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As I should very much like to have an idea of your appearance, I beg you to give me a portrait of yourself. I enclose my last photograph. I would also ask you to tell me quite briefly when and where you were born and in what years you published (or better, wrote) your works, as they are not dated. If you have any newspaper that contains these details, there will be no need to write. I am an unmethodical person and possess neither dictionaries of authors nor other books of reference in which your name might be found.

The youthful works—the Thoughts out of Season—have been very useful to me. How young you were and enthusiastic, how frank and nave I There is much in the maturer books that I do not yet understand; you appear to me often to hint at or generalise about entirely intimate, personal data, giving the reader a beautiful casket without the key. But most of it I understand. I was enchanted by the youthful work on Schopenhauer; although personally I owe little to Schopenhauer, it seemed to speak to me from the soul.

One or two pedantic corrections: Joyful Wisdom, p. 116. The words quoted are not Chamfort's last, they are to be found in his Caractres et Anecdotes: dialogue between M. D. and M. L. in explanation of the sentence: Peu de personnes et pen de choses m'intressent, mais rien ne m'intresse moins que moi. The concluding words are: en vivant et en voyant les hommes, il faut que le cour se brise ou se bronze.

On p. 118 you speak of the elevation "in which Shakespeare places Csar." I find Shakespeare's Csar pitiable. An act of high treason. And this glorification of the miserable fellow whose only achievement was to plunge a knife into a great man!

Human, all-too-Human, II, p. 59. A holy lie. "It is the only holy lie that has become famous." No, Desdemona's last words are perhaps still more beautiful and just as famous, often quoted in Germany at the time when Jacobi was writing on Lessing. Am I not right?

These trifles are only to show you that I read you attentively. Of course, there are very different matters that I might discuss with you, but a letter is not the place for them.

If you read Danish, I should like to send you a handsomely got-up little book on Holberg, which will appear in a week. Let me know whether you understand our language. If you read Swedish, I call your attention to Sweden's only genius, August Strindberg. When you write about women you are very like him.

I hope you will have nothing but good to tell me of your eyes.

Yours sincerely,
GEORGE BRANDES.

10. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.

Torino (Italia) ferma in posta, April 10, 1888.

But, my dear Sir, what a surprise is this!—Where have you found the courage to propose to speak in public of a vir obscurissimus?... Do you imagine that I am known in the beloved Fatherland? They treat me there as if I were something singular and absurd, something that for the present need not be taken seriously.... Evidently they have an inkling that I do not take them seriously either: and how could I, nowadays, when "German intellect" has become a contradictio in adjecto!—My best thanks for the photograph. Unfortunately I have none to send in return: my sister, who is married and lives in South America, took with her the last portraits I possessed.

Enclosed is a little vita, the first I have ever written.

As regards the dates of composition of the different books, they are to be found on the back of the cover of Beyond Good and Evil. Perhaps you no longer have this cover.

The Birth of Tragedy was written between the summer of 1870 and the winter of 1871 (finished at Lugano, where I was living with the family of Field-Marshal Moltke).

The Thoughts out of Season between 1872 and the summer of 1875 (there were to have been thirteen; luckily my health said No!).

What you say about Schopenhauer as Educator gives me great pleasure. This little work serves me as a touchstone; he to whom it says nothing personal has probably nothing to do with me either. In reality it contains the whole plan according to which I have hitherto lived; it is a rigorous promise.

Human, all-too-Human, with its two continuations, summer of 1876-1879. The Dawn of Day, 1880. The Joyful Wisdom, January 1882. Zarathustra, 1883-1885 (each part in about ten days. Perfect state of "inspiration." All conceived in the course of rapid walks: absolute certainty, as though each sentence were shouted to one. While writing the book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power).

Beyond Good and Evil, summer of 1885 in the Upper Engadine and the following winter at Nice.

The Genealogy decided on, carried out and sent ready for press to the printer at Leipzig, all between July 10 and 30, 1887. (Of course there are also philologica of mine, but they do not concern you and me.)

