CHAPTER VI

THE LABOUR OF ZARATHUSTRA

I

_The Conception of the Eternal Return_

Friedrich Nietzsche regarded _The Dawn of Day_ as the exercise of a

convalescent who amuses himself with desires and ideas, and finds in

each a malicious or a delightful pleasure. It had been a game which

must have an end. I must now choose from among these half-perceived

ideas, he thought, I must lay hold of one, express it in its full

force, and close my years of retreat and hesitation. "In times of

peace," he had written, "the man of warlike instinct turns against

himself." Hardly done with his combats, he sought a new occasion for

battle.

He had remained, up to mid-July, in Venetia, on the lower slopes of

the Italian Alps. He had to seek a cooler refuge. He had not forgotten

those high Alpine valleys which had given him, two years earlier, in

his ill-health a respite and a rapid joy. He went up towards them and

installed himself in a rustic fashion in the Engadine, at Sils-Maria.

He had, for one franc a day, a room in a peasant house; a neighbouring

inn furnished him with his meals. Passers by were rare, and Nietzsche,

when he found himself in talkative humour, used to visit the curé

or the schoolmaster. These good people always remembered this very

singular German professor who was so learned, so modest, and so good.

He was then reflecting on the problems of naturalistic philosophy.

Spencer's system had just come into vogue. Friedrich Nietzsche despised

this cosmogony which affected to supplant Christianity and yet remained

in submission to it. Spencer ignored Providence, yet believed in

progress. He preached the reality of a concert between the movements

of things and the aspirations of humanity. He preserved the Christian

harmonies in a God-less universe. Friedrich Nietzsche had been a pupil

at more virile schools; he heard Empedocles, Heraclitus, Spinoza,

Goethe, thinkers who with a calm regard could study Nature without

seeking in her some assent to their longings. He remained obedient to

these masters, and he felt growing and ripening in him a great and a

new idea.

We can divine from his letters the emotion with which he was seized. He

needed to be alone, and energetically defended his solitude. Paul Rée,

who admired _The Dawn,_ wished to go to him and tell him so. Friedrich

Nietzsche learnt this and was in despair.

"MY GOOD LISBETH," he wrote to his sister, "I cannot make up my mind

to telegraph to Rée not to come. Nevertheless, I must consider him an

enemy who comes to interrupt my summer's work, my work in the Engadine,

that is to say my duty itself, my 'one thing necessary.' A man here, in

the middle of all these thoughts which gush out from all sides within

me--it would be a terrible thing; and if I cannot defend my solitude

better, I leave Europe for many years, I swear it! I have no more time

to lose."

Fräulein Nietzsche forewarned Paul Rée, who abandoned his project.

At length he found it, the idea, the presentiment of which had agitated

him with such violence. One day, when he was going across the wood

of Sils-Maria as far as Silvaplana, he sat down not far from Surlei

at the foot of a pyramidal rock; at this moment and in this place

he conceived the Eternal Return. He thought: Time, whose duration

is infinite, must bring back, from period to period, an identical

disposition of things. This is necessary; therefore it is necessary

that all things return. In a number of days that is unforeseeable,

immense, yet limited, a man like to me in everything, myself in fact,

seated in the shade of this rock, will again find in this very place

this very idea. And this very idea will be rediscovered by this man not

once only, but an infinite number of times, for this movement which

brings things back is infinite. Therefore we must throw all hope aside

and think resolutely: no celestial world will receive men, no better

future will console them. We are the shadows of a blind and monotonous

nature, the prisoners of every moment. But beware! this redoubtable

idea which forbids hope ennobles and exalts every minute of our lives;

the moment is no longer a passing thing, if it come back eternally;

the least thing is an eternal monument endowed with infinite value,

and, if the word "divine" has any sense, divine. "Let everything return

ceaselessly," he wrote, "it is the extreme _rapprochement_ of a world

of becoming with a world of being: summit of meditation."[1]

The emotion of the discovery was so strong that he wept, and remained

for a long time bathed in tears. So his effort had not been in vain.

Without weakening before reality, without withdrawing from pessimism,

but, on the contrary, leading the pessimistic idea to its final

consequences, Nietzsche had discovered this doctrine of the Return,

which, by conferring eternity on the most fugitive things, restores

in each of them the lyrical power, the religious value necessary to

the soul. In a few lines he formulated the idea, and dated it: "the

beginning of August, 1881, at Sils-Maria, 6,500 feet above the sea and

far more than that above all human things!"

He lived for some weeks in a condition of rapture and of anguish: no

doubt the mystics knew similar emotions, and their vocabulary suits his

case. He experienced a divine pride; but simultaneously recoiled in

fear and trembling, like those prophets of Israel before God receiving

from Him the function of their mission. The unhappy man, who had been

so wounded by life, faced with an indescribable horror the perpetuity

of the Return. It was an insupportable expectation, a torment; but he

loved this torment, and he forced this idea of the Eternal Return on

himself as an ascetic does martyrdom. "Lux mea crux," he wrote in his

notes, "crux mea lux! Light my cross, cross my light!" His agitation,

which time did not appease, became extreme. He grew alarmed, for he was

not unaware of the danger which lay over his life.

"On my horizon thoughts rise, and what thoughts!" he wrote to Peter

Gast on the 14th of August. "I did not suspect anything of this kind.

I say no more of it, I wish to maintain a resolute calm. Alas, my

friend, presentiments sometimes cross my mind. It seems to me that I

am leading a very dangerous life, for my machine is one of those which

may GO SMASH! The intensity of my sentiments makes me shudder and laugh

--twice already I have had to stay in my room, and for a ridiculous

reason; my eyes were inflamed, why? Because while I walked I had cried

too much; not sentimental tears, but tears of joy; and I sang and

said idiotic things, being full of a new idea which I must proffer to

men...."

Then he conceived a new task. All that he had hitherto done was but

an awkward experiment or research; the time was come when he should

erect the structure of his work. Of what work? He hesitated: his gifts

as an artist, as a critic, as a philosopher, seduced him in various

directions. Should he put his doctrine in the form of a system? No, it

was a symbol and must be surrounded with poetry and rhythm. Could he

not renew that forgotten form which was created by the thinkers of the

most ancient Greece? Lucretius had handed down the model. Friedrich

Nietzsche welcomed this idea; it would please him to translate his

conception of nature into poetic language, into musical and measured

prose. He sought, and his desire for a rhythmical language, for a

living and, as it were, palpable form, suggested a new thought to him:

could he not introduce at the centre of his work a human and prophetic

figure, a hero? A name occurred to him; Zarathustra, the Persian

apostle, the mystagogue of fire. A title, a subtitle, four lines

rapidly written, announced the poem:

MIDDAY AND ETERNITY

_Sign of a New Life_

"Zarathustra, born on the borders of Lake Urumiyah, left his country

when thirty years old, went towards the province of Aria, and in ten

years of solitude composed the Zend-Avesta."

Henceforward his walks and meditations were no longer solitary.

Friedrich Nietzsche never ceased to hear and gather the words of

Zarathustra. In three distiches of a soft and almost tender seduction

he tells how this companion entered into his life:

_Sils-Maria_

I sat there waiting--waiting for nothing, Enjoying, beyond good and

evil, now The light, now the shade; there was only The day, the lake,

the noon, time without end. Then, my friend, suddenly one became

two--And Zarathustra passed by me.

In September the weather suddenly became cold and snowy. Friedrich

Nietzsche had to leave the Engadine.

* * * * *

The intemperate weather had tried him; he lost his exaltation, and a

long period of depression set in. He constantly thought of the Eternal

Return, but now, having lost courage, he only felt a horror of it. "I

have lived again through the days at Basle," he wrote to Peter Gast.

"Over my shoulder death looks at me." His complaints are brief; a word

is enough to let us divine the abysses. Thrice, during these weeks of

September and October, he was tempted to suicide. "Whence came this

temptation? It was not that he wished to avoid suffering; he was brave.

Did he then wish to prevent the ruin of his intellect? This second

hypothesis is perhaps the true one.

He stopped at Genoa. The damp winds and the lowering skies of the

capricious autumn continued to try him. He bore impatiently with the

absence of light. A melancholy of another kind complicated his trouble:

_The Dawn of Day_ had had no success. The critics had ignored the work,

his friends had read it with difficulty; Jacob Burckhardt had expressed

a polite but prudent judgment. "Certain parts of your book," he wrote,

"I read like an old man, with a feeling of vertigo." Erwin Rohde, the

dearest, the most esteemed, had not acknowledged the receipt of the

book. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to him from Genoa on October 21st:

"DEAR OLD FRIEND,--No doubt some embarrassment delays you. I pray you,

in all sincerity, not to write! There will be no change in our mutual

sentiments; I cannot bear to think that in sending a book to a friend I

exercise upon him a sort of pressure. What matters a book! What I have

still to do matters more--or why should I live? The moment is bitter, I

suffer much. Cordially your "F. N."

Erwin Rohde did not answer even this letter. How explain the want of

success of _The Dawn?_ Doubtless it is a very old story, the constant,

the universal, the irremediable misadventure of the unrecognised

genius because he is a genius, a novelty, a surprise, and a scandal.

Nevertheless we may, perhaps, grasp some definite reasons. Nietzsche,

since he had withdrawn from the Wagnerian circle, had no more friends;

and a group of friends is the most indispensable intermediary between

a great mind which is trying its skill and the mass of the public. He

is alone before unknown readers, who are disconcerted by his incessant

variations. He hopes that the lively form of his work will capture

and conquer them. But even the form is unfavourable. No book has so

difficult an address as a collection of aphorisms and brief thoughts.

The reader must give all his attention to every page and decipher an

enigma; lassitude comes quickly. Besides, it is probable that a German

public, with little feeling for the art of prose, unskilful in grasping

its features, accustomed to slow and sustained effort, was ill-prepared

to understand this unforeseen work.

November was fine; Friedrich Nietzsche recovered his spirits. "I lift

myself above my disasters," he wrote He wandered over the mountains of

the Genoese coast, he returned to the rocks on which had come to him

the prose of _The Dawn. _ Such was the mildness of the weather that he

could bathe in the sea. "I feel so rich, so proud," he wrote to Peter

Gast, "altogether _'principe Doria._ I miss only you, dear friend, you

and your music!"

Since the representations of the _Nibelungen_ at Bayreuth--that is,

for five years--Friedrich Nietzsche had deprived himself of music.

_Cave musicam!_ he wrote. He feared that if he abandoned himself to

the delight in sound he would be recaptured by the magic of Wagnerian

art. But he was finally delivered from these fears. His friend Peter

Gast had played him, in June, at Recoaro, songs and choruses which he

had amused himself in composing on the epigrams of Goethe. Paul Rée

had said one day, "No modern musician would be capable of putting to

music such slight verses." Peter Gast had taken up the challenge and

won, thought Nietzsche, who was ravished by the vivacity of the rhythm.

"Persevere," he advised his friend; "work against Wagner the musician,

as I work against Wagner the philosopher. Let us try, Rée, you and

I, to free Germany. If you succeed in finding a music suited to the

universe of Goethe (it does not exist), you will have done a great

thing." This thought reappears in each of his letters. His friend is

at Venice, he is at Genoa, and he hopes that this winter Italy will

inspire in them both, the two uprooted Germans, a new metaphysic and a

new music.

He took advantage of his improved health to go to the theatre.

He listened to the _Semiramis_ of Rossini, and four times to the

_Juliette_ of Bellini. One evening he was curious to hear a French

work, the author being unknown to him:

"Hurrah! dear friend," he wrote to Peter Gast, "another happy

discovery, an opera of Georges Bizet (who is he, then?), _Carmen._ It

is like a story of Mérimée's, clever, powerful, sometimes touching. A

true French talent which Wagner has not misguided, a frank disciple

of Berlioz.... I almost think that _Carmen_ is the best opera which

exists. As long as we live it will remain in all the repertoires of

Europe."

The discovery of _Carmen_ was the event of his winter. Many times he

spoke of it, many times he returned to it; when he heard this frank and

impassioned music, he felt better armed against the romantic seductions

which were always powerful in his soul. "_Carmen_ delivers me," he was

to write.

* * * * *

Friedrich Nietzsche again found the happiness which he had enjoyed

in the preceding year; a like happiness, but sustained by a graver

kind of emotion: the full midday of his thought rose after the dawn.

Towards the end of December he passed a crisis and surmounted it. A

sort of poem in prose commemorated this crisis. We will translate it

here. It is the consequence of his meditations, of those examinations

of conscience which he used to write down, as a young man, each Saint

Sylvester's Day:

"_For the New Year._--I still live, I still think: I must still live,

for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ This is

the day upon which every one is permitted to express his desire and

his dearest thought: I, too, shall then express the inner wish which I

form to-day, and say what thought I take to heart, this year, before

all other--what thought I have chosen as the reason, guarantee, and

sweetness of my life to come! I wish to try each day to see in all

things necessity as a beauty--thus shall I be one of those who make

things beautiful. _Amor fati,_ let that be henceforward my love! I

do not wish to go to battle against the hideous. I do not wish to

accuse, I do not even wish to accuse the accusers. _To avert my

gaze,_ let that be my sole negation. In a word, I wish to be, in every

circumstance, a Yea-Sayer!"

