Part 18

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.