Nietzsche’s Letters: 1884

(Fonte da tradução em inglês: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/nlett1884.htm )

Versão em Português

1

Nice, January/Februry 1884: Draft of letter to Franz Overbeck

By the bye, my sister is a dog in the manger: six times in the past two years she has flung a letter into the midst of my supreme and most felicitous feelings—feelings that have always been rare on this earth—a letter that has the most insidious stench of the all-too-human about it.

2

Nice, January/Februry 1884: Drafts of letters to Franziska Nietzsche

But to come back a year later to things that occurred prior to my intimate meetings with Fräulein Salomé in Tautenburg and Leipzig—that was an act of incomparable brutality. And then to send me letter after letter informing me of things that were news to me, thus subsequently heaping filth on those months so full of self-sacrifice—I call that insidious. If Fräulein Salomé said of me that behind the mask of ideal goals” I pursued her “with filthy intentions,” ought I have been permitted to learn of it a year afterwards? I would have kicked her out with condemnations and curses, I would have rescued Rée from her.—That is only a sample of a hundred instances in which my sister’s fatal perversity toward me has shown itself. I’ve long known of course that she will have no rest till she sees me dead. Now my Zarathustra is finished! The moment I finished it and was steering into harbor, there she was, tossing handfuls of filth into my face.

Your letter hints at things that leave me speechless.

Am I not the one who last year showed the two of you a surfeit of undeserved kindness? Are you both ingrates? Or are you so utterly dishonest that you make the simplest truth stand on its head?

Who behaved wretchedly toward me, if it wasn’t the two of you? Who endangered my life, if not you? Who abandoned me totally the way you two did, so that when I needed consolation you replied by heaping scorn and filth on everything I live and strive for?

I well know the moral distance that has separated me, from childhood on, from the likes of you. I needed every ounce of gentleness, patience, and silence I could muster, in order to make that distance less palpable to you. Have you no idea of the revulsion I must try to overcome being so closely related to people like you! What is it then that causes me to throw up when I read my sister’s letters, when I have to swallow her concoctions of stupidity and insolence laced with moralizing?

For several years now I have had to defend myself against L[isbeth], to flee from her like an animal she was torturing to death; I conjured her to leave me in peace and she has not stopped tormenting me for a single moment. I was afraid to go to N[aumburg] last August, afraid of what I might do to her, and that’s why I appealed to O[verbeck] for advice. And now she strikes her little pose and acts as though she were guilty of nothing at all!

I don’t know what’s worse, Lisbeth’s boundless, insolent mindlessness, such that she proceeds to instruct me—I who know human beings down to the bone—concerning two human beings I had the time and desire to examine quite closely; or her shameless tactlessness that never tires of chucking ordure at people who at all events shared an important part of my intellectual development and who therefore are a hundred times closer to me than the emptyheaded vengeful wretch she is.

My nausea—to be related to such a squalid creature.

Where did she get this nauseating brutality from? Where did she get that coy little way she has of injecting poison?

When a human being like me says “So-and-so belongs to my life’s plan,” as I did say to Lisbeth concerning Fräulein Salomé, then her’s is an obtuse mindlessness, a vindictiveness, and a desire to avenge herself on a superior nature. And then to work against me in such an infamous way. In the end, of course, I achieved what I wanted.

The silly goose went so far as to accuse me of being envious of Rée! and to compare me to Gersdorff and herself to Malwida!

You cannot empathize, you have no idea what solace Dr. Rée was to me for years—faute de mieux, obviously; and what an incredible blessing it was for me to have had dealings with Fräulein Salomé.

As far as Lisbeth’s letter is concerned—her judgments of me do not perturb me. I believe I’ve heard them before. Was it from Lisbeth? Or from Fräulein Salomé? At that time they agreed at least about me. Well, then, who is double-crossing whom?

Do not believe, dear mother, that I am in a bad mood. Quite the contrary! But whoever will not be loyal to me, let them go to the devil—or, as far as I’m concerned, to Paraguay.

3

Nice, February 22, 1884: Letter to Erwin Rohde

My dear old friend

I don’t know what brought it on, but when I read your last letter, especially when I saw that charming picture of your children, I felt as though you were holding my hand and looking at me mournfully, as if to say: “How can it be that we have so little in common now, that we live in such different worlds? Yet at one time — —”

And that’s how it is, my friend, with everyone I care about: it’s all over, past history, merely a matter of being considerate. We still get together. We talk, so as not to be silent. We write letters, so as not to be silent. But the truth can be seen in their eyes, which say to me (I hear it well enough!): “Nietzsche, you are now all alone!”

