Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius

..persuasive ...[Pietsch] has illuminated

Copyright © 1991 by Carl PIetsch

All rights reseIVed. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. The Free Press A Division of Macmillan, Inc. 866 Third Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10022 Maxwell Macmillan Canada; Inc. 1200 Eglinton Avenue East Suite 200 Don Mills, Ontario M3C 3N1 Macmillan, Inc. is part of the Maxwell Communication Group of Companies. First Free Press Paperback Edition 1992 Printed in the United States of America printing number 1 2 3 4

5

6 7 8 9 10

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

PIetsch, Carl.

Young Nietzsche: becoming a genius p.

cm.

/

Carl PIetsch.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0--02-925042-0 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844 -1900-Contributions in notion of genius. B3318.G46P57

2. Genius.

I. Title.

1991

193-dc20 [B]

91-11612 CIP

For Laura

Contents Preface and Ackrwwledgments ONE A Genealogy of Genius TWO The Birth of a Genius? THREE Without a Father FOUR Learning to Learn

IX

1

17 31 46

FIVE A Student of Genius

63

SIX Emulating Geniuses

103

SEVEN First Works

126

EIGHT Struggle for Autonomy

159

NINE Redefining Genius

205

Notes

219

SU(!gt!Stinns for Further ReLu1ing

249

Index

253

Preface and Acknowledgments, !

was first attracted to Friedrich N ietzsche as an u ndergraduate at

Brigham Young University. He represented a radical indepen­ dence of thought to me, and I wrote my senior honors paper on what then seemed the most provocative of his ideas. As a graduate student in intellectual history at the University of Chicago, I de­ cided to write my dissertation about Nietzche as well. By that time, the fog of adolescent enthusiasm had cleared somewhat, and the categories of psychoanalysis came naturally to hand as a means of explaining his unusual manner of thinking. Fortunately, Profes­ sor William McNeill, my adviser, countenanced and even en­ couraged my interest in psychobiography. The psychoanalytic focus of the dissertation also led me to a rewarding association with D r. George Moraitis of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago, who helped me to appreciate my own psychological in­ volvement with Nietzsche as well asto avoid some of the pitfalls of historical diagnosis. I became dissatisfied with my psychoanalytic treatment of Nietzsche's life as I realized that it did not suffice to illuminate the conjuncture of his ideas. Nietzsche had carefully constructed both his life and his works as monuments of creativity and had cast him­ self in the role of the genius. I began to explore the theory of ge­ nius, which had become, in the nineteenth century, a veritable ideology, a vehicle for conveying the grand aspirations of unusual individuals to the culture at large. Many writers and artists em­ ployed it, both to marshal their own energies and to construct themselves and their oeuvres to fit this new archetype of creative life, thus making themselves recognizable to the public. The question of how Nietzsche became a genius, or how he con­ structed himself as a genius, linked what I knew about his unique personality to the cultural category of genius, a socially con­ structed role. Nietzsche learned about it from widely revered exam-

/

x

Preface and A cknowledgments

pIes like Goethe and Schiller. With his need for fatherly mentors, he fastened his attention upon these men and emulated them. And after an extended apprenticeship to Schopenhauer and Wagner, he assumed the mantle of genius for himself. With this understand. i � g of Nietzsche's development, I was in a position to write a quite dI ferent book. In fact, I found that the complementary relation­ ShIp of personal psychology and the culture of genius provides a strategy for investigating many other great and unique creative fig­ ures. I had a research agenda that went far beyond Nietzsche. I have a great many friends and colleagues to thank for their confidence in me and my gradually developing project, and for their friendship. Thanks first to my far-flung friends who believed that I could bring this to fruition; to former colleagues in the De­ partment of History at the University of North Carolina; in the De­ partment of German at the University of Pittsburgh; and in the Departments of History at Appalachian State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; and finally to my cur­ r� nt colleagues at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In the years SInce I began to write this book, I have incurred many oth er debts too personal to mention here, but no less gratefully remembered. For her sustaining confidence I am particularly grateful to Joyce Seltzer at The Free Press. Without her encouragement during the last several years, this book might not have been published. Without her intellectual advice and editorial criticism, it would be much less satisfactory than it is. To my daughter Laura, who can hardly know how much she has helped with the book, I dedicate it.

�

ONE

A Genealogy of Genius •

son of a Prot­ riedrich Wilh elm Nietz sche was born in 1 844, the the boy to be­ cted expe ly estan t pasto r, whos e conservative fami pe where Euro a into � ome a pastor too. But Fried rich was also born roma ntic hero es By� on, G oethe, Mozart, Rous seau, and ot her Weim ar from all loom ed as large as kings . Peop le h(i d flock ed to s, and by the time over Europe to pay hom age to Goethe as a geniu nal hero of G er­ Nietz sche was a boy Goet he h ad beco me the natio � in 1 850, but many. The idea of genius was hard ly a centu ry"ol, like Goet he and among many educ ated peop le creative hero es kings as figures and ymen clerg Schil ler had already repla ced both sche' s first Nietz g youn of veneration. Goethe would be one of the with an al­ he heroe s, and the cult of geniu s woul d prov ide N ietzsc ternative vocat ion to that of the pastorate. the pro­ The" idea of genius emerged from the Enlightenm ent, Even as ry. centu h teent gressive intell ectua l move ment of the eigh , they ution radical writers prepared the way for democ ratic revol roma ntic were also settin g the stage for the nineteen th century's in A meric a heroe s, and its cult of geniu s. All across Euro pe and s. Bour ­ order eged comm oners were taking the place of the privil de­ they as geois intellectuals creat ed new roles for them selves patro ns, clared their indep enden ce from cleric al caree rs and noble own and claim ed the right to reform societ y accor ding to their

F

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

2

lights. They presented themselves as representatives of the middle classes generally, and even called themselves the "party of human· ity." But soon the idea emerged that they constituted an aristocracy of i? tellect. That would become one of the bases of the theory of genIus. Voltaire's career il ustr� tes ho� the intellectual assumed a sig­ . nIficant new role and Identi ty dUri ng the course of the eighteenth ce ntury. Born a bourgeois as Franc; ois Arouet in 1 694, by 1 725 V ol­ . taIre had conquered Paris with his plays and added the aristocratic "de Voltaire" to his name. The nobility took umbrage at his inso­ lence, had Voltaire beaten, arrested, and sent to the Bastille, and eventually had him exiled from France. But V oltaire remained an iconoclast, and another half-century of strictly literary combat made him rich and famous. The public bought his writings, and such royal patrons as Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine of Russia entreated him to attend them at their courts. When V ol­ taire died in 1 778, he was vindicated precisely by his writing. I He had broken the rule of deference to aristocracy and to institutional religion, a rule that men of letters had obeyed for centuries. And he had established the intellectual as an independent force in West­ ern society. Voltaire became a model for others. A century later he would also be one of Nietzsche' s heroes. But, even in V oltaire' s own time, a whole generation of emancipated thinkers and writers-the philo­ sophes-venerated him in France. These rationalist critics of the a ristocratic social order placed great faith in knowledge and educ a­ . tIon. Under the leadership of Denis Did erot they produced The Grand Encyclopedia ( 1 75 1 - 1 772). The first such compendium of knowledge, the Encyclopedia was not merely a reference work open­ ing hitherto obscure and often secret knowledge to the public; it was also the repository of every subversive opinion of the eigh­ teenth century. It met with repression from both the Catholic Church and the French monarchy. Diderot and some of his collab­ o rators were arrested for the opinions expressed in it; later vol­ u� es were banned and had to be printed in Holland; and shI� ments of th � book were impounded. Nevertheless, the Encyclo­ pedza was finanCia lly successful, and the views expressed in it be­ came the ideological foundation of the Revolution of 1 789.2 For the first time, perhaps, the pen wa s proving mightier than the sword.

�

A Genealogy of Genius

3

ues were pub lish ing the Encyclope­ Wh ile Diderot and his coll eag single­ radical man in a mor e li.bera l cou ntry dia in France , a far less guage. Sam uel the first Dictionary of the Englzsh Lan h dedly wrote had bee� ove rish ed poe t and essayist, but he . J nso n was an imp rite hIS erW und ld wou field ster Che d Lor ain cert led to b elie ve that a d by . After he had bee n repeatedly rebuffe efforts on a dict ion ary ther ano d' s doo r, however, J ohn son fou nd servants at Che sterfiel to adseveral boo ksel lers who were WI'11'Ing sou rce of supp ortmon ey, with a view to pro filu' ng from even .? vance him the nec essa ry ry I na zctzo D·· at gre son com ple ted the tu al sale s. But whe n J ohn that Che ster field had t.ake.n cred It 1 754, he was surprised to learn tly creation of his work. J ohn son IndI gnan for having supp orted the sterfield, poi ntin? out that he . h� d not pen ned a letter to Lord Che iary while workIng on the Dzctzonary, bee n the grea t man's ben efic mm end atio n to sell it now that the and he did. not need his reco on, my Lor d, one who look s with work was fi nish ed. "Is not a patr er, and , whe n he for life in the wat ,, unc oncer n on a man struggli ng 3 rs him with help ? Thi s became th e h as reached grou nd, encu mbe ce from literary patronage. defi ni tive declaration of inde pen den ency clop edis ts, and oth­ The succ ess of V olta ire, J ohn son, the for boo ks and idea� that wou ld ers proved that there was a market of patrons and cleri cal care ers. m ake inte llect uals inde pen den t ided the basi s for a new inte l­ And this fina ncia l inde pen den ce prov genr es of thought- an d r ep­ lectu al inde pen den ce, and even for new created (or recreated) resentation. Eighteenth- century writers y, genres that perm itted autobiography, the nove l, and biograph als in ent!!� ly new ways. the pub lic to thin k abou t grea t individu resu lts. Thinking in terms ofgeni us was one of the ed not only to great edcrib The read ing pub lic of the time subs ies as well , espe ciall y in ucational works but to nove ls and biograph the details ?f � iddl e Engl and. Biography and the novel dignified re the pubh c In ways class life, and put bour geoi s indi vidu als befo been represen ted pre­ in which only the privileged orders had man, the imp ressi on vious ly. When the indi vidu al was a creative rttuelJohnson (179 1 ), for could be dramatic. J ame s Bosw ell' s Life ofSa is one of the first in­ exam ple, beca me tremendously pop ular . It us for the publ ic min d. stances in whic h a biography defined a geni and conv ersa tion al­ wit a It gave such a livel y portrait ofJohn son as of his interlocutors­ ist-with an intel ligen ce far surp assin g th at this biograph y than that John son is better remembered today for

::

