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A letter addressed about this time to Frulein von Meysenbug gives food for thought.
"I have given to men the most profound book," he writes; "one pays dearly for that. The price of being immortal is sometimes life!... And always on my road that cretinism of Bayreuth! The old seducer Wagner, dead though he be, continues to draw away from me just those few men whom my influence might touch. But in Denmark—how absurd to think!—I have been celebrated this winter. Dr. Georges Brandes, whose mind is so full of vitality, has dared to talk about me before the University of Copenhagen. And with brilliant success! Always more than three hundred listeners! And a final ovation!—And something similar is being arranged in New York. I am the most independent mind in Europe and the only German writer—which is something!"
He added in a postscript: "Only a great soul can endure my writings. Thus I have had the good luck to provoke against myself all that is feeble and virtuous." No doubt the indulgent Frulein von Meysenbug saw in these lines a point directed against herself. She answered, as usual, in her kindly manner: "You say that everything feeble and virtuous is against you? Do not be so paradoxical. Virtue is not weakness but strength, words say it plainly enough. And are you not yourself the living contradiction of what you say? For you are virtuous, and the example of your life, if men could only know it, would, as I am assured, be more persuasive than your books." Nietzsche replied: "I have read your charming letter, dear lady and dear friend, with real emotion; no doubt you are right—so am I."
How headlong a thing is his life! Days spent in walking, in getting the rhythm of phrases, in sharpening thoughts. Often he works through the dawn and is writing still when the innkeeper rises and goes noiselessly out to follow the traces of the chamois among the mountains. "Am I not myself a hunter of chamois?" thinks Nietzsche, and goes on with his work.
The Case of Wagner being completed, Nietzsche began a new pamphlet, directed not against a man, but against ideas—against all ideas that men have found whereby to guide their acts. There is no metaphysical world, and the rationalists are dreamers; there is no moral world, and the moralists are dreamers. What then remains? "The world of appearances, perhaps? But no; for with the world of truth we have abolished the world of appearances!" Nothing exists but energy, renewed at every instant. "Incipiet Zarathustra." Friedrich Nietzsche looked for a title for his new pamphlet: Leisure Hours of a Psychologist was his first idea; then, The Twilight of the Idols, or The Philosophy of the Hammer. On September 7th he sent his manuscript to[Pg 354] the publisher. This little book—he wrote—must strike, scandalise, and strain people's minds, and prepare them for the reception of his great work.
Of it he is always thinking, and his second pamphlet is scarcely finished when he starts on this labour. But we no longer recognise the calm and Goethean work which it had been his desire to write. He tries new titles: We other Immoralists, We other Hyperboreans: then returns to his old title and keeps to it—The Will to Power: An Essay towards the Transvaluation of all Values. Between September 3rd and September 30th he draws up a first section: The Antichrist; and it is a third pamphlet. This time he speaks outright, he indicates his Yea and his Nay, his straight line and his goal: he exalts the most brutal energy. All moral imperatives, whether dictated by Moses or by Manu, by the people or by the aristocracy, are lies. "Europe was near to greatness," he writes, "when, during the first years of the sixteenth century, it was possible to hope that Csar Borgia would seize the Papacy." Are we bound to accept these thoughts as definitive, because they are the last that Nietzsche expressed?
While he was drawing up The Antichrist, he returned again to his Dionysian Songs, outlined in 1884, and completed them. Here we find the sure expression of the presentiments that then agitated him.
"The sun sets,
Soon thy thirst shall be quenched,
Burning heart!
A freshness is in the air,
I breathe the breath of unknown mouths,
The great cold comes....
The sun is in its place, and burns upon my head at noon.
I salute ye, ye who come,
O swift winds,
[Pg 355]O fresh spirits of the afternoon
The air stirs, peaceable and pure.
Has it not darted towards me a sidelong glance,
A seductive glance,
To-night?
Be strong, brave heart!
Ask not: why?
Eve of my life!
The sun sets."
On the 21st September we find him at Turin. On the 22nd The Case of Wagner was published. Here at last was a book of which the newspapers spoke a little. But Nietzsche was exasperated by their comments. With the exception of a Swiss author, Carl Spiteler, no one had understood him. Every word gave him the measure of the public ignorance as regards his work. For ten years he had been seeking and following ideas found by him alone: of this the German critics knew nothing; they knew only that a certain Herr Nietzsche, a disciple of Wagner's, had been an author; they read The Case of Wagner and surmised that Herr Nietzsche was just fallen out with his master. Besides, he felt that he had incurred the blame of some of his later friends. Jacob Burckhardt, always so precise, did not acknowledge the receipt of the pamphlet; the good Meysenbug wrote an indignant and severe letter.
"These are subjects," Nietzsche answered him, "with regard to which I cannot permit any contradiction. Upon the question of decadence I am the highest authority (instance) in the world: the men of to-day, with their querulous and degenerate instinct, should consider themselves fortunate that they have by them some one who offers them a generous wine in their most sombre moments. That Wagner succeeded in making himself believed in, assuredly proves genius; but the genius of falsehood. I have the honour to be his opposite—a genius of truth."
In spite of the agitation thus displayed, his letters expressed an unheard-of happiness. There is nothing which he does not admire. The autumn is splendid; the roads, the galleries, the palaces, the cafs of Turin, are magnificent; repasts are succulent and prices modest. He digests well, sleeps marvellously. He hears French operettas: there is nothing as perfect as their buoyant manner, "the paradise of all the refinements." He listens to a concert: each piece, whether Beethoven, Schubert, Bossaro, Goldmarck, Vibac, or Bizet be its author, seems to him equally sublime. "I was in tears," he wrote to Peter Gast. "I think that Turin, from the point of view of the musical sense, as from every other point of view, is the most solid town that I know."
One might hope that this intoxication of spirit kept Nietzsche from knowledge of his destiny. But a rare word sufficiently indicates his clairvoyance. He has a sense of the approaching disaster. His reason escapes from him and he measures its flight. On the 13th of November, 1888, he expressed to Peter Gast a desire to have him near, his regret that he could not come; this was his constant plaint, the very constancy of which indeed diminished its significance. Nietzsche, who knew this, warned his friend: "What I tell you, take tragically," he wrote. On the 18th of November he sent a letter which seemed quite happy. He spoke of operettas which he had just heard, of Judic, and of Milly Meyer. "For our bodies and for our souls, dear friend," he wrote, "a light Parisian intoxication, 'tis salvation." He concluded: "This letter also, I pray you to take tragically."
