Friedrich Nietzsche

“ And, with his own peculiar cynicism, God allows his sun to shine more brightly on us than on the more respectable Europe of Herr von Bismarck (—which with feverish virtue is working at its armaments, and looks for all the world like a heroic hedgehog) . The days seem to dawn here with unblushing beauty; never have we had a more beautiful winter. How I should like to send you some of the colouring of Nice! It is all besprinkled with a glittering silver grey; intellectual, highly intellectual colouring; free from every vestige of the brutal ground tone. ”

“ The herd honours everything in the nature of a pose, any solemn attitude,—things from which we two are averse. Only subtle spirits understand the shame of the noble mind, that conceals its highest and its best beneath a plain surface. I feel certain that among all those people over there, only a few have any idea with what little regard for yourself and with what passionate resolution you try to realize your ideals. The only question I ask myself is—are these ideals worthy of so much self-sacrifice? I very much fear you will yet have to overcome many bitter disappointments in your life. ”

“ Fortunately, I am quite devoid of all political and social ambition, so that I need fear no dangers in that direction—no loadstones to draw me aside, no compulsion to compromise or to consider consequences; in short, I can say all I think, and what I want to do is to test once and for all to what extent modern mankind—so proud of its freedom of thought—can endure free thought. I do not ask anything either excessive or fantastic from life; besides, in the course of the next few years we shall experience something for which all the world of the past and the future may envy us. ”

“ I should like to be something more than a mere trainer of efficient philologists. The present generation of teachers, the care of the coming generation—all this is in my mind. If we must live our lives out to the bitter end let us at least do so in such wise that others may bless our life as a priceless treasure, once we have been happily released from its tolls.
As for you, old man, with whom I agree on such a number of vital and fundamental questions, I wish you the luck you deserve and myself your old and tried friendship. ”

“ At present there is not a soul in Germany who has an inkling of what I want, or of the fact that I want anything at all, or even that I have already attained a not insignificant portion thereof. There is not a soul who at heart is either well pleased, or anxious, or distressed, or anything whatsoever, about the "things" that I hold dear. But, after all, perhaps to be aware of this alone is an invaluable piece of insight, and with it one has approached quite near to Epicurus's garden, and above all to oneself—after it, one jumps with a mighty spring back to oneself. ”

“ It is in a mood such as this—a mood desirable above all others—that I take up my pen to reply to your kind and thoughtful letter. The interests we share have become welded together to the smallest particle; once again we have realized that mere strokes of the pen in fact, even the most unexpected whims in the past of a few individuals determine the history of countless numbers of others; and we readily leave it to the pious to thank their God for these accidents. We may perhaps laugh at this thought when we meet again in Leipzig. ”

“ Besides there is this to be said for Nice: it is a place in which one can live the whole year round—you will find it much more exhilarating than Venice in summer, thanks to the cool sea-breezes at night. Nice is, moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, the reverse of Venice, as southern cities go; it seems to me to be worth your while to try it, just to see what the Muses, or the mistral, or the luminous heavens would have to tell you here. Thirdly, you can live more cheaply here than at any other place on the Riviera; Nice is a large open-hearted place, with attractions for all. ”

“ It is precisely we solitary ones that require love and companions in whose presence we may be open and simple, and the eternal struggle of silence and dissimulation can cease.
Yes, I am glad that I can be myself, openly and honestly with you, for you are such a good friend and companion, and the older you grow and the more you free yourself from the Naumburg atmosphere, the more will you certainly adapt yourself to all my views and aspirations. ”

“ On the whole, however, I am, to tell the truth, astonished at the number of springs a man can set flowing in himself—even a man like myself who am not one of the richest. I believe that if I possessed all the qualities in which you excel me I should be puffed up with pride and insufferable. Even now there are moments when I wander over the heights above Genoa here with glances and hopes like those which dear old Columbus may perhaps have cast from this very spot out over the sea and the whole of the future. ”

