by Roy Jackson
This experience is certainly significant, and any student of Nietzsche should be hesitant in describing him as lacking a spiritual side. Nietzsche’s experience beside the lake of Silvaplana tells us much about Nietzsche’s religiosity. He could hardly be described as a rationalist, and even the term ‘empiricist’ is not entirely accurate. In fact, he often comes across as a philosophical Romantic. Some have suggested that this experience is the first sign of Nietzsche’s madness, but to suggest this is to discount all of his writings after Dawn as the product of a madman when, in fact, he goes on to produce much more mature and philosophically rigorous work than previously. What the Surlej experience does tell us, however, is that Nietzsche saw himself as entering a new phase in his philosophical enterprise, a belief that he now had a ‘calling’, for want of a better term, that would lead to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In this sense, we can say that Nietzsche looked to his earlier works as ‘piecemeal philosophy’.
Lou von Salomé
From 1882 Nietzsche’s thoughts were already on Zarathustra, with Part One written by February 1883. Paul Rée had spent some time with Nietzsche in Genoa before heading off to Rome in March 1882. At the same time, Nietzsche, curiously, headed to Messina in Sicily. Usually, at that time of year, Nietzsche would have headed for more northerly climes. Whatever the reason, he seemed happy enough there. He wrote to Gast:
‘So, I have arrived at “my corner of the earth”, where, according to Homer, happiness is said to dwell. Truly, I have never been in such good spirits as in the past week, and my fellow citizens are pampering and spoiling me in the most charming way.’
Nietzsche, quoted in Roger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (London: Granta, 2003), p. 244
Spotlight
Writers have often speculated about Nietzsche’s sexuality, suggesting that his pragmatic approach to marriage fit with homosexual tendencies. His unconventional visit to Messina has been seen as an attempt to fulfil his homoerotic fantasies, as Messina at the time was home to a homosexual colony. Such speculation, however, must remain just that, unless further evidence comes to light.
Rée, for his part, stayed at Malwida von Meysenbug’s house in Rome. There he met the 20-year-old Lou von Salomé (1861–1937) and immediately fell in love with her. Born in St Petersburg and the daughter of a Russian general of Huguenot descent, Salomé had left Russia with her mother in 1880 to study at the University of Zurich. She had developed a severe lung disease and her doctors, who gave her only a few years to live, suggested she head south in search of a better climate to aid her recovery, which was how she came to be staying in Meysenbug’s house.
No doubt her feeling that she would not live long gave Salomé an extra passion for life and an enthusiasm for the study of philosophy that would have attracted many to her. It certainly had an effect on Rée, and they would walk the streets of Rome night after night discussing their ideas. Rée wrote excitedly to Nietzsche about Salomé, and one response from Nietzsche is particularly interesting:
‘Give that Russian girl my regards if that makes any sense: I lust after this kind of soul. Indeed, I plan to go on the prowl for one quite soon; considering what I wish to accomplish in the next ten years, I need one. Marriage is an altogether different story – I could agree only to a maximum of two years of marriage.’
Nietzsche, quoted in Roger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (London: Granta, 2003), p. 250
Spotlight
Nietzsche’s attitude to marriage seems to have been purely pragmatic: it was a case of needing someone to run the household and, more importantly, to act as his amanuensis. Previously, he had relied upon his friends for this and, apparently, had also acquired a typewriter about which he complained bitterly as being defective, although it is hard to imagine Nietzsche – with his severe migraines – banging away at a typewriter. It would have made an interesting thesis to investigate whether Nietzsche’s style altered as a result of using a typewriter, but, alas, no typewritten manuscripts of his seem to exist – and so he probably never used it at all.
Nietzsche certainly seemed to lack certain social skills when it came to marriage proposals. In April 1876 he had proposed marriage to a woman he hardly knew, having met her only three times. He was promptly rejected, but this did not seem to bother Nietzsche very much. When, after having spent three weeks in Messina, he turned up in Rome in April 1882 it was only a matter of days before he proposed to Salomé. Rée had also proposed to Salomé, but her response to both of them was that she was not interested in marriage, but would rather form a kind of intellectual ménage à trois, in which the three of them would share an apartment in Vienna or Paris, writing, studying and debating. This idea certainly seemed to appeal to Nietzsche; it fit with his dream of a ‘secular monastery’.
Such a threesome was bound to fail eventually, given the egos and competitive nature of the three characters. But the ménage à trois did not occur immediately. First, Salomé spent some time with Rée and his mother in West Prussia and then, in August, she spent three weeks in Tautenburg with Nietzsche and his sister Elisabeth. Nietzsche’s sister took a dislike to Salomé and considered the idea of such a threesome insane. At Tautenburg, Salomé and Nietzsche were housed in separate apartments and they would take long walks together. While she loved the conversations, she did not love Nietzsche:
‘In some deep dark corner of our beings we are worlds apart. Nietzsche’s nature is like an old castle that conceals within it many a dark dungeon and hidden basement room, not apparent at first glance and yet likely to contain all the essentials. It is strange, but recently the idea suddenly struck me that we could wind up facing each other as enemies someday.’