I am now making an experiment with Turin; I shall stay here till June 5 and then go to the Engadine. The weather so far is wintry, harsh and unpleasant. But the town superbly calm and favourable to my instincts. The finest pavement in the world.

Sincere greetings from
Yours gratefully,
NIETZSCHE.

A pity I understand neither Danish nor Swedish.

Vita.—I was born on October 15, 1844, on the battlefield of Ltzen. The first name I heard was that of Gustavus Adolphus. My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Nizky); it seems the type has been well maintained, in spite of three generations of German mothers. Abroad I am usually taken for a Pole; this very winter the visitors' list at Nice entered me comme Polonais. I am told my head occurs in Matejko's pictures. My grandmother belonged to the Schiller-Goethe circles of Weimar; her brother was Herder's successor in the position of General Superintendent at Weimar. I had the good fortune to be a pupil of the venerable Pforta School, from which so many who have made a name in German literature have proceeded (Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel, Ranke, etc., etc.). We had masters who would have (or have) done honour to any university. I studied at Bonn, afterwards at Leipzig; old Ritschl, then the first philologist in Germany, singled me out almost from the first. At twenty-two I was a contributor to the Litterarisches Centralblatt (Zarncke). The foundation of the Philological Society of Leipzig, which still exists, is due to me. In the winter of 1868-1869 the University of Basle offered me a professorship; I was as yet not even a Doctor. The University of Leipzig afterwards conferred the doctor's degree on me, in a very honourable way, without any examination, and even without a dissertation. From Easter 1869 to 1879 I was at Basle; I was obliged to give up my rights as a German subject, since as an officer (Horse Artillery) I should have been called up too frequently and my academic duties would have been interfered with. I am none the less master of two weapons, the sabre and the cannon—and perhaps of a third as well.... At Basle everything went very well, in spite of my youth; it sometimes happened, especially with candidates for the doctor's degree, that the examinee was older than the examiner.

I had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with Jakob Burkhardt, an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded thinker. A still greater piece of good fortune was that from the earliest days of my Basle existence an indescribably close intimacy sprang up between me and Richard and Cosima Wagner, who were then living on their estate of Triebschen, near Lucerne, as though on an island, and were cut off from all former ties. For some years we had everything, great and small, in common, a confidence without bounds. (You will find printed in Volume VII of Wagner's complete works a "message" to me, referring to The Birth of Tragedy.) As a result of these relations I came to know a large circle of persons (and "personesses"), in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between Paris and Petersburg. By about 1876 my health became worse. I then spent a winter at Sorrento, with my old friend, Baroness Meysenbug (Memoirs of an Idealist) and the sympathetic Dr. Re. There was no improvement. I suffered from an extremely painful and persistent headache, which exhausted all my strength. This went on for a number of years, till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering, that at that time I had 200 days of torment in the year. The trouble must have been due entirely to local causes, there is no neuropathic basis for it of any sort. I have never had a symptom of mental disturbance; not even of fever, nor of fainting. My pulse was at that time as slow as that of the first Napoleon (= 60). My speciality was to endure extreme pain, cru, vert, with perfect clarity, for two or three consecutive days, accompanied by constant vomiting of bile. The report has been put about that I was in a madhouse (and indeed that I died there). Nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact my intellect only came to maturity during that terrible time: witness the Dawn of Day, which I wrote in 1881 during a winter of incredible suffering at Genoa, away from doctors, friends or relations. This book serves me as a sort of "dynamometer": I composed it with a minimum of strength and health. From 1882 on I went forward again, very slowly, it is true: the crisis was past (my father died very young, just at the age at which I was myself so near to death). I have to use extreme care even to-day; certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are indispensable to me. It is not from choice but from necessity that I spend the summer in the Upper Engadine and the winter at Nice.... After all, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it has released me, it has restored to me the courage to be myself.... And, indeed, in virtue of my instincts, I am a brave animal, a military one even. The long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride. Am I a philosopher, do you ask?—But what does that matter!...