FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND RICHARD WAGNER--BAYREUTH
Bayreuth has had a strange destiny. This little German town, so
long obscure, scintillates in the eighteenth century, shines with
a somewhat flickering brilliance, but becomes celebrated at last
throughout all Europe. An intelligent Margravine--Frederick's sister,
the friend of Voltaire and of French elegance--lives there, beautifies
it, enlivens the barren country with castles, and lavishes on its
façades the singular volutes of the "rococo" style. The Margravine
dies and Bayreuth is again forgotten. A century passes and suddenly
its fame returns; the little town that the Margrave adorned becomes
the Jerusalem of a new art and a new religion. A strange destiny, but
a factitious one. It is a poet who has regulated the antitheses. The
history of Bayreuth ought to be included among Wagner's works.
He wished to set up his theatre in a quiet and secluded town. It suited
him, not to go to his audience, but rather to force his audience to
come to him. He chose, from many others, this town; the two Germanys
would be thus confronted, the one, that of the past, a slave to French
customs, mean and shabby; the other, that of the future, his own, an
emancipating and innovating Germany. The work was started without
delay. The master decided that the foundation-stone of his theatre
should be laid with pomp on the 22nd of May, 1872, the anniversary of
his birth.
"So we shall see one another again," wrote Nietzsche to his friend
Rohde. "Our meetings are ever becoming more grandiose, more historical,
are they not?"
They were present together at the ceremony, one of them coming from
Basle, the other from Hamburg. Two thousand people were assembled
in the little town. The weather was appalling. But the unceasing
rain, the threatening sky, made the ceremony still more imposing.
Wagnerian art is a serious thing and has no need of smiling heavens.
The faithful disciples, standing in the open air at the mercy of the
winds, saw the stone laid. In the hollow block Wagner deposited a piece
of poetry written by himself, and then threw the first spadeful of
plaster. In the evening he invited his friends to hear an execution
of the "Symphony" with chorus, the orchestration of which he had in
parts slightly strengthened. He personally conducted. Young Germany,
assembled in the Margrave's theatre, listened piously to this work in
which the nineteenth century declared its need, and when the final
chorus struck up--"Millions of men embrace each other"--it really
seemed, said a spectator, as if the sublime wish was about to be
realised.
"Ah! my friend," wrote Nietzsche, "through what days we have lived!
No one can rob us of these grave and sacred memories. We ought to go
forth into life inspired to battle on their behalf. Above all, we ought
to force ourselves to regulate all our acts, with as much gravity and
force as is possible, so as to prove that we are worthy of the unique
events at which we have assisted."
Nietzsche wanted to fight for Wagner, for he loved Wagner and he loved
battle. "To arms, to arms!" he writes to Rohde; "war is necessary to
me, _ich brauche den Krieg._" But he had already proved many a time,
what he now began sadly to understand, that his nature did not lend
itself to reticence and to the prudence necessary in such a contest, in
which public opinion was the stake. There was no instant but a word,
an attitude ran foul of his radical idealism. He felt the instinctive
constraint that he had already known at Triebschen. Wagner disturbed
him. He hardly recognised the grave and pure hero whom he had loved
so much. He saw another man, a powerful workman, brutal, vindictive,
jealous. Nietzsche had thought of making a tour in Italy, with a
relation of Mendelssohn's; he was obliged to give up this idea in order
to humour the master, who detested the race, even to the very name of
Mendelssohn.
"Why is Wagner so distrustful?" Nietzsche wrote in his diary; "it
excites distrust."
Wagner was as dictatorial as he was distrustful. The days had become
rare when he could converse at leisure with nobleness and freedom as he
had done at Triebschen. He spoke briefly, he commanded.
Nietzsche was still ready to go on a mission to Northern Germany to
speak, write, and found _Vereine,_ and to "thrust under the noses
of the German savants the things which their timid eyes failed to
perceive." Wagner would not accept this proposal; he wished Nietzsche
to publish his lectures on _The Future of our Educational Systems._
Nietzsche resisted a desire in which he thought he detected a certain
egotism.
"Our Herr Nietzsche only wants to do what he likes," exclaimed the
irritable Wagner.
His anger saddened and humiliated Nietzsche both on his own account
and on his master's. He thought, "Ill, weighed down with work, have
I no right to respect? Am I under any one's orders? Why is Wagner so
tyrannical?" We read in his diary, "Wagner has not the strength to
make those around him free and great. Wagner is not loyal; he is, on
the contrary, suspicious and haughty."
At the same time there appeared a pamphlet, _The Philology of the
Future, a reply to F. Nietzsche._ The author was Willamowitz, who had
been Nietzsche's comrade at the school of Pforta.
"DEAR FRIEND," he wrote to Gersdorff, who informed him of the pamphlet,
"Don't worry over me. I am ready. I will never entangle myself in
polemics. It is a pity it should be Willamowitz. Do you know that
he came last autumn to pay me a friendly visit? Why should it be
Willamowitz?"
Wagner, at whom the title itself of the pamphlet, _The Philology of
the Future,_ was aimed--it parodied his famous formula, _The Music of
the Future_--wrote a reply, and profited by the occasion to renew his
invitation to Friedrich Nietzsche.
"What must one think of our schools of culture?" he concludes. "It is
for you to tell us what German culture ought to be, so as to direct
the regenerated nation towards the most noble objects." Once again
Nietzsche was firm in his determination. He was by no means satisfied
with these lectures, being discontented with their form and uncertain
even of their thought. "I do not wish to publish anything as to which
my conscience is not as pure as that of the seraphim." He tried to
express his Wagnerian faith in another style.
"I should have so much pleasure," he wrote to Rohde, "in writing
something for the service of our cause, but I don't know what. All that
I advance is so wounding, such an irritant, and more likely to hurt
than to serve. Why should my poor book, naïve and enthusiastic as it
was, have been received so badly? Singular! Now, what shall we do, we
others?"
He began to write _Reden eines Hoffenden (Words of a Man of Hope),_
which he soon gave up.
* * * * *
Friedrich Nietzsche re-opened his Greek books, so invariably beautiful
and satisfying. He explained--before very few pupils, because the
evil fame of the _Gebürt_ withdrew young philologists from him--the
_Choephores of Æschylus_ and some passages of ante-Platonic philosophy.
Across a gulf of twenty-five centuries that clear radiance descended
upon him, scattering all doubts and shadows. Nietzsche often heard with
misgiving the fine words which it pleased his Wagnerian friends to use.
