not yet the author of _Zarathustra_--he is a few years too young for
that.
I am very grateful for the etymology of _Goth_; it is simply godlike.
I presume you are reading another letter of mine to-day.
Your gratefully attached
N.
16. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.
_Sils-Maria_, Sept. 13, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Herewith I do myself a pleasure--that of recalling myself to your
memory, by sending you a wicked little book, but one that is none the
less very seriously meant; the product of the _good_ days of Turin.
For I must tell you that since then there have been _evil_ days in
Superfluity; such a decline in health, courage and "will to life,"
to talk Schopenhauer, that the little spring idyll scarcely seemed
credible any longer. Fortunately I still possessed a document belonging
to it, the _Case of Wagner. A Musician's Problem_. Spiteful tongues
will prefer to call it _The Fall of Wagner_.
Much as you may disclaim music (--the most importunate of all the
Muses), and with however good reason, yet pray look at this piece of
musician's psychology. You, my dear Mr. Cosmopolitan, are far too
European in your ideas not to hear in it a hundred times more than my
so-called countrymen, the "musical" Germans.
After all, in this case I am a connoisseur _in rebus et personis_--and,
fortunately, enough of a musician by instinct to see that in this
ultimate question of values, the problem is accessible and _soluble_
through music.
In reality this pamphlet is almost written in French--I dare say it
would be easier to translate it into French than into German.
Could you give me one or two more Russian or French addresses to which
there would be some _sense_ in sending the pamphlet?
In a month or two something _philosophical_ may be expected; under the
very inoffensive title of _Leisure Hours of à Psychologist_ I am saying
agreeable and disagreeable things to the world at large--including that
intelligent nation, the Germans.
But all this is in the main nothing but recreation beside the main
thing: the name of the latter is _Transvaluation of all Values_. Europe
will have to discover a new Siberia, to which to consign the author of
these experiments with values.
I hope this high-spirited letter will find you in one of your usual
_resolute_ moods.
With kind remembrances,
Yours,
Dr. NIETZSCHE.
Address till middle of November: Torino (Italia) ferma in posta.
17. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen_, Oct. 6, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Your letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work. This
accounts for my delay in answering.
The mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement.
It is sad news that you have had a bad summer. I was foolish enough to
think that you had already got over all your physical troubles.
I have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much
enjoyment. I am not so unmusical that I cannot enter into the fun of
it. I am merely not an expert. A few days before receiving the little
book I heard a very fine performance of _Carmen_; what glorious music!
However, at the risk of exciting your wrath I confess that Wagner's
_Tristan und Isolde_ made an indelible impression on me. I once heard
this opera in Berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of
mind, and I felt every note. I do not know whether the impression was
so deep because I was so ill.
Do you know Bizet's widow? You ought to send her the pamphlet. She
would like it. She is the sweetest, most charming of women, with a
nervous _tic_ that is curiously becoming, but perfectly genuine,
perfectly sincere and full of fire. Only she has married again (an
excellent man, a barrister named Straus, of Paris). I believe she
knows some German. I could get you her address, if it does not put you
against her that she has not remained true to her god--any more than
the Virgin Mary, Mozart's widow or Marie Louise.
Bizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming.--But I am gossiping.
I have given a copy of the book to the greatest of Swedish writers,
August Strindberg, whom I have entirely won over to you. He is a true
genius, only a trifle mad like most geniuses (and non-geniuses). The
other copy I shall also place with care.
Paris I am not well acquainted with now. But send a copy to the
following address: Madame la Princesse Anna Dmitrievna Ténicheff, Quai
Anglais 20, Petersburg. This lady is a friend of mine; she is also
acquainted with the musical world of Petersburg and will make you known
there. I have asked her before now to buy your works, but they were all
forbidden in Russia, even _Human, all-too-Human_.
It would also be as well to send a copy to Prince Urussov (who is
mentioned in Turgeniev's letters). He is greatly interested in
everything German, and is a man of rich gifts, an intellectual gourmet.