Lou Salomé, quoted in Roger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (London: Granta, 2003), p.254
Salomé’s prediction was later to prove correct, as evidenced from a letter Nietzsche wrote (but never sent) to Paul Rée’s brother, in July 1883: ‘This scrawny dirty smelly monkey with her fake breasts – a disaster!’
In the meantime, however, plans were drawn to set up the ménage à trois in Paris, and Nietzsche began to make inquiries among many of his friends in Paris regarding accommodation. However, he had not realized that by this time Rée was becoming increasingly jealous of Nietzsche in the relationship. He thought that Nietzsche presented a possible threat to his own romantic intentions towards Salomé, and so he arranged for himself and Salomé to live far away from Nietzsche, in Berlin. Nietzsche was never to see either of them again.
The final years
Undoubtedly, the realization that he had been ditched, that he had been taken in by a 21-year-old, had an emotional effect upon Nietzsche. For solace, he now buried himself in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Reading the opening pages of Zarathustra, we can see this as autobiographical, as it paints a picture of the suffering and solitude that Nietzsche himself now felt. Thus Spoke Zarathustra also helps us understand what Nietzsche means by the ‘new philosophers’. There has been much debate as to what these philosophers would be like, what they would do, what morality they would possess, and so on. To understand this, you need to understand Nietzsche’s own life and how this is partly autobiographical through his character of Zarathustra.
Nietzsche felt alone in the world. For company, he turned to his sister, who made every effort to ruin the name of Salomé by writing letters decrying her character and her ‘immoral’ lifestyle with Rée. Nietzsche, it seemed, may well have been party to this dung throwing.
The year 1888 was the last of Nietzsche’s sane life, although it was also the start of his fame. He spent the beginning of that fateful year in Nice, stayed in Turin from April till June, spent the summer in Sils-Maria, and then returned to Turin in September. It was, in this respect, a year of his usual wanderings, but in other respects it was very different. In his correspondence, Nietzsche reported that his health was improving and that he felt a sense of joy and elation with life, not recognizing that these feelings of euphoria
were symptomatic of forthcoming megalomania.
Added to this tragedy of oncoming madness was the fact that Nietzsche was never to appreciate the success and influence his work was to have, for undoubtedly he courted notoriety and wanted success. It was on the very first day of 1888 that the first ever review of Nietzsche’s whole work appeared in a German newspaper. A few months later, in April, the internationally renowned Danish critic and biographer Georg Brandes (1842–1927) gave a series of popular lectures on Nietzsche at Copenhagen University. Nietzsche had finally arrived, yet his letters were becoming more and more bizarre, evidence of his looming mental breakdown.
In this final year of sanity, Nietzsche was as prolific a writer as ever. He wrote six short books: The Wagner Case, The Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche contra Wagner and Dithyrambs of Dionysus. Are these works in any way a reflection of Nietzsche’s approaching insanity? They do not introduce any new philosophy, nor do they contradict what he had previously said. There is evident continuation from his previous work, and the structure is generally tight and presented in a magnificent poetic style. These works deserve attention, therefore, and show no evidence of Nietzsche having lost his intellectual capacity – quite the contrary.
DESCENT INTO INSANITY
On 3 January 1889, according to a well-known although possibly apocryphal account, Nietzsche walked out of his lodgings and saw in the piazza a cabman beating his horse. Nietzsche cried out, ran across the square and threw his arms around the neck of the horse. At that moment he lost consciousness. A crowd gathered and the landlord of Nietzsche’s lodgings carried the still-unconscious Nietzsche back to his room. When he finally came to, he shouted, sang and punched away at the piano. Once he had calmed down, he wrote a series of epistles to his friends and the courts of Europe declaring that he, signed ‘the Crucified’, would be going to Rome in five days’ time and that all the princes of Europe and the Pope should assemble.
Nietzsche, at the age of 44, was now permanently insane. One of his few remaining friends, Overbeck, disturbed by the letters, went to Turin and persuaded Nietzsche to travel to Basel with him and enter the mental asylum there. From here, he was transferred to a clinic in Jena, near his mother’s home. At the clinic, Nietzsche behaved like an imperious ruler, surveying the premises as if they were his palace. His conversation would switch from the rational to the nonsensical and violent at any given moment. When it was clear that no improvement was possible, his mother took him home with her to Naumburg. She looked after him devotedly for seven years, watching him fall steadily into decline and apathy. After his mother’s death in 1897, the care of Nietzsche until his own death in 1900 was left in the hands of his sister Elisabeth.
‘Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.’
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 1, Zarathustra’s Prologue, 5
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
Much of Nietzsche’s legacy is closely related to his sister’s less favourable legacy. Elisabeth Nietzsche (1846–1935), more than any other person, is responsible for the misunderstandings that have accompanied Nietzsche’s philosophy to this day. When Nietzsche started writing poetry at the age of eight, it was the six-year-old Elisabeth who collated them for him. At such an early age, she already felt responsible for the work and life of the shy Friedrich.
Elisabeth loved the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 – the event that Nietzsche hated so much. She had already got to know Wagner through her brother and she was captivated by the composer’s anti-Semitic ideas. At the festival, she met and fell in love with Bernhard Förster, an anti-Semitic fanatic who was also attracted to Wagner’s writings on Jews. Förster saw in Wagner a guide who would help him to become a professional anti-Semite, a member of the notorious ‘German Seven’ who called for the registration of Jews and the stop on Jewish immigration. Much to the disgust of Nietzsche, Förster married Elisabeth, who, for her part, attempted unsuccessfully to recruit her brother into the anti-Semitic cause.
Wagner once wrote of the possibility of establishing a pure German colony in South America where Jews would be banned. Even though Wagner himself knew little about South America, Bernhard Förster took up his idea with great enthusiasm. He formed a group of somewhat disparate disciples and they, together with Elisabeth, sailed off to Paraguay, where they established a colony called Nueva Germania in 1887. The colony did not thrive, however, and although it still exists today, it has integrated with the Paraguayan culture and people.
As for Bernhard Förster, he grew increasingly in debt and committed suicide in the same year that Nietzsche went mad. Nietzsche’s madness was the excuse Elisabeth needed to abandon Nueva Germania to its fate, and pursue her new full-time mission of making her brother famous. For the next 40 years, Elisabeth manipulated his works and superimposed her own racist views upon them.
THE NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE
On returning to Germany, Elisabeth – who represented everything that Nietzsche hated about Germany and Germans – became his guardian and owner of his copyrights. Immediately, Elisabeth set about taking control of all of Nietzsche’s writings. When Nietzsche collapsed in madness, he left behind mounds of unpublished material at his various lodgings. Elisabeth established an archive in a house in Naumburg that would become a museum of Nietzsche’s works. As well as his works, however, Nietzsche himself was lodged in a room as one of the exhibits. Incapable of coherent speech, he was exhibited to important visitors and dressed in a white robe like a Brahman priest. Elisabeth turned her brother into a prophet, surrounding him in mystique and turning his madness into something seemingly superhuman.
The collected works of Nietzsche brought Elisabeth fame and fortune, and she became the official mouthpiece for her brother. However, in collecting his works, she would ignore any of his philosophy that she did not agree with, forge letters that she claimed Nietzsche had written to her that praised her, and wrote a popular biography of Nietzsche that was full of lies. The greatest sin of all was that she collected Nietzsche’s unpublished notes into a book called The Will to Power. She claimed that this was Nietzsche’s final testament, his true philosophy, whereas it is full of discarded thoughts and poorly written notes that Nietzsche had no intention of publishing. Although of historical interest, it is a shame that it is still quoted as an authority of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche’s unpublished notes can be very helpful in understanding Nietzsche’s thought processes, but they do need to be treated for what they are.
Nietzsche, at a time before his mental collapse and the falling out with his sister, had once written to Elisabeth requesting that, at his death – for he always believed he would die young – he should be given a pagan burial, with no priest at his grave. However, when he died on 25 August 1900, Elisabeth gave him a full Lutheran funeral and buried him in a coffin with a silver cross.
Key ideas
Philosophical Romanticism: The Romantic Movement was at its height in most of Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century. It affected most aspects of intellectual and cultural life. In philosophy, it is perhaps best understood as not being a complete rejection of empiricism, but rather also emphasizing the importance of nature, the emotions, and so on, in an understanding of what it means to be human
Anti-Semitism: A form of racism, prevalent during Nietzsche’s time, that focused on prejudice against and hatred towards Jewish religion and/or ethnicity
Nazism: The fascist, anti-Semitic ideology of the twentieth-century political party – founded by Adolf Hitler – Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nazi Party.
Eternal recurrence: The idea that time is cyclical rather than linear, and that the universe will recur an infinite number of times
Zarathustra: A Persian prophet also known as Zoroaster and the founder of the religion of Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche took the name for a ‘new prophet’ who would turn morality on its head
Things to remember<
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• Nietzsche’s severe, debilitating headaches grew worse to the extent that he had to give up his academic career in 1879.
• Nietzsche spent the next ten years (1879–89) wandering in various countries for the sake of his health. These proved to be very productive years in terms of his writing.
• In August 1881 Nietzsche had the ‘inspiration’ for Zarathustra while walking through the woods beside the lake of Silvaplana in Switzerland.
• By 1885 Nietzsche had completed Thus Spoke Zarathustra, followed by Beyond Good and Evil the next year.
• The year 1888 was the last of Nietzsche’s sane life, although it was also the year when he started to receive recognition.
• Nietzsche spent his final years (1889–1900) insane, cared for by his mother and then his sister Elisabeth.
• Elisabeth Förster- Nietzsche, an anti-Semite, edited Nietzsche’s works and later presented him, falsely, as the ‘Nazi philosopher’.
• Nietzsche died on 25 August 1900 and was given a Christian burial, against his own wishes.
Fact-check
1 What was Nietzsche’s ‘monastery for free spirits’?
a A place where people could drink alcohol for free
b A nudist colony
c A place to read, study and debate
d A place of worship and prayer
2 Why did Nietzsche retire from his professorship?