"Millions of men embrace each other," the chorus sang at Bayreuth in
the work of Wagner. It sang well, but, after all, men did not embrace
each other; and here Nietzsche suspected a certain extravagance, a
certain falsehood. Look at the ancient Greeks, those ambitious and evil
men. They do not embrace each other much, their hymns never speak of
embraces. They desire to excel, and are devoured by envy; their hymns
glorify these passions. Nietzsche liked their naïve energy, their
precise speech. He refreshed himself at this source and wrote a short
essay: _Homer's Wettkampf (The Homeric Joust)._ We find ourselves
driven at the very beginning far away from the Wagnerian mysticism.
"When you speak of _Humanity,_" he writes, "you imagine an order of
sentiment by which man distinguishes himself from nature, but such a
separation does not exist; these qualities called 'natural' and those
called 'human' grow together and are blended. Man in his noblest
aspirations is still branded by sinister nature.
"These formidable tendencies which seem inhuman are perhaps the
fruitful soil which supports all humanity, its agitations, its acts,
and its work.
"Thus it is that the Greeks, the most human of all men, remain cruel,
happy in destruction."
This rapid sketch was the occupation of a few days. Nietzsche undertook
a long work. He studied the texts of Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus,
Empedocles. He tried to approach those philosophers who were truly
worthy of the name which they themselves had invented, those masters of
life, scornful of argument and of books; citizens and at the same time
thinkers, and not _déracinés_ like those who followed them--Socrates
and his school of mockers, Plato and his school of dreamers,
philosophers of whom each one dares to bring a philosophy of his own,
that is to say, an individual point of view in the consideration of
things, in the deliberation of acts. Nietzsche, in a few days, filled a
copybook with notes.
All the same, he continued to be interested in the successes of his
glorious friend. In July _Tristan_ was played at Munich. He went, and
met many other disciples; Gersdorff, Fräulein von Meysenbug, whom he
had met at the May festivals of Bayreuth. She had preserved, despite
her fifty years, that tender charm that never left her, and the
physical grace of a frail and nervous body. Friedrich Nietzsche passed
some pleasant days in the company of his comrade and his new friend.
All three regretted them when they were gone, and at the moment of
departure expressed a hope of meeting each other soon again. Gersdorff
wished to return in August to hear _Tristan,_ and once more Nietzsche
promised to be there, but at the last moment Gersdorff was unable to be
present, and Nietzsche had not the courage to return alone to Munich.
"It is insupportable," he wrote to Fräulein von Meysenbug, "to find
yourself face to face with an art so serious and profound. In short, I
remain at Basle." Parmenides, on whom he was meditating, consoled him
for the loss of _Tristan._
Fräulein von Meysenbug kept Nietzsche advised of all news, whether
trivial or important, in connection with the Wagnerian campaign. The
master had just terminated _The Twilight of the Gods,_ the last of
the four dramas of the Tetralogy. He had at last finished his great
work. Fräulein von Meysenbug was informed in a note written to her by
Cosima Wagner. "In my heart I hear sung 'Praise be to God,'" wrote the
wife. "Praise be to God," repeated Fräulein von Meysenbug, and she
adds--these few words indicate the tone of the place and of the time:
"The disciples of the new spirit need new mysteries by which they may
solemnise together their instinctive knowledge. Wagner creates them
in his tragic works, and the world will not have recovered its beauty
until we have built for the new Dionysian myth a Temple worthy of
it." Fräulein von Meysenbug confided to Nietzsche the measures she
was taking to win Marguerite of Savoy, the Queen of Italy, to the
cause, and to make her accept the Presidency of a small circle of
noble patronesses. A few women of the highest aristocracy, friends
of Liszt's, initiated by him into the Wagnerian cult, composed this
sublime _Verein._
In all this there was an irritating atmosphere of snobbery and
excessive religiosity. Yet Fräulein von Meysenbug was an exquisite
woman with irreproachable intentions, pure with that purity which
purifies all that it touches: Nietzsche did not practise his criticism
on this friend's letters. He soon felt the fatigue of continuous work.
He lost his sleep and was obliged to rest. Travel had often lightened
his mind. He set out, at the end of summer, for Italy, and went as
far as Bergamo but no further. This country, which he was afterwards
to love so much, displeased him. "Here reigns the Apollonian cult,"
Fräulein von Meysenbug, who was staying at Florence, told him; "it
is good to bathe in." Nietzsche was very little of an Apollonian. He
perceived only voluptuousness, excessive sweetness, harmony of line.
His German tastes were disconcerted and he returned to the mountains,
where he became, as he wrote, "more audacious and more noble." There,
in a poor village inn at Splügen, he had a few days of happiness.
"Here, on the extreme border of Switzerland and Italy," he wrote in
August, 1872, to Gersdorff, "I am alone, and I am very well satisfied
with my choice. A rich and marvellous solitude, with the most
magnificent roads in the world, along which I go meditating for hours,
buried in my thoughts, and yet I never fall over a precipice. And
whenever I look around me there is something new and great to see. No
sign of life except when the diligence arrives and stops for relays.
I take my meals with the men, our one contact. They pass like the
Platonic shadows before my cave."
Until now Nietzsche had not cared much for high mountains; he preferred
the moderate valleys and woods of the Jura, which reminded him of
his native country, the hills of the Saale and Bohemia. At Splügen a
new joy was revealed to him; the joy of solitude and of meditation
in the mountain air. It was like a flash of lightning. He went down
to the plains and forgot; but six years later, with the knowledge of
his eternal loneliness on him, he found, sheltered in mean inns like
this one, once again the same lyrical élan that he had discovered in
October, 1872.
He soon left his sanctuary and returned without vexation to Basle,
whither his professional duties drew him. There he had made friendships
and established a way of life. He liked the town, and tolerated the
inhabitants. Basle had truly become his centre. "Overbeck and Romundt,
my companions of table and of thought," he writes to Rohde, "are the
best society in the world. With them I cease my lamentations and my
gnashing of teeth. Overbeck is the most serious, the most broad-minded
of philosophers, and the most simple and amiable of men. He has that
radical temper, failing which I can agree with no one."
His first impression on his return was trying. All his pupils left
him. He was not at a loss to understand the reason of this exodus;
the German philologists had declared him to be "a man scientifically
dead." They had condemned him personally, and put an interdict upon his
lectures. "The Holy Vehmgericht has done its duty well," he wrote to
Rohde. "Let us act as if nothing had happened. But I do not like the
little University to suffer on my account, it hurts me. We lose twenty
entries in the last half-year. I can hardly as much as give a course on
Greek and Latin rhetoric. I have two pupils, one is a Germanist, the
other a Jurist."
At last he received some comfort. Rohde had written in defence of
his book an article which no review would accept. Weary of refusal,
he touched up his work and published it under the form of a letter
addressed to Richard Wagner. Nietzsche thanked him. "Nobody dared to
print my name," he wrote to Rohde.
