Excerpts: Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche
I post some of my favorite letters for you to read (for free)
Happy Thanksgiving, Friends,
As some may know, I recently revised, edited, and republished an old translation of Nietzsche’s letters, which you can find here or in the reply to my pinned tweet. A few friends have requested that I post some excerpts from this collection, so here are a few of my favorites. I hope friends enjoy.
TO ROHDE.
Leipzig, November 9, 1868.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
Today I intend to relate a whole host of sprightly experiences, to look merrily into the future and to conduct myself in such idyllic and easy fashion that your sinister guest—that feline fever—will arch its back and retire spitting and swearing. And in order that all discordant notes may be avoided I shall discuss the famous res severa which is responsible for your second letter on a special sheet of paper, so that you will be able to read it when you are in the right mood and place for it.
The acts of my comedy are: (1) A Club-night or the Assistant Professor; (2) The Ejected Tailor; (3) A Rendezvous with X. Some old women take part in the performance. . . .
At home I found two letters, yours and an invitation from Curtius, whom I am glad to get to know better. When two friends like us write letters to each other, it is well known that the angels rejoice. And they rejoiced as I read your letter— aye, they even giggled. . . .
When I reached home yesterday, I found a card addressed to me with this note upon it: “If you would like to meet Richard Wagner, come to the Theatre Café at a quarter to four. Windisch.”
Forgive me, but this news so turned my head that I quite forgot what I was doing before it came and was thoroughly bewildered.
I naturally ran there and found our loyal friend, who gave me a lot of fresh information. Wagner was staying in Leipzig with his relations in the strictest incognito. The press had no inkling of his visit and all Brockhaus’s servants were as dumb as graves in livery. Now Wagner’s sister, Frau Brockhaus, that determined and clever woman, had introduced her friend Frau Ritschl to her brother, and on this occasion was able proudly to boast of the friend to the brother and of the brother to the friend, the lucky creature! Wagner played the Meisterlied, which you must know, in Frau Ritschl’s presence, and this good lady told him that she already knew the song very well, mea opera. Imagine Wagner’s joy and surprise! And with the utmost readiness in the world, he graciously declared his willingness to meet me incognito. I was to be invited on Friday evening. Windisch, however, pointed out that I should be prevented from coming by my official post and duties, Saturday afternoon was accordingly proposed. On that day Windisch and I ran to the Brockhaus’s, found the Professor’s family but no Wagner. He had just gone out with an enormous hat on his huge head. It was thus that I made the acquaintance of the excellent family and received a kind invitation for Sunday evening.
On these days, I felt as though I was living in a novel, and you must allow that in view of the inaccessibility of the exceptional man, the circumstances leading up to this acquaintance were somewhat romantic.
As I was under the impression that a large company of guests had been invited, I decided to dress very ceremoniously, and was glad that my tailor had promised to deliver a new dress suit for this very evening. It was a horrid day with constant showers of rain and snow. One shuddered at the thought of leaving the house, and I was therefore very pleased when little Roscher paid me a visit in the afternoon to tell me something about the Eleatics and about God in philosophy—for, as candidandus he is working up the material collected by Ahrens in his “Development of the Idea of God up to the Time of Aristotle,” while Romundt is trying for the prize essay of the University, the subject of which is “On the Will.” It was getting dark, the tailor did not turn up, and Roscher left me. I accompanied him, called on the tailor myself, and found his minions busily engaged on my clothes, which they promised to send round in three-quarters of an hour.
I went on my way in a jolly mood, looked in at Kintschy’s, read the Kladderadatsch, and was amused to find a paragraph saying that Wagner was in Switzerland and that a fine house was being built for him in Munich, while I knew all the time that I was going to see him that evening and that the day before he had received a letter from the little monarch addressed to “The Great German Tone-poet, Richard Wagner.”
