I
The Conception of the Eternal Return

Friedrich Nietzsche regarded The Dawn of Day as the exercise of a convalescent who amuses himself with desires and ideas, and finds in each a malicious or a delightful pleasure. It had been a game which must have an end. I must now choose from among these half-perceived ideas, he thought, I must lay hold of one, express it in its full force, and close my years of retreat and hesitation. "In times of peace," he had written, "the man of warlike instinct turns against himself." Hardly done with his combats, he sought a new occasion for battle.

He had remained, up to mid-July, in Venetia, on the lower slopes of the Italian Alps. He had to seek a cooler refuge. He had not forgotten those high Alpine valleys which had given him, two years earlier, in his ill-health a respite and a rapid joy. He went up towards them and installed himself in a rustic fashion in the Engadine, at Sils-Maria. He had, for one franc a day, a room in a peasant house; a neighbouring inn furnished him with his meals. Passers by were rare, and Nietzsche, when he found himself in talkative humour, used to visit the curé or the schoolmaster. These good people always[Pg 230] remembered this very singular German professor who was so learned, so modest, and so good.

He was then reflecting on the problems of naturalistic philosophy. Spencer\'s system had just come into vogue. Friedrich Nietzsche despised this cosmogony which affected to supplant Christianity and yet remained in submission to it. Spencer ignored Providence, yet believed in progress. He preached the reality of a concert between the movements of things and the aspirations of humanity. He preserved the Christian harmonies in a God-less universe. Friedrich Nietzsche had been a pupil at more virile schools; he heard Empedocles, Heraclitus, Spinoza, Goethe, thinkers who with a calm regard could study Nature without seeking in her some assent to their longings. He remained obedient to these masters, and he felt growing and ripening in him a great and a new idea.

We can divine from his letters the emotion with which he was seized. He needed to be alone, and energetically defended his solitude. Paul Rée, who admired The Dawn, wished to go to him and tell him so. Friedrich Nietzsche learnt this and was in despair.

"MY GOOD LISBETH," he wrote to his sister, "I cannot make up my mind to telegraph to Rée not to come. Nevertheless, I must consider him an enemy who comes to interrupt my summer\'s work, my work in the Engadine, that is to say my duty itself, my \'one thing necessary.\' A man here, in the middle of all these thoughts which gush out from all sides within me—it would be a terrible thing; and if I cannot defend my solitude better, I leave Europe for many years, I swear it! I have no more time to lose."

Fr?ulein Nietzsche forewarned Paul Rée, who abandoned his project.

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At length he found it, the idea, the presentiment of which had agitated him with such violence. One day, when he was going across the wood of Sils-Maria as far as Silvaplana, he sat down not far from Surlei at the foot of a pyramidal rock; at this moment and in this place he conceived the Eternal Return. He thought: Time, whose duration is infinite, must bring back, from period to period, an identical disposition of things. This is necessary; therefore it is necessary that all things return. In a number of days that is unforeseeable, immense, yet limited, a man like to me in everything, myself in fact, seated in the shade of this rock, will again find in this very place this very idea. And this very idea will be rediscovered by this man not once only, but an infinite number of times, for this movement which brings things back is infinite. Therefore we must throw all hope aside and think resolutely: no celestial world will receive men, no better future will console them. We are the shadows of a blind and monotonous nature, the prisoners of every moment. But beware! this redoubtable idea which forbids hope ennobles and exalts every minute of our lives; the moment is no longer a passing thing, if it come back eternally; the least thing is an eternal monument endowed with infinite value, and, if the word "divine" has any sense, divine. "Let everything return ceaselessly," he wrote, "it is the extreme rapprochement of a world of becoming with a world of being: summit of meditation."[1]

The emotion of the discovery was so strong that he wept, and remained for a long time bathed in tears. So his effort had not been in vain. Without weakening before reality, without withdrawing from pessimism, but, on the contrary, leading the pessimistic idea to its final consequences, Nietzsche had discovered this doctrine of the Return, which, by conferring eternity on the most[Pg 232] fugitive things, restores in each of them the lyrical power, the religious value necessary to the soul. In a few lines he formulated the idea, and dated it: "the beginning of August, 1881, at Sils-Maria, 6,500 feet above the sea and far more than that above all human things!"

He lived for some weeks in a condition of rapture and of anguish: no doubt the mystics knew similar emotions, and their vocabulary suits his case. He experienced a divine pride; but simultaneously recoiled in fear and trembling, like those prophets of Israel before God receiving from Him the function of their mission. The unhappy man, who had been so wounded by life, faced with an indescribable horror the perpetuity of the Return. It was an insupportable expectation, a torment; but he loved this torment, and he forced this idea of the Eternal Return on himself as an ascetic does martyrdom. "Lux mea crux," he wrote in his notes, "crux mea lux! Light my cross, cross my light!" His agitation, which time did not appease, became extreme. He grew alarmed, for he was not unaware of the danger which lay over his life.

"On my horizon thoughts rise, and what thoughts!" he wrote to Peter Gast on the 14th of August. "I did not suspect anything of this kind. I say no more of it, I wish to maintain a resolute calm. Alas, my friend, presentiments sometimes cross my mind. It seems to me that I am leading a very dangerous life, for my machine is one of those which may GO SMASH! The intensity of my sentiments makes me shudder and laugh —twice already I have had to stay in my room, and for a ridiculous reason; my eyes were inflamed, why? Because while I walked I had cried too much; not sentimental tears, but tears of joy; and I sang and said idiotic things, being full of a new idea which I must proffer to men...."

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Then he conceived a new task. All that he had hitherto done was but an awkward experiment or research; the time was come when he should erect the structure of his work. Of what work? He hesitated: his gifts as an artist, as a critic, as a philosopher, seduced him in various directions. Should he put his doctrine in the form of a system? No, it was a symbol and must be surrounded with poetry and rhythm. Could he not renew that forgotten form which was created by the thinkers of the most ancient Greece? Lucretius had handed down the model. Friedrich Nietzsche welcomed this idea; it would please him to translate his conception of nature into poetic language, into musical and measured prose. He sought, and his desire for a rhythmical language, for a living and, as it were, palpable form, suggested a new thought to him: could he not introduce at the centre of his work a human and prophetic figure, a hero? A name occurred to him; Zarathustra, the Persian apostle, the mystagogue of fire. A title, a subtitle, four lines rapidly written, announced the poem:

MIDDAY AND ETERNITY

Sign of a New Life

"Zarathustra, born on the borders of Lake Urumiyah, left his country when thirty years old, went towards the province of Aria, and in ten years of solitude composed the Zend-Avesta."

