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You must not be angry either, to find yourself brought forward at a critical passage in the book—I wrote it just now—where I stigmatise the conduct of my German friends towards me, their absolute leaving me in the lurch as regards both fame and philosophy. Then you suddenly appear, surrounded by a halo....

I believe implicitly what you say about Dostoievsky; I esteem him, on the other hand, as the most valuable psychological material I know—I am grateful to him in an extraordinary way, however antagonistic he may be to my deepest instincts. Much the same as my relation to Pascal, whom I almost love, since he has taught me such an infinite amount; the only logical Christian.

The day before yesterday I read, with delight and with a feeling of being thoroughly at home, Les maris, by Herr August Strindberg. My sincerest admiration, which is only prejudiced by the feeling that I am admiring myself a little at the same time.

Turin is still my residence.

Your
NIETZSCHE, now a monster.

Where may I send you the Twilight of the Idols? If you will be at Copenhagen another fortnight, no answer is necessary.

21. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, Nov. 23, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

Your letter found me to-day in full fever of work; I am lecturing here on Goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for three quarters of an hour in the square before the University to get standing-room. It amuses me to study the greatest of the great before so many. I must stay here till the end of the year.

But on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that—as I am informed—one of my old books, lately translated into Russian, has been condemned in Russia to be publicly burnt as "irreligious."

I already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on Poland and Russia; now I must try to set in motion all the influence I can command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in Russia this winter. To make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are now confiscated. There is great anxiety since the disaster at Borki. It was just the same shortly after the famous attempts. Every letter was snapped up.

It gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through so much. Believe me, I spread your propaganda wherever I can. So late as last week I earnestly recommended Henrik Ibsen to study your works. With him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant kinship. Great and strong and unamiable, but yet worthy of love, is this singular person. Strindberg will be glad to hear of your appreciation. I do not know the French translation you mention; but they say here that all the best things in Giftas (Maris) have been left out, especially the witty polemic against Ibsen. But read his drama Pre; there is a great scene in it. I am sure he would gladly send it you. But I see him so seldom; he is so shy on account of an extremely unhappy marriage. Imagine it, he abhors his wife intellectually and cannot get away from her physically. He is a monogamous misogynist!

It seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in you. In my early days I was passionately polemical; now I can only expound; silence is my only weapon of offence. I should as soon think of attacking Christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves, I mean against the belief in werewolves.

But I see we understand one another. I too love Pascal. But even as a young man I was for the Jesuits against Pascal (in the Provinciales). The worldly-wise, they were right, of course; he did not understand them; but they understood him and—what a master-stroke of impudence and sagacity!—they themselves published his Provinciales with notes. The best edition is that of the Jesuits.

Luther against the Pope, there we have the same collision. Victor Hugo in the preface to the Feuilles d'Automne has this fine saying: On convoque la dite de Worms mais on peint la chapelle Sixtine. Il y a Luther, mais il y a Michel-Ange ... et remarquons en passant que Luther est dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que Michel-Ange n'y est pas.

Study the face of Dostoievsky: half a Russian peasant's face, half a criminal physiognomy, flat nose, little piercing eyes under lids quivering with nervousness, this lofty and well-formed forehead, this expressive mouth that speaks of torments innumerable, of abysmal melancholy, of unhealthy appetites, of infinite pity, passionate envy! An epileptic genius, whose exterior alone speaks of the stream of gentleness that filled his spirit, of the wave of acuteness almost amounting to madness that mounted to his head, and finally of the ambition, the immense effort, and of the ill-will that results from pettiness of soul.

His heroes are not only poor and pitiable creatures, but simple-minded sensitive ones, noble strumpets, often victims of hallucination, gifted epileptics, enthusiastic candidates for martyrdom—just those types which we should suspect in the apostles and disciples of the early days of Christianity.

Certainly nothing could be farther removed from the Renaissance.

I am excited to know how I can come into your book.

I remain your faithfully devoted
GEORGE BRANDES.

22. Unstamped. Without further address, undated. Written in a large hand on a piece of paper (not note-paper) ruled in pencil, such as children use. Post-mark: Turin, January 4, 1889.

TO THE FRIEND GEORG

When once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me: the difficulty now is to get rid of me ...

The Crucified.

As Herr Max Nordau has attempted with incredible coarseness to brand Nietzsche's whole life-work as the production of a madman, I call attention to the fact that signs of powerful exaltation only appear in the last letter but one, and that insanity is only evident in the last letter of all, and then not in an unqualified form.

But at the close of the year 1888 this dear and masterly mind began to be deranged. His self-esteem, which had always been very great, acquired a morbid character. His light and delicate self-irony, which appears not unfrequently in the letters here given, gave place to constantly recurring outbursts of anger with the German public's failure to appreciate the value of his works. It ill became a man of Nietzsche's intellect, who only a year before (see Letter No. 2) had desired a small number of intelligent readers, to take such offence at the indifference of the mob. He now gave expression to the most exalted ideas about himself. In his last book but one he had said: "I have given the Germans the profoundest books of any they possess "; in his last he wrote: "I have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses." At the same time he yielded to an impulse to describe the fame he hoped to attain in the future as already his. As the reader will see, he had asked me to furnish him with the addresses of persons in Paris and Petersburg who might be able to make his name known in France and Russia. I chose them to the best of my judgment. But even before the books he sent had reached their destinations, Nietzsche wrote in a German review: "And thus I am treated in Germany, I who am already studied in Petersburg and Paris." That his sense of propriety was beginning to be deranged was already shown when sending the book to Princess Tnicheff (see Letter No. 18). This lady wrote to me in astonishment, asking what kind of a strange friend I had recommended to her: he had been sufficiently wanting in taste to give the sender's name on the parcel itself as "The Antichrist." Some time after I had received the last deranged and touching letter, another was shown me, which Nietzsche had presumably sent the same day, and in which he wrote that he intended to summon a meeting of sovereigns in Rome to have the young German Emperor shot there; this was signed "Nietzsche-Csar." The letter to me was signed "The Crucified." It was thus evident that this great mind in its final megalomania had oscillated between attributing to itself the two greatest names in history, so strongly contrasted.