THE NIETZSCHE-LOU SALOME CORRESPONDENCE 1882

The story of the friendship of Lou Salome and Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882 has been interpreted many different ways by scholars over the years. While trying to make sense of it myself, I found the letters they, and those around them, wrote that year and a few years after to be useful in sorting out which interpretations made sense and which seemed to stray far afield. The story that resulted was very different from the one usually told in the scholarly literature.

Although some of the letters, entirely or in fragments, have been published in many biographies and articles, there is no one complete volume of letters translated into English. I gathered what I could find and typed them into one document, copied below. Although the task of finding and typing the letters was at times tedious (this was before the Internet or scanners), I was fascinated to see a story developing as the letters accumulated. Each newly discovered letter added a piece to the puzzle -- the events of 1882.

Most useful were the many letters translated by Rudolph Binion in his biography Frau Lou.

To accompany the letters, I have a text describing the events of that year, what was going on as the letters were being written, which I will post next. And I will add links and photographs to these letters identifying the correspondents.

A five-volume edition of letters was published in Germany between the years 1900-1909. Nietzsche died in 1900. Translating these letters -- if it has not already been done-- would be a worthy chore for a Nietzsche scholar.

Please note -- this is a rough, personal work file to satisfy my curiosity and was not meant for formal publication. Please excuse any inaccuracies.

THE LETTERS

1882

Part I: January-March -- Genoa

To Elisabeth, January 30, 1882

But I -- forgive me -- will come only on the condition that Wagner personally invites me and treats me as the most honored guest at the festival.

To Elisabeth, February 3, 1882

Just a few lines, my beloved sister, to thank you for your good words about Wagner and Bayreuth. Certainly those were the best days of my life, the ones I spent with him at Tribschen and through him in Bayreuth .... But the omnipotence of our tasks drove us apart, and now we cannot rejoin one another --we have become too estranged.

My Wagner mania certainly cost me dear. Has not this nerve-shattering music ruined my health? And the disillusionment and leaving Wagner -- was not that putting my very life in danger? Have I not needed almost six years to recover from that pain? No, Bayreuth is for me out of the question. It was only a joke, what I wrote you the other day. But you must go to Bayreuth, all the same. That is of great importance to me.

To Elisabeth, Genoa, Feb 10, 1882

With Dr. Ree's visit so far, as was to be expected, all has not gone well. The first day, best of spirits, the second endurable only with the help of restoratives, exhaustion the third, fainting in the afternoon ....In brief, we have still to learn how to be together. It is in fact all too pleasant being with Dr. Ree; there could hardly be more delightful company.

In response to Ree’s letter from Rome telling him about Lou:

My dear friend, how much pleasure your letters give me! They take me off in all directions, and in the end always back to you...

What pleasure your letters give me! They draw me in every which way -- and to you in the end, come what may...Greet the Russian girl for me, if that makes any sense: I am greedy for souls of that species. In fact, in view of what I mean to do these next ten years, I need them! Matrimony is quite another story. I could consent at most to a two-year marriage, and then only in view of what I mean to do these next ten years.

Part II: Secrecy and Good Cheer, April-June

To Lou:

Here in Naumburg I have so far been wholly silent about you and us. That way I remain more independent and can serve you better.-- The nightingales sing the whole night through before my window. Ree is from head to toe a better friend than I am or can be: mark well the distinction! When I am alone I often, very often, speak your name and -- to my greatest pleasure!

To Elisabeth, April, 1882:

The girl is twenty four [she was 21]; plain (---); but like all plain girls, she has cultivated her intellect in order to attract. Ree is of opinion that her intellect is extraordinary.

To Ree:

I have been taciturn and shall remain so -- you know what about. One cannot be friends more wonderfully than we are now, can one? My dear old Ree!

To Lou May 28:

For, honestly, I should very much like to be all alone with you as soon as possible. Such solitary beings as I must first slowly get used to those dearest to them: be considerate of me in this -- or rather a little obliging! ... (So long as all summer plans are still up in the air; I do well to maintain complete silence in my family -- not from joy in secrecy, but 'knowledge of people.') My dear friend Lou, on 'friends' and on friend Ree in particular I will explain myself orally: I know quite well what I am saying if I call him a better friend than I am or can be...After Bayreuth we shall seek another resting place for the benefit of your health?... They say I have never in my life been so cheerful as now. I trust my fate.

To Ida Overbeck, May 28:

How could I fear fate, particularly when it confronts me in the wholly unexpected form of Lou? Ree and I feel the same devotion to our courageous, high-minded friend: even on this score he and I have great faith in each other, and we are not of the dumbest or youngest.-- So far I have kept strict silence here about all these things

To Ree:

What's doing with our summer plans?...I often laugh at our Pythagorean friendship. It raises me in my own esteem to be really capable of it. Yet it does remain laughable? -- In heartfelt love, your F.N.

To Lou, June 7:

... it is unbearable for me to think of you suffering alone....neither Mrs. Ree in Warmbrunn nor Miss von Meysenbug in Bayreuth nor my family need break their heads and hearts over things that we, we, we alone are and shall be up to, whereas they may strike others as dangerous fantasies.... it also seems to me more advisable not to put our Trinity on display so openly this summer...I too have a flush of dawn about me -- and this is no printed one. What I no longer thought possible -- to find a friend of my utmost joy and sorrow -- now seems to me: as a golden possibility on the horizon of my whole future life. I have only to think of my dear Lou's brave and prescient soul and I am moved.

To Overbeck, June 7:

There are lots of life secrets of mine bound up with this new future, and task remain that can be carried out only through deeds... I go on keeping silence here. As for my sister, I am wholly determined to leave her out: she could only confuse things (and herself to begin with)....

To Lou, June 10:

From this distance, my dear friend, I cannot make out which people have to be told about our plans, but I think we should make sure we confide only in them. I love privacy, and want very much that you and I be spared the gossip of a whole continent. Other than that, I have such high hopes for our living together that all repercussions, essential or incidental, are of little concern to me just now. Whatever happens we'll bear it together, and together each evening we'll put our little worries behind us -- agreed?

...Finally in all practical matters I'm highly inexperienced. For years now I've never had to explain or justify to others anything I've done. I prefer to keep my plans secret; the whole world may talk about what I do if it wishes. But nature has given every creature its own weapons of defense -- to you it gave your magnificent honesty. Pindar says somewhere, "Become what you are."

Loyally and devotedly, F.N.

To Ree (about the same time):

... All in all I beg you to keep silence toward everyone about our winter project: one ought to keep silence about everything in the making As soon as it is spread about prematurely there are contradictors and counterplans: the danger is not slight... In sum, we both have it quite good: who else has such a lovely prospect before him as we do?

To Lou, June 18:

You know that I wish to be your teacher, your guide on the path to scholarly production?

To Lou, June 18:

I should so much like to work and study some with you soon. I have prepared fine things ‑‑ fields in which sources are to be discovered. ... You do know that I wish to be your teacher, your guide on the way to scholarly production? What do you think of the time after Bayreuth? What would be most desirable, advantageous, and valuable to you for just this period? And is September to be kept in sight for the beginning of our Vienna existence? My trip has taught me again about my ineffable awkwardness as soon as I feel new places and people about me: I believe the blind are more reliable than the half blind. Concerning Vienna, it is now my wish to be set down like a piece of luggage in a small room of the house you want to occupy. Of next door, as your faithful friend and neighbor.