[....]

The three acts of my Zarathustra are finished: you have the first, the other two I hope to be able to send you in 4-6 weeks. It is a kind of abyss of the future, something horrible, particularly in its rapture. Everything in it is me alone, without prototype, parallel, or precedent; anyone who ever lived in it would come back to the world a different man.

[....] I fancy that, with Zarathustra, I have now brought the German language to perfection. After Luther and Goethe there was still a third step to take—; see for yourself, old bosom friend, if power, suppleness, and melody have ever before been blended like this in one language. [....] I write a stronger, manlier line than Goethe, without falling prey, as Luther did, to coarseness. My style is a dance, it plays with all sorts of symmetries, only to leap over and scoff at them. This applies even to the choice of vowels.

Forgive me! I would not think of making a confession like this to anyone else, but you once did say, I believe you were the only one, how much you liked my style.— [....]

Oh, friend, what a wild, secluded life I lead! So alone, alone! So without “children”!

[....]

4

Nice, April 22, 1884: Postcard to Franz Overbeck

My dear friend [....] The latest news is that great misgivings arise with regard to my publisher. [....] The accursed anti-Semitism is ruining all my chances for financial independence, students, new friends, influence, it alienated R[ichard] W[agner] and me, it is the cause of a [radical] break between me and my sister etc. etc. etc. [....]

5

Venice , beginning of May 1884: Letter to Malwilda von Meysenbug

By now, my highly esteemed friend, the last two parts of Zarathustra are hopefully in your hands [....] Who knows how many generations it will take to produce a few men who can fully appreciate what I have done. And I am appalled by the thought of all the unqualified and wholly unsuitable types who will some day appeal to my authority. But this is the torment of every great teacher of mankind: he knows that he has as much chance of becoming its curse as its blessing.

I myself will do what I can to ward off at least the crudest misunderstandings. Now that I have built this vestibule for my philosophy, I must get back to work and not tire until the main structure stands finished before me. [....]

But this loneliness, ever since childhood! This reserve, in the most intimate relationships! Even kindness can no longer reach me.

In Nice, during Fräulein Schirhofer’s visit, I did often think of you with genuine gratitude, for I realized that you meant to be kind. Actually, it was a visit at the right time, a pleasant and profitable one (especially since no interfering, conceited goose was present—sorry, I was referring to my sister!). But basically I think that no one can help me overcome this deep-rooted feeling of being alone. I’ve never found anyone I can talk to the way I talk with myself. — Forgive me for such a confession, my revered friend! [....]

I am angry with myself for the inhuman letter I sent you last summer; that unspeakably nasty turmoil made me downright ill. Meanwhile the situation has changed: I have broken with my sister completely. For heaven’s sake do not dream of trying to intercede; between a vengeful anti-Semitic goose and me there can be no reconciliation. Anyway, I’m being as tolerant as I can, since I know what can be said in defense of my sister and what lies behind her so abusive and shameful behavior toward me:—love. It is absolutely necessary that she set sail for Paraguay as soon as possible. Later, much later, she will come to realize all by herself how much harm she did me during the most decisive period of my life with these incessant dirty-minded insinuations about my character (the business has been going on for two years!). I am also left with the very awkward task of trying to make some amends to Dr. Rée and Frl. Salomé for what my sister has done. [....] She is devoid of all psychological insight. [....]

6

Venice, first week of June 1884: Letter to Malwilda von Meysenbug

My highly esteemed friend,

[....] It has now become extremely difficult to give me help; more and more, I consider it unlikely that I will meet anyone who can. Almost every time I have entertained such hopes, it has turned out that I was the one who had to pitch in. But I have no time for that now. My task is enormous, my determination no less so. What I want, my son Zarathustra won’t tell you. But he will challenge you to figure it out, and perhaps you can. This much is certain: I wish to force mankind to decisions which will determine its entire future—and it may yet happen that one day whole millennia will make their most solemn vows in my name. — [....]

Mais textos

• No related posts.

Sem comentários - Adicione o seu

algumas tags: