Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. His eyesight was feeble and painful, so that he had to accept the help which two friends offered him: one of them was a young student named K?selitz, whom he had jokingly called Peter Gast, Peter the Guest—the surname stuck to him; the other was that Paul Rée, the Jew, with the acute mind, whom he had known for two years. Thanks to their devotion he was able to re-read the notes written at Klingenbrunn; he hoped to find matter in them for the second "Unseasonable Thought." Paul Rée was then publishing his Psychological Observations, reflections inspired by the English and French masters, Stuart Mill and La Rochefoucauld. Friedrich Nietzsche heard this little work read, and appreciated it. He admired this prudent style of conducting thought; he enjoyed it on the morrow of the emphatic ceremonies of Bayreuth, as though it were a repose; and he resolved to study at the school of Rée and of his masters. Nevertheless he always felt the immense void which his renouncement of Richard Wagner left in him.

"At this moment," he wrote, the 20th September, 1876, "I have every leisure to think of the past—farthest and nearest—for my oculist makes me sit idle for long periods in a darkened room. Autumn, after such a summer, is[Pg 196] for me, and no doubt not only for me, more autumn than any other. After the great event comes an attack of blacker melancholy, and to escape it one cannot fly too quickly towards Italy or towards work, or towards both."

He had obtained the leave for which he had asked, and the sole gladness which he had in life was the certainty that he would be free for some months from all professional duties.

He left Switzerland at the end of October. Alfred Brenner and Paul Rée accompanied him. The three Germans went down towards Genoa, and thence took a steamer to Naples, where Fr?ulein von Meysenbug was expecting them.

"I found Nietzsche," she writes, "disappointed sufficiently, because the journey and the arrival in Naples, in the middle of this noisy, clamorous, importunate people, had been very disagreeable to him. In the evening, however, I asked the visitors to take a drive to Pausilippe. It was such an evening as one sees only down here; sky, earth, and sea floated in a glory of indescribable colours, which filled the soul as an enchanting music, a harmony from which every discordant note was gone. I observed how Nietzsche\'s face lit up in joyous and almost childlike astonishment, as though he were dominated by a profound emotion; finally he gave vent to enthusiastic exclamations, which I welcomed as a happy augury for the efficacy of his visit."

Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had hired a villa—it was an old pension—on that slope which glides rapidly towards the sea, carrying its olives, its lemons, its cypresses, and its vines with it down to the waves. "On the first[Pg 197] floor," she writes, "there were rooms with terraces for the gentlemen; on the second, rooms for myself and my maid, with a big sitting-room for our common use."

She installed her guests in this retreat which she had selected for them; but they had to wait a while before they could enjoy the retired life for which they were in search. A too illustrious neighbour was stopping hard by—none other than Richard Wagner, who, accompanied by all his people, was resting at Sorrento after the immense effort and triumph of Bayreuth.

He showed no signs of fatigue. His days were spent in walking, his nights in conversation. With Fr?ulein von Meysenbug and his friends he held a sort of court.

We wonder if Friedrich Nietzsche had expected thus to find his master before him again? He could not avoid taking part in the walks, and in the evening parties: but he displayed a slight reserve. Whilst Richard Wagner talked of his future projects and of his coming work, and of the religious ideas which he wished to express, Nietzsche preferred to isolate himself with Paul Rée and to talk of Chamfort and of Stendhal. Richard Wagner observed these conversations. Now, he disliked Jews, and Rée displeased him. "Be careful," said he to Nietzsche, "that man will do you no good." Nietzsche did not modify his attitude. He spoke little, or, if he did mix in conversation, displayed a forced liveliness and a gaiety which were not altogether natural. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug was more than once surprised:

"But I never suspected," she writes, "that any change had come over his sentiments, and I abandoned myself with a whole heart to the delights which came to complete those of Bayreuth. The joy I experienced in living in a like intimacy led me to quote one day, as we sat together at table, a thought from Goethe of which I was very fond: \'Happy he who, without hatred, withdraws[Pg 198] from the world, presses a friend to his breast, and thus enjoys that something which men know not nor suspect, that which crosses the labyrinth of the heart at night.\' The Wagners did not know this quotation, and were so enchanted with it that I had to repeat it to them. Alas! I did not guess that the demons who also cross the labyrinth of the heart at night and intimately contemplate the divine mystery of sympathy between noble minds, had already begun their work of sowing discord and division."