Ree was to forward this letter to "our very remarkable and all too lovable friend."

To Ree, around June 18::

I am full of confidence in this year with its mysterious dice game over my fate... " ..."no longer in any condition to undertake anything alone.... I am now working it out so that my mother too could invite Miss Lou.

He did not send this paragraph:

My silence would have been impossible in the long run; it was necessary for only the very earliest period, as I had agreed with Overbeck. I myself could make this new "demand" on my family only after much vexation and almost a slight threat; from scratch such a venture as our Vienna plan would have bewildered them ‑‑ they would have taken it for folly or infatuation.

To Lou, June 26:

My dear friend, half an hour from the Dornburg on which December the old Goethe enjoyed his solitude, lies Tautenburg in the midst of beautiful woods. There my good sister has fixed up an idyllic little nest for me, for this summer. Yesterday I took possession; tomorrow my sister is leaving and I shall be alone. But we made an agreement that may bring her back. For supposing that you found no better use for the month of August and found it seemly and feasible to live with me in the woods here, my sister would accompany you here from Bayreuth and live with you here in the same house (e.g. the parson's where she is staying at the moment: the village offers a selection of modest but pretty rooms). My sister, about women you can ask Ree, would prefer seclusion precisely for this period in order to brood over her little novella eggs. She finds the thought of being in your and my proximity extremely attractive. --There! And now candor "even unto death!" My dear friend! I am not tied down in any way and could most easily change my plans if you have plans. And if I am not to be together with you, simply tell me that, too -- and you don't even have to give any reasons! I have complete confidence in you: but that you know.

If we harmonize, our healths will harmonize, too, and there will be some secret advantage somewhere. I have never yet thought that you should read to and write for me; but I should like very much to be permitted to be your teacher. Finally, to tell the whole truth: I am now looking for human beings who could become my heirs; I am carrying around a few ideas that are not by any means to be found in my books -- and am looking for the most beautiful and fruitful soil for them.

Just look at my selfishness!--

When I occasionally think of the dangers to your life, your health, my soul is always filled with tenderness; I cannot think of anything that brings me so close to you so quickly. -- And then I am always happy to know that you have Ree and not only me for a friend. To think of you two together walking and talking is a real delight to me.--...

Faithfully your friend,

Nietzsche

Part III: Bayreuth, July

To Lou, Tautenburg, July 2, 1882:

My dear friend, how bright the sky above me is now! Yesterday at noon it was like a birthday party around here: you said yes, the loveliest gift anyone could have given me at this moment; my sister sent cherries, Teubner sent the first three proof sheets of The Gay Science; on top of all that, I had just finished the very last part of the manuscript, thus ending six years' work (1976-1882) --- all of my "free thinking." And what years! What tortures of every kind, what periods of loneliness, of disgust with life! And as a homemade remedy against all this, against life as much as death, I brewed my own potion, those ideas of mine with their little patches of unclouded sky above them. Oh dear friend, whenever I think of all this I am deeply moved, and can't understand how it could possibly have worked out so well. I"m all full of self-pity and a feeling of victory. For it is a victory, and a total one; even my physical health has returned. I've no idea how, and everyone tells me I look younger than ever. Heaven protect me from stupidity! -- But from now on, when you advise me, I'll be in good hands and need have no fear.

As regards the winter, I have been thinking seriously and exclusively of Vienna; my sister's plans for the winter are independent of mine, and we can leave them out of considerations. The south of Europe is now far from my thoughts.

I don't want to be lonely any more and wish to rediscover how to be human. This is a lesson I'll have to learn from scratch!

To Malwida, around July 2 (clear skies letter) Draft, in WK:

This year, which signifies a new crisis in several chapters of my life (epoch is the right word -- an intermediate state between two crises, one behind one ahead of me) has been made much more beautiful for me by the radiance and charm of this truly heroic soul. I wish to acquire a pupil in her and, if my life should not last much longer, an heir and one who will develop my thoughts. Incidentally: Ree should have married her; and I for my part have certainly urged him all I could. But the effort now seems in vain. At one final point he is an unshakable pessimist; and how he has remained faithful to himself at this point, against all the objections of his heart and of my reason, has in the end won my great respect. The idea of the propagation of mankind seems intolerable to him: it goes against all his feelings to add to the number of the wretched. For my taste, he has too much pity at this point and too few hopes.

To Lou, July 3:

But you will now find that there was no need for my whole hush‑hush to begin with? I analyzed it today and found as its basic cause: mistrust toward myself. I was downright bowled over by the fact of having acquired a "new person" after overly strict seclusion and renunciation of all love and friendship. I had to keep silent because it would have thrown me every time to speak about you (as it did at the good Overbecks.) Now, I tell you this for laughs. The way with me is always a human, all too human one, and my foolishness grows with my wisdom.

To Gast: July 13:

The poem called "To Suffering" was not my work. It is one of those things that completely overwhelm me. I've never been able to read it without tears: here is a voice I've been waiting for ever since childhood. The poem is by my friend Lou; you haven't heard about her before. She is a Russian general's daughter, twenty years old, keen as an eagle, brave as a lion, and yet a very girlish child who may well not live long. I owe her to Frl. von Meysenbug and Ree. She's visiting Ree just now; after Bayreuth she's coming here to Tautenburg, and in the fall we'll move together to Vienna. She's amazingly ripe and ready for my way of thinking.

Dear friend, you'll surely do us the honor of keeping the notion of a love affair far removed from our relationship. We are friends, and I intend to hold this girl and her trust in me sacred. Besides, she has an unbelievably firm character and knows exactly what she wants -- without consulting or caring about the world's opinion.

To Lou, Tautenburg, July 20:

Well, my dear friend, all is well till now, and a week from Saturday we shall see each other again.

I have thought of you much, and have shared with you in thought much that has been elevating, stirring, and gay, so much so that it has been like living with my dear friends. If only you knew how novel and strange that seems to an old hermit like me! How often it has made me laugh at myself!

As for Bayreuth, I am satisfied not to have to be there, and yet, if I could be near you in a ghostly way, murmuring this and that in your ear, then I find even the music of Parsifal endurable (otherwise it is not endurable). I would like you to read beforehand, my little work Richard Wagner in Bayreuth; I expect friend Ree has it. I have had such experiences with this man and his work, and it was a passion which lasted a long time -- passion is the only word for it. The renunciation that it required, the rediscovering of myself that eventually became necessary, was among the hardest and most melancholy things that have befallen me.

And how happy I am, my beloved friend Lou, that I can now think of the two of us -- "Everything is beginning, and yet everything is perfectly clear!" Trust me! Let us trust one another!

With the very best wishes for your journey.

Your friend Nietzsche

Geist? What is geist to me? What is knowledge to me? I value nothing buy impulses -- and I could swear that we have this in common. Look through this phrase, in which I have lived for several years -- look beyond it! Do not deceive yourself about me-- surely you do not think that the "freethinker" is my ideal! I am...

Sorry, dearest Lou!

F.N

To Gast July 25:

So, my dear friend, I'm to have music too! Good things are pouring in this summer -- it's as if I had a victory to celebrate. And so I do: think how since 1876 I've been, body and soul, more of a battlefield than a human being.

Your melancholy words, "always a bridesmaid, never a bride," weigh heavily on my heart. There were times when I thought the same about myself. But apart from the other ways in which we're different, I'm more easily pushed around than you.

You, of course, will be the subject of the utmost discretion; introduced as an Italian friend whose name is a secret.

