PART III
Madness
Raskolnikov dreamt a terrible dream […] some peasant’s small, lean, greyish-brown mare was harnessed to one of these huge carts, the sort of poor old nag which - he had seen it so often - found it very hard to draw quite an ordinary cart with wood or hay piled on top of it, especially when the cart was stuck in the mud or in a rut, and every time that happened, the peasant flogged her so brutally, so brutally, sometimes even across the eyes and muzzle, and he felt so sorry, so sorry for the poor old horse that he almost burst into tears, and his mother always used to take him away from the window. But now in front of the pub pandemonium suddenly broke loose a crowd of blind drunk big peasants in red and blue shirts with their coats thrown over their shoulders came out of the pub, yelling and singing, and strumming their balalaikas. ‘Come on, get on my cart!’ shouted one of them, quite a young peasant with a terribly thick neck and a very red, beefy face. ‘I’ll drive you all home! Get in!’
But almost immediately there was a loud outburst of laughter and shouts.
‘Look at that old nag of his! Drive us all home, will he?’
‘Have you lost your senses Mikolka? What made you put such an old weed in a big cart like that?’
‘The mare is twenty if she’s a day, lads!’
Come on! I’ll drive you all home!’ Mikolka shouted again, jumping into the cart before everyone else, picking up the reins, and standing, drawn up to his full height, in front. ‘Matvey has taken the bay’, he shouted from the cart, ‘and this old nag of mine, lads, is just breaking my heart. I should have cut her throat long ago. Doesn’t earn her keep, she doesn’t. Come on, I say. Get in, get in, all of you. I’ll make her jump. I’ll make her go a-galloping all the way. You’ll see. She’ll go a-galloping all the way!’ and he took the whip in his hands, preparing himself gleefully to whip the little grey-brown mare.
‘Come along, let’s get in!’ laughing voices were raised in the crowd. ‘D’you hear? He’ll make her go a-galloping all the way!’
‘I bet you she’s never gone a-galloping for ten years or more’.
‘She’ll be skipping along!’
‘Don’t spare her lads! Take you whips, all of you! Ready-y?
‘Aye, serves her right! Give her a good flogging!’
The prisoner called up had to run full force and stand in front of the authorities; after a short talk of a few seconds he had to pull down his trousers and, exposing his buttocks, lie down on the beams. One of the SS men pressed with his boot on the head of the culprit so as to immobilise him. Two SS men with long whips stood on both sides of the punished and the blows were dealt, in turns, form one side and then the other. The SS men counted aloud as they beat him, resting for a few seconds before each blow. Red bruises appeared on the buttocks side by side, and crossing, until blood started to gush. The victim yelled, which led to stronger pressure of the boot on his head, and sometimes a kick. The SS men did not like to have their solemn ceremony interrupted by whimpering.
After some dozen blows, a victim ceased to whimper and his body, shrieking after each blow, became numb. Some inmates evacuated their bowels after several blows. After the predefined number of blows had been dealt and counted, when the SS man shouted ‘Raus! Los!’ (Out! G0!) the victim had to quickly pull up his trousers and run back to the rows. If the punished inmate did not stand up, due to fainting or exhaustion, he received several kicks in the head and then a Gnadenschuss (mercy shot) - a shot in the back of the head from the SS man’s pistol.
They all got into Mikolka’s cart, laughing and joking. Six men clambered into the cart, and there was still room for more. They took a fat, red-cheeked peasant woman with them […] In the crowd people were laughing, and indeed how could they help laughing? The mare was all skin and bones, and there she was supposed to drag such a heavy load at a gallop! Two young lads in the cart at once took a whip each and got ready to help Mikolka. There was a shout, ‘Gee-up!’ and the poor mare started pulling away with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely manage to move the cart one step at a time, working away helplessly with her legs, snorting and cowering under the blows of the three whips which were belabouring her mercilessly. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Mikolka was beginning to lose his temper, and, in his fury, he showered blow and blow in the helpless mare, as though he really thought that she could gallop.
