20
Having a ‘Christian’ perspective on difficulty is not limited to members of the Christian church; it is for Nietzsche a permanent psychological possibility. We all become Christians when we profess indifference to what we secretly long for but do not have; when we blithely say that we do not need love or a position in the world, money or success, creativity or health – while the corners of our mouths twitch with bitterness; and we wage silent wars against what we have publicly renounced, firing shots over the parapet, sniping from the trees.
How would Nietzsche have preferred us to approach our setbacks? To continue to believe in what we wish for, even when we do not have it, and may never. Put another way, to resist the temptation to denigrate and declare evil certain goods because they have proved hard to secure – a pattern of behaviour of which Nietzsche’s own, infinitely tragic life offers us perhaps the best model.
21
Epicurus had from an early age been among his favourite ancient philosophers; he called him ‘the soul-soother of later antiquity’, ‘one of the greatest men, the inventor of an heroic-idyllic mode of philosophizing’. What especially appealed to him was Epicurus’s idea that happiness involved a life among friends. But he was rarely to know the contentment of community: ‘It is our lot to be intellectual hermits and occasionally to have a conversation with someone like-minded.’ At thirty, he composed a hymn to loneliness, ‘Hymnus auf die Einsamkeit’, which he did not have the heart to finish.
The search for a wife was no less sorrowful, the problem partly caused by Nietzsche’s appearance – his extraordinarily large walrus moustache – and his shyness, which bred the gauche stiff manner of a retired colonel. In the spring of 1876, on a trip to Geneva, Nietzsche fell in love with a twenty-three-year-old, green-eyed blonde, Mathilde Trampedach. During a conversation on the poetry of Henry Longfellow, Nietzsche mentioned that he had never come across a German version of Longfellow’s ‘Excelsior’. Mathilde said she had one at home and offered to copy it out for him. Encouraged, Nietzsche invited her out for a walk. She brought her landlady as a chaperone. A few days later, he offered to play the piano for her, and the next she heard from the thirty-one-year-old Professor of Classical Philology at Basle University was a request for marriage. ‘Do you not think that together each of us will be better and more free than either of us could be alone – and so excelsior?’ asked the playful colonel. ‘Will you dare to come with me … on all the paths of living and thinking?’ Mathilde didn’t dare.
A succession of similar rejections took their toll. In the light of his depression and ill health, Richard Wagner decided that there were two possible remedies: ‘He must either marry or write an opera.’ But Nietzsche couldn’t write an opera, and apparently lacked the talent to produce even a decent tune. (In July 1872, he sent the conductor Hans von Bülow a piano duet he had written, asking for an honest appraisal. It was, replied von Bülow, ‘the most extreme fantastical extravagance, the most irritating and anti-musical set of notes on manuscript paper I have seen for a long time’, and he wondered whether Nietzsche might have been pulling his leg. ‘You designated your music as “frightful” – it truly is.’)
Wagner grew more insistent. ‘For Heaven’s sake, marry a rich woman!’ he intoned, and entered into communication with Nietzsche’s doctor, Otto Eiser, with whom he speculated that the philosopher’s ill health was caused by excessive masturbation. It was an irony lost on Wagner that the one rich woman with whom Nietzsche was truly in love was Wagner’s own wife, Cosima. For years, he carefully disguised his feelings for her under the cloak of friendly solicitude. It was only once he had lost his reason that the reality emerged. ‘Ariadne, I love you,’ wrote Nietzsche, or, as he signed himself, Dionysus, in a postcard sent to Cosima from Turin at the beginning of January 1889.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche intermittently agreed with the Wagnerian thesis on the importance of marriage. In a letter to his married friend Franz Overbeck, he complained, ‘Thanks to your wife, things are a hundred times better for you than for me. You have a nest together. I have, at best, a cave … Occasional contact with people is like a holiday, a redemption from “me”.’
In 1882, he hoped once more that he had found a suitable wife, Lou Andreas-Salomé, his greatest, most painful love. She was twenty-one, beautiful, clever, flirtatious and fascinated by his philosophy. Nietzsche was defenceless. ‘I want to be lonely no longer, but to learn again to be a human being. Ah, here I have practically everything to learn!’ he told her. They spent two weeks together in the Tautenburg forest and in Lucerne posed with their mutual friend Paul Rée for an unusual photograph.
(Ill. 22.27)
But Lou was more interested in Nietzsche as a philosopher than as a husband. The rejection threw him into renewed prolonged, violent depression. ‘My lack of confidence is now immense,’ he told Overbeck, ‘everything I hear makes me think that people despise me.’ He felt particular bitterness towards his mother and sister, who had meddled in the relationship with Lou, and now broke off contact with them, deepening his isolation. (‘I do not like my mother, and it is painful for me to hear my sister’s voice. I always became ill when I was with them.’)
There were professional difficulties, too. None of his books sold more than 2,000 copies in his sane life-time; most sold a few hundred. With only a modest pension and some shares inherited from an aunt on which to survive, the author could rarely pay for new clothes, and ended up looking, in his words, ‘scraped like a mountain sheep’. In hotels, he stayed in the cheapest rooms, often fell into arrears with the rent and could afford neither heating nor the hams and sausages he loved.
His health was as problematic. From his schooldays, he had suffered from a range of ailments: headaches, indigestion, vomiting, dizziness, near blindness and insomnia, many of these the symptoms of the syphilis he had almost certainly contracted in a Cologne brothel in February 1865 (though Nietzsche claimed he had come away without touching anything except a piano). In a letter to Malwida von Meysenbug written three years after his trip to Sorrento, he explained, ‘As regards torment and self-denial, my life during these past years can match that of any ascetic of any time …’ And to his doctor he reported, ‘Constant pain, a feeling of being half-paralysed, a condition closely related to seasickness, during which I find it difficult to speak – this feeling lasts several hours a day. For my diversion I have raging seizures (the most recent one forced me to vomit for three days and three nights; I thirsted after death). Can’t read! Only seldom can I write! Can’t deal with my fellows! Can’t listen to music!’
Finally, at the beginning of January 1889, Nietzsche broke down in Turin’s Piazza Carlo Alberto and embraced a horse, was carried back to his boarding-house, where he thought of shooting the Kaiser, planned a war against anti-Semites, and grew certain that he was – depending on the hour – Dionysus, Jesus, God, Napoleon, the King of Italy, Buddha, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Voltaire, Alexander Herzen and Richard Wagner; before he was bundled into a train and taken to an asylum in Germany to be looked after by his elderly mother and sister until his death eleven years later at the age of fifty-five.
22
And yet through appalling loneliness, obscurity, poverty and ill health, Nietzsche did not manifest the behaviour of which he had accused Christians; he did not take against friendship, he did not attack eminence, wealth, or well-being. The Abbé Galiani and Goethe remained heroes. Though Mathilde had wished for no more than a conversation about poetry, he continued to believe that ‘for the male sickness of self-contempt the surest cure is to be loved by a clever woman.’ Though sickly and lacking Montaigne or Stendhal’s dexterity on a horse, he remained attached to the idea of an active life: ‘Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book – I call that vicious!’
He fought hard to be happy, but where he did not succeed he did not turn against what he had once aspired to. He remained committed to what was in his eyes the most im
portant characteristic of a noble human being: to be someone who ‘no longer denies’.
23
After seven hours of walking, much of it in the rain, it was in a state of extreme exhaustion that I reached the summit of Piz Corvatsch, high above the clouds that decked the Engadine valleys below. In my rucksack I carried a water-bottle, an Emmental sandwich and an envelope from the Hotel Edelweiss in Sils-Maria on which I had that morning written a quote from the mountain philosopher, with the intention of facing Italy and reading it to the wind and the rocks at 3,400 metres.
Like his pastor father, Nietzsche had been committed to the task of consolation. Like his father, he had wished to offer us paths to fulfilment. But unlike pastors, and dentists who pull out throbbing teeth and gardeners who destroy plants with ill-favoured roots, he had judged difficulties to be a critical prerequisite of fulfilment, and hence knew saccharine consolations to be ultimately more cruel than helpful:
The worst sickness of men has originated in the way they have combated their sicknesses. What seemed a cure has in the long run produced something worse than what it was supposed to overcome. The means which worked immediately, anaesthetizing and intoxicating,
the so-called consolations
, were ignorantly supposed to be actual cures. The fact was not noticed … that these instantaneous alleviations often had to be paid for with a general and profound worsening of the complaint.
Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad.
To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something that must be abolished, is the [supreme idiocy], in a general sense a real disaster in its consequences … almost as stupid as the will to abolish bad weather. (Ill. 22.28)
Notes
Acknowledgements
Copyright Acknowledgements
Picture Acknowledgements
Notes
Consolation for Unpopularity
Aside from a mention of Aristophanes and quotations from Plato’s Phaedo, the portrait of Socrates is drawn from Plato’s early and middle dialogues (the so-called Socratic dialogues): Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Meno, Protagoras and Republic, book I
Quotations taken from:
The Last Days of Socrates
, Plato, translated by Hugh Tredennick, Penguin, 1987
Early Socratic Dialogues
, Plato, translated by Iain Lane, Penguin, 1987
Protagoras and Meno
, Plato, translated by W. K. C. Guthrie, Penguin, 1987
Gorgias
, Plato, translated by Robin Waterfield, OUP, 1994.
1 So … deaths: Apology, 29d
2 Whenever … angle: Laches, 188a
3 Let’s … courageous: Laches, 190e–191a
4 At … battle: Laches, 191c
5 By … inescapable: Meno, 78c–79a
6 I … cities: Apology, 36b
7 I … well-being: Apology, 36d
8 I … fellow-citizen: Apology, 29d
9 I … narrow: Apology, 36a
10 If … choose: Gorgias, 472a-b
11 The … him: Gorgias, 471e–472a
12 When … public: Crito, 47b
13 Don’t … say: Crito, 47a–48a
14 I … time: Apology, 37a–b
15 If … sleeping: Apology, 30d–31a
16 In … off: Phaedo, 116c–d
17 When … himself: Phaedo, 117a-d
18 What … friends!: Phaedo, 117d
19 And … man: Phaedo, 118a
Consolation for Not Having Enough Money
Quotations taken from:
The Essential Epicurus
, Epicurus, translated by Eugene O’Connor, Prometheus Books, 1993
The Epicurean Inscription
, Diogenes of Oinoanda, translated by Martin Ferguson Smith, Bibliopolis, 1993
On the Nature of the Universe
, Lucretius, translated by R. E. Latham, revised by John Godwin, Penguin, 1994
1 If … forms: Fragments, VI.10
2 Pleasure … life: Letter to Menoeceus, 128
3 The … this: Fragments, 59
4 The … happiness: Letter to Menoeceus, 122
5 A … malady: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, III.1070
6 Just … mind: Fragments, 54
7 Send … like: Fragments, 39
8 Of … friendship: Principal Doctrines, 27
9 Before … wolf: quoted in Seneca, Epistle, XIX.10
10 We … politics: Vatican Sayings, 58
11 The … pleasant: Letter to Menoeceus, 126
12 What … anticipation: Letter to Menoeceus, 124–5
13 There … living: Letter to Menoeceus, 125
14 Of … necessary: Principal Doctrines, 29
15 Plain … away: Letter to Menoeceus, 130
16 As … without: Porphyry reporting Epicurus’s view in On Abstinence, 1.51.6–52.1
17 Nothing … little: Fragments, 69
18 The … accomplished?: Vatican Sayings, 71
19 The … joy: Vatican Sayings, 81
20 idle opinions: Principal Doctrines, 29
21 Luxurious … flesh: Diogenes of Oinoanda, Fragment 109
22 One … overflowing: Diogenes of Oinoanda, Fragment 108
23 Real … science: Diogenes of Oinoanda, Fragment 2
24 Having … salvation: Diogenes of Oinoanda, Fragment 3 (adapted)
25 chosen … senses: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, V.1133–4
26 send … like: Fragments, 39
27 ergo … herbas: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II.20–33
28 When … poverty: Vatican Sayings, 25
29 Mankind … seas: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, V.1430–5
30 It … good: Letter to Menoeceus, 129
Consolation for Frustration
Quotations taken from:
The Annals of Imperial Rome
, Tacitus, translated by Michael Grant, Penguin, 1996
The Twelve Caesars
, Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves, Penguin, 1991
Dialogues and Letters
, Seneca, translated by C. D. N. Costa, Penguin, 1997
Letters from a Stoic
, Seneca, translated by Robin Campbell, Penguin, 1969
Moral Essays
, volume 1, Seneca, translated by John W. Basore, Loeb-Harvard, 1994
Moral Essays
, volume 11, Seneca, translated by John W. Basore, Loeb-Harvard, 1996
Moral and Political Essays
, Seneca, translated by John M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé, CUP, 1995
Naturales Quaestiones
1 & 11, Seneca, translated by T. H. Corcoran, Loeb-Harvard, 1972
1 Where … tutor: Tacitus, XV.62
2 I … end: Tacitus, XV.63
3 He … undisturbed: Epistulae Morales, CIV.28–9
4 the Monster: Suetonius, Caligula, IV.22
5 on … neck!: Suetonius, Caligula, IV.30
6 I … it: Epistulae Morales, LXXVIII.3
7 There … vices: De Ira, II.36.5–6
8 Prosperity … tempers: De Ira, II.21.7
9 What … columns?: De Ira, I.19.4
10 Why … servant?: De Ira, II.25.3
11 Why … talking?: De Ira, III.35.2
12 Is … misbehave?: De Ira, II.31.4
13 There … dare: Epistulae Morales, XCI.15
14 Nothing … happen: Epistulae Morales, XCI.4
15 What … Fortune: De Consolatione ad Marciam, XI.3
16 You … happened …?: De Consolatione ad Marciam, IX.5
17 Who … immobile: Naturales Quaestiones, I.VI.11–12
18 the … never-ending: De Consolatione ad Marciam, IV.1
19 We … property: De Consolatione ad Marciam, IX.1–2
20 No … hour: De Consolatione ad Marciam, X.4
21 [The wise] … thought …: De Ira, II.10.7
22 Fortune … own: Ep
istulae Morales, LXXII.7
23 Nothing … whirl: Epistulae Morales, XCI.7
24 Whatever … empires: Epistulae Morales, XCLI.6
25 How … ruins?: Epistulae Morales, XCI.9
26 We … die: Epistulae Morales, XCI.12
27 Mortal … birth: De Consolatione ad Marciam, XI.1
28 Reckon … everything: De Ira, II.31.4
29 Quotiens … petisti: De Consolatione ad Marciam, IX.3
30 I … myself: Epistulae Morales, XIV.16
31 You … hope: Epistulae Morales, XXIV.1
32 I … happen: Epistulae Morales, XXIV.1–2
33 If … prison?: Epistulae Morales, XXIV.3
34 ‘I … now?’: Epistulae Morales, XXIV.17
35 The … good: Epistulae Morales, XVIII.9
36 Is … Fortune: Epistulae Morales, XVIII.5–9
37 Stop … poverty: Vita Beata, XXIII.1
38 I … half: Vita Beata, XXV.5
39 The … himself: De Constantia, V.4
40 The … left: Epistulae Morales, IX.4
41 The … tall: Vita Beata, XXII.2
42 The … them: Epistulae Morales, IX.5
43 Never … me: Consolation to Helvia, V.4
44 a … spirit: De Constantia, X.3
45 ‘So … table’: De Constantia, X.2
46 [The … everything: Epistulae Morales, LXXXI.25
47 I … mankind: Epistulae Morales, VI.7
48 Imagine … shops: Epistulae Morales, LVI.1–2
49 All … within: Epistulae Morales, LVI.5
50 When … destined: Bishop Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 1.21 (quoted in A. A. Long & D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, CUP, 1987, volume 1, p. 386)
51 An … necessity: De Ira, III.16.1
52 When … philosopher: De Tranquillitate Animi, XIV.3
53 A … does: Naturales Quaestiones, II.16
54 Among … air: Naturales Quaestiones, VI.31.1–2
The Consolations of Philosophy Page 19