"... It was as if I had committed a crime, and now your book comes,
so ardent, so daring a witness to our fraternal combat! My friends
are delighted with it. They are never tired of praising you, for the
details and the whole; they think your polemics worthy of a Lessing.
... What pleases me most is the deep and threatening clamour of it,
like the sound of a waterfall. We must be brave, dear, dear friend. I
always have faith in progress, in our progress. I believe that we will
always go on increasing in loyal ambitions, and in strength. I believe
in the success of our advance towards ends more noble yet, and more
aspiring. Yes, we will reach them, and then as conquerors, who discover
goals yet further off, we shall push on, always brave! What does it
matter to us that they will be few, so few, those spectators whose eyes
can follow the path we are pursuing? What does it matter if we have for
spectators only those who have the necessary qualities for judging this
combat? All the crowns which my time might give me I sacrifice to that
unique spectator, Wagner. The ambition to satisfy him animates me more,
and more nobly, than any other influence. Because he is difficult and
he says everything, what pleases him and what displeases him; he is my
good conscience, to praise and to punish."
At the commencement of December, Nietzsche was lucky enough to find
his master again for a few hours, and to live with him in the intimate
way that reminded him of the days at Triebschen. Wagner, passing
through Strassburg, called to him; and he went at once. The meeting
was untroubled by any discord, a harmony now, no doubt, rare enough;
for Cosima Wagner, after having remarked this in one of her letters,
expressed the hope that such perfect hours would suffice to dissipate
all misunderstandings and to prevent their recrudescence.
* * * * *
Nietzsche worked a great deal during these last months of 1872. His
studies on the tragic philosophies of the Greeks were well advanced;
he left them over. Those wise men had restored his serenity, and he
profited by the help which they had given him to contemplate once more
the problems of his century. The problems--this is hardly a correct
expression, for he knew of only one. He questioned himself how a
culture should be founded, that is to say, a harmony of traditions, of
rules, of beliefs, by submission to which a man may become nobler.
Actual modern societies have for their end the production of certain
comforts; how should different societies be substituted which would
not only satisfy men, but benefit them? Let us know our wretchedness;
we are stripped of culture. Our thoughts and our acts are not ruled by
the authority of any style; the idea even of such an authority is lost
to us. We have perfected in an extraordinary manner the discipline of
knowledge, and we seem to have forgotten that others exist. We succeed
in describing the phenomena of life, in translating the Universe into
an abstract language, and we scarcely perceive that, in writing and
translating thus, we lose the reality of the Universe of Life. Science
exercises on us a "barbarising action," wrote Nietzsche. He analysed
this action.
"The essential point of all science has become merely accessory, or
else it is entirely absent.
"The study of languages--without the discipline of style and rhetoric.
"Indian studies--without philosophy.
"Classical antiquity--without a suspicion of how closely everything in
it is bound up with practical efforts.
"The sciences of nature--without that beneficent and serene atmosphere
which Goethe found in them.
"History--without enthusiasm.
"In short, all the sciences without their practical uses, that is to
say, studied otherwise than as really cultivated men would study them.
Science as a means of livelihood."
It is necessary, therefore, that the sense of beauty, of virtue, and of
strong and regulated passions should be restored. How can a philosopher
employ himself in this task? Alas! the experience of antiquity teaches
and discourages us. The philosopher is a hybrid being, half logician,
half artist, a poet, an apostle, who constructs his dreams and his
commandments in a logical manner. Men listen willingly enough to poets
and apostles, they do not listen to philosophers, they are not moved by
their analyses and their deductions. Consider that long line of genius,
the philosophers of tragic Greece. What did they realise? Their lives
were given in vain to their race. Empedocles alone moved the mob, but
he was as much a magician as philosopher; he invented myths and poems;
he was eloquent, he was magnificent; it was the legend, and not the
thought of Empedocles, that was effective. Pythagoras founded a sect,
a philosopher cannot hope for more: his labour grouped together a few
friends, a few disciples, who passed over the human masses like a
ripple on the ocean; not one of the great philosophers has swayed the
people, writes Nietzsche. Where they have failed, who will succeed? It
is impossible to found a popular culture on philosophy.
What is then the destiny of these singular souls? Is their force, which
is at times immense, lost? Will the philosopher always be a paradoxical
being, and useless to men? Friedrich Nietzsche was troubled; it was
the utility of his own life that he questioned. He would never be a
musician, that he knew at last; never a poet, he had ceased to hope
for it. He had not the faculty of conceiving the uniformities, of
animating a drama, of creating a soul. One evening he confessed this to
Overbeck with such sadness that his friend was moved. He was therefore
a philosopher, moreover, a very ignorant one, an amateur of philosophy,
an imperfect lyrical artist; and he questioned himself: Since I have
for weapons only my thoughts, the thoughts of a philosopher, what can
I do? He answered: I can help. Socrates did not create the truths that
error kept prisoners in the souls of his interlocutors, he only aspired
to the title of accoucheur. Such is the task of a philosopher. He is
an inefficient creator, but a very efficient critic. He is obliged
to analyse the forces which are operative around him, in science, in
religion, and in art; he is obliged to give the directions, to fix the
values and the limits. Such shall be my task. I will study the souls
of my contemporaries, and I shall have every authority to say to them:
Neither science nor religion can save you; seek refuge in art, the
power of modern times, and in the artist who is Richard Wagner. "The
philosopher of the future," he wrote, "he must be the supreme judge of
an æsthetic culture, a censor of every digression."
Nietzsche went to Naumburg for the Christmas holidays. Wagner sent
him word to ask him to stop at Bayreuth on his way home to Basle, but
he was hard pressed by work and perhaps a little ill, and no doubt
a secret instinct warned him that solitude would be best for the
meditation of the problems which he had to determine for himself.
He made his apologies. Besides, he had had for some weeks many
opportunities of proving his attachment. He had written an article (the
only one in all his work) in answer to an alienist who had undertaken
to prove that Wagner was mad. He had offered a sum of money to help in
the propaganda. This anonymous and distant manner was the only one that
suited him at the time. Even at Basle he tried to found a Wagnerian
Verein. He was therefore astounded when he discovered that the master
was displeased at his absence. Already in the past year an invitation,
also declined, had helped to provoke a mild lecture.
"It is Burckhardt who is keeping you at Basle," wrote Cosima Wagner.
Nietzsche wrote and remedied things, but the painful impression
remained.
"Everything is quieted," he told the friend who had informed him; "but
I cannot quite forget. Wagner knows that I am ill, absorbed in work,
and in need of a little liberty. I shall be, henceforth, whether I
wish it or no, more anxious than in the past. God knows how many times
I have wounded him. Each time I am astonished, and I never succeed in
precisely locating the point in which we have clashed."