A remark in your letter makes me realize that all the jingles of mine which you know were written before I met Lou...But perhaps you also feel that, as "thinker" and "poet" as well, I must have had a certain presentiment of Lou? Or is it "coincidence"? Yes! Kind coincidence.

Part IV: Tautenburg and the Break with the Family, August-October

To Lou, August 4:

I wanted to live alone. But then the dear bird Lou flew by, and I took it for an eagle. And wanted to have the eagle about me. Do come, I am suffering too much for having made you suffer: we shall bear it better together.

To Gast, August 4:

One day a bird flew by me, and I, superstitious like all solitary people who stand at a turning of their way, believed I had seen an eagle. Now the whole world is at pains to prove to me I am mistaken -- and there is urbane European prattle about it. Who is better off now -- I, who as they say was 'fooled," who spent a whole summer in a lofty world of hope on account of this bird of omen, or those who are 'not to be fooled'?...Now I am 'a bit in the wilderness' and pass many a sleepless night. But no despondency! And that demon was, like everything that now crosses by path (or seems to), heroic-idyllic.”

To Lou: End of August:

I left Tautenburg one day after you, very proud at heart, in very good spirits-- why?

I have spoken very little with my sister, but enough to send the new ghost that had arisen back into the void from which it came.

In Naumburg the daemon of music came over me again -- I have composed a settling of your "Prayer to Life".

Lastly, my dear Lou, the old, deep, heartfelt pleas: become the being you are! First, one has the difficulty of emancipating oneself from this emancipation too! Each of us has to suffer, though in greatly differing ways, from the chain sickness, even after he has broken the chains.

In fond devotion to your destiny -- for in you I love also my hopes.

To Overbeck:

If you have read the "Sanctus Januarius" you will have remarked that I have crossed a tropic. Everything that lies before me is new, and it will not be long before I catch sight also of the terrifying face of my more distant life task. This long, rich summer was for me a testing time; I took my leave of it in the best of spirits and proud, for I felt that during this time at least the ugly rift between willing and accomplishment had been bridged. There were hard demands made on my humanity, and I have become equal to the hardest demands I have made on myself. The whole interim state between what was and what will be, I call 'in media vita'; and the daemon of music, which after long years visited me again, compelled me to express this in tones also.

But my most useful activity this summer was talking with Lou. There is a deep affinity between us in intellect and taste -- and there are in other ways so many differences that we are the most instructive objects and subjects of observation for each other. I have never met anyone who could derive so many objective insights from experience, who knows how to deduce so much from all she has learned. Yesterday Ree wrote to me, 'Lou has decidedly grown a few inches in Tautenburg" -- well, perhaps I have grown too. I would like to know if there has ever existed before such philosophical candor as there is between us. L. is now buried behind books and work; her greatest service to me so far is to have influenced Ree to revise his book on the basis of one of my main ideas.. Her health, I fear, will only last another six or seven years.

Tautenburg has given Lou an aim -- she left me a moving poem, "Prayer to Life."

Unfortunately, my sister has become a deadly enemy of Lou; she was morally outraged from start to finish, and now she claims to know what my philosophy is all about. She wrote to my mother: "In Tautenburg she saw my philosophy come to life and this terrified her: I love evil, but she loves good. If she were a good Catholic, she would go into a nunnery and do penance for all the harm that will come of it." In brief, I have the Naumburg "virtuousness" against me; there is a real break between us -- and even my mother at one point forgot herself so far as to say one thing which made me pack my bags and leave early the next day for Leipzig. My sister (who did not want to come to Naumburg as long as I was there and who is still in Tautenburg quotes ironically in this regard, "Thus began Zarathustra's Fall." In fact it is the beginning of a start.

To Elisabeth September:

...If only I could give you some idea of the cheerful self-confidence which inspired me this summer. Everything worked out well, often unexpectedly, just when I thought things had gone wrong. Lou is very content also (she's hard at work and knee-deep in books). What means a great deal to me is that she has converted Ree to a key conception of mind (as he himself reports); it's radically changing the foundations of his book. He wrote yesterday: "Lou has certainly grown a few inches in Tautenburg."

It distresses me to hear that you are still suffering from the after-effects of those scenes, which I'd so willingly have spared you. Look at it this way: the excitement brought out in the open what might otherwise have long remained buried, namely that Lou had a rather low opinion of me and mistrusted me somewhat; and when I reflect more carefully on the circumstances in which we met, she may have been quite justified (taking into account the effect of several careless remarks by friend Ree). But now she undoubtedly thinks better o me -- surely that's the main thing, isn't it, my dear sister?...

Perhaps I've already dwelt too long on this point. I thank you once more with all my heart for everything you did for me this summer; and I can perceive your sisterly benevolence just as clearly in those matters where we couldn't see eye to eye. Indeed, who can afford to have anything to do with such an antimoral philosopher! But two things are unconditionally forbidden me by my way of thought: (1) remorse, (2) moral indignation.

Be nice again, dear Lama!

To Ree, September 15?

My dear friend, it is my opinion that the two and the three of us are wise enough to be and stay good to one another. In this life, in which people like us so easily turn into frightening phantoms, let us be pleased and pleasant with one another, and be inventive in this -- I for my part have much to catch up on here, lone monster that I was....our dear Lou, my sister (as I have lost my natural sister, a preternatural one is due me).

To Lou September 16:

Your idea of reducing philosophical systems to the status of personal records of their authors is a veritable "twin brain" idea. In Basel I was teaching the history of ancient philosophy in just this sense, and liked to tell my students: "This system has been disproved and it is dead; but you cannot disprove the person behind it -- the person cannot be killed. Plato, for example.

...The course of my life is decided already...

Yesterday afternoon I was happy; the sky was blue, the air mild and clear, I was in the Rosenthal, lured there by the Carmen music. I sat there for three hours, drank my second glass of cognac this year, in memory of the first (ha! how horrible it tasted!), and wondered in all innocence and malice if I had any tendency to madness. In the end I said no. Then the Carmen music began, and I was submerged for half an hour in tears and heart beatings. But when you read this you will finally say yes! and write a note for the "Characterization of Myself."

Come to Leipzig soon, very soon! Why only on October 2? Adieu, my dear Lou.

September 26 to Lou:

How are your eyes? -- Maybe you should go swimming a bit every few days; we have two swimming pools here with a comfortable temperature.

...(he continues about music, putting Life-Prayer to music)

But what am I prattling about, my dear Lou, so much with the fountain pen! To be continued orally. And when?

Wishing you well from the heart

To Overbeck October:

...The renewal of my Genoese solitude might be dangerous. I confess that I would be extremely glad to tell you and your wife at length about this year's experiences -- there is much to tell and little to write.

Lou and Ree left recently -- first, to meet Ree's mother in Berlin; from there they go to Paris. Lou is in a miserable state of health; I now give her less time than I did last spring. We have our share of worry -- Ree is just the man for his task in this affair. For me personally, Lou is a real trouvaille; she has fulfilled all my expectations -- it is not possible for two people to be more closely related than we are.

As for Koselitz (or rather Herr "Peter Gast"), he is my second marvel of this year. Whereas Lou is uniquely ready for the till now almost undisclosed part of my philosophy, Koselitz is the musical justification of my whole new praxis and rebirth -- to put it altogether egoistically.

