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At last he was cured. In the first days of October, feeling a lively need for the pleasures which Naumburg had not to offer—music, society, conversation, the theatre—he reinstalled himself at Leipsic. Both masters and comrades gave him a warm welcome. His re-entry was happy. He had scarcely completed his twenty-third year and a glorious dawn already preceded him. An important review in Berlin asked him for some historical studies, and he gave them. In Leipsic itself he was offered the editorship of a musical review: this he refused, although importuned. "Nego ac pernego," wrote he to Rohde, now in residence in another University city.
He interested himself in everything, except politics. The din and confusion of men in public meeting assembled was insupportable to him. "Decidedly," said he, "I am not a ." And he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, who had been giving him some information about Parliamentary intrigues in Berlin:
"The course of events astonishes me; but I cannot well understand them, nor take them in, unless I draw out of the crowd and consider apart the activity of a determined man. Bismarck gives me immense satisfaction. I read his speeches as though I were drinking a strong wine; I hold back my tongue that it may not swallow too quickly and that my enjoyment may last. The machinations of his adversaries, as you relate them to me, I conceive without difficulty; for it is a necessity that everything that is small, narrow, sectarian and limited should rebel against such natures and wage an eternal war upon them."
Then to so many satisfactions, new and old, was added the greatest of joys: the discovery of a new genius, Richard Wagner. The whole of Germany was making[Pg 62] the same discovery about this time. Already she knew and admired this tumultuous man, poet, composer, publicist, philosopher; a revolutionary at Dresden, a "damned" author at Paris, a favourite at the Court of Munich; she had discussed his works and laughed over his debts and his scarlet robes. It was by no means easy to pass a clear judgment on this life which was a mixture of faith and insincerity, of meanness and greatness; on this thought which was sometimes so strong and often so wordy. What kind of man was Richard Wagner? An uneasy spirit? a genius? One scarcely knew, and Nietzsche had remained for a long time in a state of indecision. Tristan and Isolde moved him infinitely; other works disconcerted him. "I have just read the Valkyrie," he wrote to Gersdorff, in October, 1866, "and I find myself impressed so confusedly that I can reach no judgment. Its great beauties and virtutes are counterbalanced by so many defects and deformities equally great; 0 + a + (-a) gives 0, all calculations made." "Wagner is an insoluble problem," he said on another occasion. The musician whom he then preferred was Schumann.
Wagner had the art of imposing his glory on the world. In July, 1868, he produced at Munich the Meistersinger, that noble and familiar poem in which the German people, heroes of the action, filled the stage with their arguments, their sports, their labours, their loves, and themselves glorified their own art, music. Germany was then experiencing the proud desire of greatness. She had the confidence and the lan which dare recognise the genius of an artist. Wagner was acclaimed; he passed during the last months of 1868 that invisible border-line above which a man is transfigured and exalted, above glory itself, into a light of immortality.
Friedrich Nietzsche heard the Meistersinger. He was touched by its marvellous beauty and his critical fancies[Pg 63] vanished. "To be just towards such a man," he wrote to Rohde, "one must have a little enthusiasm.... I try in vain to listen to his music in a cold and reserved frame of mind; every nerve vibrates in me...." This miraculous art had taken hold of him; he wished that his friends should share his new passion; he confided his Wagnerian impressions to them: "Last night at the concert," he wrote, "the overture to the Meistersinger caused me so lasting a thrill that it was long since I had felt anything like it." Wagner's sister, Madame Brockhaus, was living in Leipsic. She was a woman out of the ordinary; and her friends affirmed that they recognised in her a little of the genius of her brother. Nietzsche wanted to approach her. This modest desire was soon satisfied.
"The other evening," he writes to Rohde, "on returning home I found a letter addressed to me, a very short note: 'If you would care to meet Richard Wagner come to the Caf zum Theater at a quarter to four.—W. ... SCH.' The news, if you will forgive me, positively turned my head, and I found myself as if tossed about by a whirlwind. It goes without saying that I went out at once to seek the excellent Windisch, who was able to give me some further information. He told me that Wagner was at Leipsic, at his sister's, in the strictest incognito; that the Press knew nothing about his visit, and that all the servants in the Brockhaus household were as mute as liveried gravediggers. Madame Brockhaus, Wagner's sister, had presented to him only one visitor, Madame Ritschl, whose judgment and penetration of mind you know, thus allowing herself the pleasure of being proud of her friend before her brother and proud of her brother before her friend, the happy creature! While Madame Ritschl was in the room Wagner played the Lied from the Meistersinger, which you know well;[Pg 64] and the excellent lady informed him that the music was already familiar to her, mea opera. Thereupon pleasure and surprise on the part of Wagner: he expresses a keen desire to meet me incognito. They decide to invite me for Friday evening. Windisch explains that that day is impossible to me on account of my duties, my work, my engagements: and Sunday afternoon is suggested. We went to the house, Windisch and I, and found the professor's family there, but not Richard: he had gone out with his vast skull hidden under some prodigious headdress. I was presented to this very distinguished family, and received a most cordial invitation for Sunday evening, which I accepted.
"I spent the next few days, I assure you, in a highly romantic mood: and you must admit that this dbut, this unapproachable hero, have something about them bordering on the world of legend.
"With such an important function before me I decide to dress in my best. It so chanced that my tailor had promised to deliver me on Sunday a black coat: everything promised well. Sunday was a frightful day of snow and rain. One shuddered at the idea of leaving the house. So I was far from displeased to receive a call during the afternoon from R——, who babbled about the Eleatics and the nature of God in their philosophy—because as candidandus he is going to take the thesis prescribed by Abrens, The Development of the Idea of God down to Aristotle, while Romundt proposes to solve the problem Of the Will, and thereby to win the University prize. The evening draws on, the tailor fails to arrive and Romundt departs. I go with him as far as my tailor's, and entering the shop, I find his slaves very busy on my coat: they promise that it will be delivered in three hours. I leave, more content with the course of things; on my way home I pass Kintschy, read the Kladderadatsch, and find with satisfaction a newspaper paragraph[Pg 65] to the effect that Wagner is in Switzerland, but that a beautiful house is being built for him at Munich. As for me, I know that I am about to see him, and that a letter arrived for him yesterday from the little King, bearing the address: To the great German composer, Richard Wagner.