This annoyance did not affect his thought; we can follow it to its
smallest shades of meaning, thanks to the notes published in the tenth
volume of his complete works. It is quite active and fecund. "I am the
adventurer of the spirit," he was to write. "I wander in my thought. I
go to the idea that calls me...."
He was never to wander so audaciously as in the first weeks of 1876.
He completed a finer and sober essay, _Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im
ausser moralischen Sinne (On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral
Sense.)_ (It is a pity that it is necessary to translate these
high-sounding expressions, and we render them word for word.) Nietzsche
always liked high-sounding words; he does not recoil here from using
the word "untruth," and essays for the first time a "reversal of
values." To the true he opposes the false and prefers it. He exalts the
imaginary worlds which poets add to the real world. "Dare to deceive
thyself and dream," Schiller had said; Friedrich Nietzsche repeats
this advice. It was the happy audacity of the Greeks; they intoxicated
themselves with their divine histories, their heroic myths, and this
intoxication set their souls on high adventures. The loyal Athenian,
persuaded that Pallas dwelt in his city, lived in a dream. More
clear-sighted, would he have been stronger; more passionate, braver?
Truth is good in proportion to the services which it assures, and
illusion is preferable if it performs its duty better. Why deify the
truth? It is the tendency of the moderns; _Pereat vita, fiat veritas!_
they say readily. Why this fanaticism? It is an inversion of the sane
law for men: _Pereat Veritas, fiat vita!_
Nietzsche wrote down these dogmatic formulas, but did not stop at them.
He went on writing. It was thus that he worked and advanced in his
researches. Let us not forget that these thoughts, firm though they
were in manner, were only indications, steps on the road. He would
give birth to other and perhaps contrary thoughts. Friedrich Nietzsche
had in him two instincts, opposed to each other; the one, that of the
philosopher, and the other, that of the artist; the one was bent on
truth, the other was ready to fabricate. He hesitated at the moment
when he had to sacrifice one or the other. The instinct for the true
protested within him. He did not abandon his formulas; he took them up
again, he essayed new definitions, he indicated the difficulties, the
hiatus. His thoughts had no disguise, and we can follow his researches.
Let us translate this significant disorder:
"_The philosopher of the tragic knowledge._ He binds the disordered
instinct of knowledge, but not by a new metaphysic. He does not
establish new beliefs. He sees with a tragic emotion that the ground
of metaphysics opens under him, and he knows that the many-coloured
whirlwind of science can never satisfy him. He builds for himself a new
life; to art he restores its rights.
"_The philosopher of the desperate knowledge_ abandons himself to blind
science: knowledge at any price.
"Even if metaphysics be only an anthropomorphic appearance, for the
tragic philosopher that achieves the _image of being._ He is not
sceptical. Here there is an idea to create; for scepticism is not the
end. The instinct of knowledge forced to its extreme limits turns
against itself to transform itself into a criticism of the faculty of
knowledge. Knowledge in the service of the best kind of life. One
should even _will illusion,_ therein lies the tragic."
What is then this philosopher of the desperate knowledge whose attitude
Nietzsche defines in two lines. Must he not love him, having found for
him already such a beautiful name? _There is an idea to create,_ writes
Nietzsche; what then is this idea? It seems that in many passages
Nietzsche is pleased to contemplate, without its veils, that terrible
reality, whose aspect alone, says the Hindu legend, means death.
"How," he writes, "do they dare talk of a destiny for the earth? In
infinite time and space there are no ends: _what is there, is eternally
there,_ whatever the forms. What can result from it for a metaphysical
world one does not see.
"Without support of this order humanity should stand firm; a terrible
task for the artist!
"The terrible consequences of Darwinism, in which, moreover, I believe.
We respect certain qualities which we hold as eternal, moral, artistic,
religious, &c, &c, &c. The spirit, a production of the brain, to
consider it as supernatural! To deify it, what folly!
"To speak of an unconscious end of humanity, to me, that is false.
Humanity is not a whole like an ant-hill. Perhaps one may speak of the
unconscious ends of an ant-hill--but of all the ant-hills of the world!
"Our duty is not to take shelter in metaphysics, but actively to
sacrifice ourselves to the _birth of culture._ Hence my severity
against misty idealism."
At that instant Nietzsche had almost reached the term of his thought,
but with great labour and consequent suffering. Headaches, pains in
the eyes and stomach, laid hold of him once more. The softest light
hurt him, he was obliged to give up reading. Nevertheless, his thought
never halted. He was again occupied with the philosophers of tragic
Greece; he listened to the words which come down to us diminished by
the centuries, but always firm. He heard the concert of the everlasting
responses--
_Thales._ Everything derives from a unique element. _Anaximander._ The
flux of things is their punishment. _Heraclitus._ A law governs the
flux and the institution of things.
_Parmenides._ The flux and the institution of things is illusion. The
One alone exists.
_Anaxagoras._ All qualities are eternal; there is no becoming.
_The Pythagoreans._ All qualities are quantities. _Empedocles._
All causes are magical. _Democritus._ All causes are mechanical.
_Socrates._ Nothing is constant except thought.
Friedrich Nietzsche is moved by these opposing voices, by these rhythms
of thought which accuse nature in their eternal collisions. "The
vicissitudes of the ideas and systems of man affect me more tragically
than the vicissitudes of real life," said Hölderlin. Nietzsche's
feeling was the same. He admired and envied those primitives who
discovered nature and who found the first answers. He threw aside the
devices of art, he confronted life as Œdipus confronted the Sphinx,
and under this very title _Œdipus_ he wrote a fragment to the
mysterious language of which we may open our ears.
_Œdipus._ I call myself the last philosopher because I am the last
man. I speak alone and I hear my voice sounding like that of a dying
man. With thee, dear voice, whose breath brings to me the last memories
of all human happiness, with thee let me speak yet a moment more:
thou wilt deceive my solitude; thou wilt give me back the illusion
of society and love, because my heart will not believe that love is
dead. It cannot endure the terror of the most solitary solitude, and
forces me to speak as if I were two. Is it thou that I hear, my voice?
Thou murmurest, and thou cursest? Yet--thy malediction should rend
the entrails of the world! Alas, in spite of everything it subsists,
more dazzling and colder than ever; it looks at me with its stars
pitilessly; it exists blind and deaf as before, and nothing dies but
man. And yet, you still speak to me, beloved voice! I die not alone in
this universe. I, the last man: the last plaint, your plaint, dies with
me. Misery, misery! pity me, the last man of misery, Œdipus!
It seems that Nietzsche, now at the extreme limits of his thought,
experiences a sudden need of rest. He wants to speak to his friends, to
feel himself surrounded by them and diverted. The Easter holidays in
1873 gave him a fortnight's release. He left for Bayreuth, where he was
not expected.