Part V: The End of the Trinity, November, December

To Overbeck, November 5:

For me personally, Lou is a real lucky find; she has fulfilled all of my expectations -- it would not easily be possible for two people to be more akin than we are."-- check this quote with above) and to Romundt, "Lou, fully absorbed in religious-historical studies is a little genius; to look on a little now and then and to help along is a joy to me.

To Overbeck early in November:

Perhaps I have never endured such melancholic hours as in the Leipzig autumn -- even though I have reason enough about me to be of good cheer.

To Lou November 8:

Two days ago I also wrote to your mother (pretty long at that).

I also sent two letters of inquiry to Paris. --

What melancholy!

I feel every stirring of the higher soul in you, I love nothing in you but these stirrings. I'll abstain from all familiarity and nearness, if only I can be sure of one thing: that we are united in that place which few coarse souls attain.

I'm speaking obscurely? Once I have trust, then you'll see that I have words too. Until now I've had to be silent.

Spirit? What is spirit to me? What is knowledge? I guess nothing but drives -- and I'd like to swear, that we have something in common. Look through the phase I've been in the last few years -- look behind it! Don't underestimate me -- You don't really believe, that the 'free spirit' is my ideal? I am --

Pardon, dearest Lou, be what you have to be.

To Lou, date?:

If I banish you from me now it is a frightful censure of your whole being...you have caused damage, you have done harm , not only to me but to all the people who have loved me. This sword hangs over you.

To Ree, End of November:

But my dear, dear friend. I thought you'd feel just the opposite and be secretly glad to be rid of me for a while! There were a hundred moments this year...when I felt that you are paying too high a price for our friendship. I've already had much too great a share of your Roman discovery (I mean Lou) -- and it seemed to me all along, especially in Leipzig, that you had a right to treat me a bit coldly.

Think as well as possible of me dearest friend, and please ask Lou to do the same. I'm deeply devoted to both of you -- and believe I've proved this more by my absence than by my presence.

Proximity makes one insatiable, and after all I'm a demanding person as it is.

We'll see each other again from time to time, won't we? Don't forget that as of this year I'm suddenly low on affection, and hence very much in need of it.

Write me in full detail about what concerns us most, -- what "has come between us" as you say.

To Lou, November 24:

Yesterday I wrote the enclosed letter to Ree: and just as I was going to bring it to the post office -- something occurred to me, and I ripped up the envelop. This letter, which concerns only you, would perhaps cause more difficulties for Ree than for you; to make it short, read it, and it is completely up to you whether Ree should read it. Take this as sign of trust my purist will to trust between us.

And now, Lou, dearest heart, clear the skies! I want nothing more than clear skies in all aspects; otherwise I'll have to fight my way through, no matter how hard it is. But a lonely one suffers terribly because of suspicion about a pair of people he loves -- especially when its a suspicion of a suspicion which they have against his whole being. Why has all cheerfulness been lacking until now in our speaking? Because I had to do violence to myself! The clouds on our horizon lay upon me.

Maybe you know how unbearable the desire to shame everything is to me, to accuse everything and to have to defend oneself. One does much wrong, unavoidably -- but one also has the opposite strength to do well, to find peace and joy.

From Binion, addition to this letter:

I want nothing but pure, clear sky, in every last corner of it. Otherwise I shall scrape through hard as this may prove -- but, being so lonesome, I suffer frightfully from any suspicion about the few people I love, especially when that suspicion concerns a suspicion against my whole being. Why has all serenity been wanting in our association so far? Because I had to do myself too much violence: the cloud on our horizon lay upon me! You perhaps know how unbearable all wanting to shame, all accusing and having to defend oneself, is to me. One does much wrong, inevitably -- but one has also the glorious counterpower of doing good, of creating peace and joy. I feel every stirring of the higher soul in you -- and love nothing about you but such stirring. I am glad to renounce all intimacy and nearness if only I may be sure that where we feel at one is just where common souls do not attain. Am I speaking darkly? Should I have the confidence, you will learn that I have the words too. So far I have always had to keep silence.

Affects are devouring me. Dreadful pity, dreadful disillusion, dreadful feeling of wounded pride -- how can I stand it any longer? Isn't pity a feeling out of hell? What should I do? Every morning I despair of lasting the day. I no longer sleep -- what good does eight hours' walking do? Where do I get these violent affects from ! Oh some ice! But where is there ice left for me? This evening I'll take opium till I lose my mind. Where is there a person left whom one could respect! But I know you all through and through.

To Lou Nov/Dec:

I have to write you a small, nasty letter. In the name of heaven, why do these 20 year old girls think who have pleasant feelings of love and have nothing better to do than to lay in bed here and there and be sick? Should one perhaps run after these little girls to chance boredom and flies away from them?? To accidentally spend a nice winter with them? Charming: but what do I have to do with nice winters? If I should have the honor of being of such service.

To Lou, November:

Do we want to grow angry with each other? Do we want to make a bigger noise? I don't at all, I wanted cheery skies between us. But you are a small gallows bird! And I used to think you were the embodiment of virtue and honorableness.

I didn't know until this year, how mistrustful I am. Namely, against myself. Dealing with others has ruined dealing with myself.

You wanted to ask me something more?

I like your voice the most when you beg. But one doesn't hear this often enough.

I will be deferential.

Oh, this melancholy! I'm writing nonsense. How abhorrent people seem to me today! Where is there a sea, in which one can really still drown. I mean a person.

Before the middle of December:

Whether I suffered a lot is nothing against the question, whether you will find yourself again, Dear Lou, or not-- I've never dealt with so poor a person as you are

unknowing -- but sharp-witted

rich in using out what's known

without taste, but naive in this shortcoming

honest and just in small matters, out of stubbornness

usually; on the larger scale, which affects the entire stance towards life, dishonest (sick as a result of too much work, etc.)

without any sensitivity for giving and taking

without spirit and incapable of love

in affect (not effect) always sick and near to madness

without thankfulness, without shame toward benefactors

unfaithful and in conversation leaving yourself at the mercy of others

incapable of the politeness of the heart

repelled against pureness and the purity of the soul

without shame always embarrassed in thought, against oneself

violent in particular

undependable

not well behaved

crude in things of honor

monstrous the negative (“?)

a brain with the first signs of a soul

character of a cat -- the predator clothed as a house pet

nobleness as reminiscence of familiarity with nobler people

a strong will, but without a large object

without diligence and purity

without bourgeois uprightness

cruelly displaced sensuality

overdue childish egoism as a result of sexual atrophy and delay

of enthusiasm capable

without love to people, but love to god

in need of expansion

crafty and full of self-restraint in reference to the sensuality of men.

To Lou, Before the middle of December:

Today I will only criticize you that you didn't warn me soon enough about yourself. In Lucerne I gave you my work on Schopenhauer -- I told you that my principles were contained in it and that I believed them to be yours as well. You should have read it then and said No! -- much would have been spared me! A poem much as 'On Pain" is on your lips a deep untruth. --

You see, I acted appositely: I wrote a letter about it to Mrs. O(verbeck) to ask her to give you information (which was certainly described by me ) about my character so that you don't expect anything from me that I can't fulfill.

I have a big heart for the difference between people. It is only unbearable to adore somebody because of traits which are the opposite of those he has.

Don't say anything dear Lou on your behalf: I've already allowed more to your behalf as you were able to -- indeed before myself and before others.

People such as yourself can only be bearable through the high goals of others.

How pale your humanity seems next to that of friend Ree. How poor you are in honor, thankfulness, piety, politeness, admiration -- shame -- in order to speak of higher things. What would you answer if I were to ask you: are you well-behaved? Are you unable to betray?

Do you have no feeling for the fact that when someone such as I is in your presence that it costs him much energy?

I could make it much easier for myself with you -- except when you beg?

Are you upright? Sensitive in relationship to giving and receiving?

To Lou, Middle of December:

I never doubted that you wouldn't someday cleanse yourself in a heavenly way from the dirt of those humiliating deeds.

Every other man would have turned away with disgust from such a girl: I too had it (WFN: check this phrase), but managed to overcome it over and over again to stay the truth: it disturbs me to see a nature capable of nobility in her perversion.

That gave me sympathy.

I lost that little truth that I had: my good name; the trust of a few people; I shall lose perhaps my friend R(ee) -- I lost the whole year due to the terrible tortures which have hold of me even now

In Germany I found nobody to help me and now it's as if I'm banned from Germany and what hurts me the most is -- my whole philosophy is exposed due to -- I don't have to be ashamed in front of myself for this thing: the strongest and most heartfelt feelings of this year I've had for Lou, and there was nothing in this love that belonged to the erotic. At the very most I could have made God jealous.

Strange! I thought that an angel was being sent to me in return, as I turned my attention once again to people and to life -- an angel who should soothe things in me that had become hard because of pain and loneliness, and above all an Angel of courage and hope for everything that I still have before me -- in the meantime it wasn't an angel.

Finally I don't want anything else to do with her. It was a completely useless waste of love and heart. And to say the truth: I'm rich enough for that.

To Lou, Middle of December (Draft):

If I should send you away from me now it would be a terrible grade for your whole being! You have dealt with one of the most patient and well-meaning of people... Write other letters to me. Concentrate on something better; concentrate on yourself!

I've never been wrong about somebody before: and in you is that drive to a holy self-addiction, which is against the drive to obedience -- You've mistaken this drive (through I don't know what kind of a curse) for its opposite...

If you give vent to everything wretched in your nature, who then can still deal with you!

You've inflicted damage, you've inflicted pain -- and not just you, but all other people who love me. This sword hangs over you.

You have in me the best advocate, but also the most merciless judge! I demand that you judge yourself and that you determine your own punishment.

These are all things that happen in order to overcome them -- in order to overcome one's self.

Yes, I was angry with you: but why single out this detail? I was angry with you all five days -- and believe me I've always had a good reason for that. But how could I be able to live among people now if I didn't know how to overcome my repugnance for so many people?

I am insulted not just by actions but much more by characteristics.

I had decided for myself back in Orta to reveal my whole philosophy to you. Oh, you have no idea what kind of a decision that was: I believed I couldn't make a better present to someone.

I tended back then to consider you a vision and manifestation of my earthly ideal. Please note: I have terrible eyesight.

I think that nobody can think better of you, but also not worse.

If I had created you, I certainly would have given you better health, but much more beyond that, which is far more worthy -- and perhaps a bit more love to me (although that has the absolute least importance) and it would have been the same with friend Ree -- neither with you nor with him can I speak even a single word about matters of my heart. I imagine, you don't know at all what I want? But this forced noiselessness is almost suffocating, because I am fond of people.

To Lou, Middle of December--Draft 2:

(On the whole I've never been wrong about somebody before).

I credited you with higher feelings than other people: that and that alone was what bound me to you so quickly. After everything that you had told me this confidence was allowed. I would only hurt you and accomplish nothing if I told you what I call my holy self-addiction. -- Strange! I would still believe more or less that you are capable of these higher and most rare feelings: some accident in your upbringing and development lames the good will for it intermittently. -- Think about it: this cat-like egoism that can't love anymore, this feeling of life in nothingness to which you proclaim yourself is exactly that which repels me in people: worse than something evil. (Things that one has in order to overcome them, in order to overcome one's self.) And if I understand you somehow: these are all tendencies that are capricious and were forced upon you -- in so far as they aren't symptoms of your illness (about which I have a lot of painful thoughts in the back of my mind).

In Orta I had decided to guide you step by step to the consequence of my philosophy -- You as the first person whom I held capable of it. Oh, you have no idea what a decision, what effort that cost me! I've always done a lot for my pupils: the thought of reward in any sense always insulted me. But what I wanted to do here, now, in regard to the increasingly bad state of my strength, that was beyond all former efforts. A prolonged structure and construction. I never thought of asking you first about your willingness: You weren't supposed to notice how you came to this task. I trusted those higher impulses which I believed you to have.

I thought of you as my heir.

As far as friend R(ee) is concerned: it was like very time (even after Genoa): I can't stand looking at this slow disintegration of an extraordinary nature without feeling ireful. This lack of a goal! and therefore the small desire for the means, for the work, this lack of diligence, even on scientific consciousness. -- I see everywhere mistakes in upbringing. A man should be raised to be in one sense or another a soldier. And woman to be in one sense or another the woman of a soldier.

Spiritus and portemonnaie. (spirits and wallets)

To Lou and Ree, Mid December:

My dears, Lou and Ree

Do not be upset by the outbreaks of my 'megalomania" or of my "injured vanity" -- and even if I should happen one day to take my life because of some passion or other, there would not be much to grieve about. What do my fantasies matter to you? (Even my truths mattered nothing to you till now.) Consider me, the two of you, as a semilunatic with a sore head who has been totally bewildered by long solitude.

To this, I think, sensible insight into the state of things I have come after taking a huge dose of opium -- in desperation. But instead of losing my reason as a result, I seem at last to have come to reason. Incidentally, I was really ill for several weeks; and if I tell you that I have had twenty days of Orta weather here, I need say no more.

Friend Ree, ask Lou to forgive me everything-- she will give me an opportunity to forgive her too. For till now I have not forgiven her.

It is harder to forgive one's friends than one's enemies.

Lou's "justification" occurs to me...

To Lou, Middle of December:

My dear Lou: don't write letters like that to me! What do I have to do with this wretchedness? Please note: I wish that you would raise yourself up before me so that I didn't have to despise you.

But Lou what kind of letters are you writing! Revenge-lustful schoolgirls write like that! What do I have to do with this pitifulness! Please understand: I want you to raise yourself up before me, not that you reduce yourself. How can I forgive you, if I don't first recognize that being in you again for which you could ever possibly be forgiven?

No, my dear Lou we are a long way still from 'forgiving'. I can't shake forgiveness out of my shirt-sleeves, after the offense had four month's time to work its way into me.

Good-bye, my dear Lou. I won't see you again. Protect your soul from such actions and make good to others and especially my friend Ree what you couldn't make good to me.

I didn't create the world and Lou: I wish I had -- then I would be able to bear all the guilt that things turned out between us the way they did.

Good-bye dear Lou. I didn't read your letter to its end, but I'd read too much already.

To Lou and Ree, December 20, approx:

Note: other translation of letter above....

I am in order to be a free spirit in the school of affects. That is the affects are devouring me. A horrible sympathy, a horrible disappointment, a horrible feeling of wounded pride -- how do I stand it? Isn't sympathy a feeling from Hell? What should I do? I despair every morning about how I'm to survive the day. I don't sleep anymore: 8 hours marching doesn't even help! Where do I these strong affects come from? Oh, for some ice. But where is there ice for me? Tonight I will take so much opium that I'll loose my senses. Where is there someone whom I could honor? But I know you all through and through.

