lies told."
He longed for the most desert and silent places, for the most complete solitude; she brought him to the valleys of the Upper Engadine. At that time very few people went up there. Nietzsche discovered this remote Switzerland and derived an unexpected comfort from the light and pure quality of the air, and the kindly light of the meadows, which soothed his worn-out eyes. He liked the scattered lakes, which recalled a Finland, the villages with their singing names, the fine peasant race, which proclaimed the presence of Italy beyond the glaciers. "This nature is familiar to me," he wrote to Rée; "it does not astonish me, there is an understanding between us." With a convalescent's surprise he began to live again. He wrote scarcely any letters; he wrote for himself, and it is in his work that we must seek the information which his correspondence formerly gave us. This is how he narrates his ascent towards the Engadine.
"Et in Arcadia ego.—Above the hills which take the shape of waves, across the austere pines and the old fir-trees, I have turned my gaze upon a little lake whose water is green and milky. Around me were rocks of every contour, a soil painted in discordant colours with grasses and flowers. Before me a flock moved, now scattering, now closing up its ranks; some cows, grouped afar-off, below a forest of pines, stood out in relief under the evening light; others, nearer, more sombre; and everything calm in the peace of the approaching twilight. My watch registered half-past five. The monarch of the[Pg 214] herd was walking in the foam-white brook; he stepped out slowly, now stemming the fierce tide, now giving way to it: no doubt he found a kind of ferocious delight in so doing. Two human beings, brown skinned, of Bergamesque origin, were the shepherds of this flock: the young girl dressed almost like a boy. To the right, above a large belt of forest, edges of rocks, fields of snow; to the left, two enormous prongs of ice, far over me, in a veil of clear mist. Everything grand, calm, luminous. This beauty, thus suddenly perceived, thrilled, so as to bring into the soul a mute adoration of this moment of revelation. Into this world of pure light and sharp outline (exempt from disquiet and desire, expectation and regret), one was tempted to introduce Grecian heroes—involuntarily, as though it were the most natural thing. One had to feel in the manner of Poussin and his pupils; in a thoroughly heroic and idyllic manner. And it is thus that certain men have lived, thus that they have felt life, lastingly, within and without themselves; and I recognise among them one of the greatest of all men, one who discovered a style of heroic and idyllic philosopher: Epicurus."
Friedrich Nietzsche stayed in the Engadine, poorly lodged, sparingly fed, till September came; but he was satisfied, though deprived of friends, with his music and books. His sufferings were not intolerable: he could work and had soon filled six copybooks with pencil notes of his calmer thoughts, which, though always sceptical, were not bitter, but seemed, as it were, tempered by the unexpected indulgence. He had no illusions concerning this respite which he had received. It was a respite and no more, and he did not hope. Nevertheless he rejoiced that, before his breakdown, he had the opportunity of saying what happiness had been procured him by the simple contemplation of things, of human nature, of the[Pg 215] mountains and the sky; he hastened to harvest this last felicity. At the beginning of September, 1879, he sent his completed work to Peter Gast.
"My dear, dear friend," he wrote, "when you receive these lines my manuscript will be in your hands. Perhaps you will feel a little of the pleasure which I have myself when I think of my work that is now completed. I am at the end of my thirty-fifth year, 'the middle of life,' they used to say some thousand years ago: it is the age at which Dante had his vision, as he tells us in the first verses of his poem. I am now in this middle of life, and on all sides so hard pressed by death, that at any hour it may take me; my life is such that I must foresee a rapid death, in spasms.... So I feel like a very old man, and the more because I have done the work of my life. I have poured out a good drop of oil, I know it, it will be accounted to me. I have experienced my manner of life to the full; many will experience it after me. My continual, my bitter sufferings have not altered my humour up to the present. On the contrary, it seems to me that I feel gayer, more kindly, than ever I was: whence comes this influence which fortifies me and ameliorates my condition? Not from men, for all but a few are provoked against me,[2] and do not grudge the trouble of letting me know it. Dear friend, read this last manuscript from end to end, and see if any trace of suffering or of depression is there disclosed. I think not, and this very conviction assures me that there must be some hidden strength in my thoughts, and not that lassitude, that powerlessness, which those who do not approve of me would like to find in them."
[Pg 216]
At this instant of his life Nietzsche made ready to die. How? It is not too hazardous to guess. He was waiting for that "rapid end in spasms," which had swept off his father in madness, and a pious sentiment brought him back to the domestic hearth. Released from the obligations which kept him at Basle, free to choose his retreat, he resisted the call of Peter Gast from Venice. It was no time for learning to know and to love a new beauty. "No," said he, "in spite of Overbeck, in spite of my sister, who press me to rejoin you, I shall not go. In certain circumstances, as I think, it is fitting that one should be closer to one's mother, one's hearth, one's souvenirs of childhood...."