4

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

for his own writings. For Johnson did not portray himself as a ge­ nius, and the term in its modern sense did not appear in his dictio­ nary. Among all the novels and biographies of the late eighteenth century, the works ofJean :J acques Rousseau andJohann Wolfgang Goethe were perhaps the most important in forming the ideal of the life of genius. They focused more p articularly upon the interior life of the young artist and intellectual. Rousseau's Julie, Dr the new Heloise (176 1 ), and Goethe' s SDrrDws 'Of the YDung Werther (1 774) were highly romantic stories of artistic young men, prototypes of the ro­ mantic hero and misunderstood genius, great in imagination and sensitivity but frustrated in love. Werther was translated into every European language and had such a profound impact that it actu­ ally provoked a wave of suicides in imitation of its hero. Immensely popular with middle- class readers, these novels were the first mod­ ern best-sellers. In some vague but profound way they also contrib­ uted to the reeducation of European sensibility, turning attention from the aristocrat to the artist and his noble soul. Both Goethe and Rousseau addressed the subject of education in virtually all of their works, returning again and again to the ques­ tion of how to nurture and d evelop one's own self. Theirs was no longer the critical education of the philDsDphes, who wanted to liber­ ate the middle classes from the shackles of tradition and supersti­ tion by conveying maximum knowledge. It was rather an education of sensibility, and a liberation of the innate talents and abilities in individuals. In his Emile, Rousseau eschewed discipline and rote learning and advocated drawing out what was already present in the child. And Goethe, with his Wilhelm Meister novels, gave the term Bildung (education) the new sense of developing unique po­ tential rather than learning what other people had to teach. Curiously enough this romantic view of education returned at­ tention to birth and innate qualities. The aristocrats of the old re­ gime had placed their confidence in noble blood; romantic writers invested theirs in innate talent. As if to illustrate how their own innate talent emerged, Goethe and Rousseau wrote autobiogra­ phies as well. Rousseau's CDnfessiDns, and Goethe's Out 'Of My Life (Aus meinem Leben, or Dichtung und Wahrheit, as it is often called), pointed to the uniqueness and organic development of the creative personality.4 Rousseau announced in the opening passage of his CDnfessiDns that, once God had made him, He br oke the mold.5 For his part, Goethe was fond of biological metaphors for the life of the

5

A Genealogy of Genius

d gradu ally into its foreordain ed arti st that, like a flowe r, opene ?voked a mirati� n of th roman­ glory. The se autobiographi.es pr and hIS creatIve gen.lus. apart tic literary hero while settIng hl � . . ry men. By dIStIn guIshI ng ge­ ordIna of ed talent most the even m fro rather than education, the niu s as inherent, the produ ct of birth extraordinary new model of au tobio graphies set in motion an ent. hu man exce llenc e and achi evem nth century a new unders tandninetee the of By the beginn in g in Europ e and � meric a. ing of human greatness ha develo pe . ty of all . the edu cablh Based initial l y upon educa tIon and a faIth In ed upon a very few men, a theory of genius had emerg ed that focuss s was a new aristo c­ individu als born to lead creative lives. Geniu p�es in their quest philDsD the than racy in a much more literal sens tenme nt had Enhgh The for legitim ate social status had Intende d. s and had created the social space for the ninete enth- century geniu pedia. The offered one of its first definitions in The Grand EncyclD actually Byron and , Goethe au, great romantic heroes like Rousse lived and ed, provid stepped onto the stage that that social space or were, They out the role of the creative individual as genius . seemed to have been, born to create. The differen ce between genius and talent was categorical. O nly a genius could create, and his creations were so remarkable that contemporaries could not recognize them immed iately. As one of Nietz sche' s later mentors put it,

�

�

�

?

�

Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people's capacity to

achieve, yet not to achieve what is beyond their capacity of apprehe n­ sion; therefore it at once finds its apprecia tors. The'ach ievemen t of genius, on the other hand, transcends not only others' capacity of achievement, but also their capacity of apprehen sion; therefore they do not become immedia tely aware of it. Talent is like the marksma n ho hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marks­ man who hits a target . . . which others cannot even see.6

�

The works of those who were deemed geniuses seemed so different f rom the work of their contemporaries that it was easy to believe they had been born for their tasks. The genius became the demi­ god of the nineteen th century, and the belief arose that "a genius is born, not made." Genius was thus defined by qualities not formerly ascribed to humans at all, but reserved for God. The romantic generation rev-

6

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

olutionized aesthetic theory by making the artist a creator. It rede­ fined the artist as the maker of completely new objects, not just the imitator of God's creations that he had been for centuries. Works of art ceased to be mirrors of nature and became independent sources of insight and illumination.7 The genius-artist was credited with imagination, origin�lity, and creativity-terms and qualities that at the turn of the nineteenth century were as new as the con­ cept of the genius itself.8 Ascribing such qualities to the genius cul­ minated in the belief that the genius could create ex nihilo, out of nothing, as God had supposedly done, or at the very least out of his own soul. The capacity to create was, however, accompanied by psycho­ logical stress and social isolation, at least in the popular imagina­ tion. The genius seemed obsessed, and burdened by a responsibility to create. Insanity was associated with genius as well, and there were enough unbalanced and suicidal creators to con­ firm this prejudice. Even Goethe suffered from morbid tendencies, evident in The Sorrows of the Young Werther. Goethe, however, over­ came his depression. But another hero of Nietzsche's youth, the poet Friedrich Holderlin, lost his mind in 1 806 at the age of 36, and lived on in an asylum until 1 843. Holderlin was considered an "un­ healthy" influence on young people, and when as a schoolboy Nietzsche wrote an essay praising Holderlin's poetry, he was repri­ manded.9 Society was uncomfortable with such unpredictable members. The association of genius with insanity was largely de­ fensive: the imputation of insanity served to protect society against the unexpected and often unwanted eruptions of genius. It was a time when many harmless creative people were incarcerated in asy­ lums by their relatives and physicians, simply for fear of the un­ usual. Even when geniuses were not suspected of insanity, they were often perceived to be maladapted and never very conforming to s?cial conventions. By 1 850 it was apparent that the bourgeois pub­ he could not keep up either in taste or progressive conviction with the innovations of the avant-garde in art or philosophy. The natu­ ral partnership struck in the late eighteenth century between such public men as lawyers and the gentry on the one hand, and artists and intellectuals on the other, did not survive the triumph of the bourgeoisie; it degenerated into mutual hostility. The middle classes had become complacent, and in their view, the artists and intellectuals were becoming progressively more shrill and anti10

A Genealogy of Genius

7

social. The ideology of genius encouraged creative heroes to follow their own natural paths of develop ment, paths that most often ran ainst the grain of convention al bourgeois society. Geniuses as composer Hector Berlioz, the � sparate as the flamboyant French you ng Richard Wagner, and the revolutio nary Ka�l Marx were clas­ sified as "bohemi an" in the 1 840s, both for theIr works and for their life-style. As the genius was becoming alienated from a self-satisfie d middle class, he became a law unto himself. A romantic artist like Ber­ lioz thou ght he was better qualified to know the virtues of his own music than the middle-class audience who only wanted to hear something familiar. He was contemptu ous of the public and would n ot be deterred from following either his musi(all agenda or his outrageously egotistical life-style. Marx, too, was schooled in the romantic mythology, and found his mission in a similarly defiant stru ggle against the theory of the new ruling class. His project was to critique the whole bourgeois system, but an integral part of the project was to explain the resistance of the bourgeoisie to innova­ tion of any sort. He showed that the bourgeoisie had been a pro­ gressive force only as long as they were in revolutionary opposition to the old aristocratic regime. Now that they in turn had become the dominant class, the bourgeoisie could be relied upon to oppose every artistic or intellectual provocation of the avant-garde, just as they opposed the economic interests of the working classes. Genius was a provocation to middle-class complacency. But the provocation was not limited to challenges to the social position of the middle classes, as Marx's logic might suggest._The figure of the genius was well calculated to incite many kinds of anxiety and am­ bivalence. Different in dress and habits, perhaps even psycho­ pathic, driven to create regardless of the consequences, the genius seemed strangely motivated and highly unpredictable. What is more, the genius seemed to create by magic. Mozart, for instance, wrote down whole symphonies out of his head without revising a single note. Goethe too awoke mornings with complete poems in mind. And geniuses did not perform such feats just once, but regu­ larly throughout long careers. It seemed as if they did not have time in a single life-time to create all that they were capable of. To ordi­ nary people, such men were either demi-gods or devils; perhaps like Faust, they had contracted with the powers of evil to get their god-like gifts. In either case they were disturbing. The genius had become a formidable figure, towering over his

f

II

8

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

contemporaries and inspiring both admiration and resentment. With his power to create ex nihilo, the genius had become a kind of "unmoved mover," in Aristotle's terminology, forcing his contem­ poraries to orient themselves to his creations. This was a function that had formerly been assigned to God, who had presumably cre­ ated heaven and earth and given direction to all life. But now there emerged a pantheon of artists and thinkers who had evidently cre­ ated the world of thought and perception from within which nine­ teenth-century people apprehended life. For many educated people, God was retreating to the wings, and the genius was taking his place at the center of the stage. Thus the genius emerged as the focus of something approaching a secular religion-ironically, since the invention of the genius in the late eighteenth century was a function of an emancipation from traditional religion. Most edu­ cated people still needed powerful yet recognizable heroes to pro­ vide authoritative direction. In a democratic century, this need could only inspire ambiva­ lence. The awed respect that the public paid to the genius was diffi­ cult to reconcile with the rights of popular sovereignty everywhere asserted by the middle classes. The contradiction was more often implicit than recognized by contemporaries, but it was quite evi­ dent in Napoleon's case. The great admiration that people across Europe felt for the military genius who tamed the French Revolu­ tion and humiliated the crowned heads of Europe was matched only by their resentment of the dictatorial nature that Napoleon revealed as he crowned himself Emperor of France and subjugated other European nations. Once the hero of creative people through­ out the continent, once the very embodiment of individual initia­ tive, he earned the ire of men as far apart as Beethoven and Francisco Goya for becoming a tyrant. 1 2 The public seems to have envied not only the creative powers of the genius, but also his corresponding freedom from social con­ vention and even his willful behavior. At the same time, the public disapproved of precisely the thing it admired, and often perceived depravity and immorality in the genius. Thus, what the genius in­ spired most of all was ambivalence. Great admiration could quickly be transformed into bitter disappointment and rejection, as when Beethoven angrily struck Napoleon's name from the title page of his Third Symphony and renamed it "the Heroic Symphony."13 Perhaps this profound ambivalence lies at the root of the idea that the genius is always "ahead of his time," for in spite of the most

A Genealogy of Genius

9

edly found it difficu lt profound admiration, contemporaries repeat terms. Psycholog­ rial accept geniuses on their own often dictato ult to approach allY at least, the geniu s had becom e more diffic some of us find it as than the kings of the old regime. Even now, the genius as Moses difficult to look directly upon the creativity of . ing bush burn did to look upo n God in the This ambivalence was naturally reflected in biography, which as a ��ans as became a primary mean s of propagating geniu s, well . or cnt�C1sm. of policing the pantheon of genius through eulogy ed In the The genre of multi-volumed "lives and works" was invent Lytton as But s. lize geniu nineteenth centu ry to monu menta ize trivial to Strachey noted, the welter of biog:ap� ic det�il tended . Ing the creative achievements of genIUS . And In a speech accept the the Goethe Prize in 1 930, Freud worried that "even the best and of riddle the upon light any fulle st" biographies could "not throw ga­ d investi detaile the miraculous gift that makes an artist." Such tions inevitably uncover disapp ointing moments in the life of a great man, and even the most lau �atory biographies entail oe� ipal rivalry and tend to bring the genIUS down to human proportIons. Nevertheless Freud conclu ded that educated people must "put up" with biography, because ambivalence about the great is inescapably human:

��

Our attitude to fathers and teachers is, after all, an amb ivalent one since our reverence for them regularly conceals a compone nt of hos­ tile rebellion . This is a psycholo gical fatality; it cannot be altered with­ out forcible suppressi on of the truth and is bounl � ethical preceptor. Nietzsche's alP-bivalence about Schopenhauer explains why he did not abandon philology for a dissertation on "the concept of the organic since Kant." Such a project would have involved him in a public critique of his ideal. What is odd is that his notes suggesting a comprehensive negation of Schopenhauer's system of thought have no precedent in his correspondence, not even with Rohde. Schopenhauer was his master, his "first love," the ideal after whom he refashioned his intellect, and yet suddenly he was in a position to mount a frontal, intellectual attack upon him. It is as if he had innocently applied his intellectual skills to his master, and before he realized what he had done, had laid the master' s system in ruins. Paul Deussen sensed that Nietzsche was no longer in agreement with Schopenhauer, at just the time he was catching up and becom-

94

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

ing a disciple of Schopenhauer himself. Deussen suggested that Nietzsche write a critique of the philosopher, only to be brusquely r�buffed. ��th the r�mark tha� one does not refute a Weltanschauung WIth lOgIC. And NIetzsche dId not actually make this attack up Schopenhauer in print until many years later. He was still holdinong back his criticism when he wrote "Schopenhauer as Educator" in 1 874. This peculiar situation is understandable as a functi on Nietzsche's p�ychological attach ment to Schop enhauer. Havinofg chosen the phIlosopher for a father figure, he naturally discover conflicting feelings for him. The natural ground upon which etod criticize him was intellectual, and Nietzsche's intelle ctual obj ec. tions to Schop enhauer's concep t of the will may have been wel founded. But Nietzsche was not so impetu ous as to throw off hisl· discip leship to Schop enhauer altogether, simply becau se he dis· agreed with him intellectually. His refusal to reject Schop enhau at this point demonstrates again that with Schopenhauer he waers worki ng through unresolved feelings about his father. He was also redefi ning himself-becoming a philosopher in the steadfastly honest sense in which he understood Schop enhauer to have been philos opher. He was becoming someone who could philos ophizea as Schopenhauer did, rather than simply someone who accep ted Schopenhauer's conclusions. This is what a prospective genius must do-reach the level of the genius who has been his model, and then overcome or go be­ y� nd � im. He must transcend his model in order to becom e a ge­ nIUS hImself. In 1 868 Nietzsche was just beginn ing to realize that he would have to do this; and his reluctance to take this step shows in his letter to Deussen, rejecting the idea of a critique of Schoo penhauer's ideas. ••

On his way to the sanatorium in July 1 868, Nietzs che passed t�rough Leipzig and visited a number of friend s, includ ing the RItschls . The high point of his trip, he wrote, was conversatio n and playing the piano with Frau Ritschl. He notified his family and Rohde that she was now his intimate Freundin, a term that almost connotes "girl friend" here. 78 What they played together was Wagner, about whose music Nietzsche still had serious reserv tions. But now he began to speak of Schopenhauer and Wagner ina­ the same breath. Frau Ritschl also inspired him with a desire to

t

A Student of Genius

�

95

nter more actively into the social life of Leipzig; his entree would e Frau Brockhaus, sister of Richard Wagner, and Sophie Rits chl's best friend. There is an oedipal dimension to this seu do- romantic enthusiasm for the wife of his Doktorvater. And is aspiration to an exciting social life again seems rather unrealis­ tic given his formal demeanor. But these unexpressed hopes and feeli n gs seem to have temporarily reconciled his ambivalences, bringing him back to Leipzig and philology with enthusiasm and a fresh disposition. Nietzsche returned to Leipzig in the autumn of 1 868 to a new style of life, definitely not the life of a student. He referred to him­ self in his letters as "Leipzig's future Privatdozent" and even signed hi s name with "Dr." although he had not begun to write the doc­ toral dissertation. He took a room with the prominent Leipzig fam­ ily of Karl Biedermann, who was a natio �al �olitician, hi.storian, and editor, as well as a professor at the unIversIty. There NIetzsche could expect to meet many of Leipzig's important people. He met the editor of the Literarisches Centralblatt and began to contribute articles to it. And he got himself appointed theater critic for the Deu tsche allgemeine Zeitung (Biedermann, his landlord, was the editor of that periodical). He attended the theater and concerts reg­ ularly, often in the company of Frau Ritschl (but apparently never with a woman his own age), and took a close interest in theatrical personalities such as the actress Hedwig Raabe, and Heinrich Laube, the new director of Leipzig's Gewandhaus theater. He went to teas, suppers, and parties, avidly meeting important people. He was eager to enter creative circles, and apparently �ager to enter upon a creative life of his own, even ifhe was unsure precisely what he would create. Nietzsche's le tters to friends, describing these activities, also changed. In listing all the things he was doing, and mentioning all the people he met (and even those he could have met had he cho­ sen to make the effort), he seems to have lost all modesty. 79 He shows no empathic awareness of how his friends might feel reading such letters, nor does he seem to consider th(:lt his style of life and sense of importance conflicted with his discipleship to Schopenhauer. This aggressive self-affirmation in his correspon­ dence paralleled his aggressive new social life. Unaccompanied by any new creative achievement, however, Nietzsche's changed atti­ tude about himself seems more of a prelude than the realization of a new creative self.

h

96

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

It is hard to know how long Nietzsche could have maintain ed this pace in Leipzig, since other things happened even faster. B e fore a single semester of his renewed student life could pass, he had met RI.�hard Wagner and been appointed professor of classical phi­ lology In Basel. These fateful events marked his life as much as any others.

Nietzsche was won over to Wagner and his mus ic in the mon ths before he actually met the com poser. While he had been fami l with Wagner's mus ic since Gustav Krug had introduce d him iar to it in the Germania, until October 1 866 he had opp osed it as mod ern and cac�phonous. Then, playing piano excerpts from The Valkyrie, he realIzed that he had "very mixed feeli ngs," and wrot Gersdorff that "the great beau ties and virtues [of this mus e to ic] are balanced by equally great uglin ess and weakness es."8o He was ambivale nt about Wagner when he played the pian o score still Meistersinger with Frau Ritschl in the summer of 1 868. But histo The est mus t have been active, since it was he who introduced her inter� to the m� sic. Between that event and his return to Leipzig in Octo NIetzsche read Otto Jahn 's Essays on Music, inclu ding the oneber, Wagner,8l and reported to Rohde: "One has to have a certa on thusiasm to do such a man [as Wagner] justice; Jahn has an in en� tive resistance to him , however, and seems to listen with half-instinc­ ears .': Ni �tzsche nonetheless admits that he agrees withJahn closed acterIZatIon of Wagner as the foremos t represen tative of a 's char­ modern �endency i� music to drag all modes of artistic expression toge Into confusIon. And yet Nietzsche is amazed at the range of Wag ther talent, which may even permit the composer to transcend ner's dilettan" tism i? his quest for the Gesamtkunstwerk. Furthermore he fault for blIndness to Wagner's "ethical" personality: the energy, sJahn and truthfulness that Wagner shared with Schopenhauer.82 vital ity, In this muc h more positive frame of min Nietzsche attended a conce�t of Wagnerian mus ic in Leipzig on dOcto ber 27. The pro­ gram Included the overtures to Tristan and Isolde and The Meis tersin- . ger. Under the immediate impression of this mus icon the same day-he wrote again to Rohde:

�

I cann ot brin g it over my heart to reac t to this musi c with a cool criti­ cal mind. My every fiber, every nerv e vibra tes to this mus ic. And I have hardly ever had such a lastin g feeli ng of release as upon liste ning . to thIS overture [to The Meistersinger]. 83

d e­ d ­ y

s

�

97

A Student of Genius

So it was perhaps The Meistersinger that finall.y. won N.ietz� che over Image he to Wag'nerian music, adding to the very pOSItiVe ethIcal ' . 'T'he Mezstersznger had of Wagner's personality. And It was aI eady at brought him face to face with Wagner, for it had been The eistersinger that he had played with Frau Ritschl. November 1 868, Wagner came secretly to Leipzig to .sitInhisearly sister Otilie Brockhaus, wife of the orientalist Professor ermann Brockhaus and Sophie Ritschl's best friend. Frau Ritschl as invited to meet him at her friend's home. In the course of the vening Wagner played piano excerpts fro� The .z:teistersinge�. Frau Ritschl told him that she was already famIlIar WIth the musIC and had played it with a young student, whom Wagn�r immediatel� d� .. manded to meet. So Nietzsche was invited to dInner and an IntI­ mate evening with the composer on November 8. As the day progressed he was in a state of ne:vous �nticipation. and got into a fight with a tailor who had promIsed hIm a ne� SUIt for the oc�a­ sion. First the suit was not ready. Then, when It was finally delIv­ ered to him half an hour before he was expected by the Brockhauses, the messenger demanded immediate payment, which the student was unable to make. With Nietzsche trying to put the suit on and the tailor's helper trying to take it back, it was ripped and Nietzsche had to go in his old suit. But the evening went wonderfully anyway. Wagner was in an expansive mood. He not only played hIS. music on the piano before and after dinner, he read humorous pas­ sages from his autobiography, spoke about his youth in Leipzig (using the Leipzig dialect to great effect), and made gr� at fun of the music directors who were (incompetently) attempting to perform his music. Wagn�r overwhelmed Nietzsche with the great vigor of his personality. But he also conversed intimately with Nietzsch� about Schopenhauer and how deeply indebted he was to the phI­ losopher, giving him the feeling that they had a good deal in com­ mon. Before the evening was over Wagner had invited Nietzsche to visit him in Tribschen (near Lucerne, Switzerland) where he was then living, so that they could "make music and philosophy to­ gether." And in the meantime he charged Nietzsche with the re­ sponsibility of instructing the Brockhaus family in Wagnerian music.84 This was one of the most exhilarating experiences of Nietzsche's life, comparable only to his discovery ofSchopenhauer in the used-book store, and his success with his first paper before

: �

� :

.

1 1

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

98

the Philological Society. In fact, in terms reminiscent of his descrip_ tion of reading S chopenhauer, he wrote to Rohde that meetin g Wagner had been a kind of self.discovery. He wrote that Wagner was "the most perfect illustration of what Schopenhauer call ed genius: yes, the similarity in all details is so great that it leaps to thea . ' enthusiasm for the gen iu eye. "85 A n d he qUIC kl y merged hIS Wagner with h i s idealization of S chope nhauer. L i ke S c ho penhauer, Wagner was an older man, potentially a comprehensive model for Nietzsche's life endeavors. (Wagner, incidentally, was ex­ a� tly the age Nietzsche' � real fath er would have been.)86 The o nly . dIfference was that by vIrtue of hIS personal accessibility, Wagner was a � ore co ? crete and scrutable ideal than Schopenhauer had . b �en, gIvIng NIetzsche a realistic opportunity to compare himself wIth the ideal. He immediately began to read Wagner's books, in­ . cludIng the ponderous Opera and Drama, and in January 1 869 he of a Wagnet�aveled to Dresden to hear his first full performance . nan opera, Die Meistersinger.