I do not remember his address for the moment, but can find it out.
I am glad that in spite of all bodily ills you are working so
vigorously and keenly. I am looking forward to all the things you
promise me.
It would give me great pleasure to be read by you, but unfortunately
you do not understand my language. I have produced an enormous amount
this summer. I have written two long new books (of twenty-four and
twenty-eight sheets), _Impressions of Poland and Impressions of
Russia_, besides entirely rewriting one of my oldest books, _Æsthetic
Studies_, for a new edition and correcting the proofs of all three
books myself. In another week or so I shall have finished this work;
then I give a series of lectures, writing at the same time another
series in French, and leave for Russia in the depth of winter to revive
there.
That is the plan I propose for my winter campaign. May it not be a
Russian campaign in the bad sense.
I hope you will continue your friendly interest in me.
I remain,
Your faithfully devoted,
GEORGE BRANDES.
18. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.
_Turin_, Oct. 20, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Once more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north; it
is in fact so far the only letter that puts a "good face," or any
face at all on my attack on Wagner. For people do not write to me. I
have irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest. There is, for
instance, my old friend, Baron Seydlitz of Munich, who unfortunately
happens to be President of the Munich Wagner Society; my still older
friend, _Justizrath_ Krug of Cologne, president of the local Wagner
Society; my brother-in-law, Dr. Bernhard Förster in South America,
the not unknown Anti--Semite, one of the keenest contributors to the
_Bayreuther Blätter_--and my respected friend, Malwida von Meysenbug,
the authoress of _Memoirs of an Idealist_, who continues to confuse
Wagner with Michel Angelo....
On the other side I have been given to understand that I must be on my
guard against the female Wagnerite: in certain cases she is said to
be without scruple. Perhaps Bayreuth will defend itself in the German
Imperial manner, by the prohibition of my writings--as "dangerous to
public morals"; for here the Emperor is a party to the case.
My dictum, "we all know the inæsthetic concept of the Christian
_Junker_," might even be interpreted as _lèse-majesté_.
Your intervention on behalf of Bizet's widow gave me great pleasure.
Please let me have her address; also that of prince Urussov. A copy
has been sent to your friend, the Princess Dmitrievna Ténicheff. When
my next book is published, which will be before very long (the title
is now _The Twilight of the Idols. Or, How to Philosophise with the
Hammer_), I should much like to send a copy to the Swede you introduce
to me in such laudatory terms. But I do not know where he lives. This
book is my philosophy _in nuce_--radical to the point of criminality....
As to the effect of _Tristan_, I, too, could tell strange tales. A
regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a
Wagnerian repast. The _Reichsgerichtsrath_ Dr. Wiener of Leipzig gave
me to understand that a Carlsbad cure was also a good thing....
Ah, how industrious you are! And idiot that I am, not to understand
Danish! I am quite willing to take your word for it that one can
"revive" in Russia better than elsewhere; I count any Russian book,
above all Dostoievsky (translated into French, for Heaven's sake not
German!!) among my greatest sources of relief.
Cordially and, with good reason, gratefully,
Yours,
NIETZSCHE.
19. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen,_ Nov. 16, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have waited in vain for an answer from Paris to learn the address
of Madame Bizet. On the other hand, I now have the address of Prince
Urussov. He lives in Petersburg, Sergievskaia 79.
My three books are now out. I have begun my lectures here.
Curious it is how something in your letter and in your book about
Dostoievsky coincides with my own impressions of him. I have mentioned
you, too, in my work on Russia, when dealing with Dostoievsky. He is a
great poet, but an abominable creature, quite Christian in his emotions
and at the same time quite _sadique_. His whole morality is what you
have baptised slave-morality.
The mad Swede's name is August Strindberg; he lives here. His address
is Holte, near Copenhagen. He is particularly fond of you, because he
thinks he finds in you his own hatred of women. On this account he
calls you "modern" (irony of fate). On reading the newspaper reports
of my spring lectures, he said: "It is an astonishing thing about this
Nietzsche; much of what he says is just what I might have written." His
drama, _Père_, has appeared in French with a preface by Zola.