Henceforward his walks and meditations were no longer solitary. Friedrich Nietzsche never ceased to hear and gather the words of Zarathustra. In three distiches of a soft and almost tender seduction he tells how this companion entered into his life:

[Pg 234]

Sils-Maria

I sat there waiting—waiting for nothing, Enjoying, beyond good and evil, now The light, now the shade; there was only The day, the lake, the noon, time without end. Then, my friend, suddenly one became two—And Zarathustra passed by me.

In September the weather suddenly became cold and snowy. Friedrich Nietzsche had to leave the Engadine.

The intemperate weather had tried him; he lost his exaltation, and a long period of depression set in. He constantly thought of the Eternal Return, but now, having lost courage, he only felt a horror of it. "I have lived again through the days at Basle," he wrote to Peter Gast. "Over my shoulder death looks at me." His complaints are brief; a word is enough to let us divine the abysses. Thrice, during these weeks of September and October, he was tempted to suicide. "Whence came this temptation? It was not that he wished to avoid suffering; he was brave. Did he then wish to prevent the ruin of his intellect? This second hypothesis is perhaps the true one.

He stopped at Genoa. The damp winds and the lowering skies of the capricious autumn continued to try him. He bore impatiently with the absence of light. A melancholy of another kind complicated his trouble: The Dawn of Day had had no success. The critics had ignored the work, his friends had read it with difficulty; Jacob Burckhardt had expressed a polite but prudent judgment. "Certain parts of your book," he wrote, "I read like an old man, with a feeling of vertigo." Erwin Rohde, the dearest, the most esteemed, had not acknowledged the receipt of the book. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to him from Genoa on October 21st:

[Pg 235]

    "DEAR OLD FRIEND,—No doubt some embarrassment delays you. I pray you, in all sincerity, not to write! There will be no change in our mutual sentiments; I cannot bear to think that in sending a book to a friend I exercise upon him a sort of pressure. What matters a book! What I have still to do matters more—or why should I live? The moment is bitter, I suffer much. Cordially your "F. N."

Erwin Rohde did not answer even this letter. How explain the want of success of The Dawn? Doubtless it is a very old story, the constant, the universal, the irremediable misadventure of the unrecognised genius because he is a genius, a novelty, a surprise, and a scandal. Nevertheless we may, perhaps, grasp some definite reasons. Nietzsche, since he had withdrawn from the Wagnerian circle, had no more friends; and a group of friends is the most indispensable intermediary between a great mind which is trying its skill and the mass of the public. He is alone before unknown readers, who are disconcerted by his incessant variations. He hopes that the lively form of his work will capture and conquer them. But even the form is unfavourable. No book has so difficult an address as a collection of aphorisms and brief thoughts. The reader must give all his attention to every page and decipher an enigma; lassitude comes quickly. Besides, it is probable that a German public, with little feeling for the art of prose, unskilful in grasping its features, accustomed to slow and sustained effort, was ill-prepared to understand this unforeseen work.

November was fine; Friedrich Nietzsche recovered his spirits. "I lift myself above my disasters," he wrote He wandered over the mountains of the Genoese coast, he returned to the rocks on which had come to him the prose of The Dawn. Such was the mildness of the[Pg 236] weather that he could bathe in the sea. "I feel so rich, so proud," he wrote to Peter Gast, "altogether \'principe Doria. I miss only you, dear friend, you and your music!"

Since the representations of the Nibelungen at Bayreuth—that is, for five years—Friedrich Nietzsche had deprived himself of music. Cave musicam! he wrote. He feared that if he abandoned himself to the delight in sound he would be recaptured by the magic of Wagnerian art. But he was finally delivered from these fears. His friend Peter Gast had played him, in June, at Recoaro, songs and choruses which he had amused himself in composing on the epigrams of Goethe. Paul Rée had said one day, "No modern musician would be capable of putting to music such slight verses." Peter Gast had taken up the challenge and won, thought Nietzsche, who was ravished by the vivacity of the rhythm. "Persevere," he advised his friend; "work against Wagner the musician, as I work against Wagner the philosopher. Let us try, Rée, you and I, to free Germany. If you succeed in finding a music suited to the universe of Goethe (it does not exist), you will have done a great thing." This thought reappears in each of his letters. His friend is at Venice, he is at Genoa, and he hopes that this winter Italy will inspire in them both, the two uprooted Germans, a new metaphysic and a new music.

He took advantage of his improved health to go to the theatre. He listened to the Semiramis of Rossini, and four times to the Juliette of Bellini. One evening he was curious to hear a French work, the author being unknown to him:

"Hurrah! dear friend," he wrote to Peter Gast, "another happy discovery, an opera of Georges Bizet (who is he, then?), Carmen. It is like a story of Mérimée\'s, clever, powerful, sometimes touching. A true[Pg 237] French talent which Wagner has not misguided, a frank disciple of Berlioz.... I almost think that Carmen is the best opera which exists. As long as we live it will remain in all the repertoires of Europe."

The discovery of Carmen was the event of his winter. Many times he spoke of it, many times he returned to it; when he heard this frank and impassioned music, he felt better armed against the romantic seductions which were always powerful in his soul. "Carmen delivers me," he was to write.

Friedrich Nietzsche again found the happiness which he had enjoyed in the preceding year; a like happiness, but sustained by a graver kind of emotion: the full midday of his thought rose after the dawn. Towards the end of December he passed a crisis and surmounted it. A sort of poem in prose commemorated this crisis. We will translate it here. It is the consequence of his meditations, of those examinations of conscience which he used to write down, as a young man, each Saint Sylvester\'s Day:

"For the New Year.—I still live, I still think: I must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. This is the day upon which every one is permitted to express his desire and his dearest thought: I, too, shall then express the inner wish which I form to-day, and say what thought I take to heart, this year, before all other—what thought I have chosen as the reason, guarantee, and sweetness of my life to come! I wish to try each day to see in all things necessity as a beauty—thus shall I be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati, let that be henceforward my love! I do not wish to go to battle against the hideous. I do not wish to accuse, I do not even wish to accuse the[Pg 238] accusers. To avert my gaze, let that be my sole negation. In a word, I wish to be, in every circumstance, a Yea-Sayer!"