It was to Naumburg, therefore, that he proceeded. He wished to lead there a life of entire peace, and to distract himself from thought by manual labour. In a tower of the old ramparts he hired a great room. Below the old wall there extended an unused piece of land, and this he took on lease and cultivated. "I have ten fruit trees," he wrote, "and roses, lilacs, carnations, strawberries, goose-berry bushes, and green gooseberries. At the beginning of next year I shall have ten rows of vegetables growing."
But the invalid was soon obliged to abandon these plans. The winter was rigorous. Friedrich Nietzsche could not withstand either the glare of the snow which dazzled his eyes, or the humid air which depressed and shattered his nerves. In a few weeks he had lost the benefit derived from his visit to the Engadine.
The Traveller and his Shadow, the proofs of which Peter Gast had corrected, was published. Apparently it was better understood than the preceding collections had been. Rohde wrote Nietzsche a letter which pleased him. Certainly he did not express unqualified admiration. "This clear but never emotional view of humanity," said he, "pains him who loves you and who hears the friend in every word." But, on the whole, he admired.
[Pg 217]
"What you give to your readers," he wrote, "you can scarcely surmise, for you live in your own mind. But a voice like yours is one which we never hear, either in life or in books. And, as I read you, I continue to experience what I experienced at your side in the time of our comradeship: I feel myself raised into a higher order of things, and spiritually ennobled. The conclusion of your book penetrates the soul. You can and you should, after these discordant harmonies, give us yet softer, yet diviner strains.... Farewell, my dear friend, you are always he who gives, I am always he who receives...."
Nietzsche was happy. "Thanks, dear friend," he wrote on the 28th of December, 1879; "your old affection sealed anew—it is the most precious gift which these Christmas days have brought me." But his answer was brief, and the last two lines of his letter give the reason: "My condition has again become terrible, my tortures are atrocious; sustineo, abstineo; and I am astonished at it myself."
This very strong language contains no exaggeration. His mother and sister, who saw him suffer, bear witness to the awful days through which he passed. He accepted suffering as a test, as a spiritual exercise. He compared his destiny to that of men who were great in sorrow—Leopardi, for instance. But Leopardi was not brave, for, in his sickness, he defamed life, and—Nietzsche discovered this hard truth—an invalid has not the right to be a pessimist. Or the Christ. But even Christ weakened upon the cross. "Father, Father!" He cried out, "why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Friedrich Nietzsche had no God, no father, no faith, no friends. Every prop he had taken from himself, and yet he did not bend. To complain, even in a passing manner, would be to avow defeat. He refused to make the avowal. Suffering did not[Pg 218] overwhelm him; on the contrary, it instructed him, and animated his thought.
"The enormous tension of the intellect, bent on the mastery of pain," he writes, "shows everything in a new light: and the unspeakable charm of every new light is often powerful enough to overcome all the allurements of suicide, and to make the continuance of life appear as most desirable to the sufferer. Scornfully he reviews the warm and comfortable dream-world, wherein the healthy man moves unthinkingly; scornfully he reviews the noblest and dearest of the illusions in which he formerly indulged; this contempt is his joy, it is the counterpoise which enables him to hold his own against physical pain, a counterpoise the necessity of which he now feels.... Our pride revolts as it never did before: joyfully does it defend life against such a tyrant as pain, that tyrant that would force us to testify against life. To stand for life in the face of this tyrant is a task of infinite fascination."[3]
Friedrich Nietzsche supposed that his end was close at hand. On the 14th of January, wishing to give a last indication of his thought to some friend, he wrote Fr?ulein von Meysenbug a letter which is a farewell and a spiritual testament. What an effort it must have cost him!
"Although to write is one of the fruits which is most strongly forbidden me, still I want you to have one more letter from me, you whom I love and venerate like a beloved sister—it will be the last! For the awful and almost incessant martyrdom of my life gives me a thirst[Pg 219] for death, and, according to certain signs, I am now near enough to that access of fever, which shall save me, to be permitted to hope. I have suffered so much, I have renounced so many things that there is no ascetic, of any time, to whose life I have not the right to compare my life in this last year. Nevertheless I have acquired a great deal. My soul has gained in purity, in sweetness, and I no longer need religion or art for that. (You will remark that I have some pride; that is because in my state of entire abandonment I have been able finally to discover my intimate sources of consolation.) I think that I have done the work of my life as a man may to whom no time is left. But I know that for many men I have poured out a drop of good oil, that many men will be guided by me towards a higher, a more serene, and lucid life. I give you this supplementary information: when my humanity shall have ceased to be, men will say so. No sorrow has been or will be able to induce me to give false evidence on life, as I know it.
