Nietzsche’s Letters: 1887

Fonte: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/nlett1887.htm TraduçãoCartas de Nietzsche – 1887

Nice, March 7, 1887: Letter to Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast)

Dear friend,

[....] Dostoevsky happened to me just as Stendhal did earlier, by sheer accident: a book casually flipped open in a shop, a name I had never even heard before—and the sudden awareness that one has met with a brother.

[...] four years in Siberia, chained, among hardened criminals. This period was decisive. He discovered the power of his psychological intuition; what’s more, his heart sweetened and deepened in the process. His book of recollections from these years, La maison des morts, is one of the most “human” books ever written. [...] I first read [...] two short novels ["The Landlady" and Notes from Underground]: the first a sort of strange music, the second a true stroke of psychological genius—a frightening and ferocious mockery of the Delphic “know thyself,” but tossed off with such an effortless audacity and joy in his superior powers that I was thoroughly drunk with delight. [....]

Nice, March 29, 1887: Letter to Theodor Fritsch (Compare: Nietzsche’s note, End 1886-Spring 1887 7 [67])

Dear Sir,

Herewith I am returning to you the three issues of your correspondence sheet, thanking you for your confidence which you permitted me to cast a glance at the muddle of principles that lie at the heart of this strange movement. Yet I ask in the future not to provide me with these [anti-Semitic] mailings: I fear, in the end, for my patience. Believe me: this abominable “wanting to have a say” of noisy dilettantes about the value of people and races, this subjection to “authorities” who are utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind (e.g., E. Dühring, R. Wagner, Ebrard, Wahrmund, P. de Lagarde—who among these in questions of morality and history is the most unqualified, the most unjust?), these constant, absurd falsifications and rationalizations of vague concepts “germanic,” “semitic,” “aryan,” “christian,” “German”—all of that could in the long run cause me to lose my temper and bring me out of the ironic benevolence with which I have hitherto observed the virtuous velleities and pharisaisms of modern Germans.

— And finally, how do you think I feel when the name Zarathustra is mouthed by anti-Semites? …

Yours humbly Dr. Fr. Nietzsche

Cannobio, Villa Badia, April 14, 1887: Letter to Franz Overbeck

Dear Friend, There is nothing more paralyzing or discouraging to me than to travel into today’s Germany to take a closer look at those many sincere persons who believe that they take a “positive attitude” toward me. Meanwhile, all understanding of me is lacking. And if my probability-reckoning does not fail me, it will not be any different before 1901. I believe that people would simply take me to be mad if I let it be known what I take myself to be. [...] (This winter I delved into our contemporary European literature, so that I can now say that my philosophical position is by far the most independent one, however much I feel myself to be the inheritor of several millennia. Contemporary Europe hasn’t an inkling of the frightful decisions about which my very essence turns, or of the wheel of problems on which I am stretched.— Or that with me a catastrophe is being prepared whose name I know yet will not utter.)

Your faithful friend,N.

Venice, October 22, 1887: Letter to Hans von Bülow

Honored Sir, There was a time when you administered the death sentence to a piece of my music, the most well-deserved sentence possible in rebus musicis et musicantibus [in matters of music and musicians]. And now, in spite of all, I am daring to send you something else—a Hymn to Life [image above], which I wish all the more to remain alive. It is to be sung some day, whether in the near or remote future, in memory of me; in memory of a philosopher who had no present, and who didn’t really want any. Does he deserve that? In addition, it may be possible that over the past ten years I have learned something as a musician as well. Most indebted to you, very honored sir, as always and unalterably,

Dr. Fr. Nietzsche.

Nice, December 2, 1887: Letter to Georg Brandes

Esteemed sir,

[....] On my scale of experiences and events the rarer, the more distant, the finer registers predominate over the normal, middling ones. I also have (to speak like an old musician, which in fact I am) an ear for quarter-tones. Finally—and no doubt this above all is what makes my books obscure—I have a mistrust of dialectic, even of reasons. Whether a man is ready to call something true or not seems to me to be more a matter of the degree of his courage. (Only rarely do I have the courage to affirm what I actually know.)

Your expression “aristocratic radicalism” is very good. It is, if you will allow me, the shrewdest thing I have seen about myself so far. [....]

Are you a musician? Just now a work of mine for chorus and orchestra, “Hymn to Life,” is being published. Of my various musical compositions, this one is intended to survive and to be sung one day “in memory of me,” assuming, of course, that enough of the rest of me survives. You see what posthumous thoughts occupy my mind. But a philosphy like mine is like a tomb—it seals one off from the living. Bene vixit qui bene latuit ["Who has hidden himself well has lived well"—Horace]—that’s what is written on the gravestone of Descartes. An epitaph if there ever was one!

[....] I gave up my university professorship. I’m three-quarters blind.

Nice, December 14, 1887: Letter to Carl Fuchs

Dear and worthy friend,

[...] Throughout the last years the vehemence of my inner vibrations has been frightening. Now that I have to move on to a new and higher form of expression, I need first of all a new sense of alienation, a still greater depersonalization. [....]

In Germany there is much complaining about my “eccentricities.” But since it is not known where my center is, it won’t be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been “eccentric.” That I was a philologist, for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had for me—it was the most severe test of my character. [...]

[....] So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine. [....]

Nice, end of December 1887: Draft of letter to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

In the meantime I’ve seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr. Förster has not yet severed his connection with the anti-Semitic movement. [...] Since then I’ve had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and protectiveness I’ve so long felt toward you. The separation between us is thereby decided in really the most absurd way. Have you grasped nothing of the reason why I am in the world? [...] Now it has gone so far that I have to defend myself hand and foot against people who confuse me with these anti-Semitic canaille; after my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more recently have given the impetus to this most dire of all confusions. After I read the name Zarathustra in the anti-Semitic Correspondence my forbearance came to an end. I am now in a position of emergency defense against your spouse’s Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully my ideal!!

Christmas 1887: Letter to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

[...] You have committed one of the greatest stupidities—for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. [...] It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Förster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner, always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them after all. [...] It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I have favored secretly—and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times. [....]

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