I feel mournful whenever I think of Germany. What a development is now
going on there! How sad to think that to all appearance one will never
in one's lifetime be a historical witness of the smallest good thing.
What a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand
Danish. I am doing all I can to prevent my books on Poland and Russia
being translated, so that I may not be expelled, or at least refused
the right of speaking when I next go there.
Hoping that these lines will find you still at Turin or will be
forwarded to you, I am,
Yours very sincerely,
GEORGE BRANDES.
20. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.
_Torino, via Carlo Alberto_, 6, III.
Nov. 20, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Forgive me for answering at once. Curious things are now happening
in my life, things that are without precedent. First the day before
yesterday; now again. Ah, if you knew what I had just written when
your letter paid me its visit.
With a cynicism that will become famous in the world's history, I have
now related myself. The book is called _Ecce Homo_, and is an attack on
the Crucified without the slightest reservation; it ends in thunders
and lightnings against everything that is Christian or infected with
Christianity, till one is blinded and deafened. I am in fact the
first psychologist of Christianity and, as an old artilleryman, can
bring heavy guns into action, the existence of which no opponent of
Christianity has even suspected. The whole is the prelude to the
_Transvaluation of all Values_, the work that lies ready before me:
I swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole world in
convulsions. I am a fate.
Guess who come off worst in _Ecce Homo_? Messieurs the Germans! I have
told them terrible things.... The Germans, for instance, have it on
their conscience that they deprived the last _great_ epoch of history,
the Renaissance, of its meaning--at a moment when the Christian values,
the _décadence_ values, were worsted, when they were conquered in the
instincts even of the highest ranks of the clergy by the opposite
instincts, the instincts of life. To _attack_ the Church--that meant to
re-establish Christianity. (Cesare Borgia as pope--that would have been
the meaning of the Renaissance, its proper symbol.)
You must not be angry either, to find yourself brought forward at a
critical passage in the book--I wrote it just now--where I stigmatise
the conduct of my German friends towards me, their absolute leaving me
in the lurch as regards both fame and philosophy. Then you suddenly
appear, surrounded by a halo....
I believe implicitly what you say about Dostoievsky; I esteem him, on
the other hand, as the most valuable psychological material I know--I
am grateful to him in an extraordinary way, however antagonistic he may
be to my deepest instincts. Much the same as my relation to Pascal,
whom I almost love, since he has taught me such an infinite amount; the
only _logical_ Christian.
The day before yesterday I read, with delight and with a feeling of
being thoroughly at home, Les mariés, by Herr August Strindberg. My
sincerest admiration, which is only prejudiced by the feeling that I am
admiring myself a little at the same time.
Turin is still my residence.
Your
NIETZSCHE, now a monster.
Where may I send you the _Twilight of the Idols_? If you will be at
Copenhagen another fortnight, no answer is necessary.
21. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.
_Copenhagen_, Nov. 23, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Your letter found me to-day in full fever of work; I am lecturing here
on Goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for
three quarters of an hour in the square before the University to get
standing-room. It amuses me to study the greatest of the great before
so many. I must stay here till the end of the year.
But on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that--as I
am informed--one of my old books, lately translated into Russian, has
been condemned in Russia to be publicly _burnt_ as "irreligious."
I already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on
Poland and Russia; now I must try to set in motion all the influence I
can command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in Russia this
winter. To make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are
now confiscated. There is great anxiety since the disaster at Borki. It
was just the same shortly after the famous attempts. Every letter was
snapped up.
It gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through
so much. Believe me, I spread your propaganda wherever I can. So late
as last week I earnestly recommended Henrik Ibsen to study your works.
