Page 6 of 79
The work is full of power; but Hlderlin abandons it. His melancholy enfeebles and exalts him. He wishes to leave Germany where he has suffered so much, and to free his relatives from the inconvenience of his presence. Employment is offered to him in France, at Bordeaux, and he disappears. Six months later he returns home sunburnt and in rags. He is questioned, but he does not reply. Enquiries are made and it is, with great difficulty, discovered that he had crossed France on foot under the August sun. His mind is gone, swallowed up in a torpor which is to last for forty years. He dies in 1843, a few months before the birth of Nietzsche. It might please a Platonist to think that the same genius passed from one body to the other. Surely the same German soul, romantic by nature, and classic in aspiration, broken at length by its desires, animated these two men, and predestined them to the same end. One seems to surprise across the tenor of their lives the blind labour of the race, which, pursuing its monotonous bent, sends into the world, from century to century, like children for like ordeals.
That year, at the approach of summer, Nietzsche suffered severely from his head and eyes. The malady was uncertain in its nature, but possibly had its origin in the nerves. His holidays were spoilt. But he arranged to be able to stay at Naumburg until the end of August, and the joys of a prolonged leisure compensated him for previous vexations.
He returned to Pforta in a wholesome frame of mind.[Pg 35] He had not resolved his doubts but he had explored them, and could without wronging himself become once more a laborious student. He was careful not to interrupt his reading, which was immense. From month to month he sent punctually to his two friends at Naumburg, poems, pieces of dance and song music, essays in criticism and philosophy. But these occupations were not allowed to interrupt his work as a student. Under the direction of excellent masters, he studied the languages and the literatures of antiquity.
He would have been happy, had not the pressing questions of the future and of a profession begun to torment him.
"I am much preoccupied with the problem of my future," he wrote to his mother in May, 1862. "Many reasons, external and internal, make it appear to me troubled and uncertain. Doubtless I believe myself to be capable of success in whatever province I select. But strength fails me to put aside so many of the diverse objects which interest me. What shall I study? No idea of a decision presents itself to my mind, and yet with myself alone it lies to reflect and to make my choice. What is certain is that whatever I study I shall be eager to probe to its depths. But this fact only renders the choice more difficult, since the question is to discover the pursuit to which one can give one's whole self. And how often they deceive us, these hopes of ours! How quickly one is put on the wrong track by a momentary predilection, a family tradition, a desire! To choose one's profession is to make one in a game of lotto, in which there are many blanks, but only very few prizes! At this moment my position is uncomfortable. I have dispersed my interest over so many provinces that if I were to satisfy my tastes I would certainly become a very learned man, but only with great difficulty a[Pg 36] professional animal. My task is to destroy many of my present tastes, that is clear, and, by the same process, to acquire new ones. But which are the unfortunates that I am to throw overboard? Precisely my dearest children, maybe!..."
His last holidays slipped by into the beginning of his last year. Nietzsche returned without vexation to the old school which he was soon to leave. The rules had grown lighter, and he had a room to himself, and certain liberties. He went out to dine on the invitation of this or that professor, and thus, even in the monastery, he had his first taste of the pleasures of the world. At the house of one of his tutors he met a charming girl; he saw her again, and, for the first time in his life, fell in love. For some days his dreams were all of the books which he wished to lend her, of the music which he wished to play with her. His emotion was delicious. But the girl left Pforta, and Nietzsche returned to his work. The Banquet of Plato, the tragedies of schylus, were his last diversions before he gave himself up to the ordinary round of tasks. Sometimes he sat down to the piano just before the supper hour; two comrades who were to remain his friends, Gersdorff and Paul Deussen, listening while he played them Beethoven or Schumann, or improvised.
Poetry is always by him. If he has the slightest leisure, if there is a delay of some hours in his work, the lyricist reappears. On Easter morning he leaves school, returns home, goes straight to his room, where he is alone, dreams for a moment; then finds himself assailed by a multitude of impressions. He writes with intense pleasure after his long privation. And is not the page, which we transcribe here, worthy of Zarathustra?
"Here I am on the evening of Easter Day, seated at[Pg 37] my fire, enveloped in a dressing-gown. Outside a fine rain is falling. All about me is solitude. A sheet of white paper lies on my table; I look at it in a muse, rolling my pen between my fingers, embarrassed by the inextricable multitude of subjects, feelings, thoughts which press forward and ask to be written. Some of them clamour and make a great tumult: they are young and eager for life. Others gesture and struggle there also: they are old thoughts, well matured, well clarified; like elderly gentlemen they regard with displeasure the mle of young bloods. This struggle between an old world and a new it is that determines our mood; and the state of combat, the victory of these, the weakness of those, we call at any moment our state of mind, our Stimmung.... Often when I play the spy on my thoughts and feelings, and study them in religious silence, I am impressed as with the hum and ferment of savage factions, the air shudders and is torn across as if a thought or an eagle had shot up towards the sun.
"Combat is the food which gives strength to the soul. The soul has skill to pluck out of battle sweet and glorious fruits. Impelled by the desire for fresh nutriment, it destroys; it struggles fiercely—but how gentle it can be when it allures the adversary, gathers it close against itself, and wholly assimilates it.
"That impression, which at this moment makes all your pleasure or all your pain, will, it may be, slip off in an instant, being the mere drapery of an impression still more profound, will disappear before something older and higher. Thus our impressions grave themselves deeper and deeper on our souls, being ever unique, incomparable, unspeakably young, swift as the instant that brought them.
"At this moment I am thinking of certain people whom I have loved; their names, their faces pass before my mind. I do not mean that in fact their natures[Pg 38] become continually more profound and more beautiful; but it is at least true that each of these reminiscences, when I recover it, leads me on to some acuter impression, for the mind cannot endure to return to a level which it has already passed; it has a need of constant expansion. I salute you, dear impressions, marvellous undulations of an agitated soul. You are as numerous as Nature, but more grandiose, for you increase and strive perpetually—the plant, on the contrary, gives out to-day the same perfume that it gave out on the day of creation. I no longer love now as I loved a few weeks ago, and I find myself in a different disposition at this moment from that in which I was when I took up this pen."