“ Is it not possible that with Christianity a division was made in this realm of man's nature also, which the nation of harmony knew nothing about? Ought not every scholar to blush at the thought of Sophocles, who, distinguished as he was in the domain of the spirit, was yet able to dance with grace and understood the art of playing at ball? But we stand towards these things as we stand towards life in general; we readily recognize an evil condition, but we do not raise a finger to get rid of it. ”

“ Yes, dear old devoted Gersdorff, we have now shared a goodly portion of youth, experience, education, inclination, hatred, striving, and hope in common; we know that we can thoroughly enjoy even sitting beside each other in silence. I don't think we need to give each other any pledges or promises, because we thoroughly believe in each other. I know from experience that you help me where you can, and whenever I have reason to rejoice I always think, "How pleased Gersdorff will be!" ”

“ For it is indeed a new experience for me to have no one on the spot to whom I can tell all the best and the worst that life brings me—not even a really sympathetic colleague. In such anchoritic conditions and with such difficult years in a young life, my friendship is actually becoming something pathological. I beg you, as an invalid begs : "Come to Bâle!"
My real refuge, which cannot be valued too highly, is still Triebschen, near Lucerne. The only thing is I can but seldom have recourse to it. I spent my Christmas holidays there, most beautiful and uplifting memory! ”

“ Towards the emancipators of the spirit mankind is most irreconcilable in its hate, and most unjust in its love. Albeit I shall go on my way in peace, and renounce everything that might stand in my way. This is the decisive element in life: were I not conscious of the superlative fruitfulness of my new philosophy, I should certainly feel frightfully isolated and alone. But I am at one with myself.
Your heartily devoted friend, F. N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - March, 1879 Bâle, March 1, 1879. ”

“ Verily, dear friend, that is more than a philological prize, although I am not insensible even to the kind of encomiums that the Faculty of Leipzig thought fit to bestow upon me. . . .
Ah, my dear friend, what a child of misfortune is a field artilleryman when he has literary tastes into the bargain. Our old god of War loved young women, not shrivelled old Muses. A gunner who often enough in his barrack room sits upon a dirty stool meditating upon Democritean problems, while his boots are being polished for him, is really a paradox on whom the gods must look with scorn. ”

“ That is to say, egoism; and this is the result of one's eternal lonely brooding and lonely suffering. In the end, one begins to feel constantly as if one were covered with a hundred scars and every movement were painful. But, joking apart, I shall very soon be thirty and things must change somewhat; they must become more virile, more even in tenour, and no longer so damned unstable. To continue one's work and to think of oneself as little as possible—that must be the first necessity. ”

“ In a week I was able to travel to Naumburg, but I am not right yet. Besides, the atmosphere of my experiences had spread like a gloomy mist all about me, and for some time I never ceased to hear the plaintive cries of the wounded. It was therefore quite impossible to pursue my plan of returning to the seat of war, and now I must be content with watching and pitying from a distance.
Oh, my dear friend, what good wishes can I send you! We both know what we have to expect from life. But we must not live for ourselves alone. So live on! live on! ”

“ As for you, my dear friend, you were not intended to be such a creature of aphorisms; your aim is a lofty one; unlike me you do not feel obliged to let people guess at the interdependence and at the need of interdependence in your work. Your mission it is once more to make known the higher laws of style in your art—those laws the setting aside of which the weakness of modern artists has elevated almost to a principle: your mission it is to reveal your art once more quite complete! ”

“ Between ourselves, I regard the Prussia of today as a power full of the greatest dangers for culture. One day I shall myself publicly expose our scholastic organization; as to the religious intrigues which are once more spreading from Berlin to the advantage of the Catholic Church I leave that to others! At times it is very hard, but we must be philosophical enough to keep our presence of mind in the midst of all this intoxication, so that no thief may come to rob or steal from us—what the greatest military feats or the highest national exaltation would in my opinion never replace. ”

“ As a matter of fact nothing would have been more exhilarating than to sit down together now, as we used to do, to digest our bodily meals together at Kintschy's, and symbolically drink our afternoon coffee in company, and, from this midday of our lives, glance backwards into the past and forwards into the future.
However, it will not be too late to do this even in Paris, where the great άναγνώφισις [35] of our comedy takes place, and upon the most beautiful scene in the world, too, between the most brilliant wings and in numerable glittering supers. ”