The thirty days of January passed without a cloud appearing in the

sky. He was to dedicate to this fine month, as a sign of gratitude,

the fourth book of the _Gay Science,_ which he entitled _Sanctus

Januarius;_ an admirable book rich in critical thought, in intimate

refinements, and from the first to the last line dominated by a sacred

emotion--_Amor fati._

In February Paul Rée, passing through Genoa, stayed some days with his

friend, who showed him his favourite walks and brought him to those

rocky creeks "where in some six hundred years, some thousand years," he

wrote gaily to Peter Gast, "they will raise a statue to the author of

_The Dawn"_ Then Paul Rée went on to Rome, where Fräulein von Meysenbug

was waiting for him. He had a curiosity to penetrate into the Wagnerian

world there, which was greatly excited in expectation of _Parsifal;_

it was in July, at Bayreuth, that the Christian mystery was to be

presented. Friedrich Nietzsche did not wish to accompany Paul Rée, and

the approaching performance of the _Parsifal_ only made his ardour

for work the more active. Had he not--he, too--a great work which he

must ripen? Had he not to write his anti-Christian mystery, his poem

of the Eternal Return? It was his constant thought. It procured him a

happiness, thanks to which he could recall with less torturing regret

the master of by-gone days. Richard Wagner seemed very far and very

near; very far as regards his ideas, but what are ideas worth to a

poet? Very near in sentiments, desires, lyrical emotion; and were

not these the essential things? All disaccord between poets is only

a question of shades, for they inhabit the same universe, they work

with a like heart to give a significance and a supreme value to the

movements of the human soul. Reading this page which Nietzsche then

wrote, it is easier to understand the condition of his mind:

"_Stellar Friendship._--We were friends, and we have become strangers

to each other. Ah, yes; but it is well so, and we wish to hide nothing,

to disguise nothing from one another; we have nothing to be ashamed

of. We are two ships, each with a bourne and a way. By chance we have

crossed paths; we have made holiday together--and then our two good

ships have so tranquilly reposed in the one port and under the same

sun, that it seemed as though they had both attained their bourne. But

the all-powerful force of our mission has driven us afresh towards

divers seas and suns--and perhaps we shall not meet, or recognise one

another again: the divers seas and suns will have transformed us! We

had to become strangers; a reason the more why we should mutually

respect ourselves! No doubt there exists a far off, invisible and

prodigious cycle which gives a common law to our little divagations:

let us uplift ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short,

our vision too feeble; we must content ourselves with this sublime

possibility. And if we must be enemies upon earth, in spite of all we

believe in our stellar friendship."

What form did the poetical exposition of the Eternal Return then take

in his soul? We do not know. Nietzsche did not care to talk about his

work; he liked to complete it before making announcements. However,

he wished that his friends should know the new movement in which his

thought was engaged. He addressed to Fräulein von Meysenbug a letter in

which Wagner was treated without deference, then he added a mysterious

enough promise: "If I am not illusioned as to my future, it is by my

work that what is best in the work of Wagner will be continued--and

here, perhaps, is the comical side to the adventure."

* * * * *

At the beginning of spring Friedrich Nietzsche, following out a

caprice, made a bargain with the captain of an Italian sailing

vessel bound for Messina and crossed the Mediterranean. The passage

was a terrible one, and he was sick to death. But his stay was at

first happy: he wrote verses, a pleasure which he had not known for

several years. They are impromptus and epigrams, perhaps inspired by

those Goethean sallies which Peter Gast had put to music. Nietzsche

then sought for a corner of nature and of humanity favourable to

the production of his great work: Sicily, "Curb of the world where

Happiness has her habitation," as old Homer teaches, struck him as

an ideal refuge, and, suddenly forgetting that he could not bear the

heat, he decided to stay in Messina for the whole summer. Some days of

sirocco, towards the end of April, prostrated him, and he prepared for

departure. It was in these circumstances that he received a message

from Fräulein von Meysenbug, who urged him very keenly to stop at

Rome. Rome was a natural stage on his journey, and he accepted. Why

was Fräulein von Meysenbug thus insistent? We know. This excellent

woman had never been resigned to the unhappiness of the friend whose

destiny she had vainly sought to sweeten. She knew the delicacy, the

tenderness of his heart, and often wished to find him a companion; had

he not written to her, "I tell you in confidence, what I need is a

good woman"? In the spring of this year she thought that she had found

her.[2]

This accounted for her letter. It was Fräulein von Meysenbug's habit to

do good, and her taste; but perhaps she sometimes forgot that goodness

is a difficult art in which the results of defeat are cruel.

The girl whom Fräulein von Meysenbug had met was called Lou Salomé.

She was scarcely twenty years old; she was a Russian and admirable as

regards her intelligence and intellectual ardour; her beauty was not

perfect, but the more exquisite for its imperfections, and she was

fascinating in the extreme. Sometimes it happens that there arises,

in Paris, in Florence, in Rome, some excited young lady, a native of

Philadelphia, of Bucharest, or of Kief, who comes with a barbarous

impatience to be initiated into culture and to conquer a hearth in our

old capital. The lady in question was of rare quality assuredly; her

mother followed her across Europe, carrying the cloaks and the shawls.

Fräulein von Meysenbug conceived an affection for her. She gave her

Nietzsche's works; Lou Salomé read them and seemed to understand.

She talked to her at great length of this extraordinary man who had

sacrificed friendship with Wagner for the maintenance of his liberty:

He is a very rugged philosopher, she said, but he is the most

sensitive, the most affectionate friend, and, for those who know him,

the thought of his solitary life is a source of sadness. Miss Salomé

displayed a great deal of enthusiasm and longing; she declared that she

felt vowed to a spiritual share in such a life, and that she wished to

make Nietzsche's acquaintance. In concert with Paul Rée, who, it seems,

had known her for a longer time, and also appreciated her, Fräulein von

Meysenbug wrote to Friedrich Nietzsche.

He arrived, he heard the praises of Miss Lou sung; she was a woman

of elevated feeling, shrewd and brave; intransigent in research and

in affirmation; a heroine in the manner of her childhood; it was the

promise of a great life. He agreed to see her. One morning, at St.

Peter's, she was presented to him and conquered him at once. He had

forgotten, during his long months of meditation, the pleasure of being

listened to and of talking. "The young Russian" (it is thus that he

calls her in his letters) listened deliciously. She spoke little, but

her calm look, her assured and gentle movements, her least words, left

no doubt as to the quickness of her mind and to the presence of a soul.

Very quickly, perhaps at first sight, Nietzsche liked her. "There's a

soul," he said to Fräulein von Meysenbug, "which has made a little body

for itself with a breath."[3] Miss Salomé did not let herself be thus

enticed. Nevertheless, she felt the singular quality of the man who

talked to her; she had long conversations with him, and the violence of

his thought troubled her even in her sleep. The adventure--it was in

fact a drama--commenced at once.

A few days after this first interview, Miss Salomé and her mother left

Rome. The two philosophers, Nietzsche and Rée, went with her, both of

them enthusiasts for the young girl. Nietzsche said to Rée:

"There's an admirable woman, marry her." "No," answered Rée; "I am a

pessimist, and the idea of propagating human life is odious to me.

Marry her yourself; she is the companion that you want...." Nietzsche

dismissed this idea. Perhaps he said to his friend, as he had said

to his sister: "I marry! Never, I would have to be a bar somewhere

or other." Miss Salomé's mother examined these two men who were

so attentive to her child; Friedrich Nietzsche perplexed her; she

preferred Paul Rée.

The two friends and the two philosophers stopped at Lucerne. Friedrich

Nietzsche wished to show his new friend that house at Triebschen where

he had known Richard Wagner. Who was not then thinking of the master?

He brought her as far as the poplars whose high foliage enclosed the

gardens. He recounted to her the unforgettable days, the gaieties,

the magnificent angers of the great man. Seated by the border of the

lake, he talked in a low, contained voice, and turned his face a

little away, for it was troubled by the memory of those joys of which

he had deprived himself. Suddenly he grew silent, and the young girl,

observing him, saw that he wept.

He confessed all his life to her; his childhood, the pastor's house,

the mysterious grandeur of the father who had been so quickly taken

away; the pious years, the first doubts, and the horror of this world

without a God in which one must resolve to live; the discovery of

Schopenhauer and of Wagner, the religious feeling which they had

inspired in him and which had consoled him for the loss of his faith.

"Yes," said he (Miss Salomé reports these words), "my adventures began

in this manner. They are not ended. Where will they lead me? Whither

shall I adventure again? Should I not come back to the faith? to some

new belief?"

He added gravely: "In any case a return to the past is more likely than

immobility."

Friedrich Nietzsche had not yet avowed his love; but he felt its force

and no longer resisted. Only he feared to declare himself. He begged

Paul Rée to speak in his name, and withdrew.

On the 8th of May, settled for some days in Basle, he saw the

Overbecks and confided in them with a strange exaltation. A woman has

come into his life; it is a happiness for him; it will benefit his

thought, which will henceforward be livelier, richer in its shades and

emotion. Assuredly he would prefer not to marry Miss Lou, he disdains

all fleshly ties; but perhaps he ought to give her his name for her

protection against scandalmongers, and from this spiritual union would

be born a spiritual son: the prophet Zarathustra. He is poor; this is a

vexation, an obstacle. But could he not sell all his future work in a

lump to some publisher for a considerable sum? He thought of doing so.

These out-bursts did not fail to trouble the Overbecks, who augured ill

of a liaison so bizarre and of an enthusiasm so ready.

Friedrich Nietzsche at last received Lou Salomé's reply: she did not

wish to marry. An unhappy love affair, which had just crossed her life,

left her, she said, without strength to conceive and nourish a new

affection. She therefore refused Nietzsche's offer. But she was able to

sweeten the terms of this refusal: the only thing of which she could

dispose, her friendship, her spiritual affection, she offered.

Friedrich Nietzsche returned at once to Lucerne. He saw Lou Salomé

and pressed her to give a more favourable reply; but the young girl

repeated her refusal and her offer. She was to be present in July at

the Bayreuth festivals, from which Nietzsche wished to abstain. She

promised to rejoin him when they were over and to stay for some weeks

at his side. She would then listen to his teaching, she would confront

the last thought of the master with that of the liberated disciple.

Nietzsche had finally to accept these conditions, these limits which

the young girl placed on their friendship. He advised her to read

one of his books, _Schopenhauer as Educator._ He was always glad to

acknowledge this work of his youth, this hymn to the bravery of a

thinker and to voluntary solitude. "Read it," he said to her, "and you

will be ready to hear me."

Friedrich Nietzsche left Basle and re-entered Germany, desirous of

becoming reconciled to his country. He was, as we know, accustomed to

such absorbing and unexpected desires. A Swiss, whom he had met at

Messina, had praised the beauty of Grunewald, near Berlin; he wished to

settle there, and wrote to Peter Gast, to whom, six weeks earlier, he

had suggested as a summer residence Messina.

He went to visit this Grunewald, which pleased him well enough; but he

saw, on the same occasion, Berlin and a few Berliners, who displeased

him extremely. He perceived that his last books had not been read, and

that his thought was ignored. He was only known as the friend of Paul

Rée, and no doubt his disciple. This he did not like. He went without

delay to spend some weeks in Naumburg, where he dictated the manuscript

of his coming book, _La Gaya Scienza_[4]. To his own people, it seems,

to his mother and to his sister, he spoke discreetly of the new friend.

His gaiety amazed them: they did not discern its cause. They did not

know that their strange Friedrich had in his heart a sentiment, a hope

of happiness, which Lou Salomé had been far from discouraging.

The representation of _Parsifal_ was fixed for the 27th July. Friedrich

Nietzsche went to stay in a village of the Thuringian forests,

Tautenburg, not far from Bayreuth, where all his friends were to

foregather: the Overbecks, the Seydlitzs, Gersdorff, Fräulein von

Meysenbug, Lou Salomé, Lisbeth Nietzsche. He alone was absent from

the rendezvous. At this moment a word from the master would perhaps

have sufficed to bring him back; perhaps he waited for and hoped

for this word. Fräulein von Meysenbug wished to make an attempt at

reconciliation: she dared to name Nietzsche in Wagner's presence.

Wagner told her to be silent and went out of the room banging the door.

So Friedrich Nietzsche, who no doubt never knew of this overture,

remained in those forests in which he had spent such hard days in

1876. How miserable he had then been and now how rich he was! He had

repressed his doubts; a great thought animated his mind, a great

affection his heart. Lou Salomé had just dedicated to him, as a sign of

spiritual sympathy, a beautiful poem.

