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There is one Scandinavian writer whose works would interest you, if only they were translated: Sren Kierkegaard; he lived from 1813 to 1855, and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists that have ever existed. A little book I wrote about him (translated, Leipzig, 1879) gives no adequate idea of his genius, as it is a sort of polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence. But in a psychological respect it is, I think, the most subtle thing I have published.

The essay in the Goethe Year-book was unfortunately shortened by more than a third, as the space had been reserved for me. It is a good deal better in Danish.

If you happen to read Polish, I will send you a little book that I have published only in that language.

I see the new Rivista Contemporanea of Florence has printed a paper of mine on Danish literature. You must not read it. It is full of the most ridiculous mistakes. It is translated from the Russian, I must tell you. I had allowed it to be translated into Russian from my French text, but could not check this translation; now it appears in Italian from the Russian with fresh absurdities; amongst others in the names (on account of the Russian pronunciation), G for H throughout.

I am glad you find in me something serviceable to yourself. For the last four years I have been the most detested man in Scandinavia. Every day the papers rage against me, especially since my last long quarrel with Bjrnson, in which the moral German papers all took part against me. I dare say you know his absurd play, A Gauntlet, his propaganda for male virginity and his covenant with the spokeswomen of "the demand for equality in morals." Anything like it was certainly unheard of till now. In Sweden these insane women have formed great leagues in which they vow "only to marry virgin men." I suppose they get a guarantee with them, like watches, only the guarantee for the future is not likely to be forthcoming.

I have read the three books of yours that I know again and again. There are two or three bridges leading from my inner world to yours: Csarism, hatred of pedantry, a sense for Beyle, etc., but still most of it is strange to me. Our experiences appear to be so infinitely dissimilar. You are without doubt the most suggestive of all German writers.

Your German literature! I don't know what is the matter with it. I fancy all the brains must go into the General Staff or the administration. The whole life of Germany and all your institutions are spreading the most hideous uniformity, and even authorship is stifled by publishing.

Your obliged and respectful,
GEORGE BRANDES.

6. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.

Nice, Feb. 19, 1888.

You have laid me under a most agreeable obligation with your contribution to the idea of "Modernity," for it happens that this winter I am circling round this paramount problem of values, very much from above and in the manner of a bird, and with the best intention of looking down upon the modern world with as unmodern an eye as possible. I admire—let me confess it—the tolerance of your judgment, as much as the moderation of your sentences. How you suffer these "little children" to come unto you! Even Heyse!

On my next visit to Germany I propose to take up the psychological problem of Kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with your older literature. It will be of use to me in the best sense of the word—and will serve to restore good humour to my own severity and arrogance of judgment.

My publisher telegraphed to me yesterday that the books had gone to you. I will spare you and myself the story of why they were delayed. Now, my dear Sir, may you put a good face on a bad bargain, I mean on this Nietzsche literature.

I myself cherish the notion of having given the "new Germans" the richest, most actual and most independent books of any they possess; also of being in my own person a capital event in the crisis of the determination of values. But this may be an error; and, what is more, a piece of foolishness—I do not want to have to believe anything [of the sort] about myself.

One or two further remarks: they concern my firstlings (the Juvenilia and Juvenalia).

The pamphlet against Strauss, the wicked merrymaking of a "very free spirit" at the expense of one who thought himself such, led to a terrific scandal; I was already a Professor Ordinarius at the time, therefore in spite of my twenty-seven years a kind of authority and something acknowledged. The most unbiassed view of this affair, in which almost every "notability" took part for or against me, and in which an insane quantity of paper was covered with printer's ink, is to be found in Karl Hillebrand's Zeiten, Vlker und Menschen, second volume. The trouble was not that I had jeered at the senile bungling of an eminent critic, but that I had caught German taste in flagranti in compromising tastelessness; for in spite of all party differences of religion and theology it had unanimously admired Strauss's Alten und Neuen Glauben as a masterpiece of freedom and subtlety of thought (even the style!). My pamphlet was the first onslaught on German culture (that "culture" which they imagined to have gained the victory over France). The word "Culture-Philistine," which I then invented, has remained in the language as a survival of the raging turmoil of that polemic.

The two papers on Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner appear to me to-day to contain self-confessions, above all promises to myself, rather than any real psychology of those two masters, who are at the same time profoundly related and profoundly antagonistic to me—(I was the first to distill a sort of unity out of them both; at present this superstition is much to the fore in German culture—that all Wagnerites are followers of Schopenhauer. It was otherwise when I was young. Then it was the last of the Hegelians who adhered to Wagner, and "Wagner and Hegel" was still the watchword of the 'fifties).

Between Thoughts out of Season and Human, all-too-Human there lies a crisis and a skin-casting. Physically too: I lived for years in extreme proximity to death. This was my great good fortune: I forgot myself, I outlived myself ... I have performed the same trick once again.

So now we have each presented gifts to the other: two travellers, it seems to me, who are glad to have met.

I remain,
Yours most sincerely,
NIETZSCHE.

7. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, March 7, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

I imagine you to be living in fine spring weather; up here we are buried in abominable snowdrifts and have been cut off from Europe for several days. To make things worse, I have this evening been talking to some hundred imbeciles, and everything looks grey and dreary around me, so to revive my spirits a little I will thank you for your letter of February 19 and your generous present of books.

As I was too busy to write to you at once, I sent you a volume on German Romanticism which I found on my shelves. I should be very sorry, however, that you should interpret my sending it otherwise than as a silent expression of thanks.

The book was written in 1873 and revised in 1886; but my German publisher has permitted himself a number of linguistic and other alterations, so that the first two pages, for instance, are hardly mine at all. Wherever he does not understand my meaning, he puts something else, and declares that what I have written is not German.