‘Let me lend you a hand, lads,’ a young fellow in the crowd cried, his fingers itching to have a go at the old mare.
‘Come on! Get in, all of you! Mikolka shouted, ‘she’ll take you all! I’ll flog the life out of her!’ and he went on flogging and flogging, in his blind fury hardly knowing what to hit her with.
Then we went to work. In our wooden shoes we were chased by blows from rods into a corner of the field and had to fill sometimes our caps, at other times our jackets, with stones, wet sand or mud, and, holding them with both hands and running under a hail of blows, bring them to the opposite corner of the field, empty the stuff, refill it and bring it back to the opposite corner, and so on. A gauntlet of screaming SS men and privileged prisoners armed with rods and whips, let loose on us a hail of blows. It was hell.
‘Daddy! Daddy!’ he cried to his father. ‘Daddy, look what they are doing! Daddy, they’re beating the poor little horse!’ […] He tore himself out of his father’s hands and, hardly realising what he was doing, ran to the old horse. But the poor old mare was already in a very bad state. She was gasping for breath, standing still, pulling at the cart again, and almost collapsing in the read.
‘Flog her to death!’ shouted Mikolka. ‘I don’t mind. I’m going to flog her death myself! […]
At the marketplace, the Jews, who had been forced to squat for hours were mocked and kicked, and some of the Germans organised a game of tossing apples and whoever was struck by the apple was then killed. This sport was continued at the railway station, this time with empty liquor bottles. Bottles were tossed over Jewish heads and whoever was struck by a bottle was dragged out of the crowd and beaten murderously amid roaring laughter. Then some of those who were thus mangled were shot.
A loud peal of laughter suddenly drowned everything unable to stand the rain of blows from the whips any longer, the poor beast started kicking helplessly. […] such a bag of bones, and there she was kicking!
Two lads in the crowd also armed themselves with whips and ran to the mare, intending to flog her from each side. They ran to take up their positions.
‘Whip her across the muzzle!’ shouted Mikolka. ‘Across the eyes! Whip her across the eyes!’
‘Let’s have a song, lads!’ someone in the cart shouted, and everyone in the cart took up the cry. They started singing a boisterous song, a tambourine tinkled, and there was shrill whistling during the refrains. […]
He ran beside the old mare, he ran in front of her, he saw her being whipped across her eyes, across the very eyes! He was crying. His heart heaved. Tears rolled down his cheeks. One of the men who were flogging the horse grazed his face with the whip, but he felt nothing. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the old man with the grey beard who was shaking his head and condemning it all. A woman took him by the hand and tried to lead him away, but he freed himself and ran back to the poor old horse, which seemed to be at the last gasp, but started kicking once more.
‘Oh, to hell with you!’ shouted Mikolka furiously, and, throwing down his whip, he bent down and dragged out a long, thick shaft from the bottom of the cart. Taking hold of it by one end with both hands, he swung it with an effort over the grey-brown mare.
‘He’ll strike her dead!’ they shouted all round.
‘He’ll kill her!’
‘My property!’ shouted Mikolka, and let fall the shaft with all his might. There was the sound of a heavy thud.
The men of Police Battalion 309’s First and Third Companies drove their victims into the synagogue, the less compliant Jews receiving liberal blows of encouragement. The Germans packed the large synagogue full. The fearful Jews began to chant and pray loudly. After spreading gasoline around the building, the Germans set it ablaze; one of the men tossed an explosive through the window to ignite the holocaust. The Jews’ prayers turned into screams. A battalion member described the scene, ‘I saw […] smoke that came out of the synagogue and heard there how the incarcerated people cried loudly for help. I was about seventy metres from the synagogue. I could see the building and observed that people tried to escape through the windows. One shot at them […] One of the men of the Battalion shouted ‘Let it burn, it’s a nice little fire, it’s great fun’.
‘Flog her! Flog her! Why have you stopped?’ shouts were heard in the crowd.