"I leave this evening," he writes to Fräulein von Meysenbug. "Guess
where I am going? You've guessed, and, height of bliss, I shall meet
the best of men, Rohde, to-morrow at half-past four. I shall be staying
with Wagner, and then see me quite happy! We shall speak much of you,
much of Gersdorff. He has copied my lectures, you say? It touches
me, and I will not forget it. What good friends I have! It is really
shameful.
"I hope to bring back from Bayreuth courage and gaiety, and to
strengthen myself in everything that is good. I dreamt last night
that I was having my _Gradus ad Parnassum_ carefully rebound. This
mixture of bookbinding and symbolism is comprehensible; moreover,
very insipid. But it is a truth! It is necessary from time to time to
rebind ourselves by frequenting men more valorous and stronger than
ourselves or else we lose a few of our pages, then a few more, still a
few more, until the last page is destroyed. And that our life should be
a _Gradus ad Parnassum,_ that also is a truth that we must often repeat
to ourselves. The future to which I shall attain if I take plenty of
trouble, if I have a little happiness and much time, is to become a
more sober writer, and from the first and ever better to pursue my
calling as a man of letters more soberly. From time to time I feel a
childish repugnance to printed paper, I think that I see soiled paper.
And I can very well picture a period when reading was not much liked,
writing even less so; but one far preferred to think a lot, and to act
still more. For everything to-day awaits that efficacious man, who,
condemning in himself and us our millenarian routines, will live better
and will give us his life to imitate."
Friedrich Nietzsche left for Bayreuth.
* * * * *
He there learnt a piece of unexpected news. Money was lacking. Of the
twelve hundred thousand francs needed, eight hundred thousand only had
been realised with great difficulty. The enterprise was compromised
and perhaps ruined. Everyone was losing heart. The master alone was
confident and calm. Since he had attained his manhood, he had desired
to possess a theatre. He knew that a constant will prevails over
chance, and a few months of crisis did not alarm him after forty years
of waiting. Capitalists from Berlin, Munich, Vienna, London, and
Chicago were making proposals to him which Richard Wagner invariably
refused to entertain. He wished his theatre to belong to himself alone,
and to be near him: "It is not a question of the success of the
affair," he said, "but of awakening the hidden forces of the German
soul." But his remarkable serenity failed to reassure his friends. A
panic was engendered at Bayreuth, and no one again dared to hope.
Friedrich Nietzsche looked on, listened, observed, and then fled to
Naumburg. "My despair was deep," he has written; "there was nothing
that did not seem criminal to me." He was rediscovering the world after
ten months of solitude, and finding it even more cowardly and more
miserable than he had ever judged it to be. There was worse to endure,
for he was discontented with himself. He recalled his last meditations.
"I call myself the last philosopher, because I am the last man." And
he questioned himself: Was he really "the last philosopher"? "the
last man"? Had he not flattered himself in assigning himself a rôle
so difficult and magnificent? Had he not been ungrateful, cowardly,
and vile, like the others, in abandoning the struggle at the decisive
moment to shut himself up in his solitude and his selfish dreams? Had
he not forgotten his master? He accused himself; remorse accentuated
his despair. "I should not think of myself," was his reproach--"Wagner
alone is a hero--Wagner, so great in misfortune, great as of old at
Triebschen. It is he whom we must serve. I must henceforth be vowed to
help him."
It had been his intention to publish a few chapters of his book on _The
Philosophers of Tragic Greece._ He abstained from this delight; put
away in a drawer--not without a pang--his almost finished manuscript.
He wished to "spit out lava," to insult Germany and treat her like a
brute, since, imbecile brute that she was, she would only yield to
brutality.
"I return from Bayreuth in such a state of persistent melancholy," he
wrote to Rohde, "that the only hope for me is holy wrath."
Friedrich Nietzsche looked for no joy in the work which he was about to
undertake. To attack is to recognise, to condescend, to lower oneself.
He would have preferred to have had no traffic with base humanity. But
here was Richard Wagner; was it to be borne that he should be tormented
and trammelled? that the Germans should sadden him as they saddened
Goethe, and break him, as they broke Schiller? To-morrow other men
of genius would be born: was it not necessary to fight from to-day
to assure them their liberty and the freedom of their lives? It is
impossible to ignore the masses that beset us. It is a bitter destiny,
but one that may not be eluded. It is the destiny of the best-born, and
above all of the best Germans, heroes begotten and misunderstood by a
race insensible to beauty.
Friedrich Nietzsche remembered what Goethe had said of Lessing: "Pity
this extraordinary man, pity him that he lived in such a pitiable
era, that he was forced to act ceaselessly by polemics." He applied
this to himself, but polemics seemed to be a duty to him, as in other
times they had been to Lessing. He looked round for an adversary. The
illustrious D. F. Strauss now represented official philosophy; he was
its heavy pontiff. Having renounced the critical researches, in which
he was a real master, he was affecting, in his old age, the attitude of
a thinker, and was elaborating his _Credo_ with sham elegances borrowed
from Voltaire and About.
"I simply propose," he wrote in _The Old Faith and the New_, "to say
how we live--how for long years past we have been wont to direct our
lives. By the side of our professions--for we belong to the most
diverse professions; we are not all artists or scholars, but also
officials, soldiers, artisans, or proprietors, and, I have already said
and I repeat it, our number is not small, we are many thousand, and
not of the worst, in every country--by the side of our professions, I
say, we try, as far as possible, to keep our minds open to the highest
interests of humanity; our hearts are exalted by these new destinies,
as unforeseen as they are magnificent, assigned by Fate to our country
which formerly endured so much. The better to understand these things,
we study history, to which easy access is opened to the first comer
by a number of both popular and attractive works. And then we try to
extend our knowledge of nature by the aid of manuals which are within
reach of everybody. Finally we find in reading our great poets, in
hearing our great musicians, stimulants for spirit and feeling, for the
imagination and the heart, stimulants which in truth leave nothing to
be desired. Thus we live, thus we march forward in happiness."
So the Philistines are happy and very rightly, thought Nietzsche: this
is the era of their power. Assuredly the species is not new. Even
Attica had its abettors of "banausia." But the Philistine formerly
lived under humiliating conditions. He was merely tolerated. He was
not talked of, nor did he talk. Then a more indulgent period arrived,
in which he was listened to, his follies flattered; he appeared droll.