TO SORROW.

_Wer kann dich fliehn, den du ergriffen hast,_

_Wenn du die ernsten Bliche auf ihn richtest?_

_Ich will nicht flüchten, wenn du mich erfasst,_

_Ich glaube nimmer, dass du nur vernichtest!_

_Ich weiss, durch jedes Erden--Dasein muss du gehn,_

_Und nichts bleibt unberührt von dir auf Erden:_

_Das Leben ohne dich--es wäre schön,_

_Und doch--auch, du bist werth, gelebt zu werden._[5]

Peter Gast, having read these verses, thought they were Nietzsche's,

who rejoiced over his error.

"No," he wrote to him, "this poetry is not by my hand. It is one of the

things which exercise upon me a tyrannical power, I have never been

able to read it without tears; it has the accent of a voice which I

might have waited for, expected since my childhood. My friend Lou, of

whom you have not yet heard, has written it. Lou is the daughter of a

Russian general, she is twenty years old; her mind is as piercing as an

eagle's vision, she has the courage of a lion, and yet she is a very

feminine child, who, perhaps, will hardly live...."

He re-read his manuscript for the last time and sent it to the printer.

He hesitated a little at the moment of publishing this new collection

of aphorisms. His friends, as he knew, would find fault with these

too numerous volumes, these too brief essays, these scarcely formed

sketches. He listened to them, heard what they had to say, answered

them with an apparent good will. No doubt his modesty was feigned; he

could not bring himself to believe that his essays, short though they

were, his sketches, which were so weak in form, were not worth being

read.

He thought much of the Bayreuth festivals, but he dissembled or only

half avowed his regrets. "I am well content that I cannot go," he wrote

to Lou Salomé. "And, nevertheless, if I could be at your side, in good

humour to talk; if I could say in your ear this, that, well, I could

endure the music of the _Parsifal_ (otherwise I could not)."

_Parsifal_ triumphed. Nietzsche mockingly welcomed the news. "Long live

Cagliostro!" he wrote to Peter Gast. "The old enchanter has again had a

prodigious success; the old gentlemen sobbed."

The "young Russian" came to rejoin him as soon as the festivals were

over; Lisbeth Nietzsche accompanied her. The two ladies installed

themselves in the hotel where Friedrich Nietzsche awaited them; then

he undertook to initiate his friend.

She had heard the Christian mystery at Bayreuth, the history of human

sorrow traversed like an ordeal and consoled at last by beatitude.

Friedrich Nietzsche taught her a more tragic mystery: sorrow is our

life and our destiny itself; let us not hope to traverse it; let us

accept it more entirely than the Christians ever did! Let us espouse

it; let us love it with an active love; let us be, like it, ardent and

pitiless; hard to others as to ourselves; cruel, let us accept it;

brutal, let us accept it. To lessen it is to be cowardly; and let us

meditate on the symbol of the Eternal Return to practise our courage.

"Unforgettable for me are those hours in which he revealed to me his

thoughts," wrote Miss Salomé. "He confided them to me, as though they

were a mystery unspeakably hard to tell; he only spoke of them in a low

voice, with every appearance of the most profound horror. And truly

life had been for him such bitter suffering that he suffered from

the Eternal Return as from an atrocious certainty." That Miss Salomé

listened to these confessions with great intelligence and real emotion,

the pages which she afterwards wrote assure us.

She conceived a brief hymn which she dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche:

"As friend loves friend,

So love I thee, life surprising!

Do I weep or joy in thee,

Givest thou me joy or suffering,

I love thee with thy joy and pain.

And if thou must destroy me,

I shall suffer, leaving thee.

As the friend who teareth himself from the arms of the friend,

I caress thee with my whole strength:

Hast thou no other joy for me?

So be it, I have still--thy suffering."

Friedrich Nietzsche, delighted with the gift, wished to reply to it

by another gift. For eight years he had forbidden himself musical

composition, which enervated and exhausted him. He undertook to compose

a sorrowful dithyramb on the verses of Miss Salomé. This work was

too moving and caused him great pain: neuralgia, crises of doubt,

barrenness and satiety. He had to take to his bed. Even from his room

he addressed short notes to Lou Salomé. "In bed, terrible attack. _I

scorn life_."

But these weeks at Tautenburg had their secret history of which we know

little. Lou Salomé, writes Fräulein Nietzsche, was never the sincere

friend of her brother; he roused her curiosity, but her passion,

her enthusiasm, were only feigned, and she was often wearied by his

terrible agitation. She wrote to Paul Rée, from whom Fräulein Nietzsche

was surprised to receive a very singular message: "Your brother," he

said, "tires our friend; shorten, if it be possible, the meeting."

We are inclined to think that Fräulein Nietzsche was jealous of this

initiation which she had not received, jealous, too, of this young

Slav, whose charm was tinged with mystery, and that we must take what

she has to say with caution.

No doubt, Nietzsche alarmed Lou Salomé by the violence of his passions

and by the loftiness of his demands. She had not foreseen, in offering

to be his friend, the crises of a friendship ruder than a stormy love.

He demanded an absolute assent to each of his thoughts. The young girl

refused such assent: may the intellect, like the heart, be given?

Nietzsche could not brook her proud reserve, and reproached her, as

though it were a fault, for the independence which she wished to

preserve. A letter to Peter Gast gives us a glimpse into these disputes.

"Lou remains another week with me," he wrote, on the 20th of August,

from Tautenburg. "She is _the most intelligent of all women._ Every

five days a little tragical scene arises between us. All that I have

written to you about her is absurd, and not less absurd, no doubt, than

what I now write to you."

This somewhat cautious and reticent phrasing does not suggest that the

heart had escaped its captivity. Lou Salomé left Tautenburg; Friedrich

Nietzsche continued to write letters to her, many of which are known

to us. He confided his work and projects to Lou Salomé: he wished to

go to Paris or Vienna to study the physical sciences and deepen his

theory of the Eternal Return; for it was not enough that it should be

fascinating and beautiful, Nietzsche wished that it should be true.

Thus we saw him, and always will see him, hampered by his critical

spirit when he pursues a lyrical inspiration; hampered by his lyrical

genius when he pursues a critical analysis. He related to her the happy

success of the _Hymn to Life_ which her verses had inspired, and which

he was submitting to the judgment of his musical friends. An orchestral

conductor gave him hope of a hearing: ready for hope as he was, he

communicated the news. "By this little path," he writes, "we can reach

posterity _together_--all other paths remaining open." On September

16th he wrote from Leipsic to Peter Gast. "Latest news: on the 2nd of

October Lou comes here; two months later we leave for Paris; and we

shall stay there, perhaps for years. Such are my projects."

His mother and sister blamed him; he knew it, and their hostility did

not displease him: "All the virtues of Naumburg are against me," he

wrote, "it is well that it is so ..."

Two months later, the friendship was broken. Perhaps we may perceive

what had happened. Lou Salomé came to find Nietzsche at Leipsic, as

she had promised; but Paul Rée accompanied her. No doubt she wished

Nietzsche to understand once and for all the nature of a friendship

which was always open to him: free, not slavish; sympathy, not

intellectual devotion. Had she well weighed the difficulties of such an

enterprise, the dangers of such an attempt? These two men were in love

with her. What was her attitude between them? May she not have yielded,

when she tried to keep them both by her, to some instinct, perhaps an

unconscious one, of intellectual curiosity, of conquest and feminine

domination? Who can say, who will ever know?

Friedrich Nietzsche became melancholy and suspicious. One day he

imagined that his companions, talking together under their breath, were

laughing at him. A piece of gossip reached him, and upset his mind.

The story, puerile though it be, must be told. Rée, Nietzsche, and Lou

Salomé had been photographed together. Lou Salomé and Rée had said to

Nietzsche: "Get into this child's cart: we will hold the shafts; it

will be a symbol of our union." Nietzsche had answered: "I refuse; Miss

Lou will be in the cart; we will hold the shafts, Paul Rée and I." This

Miss Lou did. And she (according to the story repeated to him) sent the

photograph to numerous friends, as a symbol of her supremacy.

A more cruel thought soon began to torture Friedrich Nietzsche: Lou

and Rée are in agreement against me, he thought; their agreement

condemns them, they love one another and are deceiving me. Then all

became poor and vile around him. A miserable strife terminated the

spiritual adventure of which he had dreamed. He lost his strange and

seductive disciple; he lost the best and most intelligent friend of his

last eight years. Finally, affected and impaired by these humiliating

conditions, he himself did a wrong to friendship and denounced Rée to

Lou.

"He has a marvellous mind," he said, "but it is feeble and aimless.

His education is the cause of the trouble: every man should have been

brought up in some sort for a soldier. And every woman, in some sort,

for a soldier's wife."

Nietzsche had neither the experience nor the necessary resolution to

decide an infinitely painful situation. His sister, who detested Miss

Salomé, encouraged his suspicions and his rancours. She intervened in

a brutal manner, and, it seems, without authorisation, wrote the young

girl a letter which determined the rupture. Miss Salomé was angry.

We have the rough draft of the last letter which Friedrich Nietzsche

addressed to her; it throws little light on the detail of these

difficulties.

"But, Lou, what letters yours are! A little angry schoolgirl writes in

this way. What have I got to do with these bickerings? Understand me: I

wish you to rise in my opinion; not to sink again.

"I only reproach you for this: you ought to have sooner given an

account of what I expected from you. At Lucerne I gave you my essay on

Schopenhauer--I told you that my views were essentially there, and that

I believed that they would also be yours. Then you should have read

and said: No (in such matters I hate all _superficiality_). You would

have spared me much! Your poem, 'Sorrow,' written by you, is a profound

counter-truth.

"I believe that no one thinks more good things of you than I do, or

more bad. Do not defend yourself: I have already defended you, to

myself and to others, better than you could do it. Creatures like you

are only bearable to others when they have a _lofty object_.

"How poor you are in veneration, in gratitude, in piety, in courtesy,

in admiration, in delicacy--I do not speak of higher things. How would

you answer if I asked you: Are you brave? Are you incapable of treason?

"Do you not then feel that when a man like myself approaches you, he

needs to constrain himself very greatly? You have had to do with one of

the most for-bearing and benevolent of men possible: but against petty

egoism and little weaknesses, my argument, know it well, is _disgust._

No one is so easily conquered by disgust as I. I have not deceived

myself again on any point whatsoever; I saw in you that holy egoism

which forces us to serve what is highest in us. I do not know by what

sorcery's aid you have exchanged it for its contrary, the egoism of the

cat, which only desires life.

"Farewell, dear Lou, I shall not see you again. Protect your soul from

like deeds, and succeed better with others in regard to things that, so

far as I am concerned, are irreparable.

"I have not read your letter to the end, but I have read too much of

it. Your,

"F. N."

Friedrich Nietzsche left Leipsic.

[1] This formula is given in the _Wille zur Macht,_ paragraph 286.

[2] This intimate history has never been known except to a few people,

who are now, for the most part, out of our ken. Two women survive: one,

Frau Förster-Nietzsche, has published some accounts which one would

wish were more lucid and tranquil; the other, Miss Salomé, has written

a book on Friedrich Nietzsche in which some facts are indicated and

some letters cited; she has refused to enter into polemics on a subject

which, as she considers, concerns herself alone. Oral traditions are

numerous and contradictory. Some, rife in Roman society, where the

adventure took place, are less favourable to Miss Salomé; she appears

as a sort of Marie Bashkirtseff, an intellectual adventuress who was

somewhat too enterprising. Others, rife in Germany among Miss Salomé's

friends, are very different. We have heard all these traditions. The

first have influenced the account which we have given in the _Cahiers

de la quinzaine,_ the second volume of the tenth series, pp. 24 _et

seq._; the second, which we learned later, we now prefer. But all hope

of certainty must be adjourned.

[3] "Da ist eine Seele welche sich mit einen Hauch eine Körperchen

geschaffen hat."

[4] The _y_ in the word _Gaya_ does not seem to be Italian. We follow

Nietzsche's orthography.

[5] "Who that hath once been seized by thee can fly, if he hath felt

thy grave look turned on him? I shall not save myself, if thou takest

me, I shall never believe thou dost naught but destroy. Yea, thou must

visit all that liveth upon earth, nothing upon earth can evade thy

grip: life without thee--it were beautiful, yet--thou too art worthy to

be lived."

II

_Thus Spake Zarathustra_

His departure was prompt, like a flight. He passed through Basle and

stopped with his friends the Overbecks, who listened to his plaint.

He had awakened from his last dream; everyone had betrayed him: Lou,

Rée, feeble and perfidious; Lisbeth, his sister, who had acted grossly.

Of what betrayal did he complain, and of what act? He did not say,

and continued his bitter complaints. The Overbecks wished him to stay

with them for some days. He escaped them; he wished to work, and

surmount alone the sadness of having been deceived, the humiliation of

having deceived himself. Perhaps he also wished to put to profit that

condition of paroxysm and the lyrical _sursum_ whither his despair had

carried him. He left. "To-day," said he to his friends, "I enter into a

complete solitude."