“ Was I made for solitude or for a life in which there was no one to whom I could speak? The inability to communicate one's thoughts is in very truth the most terrible of all kinds of loneliness. Difference is a mask—which is more ironbound than any iron mask and perfect friendship is possible only inter pares! ”

“ Your music has qualities which are rare nowadays. In my opinion all modern music seems to be suffering from an ever increasing atrophy of the sense of melody. Melody, as the last and most sublime art of arts, is ruled by logical laws which our anarchists would like to decry as tyranny! But the one thing I am certain about is that they are unable to reach up to these sweetest and ripest of fruits. I recommend all composers the following most delightful ascetic regimen—for a while to regard harmony as undiscovered, and to collect a store of pure melodies from Beethoven and Chopin, for instance. ”

“ What I shall miss there, as everywhere, is your music. I believe that just as my work makes a stronger and more discomfiting impression upon you than upon anyone else, so everything that proceeds from you has a more soothing effect upon me than upon anyone else. This is indeed a fine relationship between us! May be it is the sort of relationship that might exist between a writer of comedy and a writer of tragedy (I remember telling you that Wagner saw in me a writer of tragedy in disguise) ; it is certainly true that on the whole I come out of it in a more Epicurean fashion than you do ”

“ On the same principle, it now seems to me an eccentricity that I should ever have been a Wagnerite. It was an extremely dangerous experiment, and now that I know I have not been ruined by it I also realize what it has meant for me—it was the severest test of character I could have had. It is certain that one's inmost nature gradually disciplines one's whole being into unity; that passion for which for ages one can find no name saves us from all digressions and dispersions, that mission whose involuntary custodian we are. ”

“ That which has given me pleasure up to the present has been the sight of men with a long will—who can hold their peace for years and who do not simply on that account deck themselves out with pompous moral phraseology, and parade as "heroes" or "noblemen," but who are honest enough to believe in nothing but themselves and their will, in order to stamp it upon mankind for all time.
Excuse me. That which drew me to Richard Wagner was this; Schopenhauer, too, had the same feeling all his life. ”

“ The special and additional value of Nietzsche's private correspondence consists in this, that here we have a writer of the most forbidding aspect, a prophet of almost superhuman inspiration, a hermit inhabiting a desert of icy glaciers, coming down, so to say, to the inhabited valley, to the familiar plain, where he assumes a human form and a human speech, where he exhibits a human heart and a human sympathy. He who still doubted that behind Nietzsche's violent denunciation of his age there was an ardent love of humanity and an eagerness to promote it to a nobler Destiny ”

“ The goal is too remote, and even if one gets within measurable distance of it, one has by that time consumed all one's strength in a long search and struggle. When freedom is at last attained, one is as lifeless and feeble as a day-fly by night. That is what I dread so much. It is a misfortune to be so conscious of one's struggle and so early in life! And unlike the artist or the ascetic, I cannot balance my doubts by means of great deeds. ”

“ A period may be dawn ing which may be better suited to my constitution than the present one—a period in which we shall once again sit side by side and see the past rise up afresh out of your music, just as in our youth we used to dream together of our future in the music we both loved. ”

“ If only all those who dabble in philosophy were followers of Schopenhauer! But only too often behind the mask of philosopher stands the exalted majesty of the "Will," which is trying to achieve its own self-glorification. ”

“ Your devoted and grateful friend, NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - November, 1887 Nice, November 11, 1887. DEAR FRIEND:
I seem to feel as if I still had to make amends to you for something that happened last Spring. And to show you how perfectly willing I am to do all I can, I send you herewith a copy of a work I have just published (but, perhaps, I owe you this book anyhow, because it belongs inseparably to the one I sent last—) . No, do not let yourself be estranged from me too easily! At my age, and lonely as I am, I do not feel any too eager to lose the few men who had my confidence in the past. ”