book, _Beyond Good and Evil_. I read it, received a strong impression,
though not a clear or decided one, and did nothing further about
it--for one reason, because I receive every day far too many books
to be able to acknowledge them. But as in the following year _The
Genealogy of Morals_ was sent me by the author, and as this book was
not only much clearer in itself, but also threw new light on the
earlier one, I wrote Nietzsche a few lines of thanks, and this led to a
correspondence which was interrupted by Nietzsche's attack of insanity
thirteen months later.
The letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear
to me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest.
[1] See _Tilskueren_ (Copenhagen) for August and November-December
1889, January, February-March, April and May 1890.
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND GEORGE BRANDES
1. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen_, Nov. 26, 1887.
DEAR SIR,
A year ago I received through your publisher your work _Beyond Good
and Evil_; the other day your latest book reached me in the same way.
Of your other books I have _Human, all-too-Human_. I had just sent the
two volumes I possess to the binder, when _The Genealogy of Morals_
arrived, so that I have not been able to compare it with the earlier
works, as I mean to do. By degrees I shall read everything of yours
attentively.
This time, however, I am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks
for the book sent. It is an honour to me to be known to you, and known
in such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader.
A new and original spirit breathes to me from your books. I do not yet
fully understand what I have read; I cannot always see your intention.
But I find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies,
the depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with
democratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. Your contempt for
the morality of pity is not yet clear to me. There were also in the
other work some reflections on women in general which did not agree
with my own line of thought. Your nature is so absolutely different
from mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home. In spite of your
universality you are very German in your mode of thinking and writing.
You are one of the few people with whom I should enjoy a talk.
I know nothing about you. I see with astonishment that you are
a professor and doctor. I congratulate you in any case on being
intellectually so little of a professor.
I do not know what you have read of mine. My writings only attempt the
solution of modest problems. For the most part they are only to be had
in Danish. For many years I have not written German. I have my best
public in the Slavonic countries, I believe. I have lectured in Warsaw
for two years in succession, and this year in Petersburg and Moscow,
in French. Thus I endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my
native land.
Although no longer young, I am still one of the most inquisitive of
men and one of the most eager to learn. You will therefore not find me
closed against your ideas, even when I differ from you in thought and
feeling. I am often stupid, but never in the least narrow.
Let me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the
trouble.
Yours gratefully,
GEORGE BRANDES.
2. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.
_Nice_, Dec. 2, 1887.
MY DEAR SIR,
A few readers whom one honours and beyond them no readers at all--that
is really what I desire. As regards the latter part of this wish, I am
bound to say my hope of its realisation is growing less and less. All
the more happy am I _in satis sunt pauci_, that the _pauci_ do not fail
and have never failed me. Of the living amongst them I will mention (to
name only those whom you are certain to know) my distinguished friend
Jakob Burkhardt, Hans von Bülow, H. Taine, and the Swiss poet Keller;
of the dead, the old Hegelian Bruno Bauer and Richard Wagner. It gives
me sincere pleasure that so good a European and missionary of culture
as yourself will in future be numbered amongst them; I thank you with
all my heart for this proof of your goodwill.
I am afraid you will find it a difficult position. I myself have no
doubt that my writings in one way or another are still "very German."
You will, I am sure, feel this all the more markedly, being so spoilt
by yourself; I mean, by the free and graceful French way in which you
handle the language (a more familiar way than mine). With me a great
many words have acquired an incrustation of foreign salts and taste
differently on my tongue and on those of my readers. On the scale of
my experiences and circumstances the predominance is given to the
rarer, remoter, more attenuated tones as against the normal, medial
ones. Besides (as an old musician, which is what I really am), I have
an ear for quarter-tones. Finally--and this probably does most to make
my books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of
reasons. What a person already holds "true" or has not yet acknowledged
as true; seems to me to depend mainly on his courage, on the relative
strength of his courage (I seldom have the courage for what I really
know).
The expression _Aristocratic Radicalism_, which you employ, is very
good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read
about myself.
How far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it will
carry me yet--I am almost afraid to imagine. But there are certain
paths which do not allow one to go backward and so I go forward,
because I _must_.
That I may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your
access to my cave--that is, my philosophy--my Leipzig publisher shall
send you all my older books _en bloc_. I recommend you especially to
read the new prefaces to them (they have nearly all been republished);
these prefaces, if read in order, will perhaps throw some light upon
me, assuming that I am not obscurity in itself (obscure in myself) as
_obscurissimus obscurorum virorum_. For that is quite possible.
Are you a musician? A work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just
being published, a "Hymn to Life." This is intended to represent my
music to posterity and one day to be sung "in my memory"; assuming that
there is enough left of me for that. You see what posthumous thoughts
I have. But a philosophy like mine is like a grave--it takes one
from among the living. _Bene vixit qui bene latuit_--was inscribed on
Descartes' tombstone. What an epitaph, to be sure!
