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Then he conceived a new task. All that he had hitherto done was but an awkward experiment or research; the time was come when he should erect the structure of his work. Of what work? He hesitated: his gifts as an artist, as a critic, as a philosopher, seduced him in various directions. Should he put his doctrine in the form of a system? No, it was a symbol and must be surrounded with poetry and rhythm. Could he not renew that forgotten form which was created by the thinkers of the most ancient Greece? Lucretius had handed down the model. Friedrich Nietzsche welcomed this idea; it would please him to translate his conception of nature into poetic language, into musical and measured prose. He sought, and his desire for a rhythmical language, for a living and, as it were, palpable form, suggested a new thought to him: could he not introduce at the centre of his work a human and prophetic figure, a hero? A name occurred to him; Zarathustra, the Persian apostle, the mystagogue of fire. A title, a subtitle, four lines rapidly written, announced the poem:
MIDDAY AND ETERNITY
Sign of a New Life
"Zarathustra, born on the borders of Lake Urumiyah, left his country when thirty years old, went towards the province of Aria, and in ten years of solitude composed the Zend-Avesta."
Henceforward his walks and meditations were no longer solitary. Friedrich Nietzsche never ceased to hear and gather the words of Zarathustra. In three distiches of a soft and almost tender seduction he tells how this companion entered into his life:
Sils-Maria
I sat there waiting—waiting for nothing, Enjoying, beyond good and evil, now The light, now the shade; there was only The day, the lake, the noon, time without end. Then, my friend, suddenly one became two—And Zarathustra passed by me.
In September the weather suddenly became cold and snowy. Friedrich Nietzsche had to leave the Engadine.
The intemperate weather had tried him; he lost his exaltation, and a long period of depression set in. He constantly thought of the Eternal Return, but now, having lost courage, he only felt a horror of it. "I have lived again through the days at Basle," he wrote to Peter Gast. "Over my shoulder death looks at me." His complaints are brief; a word is enough to let us divine the abysses. Thrice, during these weeks of September and October, he was tempted to suicide. "Whence came this temptation? It was not that he wished to avoid suffering; he was brave. Did he then wish to prevent the ruin of his intellect? This second hypothesis is perhaps the true one.
He stopped at Genoa. The damp winds and the lowering skies of the capricious autumn continued to try him. He bore impatiently with the absence of light. A melancholy of another kind complicated his trouble: The Dawn of Day had had no success. The critics had ignored the work, his friends had read it with difficulty; Jacob Burckhardt had expressed a polite but prudent judgment. "Certain parts of your book," he wrote, "I read like an old man, with a feeling of vertigo." Erwin Rohde, the dearest, the most esteemed, had not acknowledged the receipt of the book. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to him from Genoa on October 21st:
"DEAR OLD FRIEND,—No doubt some embarrassment delays you. I pray you, in all sincerity, not to write! There will be no change in our mutual sentiments; I cannot bear to think that in sending a book to a friend I exercise upon him a sort of pressure. What matters a book! What I have still to do matters more—or why should I live? The moment is bitter, I suffer much. Cordially your "F. N."
Erwin Rohde did not answer even this letter. How explain the want of success of The Dawn? Doubtless it is a very old story, the constant, the universal, the irremediable misadventure of the unrecognised genius because he is a genius, a novelty, a surprise, and a scandal. Nevertheless we may, perhaps, grasp some definite reasons. Nietzsche, since he had withdrawn from the Wagnerian circle, had no more friends; and a group of friends is the most indispensable intermediary between a great mind which is trying its skill and the mass of the public. He is alone before unknown readers, who are disconcerted by his incessant variations. He hopes that the lively form of his work will capture and conquer them. But even the form is unfavourable. No book has so difficult an address as a collection of aphorisms and brief thoughts. The reader must give all his attention to every page and decipher an enigma; lassitude comes quickly. Besides, it is probable that a German public, with little feeling for the art of prose, unskilful in grasping its features, accustomed to slow and sustained effort, was ill-prepared to understand this unforeseen work.
November was fine; Friedrich Nietzsche recovered his spirits. "I lift myself above my disasters," he wrote He wandered over the mountains of the Genoese coast, he returned to the rocks on which had come to him the prose of The Dawn. Such was the mildness of the[Pg 236] weather that he could bathe in the sea. "I feel so rich, so proud," he wrote to Peter Gast, "altogether 'principe Doria. I miss only you, dear friend, you and your music!"
Since the representations of the Nibelungen at Bayreuth—that is, for five years—Friedrich Nietzsche had deprived himself of music. Cave musicam! he wrote. He feared that if he abandoned himself to the delight in sound he would be recaptured by the magic of Wagnerian art. But he was finally delivered from these fears. His friend Peter Gast had played him, in June, at Recoaro, songs and choruses which he had amused himself in composing on the epigrams of Goethe. Paul Re had said one day, "No modern musician would be capable of putting to music such slight verses." Peter Gast had taken up the challenge and won, thought Nietzsche, who was ravished by the vivacity of the rhythm. "Persevere," he advised his friend; "work against Wagner the musician, as I work against Wagner the philosopher. Let us try, Re, you and I, to free Germany. If you succeed in finding a music suited to the universe of Goethe (it does not exist), you will have done a great thing." This thought reappears in each of his letters. His friend is at Venice, he is at Genoa, and he hopes that this winter Italy will inspire in them both, the two uprooted Germans, a new metaphysic and a new music.
He took advantage of his improved health to go to the theatre. He listened to the Semiramis of Rossini, and four times to the Juliette of Bellini. One evening he was curious to hear a French work, the author being unknown to him:
"Hurrah! dear friend," he wrote to Peter Gast, "another happy discovery, an opera of Georges Bizet (who is he, then?), Carmen. It is like a story of Mrime's, clever, powerful, sometimes touching. A true[Pg 237] French talent which Wagner has not misguided, a frank disciple of Berlioz.... I almost think that Carmen is the best opera which exists. As long as we live it will remain in all the repertoires of Europe."
The discovery of Carmen was the event of his winter. Many times he spoke of it, many times he returned to it; when he heard this frank and impassioned music, he felt better armed against the romantic seductions which were always powerful in his soul. "Carmen delivers me," he was to write.