This was enough: he became a fop, proud of his _prudhommerie._ To-day
he triumphs; it is impossible to hold him back. He becomes a fanatic,
and founds a religion: it is the new faith, of which Strauss is the
prophet. Friedrich Nietzsche would have assuredly approved of that
classification of the ages which Gustave Flaubert suggested about this
time: "_Paganisme, christianisme, muflisme_" (Paganism, Christianity,
Snout-ism). The Philistine dictates his tastes, and imposes his
mannerisms. A war breaks out: he reads his paper, the telegrams
interest him, and contribute to his happiness. Great men have suffered,
and have left us their works: the Philistine knows these works, and
appreciates them--they add to his well-being. Moreover, he appreciates
with discernment. The Pastoral Symphony ravishes him, but he condemns
the exaggerated uproar of the Symphony with chorus. David Friedrich
Strauss says it distinctly: and that clear mind of his is not to be
deceived.
Friedrich Nietzsche sought no further; he had found the man whom he
wished to destroy. In the first days of May he had all his notes in
hand, his work was ready. His strength suddenly gave out: his aching
head, his eyes that could not bear the light without pain, played
traitor to his desire to work; in a few days he was all but an invalid,
almost blind. Overbeck and Romundt did their best to help him. But
they had, both of them, other work; their time was measured by their
professional duties. A third friend came to give assistance to the
invalid. The Baron von Gersdorff, a man of leisure and a devoted
friend, was travelling in Italy. He had been Friedrich Nietzsche's
comrade at the college of Pforta, and since those already distant days
had scarcely seen him again, but his friendship had remained intact.
He hastened to Basle. He was a younger son of good family. His elder
brothers having died, one in 1866 in the Austrian campaign, the other
in 1871 in the French campaign, he had been obliged to sacrifice his
tastes, to renounce philosophy and learn farming so as to be able to
manage the family estate in North Germany. He was the only one of
Nietzsche's friends who was not a slave to paper and books. "He is a
fine type of the reserved and dignified gentleman, although extremely
simple in his manners," wrote Overbeck; "at bottom the best fellow
imaginable, and at the first glance you are left with the impression
of a man who is entirely trustworthy." A friend of Romundt's, Paul
Rée, also came to help or distract the invalid, who, thanks to so
many kindnesses, was able to resist his sufferings. Lying always in
semi-darkness, he dictated: the faithful Gersdorff wrote down what
he had to say, and by the end of June the manuscript was sent to the
publisher.
Friedrich Nietzsche's condition improved when he had finished his work.
He felt a great need of fresh air and of solitude. His sister, who
had come from Naumburg, took him to the mountains of the Grisons. His
headaches grew less severe, his eyesight became stronger. He rested
for a few weeks, correcting his proofs, rejoicing in his new-found
strength, but always haunted by his angers and his aspirations.
One day, while walking with his sister on the outskirts of Flimms, he
came on a little _château_ in a sequestered site. "What a beautiful
retreat," he said; "what a beautiful spot in which to establish our lay
convent." The _château_ was for sale. "Let us visit it," said the young
girl. They went in, and were delighted with everything: the garden,
the terrace from which a wide view stretched out before them, the big
hall with its chimney-piece of sculptured stone. The rooms were few,
but why should there be more? This would be given to Richard Wagner,
that to Cosima Wagner, this other would be at the disposal of friends
of passage, Fräulein von Meysenbug or Jacob Burckhardt. Gersdorff,
Deussen, Rohde, Overbeck, Romundt, would often reside there. "Here,"
declared Nietzsche, "we will build a covered walk, a sort of cloister.
Thus, in every kind of weather, we can walk as we talk. For we shall
talk much, we shall read but little, and write hardly at all."
He returned to his familiar dream once again, fraternal intercourse
between disciples and masters. Fräulein Nietzsche grew very excited.
"You will need a woman to keep house," she said. "It will be I." She
enquired about the price and wrote to the proprietor, but matters were
not arranged.
"I looked too young," wrote Fräulein Nietzsche, who tells the
anecdote, "and the gardener did not take us seriously." What are we to
think of this affair? It is hard to know. Was it only the chatter of a
young girl to which Friedrich Nietzsche had hearkened for an instant?
Or was it, on the contrary, a serious notion? Probably the latter. His
spirit, hospitable to chimeras, ill knew what the world admits and what
it does not admit. He came back to Basle. His pamphlet had provoked a
good deal of discussion. "I read it, and re-read it," wrote Wagner,
"and I swear to the great gods that I hold you to be the only one who
knows what I want." "Your pamphlet is a thunderbolt," wrote Hans von
Bülow. "A modern Voltaire ought to write: _écr.... l'inf...._ This
international æsthetic is for us a far more odious adversary than red
or black bandits."
Other good judges, elderly men in many cases, approved of the young
polemist; Ewald (of Gottingen), Bruno Bauer, Karl Hildebrandt, "_dieses
letzten humanen Deutschen,"_ said Nietzsche--"this last of the human
Germans"--declared for him. "This little book," wrote the critic,
"may mark a return of the German spirit towards serious thought and
intellectual passion."
But these friendly voices were few.
"The German Empire," he had written, "is extirpating the German
spirit." He had wounded the pride of a conquering people. In return,
he suffered many an insult, many an accusation of scurviness and
treachery. He rejoiced over it. "I enter society with a duel," he
said; "Stendhal gave that advice." Complete Stendhalian that he
was (or at least he flattered himself that he was), Nietzsche was,
notwithstanding, accessible to pity. David Strauss died but a few weeks
after the publication of the pamphlet, and Nietzsche, imagining that
his work had killed the old man, was sorely grieved. His sister and his
friends tried in vain to reassure him; he did not wish to abandon a
remorse which was, moreover, so glorious.
Stimulated by this first conflict, he dreamt of vaster conflicts. With
extraordinary rapidity of conception he prepared a series of treatises
which he wished to publish under a general title: _Unzeitgemässe
Betrachtungen_ ("Thoughts Out of Season"). D. F. Strauss had furnished
the subject of the first of the series. The second was to be entitled
_The Use and Abuse of History._ Twenty others were to follow. His
friends, ever the associates of his dreams, would contribute, he
thought, to the work.
Franz Overbeck had just published a little book entitled _The
Christianity of our Modern Theology._ He attacked the German savants
and their too modernist tendencies, which attenuated Christianity,
and allowed the irrevocable and serious doctrine, which was that of
the early Christians, to fall into oblivion. Nietzsche had Overbeck's
_Christlichkeit_ and his _D. F. Strauss_ bound together. On the outside
page he wrote six lines of verse.
"Two twins of the same house enter joyfully into the world--to devour
the dragons of the world. Two fathers, one work. Oh, miracle! The
mother of these twins is called Friendship."[1]
Friedrich Nietzsche hoped for a series of similar volumes, the work of
many hands but inspired by one spirit.
