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Friedrich Nietzsche stayed in the Engadine, poorly lodged, sparingly fed, till September came; but he was satisfied, though deprived of friends, with his music and books. His sufferings were not intolerable: he could work and had soon filled six copybooks with pencil notes of his calmer thoughts, which, though always sceptical, were not bitter, but seemed, as it were, tempered by the unexpected indulgence. He had no illusions concerning this respite which he had received. It was a respite and no more, and he did not hope. Nevertheless he rejoiced that, before his breakdown, he had the opportunity of saying what happiness had been procured him by the simple contemplation of things, of human nature, of the[Pg 215] mountains and the sky; he hastened to harvest this last felicity. At the beginning of September, 1879, he sent his completed work to Peter Gast.
"My dear, dear friend," he wrote, "when you receive these lines my manuscript will be in your hands. Perhaps you will feel a little of the pleasure which I have myself when I think of my work that is now completed. I am at the end of my thirty-fifth year, 'the middle of life,' they used to say some thousand years ago: it is the age at which Dante had his vision, as he tells us in the first verses of his poem. I am now in this middle of life, and on all sides so hard pressed by death, that at any hour it may take me; my life is such that I must foresee a rapid death, in spasms.... So I feel like a very old man, and the more because I have done the work of my life. I have poured out a good drop of oil, I know it, it will be accounted to me. I have experienced my manner of life to the full; many will experience it after me. My continual, my bitter sufferings have not altered my humour up to the present. On the contrary, it seems to me that I feel gayer, more kindly, than ever I was: whence comes this influence which fortifies me and ameliorates my condition? Not from men, for all but a few are provoked against me,[2] and do not grudge the trouble of letting me know it. Dear friend, read this last manuscript from end to end, and see if any trace of suffering or of depression is there disclosed. I think not, and this very conviction assures me that there must be some hidden strength in my thoughts, and not that lassitude, that powerlessness, which those who do not approve of me would like to find in them."
At this instant of his life Nietzsche made ready to die. How? It is not too hazardous to guess. He was waiting for that "rapid end in spasms," which had swept off his father in madness, and a pious sentiment brought him back to the domestic hearth. Released from the obligations which kept him at Basle, free to choose his retreat, he resisted the call of Peter Gast from Venice. It was no time for learning to know and to love a new beauty. "No," said he, "in spite of Overbeck, in spite of my sister, who press me to rejoin you, I shall not go. In certain circumstances, as I think, it is fitting that one should be closer to one's mother, one's hearth, one's souvenirs of childhood...."
It was to Naumburg, therefore, that he proceeded. He wished to lead there a life of entire peace, and to distract himself from thought by manual labour. In a tower of the old ramparts he hired a great room. Below the old wall there extended an unused piece of land, and this he took on lease and cultivated. "I have ten fruit trees," he wrote, "and roses, lilacs, carnations, strawberries, goose-berry bushes, and green gooseberries. At the beginning of next year I shall have ten rows of vegetables growing."
But the invalid was soon obliged to abandon these plans. The winter was rigorous. Friedrich Nietzsche could not withstand either the glare of the snow which dazzled his eyes, or the humid air which depressed and shattered his nerves. In a few weeks he had lost the benefit derived from his visit to the Engadine.
The Traveller and his Shadow, the proofs of which Peter Gast had corrected, was published. Apparently it was better understood than the preceding collections had been. Rohde wrote Nietzsche a letter which pleased him. Certainly he did not express unqualified admiration. "This clear but never emotional view of humanity," said he, "pains him who loves you and who hears the friend in every word." But, on the whole, he admired.
"What you give to your readers," he wrote, "you can scarcely surmise, for you live in your own mind. But a voice like yours is one which we never hear, either in life or in books. And, as I read you, I continue to experience what I experienced at your side in the time of our comradeship: I feel myself raised into a higher order of things, and spiritually ennobled. The conclusion of your book penetrates the soul. You can and you should, after these discordant harmonies, give us yet softer, yet diviner strains.... Farewell, my dear friend, you are always he who gives, I am always he who receives...."
Nietzsche was happy. "Thanks, dear friend," he wrote on the 28th of December, 1879; "your old affection sealed anew—it is the most precious gift which these Christmas days have brought me." But his answer was brief, and the last two lines of his letter give the reason: "My condition has again become terrible, my tortures are atrocious; sustineo, abstineo; and I am astonished at it myself."
This very strong language contains no exaggeration. His mother and sister, who saw him suffer, bear witness to the awful days through which he passed. He accepted suffering as a test, as a spiritual exercise. He compared his destiny to that of men who were great in sorrow—Leopardi, for instance. But Leopardi was not brave, for, in his sickness, he defamed life, and—Nietzsche discovered this hard truth—an invalid has not the right to be a pessimist. Or the Christ. But even Christ weakened upon the cross. "Father, Father!" He cried out, "why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Friedrich Nietzsche had no God, no father, no faith, no friends. Every prop he had taken from himself, and yet he did not bend. To complain, even in a passing manner, would be to avow defeat. He refused to make the avowal. Suffering did not[Pg 218] overwhelm him; on the contrary, it instructed him, and animated his thought.
"The enormous tension of the intellect, bent on the mastery of pain," he writes, "shows everything in a new light: and the unspeakable charm of every new light is often powerful enough to overcome all the allurements of suicide, and to make the continuance of life appear as most desirable to the sufferer. Scornfully he reviews the warm and comfortable dream-world, wherein the healthy man moves unthinkingly; scornfully he reviews the noblest and dearest of the illusions in which he formerly indulged; this contempt is his joy, it is the counterpoise which enables him to hold his own against physical pain, a counterpoise the necessity of which he now feels.... Our pride revolts as it never did before: joyfully does it defend life against such a tyrant as pain, that tyrant that would force us to testify against life. To stand for life in the face of this tyrant is a task of infinite fascination."[3]
Friedrich Nietzsche supposed that his end was close at hand. On the 14th of January, wishing to give a last indication of his thought to some friend, he wrote Frulein von Meysenbug a letter which is a farewell and a spiritual testament. What an effort it must have cost him!
"Although to write is one of the fruits which is most strongly forbidden me, still I want you to have one more letter from me, you whom I love and venerate like a beloved sister—it will be the last! For the awful and almost incessant martyrdom of my life gives me a thirst[Pg 219] for death, and, according to certain signs, I am now near enough to that access of fever, which shall save me, to be permitted to hope. I have suffered so much, I have renounced so many things that there is no ascetic, of any time, to whose life I have not the right to compare my life in this last year. Nevertheless I have acquired a great deal. My soul has gained in purity, in sweetness, and I no longer need religion or art for that. (You will remark that I have some pride; that is because in my state of entire abandonment I have been able finally to discover my intimate sources of consolation.) I think that I have done the work of my life as a man may to whom no time is left. But I know that for many men I have poured out a drop of good oil, that many men will be guided by me towards a higher, a more serene, and lucid life. I give you this supplementary information: when my humanity shall have ceased to be, men will say so. No sorrow has been or will be able to induce me to give false evidence on life, as I know it.
