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He was encouraged by this book: Frulein von Meysenbug reconciled him to life. Again he found his confidence and health. "My health," he wrote to Gersdorff, "is allied to my hopes. I am well when I hope."
He left his pension and went to spend some days in Geneva. There he discovered a friend, the musician Senger; he made the acquaintance of a few Frenchmen, exiled communards, and liked talking to them. He esteemed these fanatics with the square skulls, so prompt to self-sacrifice. It appears that he flirted with two "exquisite" Russians. Then he returned to Basle, and his first letter was sent to Frulein von Meysenbug.
"BASLE, Good Friday, April 14, 1876. "DEAR FRULEIN,—Four days or so back, finding myself alone on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, I spent a whole Sunday quite near you, from the earliest hour till the moon-bathed night. I have read you through and through, with a revived interest at every page, and I kept on repeating that never had I passed so blessed a Sunday. You have given me an impression of purity and love which will never leave me; and Nature, the day on which I read you, seemed to reflect this impression. You were before me as a superior form of my being, a very superior form; and which yet did not humiliate but encouraged me: thus you crossed my thoughts, and, measuring my life with yours, I am more easily able to feel what I lacked—so much! I thank you much more than I would do for a book.
"I was ill, I doubted my strength and my aims; I thought I should have to renounce everything, and my greatest fear was of the length of a life which can be but an atrocious burden if one renounces the highest aims. I am now saner and freer, and I can consider without torturing myself the duties I have to fulfil. How many times I have wished you near me to ask you some question which only a moral being higher than myself could answer! Your book gives me answers to such of these precise questions as touch me. I don't think I can ever be satisfied with my conduct, if I have not first your approbation. But it is possible that your book is a severer judge than you would be yourself. What should a man do, if, in comparing his life to yours, he does not wish to be taxed with unmanliness? I often ask myself this. He ought to do everything you have done and no more. But doubtless he could not; he lacks that sure guide, the instinct of a love that is always ready to give itself. One of the most elevated of moral themes [einer der hchsten Motive] that I have discovered, thanks to you, is maternal love without physical bonds between the mother and the child. It is one of the most magnificent manifestations of Caritas. Give me a little of that love, dear lady and dear friend, and think of me as one of those who need to be the son of such a mother. Ah! such a great need!
"We shall have lots of things to say to one another when we meet at Bayreuth. At present I again have hopes of being able to go, whereas, these two past months, I had put the very thought away from me. How I should like to be now the saner of us two, and capable of rendering you a service!
"Why can't I live near you?
"Adieu; I am and I remain, in all truth, yours,
"FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE."
Frulein von Meysenbug answered at once. "If my book had only been worth this joy, your letter to me, I would have been happy to have written it. If I can help you, I want to do so. Next winter, leave Basle, you must; look for a milder climate and a brighter one; how I feel, as you do, the annoyance of our separation. I sheltered this winter your young Basle pupil, Alfred Brenner, who is still ill; you shall bring him back to me. I will be able to find the two of you a health-giving home. Come, promise me." Nietzsche wrote immediately: "To-day I shall answer you in one word; thank you, I shall come."
Assured henceforth of sanctuary, Friedrich Nietzsche regained confidence and courage.
"I have recovered my good conscience," he wrote to Gersdorff a few days after his return; "I know that up to the present I have done all I could to enfranchise myself, and that in working thus, I have not worked for myself alone. I want to start off again on this road, and nothing more will stop me, neither memories, nor despairing presentiments. This is what I have discovered—the only thing that men respect and before which they bow, is a noble deed. Compromise, never! never! Profound success can only be assured by remaining faithful to oneself. I know already by experience what influence I exercise, and that if I became weaker or more sceptical, I should impoverish, besides my own, the hearts of many who develop with me."
He needed a pride of this sort to confront the imminent crisis. The disciples of the master gave him a dinner, and Nietzsche, who did not want to be present, had to excuse himself. He wrote an impassioned letter of which Wagner comprehended perhaps the hidden signification.
"Seven years ago, at Triebschen, I paid you my first visit. And every year, in this month of May, on this same day upon which we all celebrate the anniversary of your birth, I myself celebrate the anniversary of my spiritual birth. For since then, you live and work in me always like a drop of fresh blood that had as it were entered into my veins. This element that I owe to you urges me on, humiliates, encourages and stimulates me. It never allows me to rest, so much so that I should perhaps bear a grudge against you for this eternal disquietude if I did not know that it ever drives me on towards a freer and better state."
Wagner answered him at once in a few exuberant lines. He told of the toasts drunk to his glory and of his humorous responses, with so many puns, cock-and-bull stories and impenetrable allusions, that it is necessary to give up the attempt to translate. Nietzsche was moved by this letter. At the moment it arrived he was feeling very much the master of himself, very sure of his future. The history of his past years suddenly appeared as a grand adventure that was now for ever closed. He considered it with an indulgent regard, and, measuring the joys he owed to Wagner, he wished to express his gratitude. The other summer, at Steinabad, when in a similar state of mind, he had filled some pages of notes. He took them up again, in spite of a nervous affection of the eyes which prevented him from working without help, and undertook to draw from them the substance of a volume. Singular attempt! Disillusioned, he wrote an enthusiastic book, the most beautiful in Wagnerian literature. But a forewarned reader recognises almost from page to page the idea that Nietzsche expresses in masking it. He writes the eulogy of the poet; of the philosopher he does not[Pg 188] speak; he denies, for him who can understand, the educative bearing of the work.
"For us," he writes, "Bayreuth signifies the consecration at the moment of battle.... The mysterious regard that tragedy turns towards us is not an enervating and paralysing charm, but its influence imposes repose. For beauty is not given to us for the very moment of battle; but for those moments of calm which precede and interrupt it, for those fugitive moments in which, reanimating the past, anticipating the future, we penetrate all the symbols; for those moments when, with the impression of a slight weariness, a refreshing dream descends upon us. The day and the strife are about to begin, the sacred shadows fade away, and art is once more far from us; but its consolation is still shed upon man, as a morning dew...."