"To whom should I say all this if not to you? I think—but it is immodest to say so—that our characters resemble each other. For instance: both of us are brave, and neither distress nor contempt has been able to turn us from the path which we recognised as the right path. And both of us have known, in us, around us, many a truth, the dazzling splendour of which few of our contemporaries have perceived—we hope for humanity and, silently, offer ourselves in sacrifice for it, do we not?
"Have you good news of the Wagners? For three years I have heard nothing of them. They, too, have forsaken me. I knew for long that Wagner would separate from me as soon as he should have recognised the difference of our efforts. I have been told that he writes against me. Let him: all means must be used to bring the truth to light! I think of him with a lasting[Pg 220] gratitude, for I owe him some of the strongest incitements towards spiritual liberty. Madame Wagner, as you know, is the most sympathetic woman whom I have met. But our relations are ended, and assuredly I am not the man to resume them. It is too late.
"Receive, dear friend, who are a sister to me, the salutation of a young old man to whom life has not been cruel, although it has come about that he desires to die."
He lived, nevertheless. Paul Rée came to see him, read to him, and succeeded in distracting his thoughts. The weather, which had tried him so severely, grew warmer, and the snow, which had dimmed his eyesight, melted. Peter Gast, living as in the previous year at Venice, steadily wrote and called to him. In the middle of February he felt, with surprise, a reawakening of strength; his desires, his curiosities returned to him, and he set out at once.
He stayed for a month on the shores of Lake Garda, at Riva, and the improvement in his letters gave his relatives some hope. On the 13th of March he was at Venice: from that day the end of this crisis and his convalescence must be dated.
He had not yet loved Italy. What parts of it did he know? The Lakes: but their somewhat oppressive tepidity was ill-suited to him, and he did not relish their over-soft harmonies. Naples and its Gulf: but he was repelled by the Neapolitan crowd; the splendour of the spectacle had no doubt conquered, but it had scarcely charmed him. No intimate union had been established between this dazzling scenery and his spiritual passions. But from the first moment he yielded to the fascination of Venice. In Venice he found, at a glance, without effort, what his Greek masters—Homer, Theognis, Thucydides—had formerly given him: the sensation of[Pg 221] a lucid intellect, which lived without dreams or scruples. Against dreams, against scruples, against the prestige of a romantic art, he had been fighting for four years. The beauty of Venice was his deliverance. He remembered his agonies and smiled at himself. Had he not flattered himself in supposing that he was the most wretched of men? What man who suffered has not had this thought, this childish conceit?
"When a first dawn of assuagement, of recovery, supervenes," he wrote, "then we ungratefully humiliate the pride which formerly made us bear our sorrow, we deal with ourselves like na?ve simpletons—as if something unique had happened to us! Again we look around at men and at nature, with desire; the tempered lights of life recomfort us; again health plays its magical tricks with us. We contemplate the spectacle as if we were transformed, benevolent and still fatigued. In this condition one cannot hear music without weeping."
Peter Gast attended him with touching kindness. He accompanied him in his walks, read to him, played him his favourite music. At this period Friedrich Nietzsche liked Chopin above all musicians; he discovered a daring, a freedom of passion in his rhapsodies, which is seldom the gift of German art. Doubtless we must think of Chopin in reading those last words, "In this condition one cannot hear music without weeping."
Peter Gast also played the part of secretary, for Nietzsche had recovered his ardour for work. Day by day he dictated his thoughts. He chose, immediately, the title for a new collection (he gave up the idea quickly), L'Ombra di Venezia. Indeed, did he not owe to the presence of Venice this richness, this force, this subtlety of his mind? He essayed new researches. Was[Pg 222] it true, as he had written, that a cold calculation of interest determines the actions of men? that a mean desire for safety, for ease, for happiness, had created that excessive beauty to which Venice stands witness? Venice is unique; nevertheless, she exists and must be explained. A spiritual portent must explain the physical marvel. What, then, are the hidden springs which determine our acts? Life, Schopenhauer used to say, is a pure Will to Live; every being desires to persevere in being. We may go further, thinks Friedrich Nietzsche, and say that life aspires ever to extend and surpass itself. Its desire is, not conservation, but growth; a principle of conquest and of exaltation must be linked to its essence. How is this principle to be formulated? Nietzsche did not yet know; but the idea was with him, and importunate. He felt that he was on the eve of a discovery, on the threshold of an unknown world; and he wrote, or dictated, to his friend:
"Actions are never what they appear to be. We have had such difficulty in learning that external things are not what they appear to us. Well, it is the same with the internal world! Deeds are in reality 'something other'—more we cannot say of them, and all deeds are essentially unknown."
