Part 14

The Genealogy decided on, carried out and sent ready for press to the printer at Leipzig, all between July 10 and 30, 1887. (Of course there are also philologica of mine, but they do not concern you and me.)

I am now making an experiment with Turin; I shall stay here till June 5 and then go to the Engadine. The weather so far is wintry, harsh and unpleasant. But the town superbly calm and favourable to my instincts. The finest pavement in the world.

Sincere greetings from

Yours gratefully,

NIETZSCHE.

A pity I understand neither Danish nor Swedish.

Vita.--I was born on October 15, 1844, on the battlefield of Lützen. The first name I heard was that of Gustavus Adolphus. My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Niëzky); it seems the type has been well maintained, in spite of three generations of German mothers. Abroad I am usually taken for a Pole; this very winter the visitors' list at Nice entered me comme Polonais. I am told my head occurs in Matejko's pictures. My grandmother belonged to the Schiller-Goethe circles of Weimar; her brother was Herder's successor in the position of General Superintendent at Weimar. I had the good fortune to be a pupil of the venerable Pforta School, from which so many who have made a name in German literature have proceeded (Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel, Ranke, etc., etc.). We had masters who would have (or have) done honour to any university. I studied at Bonn, afterwards at Leipzig; old Ritschl, then the first philologist in Germany, singled me out almost from the first. At twenty-two I was a contributor to the Litterarisches Centralblatt (Zarncke). The foundation of the Philological Society of Leipzig, which still exists, is due to me. In the winter of 1868-1869 the University of Basle offered me a professorship; I was as yet not even a Doctor. The University of Leipzig afterwards conferred the doctor's degree on me, in a very honourable way, without any examination, and even without a dissertation. From Easter 1869 to 1879 I was at Basle; I was obliged to give up my rights as a German subject, since as an officer (Horse Artillery) I should have been called up too frequently and my academic duties would have been interfered with. I am none the less master of two weapons, the sabre and the cannon--and perhaps of a third as well.... At Basle everything went very well, in spite of my youth; it sometimes happened, especially with candidates for the doctor's degree, that the examinee was older than the examiner.

I had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with Jakob Burkhardt, an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded thinker. A still greater piece of good fortune was that from the earliest days of my Basle existence an indescribably close intimacy sprang up between me and Richard and Cosima Wagner, who were then living on their estate of Triebschen, near Lucerne, as though on an island, and were cut off from all former ties. For some years we had everything, great and small, in common, a confidence without bounds. (You will find printed in Volume VII of Wagner's complete works a "message" to me, referring to The Birth of Tragedy.) As a result of these relations I came to know a large circle of persons (and "personesses"), in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between Paris and Petersburg. By about 1876 my health became worse. I then spent a winter at Sorrento, with my old friend, Baroness Meysenbug (Memoirs of an Idealist) and the sympathetic Dr. Rée. There was no improvement. I suffered from an extremely painful and persistent headache, which exhausted all my strength. This went on for a number of years, till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering, that at that time I had 200 days of torment in the year. The trouble must have been due entirely to local causes, there is no neuropathic basis for it of any sort. I have never had a symptom of mental disturbance; not even of fever, nor of fainting. My pulse was at that time as slow as that of the first Napoleon (= 60). My speciality was to endure extreme pain, cru, vert, with perfect clarity, for two or three consecutive days, accompanied by constant vomiting of bile. The report has been put about that I was in a madhouse (and indeed that I died there). Nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact my intellect only came to maturity during that terrible time: witness the Dawn of Day, which I wrote in 1881 during a winter of incredible suffering at Genoa, away from doctors, friends or relations. This book serves me as a sort of "dynamometer": I composed it with a minimum of strength and health. From 1882 on I went forward again, very slowly, it is true: the crisis was past (my father died very young, just at the age at which I was myself so near to death). I have to use extreme care even to-day; certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are indispensable to me. It is not from choice but from necessity that I spend the summer in the Upper Engadine and the winter at Nice.... After all, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it has released me, it has restored to me the courage to be myself.... And, indeed, in virtue of my instincts, I am a brave animal, a military one even. The long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride. Am I a philosopher, do you ask?--But what does that matter!...

11. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, April 29, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

The first time I lectured on your works, the hall was not quite full, an audience of perhaps a hundred and fifty, since no one knew who and what you are. But as an important newspaper reported my first lecture, and as I have myself written an article on you, interest was roused, and next time the hall was full to bursting. Some three hundred people listened with the greatest attention to my exposition of your works. Nevertheless, I have not ventured to repeat the lectures, as has been my practice for many years, since the subject is hardly of a popular nature. I hope the result will be to get you some good readers in the North.

Your books now stand on one of my shelves, very handsomely bound. I should be very glad to possess everything you have published.

When, in your first letter, you offered me a musical work of yours, a Hymn to Life, I declined the gift from modesty, being no great judge of music. Now I think I have deserved the work through my interest in it and should be much obliged if you would have it sent to me.

I believe I may sum up the impression of my audience in the feeling of a young painter, who said to me: "What makes this so interesting is that it has not to do with books, but with life." If any objection is taken to your ideas, it is that they are "too out-and-out."

It was unkind of you not to send me a photograph; I really only sent mine to put you under an obligation. It is so little trouble to sit to a photographer for a minute or two, and one knows a man far better when one has an idea of his appearance.

Yours very sincerely,

GEORGE BRANDES.

12. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.

Turin, May 4, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

What you tell me gives me great pleasure and--let me confess it--still more surprise. Be sure I shall owe you for it: you know, hermits are not given to forgetting.

Meanwhile I hope my photograph will have reached you. It goes without saying that I took steps, not exactly to be photographed (for I am extremely distrustful of haphazard photographs), but to abstract a photograph from somebody who had one of me. Perhaps I have succeeded; I have not yet heard. If not, I shall avail myself of my next visit to Munich (this autumn probably) to be taken again.

The Hymn to Life will start on its journey to Copenhagen one of these days. We philosophers are never more grateful than when we are mistaken for artists. I am assured, moreover, by the best judges that the Hymn is thoroughly fit for performance, singable, and sure in its effect (--clear in form; this praise gave me the greatest pleasure). Mottl, the excellent court conductor at Carlsruhe (the conductor of the Bayreuth festival performances, you know), has given me hopes of a performance.

I have just heard from Italy that the point of view of my second Thought out of Season has been very honourably mentioned in a survey of German literature contributed by the Viennese scholar, Dr. von Zackauer, at the invitation of the Archivio storico of Florence. He concludes his paper with it.

These last weeks at Turin, where I shall stay till June 5, have turned out better than any I have known for years, above all more philosophic. Almost every day for one or two hours I have reached such a pitch of energy as to be able to view my whole conception from top to bottom; so that the immense multiplicity of problems lies spread out beneath me, as though in relief and clear in its outlines. This requires a maximum of strength, for which I had almost given up hope. It all hangs together; years ago it was already on the right course; one builds one's philosophy like a beaver, one is forced to and does not know it: but one has to see all this, as I have now seen it, in order to believe it.

I am so relieved, so strengthened, in such good humour--I hang a little farcical tail on to the most serious things. What is the reason of all this? Have I not the good north winds to thank for it, the north winds which do not always come from the Alps?--they come now and then even from Copenhagen!

With greetings,