But at home there was no tailor awaiting me, so I sat down and read the treatise on the Eudokia at my ease but was constantly disturbed by the sound of a shrill bell that seemed to be ringing some distance away. At last, I felt certain that someone was standing at the old iron gate; it was shut, as was also the door of the house. I shouted across the garden to the man to enter the house; but it was impossible to make oneself understood through the pouring rain. The whole house was disturbed, the door was ultimately opened, and a little old man bearing a parcel came up to me. It was half-past 6, time for me to dress and get ready, as I lived a long way off. It was all right; the man had my things. I tried them on, and they fitted. But what was this suspicious development? He actually presented me with a bill. I took it politely, but he declared he must be paid on delivery. I was surprised and explained that I had nothing to do with him as the servant of my tailor, but that my dealings were with his master to whom I had given the order. The man grew more pressing, as did also the time. I snatched at the things and began to put them on. He snatched them too and did all he could to prevent me from dressing. What with violence on my part and violence on his, there was soon a scene, and all the time I was fighting in my shirt, as I wished to get the new trousers.
At last, after a display of dignity, solemn threats, the utterance of curses on my tailor and his accomplice, and vows of vengeance, the little man vanished with my clothes. End of the First Act. I sat on my sofa and meditated while I examined a black coat and wondered whether it was good enough for Richard.
Outside the rain continued to pour.
It was a quarter past 7. I had promised to meet Windisch at half-past 7 at the Theatre Café. I plunged into the dark and rainy night, also a little man in black and without evening dress, yet in a beatific mood, for chance was in my favour— even the scene with the tailor’s man had something tremendously unusual about it.
At last, we entered Frau Brockhaus’s exceedingly comfortable drawing-room. There was nobody there except the most intimate members of the family, Richard, and us two. I was introduced to Wagner and muttered a few respectful words to him. He questioned me closely as to how I had become so well acquainted with his music, complained bitterly about the way his operas were produced with the exception of the famous Munich performances, and made great fun of the conductors who tried to encourage their orchestra in friendly tones as follows: “Now, gentlemen, let’s have some passion! My good people, still a little more passion if you please!” Wagner enjoys imitating the Leipzig dialect.
Now let me give you a brief account of all that happened that evening. Really the joys were of such a rare and stimulating kind that even today I am not back in the old groove but can think of nothing better to do than come to you, my dear friend, to tell you these wonderful tidings. Wagner played to us before and after supper and went through every one of the more important passages of the Meistersinger. He imitated all the voices and was in very high spirits. He is, by the bye, an extraordinarily energetic and fiery man. He speaks very quickly and wittily and can keep a private company of the sort assembled on that evening very jolly. I managed to have quite a long talk with him about Schopenhauer. Oh, and you can imagine what a joy it was for me to hear him speak with such indescribable warmth of our master—what a lot we owed to him, how he was the only philosopher who had understood the essence of music! Then he inquired as to how the professors were disposed toward him; laughed a good deal about the Philosophers Congress at Prague, and spoke of them as philosophical footmen. Later on, he read me a piece out of the autobiography he is now writing, a thoroughly amusing scene from his Leipzig student days which I still cannot recall without a laugh. He writes extraordinarily cleverly and intellectually. At the close of the evening, when we were both ready to go, he shook my hand very warmly and kindly asked me to come and see him so that we might have some music and philosophy together. He also entrusted me with the task of making his music known to his sister and his relations, a duty which I undertook very solemnly to fulfil. You will hear more about it when I have succeeded in looking at this evening more objectively and from a greater distance. For the time being a hearty farewell and best wishes for your health from yours,
F. N.
TO FREIHERR KARL VON GERSDORFF.