Towards the end of November, Richard Wagner having left Sorrento, Fr?ulein von Meysenbug and her friends were able to regulate their lives with a view to study. They arranged the employment of their time: up to noon, work and solitude; at noon, breakfast; after breakfast, a walk and conversation; in the evening, work and solitude; at night, after dinner, reading. Paul Rée, the only healthy member in this society of invalid intellectuals, read aloud. Nietzsche and Fr?ulein von Meysenbug were short-sighted; Brenner\'s lungs were affected. Who were their authors? Jacob Burckhardt, whose course of lectures on Greek culture they were studying (a student of Basle had lent his notes); a little of Michelet; Herodotus; Thucydides. A question posed, a doubt expressed, sometimes interrupted Paul Rée\'s readings; and it was almost always Friedrich Nietzsche who concluded the short debate.

"Nietzsche was indeed the soul of sweetness and kindliness!" writes Fr?ulein von Meysenbug in her charming account. "How well his good and amiable nature counterbalanced his destructive intelligence! How well he knew how to be gay, and to laugh with a good heart at the jokes which often came to disturb the serious atmosphere of our little circle. When we were together in[Pg 199] the evening, Nietzsche comfortably installed in an arm-chair in the shade of a screen; Dr. Rée, our obliging reader, seated at the table on which the lamp was placed; young Brenner, near the chimney-piece opposite me, helping me to peel oranges for dinner; I often said, laughing: \'We represent truly an ideal family; here are we four people, who scarcely knew each other before, who are not united by any tie of relationship, who have no memories in common, and we now live together in absolute concord, in the most complete personal liberty, and in a perfect content of mind and heart.\' So plans were soon sketched for the renewal and enlargement of this happy experience...."

Would it be impossible to come back each year to this Italian coast, to call one\'s friends thither, and thus to found a spiritual refuge, free of every school, of every Church? On the morrow of 1848 Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had inspired at Hamburg a sort of Socialist phalanstery, which became the subject of one of the finest chapters of her book, and remained to her as one of the greatest memories of her life. Friedrich Nietzsche in no wise abandoned his ancient dream of a lay cloister. Thus the memories of the old lady agreed with the hopes of her young companion. Paul Rée and Alfred Brenner did not refuse their co-operation, and the four friends gave the project their serious consideration.

"Already we are in quest of an appropriate locality," writes Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, "for it was at Sorrento, in the heart of this delicious scenery, and not in the close air of a town, that our project was to take shape. We had discovered near the shore various spacious grottoes enlarged by the hand of man, veritable rock halls, in which a sort of pulpit is actually to be seen, which seems to be especially put there for a lecturer. It[Pg 200] is here that, during the hot days of summer, we thought of giving our lessons. We had besides conceived the plan of the school rather on the Greek model than according to modern ideas, and the teaching was chiefly to be a mutual instruction in the Peripatetic manner...."

Nietzsche wrote to his sister: "My idea, the school of the educators, or, if you like, modern cloister, ideal colony, free university, is always floating in the air. What will befall it, who can tell? Already we have, in imagination, named you directress and administrative head of our establishment for forty persons."

At the beginning of spring Brenner and Rée left Sorrento. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug and Nietzsche, now alone together, read to one another, but only a little, for reading tried the eyes of both. They preferred to talk. Nietzsche was never tired of listening to his companion\'s recitals. She told him of the lofty days of 1848. This he liked and, above all, he liked that she should talk to him of Mazzini.

