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It would also be as well to send a copy to Prince Urussov (who is mentioned in Turgeniev's letters). He is greatly interested in everything German, and is a man of rich gifts, an intellectual gourmet. I do not remember his address for the moment, but can find it out.

I am glad that in spite of all bodily ills you are working so vigorously and keenly. I am looking forward to all the things you promise me.

It would give me great pleasure to be read by you, but unfortunately you do not understand my language. I have produced an enormous amount this summer. I have written two long new books (of twenty-four and twenty-eight sheets), Impressions of Poland and Impressions of Russia, besides entirely rewriting one of my oldest books, sthetic Studies, for a new edition and correcting the proofs of all three books myself. In another week or so I shall have finished this work; then I give a series of lectures, writing at the same time another series in French, and leave for Russia in the depth of winter to revive there.

That is the plan I propose for my winter campaign. May it not be a Russian campaign in the bad sense.

I hope you will continue your friendly interest in me.

I remain,
Your faithfully devoted,
GEORGE BRANDES.

18. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.

Turin, Oct. 20, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

Once more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north; it is in fact so far the only letter that puts a "good face," or any face at all on my attack on Wagner. For people do not write to me. I have irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest. There is, for instance, my old friend, Baron Seydlitz of Munich, who unfortunately happens to be President of the Munich Wagner Society; my still older friend, Justizrath Krug of Cologne, president of the local Wagner Society; my brother-in-law, Dr. Bernhard Frster in South America, the not unknown Anti—Semite, one of the keenest contributors to the Bayreuther Bltter—and my respected friend, Malwida von Meysenbug, the authoress of Memoirs of an Idealist, who continues to confuse Wagner with Michel Angelo....

On the other side I have been given to understand that I must be on my guard against the female Wagnerite: in certain cases she is said to be without scruple. Perhaps Bayreuth will defend itself in the German Imperial manner, by the prohibition of my writings—as "dangerous to public morals"; for here the Emperor is a party to the case.

My dictum, "we all know the insthetic concept of the Christian Junker," might even be interpreted as lse-majest.

Your intervention on behalf of Bizet's widow gave me great pleasure. Please let me have her address; also that of prince Urussov. A copy has been sent to your friend, the Princess Dmitrievna Tnicheff. When my next book is published, which will be before very long (the title is now The Twilight of the Idols. Or, How to Philosophise with the Hammer), I should much like to send a copy to the Swede you introduce to me in such laudatory terms. But I do not know where he lives. This book is my philosophy in nuce—radical to the point of criminality....

As to the effect of Tristan, I, too, could tell strange tales. A regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a Wagnerian repast. The Reichsgerichtsrath Dr. Wiener of Leipzig gave me to understand that a Carlsbad cure was also a good thing....

Ah, how industrious you are! And idiot that I am, not to understand Danish! I am quite willing to take your word for it that one can "revive" in Russia better than elsewhere; I count any Russian book, above all Dostoievsky (translated into French, for Heaven's sake not German!!) among my greatest sources of relief.

Cordially and, with good reason, gratefully,
Yours,
NIETZSCHE.

19. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, Nov. 16, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have waited in vain for an answer from Paris to learn the address of Madame Bizet. On the other hand, I now have the address of Prince Urussov. He lives in Petersburg, Sergievskaia 79.

My three books are now out. I have begun my lectures here.

Curious it is how something in your letter and in your book about Dostoievsky coincides with my own impressions of him. I have mentioned you, too, in my work on Russia, when dealing with Dostoievsky. He is a great poet, but an abominable creature, quite Christian in his emotions and at the same time quite sadique. His whole morality is what you have baptised slave-morality.

The mad Swede's name is August Strindberg; he lives here. His address is Holte, near Copenhagen. He is particularly fond of you, because he thinks he finds in you his own hatred of women. On this account he calls you "modern" (irony of fate). On reading the newspaper reports of my spring lectures, he said: "It is an astonishing thing about this Nietzsche; much of what he says is just what I might have written." His drama, Pre, has appeared in French with a preface by Zola.

I feel mournful whenever I think of Germany. What a development is now going on there! How sad to think that to all appearance one will never in one's lifetime be a historical witness of the smallest good thing.

What a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand Danish. I am doing all I can to prevent my books on Poland and Russia being translated, so that I may not be expelled, or at least refused the right of speaking when I next go there.

Hoping that these lines will find you still at Turin or will be forwarded to you, I am,

Yours very sincerely,
GEORGE BRANDES.

20. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.

Torino, via Carlo Alberto, 6, III.

Nov. 20, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

Forgive me for answering at once. Curious things are now happening in my life, things that are without precedent. First the day before yesterday; now again. Ah, if you knew what I had just written when your letter paid me its visit.

With a cynicism that will become famous in the world's history, I have now related myself. The book is called Ecce Homo, and is an attack on the Crucified without the slightest reservation; it ends in thunders and lightnings against everything that is Christian or infected with Christianity, till one is blinded and deafened. I am in fact the first psychologist of Christianity and, as an old artilleryman, can bring heavy guns into action, the existence of which no opponent of Christianity has even suspected. The whole is the prelude to the Transvaluation of all Values, the work that lies ready before me: I swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole world in convulsions. I am a fate.

Guess who come off worst in Ecce Homo? Messieurs the Germans! I have told them terrible things.... The Germans, for instance, have it on their conscience that they deprived the last great epoch of history, the Renaissance, of its meaning—at a moment when the Christian values, the dcadence values, were worsted, when they were conquered in the instincts even of the highest ranks of the clergy by the opposite instincts, the instincts of life. To attack the Church—that meant to re-establish Christianity. (Cesare Borgia as pope—that would have been the meaning of the Renaissance, its proper symbol.)