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Nietzsche, once more master of himself, returned to Bayreuth without delay: he wished to complete his experience. The excitement of the crowd was even greater than on the day of his departure. The old Emperor William was present, on his way to the grand manuvres. He had paid Wagner the compliment of being present on two evenings. From all Bavaria and Franconia, citizens and peasants had hurried hither to salute their Emperor, and there was almost a famine in the little invaded town.
The performances began; Nietzsche heard them all. He listened in silence to the observations of the faithful and measured the abyss which he had so long skirted. He continued to see his friends: Frulein von Meysenbug,[Pg 193] Miss Zimmern, Gabriel Monod, E. Schur, Alfred Brenner, who did not fail to notice in him a reserve and a silence singular at times. Often he went off alone, during the intervals or in the afternoons, with a pleasant and charming spectator, Madame O——, who was slightly Parisian, slightly Russian. He liked the delicate and surprising conversation of women, and he excused this one for being a Wagnerian.
M. Schur, who met Nietzsche at these festivals, gives a description of him which merits repetition. "As I talked to him I was struck by the superiority of his mind and the strangeness of his physiognomy. A large forehead; short hair brushed up off his forehead; the projecting cheekbones of the Slav. The strong drooping moustache, the sharp cut of the face, would have given him the air of a cavalry officer, had it not been for an indescribable something in his address that was at the same time timid and haughty. The musical voice, the slow speech, denoted the organism of the artist; the prudent and meditative bearing was a philosopher's. Nothing was more deceiving than the apparent calm of his expression. The fixed glance betrayed the melancholy labour of his thought. It was the glance of a fanatic, of a keen observer, and of a visionary. This double character added a disturbed and disturbing element, the more so because it always seemed riveted upon one point. In his effusive moments this look was moistened with the softness of a dream, but very soon it became hostile again.... During the general rehearsals, and the first three performances of the Tetralogy, Nietzsche appeared to be sad and dejected...."
Each evening was a triumph, and each of them added to Nietzsche's distress. The Rhinegold, the Valkyrie—these old pieces recalled his youth, his enthusiasms for Wagner, whom he did not know, whom he did not dare hope to know. Siegfried: souvenirs of Triebschen;[Pg 194] Wagner was completing this score when Nietzsche entered into his intimacy.
Siegfried was Nietzsche's favourite among the Wagnerian heroes. He found himself again in this young man, who had never known fear. "We are the knights of the spirit," he had then written in his notes, "we understand the song of the birds and follow them." No doubt he was almost happy when he heard Siegfried; it was the only one of Wagner's dramas which he could listen to without remorse. Lastly, The Twilight of the Gods. Siegfried has mixed in the crowd of men; they deceive him; one evening he navely relates his life; a traitor strikes him from behind and kills him. The giants are annihilated, the dwarfs vanquished, the heroes powerless; the gods abdicate; the gold is given back to the depths of the Rhine, whose surging waters cover over the world, and as they await death, men contemplate the universal disaster.
It was the end. The curtain fell slowly, the symphony was extinguished in the night, and the spectators rose suddenly, with one accord, and gave vent to a loud burst of cheering. Then the curtain rose once more and Richard Wagner appeared, alone, dressed in a redingote and cloth trousers, holding his little figure erect. With a sign he called for silence; every murmur ceased.
"We have shown you what we wished to show you," he cried, "and what we can show you when all wills are directed to one object; if on your side you support us, then you will have an art."
He retired, then returned; again and again he was recalled. Nietzsche watched his master standing in the limelight, and he alone in the hall did not applaud.
"There he is," he thought, "my ally... the Homer who has been fertilised by Plato...."
The curtain fell for the last time, and Nietzsche, silent, lost in the crowd, followed his tide like a wreck.
"Ein Zwillingspaar von einem Haus,
Gieng muthig in die Welt hinaus,
Welt—Drachen zu zerreissen.
Zwi'r Vter—Werk! Ein Wunder war's!
Die Mutter doch des Zwillingpaars
Freundschaft ist sie geheissen."
Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. His eyesight was feeble and painful, so that he had to accept the help which two friends offered him: one of them was a young student named Kselitz, whom he had jokingly called Peter Gast, Peter the Guest—the surname stuck to him; the other was that Paul Re, the Jew, with the acute mind, whom he had known for two years. Thanks to their devotion he was able to re-read the notes written at Klingenbrunn; he hoped to find matter in them for the second "Unseasonable Thought." Paul Re was then publishing his Psychological Observations, reflections inspired by the English and French masters, Stuart Mill and La Rochefoucauld. Friedrich Nietzsche heard this little work read, and appreciated it. He admired this prudent style of conducting thought; he enjoyed it on the morrow of the emphatic ceremonies of Bayreuth, as though it were a repose; and he resolved to study at the school of Re and of his masters. Nevertheless he always felt the immense void which his renouncement of Richard Wagner left in him.
"At this moment," he wrote, the 20th September, 1876, "I have every leisure to think of the past—farthest and nearest—for my oculist makes me sit idle for long periods in a darkened room. Autumn, after such a summer, is[Pg 196] for me, and no doubt not only for me, more autumn than any other. After the great event comes an attack of blacker melancholy, and to escape it one cannot fly too quickly towards Italy or towards work, or towards both."
He had obtained the leave for which he had asked, and the sole gladness which he had in life was the certainty that he would be free for some months from all professional duties.
He left Switzerland at the end of October. Alfred Brenner and Paul Re accompanied him. The three Germans went down towards Genoa, and thence took a steamer to Naples, where Frulein von Meysenbug was expecting them.
"I found Nietzsche," she writes, "disappointed sufficiently, because the journey and the arrival in Naples, in the middle of this noisy, clamorous, importunate people, had been very disagreeable to him. In the evening, however, I asked the visitors to take a drive to Pausilippe. It was such an evening as one sees only down here; sky, earth, and sea floated in a glory of indescribable colours, which filled the soul as an enchanting music, a harmony from which every discordant note was gone. I observed how Nietzsche's face lit up in joyous and almost childlike astonishment, as though he were dominated by a profound emotion; finally he gave vent to enthusiastic exclamations, which I welcomed as a happy augury for the efficacy of his visit."