He did not forget the chance by which he had had the Italian hero as carriage companion in April, 1871, as they were crossing the Alps. No compromise: live resolutely in the whole, the good, and the beautiful.... Mazzini had repeated this maxim of Goethe\'s to him, and Nietzsche associated it with his recollection of the man. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had known Mazzini in London. She had admired his authority in command, his exactitude in obedience, his readiness to serve every servant of the cause, whether he were called Cavour or Garibaldi. He had paid the price of this humility; for, forgotten in the hour of victory, the exile\'s ban had been maintained against him alone. Nevertheless, he had wished to end his days in his well-loved Liguria, and he had come there to die, hiding his name and race.[Pg 201] The doctor who took care of him was astonished—he had taken him for an Englishman—when he heard him speak in so pure an Italian. "Look you," replied the dying man, "no one has ever loved Italy so much as I loved her." Friedrich Nietzsche listened to these stories.

"The man I venerate most," said he to Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, "is Mazzini."

Could Fr?ulein von Meysenbug have guessed that her young companion, this young, tender, and enthusiastic German, had just declared war within himself on those instincts of tenderness and enthusiasm which obstructed the clarity of his views?—that Nietzsche, the continuator of Schopenhauer, the friend of Wagner, was now choosing La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Stendhal for masters? Could she have guessed that this friend who dreamed with her of setting up a lay cloister was training himself, during his long walks, to face the melancholy of a life of revolt and of solitude? He formulated the rules of such a life:

    You must neither love nor hate the people.

    You must in no way occupy yourself with politics.

    You must be neither rich nor poor.

    You must avoid the path of those who are illustrious and powerful.

    You must take a wife from outside your people.

    You must leave to your friends the care of bringing up your children.

    You must accept none of the ceremonies of the Church.

Fr?ulein von Meysenbug knew at last. One day Nietzsche handed to her a pile of MSS. "Read," said he; "here are some impressions which came to me down there, under that tree; I have never sat down in its shade[Pg 202] without plucking a thought." Fr?ulein von Meysenbug read, and discovered an unsuspected Nietzsche, a critic and a denier. "Do not publish that," she said. "Wait, reflect!" Nietzsche\'s only answer was a smile. She insisted; the conversation grew animated; they made peace in reading Thucydides.

At the beginning of May, Nietzsche, incommoded by the heat, wished to leave. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug wanted him to postpone his departure in order that he might master his first fatigue before he began the trying voyage. He would not listen to her.

"Nietzsche is really going to-morrow," she wrote to Rée; "you know that when he is thus determined upon something he carries it out, even though the sky sends the most serious warnings to turn him from it. In that he is no longer a Greek, as he is not attentive to oracles. Just as, in the most frightful weather, he starts out on an excursion, so now he goes, tired to death, in defiance of the raging wind which is lashing up the sea, and will certainly make him ill, for he is determined to make the voyage from Naples to Genoa by sea."

"Yes, he has gone," she wrote in another letter. "The charm of Sorrento in flower could not keep him; he must go, but it is horribly painful to me to let him travel thus; he is unpractical and so bad at extricating himself from a difficulty. Luckily the sea is a little calmer to-day.... Alas, there is so much to regret! Eight days ago we had sketched plans for his near and distant future. Was his brusque resolution dictated by a feverish desire to fly from his malady, which he suddenly fancied had some connection with our spring temperature, which is truly a little abnormal? But how could he have been any better elsewhere this miserable spring? I think that at the last moment it occurred to him[Pg 203] that his departure was nevertheless precipitate. But it was too late.... This melancholy multiplication of departures has quite upset me...."

Friedrich Nietzsche went to take a cure at the waters of Rosenlaui. He experienced very little benefit from it, and his immediate future preoccupied his thoughts. In September he had to resume his professorial duties. It was his daily bread, and a daily discipline from which he feared to be freed. But he also knew the horrible ennui of it. He had been given reason to hope that the authorities at Basle would consent to grant him, in consideration of his services and of his illness, a definite discharge with a sufficient pension. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug advised him to retire; his sister, on the contrary, advised him to retain his office, and Nietzsche chose to listen to his sister. But the nearer came the date of his return, the more lively grew his revolt.

"It is a thing which I know, which I feel," he then wrote to a woman who was helping him in his work, the mother of one of his pupils, Marie Baumgarten, "that I have in store a loftier destiny. I can make use of Philology, but I am more than a Philologist. \'I misrepresent myself.\' Such was the persistent theme of my last ten years. Now that a year of retired life has made everything so visible and so clear (I cannot express how rich I feel and how much of a creator of joy, in spite of every affliction, as soon as I am left alone with myself), now, I tell you with complete confidence that I am not returning to Basle to stay there. How will it come about? I do not know, but my liberty (Ah! how modest my material necessities are; little matters to me), my liberty, I shall conquer it for myself."

