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Stein was anxious to acquit himself well of his mission, but he spoke little. It was Nietzsche himself, the man, to whom he appealed, who spoke, and who saw that he was heard. We may perhaps picture the interview and Nietzsche's words:
"You admire Wagner? Who does not? As well as you and better than you have I known, revered, and hearkened[Pg 285] to him. I learnt from him not the style of his art, but the style of his life—his valour and enterprise. I am aware that I have been accused of ingratitude, which is a word I ill understand. I have continued my work. In the best sense of the word, I am his disciple. You frequent Bayreuth, which is very agreeable for you, too agreeable. Wagner offers you for your delight all the legends, all the beliefs of the past—German, Celtic, pagan, and Christian. You should leave him for the same reason that I left him, because this delight is destructive to the spirit which seeks truth. Mark you, I say no word against art or religion. I believe that their day will be again. Not one of the old values will be abandoned. They will re-appear, transfigured no doubt, and more powerful and more intense, in a world thoroughly illuminated to its depths by science. We shall rediscover all the things that we loved in our childhood and in our adolescence, all that has upheld and exalted our fathers—a poetry, a goodness, the most sublime virtues, the humblest, too, each in its glory and its dignity. But we must accept the darkness, we must renounce and search. ... The possibilities are unheard of, but alone I am weak. Help me, therefore; stay or come back here, six thousand feet above Bayreuth!"[9]
Stein listened. His diary reveals the growing vividness of his impressions:
"24 viii. '84. Sils-Maria. Evening with Nietzsche.
"27. His freedom of intellect, the imagery of his speech, a great impression. Snow and winter winds. Headaches. At night I watch him suffer.
"29. He has not slept, but has all the ardour of a young man. A sunny and magnificent day!"
After three days, the too-youthful emissary left, greatly moved by what had passed, and promising to rejoin Nietzsche at Nice, as the latter, at least, understood.[Pg 286] Nietzsche felt that he had greatly carried the day. "Such an encounter as ours must have an early and far-reaching importance," he wrote to Stein a few days after his departure. "Believe me, you now belong to that little band whose fate, for good or ill, is linked to mine." Stein answered that the days at Sils-Maria were to him a great memory, a grave and solemn moment of his life; and then, rather prudently, went on to speak of the binding conditions imposed on him by his works and his profession. What he did not say was, "Yes, I am yours."
Was Nietzsche's mind open enough to perceive the reservation? One cannot tell. He was making marvellous plans, and dreamt anew of an "ideal cloister." To Frulein von Meysenbug he made the nave proposal that she should come to Nice and spend the winter near him.
Chance permits us to discover the depths of his soul. He had gone down to Basle in September, and there Overbeck visited him at his hotel, and found him in bed, suffering from a sick headache, very low in himself, and at the same time exceedingly talkative. His excited speech troubled Overbeck, who was initiated into the mystery of the "Eternal Return." "One day we shall be here together again in this very place; I again, as I now am, sick; you again, as now you are, amazed at my words." He spoke in a low and trembling voice, and his face was troubled—this is the Nietzsche that Lou Salom has described. Overbeck listened gently, but avoided argument of any sort, and left with evil forebodings. Not until the tragic meeting in Turin in January, 1889, was he again to see his friend.
Nietzsche merely passed through Basle. His sister, whom he had not seen since the quarrel of the previous[Pg 287] autumn, gave him a rendezvous at Zrich. It was to announce her marriage, which had taken place in secret some months before. She was now no longer Frulein Nietzsche but Madame Frster, ready to leave for Paraguay with the colonists who were under the charge of her husband. Recrimination would therefore have been a waste of time. The step had been taken; Nietzsche did not discuss it, and did his best to be pleasant once again to the sister who was lost to him. "My brother," wrote Madame Frster, "seems to be in a very satisfactory condition. He is bright and charming; we have been together for six weeks, talking, laughing over everything."
She has left us a record of these days which she supposes—or pretends to suppose—were happy. Nietzsche came upon the works of one Freiligrath, a mediocre and popular poet. On the cover of the volume was inscribed Thirty—eighth Edition. With comical solemnity he exclaimed, "Here, then, we have at last a true German poet. The Germans buy his verse!" He decided to be a good German for the day, and bought a copy. He read and was hugely diverted—
"Wstenknig ist der Lwe;
Will er sein Gebiet durchfliegen."
(King of deserts is the Hon:
Will he traverse his dominion.)
He declaimed the pompous hemistiches. The Zrich hotel resounded with his childish laughter as he amused himself improvising verses on every subject in the manner of a Freiligrath.
"Hullo!" said an old general to the brother and sister. "What is amusing you two? It makes one jealous to hear you. One wants to laugh like you."
It is unlikely that Nietzsche had much cause for[Pg 288] laughter. One wonders whether he could contemplate those thirty-eight editions of Freiligrath without bitterness. During his stay in Zrich he went to the library to look through the files of the newspapers and reviews for his name. It would have meant a good deal to him to have read a capable criticism of his work, to have seen his thought reflected in another's; but no voice ever answered his labours.
"The sky is beautiful, worthy of Nice, and this has lasted for days," he wrote to Peter Gast on September 30th. "My sister is with me, and it is very agreeable for us to be doing each other good when for so long we had been doing harm only. My head is full of the most extravagant lyrics that ever haunted a poet's skull. I have had a letter from Stein. This year has brought me many good things, and one of the most precious of its gifts has been Stein, a new and a sincere friend.
"In short, let us be full of hope; or we may better express it by saying with old Keller—
"'Trinkt, O Augen, was die Wimper hlt
Von dem goldnen Ueberfluss der Welt! '"
Brother and sister left Zrich, the one bound for Naumburg, the other for Nice. On the way Nietzsche stopped at Mentone. Hardly had he settled down there than he wrote: "This is a magnificent place. I have already discovered eight walks. I hope that no one will join me. I need absolute quiet."
It is possible that the project which he had formed at the beginning of the summer, when he spoke of six years of meditation and of silence, was again in his mind. But he lacked the force of will which long and silent meditation demands. He was, however, deeply moved by the hope of a friend and by the loss of a sister, and his lyric[Pg 289] impatience broke the bonds. Yielding to instinct he composed poems off-hand—songs, short stanzas, epigrams. Practically all the poems which are to be found in his later works—the light verse, the biting distich, inserted in the second edition of the Gaya Scienza, the grandiose Dionysian chants—were finished or conceived during these few weeks. And once more he began to think of the still incomplete Thus Spake Zarathustra. "A fourth, a fifth, a sixth part are inevitable," he writes. "Whatever happens I must bring my son Zarathustra to his noble end. Alive, he leaves me no peace."