I too hope we may meet some day,
Yours,
NIETZSCHE.
N.B.--I am staying this winter at Nice. My summer address is
Sils-Maria, Upper-Engadine, Switzerland--I have resigned my
professorship at the University. I am three parts blind.
3. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen_, Dec. 15, 1887.
MY DEAR SIR,
The last words of your letter are those that have made most impression
on me; those in which you tell me that your eyes are seriously
affected. Have you consulted good oculists, the best? It alters one's
whole psychological life if one cannot see well. You owe it to all
who honour you to do everything possible for the preservation and
improvement of your sight.
I have put off answering your letter because you announced the sending
of a parcel of books, and I wished to thank you for them at the same
time. But as the parcel has not yet arrived I will send you a few words
to-day. I have your books back from the binder and have gone into them
as deeply as I was able amid the stress of preparing lectures and all
kinds of literary and political work.
December 17.
I am quite willing to be called a "good European," less so to
be called a "missionary of culture." I have a horror of all
missionary effort--because I have come across none but moralising
missionaries--and I am afraid I do not altogether believe in what is
called culture. Our culture as a whole cannot inspire enthusiasm, can
it? and what would a missionary be without _enthusiasm_! In other
words, I am more isolated than you think. All I meant by being German
was that you write more for yourself, think more of yourself in
writing, than for the general public; whereas most non--German writers
have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of
style, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but
necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to
keep to himself his most intimate and best individuality, the anonymous
in him. I have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my
inmost self is more than hinted at in my writings.
I am no connoisseur in music. The arts of which I have some notion are
sculpture and painting; I have to thank them for my deepest artistic
impressions. My ear is undeveloped. In my young days this was a great
grief to me. I used to play a good deal and worked at thorough-bass for
a few years, but nothing came of it. I can enjoy good music keenly, but
still am one of the uninitiated.
I think I can trace in your works certain points of agreement with
my own taste: your predilection for Beyle, for instance, and for
Taine; but the latter I have not seen for seventeen years. I am not so
enthusiastic about his work on the Revolution as you seem to be. He
deplores and harangues an earthquake.
I used the expression "aristocratic radicalism" because it so exactly
defines my own political convictions. I am a little hurt, however,
at the offhand and impetuous pronouncements against such--phenomena
as socialism and anarchism in your works. The anarchism of Prince
Kropotkin, for instance, is no stupidity. The name, of course, is
nothing. Your intellect, which is usually so dazzling, seems to me to
fall a trifle short where truth is to be found in a nuance. Your views
on the origin of the moral ideas interest me in the highest degree.
You share--to my delighted astonishment--a certain repugnance which I
feel for Herbert Spencer. With us he passes for the god of philosophy.
However, it is as a rule a distinct merit with these Englishmen that
their not very high-soaring intellect shuns hypotheses, whereas
hypothesis has destroyed the supremacy of German philosophy. Is
not there a great deal that is hypothetical in your ideas of caste
distinctions as the source of various moral concepts?
I know Rée whom you attack, have met him in Berlin; he was a quiet man,
rather distinguished in his bearing, but a somewhat dry and limited
intellect. He was living--according to his own account, as brother and
sister--with a quite young and intelligent Russian lady, who published
a year or two ago a book called _Der Kampf um Gott_, but this gives no
idea of her genuine gifts.
I am looking forward to receiving the books you promise me. I hope in
future you will not lose sight of me.
Yours,
GEORGE BRANDES.
4. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.
_Nice_, Jan. 8, 1888.
You should not object to the expression "missionary of culture." What
better way is there of being one in our day than that of "missionising"
one's disbelief in culture? To have understood that our European
culture is a vast problem and by no means a solution--is not such a
degree of introspection and self-conquest nowadays culture itself?
I am surprised my books have not yet reached you. I shall not omit to
send a reminder to Leipzig. At Christmas time Messieurs the publishers
are apt to lose their heads. Meanwhile may I be allowed to bring to
your notice a daring curiosity over which no publisher has authority,
an _ineditum_ of mine that is among the most personal things I can
show. It is the fourth part of my _Zarathustra_; its proper title, with
regard to what precedes and follows it, should be--
_Zarathustra's Temptation_
An Interlude.
Perhaps this is my best answer to your question about my problem of
pity. Besides which, there are excellent reasons for gaining admission
to "me" by this particular secret door; provided that one crosses the
threshold with your eyes and ears. Your essay on Zola reminded me once
more, like everything I have met with of yours (the last was an essay
in the Goethe Year-book), in the most agreeable way of your natural
tendency towards every kind of psychological optics. When working out
the most difficult mathematical problems of the _âme moderne_ you are
as much in your element as a German scholar in such case is apt to be
out of his. Or do you perhaps think more favourably of present-day
Germans? It seems to me that they become year by year more clumsy
and rectangular _in rebus psychologicis_ (in direct contrast to the
Parisians, with whom everything is becoming _nuance_ and mosaic), so
that all events below the surface escape their notice. For example, my
_Beyond Good and Evil_--what an awkward position it has put them in!