In July he tried the waters of Marienbad. He lived in a little inn, situated opposite the wood, where he walked all the length of the day.
"I am absorbed, and excavate zealously in my moral mines," he wrote to Peter Gast, "and it seems to me that I have become an altogether subterranean being—it seems to me, at this moment, that I have found a passage, an opening; a hundred times I shall be thus persuaded and then deceived."
[Pg 223]
In September he was at Naumburg; he seemed to be in a joyful and talkative humour; his sister Lisbeth recognised on his face that expression of cheerful sweetness which denotes good mental work, a plenitude and an afflux of thoughts. On the 8th of October, fearing the fogs, he descended towards Italy. He stopped at Stresa, on the shore of the Lake Maggiore. But the climate did not agree with his nerves, and unsettled his meditations. It was with terror that he recognised once more that the tyranny of external influences held him at its mercy. He took fright; could he, if he lived always in a state of suffering, express those innumerable ideas, philosophical and lyrical, which pressed on him? To acquire health was, he thought, his first duty. He left Stresa and travelled towards Sorrento.
Genoa was on his road, and there he stopped. The place charmed him at first sight. Its people were vigorous, frugal, and gay; the temperature, in November, almost that of summer. In Genoa was combined the double energy of mountain and of sea. Nietzsche liked those robust palaces that stood athwart the little streets. Such monuments had been raised by Corsair merchants to their own glory, by men whose instincts were fettered by no scruples. And his visionary spirit evoked them, for he stood in need of those Italians of a former time who were so lucid, so grasping, and who had in them so little of the Christian; who lied to others, but were frank towards themselves, without sophistry. He needed them in order to repress that romantic reverie which was not to be extinguished in him. He desired, like Rousseau, a return to nature. But Rousseau's Europe was one thing, and Nietzsche's another. Rousseau's offended against the sentiments of piety, against human sympathy, against goodness; Nietzsche's was a sluggish Europe under the domination of the herd, and it offended against other sentiments; very different, too, was the[Pg 224] oppressed nature which he exalted and in which he sought the cure and the refreshment of his soul.
He wished to make a stay at Genoa. After some trouble he found a perfect home: a garret, with a very good bed, at the top of a staircase of a hundred and four steps, in a house which looked out on a path so steep and stiff that no one passed that way, and that grass grew between the paving stones—Salita delle Battistine, 8.
He arranged his life in a manner as simple as his domicile, and thus realised one of his many dreams. Often he used to say to his mother: "How do the common people live? I would like to live like them." His mother would laugh. "They eat potatoes and greasy meat; they drink bad coffee and alcohol...." Nietzsche sighed: "Oh, those Germans!" In his Genoese house, with its poor inmates, customs were different. His neighbours lived soberly. He imitated them and ate sparely; his thought was quicker and livelier. He bought a spirit lamp, and, under his land-lady's teaching, learnt how to prepare his own risotto, and fry his own artichokes. He was popular in the big house. When he suffered from headaches, he had many visitors, full of concern for him. "I need nothing," he would say, simply: "Sono contento."
In the evening, in order to rest his eyes, he would lie stretched out on his bed, without light in the room. "It is poverty," opined the neighbours; "the German professor is too poor to burn candles." He was offered some: he was grateful, smiled, and explained the circumstances. They called him Il Santo, il piccolo Santo. He knew it, and it amused him. "I think," he wrote, "that many among us, with their abstemious, regular habits, their kindliness and their clear sense, would, were they transported into the semi-barbarism of the sixth to the tenth centuries, be revered like Saints." He conceived and drew up a rule of life:
[Pg 225]
"An independence which offends no one; a mollified, veiled pride, a pride which does not discharge itself upon others because it does not envy their honours or their pleasures, and is able to stand the test of mockery. A light sleep, a free and peaceful bearing, no alcohol, no illustrious or princely friendships, neither women nor newspapers, no honours, no society—except with superior minds; in default of them, the simple people (one cannot dispense with them; to see them is to contemplate a sane and powerful vegetation); the dishes which are most easily prepared, and, if possible, prepared by oneself, and which do not bring us into contact with the greedy and lip-smacking rabble."