Naumburg, April 11, 1869.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
My hour has come, and this is the last evening I shall spend at home for some time. Early tomorrow morning I go out into the wide, wide world, to enter a new and untried profession, in an atmosphere heavy and oppressive with duty and work. Once more I must take leave of everything, the golden time of free and unconstrained activity, in which every instant is sovereign, in which the joys of art and the world are spread out before us as a mere spectacle in which we scarcely participate. This time is now forever in the past for me. Now the inexorable goddess “Daily Duty” rules supreme. “Bemooster Bursche zieh’ ich aus! ” [As a moss-grown student I go out into the world.] But you know that touching student song of course! “Muss selber nun Philister sein!” [I too must be a Philistine now.] In one way or another this line always comes true. One cannot take up posts and honours with impunity— the only question is, are the fetters of iron or of thread? For I have the pluck which will one day perhaps enable me to burst my bonds and venture into this precarious life from a different direction and in a different way. As yet I see no sign of the inevitable humpback of the professor. May Zeus and all the Muses preserve me from ever becoming a Philistine, an ἄνϑϱωποϛ ἄμουσοϛ, a man of the herd. But I do not know how I could become one, seeing that I am not one. It is true I stand a little nearer to another kind of Philistine—the Philistine of the “specialist” species; for it is only natural that the daily task, and the unremitting concentration of the mind upon certain specified subjects and problems, should tend to abate the free receptivity of the mind and undermine the philosophic sense. But I flatter myself that I shall be able to meet this danger with more calm and assurance than the majority of philologists. Philosophical seriousness is already too deeply rooted in me; the true and essential problems of life and thought have been too clearly revealed to me by that great mystagogue, Schopenhauer, to allow of my ever being obliged to dread such a disgraceful defection from the “Idea”. To infuse this new blood into my science, to communicate to my pupils that Schopenhauerian earnestness which is stamped on the brow of the sublime man—such is my desire, such is my undaunted hope. 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.
Fare thee well!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, DR.
TO ROHDE.
Basel, December 15, 1870.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I have not allowed a minute to elapse since reading your letter but am replying at once. I simply wanted to tell you that I felt just as you do and would regard it as a disgrace if we could not get out of this state of longing thirst by means of some energetic deed. Now listen to what I have been turning over in my soul! Let us drag on for another year or two in this University life! Let us accept it as an instructive burden of sorrow which we are obliged to bear earnestly and with surprise. Among other things it will be a period of probation for the art of teaching, by means of which I regard it as my mission to perfect myself. The only thing is I have set my goal a little higher.
In the long run, I have become aware of the importance of Schopenhauer’s teaching about the wisdom of the Universities. A thoroughly radically truthful existence is impossible here. But what is especially important is that nothing truly subversive can ever emerge from this quarter.
And then we can only become genuine teachers by straining every nerve to raise ourselves out of the atmosphere of these times and by being not only wiser but above all better men. Here also I feel that the very first prerequisite is to be true. And that is why, I repeat, I cannot endure this academic atmosphere too long.
So it comes to this, we shall sooner or later cast off this yoke—upon this I am firmly resolved. And then we shall form a new Greek Academy—Romundt will certainly join us in that. Thanks to your visits to Tribschen you must also know Wagner’s Bayreuth plan. I have been considering quite privately whether we on our part should not simultaneously effect a breach with philology as it has been practised hitherto and its aspect of culture. I am preparing an important adhortatio to all those natures that have not been completely stifled and entangled in the present age. What a deplorable thing it is that I should have to write to you about these matters and that each individual thought should not have been discussed with you long ago! For, since you do not know the whole apparatus as it already exists, my plan will seem to you like an eccentric whim. But this it is not—it is a need.
A book of Wagner’s about Beethoven that has just been published you will find full of suggestions about what I desire for the future. Read it; it is a revelation of the spirit in which we—we!—shall live in the future.
Even supposing we get but few adherents, I believe, nevertheless, that we shall be able to extricate ourselves pretty well—not without some injuries, it is true—from this current, and that we shall reach some islet upon which we shall no longer require to stop up our ears with wax. We shall then be our own mutual teachers and our books will only be so much bait wherewith to lure others to our monastic and artistic association. Our lives, our work, and our enjoyment will then be for one another; possibly this is the only way in which we can work for the world as a whole.