"With a hundred men bred up to the conflict of modern ideas, inured
to heroism," he then wrote, "all our noisy and lazy culture would be
reduced to eternal silence. A hundred men of that stamp carried the
civilisation of the Renaissance on their shoulders." A double hope and
a vain one: his friends failed him, and he himself did not write his
twenty pamphlets. Only their titles, and a few pages of rough outline,
are left to us. On _The State, The City, The Social Crisis, Military
Culture,_ on _Religion,_ what had he to tell us? Let us moderate our
regrets; little perhaps; little, at all events, that could be called
precious, as distinct from his desires and his complaints.
He was also busy with another work, and announced it to Gersdorff in
mysterious terms: "Let it be enough for you to know that a danger, a
terrible and unexpected one, menaces Bayreuth, and that the task of
digging the countermine has fallen to me." In fact, Richard Wagner had
begged him to write a supreme appeal to the Germans, and he applied
himself to the task of drawing it up with all the gravity, all the
profundity, all the solemnity of which he was capable. He demanded
Erwin Rohde's assistance and advice. "Can I count on it that you will
send me soon," he wrote, "a fragment drawn up in the Napoleonic style?"
Erwin Rohde, a prudent man, declined. "One would have to be polite," he
said, "when the only true thing for the rabble is insult." Friedrich
Nietzsche did not embarrass himself with politeness.
At the end of October the presidents of the Wagner Vereine, assembled
united at Bayreuth, invited Friedrich Nietzsche to read his manifesto,
_A Summons[2] to the Germans._
"We wish to be listened to, for we speak in order to give a warning;
and he who warns, whoever he be, whatever he says, always has the right
to be heard.... We lift our voices because you are in danger, and
because, seeing you so mute, so indifferent, so callous, we fear for
you.... We speak to you in all sincerity of heart, and we seek and
desire our good only because it is also yours: the salvation and the
honour of the German spirit, and of the German name...."
The manifesto was developed in the same menacing and rather emphatic
tone, and the reading was received in an embarrassing silence. There
was no murmur of approval, no look of encouragement for the writer.
He was silent. At last some voices made themselves heard. "It is too
serious; it is not politic enough, there must be changes, a great many
changes." Some opined, "It is a monk's sermon." He did not wish to
argue, and withdrew his draft of a summons. Wagner alone had supported
him with a great deal of energy. "Wait," said he; "in a little time,
a very little time, they will be obliged to return to your challenge,
they will all conform to it."
Nietzsche remained very few days at Bayreuth. The situation, which had
been serious at Easter, was now desperate. The public, who for some
months had gibed at the great enterprise, now forgot all about it. A
formidable indifference stood in the way of the propagandists, and
every day it seemed more difficult to collect the necessary money. All
idea of a commercial loan, of a lottery, had been set aside. An appeal
written in haste to replace that of Nietzsche was spread all over
Germany; ten thousand copies were printed, an infinitesimal number were
sold. A letter was addressed to the directors of one hundred German
theatres. Each was asked to give as a subscription to Bayreuth its
receipts at a single benefit performance. Three refused, the others did
not reply.
Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. He succeeded, with the aid of
Gersdorff, in drawing up his second "Thoughts Out of Season," _The
Use and Abuse of History._ But he wrote few letters, few notes, he
formed no new project, and for the moment almost entirely escapes from
our study. The double hope of his youth, that he might assist at the
triumph of Wagner, and have a share in achieving this triumph, was
ruined. His help had been refused. He had been told: "Your text is too
grave, too solemn." And he asks himself, What does this mean? Is not
the art of Wagner a matter of supreme gravity and solemnity? He is
unhappy, humiliated, wounded in his _amour propre_ and in his dreams.
During these last weeks of 1873 he lived like an earthworm in his room
at Basle.
He went to spend the New Year holidays at Naumburg. There, alone with
his own people, he picked up some strength. He had always liked the
repose of anniversaries, which was so favourable to reflection, and, as
a young man, never allowed the feast of Saint Sylvester to pass without
putting on paper a meditation on his life, his memories, and his views
of the future. On December 31, 1873, he wrote to Erwin Rohde; the tone
of his letter recalls his former habit.
"The _Letters of an Heretical Æsthete,_ by Karl Hildebrandt, have given
me inordinate pleasure," he wrote. "What a refreshment! Read, admire,
he is one of ours, he is of the society of those who hope. May it
prosper in the New Year, this society, may we remain good comrades! Ah!
dear friend, one has no choice, one must be either of those who hope,
or of those who despair. Once and for all I have decided on hope. Let
us remain faithful and helpful to one another in this year 1874 and
until the end of our days.
"Yours,
"FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
"NAUMBURG, _Saint Sylvester's,_ 1873-74."
The first days of January came, and Friedrich Nietzsche applied himself
to work once more. Since the strange misadventure at Bayreuth (no doubt
the irritation of an author, whose aid has been rejected, accounts for
these unforeseen changes), he has been tormented by anxieties and by
doubts; he wished to clear them up. In two lines, which are like an
introduction to his thoughts of the time, he brings the Wagnerian art
into history. "Every thought that is great," he writes, "is dangerous,
and dangerous, above all, in its newness. The impression is that of an
isolated phenomenon which justifies itself by itself." Then, having
posited this general principle, he approached the definitive questions:
"What kind of man is Wagner? What does his art signify?"
It was a catastrophe in fairyland. The modern Æschylus, the modern
Pindar vanished; the beautiful metaphysical and religious decorations
fell in, and the art of Wagner appeared as it really was--an art,
the late, magnificent, and often sickly flower of a humanity fifteen
centuries old.
"Let us really ask ourselves," wrote Nietzsche in his notes, of which
his friends did not know--"Let us really ask ourselves what is the
value of the time which adopts the art of Wagner as its art? It is
radically anarchical, a breathless thing, impious, greedy, shapeless,
uncertain of its groundwork, quick to despair--it has no simplicity,
it is self-conscious to the marrow, it lacks nobility, it is violent,
cowardly. This art unites pell mell in one mass all that still attracts
our modern German souls; aspects, ways of feeling, all comes pell
mell. A monstrous attempt of art to affirm and dominate itself in an
anti-artistic period. It is a poison against a poison."
The demi-god was gone, and in his place was a stage-player. Nietzsche
recognised despairingly that he had allowed himself to be captured
by the gambols of a giant. He had loved with simplicity and with the
ardour of his youth, and had been deceived. There was jealousy in his
anger, and a little of that hatred which is never far from love. His
heart, his thought, of which he was so proud, he had given to a man:
this man had trifled with these sacred gifts.