He left, and stopped in the first instance at Genoa. "Cold, sick. I

suffer," he wrote briefly to Peter Gast. He left this town, where

he was importuned perhaps by memories of a happier time, and moved

away along the coast. At the time of which we speak, Nervi, Santa

Margherita, Rapallo, Zoagli, were places unknown to the tourist, market

towns inhabited by fishermen who, each evening, drew in their barques

to the recesses of the coves and sang as they mended their nets.

Friedrich Nietzsche discovered these magnificent spots, and chose, to

humiliate his misery there, the most magnificent of them, Rapallo. He

relates, in simple language, the circumstances of his sojourn:

"I spent my winter, 1882 to 1883, in the charming and quiet bay of

Rapallo that is hollowed out by the Mediterranean not far from Genoa,

between the promontory of Portofino and Chiavari. My health was not of

the best; the winter was cold, rainy; a little inn,[6] situated at the

very edge of the sea, so near it that the noise of the waves prevented

me sleeping at night, offered me a shelter very unsatisfactory from

all points of view. Nevertheless--and it is an instance of my maxim

that all that is decisive comes 'nevertheless '--it was during this

winter and in this discomfort that my noble Zarathustra was born. In

the morning I would climb towards the south by the magnificent mountain

road, towards Zoagli, among the pines and dominating the immense sea;

in the evening (according as my health permitted it) I would go round

the bay of Santa Margherita as far as Portofino.... On these two

roads came to me all the first part of Zarathustra (_fiel mir ein_);

and more, Zarathustra himself, as type; more exactly he fell upon me

(_überfiel mich_)...."

In ten weeks he conceived and completed his poem. It is a new work and,

if one affects to follow the genesis of his thought, a surprising one.

No doubt, he meditated a lyrical work, a sacred book. But the essential

doctrine of this work was to be given by the idea of the Eternal

Return. Now, in the first part of Zarathustra, the idea of the Eternal

Return does not appear. Nietzsche follows a different and opposing

idea, the idea of the Superman, the symbol of a real progress which

modifies things, the promise of a possible escape beyond chance and

fatality.

Zarathustra announces the Superman, he is the prophet of good tidings.

He has discovered in his solitude a promise of happiness, he bears this

promise; his strength is sweet and benevolent, he predicts a great

future as the reward of a great work. Friedrich Nietzsche, in other

times, will put a more bitter speech into his mouth. If one reads

this first part, and takes care not to confound it with those which

immediately follow, one will feel the sanctity, the frequent suavity of

the accent.

Why this abandonment of the Eternal Return? Nietzsche does not write

a word which throws light upon this mystery. Miss Lou Salomé tells

us that at Leipsic, during his short studies, he had realised the

impossibility of founding his hypothesis in reason. But this did not

diminish the lyrical value of which he knew how to take advantage

a year later; and this cannot explain, in any case, the appearance

of a contrary idea. What are we to think? Perhaps his stoicism was

vanquished by the betrayal of his two friends. "_In spite of all,_" he

wrote on December 3rd to Peter Gast, "I would not like to live these

latter months over again." We know that he never ceased to experience

in himself the efficacy of his thoughts. Incapable of enduring the

cruel symbol, he did not think that he could sincerely offer it to men,

and he invented a new symbol, Uebermensch, the Superman. "I do not

desire a recommencement," he writes in his notes (_ich will das leben

nicht wieder)._ "How was I able to endure the idea? In creating, in

fixing my view on the Superman, who says _yea_ to life, I have myself

tried to say _Yea_--alas!"

To the cry of his youth: _Ist Veredlung möglich?_ (Is the ennobling

of man possible?) Friedrich Nietzsche desires to reply, and to reply

_Yes._ He wishes to believe in the Superman, and succeeds in doing

so. He can grasp this hope; it suits the design of his work. What

does he propose to himself? Among all the inclinations which urge

him, this one is strong: to answer the _Parsifal,_ to oppose work to

work. Richard Wagner desired to depict humanity drawn from its languor

by the Eucharistie mystery, the troubled blood of men renovated by

the ever poured out blood of Christ. Friedrich Nietzsche wishes to

depict humanity saved from languor by the glorification of its own

essence, by the virtues of a chosen and willing few which purify and

renew its blood. Is this all his desire? Surely not. _Thus Spake

Zarathustra_ is more than an answer to the _Parsifal._ The origins of

Nietzsche's thoughts are always grave and distant. What is his last

wish? He desires to guide and direct the activity of men; he wishes to

create their morals, assign to the humble their tasks, to the strong

their duties and their commandments, and to raise them all towards a

sublime destiny. As a child, as a youth, as a young man, he had this

aspiration; at thirty-eight years of age, at this instant of crisis and

of decision, he finds it again and desires to act. The Eternal Return

no longer satisfies him: he cannot consent to live imprisoned in a

blind nature. The idea of the Superman on the contrary captivates him:

it is a principle of action, a hope of salvation.

What is the import of this idea? Is it a reality or a symbol? It is

impossible to say. Nietzsche's mind is rapid and always oscillating.

The vehemence of the inspiration which carries him along leaves

him neither leisure nor strength to define. He hardly succeeds in

understanding the ideas which agitate him, and interprets them himself

in divers ways. At times, the Superman appears to him as a very serious

reality. But more often, it seems, he neglects or disdains all literal

belief, and his idea is no more than a lyrical phantasy with which he

trifles for the sake of animating base humanity. It is an illusion,

a useful and beneficent illusion, he would say, were he still a

Wagnerian, dared he to re-adopt the vocabulary of his thirtieth year.

Then he had liked to repeat the maxim from Schiller: _Dare to dream

and to lie._ We may believe that the Superman is chiefly the dream and

falsehood of a lyrical poet. Every species has its limits which it

cannot transgress. Nietzsche knows this and writes it.

It was a painful labour. Friedrich Nietzsche, ill-disposed to conceive

a hope, had frequent revolts against the task which he imposed on

himself. Every morning on awakening from a sleep which chloral had

rendered sweet, he rediscovered life with frightful bitterness.

Conquered by melancholy and rancour, he wrote pages which he had at

once to re-read attentively, to correct or erase. He dreaded these bad

hours in which anger, seizing him like a vertigo, obscured his best

thoughts. Then he would evoke his hero, Zarathustra, always noble,

always serene, and seek from him some encouragement. Many a passage of

his poem is the expression of this agony. Zarathustra speaks to him:

"Yea: I know thy danger. But by my love and hope,

I conjure thee: reject not thy love and thy hope.

"The noble one is always in danger of becoming an

insolent, a sneering one and a destroyer. Alas, I have

known noble ones who lost their highest hope. Then

they slandered all high hopes.

"By my love and my hope I conjure thee; do not cast

away the hero in thy soul! believe in the holiness of thy

highest hope."

The struggle was always perceptible; nevertheless Friedrich Nietzsche

advanced his work. Every day he had to learn wisdom anew, and to

moderate, crush, or deceive his desires. He succeeded in this rude

exercise and managed to bring back his soul into a calm and fecund

condition. He completed a poem which was but the opening of a vaster

poem. Zarathustra, returning towards the mountains, abandons the world

of men. Twice again, before he dictates the tables of his law, he is

to descend to it. But what he says suffices to give us a glimpse of

the essential forms of a humanity obedient to its élite. It consists

of three castes: at the bottom, the popular caste, allowed to retain

its humble beliefs; above, the caste of the chiefs, the organisers and

warriors; above the chiefs themselves, the sacred caste, the poets who

create the illusions and dictate the values. One recalls that essay by

Richard Wagner on art, religion, and politics, formerly so much admired

by Nietzsche: in it a similar hierarchy was proposed.

In its ensemble the work is serene. It is Friedrich Nietzsche's finest

victory. He has repressed his melancholy; he exalts force, not

brutality; expansion, not aggression. In the last days of February,

1882, he wrote these final pages, which are perhaps the most beautiful

and the most religious ever inspired by naturalistic thought.

"My brethren, remain faithful to the earth, with all the force of your

love! Let your great love and your knowledge be in accord with the

meaning of the earth. I pray you and conjure you.

"Let not your virtue fly far from terrestrial things, and beat its

wings against the eternal walls! Alas! there is always so much virtue

gone astray!

"Like myself, bring back towards the earth the virtue which goes

astray--yea, towards the flesh and towards life; that it may give a

meaning to the earth, a human meaning...."

Whilst he completed the composition of this hymn on the Genoese

coast, Richard Wagner died in Venice. Nietzsche learnt the news

with a grave emotion, and recognised a sort of providential accord

in the coincidence of events. The poet of _Siegfried_ was dead; so

be it! humanity would not be for a moment deprived of poetry, since

Zarathustra had already spoken.

For more than six years he had given no sign of life to Cosima Wagner;

now he had to tell her that he had forgotten nothing of past days and

that he shared her sorrows. "You will approve of me in this, I am sure"

he wrote to Fräulein von Meysenbug.[7]

* * * * *

On the 14th of February he wrote to Schmeitzner, the publisher:

"To-day I have some news for you: I have just taken a decisive step--I

mean, one profitable to you. It concerns a little work, scarcely

100 pages long, entitled: _Thus Spake Zarathustra,_ a book for all

and none. It is a poem or it is a Fifth Gospel, or something which

has no name; by far the most serious, and also the most happy, of my

productions and one that is open to all."

He wrote to Peter Gast and to Fräulein von Meysenbug: "This year," said

he, "no society. I shall go straight from Genoa to Sils!" Thus did

Zarathustra, who left the great city and returned to the mountains. But

Friedrich Nietzsche is not Zarathustra; he is feeble, solitude exalts

and frightens him. Some weeks passed. Schmeitzner, the publisher,

was slow: Nietzsche grew impatient and modified his projects for the

summer; he wished to hear the sound of human speech. His sister, at

Rome with Fräulein von Meysenbug, guessed that he was accessible and

weary, and seized this opportunity of a reconciliation. He did not

defend himself and promised to come.

Here he was at Rome. His old friend immediately introduced him into a

brilliant society. Lenbach was there, and also that Countess Dönhoff,

to-day Princess von Buelow, an amiable woman and a great musician.

Friedrich Nietzsche felt with vexation how different he was from these

happy talkers, how he belonged to another world, how they misunderstood

him. A curious, a singular man, they think; a very eccentric man. A

great mind? No one ventured to pass this rash judgment. And Friedrich

Nietzsche, so proud when he was alone, was astonished, disturbed, and

humiliated. It seemed that he had not the strength to despise these

people who did not hearken to him; he was disquieted and began to fear

for his well-beloved son, Zarathustra.

"They will run through my book," he wrote to Gast, "and it will be a

subject of conversation. That inspires me with disgust. Who is serious

enough to hear me? If I had the authority of old Wagner, my affairs

would be in a better way. But at present _no one_ can save me from

being delivered over to 'literary people.' To the devil!"

Other vexations affected him: he had taken to chloral, during the

winter, in order to combat his insomnia. He deprived himself of it and

recovered, not without difficulty, his normal sleep. Schmeitzner, the

publisher, did not hurry to print _Thus Spake Zarathustra;_ what was

the cause of the delay? Nietzsche enquired and was told: Five hundred

thousand copies of a collection of hymns had first to be printed for

the Sunday-schools. Nietzsche waited some weeks, received nothing,

asked again; another story: the collection of hymns was published, but

a big lot of anti-Semitic pamphlets had to be printed and thrown upon

the world. June came: _Zarathustra_ had not yet appeared. Friedrich

Nietzsche lost his temper and suffered for his hero, who was thwarted

by the two platitudes, Pietism and anti-Semitism.

He was discouraged and ceased to write; he left his luggage at the

station with the books and manuscripts which he had brought: one

hundred and four kilos of paper. Everything in Rome harassed him: the

nasty people, a mob of illegitimates; the priests, whom he could not

tolerate; the churches, "caverns with unsavoury odours." His hatred

of Catholicism is instinctive and has far-off origins; always when he

approaches it, he shudders. It is not the philosopher who judges and

reproves; it is the son of the pastor, who has remained a Lutheran: who

cannot endure the other Church, full of incense and idols.

The desire came to him to leave this town. He heard the beauty of

Aquila praised. Friedrich von Hohenstaufen, the Emperor of the

Arabs and the Jews, the enemy of the popes, resided there; Friedrich

Nietzsche wished to reside there, too. Still, the room which he

occupied was a fine and well-situated one, Piazza Barberini, at the

very top of a house. There one could forget the town: the murmur of

water falling from a triton's horn stilled the noise of humanity and

sheltered his melancholy. There it was that, one evening, he was to

improvise the most poignant expression of his despair and solitude:

"I am light; alas if I were night! But this is my solitude, to be

always surrounded by light.

"Alas that I am not shadow and gloom! How I would drink from the

breasts of light!