In order to prove to you how deeply in earnest I am in this matter, I have already begun to limit my requirements in order to be able to preserve a small vestige of private means. We shall also try our luck in lotteries; and, if we write books, I shall for the immediate future demand the highest possible fees. In short, we shall make use of every legitimate means in order to establish our monastery upon a secure material basis thus, even for the next few years, we have our appointed tasks.
If only this plan would strike you as being at least worthy of consideration! That it was high time to lay it before you is proved by the really stirring letter I have just received from you.
Ought we not to be able to introduce a new form of the Academy life into the world—
“And would my powerful longings, all in vain
Charm into life that deathless form again—”
—as Faust says of Helen?
Nobody knows anything about this project, and whether we shall now send a preliminary communication about it to Romundt will depend upon you.
Our school of philosophy is surely not an historical reminiscence or a deliberate whim—does not dire necessity impel us in this direction?
Apparently the plan we made as students to travel together has returned in a new and symbolically grander form. I will not again be the culprit who, as on that occasion, left you in the lurch. I have not yet ceased to be vexed about that. With the best of hopes,
Your devoted
FRATER FRIDERICUS.
TO ROHDE.
Rosenlauibad, August 28, 1877.
DEAR OLD FRIEND:
How can I express it? But every time I think of you, I am overcome by a sort of deep emotion; and when, a day or two ago, someone wrote to me “Rohde’s young wife is an exceedingly sweet woman whose every feature is illumined by her noble soul,” I actually wept. And I can give you absolutely no plausible reason for having done so. We might ask the psychologists for an explanation. Ultimately, they would declare it was envy and that I grudged you your happiness, or that it was my vexation at someone having run away with my friend and having concealed him Heaven alone knows where, on the Rhine or in Paris, and refused to give him up again. When I was humming my “Hymn to Solitude” to myself a few days ago, I suddenly had the feeling that you could not abide my music at all and that you would much have preferred a song on Dual Bliss. The same evening, I played a song of this sort, as well as I was able, and it was so successful that all the angels might have listened to it with joy, particularly the human ones. But it was in a dark room, and no one heard it. Thus, I am forced to consume my own happiness, tears, and everything in private.
Shall I tell you all about myself—how every day I set out two hours before the sun rises on the hills and after that take my walks only among the lengthening shadows of the afternoon and evening? How many things I have thought out, and how rich I feel now that this year I have at last been allowed to strip off the old moss growth of the daily routine of teaching and thinking! As to my life here, I can only say that it is tolerable, in spite of all my ailments which have certainly followed me even up to the heights—but I have so many intervals of happy exultation both of thought and feeling.
A little while ago I had a genuinely sacred day, thanks to “Prometheus Unbound.” If the poet be not a true genius, then I do not know what genius means. The whole thing is wonderful, and I felt as if I had met my own transfigured and exalted self in the work. I bow low before a man who is capable of having and expressing such thoughts.
In three days, I shall return to Basel. My sister is already there and busy preparing the place for my arrival.
The faithful musician P. Gast is going to join our household and is going to undertake the duties of a friendly amanuensis.
I am rather dreading the coming winter. Things must change. The man who only has a few moments a day for what he regards as most important, and who has to spend the rest of his time and energy performing duties which others could carry out equally well—such a man is not a harmonious whole; he must be in conflict with himself and must ultimately fall ill. If I exercise any influence over youth at all, I owe it to my writings, and for these I have to thank my leisure moments—yes, the intervals I have won for myself, in the midst of professional duties by means of illness. Well, things must change: si male nunc non olim sic erit. Meanwhile may the happiness of my friends increase and flourish. It is always a great solace to me to think of you, my dear friend (just now I have a vision of you on the bank of a lake surrounded by roses and with a beautiful white swan swimming towards you).
With brotherly affection,
Yours,
F.
NIETZSCHE TO HIS SISTER
Genoa, February 3, 1882.