[Pg 204]

His sister came to join him at Basle and lived with him. At first his pleasure was great, but he soon recognised that he could not talk with this girl who was altogether a Wagnerian and quite devoted to the ideas of Bayreuth. Paul Rée was the only man whose company he liked; but Paul Rée was detained in North Germany by considerations of health, and could not, as Nietzsche had hoped, come to Basle.

"I hope that I shall soon learn," he wrote to him, "that the evil demons of sickness are leaving you in peace. All that I wish for you in the New Year is that you remain as you are, and that you remain for me as you have been.... Let me tell you that friendship has never been so sweet to me as in this last year, thanks to you.... When I hear of your work, my mouth waters, for I desire to be with you so much. We have been made to understand each other aright; we always come together, I think, like good neighbours, to whom the idea occurs, at the same moment, that they should pay each other a visit, and who meet on the confines of their lands.... When shall we have a good conversation upon human affairs, a personal, not an epistolary conversation?"

In December he wrote to Rée: "Ten times a day I wish to be near you." Nevertheless he finished his book, or, to be more accurate, he did not finish it, for he preserved the attractive freedom of his notes. It was thus that they came to him, one after another, without any connection; and it pleased him that they should thus remain. His deplorable health prevented him from putting a weft across them, from imposing an order upon them. And what did it matter? He recalled those French writers whose loyalty he loved: Pascal, Larochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, Montaigne. He wished[Pg 205] to leave, after their example, some disorder and some discontinuity in his thoughts. He wished to write a simple book which should call the most urgent enthusiasts back to prudence. Round Wagner and Bayreuth, "beautiful souls" were innumerable. Friedrich Nietzsche, who had just missed being one of these, wished, by talking in the manner of old Socrates, to make them feel the absurdity of their faith. Human, All Too Human, was the title which he had chosen. Right at the end of his conscious life, he recounted the object of his book.

"A torch in my hand," he writes, "and the light not smoky,[1] I have cast a lively light upon this subterranean world of the Ideal. It is war, but war without powder and without smoke, without war-like attitudes, without pathos, without dislocated limbs—all that would still be \'idealism.\' Error after error, I took them and placed them on the ice, and the ideal was not even refuted—it froze. Here, for example, freezes \'the Genius\'; in this other corner freezes \'the Saint\'; beneath a thick stopper of frozen ice \'the Hero\'; and, lastly, it is \'the Faith\' which freezes, she who is named \'Conviction\'; and then here is \'Pity,\' which notably grows cold—in fact, nearly everywhere freezes \'the thing in itself.\'"

Certainly this work is paradoxical. No one is so ardent as Friedrich Nietzsche, no one has such a belief in his work, in his mission, in the sublime ends of life; and yet he labours to scoff at them. He reverses every thesis that he has hitherto upheld. Pereat Veritas, fiat vita!—he had once written. Now he writes, Pereat vita, fiat Veritas! Above poetry he places science; above ?schylus, that same Socrates whom he had at other times denounced. No doubt it is only a pretence, and he[Pg 206] knows it. The ideas which he expresses are not really his own. He arms himself with irony for a combat which will be short: for he is not an ironist. He wants to find, and is convinced that he will find, an unknown lyricism which shall inspire his great works. Human, All Too Human, is the sign of a time of crisis and of passage, but what a surprising crisis, what a difficult passage! "The book is there," wrote Nietzsche, "to the great astonishment of the prostrate invalid."

On January 3, 1879, he received the poem Parsifal, which Richard Wagner sent him. He read it, and could better measure the always increasing distance which separated him from his old master. He wrote to the Baron von Seydlitz:

"Impression from the first reading: more Liszt than Wagner; the spirit of the counter-reformation; for me who am too accustomed to the Greek and human atmosphere, all this belongs to a too limited Christianity; the psychology is fantastic; there is no flesh and far too much blood (the Last Supper especially has far too much blood about it for me); I do not like hysterical chambermaids. The style seems like a translation from a foreign language. But the situations and their developments—are they not in a vein of the greatest poetry? Never did a musician propose a higher task to his music."