"... But I live in my own light, I drink the flames which escape from

me!"

_Thus Spake Zarathustra, a Book for All and None,_ at last appeared

during the first days of June.

"I am very much on the move," wrote Nietzsche. "I am in agreeable

society, but as soon as I am alone I feel moved as I have never been."

He soon knew the fate of his book. His friends spoke to him very little

of it; the newspapers, the reviews, did not mention it; no one was

interested in this Zarathustra, the strange prophet who in a biblical

tone taught unbelief. "How bitter it is!" said Lisbeth Nietzsche and

Fräulein von Meysenbug; these two women, Christians at heart that they

were, took offence. "And I," wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast, "I who find

my book so gentle!"

The heat dispersed this Roman society. Friedrich Nietzsche knew

not where to go. He had hoped for such different days! He had been

persuaded that he would move lettered Europe, that he would at last

attract readers to himself, or (more precisely perhaps) that he would

attract, not towards his feeble self, but towards Zarathustra, who was

so strong, disciples or even servitors. "For this summer," he wrote in

May to Peter Gast, "I have a project: to choose, in some forest, some

castle formerly fitted up by the Benedictines for their meditations,

and to fill it with companions, chosen men ... I must go on a quest for

new friends." About the 20th June, thunderstruck by the loss of his

hopes, he went up towards his favourite retreat, the Engadine.

Lisbeth Nietzsche, who was returning to Germany, accompanied him. Never

had she seen him more brilliant or more gay, she said, than during

these few hours of travel. He improvised epigrams, _bouts-rimes,_ the

words of which his sister suggested; he laughed like a child, and, in

fear of troublesome people who would have disturbed his delight, he

called and tipped the guard at every station.

* * * * *

Friedrich Nietzsche had not seen the Engadine since that summer of

1881 in which he had conceived the Eternal Return and the words

of Zarathustra. In the clutch of these memories and of the sudden

solitude, carried away by a prodigious movement of inspiration, he

wrote in ten days the second part of his work.

It was bitter. Friedrich Nietzsche could no longer repress the

rancours, the menace of which he had felt last winter; he could

no longer unite force to sweetness; "I am not a hunter of flies,"

Zarathustra used to say, and he disdained his adversaries. He had

spoken as a benefactor, and he had not been heard. Nietzsche put

into his mouth another speech: "Zarathustra the judge," he wrote in

his short notes; "the manifestation of justice in its most grandiose

form; of justice which fashions, which constructs, and which, as a

consequence, must annihilate."

Zarathustra the judge has only insults and lamentations upon his lips.

He sings this nocturnal chant which Nietzsche, at Rome, had one evening

improvised for himself alone:

"I am light; alas if I were night! But this is my solitude, to be

always surrounded by light."

This is no longer the hero whom Friedrich Nietzsche had created so

superior to all humanity; it is a man in despair, it is Nietzsche, in

short, too weak to express anything beyond his anger and his plaints.

"Verily, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and

members of man.

"To see men broken and scattered as though they lay over a butcher's

shambles, this is to my eye the most frightful thing.

"And when my eye fleeth from the present to the past, it ever findeth

the same: fragments, members, and frightful catastrophes--but no men!

"The present and the past upon the earth--alas, my friends, these are

to _me_ the most unbearable things; and I could not live were I not a

visionary of what must come.

"A visionary, a creator, the future itself and a bridge unto the

future--alas! in some sort also, a cripple upon this bridge:

Zarathustra is all this.... I walk among men, the fragments of the

future: of the future which I contemplate in my visions."

Friedrich Nietzsche derided the moral commandments which had upheld

ancient humanity: he wished to abolish them and to establish his own.

Shall we know it at length, this new law? He delays in telling it to

us. "The qualities of the Superman become more and more visible,"

he writes in his notes. He would wish that it were so; but can he,

absorbed as he is in discontent and bitterness, enunciate, define a

form of virtue, a new good, a new evil, as he had promised? He tries.

He is the prey of a bitter and violent mood, and the virtue which he

exalts is naked force undisguised, that savage ardour which moral

prescriptions have always wished to attenuate, vary, or overcome. He

yields to the attraction which it exercises upon him.

"With delight I regard the miracles which the ardent sun brings to

birth, says Zarathustra. They are tigers, palm-trees, rattlesnakes....

Verily, there is a future even for evil, and the hottest noon has not

yet been discovered for man.... One day there will come to the world

the greatest dragons.... Thy soul is so far from what is great that

thou wouldst find the Superman awful in his goodness."

There is emphasis upon this page. The words are noisy rather than

strong. Perhaps Nietzsche disguises in this way an embarrassment of

thought: he does not insist upon this gospel of evil, and prefers

to adjourn the difficult moment in which his prophet will announce

his law. Zarathustra must first complete his duties as judge, the

annihilator of the weak. He must strike: with what weapon? Here

Nietzsche again takes up the idea of the Eternal Return which he

had withdrawn from his first section. He modifies the sense and the

application of it. It is no longer an exercise of spiritual life,

a process of internal edification; it is a hammer, as he says, an

instrument of moral terrorism, a symbol which disperses dreams.

Zarathustra assembles his disciples and wishes to communicate to them

the doctrine, but his voice falters; he is silent. Suddenly he is moved

by pity, and the prophet himself suffers as he evokes the terrible

idea. He hesitates at the moment that he is about to destroy these

illusions of a better future, these expectations of another life and

of a spiritual beatitude which veil from men the misery of their state.

He grows anxious. A hunchback, who divines this, interpolates with a

sneer: "Why doth Zarathustra speak unto his disciples otherwise than

he speaketh unto himself?" Zarathustra feels his fault and seeks a new

solitude. The second part is thus completed.

On the 24th June of this year, 1882, Nietzsche was installed at Sils;

before the 10th of July he wrote to his sister:

"I beg you instantly to see Schmeitzner and engage him orally or by

writing, as you think best, to give the second part of _Zarathustra_ to

the printer as soon as the manuscript is delivered. This second part

exists to-day: try to imagine it, the vehemence of such a creation;

you will scarcely be able to exaggerate it. There is the danger. In

Heaven's name, arrange things with Schmeitzner; I am too irritable

myself."

Schmeitzner promised and kept his word; in August the proofs arrived.

Nietzsche had not strength enough to correct them and left the work to

Peter Gast and his sister. The terrible things which he had said, the

more terrible things which he had yet to say, bruised him.

* * * * *

Other vexations were added to the melancholy of his thought. An awkward

step on his sister's part awoke again the dissensions of the previous

summer. In the spring, during their reconcilement, he had said to her,

aware of her quarrelsome nature: "Promise me never to go back on the

stories of Lou Salomé and of Paul Rée." For three months she had kept

her peace, then she broke her word and spoke. What did she say? We

do not know; we are again in the obscurity of this obscure history.

"Lisbeth," he wrote to Madame Overbeck, "absolutely wants to avenge

herself on the young Russian." No doubt she reported to him some fact,

some observation of which he was ignorant. A sickening irritation laid

hold of him. He wrote to Paul Rée, and this is the letter, a sketch of

which has been found. (Was it sent as we read it? It is not certain.)

"Too late, almost a year too late, I learn of the part which you took

in the events of last summer, and my soul has never been so overwhelmed

with disgust as it is at present, to think that an insidious individual

of your kind, a liar and a knave, had been able to call himself my

friend for years. It is a crime, in my opinion, and not only a crime

against me, but above all against friendship, against this very empty

word, friendship.

"Fie, sir! So you are the calumniator of my character, and Miss Salomé

has only been the mouthpiece, the very unsatisfactory mouthpiece, of

the judgment which you passed on me; so it is you who, in my absence,

naturally, spoke of me as though I were a vulgar and low egoist, always

ready to plunder others; so it is you who have accused me of having,

so far as concerned Miss Salomé, pursued the most filthy designs under

a mask of idealism; so it is you who dare to say of me that I was mad

and did not know what I wanted? Now, of a surety, I understand better

the whole of this business which has made men whom I venerated and many

whom I esteemed, as my nearest and dearest, strangers to me.... And I

thought you my friend; and nothing, perhaps, for seven years has done

more harm to my prospects than the trouble that I took to defend you.

"It seems then that I am not very well advanced in the art of knowing

men. That furnishes you no doubt with matter for mockery. What a fool

you have made of me! Bravo! As regards men of your stamp, rather than

understand them, I had rather they mocked me.

"I would have great pleasure in giving you a lesson in practical

morals with a pair of pistols; I would succeed perhaps, under the most

favourable circumstances, in interrupting once and for all your works

on morals: one needs clean hands for that, Dr. Paul Rée, not dirty

ones!"

This letter cannot be considered sufficient to condemn Paul Rée.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote it in a moment of anger upon information

given by his sister, who was often more impassioned than accurate. It

is a precious witness to his impression; to the ill-known data of the

cause, it is a mediocre witness. What was the conduct of Paul Rée?

What were the rights and wrongs? In April, 1883, six months after the

difficulties of Leipsic, he had offered Nietzsche the dedication of a

work on the origins of the moral conscience, a work altogether inspired

by Nietzschean ideas. Nietzsche had refused this public compliment: "I

no longer want," he wrote to Peter Gast, "to be confounded with any

one." A letter written by George Brandes in 1888 shows us Paul Rée

living in Berlin with Miss Salomé, as "brother and sister," according

to both their accounts. There is no doubt that Rée helped Miss Salomé,

towards 1883, to write her book on Friedrich Nietzsche: a very

intelligent and a very noble book. We incline to believe that between

these two men there was only the misfortune of a common love which the

same woman inspired in them.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote long and febrile letters. He complained of

being alone at forty years, betrayed by his friends. Franz Overbeck

grew anxious and went up to Sils-Maria to distract him from the

solitude which wounded and consumed him. His sister, a prudent lady,

and bourgeois in her tastes, advised him in answer to his complaints:

"You are alone, it is true," said she to him; "have you not sought

solitude? Get an appointment in some University: when you have a title

and pupils, you will be recognised and people will cease to ignore

your books." Nietzsche listened indulgently, but did listen, and wrote

to the Rector of Leipsic, who, without hesitation, dissuaded him from

making any overtures, no German University being in a position to allow

an atheist, a declared anti-Christian, among its teachers. "This reply

has given me courage!" wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast; to his sister he

sent a strong letter whose thrusts she felt.

"It is necessary that I be misunderstood, better still, I go to meet

calumny and contempt. My 'near ones' will be the first against me: last

summer I understood that, and I was magnificently conscious that I was

at last on my road. When it comes to me to think, 'I can no longer

endure solitude,' then I experience an unspeakable _humiliation before

myself_--I feel myself in revolt against what there is of highest in

me...."

In September he directed his steps towards Naumburg, where it was his

intention to stay some weeks. His mother and sister inspired in him a

mixed feeling, which baffles analysis. He liked his own people because

they were his own, and because he was tender, faithful, infinitely

sensible to memories. But every one of his ideas, every one of his

desires, drew him from them, and his mind despised them. Nevertheless

the old house of Naumburg was the only place in the world where there

was, so long as he stayed there for a short time only, some sweetness

of life for him.

Mother and daughter were quarrelling. Lisbeth loved a certain Förster,

an agitator, an idealogue of Germanist and anti-Semitic views, who was

organising a colonial enterprise in Paraguay. She wished to marry him

and to follow him; her despairing mother wished to retain her. Madame

Nietzsche welcomed her son as a saviour and related to him the mad

projects which Lisbeth was forming. He was overwhelmed; he knew the

person and his ideas, he despised the low and dull passions which the

propaganda excited, and suspected him of having spoken maliciously of

his work. That Lisbeth, the companion of his childhood, should follow

this man was more than he could allow. He called her, spoke violently

to her. She answered him bravely. There was little that was delicate

or subtle in this woman's composition, but she had energy. Friedrich

Nietzsche, so weak in the depth of his soul, valued in her the quality

which he lacked. He might sermonise, scold, but he could not get his

way.

* * * * *

The late autumn came, and Naumburg was covered with fogs. Nietzsche

left and went to Genoa. These quarrels had lessened his self-respect.

"Things go badly with me, very badly," he wrote in October to Fräulein

von Meysenbug; "my visit in Germany is the cause. I can live only at

the seaside. Every other climate depresses me, destroys my nerves and

eyes, makes me melancholy, puts me into a black humour--that awful

tare; I have had to combat it in my life more than the hydras and other

celebrated monsters. In trivial ennui is hidden the most dangerous

enemy; great calamity adds to one's stature...."

Towards mid-November he left Genoa, and, circling the western coast,

began the quest for a winter residence. He passed by San Remo, Mentone,

Monaco, and stopped at Nice, which enchanted him. There he found that

keen air and that plenitude of light, that multitude of bright days

which he needed: "Light, light, light," he wrote'; "I have regained my

equilibrium."

