Nietzsche : Letters to Malvida von Meysenbug

Friedrich Nietzsche

Selected Letters

NIETZSCHE To MALVIDA VON MEYSENBUG.

Bale, October 25, 1874.

DEAREST FRAULEIN :

At last I am able once again to let you have some news of me by sending you another work of mine. From the contents of this last essay you will be able to form some idea of all that I have experienced in the interval. Also, that with the lapse of years I am, among other things, in a much more serious and precarious position than you might gather from the mere reading of the book itself.

In summa, however, you will surmise that things are going well with me, and going onwards, too, and that all I lack, alas! is just a little of the sunshine of life. Otherwise I should be compelled to acknowledge that things could not be going better with me than they are. For it is in deed a piece of great good fortune for me to progress step by step towards the accomplishment of my mission. And now I have written three of the thirteen "Thoughts Out of Season," and the fourth is already taking 'shape in my mind. How happy I shall feel when I have at last unburdened my heart of all its negative hates and all its indignation, and yet I dare hope that in five years I shall be within sight of this glorious goal ! Already at the present moment I am thankful to feel how very much more clearly and sharply I am learning to see things — spiritually (not bodily, alas!) — and how very much more definitely and intelligibly I can express myself. Provided that I am not led entirely astray in my course, or that my health does not break down, something must certainly come of all this. Just imagine a series of fifty such essays as the four I have already written — all the product of a soul's experience forced into the light of day! With such matter one could not help but produce some effect; for the tongues of many would have been unloosed and enough would have been put into words that could not be so quickly forgotten, much that to-day is almost as good as forgotten — yea, that is scarcely to hand. And what should divert me in my course? Even hostile attacks I can now turn to account and to pleasure, for they often enlighten me more quickly than friendly sympathy, and I desire nothing more than to be enlightened about the highly complex system of conflicting elements that constitutes the "modern world." 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. Moreover, I am blessed beyond all deserts with the most excellent of friends; and now, quite between ourselves, the only thing I want, and that quite soon, is a good wife, and then I shall regard all my worldly wishes as fulfilled. All the rest depends upon myself. Meanwhile, my heartiest wishes for your health, and may you continue to think kindly of Your most devoted servant,

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

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NIETZSCHE TO MALVIDA VON MEYSENBUG.

[May 12, 1887]

DEAREST FRAULEIN :

How strange it is ! With regard to what you so kindly said to me at the last moment, I wonder whether it might not prove both refreshing and fruitful for us both once more to join our two solitudes in closest and heartiest proximity! I have frequently thought about this of late, and asked myself searching questions about it. To spend one more winter with you and to be looked after and waited upon perhaps by Trina herself — that is indeed an extremely alluring prospect for which I cannot thank you sufficiently! I should prefer above all to return to Sorrento once more ("all good things twice or thrice!" say the Greeks) Or to Capri — where I shall play the piano to you again but better than I did before ! Or to Amalfl or Castellamare. Finally even to Rome (although my suspicion of the Roman climate and of large towns in general is based on good reasons and is not to be over thrown so easily ).

Solitude in the midst of solitary nature has hitherto been my chief refreshment, my means of recovery; such cities of modern traffic as Nice or even Zurich (which I have just left) in the end always make me feel irritable, sad, uncertain, desperate, unproductive, and ill. I have retained a sort of longing and superstition with regard to that peaceful sojourn down there, as if there I had breathed more deeply, if only for a few moments, than anywhere else in my life. For instance, on the occasion of that very first drive we took together in Naples when we went to Posilippo. Taking everything into consideration, you are the only person on earth about whom I could cherish such a wish; besides, I feel that I am condemned to my solitude and my citadel. There is no longer any alternative. That which bids me live, my exceptional and weighty task, bids me also keep out of the way of men and no longer attach myself to anyone. Perhaps it is the pure element in which this task has placed me that explains why it is that I have gradually grown unable even to bear the smell of men and least of all "young men," with whom I am not infrequently afflicted ( — oh, how obtrusively clumsy they are, just like puppies!) In the old days, in our solitude in Sorrento, B. and R. were too much for me; I fancy that at that time I was very reticent with you — even about things of which there is no one I should have spoken to more readily than yourself.

On my table there lies the new edition (in two volumes) of "Human-all- too-Human," the first part of which I worked out then — how strange ! Strange that it should have been in your respected neighbourhood. In the long "address" which I found a necessary pre face for the new edition of my complete works there are a number of curious things about myself which are quite uncompromising in their honesty. By this means I shall hold "the many" once and for all at arm's length; for nothing annoys men more than to show them some of the severity and hardness with which, under the discipline of one's own ideal, one deals and has dealt out to oneself. That is why I have cast my line out for "the few," and this after all I did without impatience, for it is in the nature of the indescribable strangeness and dangerousness of my thoughts that ears should not be opened for them until very late — certainly not before 1901.

You ask me to come to Versailles — oh, if only it were possible ! For I esteem the circle of men that you meet there (a curious admission for a German, but in present-day Europe I feel related only to the most intellectual among the French and Russians, and in no way whatever to my countrymen who judge all things on the principle of "Germany, Germany above all"). But I must return to the cold air of the Engadine; spring attacks me unconsciously; I dare not tell you into what abysses of despair I sink un der its influence. My body (and my philosophy, too, for that matter), feels the cold to be its appointed preservative element — that sounds paradoxical and negative, but it is the most thoroughly demonstrated fact of my life.

This is by no means a sign of a "cold nature": but you, of course, understand that, my most dear and faithful friend!

Always your affectionate and grateful friend,

NIETZSCHE.

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