�

�

Nietzsch � mig t never have had a convenient opportunity to visit Wagner I � SWItz�rlan , ut, as it happened, there was an opening for a classIcal phIlologIst In the Swiss city-state of Basel. At the time that Nietzsche was meeting Wagner in Leipzig, Kiessling, a young professor of classical philology, resigned from Basel's university ' . an d Gymnaszum (called the Paedagogium in Basel). Professor . WIlhelm Vi scher-Bilfi nger, president of the Erziehungsrath and a . . . . classIcal phIlologIst hImself, wrote to six of his trusted friends at German universities, soliciting recommendations of worthy young scholars. Many young men were recommended, and F. Nietzsche was mentioned by more than one of Vischer-B ilfinger' s corre­ spondents, but it was Ritschl's letters that secured the j ob for Nietzsche. Ritschl had already written about Nietzsche in a letter to Profes­ sor Kies �ling, who was also a former Ritschl student. (Kiessling had . asked RItschl for advIce about who would be a suitable replace­ ment, and specifically about Nietzsche, whose articles he had read i� Das Rheinische Museumfur Philologie.) Now, in answering Vischer� BIlfi ? ger on D �cember 9, 1 868, Ritschl sent him a copy of his letter . to KIesslIng, wIth an explanation. Ritschl had written that if the B �sel au horities could see beyond the formal difficulty of . NIetzsche s not havIng been granted a doctorate which no author. ities had ever done, they would have a perfect r placement. Warn-

�

��

�

A Student of Genius

99

' ng that neither Kiessling nor any of Ritschl's other students (who nc lu dedJakob Bernays) should take offense, he proceeded to give th is categorical judgmen t of Nietzsche:

� .

A s many young scholars as I have seen developing under my supervi­ sion in the last 39 years, I have never known a young man, never tried to advance the career of anyone in my discipline, who so early and so young was as mature as this Nietzsche.

Ritschl goes on in the letter to note that Nietzsche had written his es­ says, by now published in Das Rheinische Museum, in his second and third years at the university, and that he was the first student from who m he had ever accepted articles for publication. He continues, it-I prop hecy that he will stand I f he l ives long- and may God grant s. He is now twen ty-four years in the front rank of German philo logist in body and spirit , well built, old, strong, vigorous, healthy, valia nt addit ion he has an enviable and made to impr ess similar natures. In publi c. He is the objec t of abilit y to speak clearly and persu asive ly in to be) of the whol e philo ­ admi ratio n and the leader (with out want ing the time when they will logical world of Leipz ig, who can hardly await I am descr ibing a kind of hear him as their doce nt. You will say that st and appro achab le be­ "phe nome non;" well, he is that, and mode repu tation [on my opin ion sides. . . . I woul d stake my entire acade mic in Base l] woul d turn out hapthat appo intin g Nietz sche to the post . pily.s7

le for the fact that it This remarkable letter is even more remarkab ' b for Nietzsche . thejo Was not written in the hope of actually getting s woul d be able to Governed by a tone of regret that no authoritie ul letter to a former see beyond the lack of a doctorate, it is a wistf Vischer-Bi lfing er student, belat edly used as his answer to Professor ssful appl icatio n. succe in Base l. It was, however, the begin ning of a Professor Her­ Visch er-Bi lfinger also received a letter from s artic les and mann U sener in Bonn . U sener had read Nietzsche' author, even had been suffic iently impressed to recommend their er-Bi lfinger Visch So though he hims elf had never met Nietz sche. further abou t wrote to Ritschl on January 5, 1 869, inqu iring lfinger for his Nietzsch e. In answer, Ritsc hl first prais ed Visch er-Bi rtatio n, not­ willingne ss even to consi der his pupi l witho ut a disse ook bure au­ overl to as d ing that no one else woul d be so enlightene cand idate . l cratic custo m in the inter est of a truly excep tiona

1 00

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

Ritschl answered questions that the Basel professor had appare ntly asked: ( l ) that Nietzsche would be willing to teach six hours at the Paedagogium; (2) that he would be satisfied with the compensation and working conditions offered at Basel; and (3) that he was n ot such a Prussian that he could not adapt to Swiss political and s ocial life and custom. Ritschl obviously intended to show that Nietzsche would accept the job if offered it. He wrote that Nietzsche was an unpolitical person, not a Prussian nationalist; he characterized his pupil as an unselfconscious liberal. He noted that Nietzsche's con. centration had been in Greek literary history, with special empha. sis upon philosophical texts, but that if teaching in any other area should be required of him, Nietzsche would master the material quickly and profitably. He concluded his recommendation with the thought that Nietzsche would "be able to do everything that he wants to do."88 With this letter, Nietzsche's appointment had practically been secured. Nietzsche himself still had to write a letter (February 1, 1 869), explaining his willingness to accept the job if it were offered to him, to propose what he might teach, and give a brief (and not very personal) autobiography.89 Then Vischer·Bilfinger had to con. vince his fellows in the Erziehungsrath, as well as the mayor and gov. erning council of the city of Basel, that Friedrich Nietzsche was the right man for the job. On January 29 Vischer-Bilfinger formally recommended to the mayor that Nietzsche be hired to replace Kiessling.90 This was routinely approved on February 1 0, 1 869. The official letter of appointment was written to Nietzsche on the twelfth.91 The rest followed quickly. Nietzsche at first thought that he would revise his work on Diogenes Laertius as a doctoral thesis. But that proved unnecessary. On March 23 the University of Leipzig conferred a doctorate upon him in recognition of his publications in Das Rheinische Museum. Then, after some deliberation, Nietzsche decided to give up his Prussian citizenship so that he would be in­ dependent of Prussian military service in the event of a war. His application to be relieved of his citizenship was approved on April 1 7, 1 869. (By not maintaining constant residence in Switzerland or anywhere else, he never secured Swiss or any other citizenship, but remained stateless for the rest of his life.) After a leisurely trip from N aumburg by way of Cologne, Bonn, Heidelberg (where he wrote his inaugural lecture on Homer and Hesiod in his hotel room), and · Baden-Baden (where he attended another performance of

A Student of Genius

·

101

Wagner's Meistersinger), he arrived i n Basel o n April 1 9. H e would b egin �eaching in May. It was an unparalleled appointme nt. Quite aside from the econom ic security and enhanced social status that he would get as a university professor, it was an honor to have been hired in this ex­ traordinary manner. Franziska and Elisabeth Nietzsche reacted with great-and from Friedrich's point of view, excessive- enthusi­ asm . A job was one thing his mother could appreciate. (While Nietzsche had confided the possibility of the appointme nt to Erwin Rohde in advance, he kept the negotiations a secret from his family until the very end.) Rohde wrote him an extremely sensitive letter of encouragemen t and indeed of condolence , for he knew that Nietzsche was not as enthusiastic about his appointme nt as virtu­ ally any other philology student would have been. He knew how mu ch it would hurt Nietzsche to give up his plan to study in Paris. And all his more diffuse ambitions in music, literature, and even philosophy would have to be subordinated to the demands of his j ob. Nietzsche's deep sense of responsibil ity would not have per­ mitted him to accept thejob and consciously neglect the profession of philology. The time for recriminatio n against philology seemed to have passed. Nietzsche was no longer a philology student thinking of be­ com ing a philosopher or a natural scientist. He was a professor of philology, a philologist by profession. So in March of 1 869 he wrote a painfully honest reflection on how he had become one. Nietzsche begins with the thought that it is generally interesting to know how one becomes a philologist these days; after all, in the late nineteenth century there are many mor<e vital and wor­ thy disciplines that one might study. There are those who are at­ tracted to philology by the prospect of a secure job; those who are sent into philology unresistingly, like lambs to the slaughter, , by their own philology teachers; there are those who are born to teach, but not necessarily philology; and finally, "there is a small community who glory in the aesthetic pleasures of the world of Greek [artistic] forms, and an even smaller one for whom the ideas of the ancient thinkers have not yet been thought through to the end." Surprisingly, Nietzsche does not count himself among the lat­ ter. He knows that he is not any one of these exclusively. Having let himself be led into philology by his teachers, from Schulpforta to Leipzig, and done so in order to escape from theology and the pas-

I

\

1 02

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

torat�' he s� sp�cts t�at he is not a "spec ificall y philo logical na. . �ure, , but a phIlologIst by resIgn ation ." He can only conclude th

. at . In becom ing a p h·l1 0 I OgiSt he has given up art and philosophy. He feels that he has abandoned his creative self and resigned him self . schaft or schol to Wzssen arship without a true "caIH ng."92 It was a depre ssing note on which to begin a profe ssion a l reer. No wonder that later, in The Birth of Tragedy and in his ca. other books , he had so much energy for revenge upon schol arship .

. t e f

SIX

. r

Emulating Geniuses •

ietzsche arrived in Basel by train on April 1 9, 1 869, several weeks before he would begin teaching. Twenty-four years old, he already wore a moustache, although it was still a modest one. No dandy, he dressed in a black suit without any pretence, and wore small, oval-shaped spectacles. He was unremarkable in appearance, except that he gave the impression of staring. Nietzsche moved into a small apartment in the new street, "Am Schiitzengraben." It was at the edge of the city where the old forti­ fications had recently been leveled to make room for urban expan. sion. It was a splendid location, a mere ten-minute walk from the university and remarkably similar to that of his mother's home on the edge of Naumburg. It also gave Nietzsche immediate access to the gardens and fields outside the city. Nietzsche now made walk­ ing his principal form of exercise and relaxation, a custom he kept for the rest of his life. Looking northward into Germany and France, furthermore, he had a view of both the Black Forest and the Vosges Mountains. Nonetheless, he would orient himself toward Switzerland, particularly toward Lucerne, where Richard Wagner was living.