And Mikolka swung the shaft another time, and another terrific blow fell across the back of the unhappy mare. She subsided on her haunches, but presently was on her feet again, pulling, pulling with all her remaining strength first on one side and then on another, trying to move the cart. But they were belabouring her from every side with six whips, and the shaft was raised again and fell for the third and then for the fourth time, slowly and with terrific force. Mikolka was furious because he had not been able to kill her with one blow.
‘Alive and kicking!’ they shouted on all sides.
‘Bet she’ll fall down any minute now, lads,’ shouted a sportsman in the crowd. ‘She’s about finished!’
‘Why don’t you strike her with an axe? Despatch her at once!’ a third one shouted.
‘Oh damn her! Make way! Mikolka yelled furiously and, throwing down the shaft, he once more bent down in the cart and pulled out an iron bar. ‘Mind!’ he shouted, swinging it with all his might over his poor old horse. The bar came down with a crash; the old mare swayed, subsided, and was about to give another pull at the cart when the bar once again descended on her back with terrific force and she collapsed on the ground as though her four legs had given way from under her all at once.
From Warsaw, ‘Today is the great day. The weather is pleasant. The sun is shining brightly. Untersturmfuehrer Handtke wipes the sweat from his fat, red face. Then he wipes his neck and gets ready again for action. He lashes out again with the whip and strikes the terrified victims on their heads and faces and any other part of the body he can reach’.
‘Finish her off!’ Mikolka shouted, jumping down from the cart, blind with rage.
A few young men, also red-faced and drunk, seized whatever they could lay their hands on - whips, sticks, the shaft - and ran to the dying mare. Mikolka stood on one side and started raining blows across her back with the iron bar without bothering to see where the blows were falling. The mare stretched out her head, heaved a deep sigh, and died.
‘Settled her!’ they shouted in the crowd.
‘Why didn’t she gallop?’
‘My property!’ shouted Mikolka, iron bar in hand and with blood-shot eyes. He stood there as though he were sorry he had nothing more to flog. […]
But by now the poor little boy was beside himself. He pushed his way through the crowd to the grey-brown mare, put his arms round her dead, bloodstained muzzle, and kissed her, kissed her on the eyes, on the lips
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On the morning of January 3rd, as he was leaving the house, Nietzsche saw an old nag being brutally beaten by its cabman in the Piazza at the end of the street. Overcome with pity for the beaten horse, he broke into tears, staggered across the square and flung his arms around the poor animal’s neck in an attempt to protect it. Then he collapsed onto the ground sobbing. The inevitable small crowd of curious onlookers collected around him but little was done until his landlord, Davide Fino, passing by on the other side of the street, saw the little huddle of people and joined them out of curiosity. He instantly recognised his lodger huddled on the ground clutching himself around the shoulders and weeping quietly. With some difficulty he managed to stand him up, extricate him from the crowd and half carry him to the house and on up to his room.
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Nietzsche’s health was to be suffered and overcome.
He sent his CV to Georg Brandes, ‘Around 1876 my health got worse. I then spent a winter in Sorrento with my old friend Baroness Meysenbug and the congenial Dr Rée. I didn’t improve. An extremely persistent and agonising pain in the head exhausted all my energies. For several interminable years it got worse reaching a peak of constantly recurring pain of which I had two hundred days of suffering a year. The illness must have had a purely localised source, there being no neurological basis for it whatsoever. I have never had any symptoms of mental disorder, not even fever or fainting fits. My pulse at that time was as slow as the first Napoleon’s (60). My speciality was resisting this extreme pain for two of three days at a stretch, remaining alert and fully lucid, though I was continuously spitting up mucus. There was a rumour going around that I was in a lunatic asylum (and that I had even died there). Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary it was during that time that I came to full maturity’.
He wrote to Rohde, ‘My physical condition still leaves much to be desired […] Oh how I yearn for good health! One must have an undertaking which one expects to outlast one’s own lifetime to be really grateful for each good night’s sleep, for each warm ray of sunshine, yes even for “regularity”. As it is, my lower internal organs seem to be ruined. Hence the bad nerves, insomnia, haemorrhoids and coughing up blood, etc’.