Friedrich Nietzsche, in this letter, did not speak all his thoughts. Certain features of it (no flesh and far too much blood) let us divine, as already active and vehement within him, that repugnance which he was to express ten years later. Nevertheless he loved this incomparable master, and for the first time he was obliged to put clearly to himself the problem of the rupture. He had received the poem Parsifal; should he reply, and, if so,[Pg 207] in what terms? or should he take the more frank and simple course of leaving it unanswered?

His doubts and vexations increased. It is not easy to gauge his condition at this time. He scarcely confided in his sister. His letters to Paul Rée, which would no doubt enlighten us, are not printed.

Since Christmas, 1877, Friedrich Nietzsche had more leisure, his professional work having been reduced by some hours. He took advantage of this to leave Basle every week and wander alone in the neighbouring regions. He did not go to the high mountains; he had little taste for these "monsters" and preferred the Jura, the Black Forest, whose wooded heights reminded him of the places of his childhood.

What were his thoughts? We may conjecture that he was occupied solely with Wagner and his book. One month, two months had passed, and he had not acknowledged the receipt of Parsifal. Human, All Too Human was printed, and the publisher was waiting. But how should he forewarn the master, how prepare him for this surprising document? His disciples had accustomed him to the most obsequious homage, the most profound intellectual deference. Nietzsche knew that his independent work would scandalise the dovecot of Bayreuth. When the moment for his pronouncement came he took fright. He was as much concerned for the public as for Wagner himself. He was ashamed of the philosophy which he was giving forth as his own. He had written these pages, and he regretted nothing; he had followed, as he had the right to follow, the vital logic which ruled his mind. But he also knew that this same logic would bring him back one day towards a new lyricism, and it would have suited him to disguise somewhat the interlude of his years of crisis. He then conceived a singular idea: he would not sign his book; he would publish it in an enigmatical manner, anonymously; Richard Wagner[Pg 208] alone would know the mystery and know that Human, All Too Human was the work of his friend, of his disciple, who at the bottom of his soul remained still faithful. He wrote out a long draft of a letter which is preserved to us:

"I send you this book: Human, All Too Human; and at the same time I tell you, you and your noble companion, in complete confidence, my secret; it suits me that it should be also yours. The book is mine....

"I find myself in the condition of mind of an officer who has carried a redoubt. Though wounded he is upon the heights and waves his standard. More joy, far more joy than sorrow, though the neighbouring spectacle be terrible.

"I have told you that I know no one who is really in agreement with me in thought. And yet I fancy that I have thought, not as an individual, but as the representative of a group; the most singular sentiment of solitude and of society....

"... The swiftest herald who does not know precisely if the cavalry is coming behind him, or even if it exists."

The publisher rejected the proposal and Nietzsche had to abandon it. At last his mind was made up. Europe was about to celebrate, in May, 1878, the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire\'s death. Friedrich Nietzsche decided that he would publish his book at this time, and he would dedicate it to the memory of the great pamphleteer.

"In Norway those periods during which the sun remains all day beneath the horizon are called times of obscurity," he wrote in 1879; "during that time the temperature[Pg 209] goes down slowly and incessantly. What a marvellous symbol for all thinkers for whom the sun of man\'s future has been obscured for a time!" Nietzsche knew his time of obscurity. Erwin Rohde disapproved of his book, Richard Wagner made no reply; but Nietzsche knew how he was being judged in the master\'s circle. "The caricaturist of Bayreuth," said they, "is either an ingrate or a madman." An unknown donor (Gersdorff, was it not?) sent from Paris a box in which Friedrich and Lisbeth Nietzsche found a bust of Voltaire and a short note: The soul of Monsieur Voltaire presents his compliments to Monsieur Friedrich Nietzsche. Lisbeth Nietzsche could not tolerate the idea that her brother, pure German at heart, should range himself under the banner of a Frenchman, and of such a Frenchman! She wept.