Just a few lines, my darling sister, to thank you for your kind words about Wagner and Bayreuth. Certainly the time I spent with him in Tribschen and enjoyed through him at Bayreuth (in 1872, not in 1876) is the happiest I have had in my whole life. But the omnipotent violence of our tasks drove us asunder and now we can never more be united; we have grown too strange to each other.
The day I found Wagner I was happy beyond description. So long had I been seeking for the man who stood on a higher plane than I did, and who really comprised me. I believed I had found this man in Wagner. It was a mistake. And now it would not even be right to compare myself with him—I belong to another order of beings.
In any case, I have had to pay dearly for my craze for Wagner. Has not the nerve-destroying power of his music ruined my health—was it not dangerous to life? Has it not taken me almost six years to recover from this pain? No, Bayreuth is impossible for me! What I wrote a day or two ago was only a joke. But you at all events must go to Bayreuth. Your going would be of the greatest value to me.
YOUR DEVOTED BROTHER.
NIETZSCHE TO HIS MOTHER
Sils-Maria, August, 1883.
MY DEAR MOTHER:
I have received everything in the way of food and the necessaries of life—unfortunately, too, your letter, which made me feel very wretched. Really, these dissertations on Christianity and on the opinions of this man and that as to what I should do and ought to think on the subject should no longer be directed to my address. My patience won’t stand it! The atmosphere in which you live, among these “good Christians,” with their one-sided and often presumptuous judgments, is as opposed as it possibly can be to my own feelings and most remote aims. I do not say anything about it, but I know that if people of this kind, even including my mother and sister, had an inkling of what I am aiming at, they would have no alternative but to become my natural enemies. This cannot be helped; the reasons for it lie in the nature of things. It spoils my love of life to live among such people, and I have to exercise considerable self-control in order not to react constantly against this sanctimonious atmosphere of Naumburg (in which I include many uncles and aunts who do not live in Naumburg).
Let us, my dear mother, do as we have done hitherto and avoid all these serious questions in our letters. Moreover, I doubt whether our Lizzie could have read your letter.
My spirits and health have once more been very much impaired by the fact that the ghastly affair of last year is once more abroad and adding woe to woe. As to the ultimate outcome of it all, as far as I am concerned, ever since last August I have had the most gloomy forebodings. I am now working like a man who is “putting his house in order before departing.” Don’t say any more about it. I shall not either, and forgive me if this letter has turned out to be such a melancholy effusion.
Your son,
FRITZ.
NIETZSCHE TO HIS SISTER.
Sils-Maria, End of August, 1883.
MY DEAR SISTER:
Today, just as it was three days ago, the weather is perfectly bright and clear—and I can survey with cheerfulness and confidence that which I have and have not achieved up to the present, and that which I still expect from myself. You do not know this, and that is why I cannot take it amiss that you should wish to see me on other ground, more secure and more protected. Your letter to _______ made me think a good deal, and the chance remark you made about my condition in Basel having certainly been the best hitherto, made me think even more. I, on the other hand, judge the matter as follows: the whole meaning of the terrible physical suffering to which I was exposed lies in the fact that, thanks to it alone, I was torn away from an estimate of my life-task which was not only false but a hundred times too low. And as by nature I belong to the modest among men, some violent means were necessary in order to recall me to myself. Even the teachers I had as a young man are probably, in relation to what I have to do, only minor and transitory forces. The fact that I stood above them and contemplated their ideals over their heads—above all these Schopenhauers and Wagners—this is what prevented them from being quite indispensable to me, and now I could not do myself a greater injustice than to judge myself according to these contemporaries whom I have in every sense overcome. Every word in my Zarathustra is simply so much triumphant scorn and more than scorn, flung at the ideals of this period, and behind almost every word there stands a personal experience, an act of self-overcoming of the highest order. It is absolutely necessary that I should be misunderstood; nay, I would go even further and say that I must succeed in being understood in the worst possible way and despised. The fact that those “nearest to me” should be the first to do this was what I understood last summer and the following autumn, and by that alone I became filled with the glorious consciousness of being on the right road. This feeling may be read everywhere in Zarathustra. The dreadful winter, together with my bad health, made me forget it, and sapped my courage, just as the things which have happened to me during the last few weeks have brought me into the greatest danger—the danger of departing from my appointed path. The moment I am now forced to say: “I cannot endure loneliness any longer,” I am conscious of having fallen to untold depths in my own estimation—of having deserted the highest that is in me.