Letter to Richard Wagner, ‘My neuralgia gets to work so thoroughly, so scientifically, that it actually conducts experiments to see how much pain I can endure, and each time takes thirty hours to do the job. Every four to eight days I can depend on a repetition of this research. It’s a scholar’s disease, you see. Until now my highly problematic reflecting and writing has always made me ill’.
But then again to Rohde, ‘The way I live now I can endure the worst of my afflictions for between them there are so many happy peals of thought and feeling’.
To Peter Gast, ‘I have been putting my plan to do without thinking into practice. And with good reason since “behind every thought prowls the devil” of a furious attack of pain. The manuscript you received of ‘The Wanderer and his Shadow’ was purchased at such expense that no one would have written it at that price had he been able to do otherwise. Even now I tremble when I recall it.
To Dr Otto Eiser, ‘My existence is a terrible burden. I would long ago have given it up were it not for my having done the most revealing psychological and moral research in exactly this state of suffering and almost absolute renunciation. My joyous thirst for knowledge brings me to heights where I can conquer all distress and despair. On the whole I am happier than ever before in my life. And yet! constant pain, for several hours each day a feeling something like seasickness, a semi-paralysis which makes speaking difficult and, for a change of pace, furious seizures (the last involving vomiting for three days and nights; I lusted for death). To be unable to read! And only just able to write! No human contact! No Music!’
To Paul Rée, ‘My health is too shattered and my misery too constant. All this self overcoming, all this endurance - what good has it ever done me?’
To Gast, ‘One day in ten is a good one; that is par for the course, the devil take it!’
To Overbeck, ‘Since I left Turin I have been in terrible shape. Constant headaches, constant vomiting; all my old ills are back again, wrapped up in a nervous exhaustion that makes the entire machine useless. I am having trouble warding off the most depressing of thoughts. Clearheaded as I am, I cannot choose but be pessimistic about my condition as a whole. Not only health but its prerequisite is missing. My vital energy is impaired. The ravages of ten years and more have taken their irreparable toll. All this time I have lived solely off my ‘capital’ and put nothing, absolutely nothing, back […] I am not suffering from a disease of the brain or of the stomach but the pressure of nervous exhaustion - in part hereditary (from my father who died solely of the after-effects of a general want of energy) in part hard-earned - which manifests itself in countless ways’.
‘For fourteen years I have not had a day’s real health. I have woken up sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work with perseverance. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written with haemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn apart by coughing, written when my head was swimming with weakness; and for so long, it seems to me, that I have won my wager and recovered my gauntlet. I am better now and have been, rightly speaking, since I came to the Pacific; and still, few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on - ill or well, is a trifle; just as long as it goes on. I was made for a contest’. Indeed, this illness ‘has been of the very greatest help to me; it has set me free. It has restored to me the courage to be myself’.
We have a picture of Nietzsche from Stephan Zweig who wrote of the non-Jewish wanderer’s life that he would ‘go into the small, narrow, modest, coldly furnished chambre garnie where innumerable notes, pages, writings and proofs are piled up on the table, but no flowers, no decoration, scarcely a book and hardly ever a letter. Off in a corner, a heavy and graceless wooden trunk, his only possession, with the two shirts and the other worn suit. Apart from this, only books and manuscripts, and on a tray countless bottles, jars and potions against the migraines, which often render him all but senseless for hours, against his stomach cramps and his spasmodic vomiting, against the slothful intestines. Above all, there is the dreadful sedatives against his insomnia, chloral hydrate and Veronal, a frightening arsenal of poisons and drugs which are his only relief in the empty silence of this hostile room in which he never rests except in brief and artificially conquered sleep. Wrapped in his overcoat and a woollen scarf (for the wretched stove smokes but gives no warmth), his fingers freezing, his double glasses pressed close to the paper, his hurried hand writes for hours - words the dim eyes can hardly decipher. For hours he sits like this and writes until his eyes burn’.
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And so on to a few words about Nietzsche’s eyesight.