For Friedrich Nietzsche health was a fragile possession, and the more precious in that it must be incessantly conquered, lost, and reconquered. Every favourable day made him feel that surprise which constitutes the happiness of convalescents.
On jumping from his bed, he equipped himself, stuffed into his pouch a bundle of notes, a book, some fruit and bread; and then started out on the road. "As soon as the sun is risen," he wrote, "I go to a solitary rock near the waves and lie out on it beneath my umbrella, motionless as a lizard, with nothing before me but the sea and the pure sky." There he would remain for a long time, till the very last hours of the twilight. For these hours were kindly to those weak eyes of his, that were so often deprived of light and so often blinded by it—those menaced eyes, the least of whose joys was a delight.
"Here is the sea," he wrote, "here we may forget the town. Though its bells are still ringing the Angelus—that sad and foolish, yet sweet sound at the parting of day and night—only another minute! Now all is hushed! There lies the broad ocean, pale and glittering, but it cannot speak. The sky is glistening in its eternal mute[Pg 226] evening glory, in red, yellow, green hues; it cannot speak either. The small cliffs and crags, projecting into the sea—as though trying to find the most lonely spot—not any of them can speak. This eternal muteness which suddenly overcomes us is beautiful and awful; it makes the heart swell...."[4]
How often has he celebrated this hour, when, as he says, the humblest fisherman "rows with golden oars." Then he collected the fruits of the day; he wrote the thoughts which had come to him, clothed in the form and the music of their words. He continued the researches which he had begun at Venice. What is human energy? What is the drift of its desires? How are the disorders of its history, the quagmire of its manners, to be explained? He now knows the answer, and it is this, that the same cruel and ambitious force thrusts man against man, and the ascetic against himself. Nietzsche had to analyse and to define this force in order to direct it; this was the problem which he set himself, and he was confident that he would one day resolve it. Willingly he compared himself to the great navigators, to that Captain Cook who for three months navigated the coral-reefs, fathom-line in hand. In this year 1881, his hero was the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, who, when no land had yet appeared, recognised on the waves meadow grasses which had been carried into the open sea by some unknown river, the waters of which were milky and still free from salt.
"Whither do we wish to go?" he wrote. "Do we long to cross the sea? Whither does this powerful desire urge us which we value above all our other passions? Why this mad flight towards that place[Pg 227] where every sun has hitherto sunk and perished? Will they, perhaps, one day, relate of us that we also steered westward, hoping to reach an unknown India, but that it was our fate to suffer shipwreck on the Infinite? Or else, my brothers, or else?"
Nietzsche liked this lyrical page; he placed it at the end of his book as a final hymn. "What other book," he wrote, "concludes with an Or Else?"
By the end of January he had finished his work. But he was not able to re-copy his manuscript; his hand was too nervous, his eyesight too weak. He sent it on to Peter Gast. On the 13th of March the copy was ready, and Nietzsche announced it to the publisher.
"Here is the manuscript, from which I find it hard to part.... Now, hurry, hurry, hurry! I shall leave Genoa as soon as the book is out, and till then I shall live on cinders. Be quick, hurry up the printer! Can't he give you a written promise that by the end of April, at the latest, I shall have my book in hand, ready, complete?... My dear Herr Schmeitzner, let us all, for this once, do our best. The contents of my book are so important! It is a matter involving our honour that it be faulty in nothing, that it come into the world worthy and stainless. I conjure you, do that for me; no advertising. I could tell you a great deal more about it, but you will be able to understand it all by yourself when you have read my book."
The publisher read the manuscript, but understood it ill; he displayed no enthusiasm. In April, Nietzsche, still at Genoa, was still waiting for his proofs. He had hoped to surprise his friends by despatching an unexpected piece of work, and had said nothing to anyone, Peter Gast excepted. At last he renounced[Pg 228] the pleasure of having a secret. "Good news!" he wrote to his sister. "A new book, a big book, a decisive book! I cannot think of it without a lively emotion...." In May, he rejoined Peter Gast in a village of Venetia, Recoaro, at the foot of the Alps. His impatience grew every day. The delays of his publisher prevented him from clearing up the new thoughts which already pressed hard on him.
The Dawn of Day—this was the title which he finally selected—appeared at the most unfavourable time of the year, in July.
[1] Lit. torchlike.
[2] This is an evangelical reminiscence, thinks Peter Gast. Scriptural suggestions are frequent in the language and thought of Nietzsche.
[3] The Dawn of Day, cxiv. This book, published in June, 1881, gives very reliable autobiographical indications on the period here studied.
[4] The Dawn of Day, p. 301. This passage is taken from Miss Johanna Volz's translation. London: T. Fisher Unwin.