The thirty days of January passed without a cloud appearing in the sky. He was to dedicate to this fine month, as a sign of gratitude, the fourth book of the Gay Science, which he entitled Sanctus Januarius; an admirable book rich in critical thought, in intimate refinements, and from the first to the last line dominated by a sacred emotion—Amor fati.

In February Paul Rée, passing through Genoa, stayed some days with his friend, who showed him his favourite walks and brought him to those rocky creeks "where in some six hundred years, some thousand years," he wrote gaily to Peter Gast, "they will raise a statue to the author of The Dawn" Then Paul Rée went on to Rome, where Fr?ulein von Meysenbug was waiting for him. He had a curiosity to penetrate into the Wagnerian world there, which was greatly excited in expectation of Parsifal; it was in July, at Bayreuth, that the Christian mystery was to be presented. Friedrich Nietzsche did not wish to accompany Paul Rée, and the approaching performance of the Parsifal only made his ardour for work the more active. Had he not—he, too—a great work which he must ripen? Had he not to write his anti-Christian mystery, his poem of the Eternal Return? It was his constant thought. It procured him a happiness, thanks to which he could recall with less torturing regret the master of by-gone days. Richard Wagner seemed very far and very near; very far as regards his ideas, but what are ideas worth to a poet? Very near in sentiments, desires, lyrical emotion; and were not these the essential things? All disaccord between poets is only a question of shades, for they inhabit the same universe, they work with a like[Pg 239] heart to give a significance and a supreme value to the movements of the human soul. Reading this page which Nietzsche then wrote, it is easier to understand the condition of his mind:

"Stellar Friendship.—We were friends, and we have become strangers to each other. Ah, yes; but it is well so, and we wish to hide nothing, to disguise nothing from one another; we have nothing to be ashamed of. We are two ships, each with a bourne and a way. By chance we have crossed paths; we have made holiday together—and then our two good ships have so tranquilly reposed in the one port and under the same sun, that it seemed as though they had both attained their bourne. But the all-powerful force of our mission has driven us afresh towards divers seas and suns—and perhaps we shall not meet, or recognise one another again: the divers seas and suns will have transformed us! We had to become strangers; a reason the more why we should mutually respect ourselves! No doubt there exists a far off, invisible and prodigious cycle which gives a common law to our little divagations: let us uplift ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short, our vision too feeble; we must content ourselves with this sublime possibility. And if we must be enemies upon earth, in spite of all we believe in our stellar friendship."

What form did the poetical exposition of the Eternal Return then take in his soul? We do not know. Nietzsche did not care to talk about his work; he liked to complete it before making announcements. However, he wished that his friends should know the new movement in which his thought was engaged. He addressed to Fr?ulein von Meysenbug a letter in which Wagner was treated without deference, then he added a[Pg 240] mysterious enough promise: "If I am not illusioned as to my future, it is by my work that what is best in the work of Wagner will be continued—and here, perhaps, is the comical side to the adventure."

At the beginning of spring Friedrich Nietzsche, following out a caprice, made a bargain with the captain of an Italian sailing vessel bound for Messina and crossed the Mediterranean. The passage was a terrible one, and he was sick to death. But his stay was at first happy: he wrote verses, a pleasure which he had not known for several years. They are impromptus and epigrams, perhaps inspired by those Goethean sallies which Peter Gast had put to music. Nietzsche then sought for a corner of nature and of humanity favourable to the production of his great work: Sicily, "Curb of the world where Happiness has her habitation," as old Homer teaches, struck him as an ideal refuge, and, suddenly forgetting that he could not bear the heat, he decided to stay in Messina for the whole summer. Some days of sirocco, towards the end of April, prostrated him, and he prepared for departure. It was in these circumstances that he received a message from Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, who urged him very keenly to stop at Rome. Rome was a natural stage on his journey, and he accepted. Why was Fr?ulein von Meysenbug thus insistent? We know. This excellent woman had never been resigned to the unhappiness of the friend whose destiny she had vainly sought to sweeten. She knew the delicacy, the tenderness of his heart, and often wished to find him a companion; had he not written to her, "I tell you in confidence, what I need is a good woman"? In the spring of this year she thought that she had found her.[2]

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This accounted for her letter. It was Fr?ulein von Meysenbug\'s habit to do good, and her taste; but perhaps she sometimes forgot that goodness is a difficult art in which the results of defeat are cruel.

The girl whom Fr?ulein von Meysenbug had met was called Lou Salomé. She was scarcely twenty years old; she was a Russian and admirable as regards her intelligence and intellectual ardour; her beauty was not perfect, but the more exquisite for its imperfections, and she was fascinating in the extreme. Sometimes it happens that there arises, in Paris, in Florence, in Rome, some excited young lady, a native of Philadelphia, of Bucharest, or of Kief, who comes with a barbarous impatience to be initiated into culture and to conquer a hearth in our old capital. The lady in question was of rare quality assuredly; her mother followed her across Europe, carrying the cloaks and the shawls.

Fr?ulein von Meysenbug conceived an affection for her. She gave her Nietzsche\'s works; Lou Salomé read them and seemed to understand. She talked to her at great length of this extraordinary man who had sacrificed friendship with Wagner for the maintenance of his liberty: He is a very rugged philosopher, she said, but[Pg 242] he is the most sensitive, the most affectionate friend, and, for those who know him, the thought of his solitary life is a source of sadness. Miss Salomé displayed a great deal of enthusiasm and longing; she declared that she felt vowed to a spiritual share in such a life, and that she wished to make Nietzsche\'s acquaintance. In concert with Paul Rée, who, it seems, had known her for a longer time, and also appreciated her, Fr?ulein von Meysenbug wrote to Friedrich Nietzsche.

He arrived, he heard the praises of Miss Lou sung; she was a woman of elevated feeling, shrewd and brave; intransigent in research and in affirmation; a heroine in the manner of her childhood; it was the promise of a great life. He agreed to see her. One morning, at St. Peter\'s, she was presented to him and conquered him at once. He had forgotten, during his long months of meditation, the pleasure of being listened to and of talking. "The young Russian" (it is thus that he calls her in his letters) listened deliciously. She spoke little, but her calm look, her assured and gentle movements, her least words, left no doubt as to the quickness of her mind and to the presence of a soul. Very quickly, perhaps at first sight, Nietzsche liked her. "There\'s a soul," he said to Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, "which has made a little body for itself with a breath."[3] Miss Salomé did not let herself be thus enticed. Nevertheless, she felt the singular quality of the man who talked to her; she had long conversations with him, and the violence of his thought troubled her even in her sleep. The adventure—it was in fact a drama—commenced at once.