N

••

Nietzsche had grown so critical of classical philology that he was ready to abandon it even before he left Leipzig, so it is surpris-

1 04

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

ing to find that he was such an energetic and even optimistic philol­ ogist when he arrived in Basel. He proved to be an excellent teacher who won praise for his work both at the University of Basel and in the Paedagogium (a Gymnasium or high school). He lived modestly and continued to research, write, and publish in philol­ ogy for several years. He certainly did not scorn his profession or act the part of an arrogant genius in Basel. Only the furor caused by the publication of The Birth of Tragedy in 1 872 made him real ize how far beyond the bounds of professional philology his thinking had carried him, and he was not entirely pleased by that. Nietzsche's inaugural lecture, "Homer and Classical Philol­ ogy," delivered in Basel on May 28, 1 869, is actually an apology for the discipline of professional philology.l Nietzsche attacked the view-exemplified by quotations drawn from Goethe and Schil­ ler-that philology had drained the life from the aesthetic ideals of the past by treating them scientifically rather than imaginatively.2 Nietzsche on the contrary argued that phil o logy deserved credit for recovering and revivifying Hellenic aesthetic and cultural ideals. And he referred not to that great amateurJ.]. Winckelmann, whose studies of ancient art had stimulated Goethe and Schiller, but to the founder of professional philology, Friedrich August Wolf, and the tradition of scholarly German philology inspired by him in the · nineteenth century.3 It may seem curious that he should have ar� gued this way when he had been writing in precisely the opposite vein only weeks before, but in now putting a good face on philol­ ogy he was apparently trying to convince himself as much as his auditors that the profession was still a worthy endeavor. In "Homer and Classical Philology" Nietzsche reviews the ques� tion of Homer's authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer's," authorship had first been disputed in a serious philological way by Wolf, and the question had served as a focus of philological study ever since. So Nietzsche could treat it as an example of how profes­ sional philology had gradually "bridged the gap between the ideal of Antiquity-which is perhaps only the most beautiful bloom of German love-longing for the south-and the real antiquity."4 The ' ! view of the poetic genius Homer that had prevailed before Wolf was so unrealistic, according to Nietzsche, that "Homer" was noth7 , ing but an empty name. Professional philology, by showing how various hands must have been involved in the creation of different episodes, had made the great poems and even their anonymous au­ thors more accessible. But philologists had gone too far in the

1 05

Emulating Geniuses

other direction, he thought, ascribing nearly everything to tradi­ tion and nothing to genius; they had made the poems seem nothing more than the result of stories passed from one untutored gene�a­ tion to another. Nietzsche argued, however, that one cannot dISense with the genius of the individual poets who wrote the pisodes, and he concluded somewhat dramatically that there was a geniU S who put the pieces all together to make the great poemsonly his name was not Homer.5 The discipline of classical philology had gone dIrectly agaInst the main stream of nineteenth-century thinking on the question of H omer' S originality. It had denied the role of the genius, the con­ cep t that otherwise dominated European thinking about creativity in the arts and sciences. Nietzsche's inaugural lecture focuses clearly upon the genius and the necessary role of a creative individ­ ual. It demonstrates how preoccupied Nietzsche was with the ge­ niu s theme, even before he became so familiar with Richard Wagner. But Nietzsche's lecture displays his. ambivalen �e in u �ex­ p ected ways. Since his conclusion goes agaInst the. graIn of nIne­ teenth-century philological research on Homer, It threatens to undermine his declared purpose of defending philology. The lec­ ture is not actually a philological essay at all, since the inferences about the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey are drawn without any reference to the texts themselves, nor is it a critical history of philo­ logical contributions to the Homeric question. Rather, it is a the ?­ retical essay on creativity, a disquisition on how the HomerIC poems must have been written. Even in defending philology, Nietzsche avoided practicing it. The most paradoxical aspect of Nietzsche's inaugural lecture, however, is his concluding plea for gratitude, a plea that he makes "not in our name-for we are but atoms-but in the name of phi1010gy."6 Here, in an apparently conventional gesture of modesty, Nietzsche ascribes the creative work of philology to the group and to the tradition of the discipline, rather than to himself (or anyone else) as an individual. What he argues for the creators of the Home­ ric poems apparently does not pertain to philologists. It is as if he could not admit that philologists could be creative, or as ifhe could not admit himself to be the individual author of a novel interpreta­ tion of the Homeric question. This casual remark turns out to be the most critical passage in the inaugural lecture, for it reveals Nietzsche's own predicament: while he believed in the theory of the genius, he could not yet apply it to himself.

�

I

•

_,

•

1 06

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

For several years Nie tzsc he had bee n penhauer as an exemplary gen ius; emulati pre occupi ed by S choo ng Sch ope nhauer, h e ob. viou sly aspired to be or bec om e a gen ius him self. He also wanted t o �e a good philol?gist, especial� y now that he had accepted the job In Bas el. But whIle he was actIng as a profess ion al phi lolo gist h e evidently cou ld not beli eve in his own creativity. As mu ch as he wanted to affirm the profess ion al pos itio n he had accepted, hi s deeper beli ef that phi lology was an unc reative endeavor shOWed through. It was with this ambivalence abo ut him self and his profes. sion that Nietzsche ann oun ced him self to the intellectual worl d of Basel. Luckily, Basel was a qui et and unp rete ntio us pla ce for Nie tzsche to work out his ambivalence. The Swi ss federation was loosely knit, and the goals of the liberal Revolu tion of 1 848 had bee n largely realized there while they wer e repressed in the rest of Eur ope . It has bee n suggested that livin g in Switzerland per mitted Nie tzsche to escape German nation alis m to bec om e "on e of the first Europeans of modern stam p." The Franco ·Pru ssia n War would drag him briefly back into the Pru sor of phi lology in Basel, Nie tzsche did ssia n orb it. But as profes. not have to rep rese nt Ger. man Wissenschajt to the world, as he wou ld have bee n exp ecte d to, do if he had bee n teaching in Berlin. As a result of a reorganization of Swiss canton s in 1 833 , how­ ever, the city of Basel had bee n shorn of its pro vin ce and thus much of its tax base. For several decades it see med doubtfu l whether the city cou ld continue to sup port its venera ble university, whi ch had been in continu ous operation since 146 0. As the city tried to econ. om ize, many profess ors had to teach at the Paedagogium in addi. . tion to lecturing at the university; Nie tzsche was b y n o mea ns the onl y one with such a con tract. You ng pro pro mo ted at Bas el, either, even when they fess ors cou ld seld om be had proven their worth, Those from outside Switzerland tended to move back to better po. sitio ns in Germany after a few years. Nie tzsc respect, staying in Basel until 1 879 , whe he was unu sual in this n ill health forced him to retire. It might have been difficul t for Nie tzsche to get ano ther job after the pub lication of The Birth oj Trag edy, but he made no atte mp t to find one . He stayed there so long, it see ms, primarily bec aus e his am biti on was not fixe d upo n a career of pro motion s in the univer. sity world. He was preoccupi ed with the con stru ctio n of him self as an intellectual, perhaps as a gen ius, and with the pur suit of his ideas in wri ting . But this was a pri vat e preoccupation , con sist ent

Emulating Geniuses

o . o

dedication to his for the. time being at least with his conscientious . w ork at the university and the Paed agoglum. In addition to the six hours of Greek and Latin that he taught at the. P aedagogium, Nietzsche regularly taught seven hours at the rsl' ty. In his first semester, he gave two lecture courses and a u nive . ar at the university. The range of subjects he treate d .In th ese semIn . cou rse s is extremely broad, from Hesiod an� the pre-SocratIc p h. 1-' losophers among early Greek writers to LatIn epIgraphy a.nd C �cero . S 0 me of his lectures were naturally devoted to subjects In h ' h he had particular interest; for example, Aeschyi us and ear1y r k philosophy. But for the most part the subjec�s were se1ecte? to fit the needs of Basel's students, and ac� ordlng to ho� hIS cou rses would fit into the curriculum alongsIde those of hIS col· leagues. . Several testimonials exist to the excellence ofN Ietzsch e' s teac h . . apIng. During the first several years-until The Birth. oj Tragedy . d th d-he was a popular teacher both at the unIverSIty an . e are pe . . 11 f h ' Paedagogium. His authority as a teacher derIved p �rtIa y :om IS knowledge; the students too were aware that for hIS age NIetzsche had an awesome command of the ancient languages and texts. But his youth also brought him close to them, and they could feel that he understood their difficulties. He was not aloof. Students worked hard for him, and his colleagues appreciated the fact. As one col· . They league later wrote, "His students loved and respected hIm. saw that he could empathize with their you th, a? d they under�tood . . . that no shroud of dusty scholarship had dlmlnls�: d hIS own Intel· lectual youth or vigor." 8 In contrast to his immediate success WIth students, NIetzsche had to contend with the initial disfavor of his two immediate col­ leagues when he arrived in Basel. For different reasons both of them had opposed his appointment. Professo� F. D. Gerlach was seventy-six years old when Nietzsche was appoInted. He had been professor of Latin at Basel since 1 820, and had � een off� nded once before by the appointment of a young man (NIetzsche s predece �­ sor Kiessling) trained by Ritschl in more modern methods of phI­ lology. Gerlach raged against Vischer·Bilfinger and seems never to have spoken a civil word to Nietzsche. The younger of the two col­ leagues, ]. A. Mahly, was disappointed because he h �d hoped to be . promoted himself from his duties in the Paedagoglum to the Job that Nietzsche got at the university. Unl �ke G:erlach, however, he was courteous to Nietzsche when he arrIved In Basel, and fou nd

� ��

/

1 07

7

.

'
o ysafekee ping of a benevo lent being, hut,he belIeve s 1 0 hlmselL t ld .

�

�

�!� ��I���:ii�!:���i:;I�i�i�a�;'�::,!�: � ���;:�

peo�le, �v­ And again, "He f!leasures the state, society, virtue, thefeels dIssatIs­ erything by the standard of his art; and whenever heche might have fied, he wishes the world would go under."87 Nietzs e a law unto becom has genius generalized: in modern culture the himself. ers is even less Nietzsche's characterization of Wagner's follow r's less ad­ flattering. All of them were attracted precisely by Wagne to attach ted motiva lly cynica were mirable qualities. Many of them . to began he that themselves to him because of the aura of genIUS acquire. ting as How did Wagner get his followers? Singers who beca� e interes pereffects, achIeve dramatic actors and found a brand-n ew chance to

1 88

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

haps with an inferior voice. Musician s who were able to learn from the Master of performance . . . . Orchestral musicia ns who prev iou sl were bored. Musicians who intoxicated or bewitched the public in a rect manner and now learned the color-effects of the Wagnerian orche�. · tra. All sorts o f discontented people who hoped for personal gai n fro every coup. People who go into raptures over every kind of socal1 "progress." Those who were bored with all existing music and no found their nerves more powerful ly stirred. . . . Literary men with a sorts of reformist ambitions. Artists who admire his way of living inde. pendently.88

dr

e� �

This whole passage is full of scorn for Wagnerians and the side of �agner that the� found �ttractive. But its more poignant mean IS revealed only In what IS absent from the list, namely, anyoneinat­g tracted to Wagner by his tragic vision, or transformed and bled by his work in any way. More than scornfu l, Nietzsche feltenvenory­ much alone in his discipleship. . Nietzsche terms the lack of a receptive audience Wagner's pri­ mary difficulty.89 The problematic relationship of artist and lic was part of the romantic idea of the genius. But Nietzsche pub the point that the higher significance Wagner ascribed to artmakandes partIcularly to his own art, simply did not interest the public: '

.

There is somethi ng comic in Wagner's inability to persuad e the Ger· mans to take the theater seriously . They remain cold and unmoved­ he gets worked up as though their salvation depende d on it. Nowa ays especial ly, the German s believe that they are engaged in more Importa nt matters. And someone who concern s himself so sol­ emnly with art strikes them as an amusing eccentri c.90

�

Wagner had simply misjudged his contemporaries and there was ) no hope for the revolutionary transformation that Nietzsche had so ardently desired to see. This is a thoroughly damning view of Wagner, his followers, �nd the German public. It constitutes not only a burst of insight Into Wagner's often unpleasant character-which Nietzsche had strictly ignored in favor of his idealization of the composer-but also represents a spasm of disillusion in the most literal sense. Hav­ in� entertained unrealistic hopes, Nietzsche now felt hopeless. ThIs was the root of the "skepticism" and moral illness that he com­ plained of, and the psychological source of the virtual nervus breakdown that Nietzsche experienced at that time.