Please don't get upset about the eruptions of my 'superiority complex' or my injured vanity. And if I should someday for some reason accidentally take my life, there wouldn't be much to mourn for there. Of what concern is my fantasizing to you, my you and Lou? Even my truths were of no concern to you until now). Go ahead and discuss between yourselves, that I'm in the end a mind-suffering half mad cannon that long loneliness drove completely crazy.

And then to the point, as I say, about my understanding glimpse in the situation of things after I'd taken - out of desperation -- a huge dose of opium. But instead of loosing my senses, they seem to finally come to me. By the way, I really was sick for weeks; and if I say, we had 20 weeks of Orta weather, I won't need to say anything else.

Friend Ree, please beg Lou to forgive me of everything -- shell give me a chance yet to forgive her. Because until now I've not forgiven her anything.

One forgive one's friends with more difficulty than one's enemies.

That reminds me of Lou's defense.

Strange! So long as someone defends themselves before me, it is always the case that I'm supposed to be wrong. I know this in advance, so it's no longer interesting to me.

Is Lou to be a misjudged angel? I'm used to it: this year everyone is upset about me, next year they'll rejoice because of me.

Kaufmann's version ends:

Should Lou be a misunderstood angel? Should I be a misunderstood ass?

in opio veritas

Long live wine and love!

To Ree, middle of December:

Dear friend, I call Lou my living sirocco: not for a single moment with her together have I had the clear sky that I need with and without people. She unites in herself all the human qualities that repel me -- disgusting and horrible -- They don't set well with me -- and now since Tautenburg I've taken on the torture to love her! a love on whose account no one need be jealous -- at the very least the Lord above.

This is thus always a problem for the thousand faceted artist of self-overcoming. R(hode) called me that recently.

On Christmas eve, Nietzsche returned a letter from his mother unopened.

To Ree Middle of December:

I don't understand anymore, D(ear) F(riend), how can you stand being in the presence of such a being! For heaven's sake, pure air, and mutual highest respect! Otherwise...

To Ree, Last week of December:

I'm writing this in the clearest weather: please don't mistake my reason for the nonsense in my recent opium letter. I'm not crazy and I don't suffer from a superiority complex. But I should have friends who would warn me in time about such desperate things like those from summer.

Who could have guessed, that her words heroism 'fighting for a principle', her poem "On Pain", her stories about fighting for knowledge are just deceit? (Her mother wrote me in summer: L(ou) had the greatest thinkable freedom).

Or is it different? The Lou in Orta was a different being from the one that I later found again. A being without ideals, without goals, without duties, without shame. And on the lowest level of humanity, despite her good head.

You told me yourself, she had no morals -- and I said, she had a more stringent one for me than anyone else did! and she brought something more than daily and hourly to sacrifice.

In the mean time I see that she's only out for amusement and entertainment: and whenever I think, that questions of morality belong to that, then I'm taken over by -- to put it mildly -- outrage. It didn't set well with her at all, that I forbid her the word 'heroism of knowledge' -- but she should been honest and said: 'I'm legions away from that.' Heroism has to do with sacrifice and duty by the day and hour, and after that much more: the whole soul has to be of one thing, and life and happiness just as much against it. I thought Lou was such a person.

Please listen, friend, to how I see things now! She is a complete disaster -- and I am its victim. In spring I thought, a person had been found who was able to help me: for which not a good intellect but a first class morality is necessary. Instead we discovered a being, which wants to amuse itself and is shameless enough to believe, that the highest spiritus on earth are just good enough for that.

The result of my mistake is for me, that I have less than before the means of finding such a person, and that my soul, which was free, is now burdened with a weight of disgusting memories. For the whole dignity of my life's purpose has been placed in question by a superficial and unmoral, thoughtless and spiritless being like Lou, and that my name --my reputation is spotted. (check this line)

I believed you had convinced her to come to my aid.

To Overbeck December 25:

This last morsel of life was the hardest I have yet to chew, and it is still possible that I shall choke on it. I have suffered from the humiliating and tormenting memories of this summer as from a bout of madness -- what I indicated in Basel and in my last letter concealed the most essential thing. It involves a tension between opposing passions which I cannot cope with. This is to say, I am exerting every ounce of my self-mastery; but I have lived in solitude too long and fed too long off my "own fat," so that I am now being broken, as no other man could be, on the wheel of my own passions. If only I could sleep! -- but the strongest doses of my sedative help me as little as my six to eight hours of daily walking.

Unless I discover the alchemical trick of turning this -- muck into gold, I am lost. Here I have the most splendid chance to prove that for me "all experiences are useful, all days holy and all people divine"!!!

All people divine.

My lack of confidence is now immense -- everything I hear makes me feel that people despise me. For example, a recent letter from Rohde. I could swear that if we had not happened to have earlier friendly relations, he would now pronounce the most contemptuous judgments on me and my aims.

Yesterday I also broke off all correspondence with my mother; I could not stand it any more, and it would have been better if I had not stood it for as long as I have. Meanwhile how far the hostile judgments of my relatives have been spread abroad and are ruining my reputation -- well, I would still rather know than suffer this uncertainty.

My relation with Lou is in the last agonizing throes -- at least that is what I think today. Later -- if there will be any "later" -- I shall say something about that too. Pity, my dear friend, is a kind of hell -- whatever the Schopenhaurians may say.

From Kaufmann, this ending to the Dec. 25th letter:

“I am not asking you "what am I to do?" A few times I thought of renting a small room in Basel, visiting you now and then, and attending lectures. A few times I also thought of the opposite: driving my solitude and renunciation to its ultimate point and --

Well, let that be. Dear friend, you with your worthy and wise wife -- you are almost the last foothold I have left. Strange!

May you two fare well.

VI: Zarathustra -- 1883

I had the best intentions of remaking her in the image I had formed of her.

To ? February 1883:

I won't conceal it from you: I'm in a bad way. Darkness has closed in on me again...For a short time I was completely in my element, basking in my light. And now it's over. I believe I'm surely done for unless something (I have no idea what) happens. Like somebody hauling me out of Europe. I see myself now -- me with my physiological turn of mind -- as the victim of an atmospheric disturbance to which all Europe lies exposed. How can I help it if I have an extra sense, and therefore a new and terrible source of suffering? Just to think of it like that eases things...Everything I've hinted at in my letters is only peripheral. I have such a horrible bag of painful, horrible memories to carry!

Thus I haven't been able to forget, even for an hour, that my mother called me a disgrace to the grave of my father.

To Gast, February 1883:

The incredible burden of the weather (even old Etna is beginning to belch) transformed itself into thoughts and feelings of frightful intensity. And out of my sudden release from this burden, in the wake of ten absolutely bright and bracing January days, Zarathustra was born, the most emancipated of my offspring. Teubner has already started printing. I did the transcribing myself. -- Schmeitzzner reports that during the past year all my books have sold better, and there are many other signs of growing interest.

Forgive me for this babbling; you know what else is on my mind and in my heart just now. For several days I was violently ill... I'm better now, and I even think that Wagner's death is the most substantial relief I could have been granted. It was hard having to be, for six years, the opponent of the man I had respected most...Last summer I found that he had taken away from me everyone at all worth influencing in Germany and had begun drawing them into the muddled, desertlike malignancy of his old age....

To Overbeck Feb 9?:

I am very ill...No! this life! And I am the advocate of life!!..Nothing helps me; I must help myself or I am done for.

