Nietzsche : Letters to his sister

Friedrich Nietzsche

Selected Letters

NIETZSCHE to his sister.

Sils-Maria, July 8, 1886.

MY DARLING LAMA :

I have ceased to be in favour of the idea of living for good in Leipzig or Munich; life in such circles demands too heavy a toll on my pride ; and after all, however much I "belittle" myself, I still do not attain to that cheerful and comforting courage and self-reliance which are necessary for the continued pursuit of my path in life — attributes which at all events

spring into existence more readily in Sils and in Nice than in the places above mentioned.

How many humiliations and acts of foolishness did I not have to swallow down during my last stay in Germany, and without my friends ever dreaming of anything of the sort! No — they one and all "mean well" by me. I endured hours of spiritual depression that I can re

member only with a shudder. The humiliating experiences of the autumn of 1882, which I had almost forgotten, came back to my mind, and I recollected with shame the type of humanity I had already treated as my equal! Wherever I turned I was confronted by

opinions utterly opposed to my own — to my great as tonishment, however, not about Wagner. Even Kohde has refused to have anything to do with Parsifal.

Where are those old friends with whom in years gone by I felt so closely united? Now it seems as if we belonged to different worlds, and no longer spoke the same language! Like a stranger and an outcast, I move among them — not one of their words or looks reaches me any longer. I am dumb — for no one understands my speech — ah, but they never did understand me ! — or does the same fate bear the same burden on its soul? It is terrible to be condemned to silence when one has so much to say [...] 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!

Inter pares! — an intoxicating word; it contains so much comfort, hope, savour, and blessedness for him who is necessarily always alone ; for him who is "different"; who has never met anyone who pre cisely belonged to him, although he has sought well on all sorts of roads; who in his relationship to his fellows always had to practise a sort of considerate and cheerful dissimulation in the hope of assimilating himself to them, often with success, who from all too long experience knows how to show that bright face to adversity which is called sociability — and some times, too, to give vent to those dangerous, heart rending outbursts of all his concealed misery, of all the longings he has not yet stifled, of all his surging and tumultuous streams of love — the sudden madness of those moments when the lonely man embraces one that seems to his taste and treats him as a friend, as a Heaven-sent blessing and precious gift, only to thrust him from him with loathing an hour later, and with loathing too for himself, as if he had been con taminated and abased, as if he had grown strange even to himself, as if he had fallen from his own company. A deep man needs friends. All else failing, he has at least his god. But I have neither god nor friends ! Ah, my dear sister, those you call by that name were certainly friends once — but now ? For instance [...] . . . .

Now I ought once more to give myself a little rest, for the spiritual and intellectual tension of the last few years has been too severe, and my temper has grown sharper and more gloomy. My health is really quite normal — but my poor soul is so sensitive to injury and so full of longing for good friends, for people "who are my life." Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me — and I shall be cured!

Your FRITZ.

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NIETZSCHE to his sister

Nice, Wednesday, March 23, 1887.

MY DEAR LAMA :

It is now difficult to help me. When one has been at great pains for half one's life to secure independence for one's self, as I found it necessary to do, one has to accept the disadvantages of the situation as well. One cannot have the one without the other. Among these disadvantages is the fact that no one can tell from appearances what are the things I lack. I should like to have a little more money in order, for instance, that in the interests of my declining health, alone, and with the view of avoiding innumerable mistakes in dieting that I am exposed to in restaurants and hotels, I might have my own kitchen. It is also a question of pride; I should like to lead a life that really is suitable to me, and does not look so conventional as that of "a scholar on his travels." But even the five conditions that might make life endurable, and are really not pretentious, seem to me impracticable. I require (1) Some one to superintend my digestion, (2) Somebody who can laugh with me and who has cheerful spirits, (3) Some one who is proud of my company and who constrains others to treat me with becoming respect, (4) Some one who can read aloud to me without making a book sound idiotic. There is yet a fifth condition; but I will say nothing about it.

To marry now would perhaps be simply an act of folly, which would immediately deprive me of the independence that I have won with such bloody strife. And then I should also have to choose some European State, to belong to and become a citizen of it. I should have to consider my wife, my child, my wife’s family, the place I lived in, and the people we associated with, but to forbid myself the free expression of my ideas would kill me. I should prefer to be miserable, ill, and feared, and live in some out of the way corner, than to be "settled” and given my place in modern mediocrity! I lack neither courage nor good spirits. Both have remained with me because I have no acts of cowardice or false compromise on my conscience. (...)

I shall leave Nice at the beginning of next month in order to seek peaceful retirement on Lake Maggiore, where there are woods and shaded groves, and not this blindingly white incessant sunshine of Nice in the spring ! The address is ; Villa Badia, Oannobio (Lago Maggiore), but before this letter reaches you who knows where I shall be ?

With love,

Your P.

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