The cosmopolitan city displeased him, and at first he rented a room

in a house of the old Italian city, not Nice, but Nizza, as he always

wrote. For neighbours he had quite simple people, workmen, masons,

employés, who all spoke Italian. It was in similar conditions that in

1881 he had enjoyed at Genoa a certain happiness.

He chased away his vain thoughts and made an energetic effort to

complete _Zarathustra._ But then arose the greatest of his misfortunes:

the difficulty of his work was extreme, perhaps insurmountable. To

complete _Zarathustra_--what did that imply? The work was immense:

it had to be a poem which would make the poems of Wagner forgotten;

a gospel which should make the Gospel forgotten. From 1875 to 1881,

during six years, Friedrich Nietzsche had examined all the moral

systems and shown the illusion which is at their foundation; he had

defined his idea of the Universe: it was a blind mechanism, a wheel

which turned eternally and without object. Yet he wished to be a

prophet, an enunciator of virtues and of purposes: "I am he who

dictates the values for a thousand years," he said in those notes in

which his pride bursts forth. "To imprint his hand on the centuries, as

on soft wax, write on the will of millennia as upon brass, harder than

brass, more noble than brass, there," Zarathustra was to say, "is the

beatitude of the Creator."

What laws, what tables, did Nietzsche wish to dictate? What values

would he choose to honour or depreciate? and what right had he to

choose, to build up an order of beauty, an order of virtue, in nature,

where a mechanical order reigns? He had the right of the poet, no

doubt, whose genius, the creator of illusions, imposes upon the

imagination of man this love or that hatred, this good or that evil.

Thus Nietzsche would answer us, but he did not fail to recognise the

difficulty. On the last pages of the second part of his poem he avowed

it.

"This, this is my danger," says Zarathustra, "that my glance throweth

itself to the summit, whereas my hand would fain grasp and rest

upon--the void."

He wished to bring his task to a head. He had felt, this very summer,

as something very close and urgent, the tragic menace that hung over

his life. He was in haste to complete a work which he could at last

present as the expression of his final desires, as his final thought.

He had intended to complete his poem in three parts; three were written

and almost nothing was said. The drama was not sketched. Zarathustra

had to be shown at close quarters with men, announcing the Eternal

Return, humiliating the feeble, strengthening the strong, destroying

the ancient ways of humanity; Zarathustra as lawgiver dictating his

Tables, dying at last of pity and of joy as he contemplates his work.

Let us follow his notes:--

"Zarathustra reaches at the same moment the most extreme distress and

his greatest happiness. At the most terrible moment of the contrast, he

is broken.

"The most tragical history with a divine dénouement.

"Zarathustra becomes gradually more grand. His doctrine develops with

his grandeur.

"The Eternal Return shines like a sun setting on the last catastrophe."

"In the last section great synthesis of him who creates, who loves, who

destroys."

In the month of August, Nietzsche had indicated a dénouement. His

condition of mind was then very bad, and his work suffered in

consequence. He now took up the draft again, and tried to make the best

of it.

It was a drama which he had the ambition to write. He places his

action in an antique frame, in a city devastated by the pest. The

inhabitants wish to commence a new era. They seek a lawgiver; they call

Zarathustra, who descends among them, followed by his disciples.

"Go," said he to them, "announce the Eternal Return."

The disciples are afraid and avow it.

"We can endure thy doctrine," they say, "but can this multitude?"

"We must make an experiment with truth!" answers Zarathustra. "And if

the truth should destroy humanity, so be it!"

The disciples hesitate again. He commands: "I have put in your hands

the hammer which must strike men; strike!"

But they fear the people and abandon their master. Then Zarathustra

speaks alone. The crowd as it hears him is terrified, loses its temper

and its wits.

"A man kills himself: another goes mad. A divine pride of the poet

animates him: everything _must_ be brought to light. And at the moment

that he announces the Eternal Return and the Superman together, he

yields to pity.

"Everyone disowns him. 'We must,' they say, 'stifle this doctrine and

kill Zarathustra.'

"'There is now no soul on the earth who loves me,' he murmurs; 'how

shall I be able to love life?'

"He dies of sadness on discovering the suffering which is his work.

_"'Through love I have caused the greatest sorrow;_ now I yield to the

sorrow which I have caused.'

"All go, and Zarathustra, left alone, touches his serpent with his

hand: 'Who counsels wisdom to me?'--The serpent bites him. The eagle

tears the serpent to bits, the lion throws itself upon the eagle. As

soon as Zarathustra sees the combat of the animals, he dies.

"Fifth Act: The Lauds.

"The league of the faithful who sacrifice themselves upon the tomb

of Zarathustra. They had fled: now, seeing him dead, they become the

inheritors of his soul and rise to his height.

"Funeral ceremony: 'It is we who have killed him.'--The Lauds.

"The great Noon. Midday and eternity."

Friedrich Nietzsche abandoned this plan, which yet gives glimpses of

great beauty. Did he dislike displaying the humiliation of his hero?

Probably, and we shall note his search for a triumphant dénouement.

But it is chiefly to be noted that he has dashed against a fundamental

difficulty, the nature of which he perhaps does not plainly conceive:

the two symbols on which he bases his poem, the Eternal Return and the

Superman, in conjunction create a misunderstanding which renders the

completion of the work impossible. The Eternal Return is a bitter truth

which suppresses all hope. The Superman is a hope, an illusion. From

one to the other there is no passage, the contradiction is complete.

If Zarathustra teaches the Eternal Return, he will fail to excite in

men's souls an impassioned belief in superhumanity. And if he teaches

the Superman, how can he propagate the moral terrorism of the Eternal

Return? Nevertheless, Friedrich Nietzsche assigns him these two tasks;

the breathless disorder of his thoughts drives him to this absurdity.

Does he clearly perceive the problem? We do not know. These real

difficulties against which he breaks are never avowed. But if he

perceives them ill, at least he feels the inconvenience and seeks by

instinct some way of escape.

He writes a second sketch which is certainly skilful: the same scene,

the same fever-stricken city, the same supplication to Zarathustra,

who comes among a decimated people. But he comes as a benefactor and

is careful about announcing the terrible doctrine. First, he gives

his laws and has them accepted. Then, and only then, will he announce

the Eternal Return. What are these laws which he has given? Friedrich

Nietzsche indicates them. Here is one of the very rare pages, in which

we discern the order which he has dreamed.

"_(a)_ The day divided afresh: physical exercises for all the ages of

life. Competition as a principle.

. . . . . .

"_(b)_ The new nobility and its education. Unity. Obtained by

selection. For the foundation of each family, a festival.

"_(c)_ The _experiments._ (With the _wicked, punishments._) Charity

in a new form, based on a concern for the generations to come. The

wicked respectable so far as they are destroyers, for destruction is

necessary. And also as a source of strength.

"To let oneself be taught by the wicked, not to deny them competition.

To utilise the degenerate.--Punishment justifiable when the criminal is

utilised for experimental purposes (for a new aliment). Punishment is

thus made holy.

"_(d)_ To save woman by keeping her woman.

"_(e)_ The _slaves_ (a hive). The humble and their virtues. To teach

the enduring of repose. Multiplication of machines. Transformation of

the machines into beauty.

"'For you faith and servitude!'

"The times of _solitude._ Division of the times and days. Food.

Simplicity. A feature of union between the poor and the rich.

"Solitude necessary from time to time, that the being may examine

himself and concentrate.

. . . . . .

"The _ordinance of festivals,_ founded on a system of the Universe:

festival of cosmic relations, festival of the earth, festival of

friendship, of the great Noon."

Zarathustra explains his laws, he makes them loved by all; he repeats

his sermons nine times, and finally announces the Eternal Return. He

speaks to the people; his words have the accent of a prayer.

_The great question:_

"The laws have already been given. Everything is ready for the

production of the Superman--grand and awful moment! Zarathustra reveals

his doctrine of the Eternal Return--which may now be endured; he

himself, for the first time, endures it.

"_Decisive moment:_ Zarathustra interrogates all this multitude

assembled for the festival.

"'Do you wish,' he says, 'the return of it all?' All reply: Yes!

"He dies of joy.

"Zarathustra dying holds the earth locked in his arms. And although no

one said a word, they all knew that Zarathustra was dead."

It is a fine issue: Nietzsche was soon to find it too easy, too fine a

one. This Platonic aristocracy, rather quickly established, left him

in doubt. It corresponded exactly to his desires; did it correspond to

his thoughts? Nietzsche, ready in the destruction of all the ancient

moralities, did not find that he had the right of proposing another

so soon? _All answered: Yes!_ Was that conceivable? Human societies

would always draw after them an imperfect mass which would have to be

constrained by force or by laws. Friedrich Nietzsche knew it: "I am a

seer," he wrote in his notes; "but my conscience casts an inexorable

light upon my vision, and I am myself the doubter." He gave up this

last plan. Never was he to recount the active life and the death of

Zarathustra.

No document admits us to the secret of his sadness. No letter, no

word presents us with the expression of it, We may, surely, take this

very silence as the avowal of his distress and humiliation. Friedrich

Nietzsche had always wished to write a classical work, a history,

system, or poem, worthy of the old Greeks whom he had chosen for

masters. And never had he been able to give a form to this ambition.

At the end of this year 1883 he had made an all but despairing attempt;

the abundance, the importance of his notes let us measure the vastness

of a work which was entirely vain. He could neither found his moral

ideal nor compose his tragic poem; at the same moment he fails in his

two works and sees his dream vanish. What is he? An unhappy soul,

capable of short efforts, of lyrical songs and cries.

The year 1884 opened sadly. Some chance fine weather in January

reanimated him. Suddenly he improvised: no city, no people, no laws; a

disorder of complaints, appeals, and moral fragments which seem to be

the debris left over from the ruin of his great work. It is the third

part of Zarathustra. The prophet, like Friedrich Nietzsche, lives alone

and retired upon his mountain. He speaks to himself, deceives himself,

forgets that he is alone; he threatens, he exhorts a humanity which

neither fears nor hearkens to him. He preaches to it the contempt

of customary virtues, the cult of courage, love of strength and of

the nascent generations. But he does not go down to it, and no one

hears his predication. He is sad, he desires to die. Then, Life, who

surprises his desire, comes to him and raises his courage.

"O Zarathustra!" says the goddess, "do not crack thy whip so terribly.

Thou knowest, noise murdereth thought. And even now I have very tender

thoughts. Hear me, thou art not faithful enough unto me, thou lovest me

not nearly as much as thou sayst, I know, for thou thinkest of leaving

me...."

Zarathustra listens to the reproach, smiles and hesitates. "True," he

says at last, "but thou also knowest. ..." They gaze at each other,

and he tells her something in her ear, among all her confused, stupid

yellow tresses. "What though I die?" he says; "nothing can separate,

nothing can reconcile, for every moment has its return, every moment is

eternal."

"What," answers the goddess, "that thou knowest, Zarathustra? That no

one knoweth."

Their eyes meet. They look at the green meadow over which the cool of

evening was spreading; they weep, then, in silence, they listen, they

understand the eleven sayings of the old bell which strikes midnight in

the mountain.

_One!_ Oh man! Lose not sight!

_Two!_ What saith the deep midnight?

_Three!_ I lay in sleep, in sleep;

_Four!_ From deep dream, I woke to light.

_Five!_ The world is deep,

_Six!_ And deeper than ever day thought it might.

_Seven!_ Deep is its woe--

_Eight!_ And deeper than woe--delight.

_Nine!_ Saith woe: Pass, go!

_Ten!_ Eternity's sought by all delight--_Eleven!_ Eternity deep by

all delight.[8]

_Twelve!_

. . . . . .

Then Zarathustra rises: he has recovered his security, his sweetness,

and his strength. He takes up his staff and sings as he goes down

towards men. A similar versicle completes the seven strophes of his

hymn:

"Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would like to

have children, if it be not the woman whom I love: for I

love thee, oh Eternity!

"For I love thee, oh Eternity!"

At the opening of the poem Zarathustra entered the great town--the

Multi-coloured Cow he names it--and began his apostolate. At the end of

the third part Zarathustra descends to the great town to recommence his

apostolate there. Friedrich Nietzsche, a vanquished warrior, after two

years of labour, has quailed. In 1872 he sent to Fräulein von Meysenbug

the interrupted series of his lectures on the future of Universities:

"It gives one a terrible thirst," he said to her, "and, in the long

run, nothing to drink." The same words apply to his poem.

[6] Albergo la Poata (information given by M Lanzky).

[7] An unpublished letter, communicated by M. Romain Rolland.

[8] Translation published by T. Fisher Unwin.

III

_Heinrich von Stein_

In April, 1884, the third and fourth sections (of _Zarathustra)_ were

published simultaneously. For the moment Nietzsche seems to have been

happy.

"Everything comes in its own good time," he wrote to Peter Gast on

March 5th. "I am forty and I find myself at the very point I proposed,

when twenty, to reach at this age. It has been a fine, a long, and a

formidable passage."