To Overbeck, Feb 9?:

I think I shall inevitably go to ruin unless something happens, I have no idea what .... I have such a manifold burden of torturesome and hideous memories to bear. Thus for example it has not left my mind for one hour that my mother called me a shame on my father's grave. Other examples I shall keep to myself -- but a pistol barrel is to me now a source of relatively pleasant thoughts.

To Gast, February 19, 1883, Rapello, Mids version of above letter:

Next paragraph:

As for your remarks about Lou, they gave me a good laugh. Do you think then that my taste in this differs from yours? No, absolutely not! But in this case it has little to do with "charming or not charming"; the question was whether a human being of real stature should perish or not.

To Overbeck, early March:

My severance from my family is beginning to appear to me as a true blessing; oh, if you only knew all I have had to overcome on this score (since my birth)! I do not like my mother, and hearing my sister's voice upsets me; I have always fallen ill when together with them.

To Overbeck March 22?:

At the very base, immovable black melancholy....I no longer see any point at all (check underline here) to living even another half year, everything is full, painful degoutant. I forego and suffer too much....I shall do nothing good any more, so why do anything!

To Gast April 6, Genoa:

...But I am a soldier -- and this soldier, in the end, did become the father of Zarathustra! This paternity was his hope; I think that you will now sense the meaning of the verse addressing Sactus Januarius: "You who with the flaming spear split the ice of my soul and make it thunder down now to the sea of its highest hope."

To Gast April, (about Wagner):

At that time (1869) we loved one another and wanted the world for each other -- it was really a deep love, without mental reservations.

To Gast, April 21, 1883

In view of the possible danger of giving you a moment of nausea and under orders that you burn this letter immediately, I will justify myself for the use of the word "contempt" which you find so strong and incredible. I have never let myself be guided by the opinions of others but I am lacking in the disdain for human beings and the fortunate dowry of a thick skin -- and therefore I have to admit that at all times of my life I have suffered greatly regarding the opinion that others have of me. You must consider that I come from a family circle which has disapproved of and rejected my development; it was only as a consequence of this that my mother just a year ago called me "an affront to the family" and "a shame to my father's grave." My sister wrote to me at one time that if she were a Catholic she would go into a cloister to redeem the wrongs that I have created through my thinking. Yes, she has announced open hostility to me up to a point where I will have to turn around and make every effort to become a "good and true human being". Both of them consider me a "cold hearted egoist", Lou also had this opinion until she got to know me better, that I was a "mean and low character always ready to exploit others for my own ends." Cosima talked about me as a spy who would worm himself into the trust of others and then escape when he has gotten what he wants. Wagner is rich in evil thoughts; but what do you think of the fact that he has exchanged letters regarding this (even with my doctors) to express his conviction that my changed way of thinking is the result of my unnatural aberrations, hinting at pederasty -- My new writings are interpreted in Universities as evidence of my "decline"; one has heard too much about my illness. But that hurts me less than when me friend Rohde feels them to be "cold-comfortable" and probably "very advantageous to my health." -- Lastly: only now, after the publication of Zarathustra, will the worst come because I have with my "holy book" challenged all religions -- Ree has always had a very touching modesty towards me, this I will very plainly confess to you.

Out of the World into the Forest! That's the end of it!"

Very Truly Yours,

To Gast? Summer, 1883, Sils Maria (Mid)

My relatives and I -- we are too different. The precaution I took against receiving any letters from them last winter cannot be maintained any more (I am not hard enough for that). But every contemptuous word that is written against Ree or Frl. Salome makes my heart bleed; it seems I am not made to be anyone's enemy (whereas my sister recently wrote that I should be in good spirits, that this was a 'brisk and jolly war").

To Overbeck, July 1883

Things are moving again. My sister wants her revenge on this Russian-- well and good, only so far I have been the victim of her every initiative. She does not even notice bloodshed and the most brutal possibilities hardly an inch off.

To Overbeck, July 27, 1883

The separation from you threw me back into the deepest melancholy, and the whole return trip I was lost to evil black sentiments, including true hate for my sister, who for one year now has deprived me of all self-control with ill-timed silence and ill-timed talk: so that I have wound up a prey to pitiless vengefulness, whereas my innermost way of thinking precisely rejects all avenging and punishing: -- this conflict in me is driving me step by step to madness.

To Ida Overbeck, July 29, 1883

I have gone through hellish days and nights on account of something first learned by me three weeks ago. And do not worry about my false footing with my sister; the truth is that all my footings so far with everyone have been false: she was at least as much affronted as I was, with good right too, and if now she means to work it out for Lou to be sent back to Russia, she will be doing more good if she succeeds that I with my asceticism. She was too considerate of me last year, so that the most incriminating facts of this matter, which she kept back from me in Tautenburg, became known to me only three weeks ago...Of a sudden Dr. Ree steps into the foreground: to have to relearn about someone with whom I shared loved and trust for years if frightful.

To Gast? August 1883 ?:

A couple of days after August 26th letter to Gast: (WFN check exact date in Podach)

Dear friend, the parting from you threw me back into the deepest melancholy, and during the whole of my return journey, I could not shake off my black and evil feelings, one of which was a veritable hatred of my sister, who, by being silent at the wrong moment and by talking at the wrong moment throughout the whole year, has deprived me of the fruits of the best victories I have won over myself, so that I have, in the end, become the victim of a ruthlessly revengeful sentiment, although my innermost mind has foresworn revenge and punishment. This inner conflict is bringing me step by step nearer madness (could you, perhaps, do something drastic to make my sister appreciate this point?) and I feel it in the most terrible manner. Nor do I know how a journal to Naumburg would diminish the danger. On the contrary, horrible moments might ensue, and my long-nourished hatred might emerge in speech and action. And in that case, I, far more than the others, would be the victim. Even now it is inadvisable for me to write anything to my sister, except letters that are quite harmless (one of the last I sent her was full of cheery verses). Perhaps my reconciliation with her was the most fatal step in the whole affair -- I now realize that it led her to believe that it gave her a right to be revenged on Fraulein Salome.[i][ii]

To Gast August 26, 1883

For a year I have been incited to emotions of a kind I have abjured with the best will. I really think I have mastered them, at least in their grosser aspects of vengefulness and resentment.

To Malwida August, 1883, Sils Maria, Engadin (Mid)

According to everything I have heard now -- ah much too late! -- these two people Ree and Lou are not worthy to lick my boots. Excuse this all too manly metaphor! It is a protracted misfortune that the R., a thorough liar and crawling slanderer should have ever crossed my path. And for how long have I been patient and sympathetic with him! "He is a poor fellow, and one must drive him on" -- how often have I told myself this whenever his impoverished and dishonest manner of thinking and living have disgusted me! I am not forgetting the annoyance I felt in 1876 when I heard that he would be coming with you to Sorrento. And this annoyance returned two years later -- I was here in Sils Maria, and my sister's announcement that he would be coming made me ill. One ought to trust one's instincts more, even the instincts of revulsion. But Schopenhauer's 'pity" has always been the main cause of trouble in my life -- and therefore I have every reason to be well disposed toward moralities which attributes a few other motives to morality and do not try to reduce our whole human effectiveness to 'fellow feelings."...one has to keep a nice tight rein on one's sympathy, and treat anything that goes against our ideal (for instance, such low characters as L. and R.) as enemies.

To Lou's mother

I will not say what pains I took to sustain even the last vestige of that image and how much I have had to forget even the last vestige of that image and how much I have had to forget and even forgive in this. Still less do I mean to tell you, her mother, what an image was left to me in the end.