Not one intelligent word has reached me about this book, let alone an
intelligent sentiment. I do not believe even the most well-disposed of
my readers has discovered that he has here to deal with the logical
results of a perfectly definite philosophical _sensibility_, and not
with a medley of a hundred promiscuous paradoxes and heterodoxies.
Nothing of the kind has been "experienced"; my readers do not bring to
it a thousandth part of the passion and suffering that is needed. An
"immoralist!" This does not suggest anything to them.
By the way, the Goncourts in one of their prefaces claim to have
invented the phrase _document humain_. But for all that M. Taine may
well be its real originator.
You are right in what you say about "haranguing an earthquake "; but
such Quixotism is among the most honourable things on this earth.
With the greatest respect,
Yours,
NIETZSCHE.
5. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen_, Jan. 11, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Your publisher has apparently forgotten to send me your books, but I
have to-day received your letter with thanks. I take the liberty of
sending you herewith one of my books in proof (because unfortunately
I have no other copy at hand), a collection of essays intended for
_export_, therefore not my best wares. They date from various times
and are all too polite, too laudatory, too idealistic in tone. I never
really say all I think in them. The paper on Ibsen is no doubt the
best, but the translation of the verses, which I had done for me, is
unfortunately wretched.
There is one Scandinavian writer whose works would interest you, if
only they were translated: _Sören Kierkegaard_; he lived from 1813
to 1855, and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists
that have ever existed. A little book I wrote about him (translated,
Leipzig, 1879) gives no adequate idea of his genius, as it is a sort
of polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence. But in a
psychological respect it is, I think, the most subtle thing I have
published.
The essay in the Goethe Year-book was unfortunately shortened by more
than a third, as the space had been reserved for me. It is a good deal
better in Danish.
If you happen to read Polish, I will send you a little book that I have
published only in that language.
I see the new _Rivista Contemporanea_ of Florence has printed a paper
of mine on Danish literature. You must not read it. It is full of the
most ridiculous mistakes. It is translated from the Russian, I must
tell you. I had allowed it to be translated into Russian from my French
text, but could not check this translation; now it appears in Italian
from the Russian with fresh absurdities; amongst others in the names
(on account of the Russian pronunciation), G for H throughout.
I am glad you find in me something serviceable to yourself. For the
last four years I have been the most detested man in Scandinavia. Every
day the papers rage against me, especially since my last long quarrel
with Björnson, in which the moral German papers all took part against
me. I dare say you know his absurd play, _A Gauntlet_, his propaganda
for male virginity and his covenant with the spokeswomen of "the demand
for equality in morals." Anything like it was certainly unheard of till
now. In Sweden these insane women have formed great leagues in which
they vow "only to marry virgin men." I suppose they get a guarantee
with them, like watches, only the guarantee for the future is not
likely to be forthcoming.
I have read the three books of yours that I know again and again.
There are two or three bridges leading from my inner world to yours:
Cæsarism, hatred of pedantry, a sense for Beyle, etc., but still most
of it is strange to me. Our experiences appear to be so infinitely
dissimilar. You are without doubt the most suggestive of all German
writers.
Your German literature! I don't know what is the matter with it.
I fancy all the brains must go into the General Staff or the
administration. The whole life of Germany and all your institutions
are spreading the _most hideous uniformity_, and even authorship is
stifled by publishing.
Your obliged and respectful,
GEORGE BRANDES.
6. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.
_Nice_, Feb. 19, 1888.
You have laid me under a most agreeable obligation with your
contribution to the idea of "Modernity," for it happens that this
winter I am circling round this paramount problem of values, very much
from above and in the manner of a bird, and with the best intention of
looking down upon the modern world with as unmodern an eye as possible.
I admire--let me confess it--the tolerance of your judgment, as much
as the moderation of your sentences. How you suffer these "little
children" to come unto you! Even Heyse!
On my next visit to Germany I propose to take up the psychological
problem of Kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with
your older literature. It will be of use to me in the best sense of
the word--and will serve to restore good humour to my own severity and
arrogance of judgment.
My publisher telegraphed to me yesterday that the books had gone to
you. I will spare you and myself the story of why they were delayed.
Now, my dear Sir, may you put a good face on a bad bargain, I mean on
this Nietzsche literature.
I myself cherish the notion of having given the "new Germans" the
richest, most actual and most independent books of any they possess;
also of being in my own person a capital event in the crisis of the
determination of values. But this may be an error; and, what is more, a
piece of foolishness--I do not want to have to believe anything [of the
sort] about myself.
