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MY DEAR SIR,

For letter, portrait and music I send you my best thanks. The letter and the music were an unqualified pleasure, the portrait might have been better. It is a profile taken at Naumburg, characteristic in its attitude, but with too little expression. You must look different from this; the writer of Zarathustra must have many more secrets written in his own face.

I concluded my lectures on Fr. Nietzsche before Whitsuntide. They ended, as the papers say, in applause "which took the form of an ovation." The ovation is yours almost entirely. I take the liberty of communicating it to you herewith in writing. For I can only claim the credit of reproducing, clearly and connectedly, and intelligibly to a Northern audience, what you had originated.

I also tried to indicate your relation to various contemporaries, to introduce my hearers into the workshop of your thought, to put forward my own favourite ideas, where they coincided with yours, to define the points on which I differed from you, and to give a psychological portrait of Nietzsche the author. Thus much I may say without exaggeration: your name is now very popular in all intelligent circles in Copenhagen, and all over Scandinavia it is at least known. You have nothing to thank me for; it has been a pleasure to me to penetrate into the world of your thoughts. My lectures are not worth printing, as I do not regard pure philosophy as my special province and am unwilling to print anything dealing with a subject in which I do not feel sufficiently competent.

I am very glad you feel so invigorated physically and so well disposed mentally. Here, after a long winter, we have mild spring weather. We are rejoicing in the first green leaves and in a very well-arranged Northern exhibition that has been opened at Copenhagen. All the French artists of eminence (painters and sculptors) are also exhibiting here. Nevertheless, I am longing to get away, but have to stay.

But this cannot interest you. I forgot to tell you: if you do not know the Icelandic sagas, you must study them. You will find there a great deal to confirm your hypotheses and theories about the morality of a master race.

In one trifling detail you seem to have missed the mark. Gothic has certainly nothing to do with good or God. It is connected with giessen, he who emits the seed, and means stallion, man.

On the other hand, our philologists here think your suggestion of bonus—duonus is much to the point.

I hope that in future we shall never become entirely strangers to one another.

I remain your faithful reader and admirer,
GEORGE BRANDES.

15. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES. (Post-card.)

Turin, May 27, 1888.

What eyes you have! You are right, the Nietzsche of the photograph is not yet the author of Zarathustra—he is a few years too young for that.

I am very grateful for the etymology of Goth; it is simply godlike.

I presume you are reading another letter of mine to-day.

Your gratefully attached
N.

16. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.

Sils-Maria, Sept. 13, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

Herewith I do myself a pleasure—that of recalling myself to your memory, by sending you a wicked little book, but one that is none the less very seriously meant; the product of the good days of Turin. For I must tell you that since then there have been evil days in Superfluity; such a decline in health, courage and "will to life," to talk Schopenhauer, that the little spring idyll scarcely seemed credible any longer. Fortunately I still possessed a document belonging to it, the Case of Wagner. A Musician's Problem. Spiteful tongues will prefer to call it The Fall of Wagner.

Much as you may disclaim music (—the most importunate of all the Muses), and with however good reason, yet pray look at this piece of musician's psychology. You, my dear Mr. Cosmopolitan, are far too European in your ideas not to hear in it a hundred times more than my so-called countrymen, the "musical" Germans.

After all, in this case I am a connoisseur in rebus et personis—and, fortunately, enough of a musician by instinct to see that in this ultimate question of values, the problem is accessible and soluble through music.

In reality this pamphlet is almost written in French—I dare say it would be easier to translate it into French than into German.

Could you give me one or two more Russian or French addresses to which there would be some sense in sending the pamphlet?

In a month or two something philosophical may be expected; under the very inoffensive title of Leisure Hours of Psychologist I am saying agreeable and disagreeable things to the world at large—including that intelligent nation, the Germans.

But all this is in the main nothing but recreation beside the main thing: the name of the latter is Transvaluation of all Values. Europe will have to discover a new Siberia, to which to consign the author of these experiments with values.

I hope this high-spirited letter will find you in one of your usual resolute moods.

With kind remembrances,
Yours,
DR. NIETZSCHE.

Address till middle of November: Torino (Italia) ferma in posta.

17. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, Oct. 6, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

Your letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work. This accounts for my delay in answering.

The mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement.

It is sad news that you have had a bad summer. I was foolish enough to think that you had already got over all your physical troubles.

I have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much enjoyment. I am not so unmusical that I cannot enter into the fun of it. I am merely not an expert. A few days before receiving the little book I heard a very fine performance of Carmen; what glorious music! However, at the risk of exciting your wrath I confess that Wagner's Tristan und Isolde made an indelible impression on me. I once heard this opera in Berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of mind, and I felt every note. I do not know whether the impression was so deep because I was so ill.

Do you know Bizet's widow? You ought to send her the pamphlet. She would like it. She is the sweetest, most charming of women, with a nervous tic that is curiously becoming, but perfectly genuine, perfectly sincere and full of fire. Only she has married again (an excellent man, a barrister named Straus, of Paris). I believe she knows some German. I could get you her address, if it does not put you against her that she has not remained true to her god—any more than the Virgin Mary, Mozart's widow or Marie Louise.

Bizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming.—But I am gossiping.

I have given a copy of the book to the greatest of Swedish writers, August Strindberg, whom I have entirely won over to you. He is a true genius, only a trifle mad like most geniuses (and non-geniuses). The other copy I shall also place with care.

Paris I am not well acquainted with now. But send a copy to the following address: Madame la Princesse Anna Dmitrievna Tnicheff, Quai Anglais 20, Petersburg. This lady is a friend of mine; she is also acquainted with the musical world of Petersburg and will make you known there. I have asked her before now to buy your works, but they were all forbidden in Russia, even Human, all-too-Human.