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The struggle was always perceptible; nevertheless Friedrich Nietzsche advanced his work. Every day he had to learn wisdom anew, and to moderate, crush, or deceive his desires. He succeeded in this rude exercise and managed to bring back his soul into a calm and fecund condition. He completed a poem which was but the opening of a vaster poem. Zarathustra, returning towards the mountains, abandons the world of men. Twice again, before he dictates the tables of his law, he is to descend to it. But what he says suffices to give us a glimpse of the essential forms of a humanity obedient to its lite. It consists of three castes: at the bottom, the popular caste, allowed to retain its humble beliefs; above, the caste of the chiefs, the organisers and warriors; above the chiefs themselves, the sacred caste, the poets who create the illusions and dictate the values. One recalls that essay by Richard Wagner on art, religion, and politics, formerly so much admired by Nietzsche: in it a similar hierarchy was proposed.
In its ensemble the work is serene. It is Friedrich Nietzsche's finest victory. He has repressed his[Pg 259] melancholy; he exalts force, not brutality; expansion, not aggression. In the last days of February, 1882, he wrote these final pages, which are perhaps the most beautiful and the most religious ever inspired by naturalistic thought.
"My brethren, remain faithful to the earth, with all the force of your love! Let your great love and your knowledge be in accord with the meaning of the earth. I pray you and conjure you.
"Let not your virtue fly far from terrestrial things, and beat its wings against the eternal walls! Alas! there is always so much virtue gone astray!
"Like myself, bring back towards the earth the virtue which goes astray—yea, towards the flesh and towards life; that it may give a meaning to the earth, a human meaning...."
Whilst he completed the composition of this hymn on the Genoese coast, Richard Wagner died in Venice. Nietzsche learnt the news with a grave emotion, and recognised a sort of providential accord in the coincidence of events. The poet of Siegfried was dead; so be it! humanity would not be for a moment deprived of poetry, since Zarathustra had already spoken.
For more than six years he had given no sign of life to Cosima Wagner; now he had to tell her that he had forgotten nothing of past days and that he shared her sorrows. "You will approve of me in this, I am sure" he wrote to Frulein von Meysenbug.[7]
On the 14th of February he wrote to Schmeitzner, the publisher:
"To-day I have some news for you: I have just taken a decisive step—I mean, one profitable to you.[Pg 260] It concerns a little work, scarcely 100 pages long, entitled: Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book for all and none. It is a poem or it is a Fifth Gospel, or something which has no name; by far the most serious, and also the most happy, of my productions and one that is open to all."
He wrote to Peter Gast and to Frulein von Meysenbug: "This year," said he, "no society. I shall go straight from Genoa to Sils!" Thus did Zarathustra, who left the great city and returned to the mountains. But Friedrich Nietzsche is not Zarathustra; he is feeble, solitude exalts and frightens him. Some weeks passed. Schmeitzner, the publisher, was slow: Nietzsche grew impatient and modified his projects for the summer; he wished to hear the sound of human speech. His sister, at Rome with Frulein von Meysenbug, guessed that he was accessible and weary, and seized this opportunity of a reconciliation. He did not defend himself and promised to come.
Here he was at Rome. His old friend immediately introduced him into a brilliant society. Lenbach was there, and also that Countess Dnhoff, to-day Princess von Buelow, an amiable woman and a great musician. Friedrich Nietzsche felt with vexation how different he was from these happy talkers, how he belonged to another world, how they misunderstood him. A curious, a singular man, they think; a very eccentric man. A great mind? No one ventured to pass this rash judgment. And Friedrich Nietzsche, so proud when he was alone, was astonished, disturbed, and humiliated. It seemed that he had not the strength to despise these people who did not hearken to him; he was disquieted and began to fear for his well-beloved son, Zarathustra.
"They will run through my book," he wrote to Gast,[Pg 261] "and it will be a subject of conversation. That inspires me with disgust. Who is serious enough to hear me? If I had the authority of old Wagner, my affairs would be in a better way. But at present no one can save me from being delivered over to 'literary people.' To the devil!"
Other vexations affected him: he had taken to chloral, during the winter, in order to combat his insomnia. He deprived himself of it and recovered, not without difficulty, his normal sleep. Schmeitzner, the publisher, did not hurry to print Thus Spake Zarathustra; what was the cause of the delay? Nietzsche enquired and was told: Five hundred thousand copies of a collection of hymns had first to be printed for the Sunday-schools. Nietzsche waited some weeks, received nothing, asked again; another story: the collection of hymns was published, but a big lot of anti-Semitic pamphlets had to be printed and thrown upon the world. June came: Zarathustra had not yet appeared. Friedrich Nietzsche lost his temper and suffered for his hero, who was thwarted by the two platitudes, Pietism and anti-Semitism.
He was discouraged and ceased to write; he left his luggage at the station with the books and manuscripts which he had brought: one hundred and four kilos of paper. Everything in Rome harassed him: the nasty people, a mob of illegitimates; the priests, whom he could not tolerate; the churches, "caverns with unsavoury odours." His hatred of Catholicism is instinctive and has far-off origins; always when he approaches it, he shudders. It is not the philosopher who judges and reproves; it is the son of the pastor, who has remained a Lutheran: who cannot endure the other Church, full of incense and idols.
The desire came to him to leave this town. He heard the beauty of Aquila praised. Friedrich von[Pg 262] Hohenstaufen, the Emperor of the Arabs and the Jews, the enemy of the popes, resided there; Friedrich Nietzsche wished to reside there, too. Still, the room which he occupied was a fine and well-situated one, Piazza Barberini, at the very top of a house. There one could forget the town: the murmur of water falling from a triton's horn stilled the noise of humanity and sheltered his melancholy. There it was that, one evening, he was to improvise the most poignant expression of his despair and solitude:
"I am light; alas if I were night! But this is my solitude, to be always surrounded by light.
"Alas that I am not shadow and gloom! How I would drink from the breasts of light!
"... But I live in my own light, I drink the flames which escape from me!"
Thus Spake Zarathustra, a Book for All and None, at last appeared during the first days of June.
"I am very much on the move," wrote Nietzsche. "I am in agreeable society, but as soon as I am alone I feel moved as I have never been." He soon knew the fate of his book. His friends spoke to him very little of it; the newspapers, the reviews, did not mention it; no one was interested in this Zarathustra, the strange prophet who in a biblical tone taught unbelief. "How bitter it is!" said Lisbeth Nietzsche and Frulein von Meysenbug; these two women, Christians at heart that they were, took offence. "And I," wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast, "I who find my book so gentle!"