With him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant
kinship. Great and strong and unamiable, but yet _worthy_ of love,
is this singular person. Strindberg will be glad to hear of your
appreciation. I do not know the French translation you mention; but
they say here that all the best things in _Giftas_ (_Mariés_) have
been left out, especially the witty polemic against Ibsen. But read
his drama _Père_; there is a great scene in it. I am sure he would
gladly send it you. But I see him so seldom; he is so shy on account
of an extremely unhappy marriage. Imagine it, he abhors his wife
_intellectually_ and cannot get away from her _physically_. He is a
monogamous misogynist!
It seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in
you. In my early days I was passionately polemical; now I can only
expound; silence is my only weapon of offence. I should as soon think
of attacking Christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves,
I mean against the belief in werewolves.
But I see we understand one another. I too _love_ Pascal. But even
as a young man I was _for_ the Jesuits against Pascal (in the
_Provinciales_). The worldly-wise, they were right, of course;
he did not understand them; but they understood him and--what a
master-stroke of impudence and sagacity!--they themselves published his
_Provinciales_ with notes. The best edition is that of the Jesuits.
Luther against the Pope, there we have the same collision. Victor Hugo
in the preface to the _Feuilles d'Automne_ has this fine saying: _On
convoque la diète de Worms mais on peint la chapelle Sixtine. Il y a
Luther, mais il y a Michel-Ange ... et remarquons en passant que Luther
est dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que Michel-Ange
n'y est pas._
Study the face of Dostoievsky: half a Russian peasant's face, half
a criminal physiognomy, flat nose, little piercing eyes under lids
quivering with nervousness, this lofty and well-formed forehead, this
expressive mouth that speaks of torments innumerable, of abysmal
melancholy, of unhealthy appetites, of infinite pity, passionate envy!
An epileptic genius, whose exterior alone speaks of the stream of
gentleness that filled his spirit, of the wave of acuteness almost
amounting to madness that mounted to his head, and finally of the
ambition, the immense effort, and of the ill-will that results from
pettiness of soul.
His heroes are not only poor and pitiable creatures, but simple-minded
sensitive ones, noble strumpets, often victims of hallucination, gifted
epileptics, enthusiastic candidates for martyrdom--just those types
which we should suspect in the apostles and disciples of the early days
of Christianity.
Certainly nothing could be farther removed from the Renaissance.
I am excited to know how I can come into your book.
I remain your faithfully devoted
GEORGE BRANDES.
22. Unstamped. Without further address, undated. Written in a large
hand on a piece of paper (not note-paper) ruled in pencil, such as
children use. Post-mark: Turin, January 4, 1889.
TO THE FRIEND GEORG
When once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me: the
difficulty now is to get rid of me ...
_The Crucified_.
As Herr Max Nordau has attempted with incredible coarseness to brand
Nietzsche's whole life-work as the production of a madman, I call
attention to the fact that signs of powerful exaltation only appear in
the last letter but one, and that insanity is only evident in the last
letter of all, and then not in an unqualified form.
But at the close of the year 1888 this dear and masterly mind began
to be deranged. His self-esteem, which had always been very great,
acquired a morbid character. His light and delicate self-irony, which
appears not unfrequently in the letters here given, gave place to
constantly recurring outbursts of anger with the German public's
failure to appreciate the value of his works. It ill became a man of
Nietzsche's intellect, who only a year before (see Letter No. 2) had
desired a small number of intelligent readers, to take such offence
at the indifference of the mob. He now gave expression to the most
exalted ideas about himself. In his last book but one he had said: "I
have given the Germans the profoundest books of any they possess ";
in his last he wrote: "I have given mankind the profoundest book it
possesses." At the same time he yielded to an impulse to describe the
fame he hoped to attain in the future as already his. As the reader
will see, he had asked me to furnish him with the addresses of persons
in Paris and Petersburg who might be able to make his name known in
France and Russia. I chose them to the best of my judgment. But even
before the books he sent had reached their destinations, Nietzsche
wrote in a German review: "And thus I am treated in Germany, I who am
already _studied_ in Petersburg and Paris." That his sense of propriety
was beginning to be deranged was already shown when sending the book
to Princess Ténicheff (see Letter No. 18). This lady wrote to me in
astonishment, asking what kind of a strange friend I had recommended
to her: he had been sufficiently wanting in taste to give the sender's
name on the parcel itself as "The Antichrist." Some time after I had
received the last deranged and touching letter, another was shown me,
which Nietzsche had presumably sent the same day, and in which he wrote
that he intended to summon a meeting of sovereigns in Rome to have the
young German Emperor shot there; this was signed "Nietzsche-Cæsar." The
letter to me was signed "The Crucified." It was thus evident that this
great mind in its final megalomania had oscillated between attributing
to itself the two greatest names in history, so strongly contrasted.