"To you," he wrote to Rohde, "who are _homo litteratus,_ I need not

hesitate to avow that in my opinion I have with this _Zarathustra_

brought the German language to its pitch of perfection. After Luther

and Goethe a third step remained to be taken--and consider, my old and

dear comrade, were ever strength, subtlety, and beauty of sound so

linked in our language? My style is a dance; I trifle with symmetries

of all sorts, and I play on these symmetries even in my selection of

vowels."

This joy lasted only for a little while. Without fresh work to hand

Nietzsche's ardour had no purpose and turned to ennui. Should he

arrange his system methodically, draw up a "philosophy of the future"?

He considers this, but finds that he is weary of thought and of

writing. What he needs is rest and the refreshment of music; but the

music which he could love does not exist. Italian music is flabby,

German music preachy, and his taste is for the live and the lyrical;

for something grave and delicate; something rhythmical, scornful, and

passionate. _Carmen_ pleases him well enough, and yet to _Carmen_ he

prefers the compositions of his disciple, Peter Gast. "I need your

music," he wrote to Gast.

Peter Gast was at this time in Venice, where Nietzsche wished to join

him. But Venice was damp, and he dared not leave Nice before mid-April.

Clearly an invalid's exigencies are becoming each year more and more

urgent. A gloomy day lowers his spirits, a week without the sun

prostrates him.

On the 26th of April he arrived in Venice. Peter Gast found rooms for

him not far from the Rialto, with windows that opened on the Grand

Canal. He had not been in Venice for four years, and it was with a

child's pleasure that he remade the acquaintance of the loved city. He

stayed in the labyrinth of Venice; Venice--whose spirit is compounded

of the magic of sun and water, the gracefulness of a gay and tactful

people, and glimpses of unexpected gardens with flowers and mosses

springing among the stones. "One hundred profound solitudes," he notes,

"compose Venice--hence her magic. A symbol for the men of the future."

For four or five hours every day he walked the little streets as he had

walked the hills, sometimes isolating himself, sometimes moving with

the Italian crowd.

He was endlessly reflecting upon the difficulties of his task. What

should he write next? He had thought of annotating some verses of

his poem by means of a series of pamphlets, but then no one had read

the words of Zarathustra. Those friends to whom they had been sent

preserved a melancholy silence which constantly astonished him. A young

author, Heinrich von Stein, was almost alone in sending him a word of

warm congratulation. Nietzsche therefore gave up the idea, feeling that

it would be ridiculous to comment upon a Bible which the public ignored.

Very seriously he considered a "philosophy of the future." His

intention was to give up, or at least to defer, further work on his

poem; he would confine himself to long study--"five, six years of

meditation and of silence, maybe"--and formulate his system in a

precise and definite manner. Various projects were in his mind when,

towards the middle of June, he left Venice for Switzerland. He wished

first to read certain books on historical and natural science in the

libraries of Basle, but his stay in that town was brief, for he found

the heavy heat oppressive and his friends there failed to please him.

Either they had not read _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ or they had read it

very badly. "I might have been among cows," he wrote to Peter Gast,

and returned to the Engadine.

* * * * *

On the 20th of August Heinrich von Stein wrote that he was coming.

Stein was at this time a very young man, scarcely twenty-six years

of age. But there was no German writer of whom greater things were

expected than of him. In 1878 he had published a little volume called

_The Ideals of Materialism, Lyrical Philosophy._ Friedrich Nietzsche

made the acquaintance of the author, in whose essay he recognised a

research analogous to his own. He thought that he had found a kindred

spirit, a comrade in his task; but this hope deceived him. Fräulein

von Meysenbug had prided herself on bringing Heinrich von Stein under

Wagner's influence. It was her defect to be always more benevolent than

far-sighted. Thanks to her good offices, Wagner's house was opened to

Stein as it had been opened ten years earlier to Nietzsche, and there

Stein lived in spite of Nietzsche's warning, "You admire Wagner, and it

is right that you should do so--provided your admiration does not last

long." Wagner talked, and Stein, who could neither free himself from

the master's influence nor oppose it, listened. His intellectual quest,

which had hitherto been unquiet but fruitful, now came to an end. He

closed his notebooks; he was conquered by a man too great for him,

sucked in and sucked dry.

The works which he published--he died at thirty--are temperate and

acute, but they lack one quality, precisely that which gives a high

value to his first essays--audacity, daring, the charm of a nascent

thought, ill-expressed but intense.

Nietzsche continued to interest himself in Stein, and superintended the

young man's work and his friendships. "Heinrich von Stein," he wrote

in July to Madame Overbeck, "is at present the adorer of Miss Salomé.

My successor in that employment as in much else." The danger that Stein

ran caused him a great deal of uneasiness. Stein, however, read and

appreciated his books, as Nietzsche rejoiced to know.

He was strangely moved on receiving the letter, for Stein had seemed

to understand _Thus Spake Zarathustra,_ and it might be that a longing

for liberty was the explanation of his visit. Stein would make up to

him for all the friends that he had lost; and what a revenge, moreover,

if he should conquer this disciple of Wagner's, this philosopher

from Bayreuth! He hastily sent a welcome, signed "The Solitary of

Sils-Maria."

There is a possible interpretation of Stein's movements which never

occurred to Nietzsche.

It must be remembered that Stein was the intimate and faithful friend

of Cosima Wagner; and certainly he did not now come to Nietzsche

without first consulting this shrewd woman and receiving her

approbation. Moreover, Nietzsche himself had not yet attacked, but had

merely withdrawn from Wagner. In July, 1882, he had seemed favourable

to a reconciliation. Fräulein von Meysenbug's endeavours, whether he

had authorised them or no, caused him to consider the possibility; and

in February, 1883, after Wagner's death, he wrote to Cosima Wagner. He

had so far been able to avoid saying anything irreparable, and all his

later work, even the very end of _Zarathustra,_ with its very vague

lyricism, did not close the door on the hope of an understanding. This

was Stein's own impression, and he wrote to Nietzsche:

"How I long for you to come this summer to Bayreuth and hear

_Parsifal._ When I think of that work I imagine a poem of pure beauty,

a spiritual adventure that is purely human, the development of a youth

who becomes a man. I can find in _Parsifal_ no pseudo-Christianity of

any sort and fewer tendencies than in any other of Wagner's works. If

I write to you--in a spirit at once audacious and timid--it is not

because I am a Wagnerian, but because I wish for _Parsifal_ such a

hearer as you, and for such a hearer as you I wish _Parsifal._"

Cosima Wagner's judgments were sound, and she knew Nietzsche's worth.

She now carried the heavy burden of Wagner's fame; she had a tradition

to prolong, a heritage to maintain. By recalling Nietzsche to her side

she would aid an extraordinary man, a rare soul that was wasting itself

in solitary effort, and she would aid herself at the same time--or so

she may have thought. One does not like to say in so many words that

she chose Heinrich von Stein as emissary and conciliator. But one may

be certain that she knew of, and did not disapprove, the young man's

attempt.

If there was such a thing as a Wagnerian equal to the enterprise, it

was Heinrich von Stein. He was the most open-minded of the disciples.

For him that mysticism of doubtful quality which _Parsifal_ propagated

was not the last word in religion. He included Schiller, Goethe, and

Wagner in one tradition as the creators of myths and the educators

of their age and race. For him the theatre of Bayreuth was not an

apotheosis, but a promise, an instrument for the future, the symbol of

a lyrical tradition.

Stein was anxious to acquit himself well of his mission, but he spoke

little. It was Nietzsche himself, the man, to whom he appealed, who

spoke, and who saw that he was heard. We may perhaps picture the

interview and Nietzsche's words:

"You admire Wagner? Who does not? As well as you and better than

you have I known, revered, and hearkened to him. I learnt from him

not the style of his art, but the style of his life--his valour and

enterprise. I am aware that I have been accused of ingratitude, which

is a word I ill understand. I have continued my work. In the best sense

of the word, I am his disciple. You frequent Bayreuth, which is very

agreeable for you, too agreeable. Wagner offers you for your delight

all the legends, all the beliefs of the past--German, Celtic, pagan,

and Christian. You should leave him for the same reason that I left

him, because this delight is destructive to the spirit which seeks

truth. Mark you, I say no word against art or religion. I believe that

their day will be again. Not one of the old values will be abandoned.

They will re-appear, transfigured no doubt, and more powerful and more

intense, in a world thoroughly illuminated to its depths by science.

We shall rediscover all the things that we loved in our childhood and

in our adolescence, all that has upheld and exalted our fathers--a

poetry, a goodness, the most sublime virtues, the humblest, too, each

in its glory and its dignity. But we must accept the darkness, we must

renounce and search. ... The possibilities are unheard of, but alone I

am weak. Help me, therefore; stay or come back here, six thousand feet

above Bayreuth!"[9]

Stein listened. His diary reveals the growing vividness of his

impressions:

"24 viii. '84. Sils-Maria. Evening with Nietzsche.

"27. His freedom of intellect, the imagery of his speech, a great

impression. Snow and winter winds. Headaches. At night I watch him

suffer.

"29. He has not slept, but has all the ardour of a young man. A sunny

and magnificent day!"

After three days, the too-youthful emissary left, greatly moved by what

had passed, and promising to rejoin Nietzsche at Nice, as the latter,

at least, understood. Nietzsche felt that he had greatly carried the

day. "Such an encounter as ours must have an early and far-reaching

importance," he wrote to Stein a few days after his departure. "Believe

me, you now belong to that little band whose fate, for good or ill, is

linked to mine." Stein answered that the days at Sils-Maria were to him

a great memory, a grave and solemn moment of his life; and then, rather

prudently, went on to speak of the binding conditions imposed on him

by his works and his profession. What he did _not_ say was, "Yes, I am

yours."

Was Nietzsche's mind open enough to perceive the reservation? One

cannot tell. He was making marvellous plans, and dreamt anew of an

"ideal cloister." To Fräulein von Meysenbug he made the naïve proposal

that she should come to Nice and spend the winter near him.

* * * * *

Chance permits us to discover the depths of his soul. He had gone down

to Basle in September, and there Overbeck visited him at his hotel, and

found him in bed, suffering from a sick headache, very low in himself,

and at the same time exceedingly talkative. His excited speech troubled

Overbeck, who was initiated into the mystery of the "Eternal Return."

"One day we shall be here together again in this very place; I again,

as I now am, sick; you again, as now you are, amazed at my words." He

spoke in a low and trembling voice, and his face was troubled--this is

the Nietzsche that Lou Salomé has described. Overbeck listened gently,

but avoided argument of any sort, and left with evil forebodings. Not

until the tragic meeting in Turin in January, 1889, was he again to see

his friend.

Nietzsche merely passed through Basle. His sister, whom he had not

seen since the quarrel of the previous autumn, gave him a rendezvous

at Zürich. It was to announce her marriage, which had taken place in

secret some months before. She was now no longer Fräulein Nietzsche

but Madame Förster, ready to leave for Paraguay with the colonists who

were under the charge of her husband. Recrimination would therefore

have been a waste of time. The step had been taken; Nietzsche did not

discuss it, and did his best to be pleasant once again to the sister

who was lost to him. "My brother," wrote Madame Förster, "seems to be

in a very satisfactory condition. He is bright and charming; we have

been together for six weeks, talking, laughing over everything."

She has left us a record of these days which she supposes--or

pretends to suppose--were happy. Nietzsche came upon the works of one

Freiligrath, a mediocre and popular poet. On the cover of the volume

was inscribed _Thirty--eighth Edition._ With comical solemnity he

exclaimed, "Here, then, we have at last a true German poet. The Germans

buy his verse!" He decided to be a good German for the day, and bought

a copy. He read and was hugely diverted--

"Wüstenkönig ist der Löwe;

Will er sein Gebiet durchfliegen."

(King of deserts is the Hon:

Will he traverse his dominion.)

He declaimed the pompous hemistiches. The Zürich hotel resounded with

his childish laughter as he amused himself improvising verses on every

subject in the manner of a Freiligrath.

"Hullo!" said an old general to the brother and sister. "What is

amusing you two? It makes one jealous to hear you. One wants to laugh

like you."

It is unlikely that Nietzsche had much cause for laughter. One wonders

whether he could contemplate those thirty-eight editions of Freiligrath

without bitterness. During his stay in Zürich he went to the library to

look through the files of the newspapers and reviews for his name. It

would have meant a good deal to him to have read a capable criticism of

his work, to have seen his thought reflected in another's; but no voice

ever answered his labours.

"The sky is beautiful, worthy of Nice, and this has lasted for days,"

he wrote to Peter Gast on September 30th. "My sister is with me, and it

is very agreeable for us to be doing each other good when for so long

we had been doing harm only. My head is full of the most extravagant

lyrics that ever haunted a poet's skull. I have had a letter from

Stein. This year has brought me many good things, and one of the most

precious of its gifts has been Stein, a new and a sincere friend.

