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He arrived at Carlsruhe with his sick and wounded; he had contracted their illness and was attacked by dysentery and diphtheria. An unknown who had been his[Pg 93] ambulance companion nursed him devotedly. As soon as he was well again, Nietzsche went to his home at Naumburg, there to seek not repose, but an entire leisure from work and thought.
"Yes," he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, who was fighting in France—"Yes, that conception of things which is common to us has undergone the ordeal by fire. I have had the same experience as you. For me, as for you, these weeks will remain in my life as an epoch in which each one of my principles re-affirmed itself in me; I would have risked death with them.... Now I am at Naumburg again, but poorly restored to health so far. The atmosphere in which I have lived has been long over me like a dark cloud; I heard an incessant lamentation."
Once already, in July, 1865, during the campaign at Sadowa, he had known war, and undergone its allurement. A simple and great aspiration had laid hold of him; and for a moment he had felt himself in accord with his race. "I feel a patriotic emotion," he wrote; "it is a new experience for me." He grasped at this sudden exaltation and cultivated it.
Indeed, his is a changed soul. He is no longer the "loyal Swiss" of another time; he is a man among men, a German proud of his Germany. A war has transformed him; he glorifies war. War awakes the energy of men; it even troubles their spirits. It obliges them to seek in an ideal order, an order of beauty and duty, the ends of a life which is too cruel. The lyric poet, the sage, misunderstood in ages of peace, are heard with respect in ages of war. Then men have need of them, and are conscious of their need. The same necessity which ranges them behind their chiefs renders them attentive to genius. Humanity is made[Pg 94] truly one, and is drawn towards the heroic and the sublime, only under the pressure of war.
Friedrich Nietzsche, though still very weak and suffering, again took up the notes of his book that he might record in it his new ideas. In Greece, he argues, art was the visible form of a society, disciplined by struggle, from the workshop, where the captive slave laboured, up to the gymnasium and the agora, where the free man played with arms. Such was that winged figure, that goddess of Samothrace, that had for companion of her flight a bloody trireme.
The Greek genius emanated from war, it sang war, it had war for its comrade. "It is the people of the tragic mysteries," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, "who strike the great blow of the Persian battles; in return, the people who have maintained these wars need the salutary beverage of tragedy." We follow in his notes the movement of a mind which wishes to grasp the very idea of the tragic, athwart a vaguely-known Greece. Again and again we find this word tragic brought in as if it were a fundamental strain which the young thinker trains himself to repeat, like a child trying to learn a new word:—"Tragic Greece conquers the Persians.... Tragic man is nature itself in its highest strength of creation and knowledge: he trifles with sorrow...." Three formulas satisfy his research for a moment. "The tragic work of Art—the tragic Man—the tragic State." Thus he determined the three essential parts of his book, which he would entitle as a whole: The Tragic Man.
Let us not misunderstand the real object of his meditations: this society, this discipline which he discerned in the past, were in reality the ideal forms of the Fatherland which he desired and for which he dared to hope. He saw on the one hand Latin Europe, weakened by utilitarianism and the softness of life, on the other[Pg 95] Germany, rich in poets, in soldiers, in myths, in victories. She was suzerain of those races which were in process of decay. How would she exercise this suzerainty? Might not one augur from her triumph a new era, warlike and tragic, chivalrous and lyric? One could conceive it; and therefore one should hope for it, and this was enough to dictate one's duty. How glorious this Germany would be, with Bismarck as its chief, Moltke as its soldier, Wagner as its poet—its philosopher, too, existed, and was called Friedrich Nietzsche. This belief, though he expressed it nowhere, he surely had: for he had not a doubt as to his genius.
He was elated, but did not let his dreams lead him astray: he imagined an ideal Fatherland, yet never lost from sight the Fatherland, human, too human, which actually existed.
During October and the first days of November, alone with his own people in that Naumburg whose provincial virtues he did not love, he bore hardly with the vulgarity of the little people, of the functionaries with whom he mixed. Naumburg was a small Prussian town; Friedrich Nietzsche did not care for this robust and vulgar Prussia. Metz had capitulated; the finest army of France was taken captive: a delirium of conceit swept all Germany off its feet. Friedrich Nietzsche resisted the general tendency. The sentiment of triumph was a repose which his exacting soul might not know. On the contrary, he was disgusted and alarmed.
"I fear," he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, "that we shall have to pay for our marvellous national victories at a price to which I, for my part, will never consent. In confidence—I am of opinion that modern Prussia is a Power highly dangerous to culture.... The enterprise is not easy, but we must be philosophers enough to keep our sang-froid in the midst of all this smoke, we must[Pg 96] keep watch so that no robber may come and steal any part of what, in my opinion, is commensurable with nothing beside, not even the most heroic of military actions, not even our national exaltation."
Then a document appeared which deeply moved Friedrich Nietzsche. It was the date of the centenary of Beethoven. The Germans, occupied with their war, had neglected to commemorate it. Richard Wagner's voice was raised, it alone was strong enough to recall to the conquerors the memory of another glory: "Germans, you are brave," he cried; "remain brave in peace.... In this marvellous year 1870 nothing is better suited to your pride in being brave than the memory of the great Beethoven.... Let us celebrate that great pioneer and path-hewer, let us celebrate him worthily, not less worthily than the victory of German courage: for he who gives joy to the world is raised higher among men than he who conquers the world."
Germans, you are brave; remain brave in peace—no saying could move Friedrich Nietzsche more deeply. He desired to be near the master again, and, though not yet restored to health, he left Naumburg.
He saw Richard Wagner again and was not entirely satisfied. This man, who had been so splendid in misfortune, seemed to have lost stature. There was a vulgar quality in his joy. Well had the German victory avenged him for those Parisian cat-calls and railleries which he had had to endure; now he "ate Frenchmen" with an enormous and peaceable relish. Nevertheless he declined certain offers; he was promised the highest office and honours if he accepted residence in Berlin. He refused, being unwilling to let himself be enthroned[Pg 97] as poet-laureate of a Prussian Empire; and his disciple was thankful for the refusal.
Friedrich Nietzsche found at Basle an even better confidant of his anxieties. The historian Jacob Burckhardt, a great scholar of arts and civilisations, was melancholy; all brutality was odious to him, and he detested war and its destruction. A citizen of the last city in Europe which maintained its independence and its old customs, proud of this independence and of these customs, Jacob Burckhardt disliked those nations of thirty or forty millions of souls which he saw establishing themselves. To the designs of Bismarck and of Cavour he preferred the counsel of Aristotle—"So arrange that the number of citizens does not exceed ten thousand; otherwise they would not be able to meet together on the public square."