Strugglefor Autonomy

'

1 89

So in the Spring of 1 876, when Nietzsche returned from Swit­ in Bayreuth, erland and finally began to write R ichard Wagner g much agonizin fitfully, wrote He e. challeng le �e facedhada formidab about g vacillatin still Tragedy, of in writing The Birth . as he simply not could whether he could publish what he was writing. He praise Wagner as .a moral rej ect the master's aesthetic "system" and hauer. NIetzsche Schopen on essay his in done had he as exempl ar, his work. But to and Wagner was now very critical of both the man to pra­ write a eulogy of Wagner for the first Festival he would have ise both. Could he manage this without simply suppressing the insi ghts that he had recorded in his notebooks? begIns Nietzsche's published paean to Wagner . expectantly two enough with the thought that "for an event to possess greatness accom­ things must come together: greatness of spirit in those who event The .' it.' rience exp who those in spirit of � pli sh it, and greatness . Yet obvIously FestIval, Bayreuth under consideration was the audi­ the with well Nietzsche hesitates to assure his readers that all is an ence for Wagner's art. Rather, he frets, "Whenever we see [such] ex­ event approaching we are overcome with the fear that those who the to only not pertains fear This perience it will be unworthy of it." audience: Even the deed of a man great in himself lacks greatness if it is brief and without resonance or effect; for at the moment he performed it he must have been in error as to its necessity at precisely that time: he failed to take correct aim and chance became master over h 1m. · 91

Failure to find resonance in an audience with "greatne ss of spirit" would ultimately mean lack of greatness in the artist-even in Wagner's case. Thus Nietzsche calls the greatness of Wagner's life­ work at least momentarily into question. Nietzsche may have questioned Wagner' s greatness only to re�ffirm it. From Schopenhauer he borrowed the metaphor of the artist aiming at a target; the philosopher had said that a genius could hit not only targets that others could not reach, but ones that others could not even see. Nietzsche uses this metaphor to explain both Wagner's achievement and the resistance to it: That a single individual could, in the course of an ave�age h� m � n lifespan, produce something altogether new may well excite the Indig­ nation of those who cleave to the gradualness of all evolution as

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

1 90

though t� a kind of moral law: they themselves are slow and dem and slowness m others-and here they see someone moving very fast' d 0 not know how he does it, and are angry with him, For such an u n d er· as tha at ayreuth here were no warning signs, no transi tio n l ' tak mg �vents, nothmg mtermedlate; the long path t? the goal, and the goal , the first CIrcumnavigation Itself, ? one knew ut Wag�er. It IS of the globe In the domam of art,92

� �

�

�

�

This is typical of romantic descriptions of genius, saved from cliche only by Schopenhauer's metaphor, But while it reaffirms that Wagner was "a man great in himself," it does not suggest that �agner� s work enjoyed the resonance of a great and comprehend­ In,g audlen�e, In fact, Wagner's relationship to his public was, for N Ietz�ch,e, Inextricable from Nietzsche's understanding of himself as a dISCIple of Wagner, As a disciple, Nietzsche's identity was em­ bedded in his conception of Wagner's public, and vice versa, I� 1 876 Nie,tzsche was confronted by rapid growth in Wagner's pubhc, and hIS reaction was ambivalent, On the one hand Nietzsche seems to have wanted Wagner to remain unrecognized excep,t to a s� all and select coterie of followers, including himself espeCIally_ NIetzsche congratulates himself upon being one of the few who had believed in Wagner from the first moment he met ' h'1m.93 Wagner h Imselfhad said that his work would be appreciated on,IY, by /select few, Now in 1 876, as Wagner seemed finally to be galnI�g the acceptance of the German public at large, Nietzsche acts hke a child correcting an inconsistent parent: "but you said. . . ." In 1 872 he had been one of the few believers. He had ridden with �he family in �agner's carriage to the dedication. Now he pro­ tests Inwardly agaInst the throngs of superficial enthusiasts gather� ing around Wagner. On the other hand, Nietzsche was so deeply affected by Wagner that he expected Wagner's work to transform the whole generation f new followers and redeem it from superficiality and material­ �Ism. � � would have been delighted to share Wagner with a larger p� bh� If they too had been transformed by Wagner's influence, But thIS dId not appear to be happening, Nietzsche wondered why Wagner accepted the adulation of people who were not truly t?uched by his work? Earlier he had blamed the unreceptive pub­ hc. But now he was prepared to be disappointed in Wagner if the public was not magically transformed. While he was implicitly challenging Wagner's authority,

Strugglefor Autonomy

'

191

ge­ ing the traditional practice of out Nietzsche was actually challeng phet with ted Wagner to go on being ay pro niu s, Nietzsche wancou � be tr�ns­ coul man ntry, unless all Ger hono; in his own d genIUS, nIze ely accepted myth of the unrecogries , was formed. But the wid a cui­ ppreciated by contempora innovato h ead of his time and una r recognize a radical ruse that enab led the public toeven :uraalgeni without fully understan�­ us and accept him as such as unappreCI­ unrecognized, mis� nderstood,beand in g his work. Beinggeni gnIzed by us. Thus a genIUS coul d recotion ated was a sign of nize t�e Indeed an important func oteof thIS having been unrecog dd.geni us, had always been to �rom ner, myth of the unrecognize Wag ng like thIS had happenedtoWIth recognition. Somethi but seemed unmusical all a very whose compositions hade.once gorized as Zukunjtsmusik, "the few, including Nietzsch Butt-garcate ic, they came gradually to music of the future" or avan nsdeofmus a misu nderstood genius who be understood as the innovatio e temporaries . Once that was mad was beyond most of his con Em­ d about music-even the German known, everyone who careng peror-wanted to be amo the connoisseurs who coul d understand. by but it was quite normal, and,ing Nietzsche was alarmed at this,perh aps even necessary. Hav the logic of modern culture, unappreciated genius, 'Yagnet r postured for so many years asg an �I­ the peop,le wh� fi�ally deCIded had very little role in selectincoul senS the that t InSIs ly SImp not d He . acknowledge him as such s ones keep their distance. Heit tive ones understand and the cras n art would finally g� t the attentioque could only be gratified that his pers s­ e imat legit a was it pective, deserved. But from Nietzsche's supe e m beco had al people , �ol­ , tion why so many unregeneratehis worrfici dIstI a , And thIS questIon enthusiastic about Wagner and cism ofk.Wag ner, crept into Richard lationof Nietzsche's earlier criti Wagner in Bayreuth. a work of devotion to Wagner. Nietzsche's essay is nevertheless ntic work. And only readers It has often been read as a sycos pha ner have noticed the sub­ privy to Nietzsche's critical note on Wag rs s upo n Wagner and the spectato tle aspersions that Nietzsche castrem ­ man e zsch Niet ains: How did in Bayreuth. Thus the question ner' of task the age to reconcile his insight into Wag s character with praising Wagner in this essay? inced himself-at least brieflyNietzsche seems to have conv characteristics that Wagner that Wagner's defects were youthful

1 92

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

had since overcome.94 In R ichard Wagner in Bayreuth Nietzs c he asserts paradoxically that in Wagner's youth "he himself does no yet seem to be present at all." As a youth Wagner was governed b�t "a spirit of restlessness, of irritability, a nervous hastiness in seizi hold upon a hundred different things, a passionate delight in expnge­ riencing moods of almost pathological intensity, an abrupt transi­ tion from the most soulful quietude to noise and violenc Although these were characteristics that Nietzsche saw in Wagnee."r in the 1870s, since he did not know Wagner in his youth, in th published essay the real Wagner has emerged from these "riddles"e and attained his own character by the time he reaches maturity.95 The mature Wagner was by no means perfect, however. It only that the story of his life and the unfolding of his genius beginiss with his maturity. And this story is a tempestuous drama. In Nietzsche's words,

�

As soon as [Wagner's] spiritual and moral maturity arrives, the dram a of his life also begins. And how different he looks now! His nature appears in a fearful way simplified, torn apart into two drives. . . . Below there rages the precipitate current of a vehement will which . . strives to reach up to the light through every runway, cave, and crev. ice, and desires power. .

This was potentially a tyrannical force, according to Nietzsche, that could easily have made Wagner "irritable and unjust." Especially if Wagner had not been granted success, his will might have filled him with a passionate hatred and made him blame the world for his failure[!]96 The other, opposing force that Nietzsche discerned in ' Wagner's character was Treue or loyalty. Nietzsche drew his evi­ dence for this not from Wagner's life-it was not particularly evi­ dent-but from his works. Acknowledging that the characters invented by a writer do not necessarily represent him, he urges that "a succession of figures upon whom he has patently bestowed his love does tell us at any rate something about the artist." He argues that Rienzi, the Dutchman, and Senta; Tannhauser and Elizabeth; Lohengrin and Elsa; Tristan, Kurwenal, Marke, and Isolde; Hans Sachs, Briinnhilde, and Wotan, all represent a growing current of selfless loyalty in Wagner. And Nietzsche writes that this loyalty is "the most personal and primal event that Wagner experiences

r

�

Strugglefor Autonomy

1 93

within himself and reveres like a religious mystery, . . . displaying it in a hundred shapes."97 Loyalty is an interesting choice of a virtue to balance against Wagner's self-seeking and tyrannical force of will. As a theme it is often handled ambiguously, as in Tristan und Isolde, and it is cer­ tainly not the only theme of Wagner's works. It is, however, the theme of Nietzsche's relationship to Wagner. Wagner had been strangely (unnecessarily) concerned about Nietzsche's loyalty, and Nietzsche himself had tried to prove above all else that he was a disciple loyal to his master, willing to perform any service. At times it seems he was more loyal to Wagner than to himself. But now he was discovering the necessity of a higher loyalty, one to his own creative powers. Nietzsche even suggests that Wagner's followers should be so renewed as to become creators in their own right.98 Wagner might remain an example, but no longer an ideal. The struggle of loyalty depicted in Richard Wagner in Bayreuth is in some m easure autobiographical, as Nietzsche later intimated.99 In depicting Wagner's character as a struggle between his pas­ sionate will and the principle of loyalty, however, Nietzsche employed a conceit that he had devised for his essay on Scho­ penhauer: the genius in conflict with himself, creating himself by overcoming some aspect of himself. This device enabled him not only to make Wagner seem even greater for having tamed his tyran­ nical will, but to depict his life as a drama of romantic genius: It was in the relationship of these two profound forces . . . in the sur· render of the one to the other, that there lay the great necessity which had to be fulfilled if [Wagner] was to be whole and whoUY himself.lOo

Wholeness here refers of course to that unity or harmony of self that writers in the German tradition of Bildung assumed necessary for a creative life. But in Nietzsche's slightly revised version, nei­ ther Wagner nor Schopenhauer before him were born with harmo­ nious, whole personalities; they were profoundly divided men who had to overcome aspects of themselves to reach wholeness. The drama that Nietzsche purported to find in Wagner's inter­ nal struggle was a fiction that suited Nietzsche very well. It permit­ ted him to voice his reservations and yet praise Wagner in the inordinate fashion to which the master was accustomed. Yet, since the exemplary loyalty is drawn from Wagner's works rather than from his life, the effect is the opposite of the one he created in