At Pforta ‘Nobody showed much concern for Nietzsche’s eyesight. The place was dim with thick walls and few windows and there was little light during the day. In the evening the boys had to work by the light of little oil-lamps. As well as reading glasses Nietzsche needed dark glasses to protect his eyes from the sun’. He wrote home that he needed ‘above all a strong pair of spectacles - send them to me as quickly as possible’.
By 1877 his sight had deteriorated so badly that his eyes had to be within about two inches of the paper he was writing on. His physician, Eiser, arranged a joint consultation in Frankfurt with the ophthalmologist Otto Kruger. Their verdict was that the headaches were due partly to severe damage sustained by the retinas in both eyes - choroidoretinitis is frequently syphilitic in origin - and partly to ‘a predisposition in the irritability of the central organ’, originating from excessive mental activity.
His eyes were still worrying him, however ruthlessly he ignored the pain while working, ‘Sooner or later my eyes will function only in the shade of forests’ and, he noted, ‘eyes painful’.
Lou Salomé wrote that Nietzsche’s eyes were ‘not the eyes of so many short-sighted people, they did not blink or stare at you or embarrass you by coming up too close. They seemed rather like the defenders and guardians of his own treasures, silent mysteries upon which no uninvited glance was allowed to fall. His defective eyesight gave his features a unique kind of magic as they only reflected that which flowed deep inside his being rather than of the changing external impressions Those eyes looked at the same time both into the interior and into the distance far beyond immediate objects to put this better, the interior was like the distance’.
And from Elizabeth, ‘Among the immediate causes of his insanity I include the enormous strain both on his intellect and on his short-sighted eyes. When we look at the notes and the manuscripts for that tremendous output from June to December 1888 and consider how carefully he read the proofs in order to make further corrections, we are inclined to ask ourselves how he managed to get through the work at all. Those who are not short-sighted cannot understand how terribly tiring it is to write under such conditions. After a time the stooping position comes to have a harmful effect on the nerves in the head and the stomach. There are no kind of spectacles which allows one to hold one’s head up; the lens which my brother really ought to have worn makes the writing appear so small that it is of no use. It seems to me that this strain to his eye and neck muscles must be a contributory cause’.
Thus his impossible handwriting. He wrote with his thick glasses so close to the paper that his nose almost rubbed the page. As his sight deteriorated so did his writing until it became quite impossible to decipher. Peter Gast was the only man capable of making anything out of this illegible scrawl and spent endless hours making neat copies for the printer.
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The overcoming of Nietzsche’s health took a strange form. For the last few months of 1888 he stayed in Turin. He found the place congenial and had decided to make it his permanent residence. He was staying in a five storey house in the Via Carlo Alberto. His window looked out onto the road from the third floor. He had been deeply engrossed in his work but towards the end of the year his behaviour became a little strange. He drank more and more water, sometimes managing to down four carafes at a time. He went for long walks on his own, deeply submerged in thought as always. He was seen outside Rosenberg and Selliers, the bookshop, looking for new titles although he had no money to buy them. He spent time arguing about the price of fruit at the greengrocer’s. He would extemporise for long hours at the piano. None of this, of course was that much out of the ordinary for Nietzsche but a thread of euphoria was beginning to appear.
De Chirico writes that, for Nietzsche, Turin ‘is the Italian city par excellence’. In his memoirs he tells us, ‘The true novelty discovered by this philosopher […] is based on the atmosphere (atmosphere in the moral sense) […] of an autumn afternoon, when the sky is clear and the shadows are longer than in summer, for the sun is beginning to be lower. This extraordinary sensation can be found in Italian cities and in Mediterranean cities like Genoa or Nice; but the Italian city par excellence where this extraordinary phenomenon appears is Turin’. Nietzsche’s letters from there are full of strange contentment which have not been found before. The city is beneficial and superb. The people strangely kind and helpful. For them he holds a perfect fascination, ‘Everyone glances at me as if I were a prince. There is special distinction in the way doors are held open and meals are placed before me’. He was convinced that the waiters were choosing him the best of the food and that the women at the market were selling him the choicest grapes at the lowest price. He began to write chapters with titles such as ‘Why I am so clever’, ‘Why I am so wise’ and ‘Why I write such good books’. His strength was becoming phenomenal, other-worldly. He could do anything. He wrote that, ‘on questions of decadence I am the highest court of appeal on earth. The most unheard of tasks are as easy as a game’ and he could add that, ‘quite literally I hold the future of the human race in the palm of my hand’.