One or two further remarks: they concern my firstlings (the _Juvenilia_
and _Juvenalia_).
The pamphlet against Strauss, the wicked merrymaking of a "very free
spirit" at the expense of one who thought himself such, led to a
terrific scandal; I was already a _Professor Ordinarius_ at the time,
therefore in spite of my twenty-seven years a kind of authority and
something acknowledged. The most unbiassed view of this affair, in
which almost every "notability" took part for or against me, and in
which an insane quantity of paper was covered with printer's ink, is
to be found in Karl Hillebrand's _Zeiten, Völker und Menschen_, second
volume. The trouble was not that I had jeered at the senile bungling of
an eminent critic, but that I had caught German taste _in flagranti_
in compromising tastelessness; for in spite of all party differences
of religion and theology it had unanimously admired Strauss's _Alten
und Neuen Glauben_ as a masterpiece of freedom and subtlety of thought
(even the style!). My pamphlet was the first onslaught on German
culture (that "culture" which they imagined to have gained the victory
over France). The word "Culture-Philistine," which I then invented, has
remained in the language as a survival of the raging turmoil of that
polemic.
The two papers on Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner appear to me to-day
to contain self-confessions, above all promises to myself, rather
than any real psychology of those two masters, who are at the same
time profoundly related and profoundly antagonistic to me--(I was the
first to distill a sort of unity out of them both; at present this
superstition is much to the fore in German culture--that all Wagnerites
are followers of Schopenhauer. It was otherwise when I was young. Then
it was the last of the Hegelians who adhered to Wagner, and "Wagner and
Hegel" was still the watchword of the 'fifties).
Between _Thoughts out of Season_ and _Human, all-too-Human_ there lies
a crisis and a skin-casting. Physically too: I lived for years in
extreme proximity to death. This was my great good fortune: I forgot
myself, I outlived myself ... I have performed the same trick once
again.
So now we have each presented gifts to the other: two travellers, it
seems to me, who are glad to have met.
I remain,
Yours most sincerely,
NIETZSCHE.
7. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen_, March 7, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
I imagine you to be living in fine spring weather; up here we are
buried in abominable snowdrifts and have been cut off from Europe for
several days. To make things worse, I have this evening been talking to
some hundred imbeciles, and everything looks grey and dreary around me,
so to revive my spirits a little I will thank you for your letter of
February 19 and your generous present of books.
As I was too busy to write to you at once, I sent you a volume on
German Romanticism which I found on my shelves. I should be very sorry,
however, that you should interpret my sending it otherwise than as a
silent expression of thanks.
The book was written in 1873 and revised in 1886; but my German
publisher has permitted himself a number of linguistic and other
alterations, so that the first two pages, for instance, are hardly mine
at all. Wherever he does not understand my meaning, he puts something
else, and declares that what I have written is not German.
Moreover, the man promised to buy the rights of the old translation of
my book, but from very foolish economy has not done so; the consequence
is that the German courts have suppressed my book in two instances
as pirated(!)--because I had included in it fragments of the old
translation--while the real pirate is allowed to sell my works freely.
The probable result of this will be that I shall withdraw entirely from
German literature.
I sent that volume because I had no other. But the first one on the
_émigrés_, the fourth on the English and the fifth on the French
romanticists are all far, far better; written _con amore_.
The title of the book, _Moderne Geister_, is fortuitous. I have written
some twenty volumes. I wanted to put together for abroad a volume on
personalities whose names would be familiar. That is how it came about.
Some things in it have cost a good deal of study, such as the paper on
Tegnér, which tells the truth about him for the first time. Ibsen will
certainly interest you as a personality. Unfortunately as a man he does
not stand on the same level that he reaches as a poet. Intellectually
he owes much to Kierkegaard, and he is still strongly permeated by
theology. Björnson in his latest phase has become just an ordinary
lay-preacher.
For more than three years I have not published a book; I felt too
unhappy. These three years have been among the hardest of my life, and
I see no sign of the approach of better times. However, I am now going
to set about the publication of the sixth volume of my work and another
book besides. It will take a deal of time.
I was delighted with all the fresh books, turning them over and reading
them.
The youthful books are of great value to me; they make it far easier to
understand you; I am now leisurely ascending the steps that lead up to
your intellect. With _Zarathustra_ I began too precipitately. I prefer
to advance upwards rather than to dive head first as though into a sea.
I knew Hillebrand's essay and read years ago some bitter attacks
on the book about Strauss. I am grateful to you for the word
culture-philistine; I had no idea it was yours. I take no offence at
the criticism of Strauss, although I have feelings of piety for the old
gentleman. Yet he was always the Tübingen collegian.
Of the other works I have at present only studied _The Dawn of Day_
at all closely. I believe I understand the book thoroughly, many of
its ideas have also been mine, others are new to me or put into a new
shape, but not on that account _strange_ to me.