Part 16

What eyes you have! You are right, the Nietzsche of the photograph is 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

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.