Page 15 of 27

It seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent, and that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as regards my renunciation of ideas. It is a nuisance to be forced now and then to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated against one year by year in the European press; but when others never write a sensible word about one, it becomes an obligation at times to stand up for one's self.

My personal connection with Nietzsche began with his sending me his book, Beyond Good and Evil. I read it, received a strong impression, though not a clear or decided one, and did nothing further about it—for one reason, because I receive every day far too many books to be able to acknowledge them. But as in the following year The Genealogy of Morals was sent me by the author, and as this book was not only much clearer in itself, but also threw new light on the earlier one, I wrote Nietzsche a few lines of thanks, and this led to a correspondence which was interrupted by Nietzsche's attack of insanity thirteen months later.

The letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear to me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest.

---

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND GEORGE BRANDES

1. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, Nov. 26, 1887.

DEAR SIR,

A year ago I received through your publisher your work Beyond Good and Evil; the other day your latest book reached me in the same way. Of your other books I have Human, all-too-Human. I had just sent the two volumes I possess to the binder, when The Genealogy of Morals arrived, so that I have not been able to compare it with the earlier works, as I mean to do. By degrees I shall read everything of yours attentively.

This time, however, I am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks for the book sent. It is an honour to me to be known to you, and known in such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader.

A new and original spirit breathes to me from your books. I do not yet fully understand what I have read; I cannot always see your intention. But I find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies, the depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with democratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. Your contempt for the morality of pity is not yet clear to me. There were also in the other work some reflections on women in general which did not agree with my own line of thought. Your nature is so absolutely different from mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home. In spite of your universality you are very German in your mode of thinking and writing. You are one of the few people with whom I should enjoy a talk.

I know nothing about you. I see with astonishment that you are a professor and doctor. I congratulate you in any case on being intellectually so little of a professor.

I do not know what you have read of mine. My writings only attempt the solution of modest problems. For the most part they are only to be had in Danish. For many years I have not written German. I have my best public in the Slavonic countries, I believe. I have lectured in Warsaw for two years in succession, and this year in Petersburg and Moscow, in French. Thus I endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my native land.

Although no longer young, I am still one of the most inquisitive of men and one of the most eager to learn. You will therefore not find me closed against your ideas, even when I differ from you in thought and feeling. I am often stupid, but never in the least narrow.

Let me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the trouble.

Yours gratefully,
GEORGE BRANDES.

2. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.

Nice, Dec. 2, 1887.

MY DEAR SIR,

A few readers whom one honours and beyond them no readers at all—that is really what I desire. As regards the latter part of this wish, I am bound to say my hope of its realisation is growing less and less. All the more happy am I in satis sunt pauci, that the pauci do not fail and have never failed me. Of the living amongst them I will mention (to name only those whom you are certain to know) my distinguished friend Jakob Burkhardt, Hans von Blow, H. Taine, and the Swiss poet Keller; of the dead, the old Hegelian Bruno Bauer and Richard Wagner. It gives me sincere pleasure that so good a European and missionary of culture as yourself will in future be numbered amongst them; I thank you with all my heart for this proof of your goodwill.

I am afraid you will find it a difficult position. I myself have no doubt that my writings in one way or another are still "very German." You will, I am sure, feel this all the more markedly, being so spoilt by yourself; I mean, by the free and graceful French way in which you handle the language (a more familiar way than mine). With me a great many words have acquired an incrustation of foreign salts and taste differently on my tongue and on those of my readers. On the scale of my experiences and circumstances the predominance is given to the rarer, remoter, more attenuated tones as against the normal, medial ones. Besides (as an old musician, which is what I really am), I have an ear for quarter-tones. Finally—and this probably does most to make my books obscure—there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of reasons. What a person already holds "true" or has not yet acknowledged as true; seems to me to depend mainly on his courage, on the relative strength of his courage (I seldom have the courage for what I really know).

The expression Aristocratic Radicalism, which you employ, is very good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read about myself.

How far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it will carry me yet—I am almost afraid to imagine. But there are certain paths which do not allow one to go backward and so I go forward, because I must.

That I may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your access to my cave—that is, my philosophy—my Leipzig publisher shall send you all my older books en bloc. I recommend you especially to read the new prefaces to them (they have nearly all been republished); these prefaces, if read in order, will perhaps throw some light upon me, assuming that I am not obscurity in itself (obscure in myself) as obscurissimus obscurorum virorum. For that is quite possible.

Are you a musician? A work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just being published, a "Hymn to Life." This is intended to represent my music to posterity and one day to be sung "in my memory"; assuming that there is enough left of me for that. You see what posthumous thoughts I have. But a philosophy like mine is like a grave—it takes one from among the living. Bene vixit qui bene latuit—was inscribed on Descartes' tombstone. What an epitaph, to be sure!

I too hope we may meet some day,

Yours,
NIETZSCHE.

N.B.—I am staying this winter at Nice. My summer address is Sils-Maria, Upper-Engadine, Switzerland—I have resigned my professorship at the University. I am three parts blind.