…
Written under a bright clear sky, with a clear mind, a good digestion, and the time—early morning.
YOUR BROTHER.
NIETZSCHE TO HIS SISTER.
Genoa, November, 1883.
MY DEAR LAMA:
The thought of being reckoned among the authors! that belongs to the things that make me tremble with disgust. But, my dear sister, just study “Dawn of Day” and “Joyful Wisdom,” books whose contents and whose future are the richest on earth! In your last letters there was a good deal about “egoistic” and “unegoistic,” that ought no longer to be written by my sister. I draw, above all, a sharp line between strong and weak men—those who are destined to rulership, and those who are destined to service, obedience, and devotion. That which turns my stomach in this age is the untold amount of weakness, unmanliness, impersonality, changeableness, and good-nature—in short weakness in the matter of “self ”-seeking, which would fain masquerade as “virtue.” 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. . . .
I know perhaps better than anyone else how to recognize an order of rank even among strong men, according to their virtue, and on the same principle there are certainly hundreds of sorts of very decent and lovable people among the weak—in keeping with the virtues peculiar to the weak. There are some strong “selves” whose selfishness one might call divine (for instance Zarathustra’s)—but any kind of strength is in itself alone a refreshing and blessed spectacle. Read Shakespeare! He is full of such strong men, raw, hard, and mighty men of granite. Our age is so poor in these men— and even in strong men who have enough brains for my thoughts!
…
F.N.
NIETZSCHE TO BURCKHARDT.
Sils-Maria, Oberengadin September 22, 1886.
MY VERY DEAR PROFESSOR:
I am truly pained at not having seen you or spoken to you for so long! With whom would I fain speak, forsooth, if I may no longer speak to you! The “silentium” about me increases daily.
Meanwhile I trust C. G. Naumann has done his duty and sent you my last book. Please read it (although it says the same things as my “Zarathustra,” but differently, very differently). I can think of no one who has a greater number of first principles in common with me than you have. It seems to me that you have faced the same problems as I have —that you are working upon the same problems in a similar way, perhaps even in a more powerful and more profound way than I, because you are more silent. But then it should be remembered that I am the younger man. . . . The terrible conditions that determine every advance in culture, the extremely ticklish relation between what is called the “improvement” of mankind (or rather “humanization”) and the “enhancement” of the type man; above all the conflict of every moral concept with every scientific notion of life—but enough, enough! Here is a problem which fortunately, it seems to me, we may have in common with very few of our contemporaries or predecessors. To give expression to it is perhaps the greatest feat of daring on earth, and that not so much on the part of him who dares it, as of those whom he addresses. My consolation is that, in the first place, the ears for apprehending my prodigious novelties are lacking—your ears excepted, my dear and honoured friend. But to you, on the other hand, they will not be “novelties”!
Your devoted friend,
DR. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
NIETZSCHE TO STRINDBERG.
Turin, December 31, 1888.
DEAR SIR:
You will hear from me shortly about your short story—it goes off like a gunshot. I have appointed a meeting day of monarchs in Rome. I shall order . . . to be shot. Au revoir! For we shall surely see each other again.
On one condition only: let us divorce.
NIETZSCHE CAESAR.
TO THE FRIEND GEORG.
Having been discovered by you, no trick was necessary for the others to find me. The difficulty is now to get rid of me.
THE CRUCIFIED.
Was completely unaware he and Strindberg were in contact, great stuff!