CRISIS AND CONVALESCENCE
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 Köselitz, 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 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 Fräulein 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."
Fräulein 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 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 Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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 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,
Fräulein 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 Fräulein
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
Fräulein 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 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 Fräulein
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 Fräulein
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 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. Fräulein
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.
Fräulein 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. 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 Fräulein von Meysenbug, "is
Mazzini."
Could Fräulein 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.
Fräulein 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 without plucking a thought." Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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 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. Fräulein 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."
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 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 Æschylus, that same
Socrates whom he had at other times denounced. No doubt it is only a
pretence, and he 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, 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 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 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 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 manœuvre; 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."
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 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 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 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 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."
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.
"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
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 Fräulein 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 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 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 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 naïve 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 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."
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 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:
"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 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 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 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.