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"Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have had children, unless it be this woman I love—for I love thee, O Eternity!"
The best known of Nietzsche's poems forms the conclusion of Thus Spake Zarathustra, the most impressive work of Nietzsche, and is called by him "The Drunken Song." The thoughts are almost incoherent and it is difficult to say what is really meant by it. Nothing is more characteristic of Nietzsche's attitude and the vagueness of his fitful mode of thought. It[Pg 59] has been illustrated by Hans Lindlof, in the same spirit in which Richard Strauss has written a musical composition on the theme of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra.
"The Drunken Song" reads in our translation as follows:
"Man, listen, pray!
What the deep midnight has to say:
'I lay asleep,
'But woke from dreams deep and distraught
The world is deep,
'E'en deeper than the day e'er thought.
'Deep's the world's pain,—
'Joy deeper still than heartache's burning.
'Pain says, Life's vain!
'But for eternity Joy's yearning.
'For deep eternity Joy's yearning!'"
Prof. William Benjamin Smith has translated this same song, and we think it will be interesting to our readers to compare his translation with our rendering. It reads as follows:
"Oh Man! Give ear!
What saith the midnight deep and drear?
'From sleep, from sleep
'I woke as from a dream profound.
'The world is deep
'And deeper than the day can sound.
'Deep is its woe,—
'Joy, deeper still than heart's distress.
'Woe saith, Forego!
'But Joy wills everlastingness,—
'Wills deep, deep everlastingness.'"
Nietzsche is far from regarding his philosophy as timely. He was a proud and aristocratic character, spoiled from childhood by an unfaltering admiration on the part of both his mother and sister. It was unfortunate for him that his father had died before he could influence the early years of his son through wholesome discipline. Not enjoying a vigorous constitution Nietzsche was greatly impressed with the thought that a general decadence was overshadowing mankind. The truth was that his own bodily system was subject to many ailments which hampered his mental improvement. He was hungering for health, he envied the man of energy, he longed for strength and vigor, but all this was denied him, and so these very shortcomings of his own bodily strength—his own decadence—prompted in him a yearning for bodily health, for an unbounded exercise of energy, and for success. These were his dearest ideals, and his desire for power was his highest ambition. He saw in the history of human thought, the development of the[Pg 61] notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people would become subservient.
Nietzsche's philosophy forms a strange contrast to his own habits of life. A model of virtue, he made himself the advocate of vice, and gloried in it. He encouraged the robber[1] to rob, but he himself was honesty incarnate; he incited the people to rebel against authority of all kinds, but he himself was a "model child" in the nursery, a "model scholar" in school, and a "model soldier" while serving in the German army. His teachers as well as the officers of his regiment fail to find words enough to praise Nietzsche's obedience.[2]
Nietzsche's professors declare that he distinguished himself "durch pnktlichen Gehorsam" (p. 3); his sister tells us that she and her brother were "ungeheuer artig, wahre Musterkinder" (p. 36). He makes a good soldier, and, in spite of his denunciations of posing,[Pg 62] displays theatrical vanity in having himself photographed with drawn sword (the scabbard is missing). His martial mustache almost anticipates the tonsorial art of the imperial barber of the present Kaiser; and yet his spectacled eyes and good-natured features betray the peacefulness of his intentions. He plays the soldier only, and would have found difficulty in killing even a fly.
Nietzsche disclaims ever having learned anything in any school, but there never was a more grateful German pupil in Germany. He composed fervid poems on his school—the well known institution Schulpforta, which on account of its severe discipline he praises, not in irony but seriously, as the "narrow gate."[3]
Nietzsche denounces the German character, German institutions, and the German language, his mother-tongue, and is extremely unfair in his denunciations. He takes pleasure in the fact that Deutsch (see Ulfila's Bible translation) originally means "pagans or heathen," and hopes that the dear German people will earn the honor of being called pagans. (La Gaya Scienza, p. 176.) A reaction against his patriotism set in immediately after the war, when he became acquainted with the brutality of some vulgar specimens of the victorious nation,—most of them non-combatants.[4]
Nietzsche not only wrote in German and made the most involved constructions, but when the war broke out he asked his adopted country Switzerland, in which he had acquired citizenship after accepting a position as professor of classical languages at the University of Basel, for leave of absence to join the German army. In the Franco-Prussian war he might have had a chance to live up to his theories of struggle, but unfortunately the Swiss authorities did not allow him to join the army, and granted leave of absence only on condition that he would serve as a nurse. Such is the irony of fate. While Nietzsche stood up for a ruthless assertion of strength and for a suppression of sympathy which he denounced as a relic of the ethics[Pg 64] of a negation of life, his own tender soul was so over-sensitive that his sister feels justified in tracing his disease back to the terrible impressions he received during the war.