"In short, let us be full of hope; or we may better express it by

saying with old Keller--

"'Trinkt, O Augen, was die Wimper hält

Von dem goldnen Ueberfluss der Welt! '"

Brother and sister left Zürich, the one bound for Naumburg, the other

for Nice. On the way Nietzsche stopped at Mentone. Hardly had he

settled down there than he wrote: "This is a magnificent place. I have

already discovered eight walks. I hope that no one will join me. I need

absolute quiet."

It is possible that the project which he had formed at the beginning of

the summer, when he spoke of six years of meditation and of silence,

was again in his mind. But he lacked the force of will which long and

silent meditation demands. He was, however, deeply moved by the hope of

a friend and by the loss of a sister, and his lyric impatience broke

the bonds. Yielding to instinct he composed poems off-hand--songs,

short stanzas, epigrams. Practically all the poems which are to

be found in his later works--the light verse, the biting distich,

inserted in the second edition of the _Gaya Scienza,_ the grandiose

Dionysian chants--were finished or conceived during these few weeks.

And once more he began to think of the still incomplete _Thus Spake

Zarathustra._ "A fourth, a fifth, a sixth part are inevitable," he

writes. "Whatever happens I must bring my son Zarathustra to his noble

end. Alive, he leaves me no peace."

At the end of October Nietzsche left Mentone. The sight of so many

invalids disturbed him, and he set out for Nice.

* * * * *

There an unexpected companion, Paul Lanzky by name, soon joined

him. Lanzky was an "intellectual," by birth a German and by taste a

Florentine, who lived a wandering life. Chance had put the works of

Nietzsche into his hands; and he had understood them. Applying to

Schmeitzner, the publisher, for the author's address, he was told--"

Herr Friedrich Nietzsche lives a very lonely life in Italy. Write

to Poste Restante, Genoa." The philosopher replied promptly and

graciously, "Come to Nice this winter and we will talk!" So Nietzsche

was not so unsociable and solitary after all! This correspondence took

place during the autumn of 1883, but Lanzky was not free at the moment,

and begged to be excused. In October, 1884, he reached the rendezvous.

Meanwhile he had had the opportunity of acquainting himself with the

two last sections of _Zarathustra,_ and had published very intelligent

summaries of them in a Leipsic magazine and in the _Rivista Europea_ of

Florence.

On the very morning of his arrival in Nice there was a knock at his

door. A gentle-looking man entered the room and came towards him

smiling. "Also Sie sind gekommen!" said Nietzsche. "So here you are!"

He took him by the arm, and examined curiously this student of his

works. "Let's see what you are made of!"

Nietzsche's eyes were fixed upon him; those eyes which had once been

beautiful, and were, at moments, still beautiful, clouded though they

now were by reason of prolonged suffering. Lanzky was astonished. He

had come to do honour to a redoubtable prophet, and here was the most

affable, the simplest, and, as it seemed to him, the most modest of

German professors.

As the two men went out together, Lanzky avowed his surprise--"

Master," he began....

"You are the first to call me by that name," said Nietzsche with a

smile. But he let the word pass, for he knew that he was a master.

"Master," continued Lanzky, "what a mistaken idea of you one gathers

from your books; tell me ..."

"No, no, not to-day. You do not know Nice. I will do the honours, and

show you this sea, these mountains, these walks.... Another day we

shall talk, if you will."

By the time they returned it was six o'clock in the evening, and Lanzky

had discovered how tireless a walker was his prophet.

They organised their life in common. At six o'clock in the morning it

was Nietzsche's custom to make himself a cup of tea, which he took

alone; towards eight Lanzky would knock at his door and ask how he had

passed the night--Nietzsche often slept badly--and how he intended to

employ his morning. Usually Nietzsche began the day by skimming the

newspapers in a public reading hall; he then went to the shore, where

Lanzky either joined him or respected his desire for a solitary walk.

Both of them lunched in their pension. In the afternoon they walked

out together. At night, Nietzsche wrote or Lanzky read to him aloud,

often from some French book, such as the _Letters_ of the Abbé Galiani,

Stendhal's _Le Rouge et le Noir, La Chartreuse, L'Armance._

To live courteously, yet withhold from ordinary gaze the secret of

one's life, is a whole art in itself; and this art Nietzsche had

mastered. Indeed, as regards the scheme of manners that he had composed

for himself, this solitary of the table d'hôte was, deliberately,

hypocritical and almost cunning. More than once Lanzky was nonplussed.

One Sunday a young lady asked Nietzsche had he been to church.

"To-day, no," he replied courteously.

To Lanzky, who admired his prudence, he explained that every truth was

not good for everyone. "If I had troubled that girl's mind," he added,

"I should be horrified."

Occasionally it amused him to announce his future greatness. He would

tell his neighbours during meals that in forty years' time he would be

illustrious throughout Europe.

They would say: "Well, then lend us your books."

He refused their requests most positively, and again explained to

Lanzky that his writings were not for the man in the street.

"Master," asked Lanzky, "why do you print them?"

It appears that no answer was given to this reasonable question.

Nietzsche, however, dissembled even with Lanzky. The formation of a

society of friends, of an idealistic phalanstery similar to that in

which Emerson lived--this old dream of his he loved to repeat and

elaborate for him.

He often led Lanzky to the peninsula of Saint-Jean. "Here," he would

say in Biblical phrase--"Here we shall pitch our tents." He went so far

as to select a group of little villas which seemed to be suitable for

his purpose. But the members were not yet decided upon, and the name of

Heinrich von Stein, the only friend, the only disciple whom he really

wanted, was never mentioned in Lanzky's presence.

There was no news of Stein's coming, nor of his plans. To Nietzsche

he gave no sign. We may assume that he had gone to Sils-Maria to

conciliate, if possible, the two masters. But one of them had said that

he must choose between the two: perhaps he had been disturbed for a

moment. He returned, however, to his Germany, and there he saw Cosima

Wagner again. Nietzsche had required that he should choose, and he

remained faithful to Wagner.

Nietzsche anticipated a new desertion. He was afraid, and, yielding to

a humble and mournful impulse, wrote, in the form of a poem, an appeal

which he addressed to the young man:

O midday of life! O solemn time!

O garden of summer!

Unquiet happiness I am there: listening, waiting!

Night and day, living in hope of the friend;

"Where are ye, friends? Come! It is time, it is time!"[10]

Heinrich von Stein felt it incumbent upon him to reply. He wrote: "To

an appeal such as yours there is but one suitable reply. It is that I

should come and give myself entirely to you, vowing, as to the noblest

of tasks, all my time to the understanding of the new Gospel which you

have to preach. But this is forbidden me. An idea, however, strikes me.

Every month I entertain two friends and read with them some article

from the Wagner-Lexicon. It is taken as text, and, on it, I speak to

them. These conversations are becoming more and more lofty and free.

Latterly we have found this definition of æsthetic emotion--a passage

to the impersonal through very fulness of personality. I think that our

meetings would please you. And how if Nietzsche should now and again

send us the text? Would you communicate with us in this way? Would you

not see in such a correspondence an introduction, a step towards your

idea of a cloister?"

This letter was obviously the letter of an excellent pupil, and it

exasperated Nietzsche. Wagner was named, doubtless intentionally, and

the Wagnerian Encyclopedia, the sum of an absurd and puerile theology,

was indicated as the text of Stein's meditations. Here was the old

adversary again standing in the way, Wagner, the quack of thought, the

seducer of young men. Förster, who was taking his sister from him, was

a Wagnerian; and Heinrich von Stein, on Wagner's account, refused him

his devotion. It was a cruel liberty that he had won, alone and at the

cost of a struggle whose wounds he still bore. He wrote to his sister:

"What a foolish letter Stein has written me in answer to such poetry!

I am painfully affected. Here I am ill again. I have recourse to the

old means [chloral], and I utterly hate all men, myself included, whom

I have known. I sleep well, but on waking I experience misanthropy and

rancour. And yet there can be few men living who are better disposed,

more benevolent than I!"

Lanzky remarked Nietzsche's trouble of mind without suspecting the

cause. The crisis was very severe, but Nietzsche did not allow himself

to be crushed by it and laboured energetically. More often now than

heretofore he walked alone, and Lanzky would watch him trip as lightly

as a dancer across the Promenade des Anglais or over the mountain

paths. He would leap and gambol at times, and then suddenly interrupt

his capers to write down a few words with a pencil. What was the new

work on which he was busy? Lanzky had no idea.

One morning in March he entered, as was his custom, the little room

which the philosopher occupied, to find him in bed notwithstanding the

advanced hour. He made anxious enquiries.

"I am ill," said Nietzsche; "I have just had my confinement."

"What's that you say?" asked Lanzky, much perturbed.

"The fourth part of _Zarathustra_ is written."

* * * * *

This fourth section does not enable us to discover at length an advance

in the work, an attained precision of thought. It is merely a singular

fragment, an "interlude," as Nietzsche called it. It illustrates a

strange episode in the life of the hero, one which has disconcerted

many a reader. We may perhaps best understand it if we consider the

deception to which Nietzsche has just been subjected.

The superior men go up to Zarathustra and surprise him in his

mountainous solitude: an old pope, an old historian, an old king,

unhappy beings who are suffering from their abasement and wish to ask

succour of a sage whose strength they feel. Was it not thus that Stein,

that distinguished young man, etiolated by Bayreuth, went to Nietzsche?

Zarathustra admits these superior men to his presence, and keeping

in check his savage humour, makes them sit down in his cave, is sorry

for their disquietude, listens and talks to them. Was it not thus that

Nietzsche had received Stein?

Zarathustra's soul is in its depths less hard than it should be, and

he allows himself to be seduced by the morbid charm and delicacy of

the superior men; he takes pity on them and, forgetting that their

misery is irremediable, yields to the pleasures of hope. He had looked

for friends, and, perhaps, with these "superior men" they have come at

last. Had not Nietzsche hoped for some help from Stein?

Zarathustra leaves his friends for a moment, and ascends alone to the

mountain. He returns to his cave to find the "superior men," all of

them prostrate before a donkey. The aged pope is saying Mass before the

new idol. In this posture Stein, interpreting a Wagnerian bible with

two friends, had been surprised by Nietzsche.

Zarathustra hunts his guests away, and calls for new workmen for a new

world. But will he ever find them?

"My children, my pure-blooded race, my beautiful new race; what is it

that keeps my children upon their isles?

"Is it not time, full time--I murmur it in thine ear, good spirit of

the tempests,--that they should return to their father? do they not

know that my hair grows gray and whitens in waiting?

"Go, go, spirit of the tempests, indomitable and beneficent! Leave thy

gorges and thy mountains, precipitate thyself upon the seas and bless

my children before the night has come.

"Bear them the benediction of my happiness, the benediction of that

crown of happy roses! Let these roses fall upon their isles, let

them remain fallen there, as a sign, which asks: 'Whence can such a

happiness come?'

. . . . . .

"Then they shall ask: 'Still lives he, our father Zarathustra? What,

can our father Zarathustra be still alive? Does our old father,

Zarathustra, still love his children?'

"The wind breathes, the wind breathes, the moon shines bright--Oh my

far-off, far-off children, why are ye not here, with your father? The

wind breathes no cloud passes over the sky, the world sleeps. Oh, joy!

Oh, joy!"

Nietzsche omitted this page from his work. Perhaps he felt ashamed of

so plain and so melancholy an avowal.

The fourth part of _Zarathustra_ found no publisher. A few months

earlier Schmeitzner had informed Nietzsche that "the public would not

read his aphorisms." He now contented himself with stating that the

public had chosen to ignore _Zarathustra;_ and there the matter rested,

so far as he was concerned.

Nietzsche then made certain overtures which only hurt his pride and had

no result; then he took a more dignified course and had the manuscript

printed at his own expense in an edition limited to forty copies.

To tell the truth, his friends were not so numerous. He found seven

consignees--none of whom were truly worthy. If we may guess, these were

the seven: his sister--whose loss he never ceased to deplore; Overbeck

-a strict friend, an intelligent reader, but cautious and reserved;

Burckhardt, the Basle historian--who always replied to Nietzsche's

messages, but was too polite to be easily fathomed; Peter Gast--the

faithful disciple whom, no doubt, Nietzsche found too faithful and

obedient; Lanzky--his good companion of the wintertide; Rohde--who

scarcely disguised the ennui that these forced readings gave him.

These were the seven, we may presume, who received copies of the work,

and not all of them troubled to read this fourth and last section,

the interlude which ends, and yet does not complete, _Thus Spake

Zarathustra._

[9] Phrase in a passage from _Ecce Homo._

[10]

"Oh Lebens Mittag! Feierliche Zeit!

Oh Sommergarten!

Unruhig Glück im Stehn und Spahn und Warten!

Der Freunde harr' Ich, Tag und Nacht bereit;

Wo bleibt ihr, Freunde? Kommt! s'ist Zeit! s'ist Zeit!"