To Elisabeth:

"After sending off his letter to Georg Ree" (check date and enter this letter, Rudy gives no date for this one....)

Your brother is really quite unhappy. No, I am not made for enmity and hate: and since this matter has gone too far for a reconciliation with those two to be possible any more, I no longer know how to live; it is on my mind continually. Enmity is incompatible with my whole philosophy and way of thinking: to have entered the lists of the hostile (and against such poor folk) drags down my every aspiration. Never before did I hate anyone -- not even Wagner, whose perfidy went well beyond Lou's. For the first time I felt humbled.

To Ida Overbeck:

Page 108, Rudy does not give a date to this lovely letter to Ida:

..one more word on Miss Salome. Quite apart from the idealistic light in which she had been presented to me...she is and remains for me a being of the first rank, about whom it is a pity forever. Given her energy of will and originality of mind, she was headed for something great; given her practical morality, though, she may well belong rather in a penitentiary or madhouse. I miss her, for all her bad qualities: we were disparate enough for something useful to have been always sure to come out of our talks; I have found no one so unprejudiced, so clever, so well prepared for my sort of problems. I have felt ever since as if condemned to silence or humane hypocrisy in my dealings with everyone.

To his mother, Feb 1884, draft

Whatever may be said against the girl -- and surely much more than my sister says -- the fact remains that I have found no more gifted, more reflective creature. And though we never agreed (any more than did Ree and I), after every half hour together we were both happy over the lot we had learned. And I did not score my highest achievement these past twelve months without cause. We were warned about each other amply: and little as we loved each other, just as little did we need to give up a relationship in the highest sense useful to us and the world...That the two behaved vilely toward me is true, but I had forgiven them, as I had forgiven my sister worse.

To Malwida, Venice between Apr. 21- June 12,84:

It is essential that she (Elisabeth) should leave for Paraguay as soon as possible. Later,, very much later, she will come to realize how much her ceaseless filthy suspicions about my character (it has been going on for two years!) have damaged the most decisive period in my life. Ultimately there remains for me the very uncomfortable task of righting the wrong that my sister has done Dr. Ree and Frl. Salome (soon Frl. Salome's first book will be appearing -- on 'religious emotion" -- the very theme for which I discovered in Tautenburg her extraordinary talent and experience; it gladdens me that my effects at that time should not have been entirely waster). My sister reduces a rich and original creature like her to 'lies and sensuality" -- she sees in Dr. Ree and Frl. Salome nothing but two "rotters"; it is of course against this that my sense of justice revolts, whatever good reasons I may have for thinking that the two of them have deeply offended me. It was very instructive for me that my sister, in the end, brought just the same blind suspicious to bear on me as on Frl. Salome; only then did I realize that all the bad qualities which I had ascribed to Frl. S. went back to that squabble which occurred before I knew Frl. S. more closely--how much my sister much have misunderstood and added to what she heard then! She has no understanding of human beings at all -- heaven forbid that one of Dr. Forster's enemies should ever get into a discussion with her about him!

Once more asking your forgiveness for bringing up this old story again! I wanted only to prevent you from having your own feelings influenced by that horrible letter which I wrote you last summer. Extraordinary people like Frl. Salome deserve, especially when they are as young as she, to be treated with every consideration and sympathy. And even if I myself for whatever reasons, and unable to wish for any new approach toward closer relations from her side, I shall nevertheless disregard all personal considerations in the event of her position becoming difficult and desperate. Above letter, Rudy dates Early May, 1884, his translation:

I am chafing over that inhumane letter I sent you last summer; I had been made downright sick by unspeakably repulsive goading. Since then the situation has changed in that I have broken with my sister radically,: for heaven's sake do not think of mediating and conciliating: between a vengeful anti-Semitic goose and me, conciliation is impossible....Later, much later, she will come to see by herself how much she has harmed me with her continual dirty insinuations against my character those two ears -- in the most decisive epoch of my life. Now there remains for me the very touchy task of making good in some measure with Fr. Ree and Miss Salome what my sister (!) has made ill....My sister reduces such a rich and original creature (as Lou) to lies and sensuality,' sees no more in Dr. Ree and her than 'two duds.' Against this my sense of justice now revolts, though I may have good ground for considering myself to have been insulted by both. It was most instructive of my sister to have cast suspicion on me of late just as blindly as on Miss Salome: I then first realized that everything bad believed by me about Miss Salome goes back to that squabble that preceded our closer acquaintance: how much my sister may have heard wrong or imagined! She lacks any and all knowledge of people...Extraordinary people like Miss Salome deserve, especially when so young, all consideration and sympathy. And even if I, for various reasons am in no position yet to hope for a new contact between us, I do mean to disregard all personal considerations on my side should her situation shape up ill and grow desperate.

To Elisabeth, Mid-May 1885:

I am much too proud as ever to believe that any person could love me, namely this requires the precondition that a person knows who I am.

When I have shown you great rage, it is because you forced me to relinquish the last human beings (Lou and Ree) with whom I could speak without Tartuffery. Now -- I am alone. With them, I had been able to converse without a mask about things which interested me...

To Elisabeth Mid-May, 1885

I am much too proud as ever to believe that any person could love me, namely this requires the precondition that a person knows who I am.

Hide this letter from our mother...

To von Stein, October 15, 1885

Yesterday I saw Ree's book about conscience -- how empty, how boring, how false![1] One really out to speak only of things which are the stuff of one's experience.

I felt very differently about the seminovel by his soeur inseparable Salome, whom I could at once jokingly picture. Every formal aspect of it is girlish, soft, and -- in the pretense that an old man is supposed to be telling the story -- downright comic. But the matter itself has its serious side and its loftiness; and even if it is certainly not the eternal feminine which draws the girl on, then it is perhaps the eternal masculine.”

Hide this letter from our mother...

To Malwida quoted in Elisabeth:

This girl is now united to me by a bond of firm friendship....it is a long time since I made so great an acquisition. Really, I am extremely grateful to you and Ree for your agency in the matter. This year, which in many respects marks a crisis in my life...has been made much happier through the charm and brilliance of this youthful and truly heroic soul. In her I look for a disciple, and, if I am destined not to live much longer, an heir who will carry on my work.

To Ree, quoted by Elisabeth:

I'll tell you now my present view of the case. It is a complete disaster -- and I am the victim. In the spring I thought I had found a person capable of helping me; which requires, indeed, not only a lofty intellect but a morality of the first order. Instead of this, we have discovered a creature who merely wants to amuse herself, and is shameless enough to imagine that the greatest geniuses on earth are fit objects for her sport."

To Georg Ree, quoted by Elisabeth:

"Now, however, I learn that for all the odious slanders uttered against me and my sister by Fraulein S. your brother is entirely to blame; in fact, that this young lady was merely the mouthpiece of his ideas.

...I should very much like to give you a lesson in practical morality with the help of a few bullets."

Nietzsche summarizes for Elisabeth a passage from a letter to Ida Overbeck:

If she (Elisabeth) succeeds in getting L. sent back to Russia, she will do more good than I can do with all my asceticism.

Ree has deceived me shamefully in every respect, but above all with regard to Lou."

To Elisabeth, Sept 2, 1883:

So the whole affair fades away to nothing, and all my tragic attitudes now seem a trifle ridiculous... When the Lama shows her merry face, all the ghosts of the night and other evil spirits that seek to part us take to flight."

Also from Rudy, Frau Lou, page 128: "pathetically, incomprehensibly 'senile'".