A few days after this first interview, Miss Salomé and her mother left Rome. The two philosophers, Nietzsche and Rée, went with her, both of them enthusiasts for the young girl. Nietzsche said to Rée:

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"There\'s an admirable woman, marry her." "No," answered Rée; "I am a pessimist, and the idea of propagating human life is odious to me. Marry her yourself; she is the companion that you want...." Nietzsche dismissed this idea. Perhaps he said to his friend, as he had said to his sister: "I marry! Never, I would have to be a bar somewhere or other." Miss Salomé\'s mother examined these two men who were so attentive to her child; Friedrich Nietzsche perplexed her; she preferred Paul Rée.

The two friends and the two philosophers stopped at Lucerne. Friedrich Nietzsche wished to show his new friend that house at Triebschen where he had known Richard Wagner. Who was not then thinking of the master? He brought her as far as the poplars whose high foliage enclosed the gardens. He recounted to her the unforgettable days, the gaieties, the magnificent angers of the great man. Seated by the border of the lake, he talked in a low, contained voice, and turned his face a little away, for it was troubled by the memory of those joys of which he had deprived himself. Suddenly he grew silent, and the young girl, observing him, saw that he wept.

He confessed all his life to her; his childhood, the pastor\'s house, the mysterious grandeur of the father who had been so quickly taken away; the pious years, the first doubts, and the horror of this world without a God in which one must resolve to live; the discovery of Schopenhauer and of Wagner, the religious feeling which they had inspired in him and which had consoled him for the loss of his faith.

"Yes," said he (Miss Salomé reports these words), "my adventures began in this manner. They are not ended. Where will they lead me? Whither shall I adventure again? Should I not come back to the faith? to some new belief?"

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He added gravely: "In any case a return to the past is more likely than immobility."

Friedrich Nietzsche had not yet avowed his love; but he felt its force and no longer resisted. Only he feared to declare himself. He begged Paul Rée to speak in his name, and withdrew.

On the 8th of May, settled for some days in Basle, he saw the Overbecks and confided in them with a strange exaltation. A woman has come into his life; it is a happiness for him; it will benefit his thought, which will henceforward be livelier, richer in its shades and emotion. Assuredly he would prefer not to marry Miss Lou, he disdains all fleshly ties; but perhaps he ought to give her his name for her protection against scandalmongers, and from this spiritual union would be born a spiritual son: the prophet Zarathustra. He is poor; this is a vexation, an obstacle. But could he not sell all his future work in a lump to some publisher for a considerable sum? He thought of doing so. These out-bursts did not fail to trouble the Overbecks, who augured ill of a liaison so bizarre and of an enthusiasm so ready.

Friedrich Nietzsche at last received Lou Salomé\'s reply: she did not wish to marry. An unhappy love affair, which had just crossed her life, left her, she said, without strength to conceive and nourish a new affection. She therefore refused Nietzsche\'s offer. But she was able to sweeten the terms of this refusal: the only thing of which she could dispose, her friendship, her spiritual affection, she offered.

Friedrich Nietzsche returned at once to Lucerne. He saw Lou Salomé and pressed her to give a more favourable reply; but the young girl repeated her refusal and her offer. She was to be present in July at the Bayreuth festivals, from which Nietzsche wished to abstain. She promised to rejoin him when they were over and to stay for some weeks at his side. She would then listen to his[Pg 245] teaching, she would confront the last thought of the master with that of the liberated disciple. Nietzsche had finally to accept these conditions, these limits which the young girl placed on their friendship. He advised her to read one of his books, Schopenhauer as Educator. He was always glad to acknowledge this work of his youth, this hymn to the bravery of a thinker and to voluntary solitude. "Read it," he said to her, "and you will be ready to hear me."

Friedrich Nietzsche left Basle and re-entered Germany, desirous of becoming reconciled to his country. He was, as we know, accustomed to such absorbing and unexpected desires. A Swiss, whom he had met at Messina, had praised the beauty of Grunewald, near Berlin; he wished to settle there, and wrote to Peter Gast, to whom, six weeks earlier, he had suggested as a summer residence Messina.

He went to visit this Grunewald, which pleased him well enough; but he saw, on the same occasion, Berlin and a few Berliners, who displeased him extremely. He perceived that his last books had not been read, and that his thought was ignored. He was only known as the friend of Paul Rée, and no doubt his disciple. This he did not like. He went without delay to spend some weeks in Naumburg, where he dictated the manuscript of his coming book, La Gaya Scienza[4]. To his own people, it seems, to his mother and to his sister, he spoke discreetly of the new friend. His gaiety amazed them: they did not discern its cause. They did not know that their strange Friedrich had in his heart a sentiment, a hope of happiness, which Lou Salomé had been far from discouraging.

The representation of Parsifal was fixed for the 27th July. Friedrich Nietzsche went to stay in a village[Pg 246] of the Thuringian forests, Tautenburg, not far from Bayreuth, where all his friends were to foregather: the Overbecks, the Seydlitzs, Gersdorff, Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, Lou Salomé, Lisbeth Nietzsche. He alone was absent from the rendezvous. At this moment a word from the master would perhaps have sufficed to bring him back; perhaps he waited for and hoped for this word. Fr?ulein von Meysenbug wished to make an attempt at reconciliation: she dared to name Nietzsche in Wagner\'s presence. Wagner told her to be silent and went out of the room banging the door.

So Friedrich Nietzsche, who no doubt never knew of this overture, remained in those forests in which he had spent such hard days in 1876. How miserable he had then been and now how rich he was! He had repressed his doubts; a great thought animated his mind, a great affection his heart. Lou Salomé had just dedicated to him, as a sign of spiritual sympathy, a beautiful poem.

TO SORROW.

Wer kann dich fliehn, den du ergriffen hast,
Wenn du die ernsten Bliche auf ihn richtest?
Ich will nicht flüchten, wenn du mich erfasst,
Ich glaube nimmer, dass du nur vernichtest!

Ich weiss, durch jedes Erden—Dasein muss du gehn,
Und nichts bleibt unberührt von dir auf Erden:
Das Leben ohne dich—es w?re sch?n,
Und doch—auch, du bist werth, gelebt zu werden.[5]

Peter Gast, having read these verses, thought they were Nietzsche\'s, who rejoiced over his error.