We may pass over these personal sorrows; others, even more profound,
humiliated Friedrich Nietzsche. He was humiliated because he had
betrayed Truth. He had desired to live for her; he now perceived that
for four years he had lived for Wagner. He had dared to repeat after
Voltaire, "It is necessary to tell the truth and sacrifice oneself;"
he now saw that he had neglected her, that perhaps he had shunned
her, in seeking consolation from the beauties of Wagner's art. "If
you seek for ease, believe," he had written some years before to his
young sister: "if you desire the truth, search"; and the duty which he
had indicated to this child he had himself failed to observe. He had
suffered himself to be seduced by images, by harmonies, by the magic of
words; he had fed on lies.
His fault was graver yet, for he had consented to this abasement. The
universe is evil, he had written in _The Origin of Tragedy_--cruel
like a dissonance of notes, and the soul of man, dissonant like the
universe, suffering from itself, would detach itself from life if it
did not invent some illusion, some myth which deceives but appeases it
and procures it a refuge of beauty. In truth, if we thus draw back,
if we create our consolations for ourselves, whither will we not let
ourselves be led? One hearkens to one's weakness; there is no cowardice
that is not thus authorised. To accept is to deliver oneself over to
the illusionist. Is it a noble or a vile illusion? How can we know if
we are deceived, if we ask to be deceived? Nietzsche felt his memories
degraded, and his hopes discouraged by the bitterness of remorse.
The _Use and Abuse of History_ appeared in February. It is a pamphlet
directed against that science, history, the invention and pride of
the moderns; it is a criticism of the faculty, recently acquired by
men, by which they reanimate within themselves the sentiments of past
centuries, at the risk of lessening the integrity of their instincts
and perplexing their rectitude. A brief indication gives the spirit of
the book.
"The man of the future: eccentric, energetic, hot-blooded,
indefatigable, an artist, and an enemy of books. I should desire to
hunt from my ideal State the self-styled 'cultivated' men, as Plato did
the poets: it would be my terrorism."
Thus Nietzsche affronted the ten thousand "Herr Professors" to whom
history is their daily bread and who guide the public. He was punished
by their hatred and their silence. No one spoke of his book. His
friends tried to find him some readers. Overbeck wrote to his student
friend, Treischke, the political writer, the Prussian historiographer.
"I am sure," he said to him, "that you will discern in these
contemplations of Nietzsche's the most profound, the most serious, the
most instinctive devotion to German greatness." Treischke refused his
assent; Overbeck wrote again. "It is Nietzsche, my suffering friend, of
whom I will and above all must talk to you." Treischke showed temper
in his reply and the dispute became bitter. "Your Basle," he wrote,
"is a boudoir, from which German culture is insulted!" "If you saw the
three of us, Nietzsche, Romundt, and myself," said Overbeck, "you would
see three good companions. Our difference strikes me as a painful
symbol. It is so frequent an accident, so unfortunate a feature in our
German history, this misunderstanding between political men and men
of culture." "How unlucky for you," retorted Treischke, "that you met
this Nietzsche, this madman, who tells us so much about his inactual
thoughts, and who has nevertheless been bitten to the marrow by the
most actual of all vices, the _folie des grandeurs._"
Overbeck, Gersdorff and Rohde wretchedly watched the failure of this
book which they admired. "It is another thunderbolt," wrote Rohde;
"it will have no more effect than fireworks in a cellar. But one day
people will recognise it and will admire the courage and precision
with which he has put his finger on our worst wound. How strong he
is, our friend." And Overbeck: "The sensation of isolation that our
friend experiences is growing in a painful manner. Ever and ever to sap
the branch of the tree on which one supports oneself cannot be done
without grievous consequences." And Gersdorff: "The best thing for
our friend would be for him to imitate the Pythagoreans: five years
without reading or writing. When I am free, which will be in two or
three years, I shall return to my property: that asylum will be at his
disposal."
These men, with their touching solicitude concerning their friend's
lot, did not suspect either the true cause or the intensity of his
distress. They pitied his solitude, they did not know how profound
it was, or how lonely he was even with them. What mattered to him
the failure of a book from which he was separated by a revolution of
thought? "As to my book," he wrote to Rohde, "I can hardly think that I
wrote it." He had discovered his error and his fault. Hence his sorrow,
hence the agony which he dared not confess. "At the present moment," he
announced to Gersdorff, "many things ferment within me, many extreme
and daring things. I do not know in what measure I may communicate
them to my best friends, but in any case I cannot write them." One
evening, however, passion carried him away. He was alone with Overbeck;
the conversation happened to turn on _Lohengrin,_ and, with a sudden
fury, Nietzsche pulled to pieces this false and romantic work. Overbeck
listened to him in amazement. Nietzsche became silent, and from that
moment was more careful to practise the pretence which shamed him and
disgusted him with himself.
"Dear, true friend," he wrote to Gersdorff in April, 1874 "if only
you could have a far lower opinion of me! I am almost sure you will
lose those illusions that you have about me, and I would wish to be
the first to open your eyes, by explaining fully and conscientiously
that I _deserve nothing._ If you could understand how radically I am
discouraged, and from what melancholy I suffer on my own account. I
do not know if I shall ever be capable of production. Henceforward I
seek only a little liberty, a little of the real atmosphere of life,
and I am arming myself against the numerous, the unspeakably numerous,
revolting slaveries that encompass me. Shall I ever succeed? Doubt upon
doubt. The aim is too distant, and if I ever succeed in reaching it,
then I shall have consumed the better part of myself in long and trying
struggles. I shall be free and languishing like an ephemeron at dusk. I
express my lively fear! It is a misfortune to be so conscious of one's
struggles, so clairvoyant...."
This letter was written on the 1st April On the 4th of April he sent
Fräulein von Meysenbug a letter which was quite melancholy and yet less
hopeless.
"Dear Fräulein, what pleasure you give, and how deeply you touch me!
This is the first time that I have had flowers sent to me, but I know
now that these numberless living colours, voiceless though they be, can
speak plainly to us. These heralds of spring are blooming in my room,
and I have been able to enjoy them for more than a week. It needs must
be that, in our grey and painful lives, these flowers should come and
lay bare to us a mystery of nature. They prevent our forgetting that
it always is, and always must be, possible for us to find, somewhere
in the world, life and hope and light and colour. How often do we lose
this faith! And how beautiful and happy a thing it is when those who
are battling confirm themselves and one another in courage, and by
sending those symbols of flowers or books, recall their common pledge.
"My health (forgive a word on this subject) has been satisfactory
since the new year, save that I have to be careful of my sight.
But, as you know, there are states of physical suffering that are
almost a blessing, for they produce forgetfulness of what one suffers
_elsewhere._ Rather one tells oneself that there are remedies for the
soul, as there are for the body. That is my philosophy of illness, and
it gives hope for the soul. And is it not a work of art, still to hope?