It was exceedingly sad thus to witness the change that in the course of
a few weeks reduced a genius without equal to a poor helpless creature,
in whom almost the last gleam of mental life was extinguished for ever.
III
(AUGUST 1900)
It sometimes happens that the death of a great individual recalls a
half-forgotten name to our memory, and we then disinter for a brief
moment the circumstances, events, writings or achievements which gave
that name its renown. Although Friedrich Nietzsche in his silent
madness had survived himself for eleven and a half years, there is no
need at his death to resuscitate his works or his fame. For during
those very years in which he lived on in the night of insanity, his
name has acquired a lustre unsurpassed by any contemporary reputation,
and his works have been translated into every language and are known
all over the world.
To the older among us, who have followed Nietzsche from the time of
his arduous and embittered struggle against the total indifference
of the reading world, this prodigiously rapid attainment of the most
absolute and world-wide renown has in it something in the highest
degree surprising. No one in our time has experienced anything like it.
In the course of five or six years Nietzsche's intellectual tendency
--now more or less understood, now misunderstood, now involuntarily
caricatured--became the ruling tendency of a great part of the
literature of France, Germany, England, Italy, Norway, Sweden and
Russia. Note, for example, the influence of this spirit on Gabriele
d'Annunzio. To all that was tragic in Nietzsche's life was added
this--that, after thirsting for recognition to the point of morbidity,
he attained it in an altogether fantastic degree when, though still
living, he was shut out from life. But certain it is that in the decade
1890-1900 no one engaged and impressed the minds of his contemporaries
as did this son of a North German clergyman, who tried so hard to be
taken for a Polish nobleman, and whose pride it was that his works were
conceived in French, though written in German. The little weaknesses of
his character were forgotten in the grandeur of the style he imparted
to his life and his production.
To be able to explain Nietzsche's rapid and overwhelming triumph, one
would want the key to the secret of the psychological life of our time.
He bewitched the age, though he seems opposed to all its instincts.
The age is ultra-democratic; he won its favour as an aristocrat. The
age is borne on a rising wave of religious reaction; he conquered with
his pronounced irreligion. The age is struggling with social questions
of the most difficult and far-reaching kind; he, the thinker of the
age, left all these questions on one side as of secondary importance.
He was an enemy of the humanitarianism of the present day and of its
doctrine of happiness; he had a passion for proving how much that is
base and mean may conceal itself beneath the guise of pity, love of
one's neighbour and unselfishness; he assailed pessimism and scorned
optimism; he attacked the ethics of the philosophers with the same
violence as the thinkers of the eighteenth century had attacked the
dogmas of the theologians. As he became an atheist from religion, so
did he become an immoralist from morality. Nevertheless the Voltairians
of the age could not claim him, since he was a mystic; and contemporary
anarchists had to reject him as an enthusiast for rulers and castes.
For all that, he must in some hidden way have been in accord with much
that is fermenting in our time, otherwise it would not have adopted
him as it has done. The fact of having known Nietzsche, or having been
in any way connected with him, is enough at present to make an author
famous--more famous, sometimes, than all his writings have made him.
What Nietzsche, as a young man admired more than anything else in
Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner was "the indomitable energy with which
they maintained their self-reliance in the midst of the hue and
cry raised against them by the whole cultured world." He made this
self-reliance his own, and this was no doubt the first thing to make an
impression.