1 94

YOU NG NIETZSCHE

Schopenhauer as Educator,

he praised Schopenhaue moral e�emplar and ignorewhdere the philosopher's works. In ;ic�:� Wagner zn Bayreuth Nie tzsche on ly ms to praise the master,,�s moral character; in fact his praise see is oted to the heroes · of. W agner ' s work s. "At 1 east Wagner's worksdevwer e worth my I'deaIIZ" a. . etrospect to flon , " he see ms In be say : ing , so tha t even in this spasm of loyal serVIce to Wagner, Nietzsche was det aching h'Imself from Wagner's person. It was by refocussing his expectations on Wagner's ' that NIe. tzsche overcame the skepti wo rks and th elr. reception pressed and paralyzed him in the winter and spring cism that d sequently NIetzsche provides a schematic histor of l875. Co:� relatlo' nsh'Ip WIt. h the public. At first Wagner identi y of Wagner's press�d an� sought to communicate his empathyfied with th suffenng directly-in Tannhiiuser and Lohengrin andfor the w �I��s ' there wa.s mUM tuaI Inc ' om pre hen sio n.1o l Bu t Wa gne r slou ghe off the . . . deSlre to domlna ' te the. audience and transform the worldd dir ect u�11y re�ognlzed that he alone; he began "to com ly. He grad. e to terms with � Imself ; and he gave upwas try ing to pro duc e wh at Nie tIvely calls "an immediate effect." Then he tzsche pejora. "th rough h'IS art only to hIm . n Tristan andbegan to spea·k2 ' self ' -I Then, renouncing "success" in the sense of commo Meistersinger 10 b�gan to look up�n the world "with more rec n popularity, he iled eyes, was seIzed less often WIth rage and disgust," and "reonc nou . And. as h e "qUIetIy pushed forward his greatest wo nced p ower". besld� score, something happened which made rk and laid Score ten:Jrzends were coming to tell him of a subterran him stop and lis. m�ny souls.': 103 In other words, as Wagner wroteean movement of The Ring oj the Nzbelungen with sup pos ed ind iffe ren ce to the pu blic began slowly to form itself. ' a true public Nietzsche seemed to suggest that, as the firs t Festival in Bayreuth approached, Wa gne r was jus t fin din g his tru e public It was a scheme in which Wagner fou nd his true pu blic in pro porti�n as he r�n�unced pop . , a correlative of the victory of loyalty over wIll In Wagner'sulapsyntycho logical life . Bo th of these develop. ments are wIs. hfu l projec ' tio ns he's mind' and they are perhaps what Nietzsche neededoftoNiebeltzsc iev t he was not com. pletely deluded about this. In fact, his wise.hfuBul des em�rgence of a pub lic for Wagner's work was int cription of the ag�Inst the vulgarity that he feared. 104 He seems conended to guard wntten a wIs. hful account, as if to instruct the audiensciously to haNe ce on how they

a

O

.

'

a

�

Strugglefor Autonomy

195

should approach Wagner's art. His is a prescriptive celebration of the coming Festival. Nietzsche does not describe Bayreuth as the triumphant end of Wagner's race. It was only the beginning of what Nietzsche hoped would be the triumph of a tragic renewal of German culture.105 Bayreuth had been created, according to Nietzsche, because condi­ tions in the popular theater were not conducive to the proper pro­ duction of Wagner's works. According to Nietzsche, "There is only one hope and one guarantee for the future of humanity: it consists in the retention of the sense for the tragic. " And it was from Bayreuth that the sense of the tragic would again flow forth into the world.106 It would of course be a disaster if a complacent public assembled in Bayreuth, conscious only of having arrived. That would ev�scera�e Wagner's work. In a sense, Nietzsche's whole essay was wntten In fear of this, and in an attempt to prevent it, to prompt the public to greater awe and humility-so that they could be transformed by Wagner's art as Nietzsche had been. In the final section of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth it is quite ap­ parent that Nietzsche has been a?dre�sing himself to th�se who will attend the first Festival. He plaInly Instructs the pubbc that they have not arrived at the end of history. Nor is their reception of Wagner's saving work the culmination of anything. Bayreuth �s only a beginning. Wagner is the herald of another age. Even thIS select audience, expectant and anxious for their own transforma. even hon, they must b e overcome. 107 Two specially bound copies of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth ar­ rived at Wahnfried, the Wagners' home in Bayreuih" a"b outJuly 10, 1876-a "Festival Edition" in leather binding with gold lettering. Nietzsche's accompanying letter-only one to Cosima survives­ betrayed barely a hint of his anxiety about what he had published. He had wanted not only to prepare himself for the great events of the summer, he wrote, but to make a contribution to the Festival as well. He hoped only for the slightest sign of approval from the Wagners.I09 The Wagners were apparently impressed with the book, whether or not they found time to read it. And they responded as Nietzsche hoped. The Master wrote Nietzsche an enthusiastic but slightly ambiguous note, perhaps alluding to Nietzsche's infre­ quent attendance in Bayreuth: "Your book is astonishing! Where have you got to know me so well? N ow come soon and get accus.

.

!Os

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

1 96

t�me� to the impressions [of The Ring]!" 1 1 0 And Cosima thanked hIm wIth an equally brief telegram, in a loftier tone, perhap s to su . tain a certain for�alit� that she had created between herself an� her .yout�ful admIrer: ,Now l owe to you, dear friend, my singfe�' exhIl�ration and r�freshment, aside from the mighty artistic im. pressions [of The Rzng]. May this suffice as my expression of graf. t de. "11 1 In th·Is exch ange-NIetzsche s letter and the two brief messages from the Wagners in Bayreuth-there is no ackno wledg. 1 12 ment of the ambivalence of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. unli�ely that Wag�er coul� have found time to read . It see�s sbook NIetzsche In 1876. Ever SInce comIng to Bayreuth in 1872 , as' · f th·IS dream of producing The Ring ofthe Nibelunge ' the rea1·IzatIon in his �wn �e�tival Theater finally approached, the temp o o� Wagner s aCtivIty had grown progressively more frenetic. After completing The Ring in November 1874, just when he wished to turn his full attention to production, he was inundated with reo quests to give concerts. He had to accept many of these invitations just .to raise money for the theater, and to secure singers for the Festival productions. "His vogue as an opera composer had never been so great as it was now," writes his biographer Newman; and the managers of theaters throughout Germany positively de: m�n.ded th�t he co �e to their cities to conduct in return for per. mittIng theIr star sIngers to perform at Bayreuth in 1876.11 3 To Wagner this seemed like blackmail. More important tasks urgently required his attention. Wag�er was not only the author and composer of The Ring, and even desIgner of the theater; he had now to be impresario, pro. ', �ucer, director, and choreographer. He had to Scour Germany sIngers competent for the very demanding roles he had written. Even more importantly, he had to prepare them in Bayreuth, a fro � their homes, where he perceived they would lapse into baci habIts. He had to recruit and rehearse an orchestra as well. He �eeded to be in Bayreuth to supervise the last stages of construe. tIon and the furnishing of the Festival Theater. He even had to help organize the little town for the unprecedented number of visi who already began streaming into the city in the summer of 1875 whole year early-with many more expected for the first Festival in 1876. And many of the tourists were potential patrons and donors ' who hoped to be received at Wahnfried. They further distracted the Master from his preparations. An irascible man in the best times, Wagner was particularly preoccupied and irritable now. Bu U

"

1

0

'.

a

,'

Strugglefor Autonomy

1 97

calendar and the theater virtually with the Festival actually onst the ing ex­ almo superhuman restraint in focusetic com plete, he showed aesth one goal of realizing the complete oser was im­ clu sively upon the so so envisioned.1I4 The comp pression he had long production that he could hardly stop to absorbed in the work ofs essay Nothing that Nietzsche migh t have worry about Nietzsche' rbed .him or even captured his attention have distu 1 1 , wri tten could ent. 5 for m ore than a mom he had dared much. He knew In Nietzsche' s own view, however,ism e of critic of Wagner woul d showt that a dangerous degreprais e. Nietzsche was as ambivalent abou through the exorbitant was about Wagner. And his equivo­ what he had written as he now ty abou t what he had done .116 He cations bear witness to his anxie fear of Wagner's reaction was was worried sick. But of course, his er's violent repudiation of his ear­ quite realistic, considering Wagn a premonition; or perhaps he already lier essays.1I7 Perhaps he had nue as Wagner's disciple. Of course it knew that he could not contis relat ip with Wagner that his had always been Nietzsche' heionsh ied about more even works had threatened. But now was"itworr is as if I had jeopardized than that: he wrote that with this essay mean that Nietzsche' s my very self." Read literally, thisbycantheonlyprosp ect of alienating sense of self was threatened d up with Wagn that it migh t Wagner.ll 8 His identity was so boun not Wagner'serdisci ple, who collapse if they separated. If he were would he be? insecure state of mind Nietzsche was thus in a dangerously val onJuly 2 4. To make when he arrived in Bayreuth for the Festi table 'fo,� ,the f!rst few matters worse, he was miserably uncomfor and his unpleasant days, complaining of ill health, the humidity ic headaches and nausea. And lodgings. He suffered from his chronalso at ease amid the preten­ as he might have predicted, he was illgathe for the event. tious crowd of Wagner-enthusiasts sociered ty, but this particular Nietzsche was never very comfortable in and his anxiety about the crowd, the importance of the occasion, create the worst possible book he had just published combined to tions at Wahnfried, with situation for him. He avoided the recepWagn er by remaining si­ the excep tion of one where he irritated lent and aloof. "alm ost regretted From Bayreuth he wrote to his sister that hetted, but he "didn't coming." He had been to one rehearsal, he admi first like it and had to leave."ll9 It was a rehearsal of the act of The

1 98

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

an opera that Nietzsche had never heard. Elisabeth Nietzsche interpreted her brother's remark as evidence of his complete disillusion with Wagner and his work; 1 20 but si nce she enjoyed an early monopoly of her brother's le�ters and maQip_ ulated theIr. texts to serve her own purposes, thIS. Interpretation is suspect. The remark might also have been the expression of a sick and disoriented man who had not felt well at the rehearsal, or sim­ ply an indication that Nietzsche had been disappointed in that par� ticular rehearsal or the production more generally. 12 1 But it is possible that Elisabeth Nietzsche was right. Nietzsche may finally have realized his disillusion in Wagner and his music at this rehearsal. Nietzsche found some solace in Bayreuth with Malwida von Meysenbug, whose shady garden seemed to shield him from every­ thing he found unpleasant about the Festival atmosphere. Leaving most of his things at his own lodgings, he stayed at Malwida's while he waited for his sister to arrive, and his health improved for sev­ eral days. In that time he heard rehearsals of the whole of Twilight of the Gods, and remarked that "it is good to get used to this; now I am in my element." 1 22 This could be understood as a reversal of the earlier judgment. Or it could be a forthright acknowledgment of the difficulty of Wagner's new work, and an acceptance of the music as a challenging relief from Bayreuth society. Whichever the case, by August 1 , barely a week after his arrival, Nietzsche felt . worse again-he was suffering from headaches and exhaustion. In a letter written on that day, he notes that he had heard The Valkyrie in a darkened room to protect his eyes; but he makes comment on the opera. He simply wrote, "I yearn to be away from here. It is senseless for me to stay. I dread every one of these I evenings of art; and yet I don't stay away." 1 23 What is not clear i whether he would have enjoyed th�se evenings more if he had not felt ill; or whether the whole Bayreuth scene was contributing to his illness. Perhaps both! In any case, by August 1 , Nietzsche seemed to be finished with the Festival before it had really started: "I am sick. of it. I won't stay for the first performance. Somewhere else, any· where but here, where there is nothing but torture for me."124 Thus . he decided to leave Bayreuth and take another cure, this time at Klingbrunn in the nearby Bavarian mountains. While he was in Klingbrunn, he began to realize that he would not miss Wagner's company as much as he had feared. At least not the Wagner ofWahnfried and the Festival Theater, a Wagner sur· Twilight of the Gods,

no

.