To Gast, ‘Turin is perfect, a splendid and singularly comforting place. It is a handsome and important city, full of fine squares and palaces. The population is 270,000. Many princes have their seats here and it is the headquarters of the general staff. There is a university and twelve theatres, some of them excellent. The bookshops have a good selection of books in three languages. Its chief pride is its splendid, spacious porticoes and colonnades, more splendid than anything of its kind in all the rest of Europe. These colonnades shelter you against all weathers and the marble and other stone is so clean and beautiful that you feel you are in a drawing room. The air here is splendid, drier than I have found in any other city; it is very exhilarating, and gives one a tremendous appetite. This is because the high mountains are so close by. On three sides you can see the snow-capped Alps. Even from the centre of the city you can get a view of a world of mighty peaks’. It is ‘the only town that I care to live in. It seems impossible that I could find such quiet and solitude amid wonderfully broad and beautiful streets in the best part of a metropolis, right near the centre’.
To Gast, ‘I just looked at myself in the mirror and saw something completely new, a man in excellent spirits, well fed and ten years younger than he has any right to look […] Days and days go by all equally perfect, full of sunshine. Magnificent trees glowing with gold, the sky and the wide river a pale blue and the air as pure as possible - a Claude Lorraine beyond all my dreams. As to the fruit, grapes of the tawniest sweetness and cheaper than in Venice! In every way this is a good place to live.
To his mother, ‘We still have an abundance of the finest grapes, A pound of the very best quality costs 24 pfennigs. The food is incredibly wholesome and good. It’s not for nothing that I live in the most famous cattle raising country and in its royal seat at that. The tenderness of the veal is simply a revelation to me, as is the delicious lamb I love so much. And what cooking! What a sensible, simple, even subtle cuisine! Until now I never knew what a good appetite could be. Honestly, I eat four times as much as in Nice, pay less, and haven’t had a bit of indigestion. Granted that in this and other ways I am singled out for special favours. I certainly get the choicest morsels. But this is the case wherever I go - I am accepted as someone very distinguished. You would be astonished with what pride and dignity your old child swaggers around here. . . . ‘
To Overbeck, ‘I cannot find any bad news to tell you about myself. Things are going ahead in a tempo fortissimo of hard work and high spirits. […] Meanwhile I am getting rave reviews for my ‘Wagner Case’. Not only is it being hailed as a psychological masterpiece of the first order, in an area no one had previously explored - the psychology of the musician - but they are saying that my analysis of the fundamentally decadent nature of German music is an event in the history of our culture which I alone could have brought off’ […] ‘Other good news as well. The most eminent Swedish writer, August Strindberg, whom Dr Brandes calls a ‘real Genius’, has now spoken out in my favour. And St Petersburg’s high society is trying to establish relations with me, although greatly handicapped by the suppression of my works’.
To Carl Fuchs, ‘In the years ahead there will be in utter confusion in the world. Since the old God has abdicated, I shall rule from now on’.
Another to his mother, ‘Your poor old child is now a supremely famous man. Not especially in Germany - as the Germans are too stupid and vulgar for the grandeur of my genius and have always made themselves ridiculous where I am concerned - but everywhere else. I have only the most select admirers, highly placed and influential people in St Petersburg, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna and New York. Oh, if you only knew with what words the most important personages in the world express their devotion to me - the most charming women, not excluding a certain Madame la Princess Tenichev. There are true geniuses among my admirers. No name is treated with as much deference and distinction as mine is today . . . ‘
To Overbeck, ‘In two months I shall be the foremost name on earth […] It is amazing the utter fascination that I exert here in Turin, even though I am the most unassuming person and demand nothing. When I enter a large store the expression on everyone’s face changes, women stare at me on the pavement, my street vendor saves the sweetest grapes for me and has even reduced the price! It was ridiculously low to begin with. […] My waiters are splendidly polite and helpful [..] Nothing happens by chance any more. Whenever I think of someone a letter from him arrives obligingly at my door’.