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"No," he wrote to him, "this poetry is not by my hand. It is one of the things which exercise upon me a tyrannical power, I have never been able to read it without tears; it has the accent of a voice which I might have waited for, expected since my childhood. My friend Lou, of whom you have not yet heard, has written it. Lou is the daughter of a Russian general, she is twenty years old; her mind is as piercing as an eagle\'s vision, she has the courage of a lion, and yet she is a very feminine child, who, perhaps, will hardly live...."

He re-read his manuscript for the last time and sent it to the printer. He hesitated a little at the moment of publishing this new collection of aphorisms. His friends, as he knew, would find fault with these too numerous volumes, these too brief essays, these scarcely formed sketches. He listened to them, heard what they had to say, answered them with an apparent good will. No doubt his modesty was feigned; he could not bring himself to believe that his essays, short though they were, his sketches, which were so weak in form, were not worth being read.

He thought much of the Bayreuth festivals, but he dissembled or only half avowed his regrets. "I am well content that I cannot go," he wrote to Lou Salomé. "And, nevertheless, if I could be at your side, in good humour to talk; if I could say in your ear this, that, well, I could endure the music of the Parsifal (otherwise I could not)."

Parsifal triumphed. Nietzsche mockingly welcomed the news. "Long live Cagliostro!" he wrote to Peter Gast. "The old enchanter has again had a prodigious success; the old gentlemen sobbed."

The "young Russian" came to rejoin him as soon as the festivals were over; Lisbeth Nietzsche accompanied her. The two ladies installed themselves in the hotel[Pg 248] where Friedrich Nietzsche awaited them; then he undertook to initiate his friend.

She had heard the Christian mystery at Bayreuth, the history of human sorrow traversed like an ordeal and consoled at last by beatitude. Friedrich Nietzsche taught her a more tragic mystery: sorrow is our life and our destiny itself; let us not hope to traverse it; let us accept it more entirely than the Christians ever did! Let us espouse it; let us love it with an active love; let us be, like it, ardent and pitiless; hard to others as to ourselves; cruel, let us accept it; brutal, let us accept it. To lessen it is to be cowardly; and let us meditate on the symbol of the Eternal Return to practise our courage. "Unforgettable for me are those hours in which he revealed to me his thoughts," wrote Miss Salomé. "He confided them to me, as though they were a mystery unspeakably hard to tell; he only spoke of them in a low voice, with every appearance of the most profound horror. And truly life had been for him such bitter suffering that he suffered from the Eternal Return as from an atrocious certainty." That Miss Salomé listened to these confessions with great intelligence and real emotion, the pages which she afterwards wrote assure us.

She conceived a brief hymn which she dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche:

"As friend loves friend,
So love I thee, life surprising!
Do I weep or joy in thee,
Givest thou me joy or suffering,
I love thee with thy joy and pain.
And if thou must destroy me,
I shall suffer, leaving thee.
As the friend who teareth himself from the arms of the friend,
I caress thee with my whole strength:
Hast thou no other joy for me?
So be it, I have still—thy suffering."

[Pg 249]

Friedrich Nietzsche, delighted with the gift, wished to reply to it by another gift. For eight years he had forbidden himself musical composition, which enervated and exhausted him. He undertook to compose a sorrowful dithyramb on the verses of Miss Salomé. This work was too moving and caused him great pain: neuralgia, crises of doubt, barrenness and satiety. He had to take to his bed. Even from his room he addressed short notes to Lou Salomé. "In bed, terrible attack. I scorn life."

But these weeks at Tautenburg had their secret history of which we know little. Lou Salomé, writes Fr?ulein Nietzsche, was never the sincere friend of her brother; he roused her curiosity, but her passion, her enthusiasm, were only feigned, and she was often wearied by his terrible agitation. She wrote to Paul Rée, from whom Fr?ulein Nietzsche was surprised to receive a very singular message: "Your brother," he said, "tires our friend; shorten, if it be possible, the meeting."

We are inclined to think that Fr?ulein Nietzsche was jealous of this initiation which she had not received, jealous, too, of this young Slav, whose charm was tinged with mystery, and that we must take what she has to say with caution.

No doubt, Nietzsche alarmed Lou Salomé by the violence of his passions and by the loftiness of his demands. She had not foreseen, in offering to be his friend, the crises of a friendship ruder than a stormy love. He demanded an absolute assent to each of his thoughts. The young girl refused such assent: may the intellect, like the heart, be given? Nietzsche could not brook her proud reserve, and reproached her, as though it were a fault, for the independence which she wished to preserve. A letter to Peter Gast gives us a glimpse into these disputes.

"Lou remains another week with me," he wrote, on[Pg 250] the 20th of August, from Tautenburg. "She is the most intelligent of all women. Every five days a little tragical scene arises between us. All that I have written to you about her is absurd, and not less absurd, no doubt, than what I now write to you."

This somewhat cautious and reticent phrasing does not suggest that the heart had escaped its captivity. Lou Salomé left Tautenburg; Friedrich Nietzsche continued to write letters to her, many of which are known to us. He confided his work and projects to Lou Salomé: he wished to go to Paris or Vienna to study the physical sciences and deepen his theory of the Eternal Return; for it was not enough that it should be fascinating and beautiful, Nietzsche wished that it should be true. Thus we saw him, and always will see him, hampered by his critical spirit when he pursues a lyrical inspiration; hampered by his lyrical genius when he pursues a critical analysis. He related to her the happy success of the Hymn to Life which her verses had inspired, and which he was submitting to the judgment of his musical friends. An orchestral conductor gave him hope of a hearing: ready for hope as he was, he communicated the news. "By this little path," he writes, "we can reach posterity together—all other paths remaining open." On September 16th he wrote from Leipsic to Peter Gast. "Latest news: on the 2nd of October Lou comes here; two months later we leave for Paris; and we shall stay there, perhaps for years. Such are my projects."

His mother and sister blamed him; he knew it, and their hostility did not displease him: "All the virtues of Naumburg are against me," he wrote, "it is well that it is so ..."

Two months later, the friendship was broken. Perhaps we may perceive what had happened. Lou Salomé came[Pg 251] to find Nietzsche at Leipsic, as she had promised; but Paul Rée accompanied her. No doubt she wished Nietzsche to understand once and for all the nature of a friendship which was always open to him: free, not slavish; sympathy, not intellectual devotion. Had she well weighed the difficulties of such an enterprise, the dangers of such an attempt? These two men were in love with her. What was her attitude between them? May she not have yielded, when she tried to keep them both by her, to some instinct, perhaps an unconscious one, of intellectual curiosity, of conquest and feminine domination? Who can say, who will ever know?

Friedrich Nietzsche became melancholy and suspicious. One day he imagined that his companions, talking together under their breath, were laughing at him. A piece of gossip reached him, and upset his mind. The story, puerile though it be, must be told. Rée, Nietzsche, and Lou Salomé had been photographed together. Lou Salomé and Rée had said to Nietzsche: "Get into this child\'s cart: we will hold the shafts; it will be a symbol of our union." Nietzsche had answered: "I refuse; Miss Lou will be in the cart; we will hold the shafts, Paul Rée and I." This Miss Lou did. And she (according to the story repeated to him) sent the photograph to numerous friends, as a symbol of her supremacy.

A more cruel thought soon began to torture Friedrich Nietzsche: Lou and Rée are in agreement against me, he thought; their agreement condemns them, they love one another and are deceiving me. Then all became poor and vile around him. A miserable strife terminated the spiritual adventure of which he had dreamed. He lost his strange and seductive disciple; he lost the best and most intelligent friend of his last eight years. Finally, affected and impaired by these humiliating conditions, he himself did a wrong to friendship and denounced Rée to Lou.

[Pg 252]

"He has a marvellous mind," he said, "but it is feeble and aimless. His education is the cause of the trouble: every man should have been brought up in some sort for a soldier. And every woman, in some sort, for a soldier\'s wife."

Nietzsche had neither the experience nor the necessary resolution to decide an infinitely painful situation. His sister, who detested Miss Salomé, encouraged his suspicions and his rancours. She intervened in a brutal manner, and, it seems, without authorisation, wrote the young girl a letter which determined the rupture. Miss Salomé was angry. We have the rough draft of the last letter which Friedrich Nietzsche addressed to her; it throws little light on the detail of these difficulties.

    "But, Lou, what letters yours are! A little angry schoolgirl writes in this way. What have I got to do with these bickerings? Understand me: I wish you to rise in my opinion; not to sink again.

    "I only reproach you for this: you ought to have sooner given an account of what I expected from you. At Lucerne I gave you my essay on Schopenhauer—I told you that my views were essentially there, and that I believed that they would also be yours. Then you should have read and said: No (in such matters I hate all superficiality). You would have spared me much! Your poem, \'Sorrow,\' written by you, is a profound counter-truth.

    "I believe that no one thinks more good things of you than I do, or more bad. Do not defend yourself: I have already defended you, to myself and to others, better than you could do it. Creatures like you are only bearable to others when they have a lofty object.

    "How poor you are in veneration, in gratitude, in piety, in courtesy, in admiration, in delicacy—I do not[Pg 253] speak of higher things. How would you answer if I asked you: Are you brave? Are you incapable of treason?

    "Do you not then feel that when a man like myself approaches you, he needs to constrain himself very greatly? You have had to do with one of the most for-bearing and benevolent of men possible: but against petty egoism and little weaknesses, my argument, know it well, is disgust. No one is so easily conquered by disgust as I. I have not deceived myself again on any point whatsoever; I saw in you that holy egoism which forces us to serve what is highest in us. I do not know by what sorcery\'s aid you have exchanged it for its contrary, the egoism of the cat, which only desires life.

    "Farewell, dear Lou, I shall not see you again. Protect your soul from like deeds, and succeed better with others in regard to things that, so far as I am concerned, are irreparable.

    "I have not read your letter to the end, but I have read too much of it. Your,

    "F. N."

Friedrich Nietzsche left Leipsic.

[1] This formula is given in the Wille zur Macht, paragraph 286.

[2] This intimate history has never been known except to a few people, who are now, for the most part, out of our ken. Two women survive: one, Frau F?rster-Nietzsche, has published some accounts which one would wish were more lucid and tranquil; the other, Miss Salomé, has written a book on Friedrich Nietzsche in which some facts are indicated and some letters cited; she has refused to enter into polemics on a subject which, as she considers, concerns herself alone. Oral traditions are numerous and contradictory. Some, rife in Roman society, where the adventure took place, are less favourable to Miss Salomé; she appears as a sort of Marie Bashkirtseff, an intellectual adventuress who was somewhat too enterprising. Others, rife in Germany among Miss Salomé\'s friends, are very different. We have heard all these traditions. The first have influenced the account which we have given in the Cahiers de la quinzaine, the second volume of the tenth series, pp. 24 et seq.; the second, which we learned later, we now prefer. But all hope of certainty must be adjourned.

[3] "Da ist eine Seele welche sich mit einen Hauch eine K?rperchen geschaffen hat."

[4] The y in the word Gaya does not seem to be Italian. We follow Nietzsche\'s orthography.

[5] "Who that hath once been seized by thee can fly, if he hath felt thy grave look turned on him? I shall not save myself, if thou takest me, I shall never believe thou dost naught but destroy. Yea, thou must visit all that liveth upon earth, nothing upon earth can evade thy grip: life without thee—it were beautiful, yet—thou too art worthy to be lived."
II
Thus Spake Zarathustra

His departure was prompt, like a flight. He passed through Basle and stopped with his friends the Overbecks, who listened to his plaint. He had awakened from his last dream; everyone had betrayed him: Lou, Rée, feeble and perfidious; Lisbeth, his sister, who had acted grossly. Of what betrayal did he complain, and of what[Pg 254] act? He did not say, and continued his bitter complaints. The Overbecks wished him to stay with them for some days. He escaped them; he wished to work, and surmount alone the sadness of having been deceived, the humiliation of having deceived himself. Perhaps he also wished to put to profit that condition of paroxysm and the lyrical sursum whither his despair had carried him. He left. "To-day," said he to his friends, "I enter into a complete solitude."

He left, and stopped in the first instance at Genoa. "Cold, sick. I suffer," he wrote briefly to Peter Gast. He left this town, where he was importuned perhaps by memories of a happier time, and moved away along the coast. At the time of which we speak, Nervi, Santa Margherita, Rapallo, Zoagli, were places unknown to the tourist, market towns inhabited by fishermen who, each evening, drew in their barques to the recesses of the coves and sang as they mended their nets. Friedrich Nietzsche discovered these magnificent spots, and chose, to humiliate his misery there, the most magnificent of them, Rapallo. He relates, in simple language, the circumstances of his sojourn:

"I spent my winter, 1882 to 1883, in the charming and quiet bay of Rapallo that is hollowed out by the Mediterranean not far from Genoa, between the promontory of Portofino and Chiavari. My health was not of the best; the winter was cold, rainy; a little inn,[6] situated at the very edge of the sea, so near it that the noise of the waves prevented me sleeping at night, offered me a shelter very unsatisfactory from all points of view. Nevertheless—and it is an instance of my maxim that all that is decisive comes \'nevertheless \'—it was during this winter and in this discomfort that my noble[Pg 255] Zarathustra was born. In the morning I would climb towards the south by the magnificent mountain road, towards Zoagli, among the pines and dominating the immense sea; in the evening (according as my health permitted it) I would go round the bay of Santa Margherita as far as Portofino.... On these two roads came to me all the first part of Zarathustra (fiel mir ein); and more, Zarathustra himself, as type; more exactly he fell upon me (überfiel mich)...."

In ten weeks he conceived and completed his poem. It is a new work and, if one affects to follow the genesis of his thought, a surprising one. No doubt, he meditated a lyrical work, a sacred book. But the essential doctrine of this work was to be given by the idea of the Eternal Return. Now, in the first part of Zarathustra, the idea of the Eternal Return does not appear. Nietzsche follows a different and opposing idea, the idea of the Superman, the symbol of a real progress which modifies things, the promise of a possible escape beyond chance and fatality.

Zarathustra announces the Superman, he is the prophet of good tidings. He has discovered in his solitude a promise of happiness, he bears this promise; his strength is sweet and benevolent, he predicts a great future as the reward of a great work. Friedrich Nietzsche, in other times, will put a more bitter speech into his mouth. If one reads this first part, and takes care not to confound it with those which immediately follow, one will feel the sanctity, the frequent suavity of the accent.

Why this abandonment of the Eternal Return? Nietzsche does not write a word which throws light upon this mystery. Miss Lou Salomé tells us that at Leipsic, during his short studies, he had realised the impossibility of founding his hypothesis in reason. But this did not diminish the lyrical value of which he[Pg 256] knew how to take advantage a year later; and this cannot explain, in any case, the appearance of a contrary idea. What are we to think? Perhaps his stoicism was vanquished by the betrayal of his two friends. "In spite of all," he wrote on December 3rd to Peter Gast, "I would not like to live these latter months over again." We know that he never ceased to experience in himself the efficacy of his thoughts. Incapable of enduring the cruel symbol, he did not think that he could sincerely offer it to men, and he invented a new symbol, Uebermensch, the Superman. "I do not desire a recommencement," he writes in his notes (ich will das leben nicht wieder). "How was I able to endure the idea? In creating, in fixing my view on the Superman, who says yea to life, I have myself tried to say Yea—alas!"

To the cry of his youth: Ist Veredlung m?glich? (Is the ennobling of man possible?) Friedrich Nietzsche desires to reply, and to reply Yes. He wishes to believe in the Superman, and succeeds in doing so. He can grasp this hope; it suits the design of his work. What does he propose to himself? Among all the inclinations which urge him, this one is strong: to answer the Parsifal, to oppose work to work. Richard Wagner desired to depict humanity drawn from its languor by the Eucharistie mystery, the troubled blood of men renovated by the ever poured out blood of Christ. Friedrich Nietzsche wishes to depict humanity saved from languor by the glorification of its own essence, by the virtues of a chosen and willing few which purify and renew its blood. Is this all his desire? Surely not. Thus Spake Zarathustra is more than an answer to the Parsifal. The origins of Nietzsche\'s thoughts are always grave and distant. What is his last wish? He desires to guide and direct the activity of men; he wishes to create their morals, assign to the humble their tasks, to the strong their duties and their commandments, and to raise them[Pg 257] all towards a sublime destiny. As a child, as a youth, as a young man, he had this aspiration; at thirty-eight years of age, at this instant of crisis and of decision, he finds it again and desires to act. The Eternal Return no longer satisfies him: he cannot consent to live imprisoned in a blind nature. The idea of the Superman on the contrary captivates him: it is a principle of action, a hope of salvation.

What is the import of this idea? Is it a reality or a symbol? It is impossible to say. Nietzsche\'s mind is rapid and always oscillating. The vehemence of the inspiration which carries him along leaves him neither leisure nor strength to define. He hardly succeeds in understanding the ideas which agitate him, and interprets them himself in divers ways. At times, the Superman appears to him as a very serious reality. But more often, it seems, he neglects or disdains all literal belief, and his idea is no more than a lyrical phantasy with which he trifles for the sake of animating base humanity. It is an illusion, a useful and beneficent illusion, he would say, were he still a Wagnerian, dared he to re-adopt the vocabulary of his thirtieth year. Then he had liked to repeat the maxim from Schiller: Dare to dream and to lie. We may believe that the Superman is chiefly the dream and falsehood of a lyrical poet. Every species has its limits which it cannot transgress. Nietzsche knows this and writes it.

It was a painful labour. Friedrich Nietzsche, ill-disposed to conceive a hope, had frequent revolts against the task which he imposed on himself. Every morning on awakening from a sleep which chloral had rendered sweet, he rediscovered life with frightful bitterness. Conquered by melancholy and rancour, he wrote pages which he had at once to re-read attentively, to correct or erase. He dreaded these bad hours in which anger, seizing him like a vertigo, obscured his best thoughts.[Pg 258] Then he would evoke his hero, Zarathustra, always noble, always serene, and seek from him some encouragement. Many a passage of his poem is the expression of this agony. Zarathustra speaks to him:

"Yea: I know thy danger. But by my love and hope,
I conjure thee: reject not thy love and thy hope.

"The noble one is always in danger of becoming an
insolent, a sneering one and a destroyer. Alas, I have
known noble ones who lost their highest hope. Then
they slandered all high hopes.

"By my love and my hope I conjure thee; do not cast
away the hero in thy soul! believe in the holiness of thy
highest hope."