No doubt some of his friends passed a different judgment. "Your book," said Jacob Burckhardt, "enlarges the independence of the mind." "Only one book," wrote Paul Rée, "has suggested as many thoughts to me as has yours—the conversations of Goethe and Eckermann." Peter Gast remained faithful, Overbeck and his wife were sure friends. Nietzsche did not feel his defeat the less for it "Human, All Too Human" had no success. Richard Wagner, it was said, was amused by the smallness of the sales. He chaffed the publisher: "Ah, ah! now you see Nietzsche is read only when he defends our cause; otherwise, no."

In August, 1878, Human, All Too Human was judged and condemned in the Journal of Bayreuth. "Every German professor," wrote the anonymous author, in whom Nietzsche recognised, or believed that he recognised, Richard Wagner, "has to write once in his life a book to consecrate his fame. But as it is not given to all the world to find a truth, one contents oneself, to obtain the desired effect, with proving the radical nonsense of[Pg 210] the views of a predecessor, and the effect is so much the greater when the predecessor who is put to shame was the more considerable man."

This low style of judgment grieved Friedrich Nietzsche. He now proposed to explain, in a tone of serenity and respect, his attitude in respect to his old masters, Schopenhauer and Wagner. Only it seemed to him that the time for courtesies had gone by, and, after reconsidering his Sorrento notes, he undertook to write a sequel to the thoughts of Human, All Too Human.

His sister had left him; in September he was leading a painful and miserable life, a few features of which we can apprehend. He was avoided, for his agitated condition gave alarm. Often, on coming out of the University, he would meet Jacob Burckhardt. The wise historian would slip off by a clever man?uvre; he esteemed his colleague, but dreaded him. In vain Nietzsche sought to gather new disciples around him. "I am hunting for men," he wrote, "like a veritable corsair, not to sell them into slavery, but to carry them off with me to liberty." This unsociable liberty which he proposed failed to seduce the young men. A student, Herr Schaffler, has recorded his recollections: "I attended Nietzsche\'s lectures," says he; "I knew him very slightly. Once, at the end of a lecture, he chanced to be near me, and we walked out side by side. There were light clouds passing over the sky. \'The beautiful clouds,\' he said to me, \'how rapid they are!\' \'They resemble the clouds of Paul Veronese,\' I answered. Suddenly his hand seized my arm. \'Listen,\' said he; \'the holidays are coming; I am leaving soon, come with me, and we shall go together to see the clouds at Venice.\' ... I was surprised, I stammered out some hesitating words; then I saw Nietzsche turn from me, his face icy and rigid as death. He moved away without saying a word, leaving me alone."

[Pg 211]

The break with Wagner was his great and lasting sorrow. "Such a farewell," he wrote, "when one parts because agreement is impossible between one\'s manner of feeling and one\'s manner of judging, puts us back in contact with that other person, and we throw ourselves with all our strength against that wall which nature has set up between us and him." In February, 1879, Lisbeth Nietzsche wrote to Cosima Wagner: had her brother advised her to make the overture? Did he know of it? Did he approve of it? We cannot say. Cosima answered with an imperial and sweet firmness. "Do not speak to me of Human, All Too Human," she wrote. "The only thing that I care to remember in writing to you is this, that your brother once wrote for me some of the most beautiful pages that I know.... I bear no malice against him: he has been broken by suffering. He has lost the mastery of himself, and this explains his felony." She added, with more spirit than sense, "To say that his present writings are not definitive, that they represent the stages of a mind that seeks itself, is, I think, curious. It is almost as if Beethoven had said: \'See me in my third manner!\' Moreover, one recognises as one reads that the author is not convinced by his work; it is merely sophism without impulse, and one is moved to pity."

Miscellaneous Opinions and Apophthegms, which formed the sequel to Human, All Too Human, appeared in 1879. But the offence which this second volume might have given was attenuated and, as it were, warded off, by reason of the pity which Nietzsche now inspired in those who had formerly known him. His state of health grew worse. His head, his stomach, his eyes, tormented him without intermission. The doctors began to be disquieted by symptoms which they could not ascertain, by an invalid whom they could not cure. It appeared to them that his eyesight, and perhaps his reason, were............