Struglg e/or Autonomy

ms full of ons in large reception roo . rounded by wealthy patr the IongS mIS he would king and loud talk. Nor sJ1l0ke " drin h ot the er h and, ' of the operas. He would, �nyed waited performancesrieb te� s n, where he had enjo the Mas s the Wagner ofT sche mISS tive times. And he would re ate company in his mo st creastru ��mowe �f cted on the fatherly fi � hIS rful ideal that he had conseparat the er. But In rs gne Wa two e these he was beginning to W :n s recuperate. for perhap to ins nta . . nu�nd . He wou ld stay in the mou SIng thought, and then return to Basel WIth out paS ten days,Baheyreut h.125 through � at least rn to Bayreuth. He atten.desls In the event, he did retu er had The Ring of the Nibelungen as wel l. HIS � one full cycletooffind 10dgI�gs he one to use their tickets or the been unable hapany p.ly vered his health. Perh.aps he .sImdIS­ had reserved. Per srnhetoreco WIn gr s hIS hap . ? ? retu the Festival. Or per forced himself to him d, permIttIng �I� to min of e fram er illu sionmen t put rinofa calm this act in the drama of Wagner s hfe, return as an observe of the principals. rather than as oneved same reuth on August l�. On t�ehelm Nietzsche arri back in Bay WIl e) of Weimar, and KaIser at theI, day the Grossherzog (Grand Duk met arrived. The Grossher�ogw as. The the German Emperor, alsothe re was self hIm r gne and Kaiser by Wa , station by Franz Liszt, city be cely scar � ch, it was said, could for thesee a parade through the whi ­ KaI out set aths wre and s ner due to the vast numbers of, ban Ger out and great wealth from through ser. With royalty, nob ility atte nce, Nietzsche was . hardlym an many and Europe in henda ?re did nothing to mak� hImself ,important personage, andon the u occ y � Ied other hand, were full mI� noticeable. The Wagners, sts; no mat how soli citous they ht with their prominent gue dly have ter ght out guests who, h�e have felt, they could har theirsou receptio ns �nd the, pub lIce Nietzsche, stayed away fromvery solicito for N.Ietzsch� s nam hou ses. And they were not ima's diaries,us,and tzsche s c�rre­ never again appears in Cos er really resumed . NIe It seems possIble, spondence with Wagner nev and Wagner did not each other even probable, that Nietzsche reuth at the end of Ausee st. , again before Nietzsche left Bay no�ing about NIe�tzsc he s se�­ . Unfortunately we know almost his sIster and vutuall� a�l ofp hIS ond stay in Bayreuth. Inasmuch teas no rs to record hIS 1m :es­ friends were now there, he wro hislette presen.ce at any ga�henng, sions. Third parties do not record to the socIety of Mal wid a von and he seems to have kept strictly

(a

i

1 99

•

zuu

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

Meysenbug and his sister. In the absence of any direct eviden ce however, all commentators agree that Niet zsch e felt alien ated fr the social scene there, and disappointed, eventually at least, in o� production of The Ring. The only difference of opinion is over thhe appropriateness of his reaction . Some profess surprise t e Nietzsche's naivete: did he really expect the audience to be so tra at formed by the operas that they would refrain from visiting the lo ns taverns and showing off their finery at Wahnfried?1 26 Others foucal the Festival disappointing and the spectators uncommonly vnd gar.127 One of them was Wilhelm Murr, a Wagnerian who wroteul­ series of three articles for the Gartenlaube, the most widely circu­ lated periodical in Germany. The s satirizes the Bayreuth scene much as Nietzsche later did inserie Ecce Homo and other writ­ ings. 1 28 On August 27, Nietzsche left Bayreuth for Basel accompanied by Paul Ree-whom he already knew who would now become a close confidant-and the FrenchmanbutEdw Schure, whom he had only just met at the Festival, introducedard by Malwida. One con­ sequence of this long train ride is that the most extensive record of Nietzsche's state of mind at the end of the Festi was made by Schure. And although it was not written down, orval at not pub. lished for nineteen years, it seems to give an accurate least impr essio n at least of Nietzsche's attitude toward Wagner. Schure indicates that during the rehearsals and perf nces, Nietzsche seemed "sad and depressed. . . . In Wagner'sorma ence he was timid, embar­ rassed, almost invariably silent." 1 29 pres Wag ner, on the other hand, working with tremendous energy and was an expansive mood, so that Schure wondered if Nietzsche was injealo of Wagner, or perhaps disappointed in the contrast between theuscrea and the man, or merely censorious of the general vulgarity of tor the ic.! Whichever it was, "not a criticism escaped him, not a word publ of cen sure, but he showed the resigned ess of a beaten man. I still remember the air of lassitude andsadn lusionment with which he spoke of the Master's coming work ."disil In the train Nietzsche appar­ ently recounted how Wagner had told him of his plans for Parsifal, smiling indulgently "as if to say, 'See the illus ions Of these poets and musicians?' "130 Thus it seems that by the time left Bayreuth, Nietzsche had adopted, at the very least, an ironicalheattitu de toward Wagner. There had always been a strai jealousy in Nietzsche's admi­ ration for Wagner, or what mighnt of be called oedipal rivalry. Cer-

a

was

e � e e t s­ l d ­ ­ h

a

20 1

Strugglefor Autonomy

C

tainly he was shocked as well. But this was not the first time Nietzsche had been shocked by Wagner, nor was he t�e only .one shocked by the contrast between the nobility of Wagner s creatIons and his egotistical behavior. Neither was he the only one to be ap­ palled by the vulgarity of the Ba�reu�h cr?wd. But the sad�ess th�t S chu re mentions repeatedly pOInts In sull another emouonal dI. · 1ousy . rection. This is more consistent with mournIng than WIth Jea or outrage. And indeed, Nietzsche mourned the Wagner he had idealized and depended upon; whether or not t�at had ever been a realistic image is irrelevant, for now he had lost It. He' mourned the intimacy they had shared at Triebsch en too, an InfImacy that Nietzsche finally realized they would ne�er recapture. And he so mourned that naive and childlike part of hImself. that had been . 1· tyrannlca Inimpressionable and so vulnerable to the someumes flu ences ofSchopenhauer and especially Wagner. Nietzsche's own later accounts sustain the view that he b�oke with Wagner, at least in his own mind, when he suddenly reahzed that he was opposed to everything that Wagner stood for.. In Ecce Homo, a book that he prepared for publication in 1 888, Nle�zsc� e dates his disillusionment with Wagner to the Bayreuth FestIval In 1876. That book is colored by the hindsight of a decade and the foresight of a man engaged in maki� g a my�h of himself. N one�he­ less, it is significant that this autobIographIcal work charactenz� s Nietzsche's break as a sudden awakening-as from a dream-In Bayreuth: .

.

Wherever was I? There was nothing I recognized; J scarcely recog­ nized Wagner. In vain did I leaf through my e�or es. Trib schen-a . distant isle of the blessed: not a trace of any SImIlarIty. The Incompa­ rable days when the foundation stone [of the Festival Theater] was laid, the small group of people that had belonged . . . not a trac of any similarity. What had ha ened?-Wagner had been translated Into a German! The Wagnerian had become master over Wagner- Ger-

�

pp

man art. The German master. German beer.

�

�

131

Here Nietzsche seems to suggest that Wagner had changed com­ pletely as he progressed from a solitary and unrecogni�ed ge�ius, living in Swiss exile, to a cultural hero and German nauo�al Icon. But in using the metaphor of awakening from a dr� am, NIetzsche tacitly admits that he was only belatedly acknowledgIng what he ac-

202

YOUNG NIETZSCHE

tually knew about Wagner all along. He, Nietzsche, had awakened from a hypnotic sleep. Wagner had made no secret of his German patriotism and anti'­ Semitism. But these were easy to overlook, Wagner was fi nally " ensco nced in Bayreuth amid throngs of hisuntil natio nalistic SUppOrt­ ers. Then he expressed his views even more stridently, and his state­ ments were amplified by his followers.132 It is true, Nietz did ta�e a sta�d wh�n it mattered most-"":hen Wagner wassche fin a beIng receIved wIth open arms by an antI-S emitic German publillyc, when people who knew and cared very little about his music made Wagner a champion of their chauvinism. Then Nietzsche's repudi­ ation of Wagner's ideology was important, and it became very ap­ parent in his next published writing. In Human, All Too Human, two volumes of aphorisms published in 1 878 and 1879 and dedicated to Volta Nietzsche suddenly wrote as a rationalist loyal to the Europeanire,Enlig ent of the eighteenth century. It is difficult to recognize thehtenm autho r of The Birth of Tragedy or the Untimely Meditations in this new work new Nietzsche was cosmopolitan, pro-French, and vehemently. Tohep­ posed to anti-S emitism. What is more, Nietzsche claims that he began to write this book during the Bayreuth Festiv or more pre­ cisely, in the days that he spent at the spa in Klingal,brun n, before returning to attend performances of The Ring. 133 In an expla nation of why he wrote Human, All Too Human as a cosmopolitan, Nietz sche claims that he only realized in Bayreuth that Wagner had becom e his polar opposite: it was during . . . the first Festival, [that] I said farewell to Wagner in my heart. . . . Since Wagner had moved to Germ any, he had con· desce nded step by step to every th ing I despi s e-ev en to anti· Semitism.134

It was not just Wagner's chauvinism and anti-S emitism that loomed in Nietzsche's mind, however. His turn tianity was perhaps even worse. In a later Preface to Humaton,Chris All Too Human (1 886), Nietzsche wrote that Wagner might to have triumphed at Bayreuth when, in 1876, he finally achieseem ved the popularity he had sought so long. But, Nietzsche argued, the Maste r had actually been defeated, and defeated precisely by his own effort s to gain recognition. For as he "sank down, helpless and broken, befor the Christian cross," he had at last surrendered all of the ideals heehad

'I

"

203

Strugglejor Autonomy t

nature s arted with.135 Nietzsche referred not only to the religious . . Intersome�Imes he of W agner's next opera, Parsifal (which Nietzs