The struggle was always perceptible; nevertheless Friedrich Nietzsche advanced his work. Every day he had to learn wisdom anew, and to moderate, crush, or deceive his desires. He succeeded in this rude exercise and managed to bring back his soul into a calm and fecund condition. He completed a poem which was but the opening of a vaster poem. Zarathustra, returning towards the mountains, abandons the world of men. Twice again, before he dictates the tables of his law, he is to descend to it. But what he says suffices to give us a glimpse of the essential forms of a humanity obedient to its élite. It consists of three castes: at the bottom, the popular caste, allowed to retain its humble beliefs; above, the caste of the chiefs, the organisers and warriors; above the chiefs themselves, the sacred caste, the poets who create the illusions and dictate the values. One recalls that essay by Richard Wagner on art, religion, and politics, formerly so much admired by Nietzsche: in it a similar hierarchy was proposed.

In its ensemble the work is serene. It is Friedrich Nietzsche\'s finest victory. He has repressed his[Pg 259] melancholy; he exalts force, not brutality; expansion, not aggression. In the last days of February, 1882, he wrote these final pages, which are perhaps the most beautiful and the most religious ever inspired by naturalistic thought.

"My brethren, remain faithful to the earth, with all the force of your love! Let your great love and your knowledge be in accord with the meaning of the earth. I pray you and conjure you.

"Let not your virtue fly far from terrestrial things, and beat its wings against the eternal walls! Alas! there is always so much virtue gone astray!

"Like myself, bring back towards the earth the virtue which goes astray—yea, towards the flesh and towards life; that it may give a meaning to the earth, a human meaning...."

Whilst he completed the composition of this hymn on the Genoese coast, Richard Wagner died in Venice. Nietzsche learnt the news with a grave emotion, and recognised a sort of providential accord in the coincidence of events. The poet of Siegfried was dead; so be it! humanity would not be for a moment deprived of poetry, since Zarathustra had already spoken.

For more than six years he had given no sign of life to Cosima Wagner; now he had to tell her that he had forgotten nothing of past days and that he shared her sorrows. "You will approve of me in this, I am sure" he wrote to Fr?ulein von Meysenbug.[7]

On the 14th of February he wrote to Schmeitzner, the publisher:

"To-day I have some news for you: I have just taken a decisive step—I mean, one profitable to you.[Pg 260] It concerns a little work, scarcely 100 pages long, entitled: Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book for all and none. It is a poem or it is a Fifth Gospel, or something which has no name; by far the most serious, and also the most happy, of my productions and one that is open to all."

He wrote to Peter Gast and to Fr?ulein von Meysenbug: "This year," said he, "no society. I shall go straight from Genoa to Sils!" Thus did Zarathustra, who left the great city and returned to the mountains. But Friedrich Nietzsche is not Zarathustra; he is feeble, solitude exalts and frightens him. Some weeks passed. Schmeitzner, the publisher, was slow: Nietzsche grew impatient and modified his projects for the summer; he wished to hear the sound of human speech. His sister, at Rome with Fr?ulein von Meysenbug, guessed that he was accessible and weary, and seized this opportunity of a reconciliation. He did not defend himself and promised to come.

Here he was at Rome. His old friend immediately introduced him into a brilliant society. Lenbach was there, and also that Countess D?nhoff, to-day Princess von Buelow, an amiable woman and a great musician. Friedrich Nietzsche felt with vexation how different he was from these happy talkers, how he belonged to another world, how they misunderstood him. A curious, a singular man, they think; a very eccentric man. A great mind? No one ventured to pass this rash judgment. And Friedrich Nietzsche, so proud when he was alone, was astonished, disturbed, and humiliated. It seemed that he had not the strength to despise these people who did not hearken to him; he was disquieted and began to fear for his well-beloved son, Zarathustra.

"They will run through my book," he wrote to Gast,[Pg 261] "and it will be a subject of conversation. That inspires me with disgust. Who is serious enough to hear me? If I had the authority of old Wagner, my affairs would be in a better way. But at present no one can save me from being delivered over to \'literary people.\' To the devil!"

Other vexations affected him: he had taken to chloral, during the winter, in order to combat his insomnia. He deprived himself of it and recovered, not without difficulty, his normal sleep. Schmeitzner, the publisher, did not hurry to print Thus Spake Zarathustra; what was the cause of the delay? Nietzsche enquired and was told: Five hundred thousand copies of a collection of hymns had first to be printed for the Sunday-schools. Nietzsche waited some weeks, received nothing, asked again; another story: the collection of hymns was published, but a big lot of anti-Semitic pamphlets had to be printed and thrown upon the world. June came: Zarathustra had not yet appeared. Friedrich Nietzsche lost his temper and suffered for his hero, who was thwarted by the two platitudes, Pietism and anti-Semitism.

He was discouraged and ceased to write; he left his luggage at the station with the books and manuscripts which he had brought: one hundred and four kilos of paper. Everything in Rome harassed him: the nasty people, a mob of illegitimates; the priests, whom he could not tolerate; the churches, "caverns with unsavoury odours." His hatred of Catholicism is instinctive and has far-off origins; always when he approaches it, he shudders. It is not the philosopher who judges and reproves; it is the son of the pastor, who has remained a Lutheran: who cannot endure the other Church, full of incense and idols.

The desire came to him to leave this town. He heard the beauty of Aquila praised. Friedrich von[Pg 262] Hohenstaufen, the Emperor of the Arabs and the Jews, the enemy of the popes, resided there; Friedrich Nietzsche wished to reside there, too. Still, the room which he occupied was a fine and well-situated one, Piazza Barberini, at the very top of a house. There one could forget the town: the murmur of water falling from a triton\'s horn stilled the noise of humanity and sheltered his melancholy. There it was that, one evening, he was to improvise the most poignant expression of his despair and solitude:

"I am light; alas if I were night! But this is my solitude, to be always surrounded by light.

"Alas that I am not shadow and gloom! How I would drink from the breasts of light!

"... But I live in my own light, I drink the flames which escape from me!"

Thus Spake Zarathustra, a Book for All and None, at last appeared during the first days of June.

"I am very much on the move," wrote Nietzsche. "I am in agreeable society, but as soon as I am alone I feel moved as I have never been." He soon knew the fate of his book. His friends spoke to him very little of it; the newspapers, the reviews, did not mention it; no one was interested in this Zarathustra, the strange prophet who in a biblical tone taught unbelief. "How bitter it is!" said Lisbeth Nietzsche and Fr?ulein von Meysenbug; these two women, Christians at heart that they were, took offence. "And I," wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast, "I who find my book so gentle!"

The heat dispersed this Roman society. Friedrich Nietzsche knew not where to go. He had hoped for such different days! He had been persuaded that he would move lettered Europe, that he would at last attract reade............