To Meta von Salis, ‘The year which is just ending has been too good [..] Meanwhile, in an entirely incredible way, I am beginning to become famous. I doubt any mortal has ever received letters of the kind I am getting now, all from the élite of the intellectual world, whose characters have stood the test of high office and positions. They come from everywhere, not least from the finest society in St Petersburg. And the French! You should hear the tone of M. Taine’s letters to me. Just now a charming, perhaps charmed, message came from one of the foremost and most influential men in France, who proposes to interest himself in the publication and translation of my works - none other than the editor-in-chief of the ‘Journal des Debates’ and the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’, Monsieur Bourdeau . . . ‘
Although there may be reason for all this over obliging behaviour. Nietzsche notes, ‘I play so many silly tricks on myself and my head is so full of clownish private jokes that sometimes for half an hour in full view of everybody I will grin - I cannot think of a better word’. And again, ‘I have just returned from a great concert [..] I was trying to recover from my extreme joy and my face was smirking continuously - once, tearfully , for ten whole minutes’.
At least for a moment he felt accepted for what he was, an interregnum of fame and health which has to be grasped for as long as possible even if it leads to a posthumous existence in which sickness and neglect can be forgotten.
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After Davide had persuaded him back to his flat he lay for a long time unconscious on his bed and, when he finally came round, it was clear that he was no longer the old Nietzsche. He dashed around the room, dancing and singing, stopping every now and then to thump unmusically on the piano. Poor Fino, who had already summoned a doctor, now threatened to call in the police. This had the desired effect and Nietzsche began to calm down. He sat at his desk and started scratching away. He wrote to most of the courts of Europe telling them that he would be on his way to Rome on the following Tuesday and instructing them to be there to meet with him and the Pope. He wrote to ‘dear Umberto’, the king of Italy, and to the house of Baden, ‘my children’, to tell them of his plans. He sent a note to the Vatican Secretary of State telling the Pope to expect him. There was one exception to this general invitation and that was the Hohenzollerns. He advised the courts of the other German princes to have nothing to do with them for the Reich was still the enemy of German culture.
He wrote to Peter Gast a single line, ‘To my Maestro Pietro. Sing me a new song. the world is transfigured and all the heavens rejoice’. He signed it ‘The Crucified’. To Brandes went another letter of one line, ‘After you had discovered me it was not hard to find me. The problem now is to lose me’. This also he signed ‘the Crucified’. He wrote a string of letters to Strindberg, to Malwida, to Spitteler, to Rohde, to Bülow. Cosima Wagner received another note of one line ‘Ariadne, I love you’. This he signed ‘Dionysus’.
One of the letters to Strindberg was written in Latin and Greek and opened, suspiciously, with a quotation from a Poem of Anacreon, ‘I want, I want to be mad’ and closed with the words ‘It is a joy to be mad’.
At his desk writing intensely. To Burckhardt went another letter with the signature of Dionysus which was followed by another, longer letter of four pages, to which extra lines were scratched in the margins, ‘I would much rather have been a professor at Basle than God; but I did not dare to carry my private egotism so far as to neglect the creation of the world. You see, one must make sacrifices. The remainder for Frau Cosima . . . Ariadne . . . There is magic from time to time. . . I have had Caiaphas put in chains; and last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very long drawn-out manner. Wilhelm, Bismarck and all anti-semites abolished’.
Burckhardt got his letter in the post on the Sunday 6th January. The retired Basle professor of art struggled for some time with the minuscule and almost illegible scrawl in which it was written and soon realised that something had changed. One sentence which was added in the margin of the first page may have sounded to him like a not so crazy appeal for help, ‘You can make any use of this letter which will not lower me in the estimation of the people of Basle’. Burckhardt put the letter carefully in his coat pocket and started out on the short walk from his suburb of St Alban to the Seevogelstrassse to show it to Overbeck. He knew that Overbeck had long been a good friend of Nietzsche’s and knew also that there was a constant correspondence between them. He handed the letter to Overbeck who knew immediately that something was amiss. More than anything he was astonished that Nietzsche should have written such a letter to Burckhardt and the fact that he was now there standing at the front door for the first time meant as much to him as the letter which had been placed in his hand. Overbeck at once sat down and wrote a quick letter to Turin asking Nietzsche to come immediately to his house in Basle but this letter was crossed by another from the desk in Turin, ‘I still hope to show that I am one who pays his debts, for example, to you. I have just had all anti-semites shot’. Again, it was signed ‘Dionysus’.
This second letter convinced Overbeck that he could wait no longer. He made his way at once to Wille, a well known Basle psychiatrist and showed him both his own letter and the one to Burckhardt. Wille read the letters and suggested that Overbeck get Nietzsche to his clinic if it were at all possible. He impressed on Overbeck the need to get to Turin before anything irrevocable happened and that it might help to send a wire on ahead to let Nietzsche know that he was on his way. This was done immediately and, on the same evening, Overbeck caught the train for Turin. He arrived in the nick of time. As he approached the door of Davide Fino’s house on the following afternoon he met the landlord leaving on his way to call the police and request the help of the German consul. The lodgings were in chaos. Nietzsche had again being singing and playing the piano and generally driving everyone to the point of desperation. When Overbeck entered the room he found Nietzsche crouched in a corner studying the proofs of his ‘Nietzsche contra Wagner’. When he saw Overbeck he dropped the pages and, beginning to weep, struggled over to embrace him. He was in a terrible state and fell back onto the couch shaking from head to foot as if the greeting had half destroyed him. Fino’s wife succeeded in giving him a phial of bromide and he calmed down enough to begin telling them of the ceremonies and pageants which had been prepared for his new dignity. He accompanied himself on the piano in muffled and mystical chords as he sang bits and pieces of his latest ideas and talked about his new existence as successor of the dead divinities of the world’s history. Then, as he paused and pondered for a moment, another Nietzsche emerged, the jester who danced about the room making scurrilous jokes. Overbeck despaired of getting his friend all the way to Basle in this state.
But then he had a piece of luck. He was told of a German dentist called Miescher who had had some experience in escorting mental patients and was prepared to help for a small fee. Overbeck was very glad to take advantage of the man and they set off. The journey started out well enough but soon turned into an epic. There were a thousand difficulties. An incident in the streets of Turin might have brought in the Italian authorities and result in a refusal to allow Nietzsche to leave the country. Such problems could easily have occurred in the crowded streets or in the railway station where they had to wait for over half an hour in the middle of the afternoon or at Novarra where there was another enforced wait of three hours. But in the end everything went well, largely due to Miescher’s acumen and experience. When his patient refused to leave his room Miescher told him that he had to visit Basle because of the great pageants and festivities that had been arranged there in his honour and when he stopped in the middle of the street and began to make a speech to the crowds Miescher persuaded him that he wasn’t behaving like a great and influential person who is obliged to remain incognito in public places. For most of the journey itself Nietzsche slept after being given a draught of chloral. Once he woke up as the train was steaming through the night over the St Gothard pass and began to sing a wonderful song with a strange and beautiful melody. It was his last poem, ‘The Venetian Gondola’, in which he tells of his soul singing a song tremulous with rich joy but which ends ‘Was anyone listening?’ The three of them arrived at Basle station at a quarter to eight the following morning, Thursday 10th of January. Nietzsche walked calmly from the train to a waiting cab and sat silently huddled in the corner during the whole of the long journey to the nursing home at Friedmatt where Wille ushered them all into the waiting room. Overbeck was terrified of this meeting because Nietzsche had known Wille back in his days at the University of Basle and, should he recognise him as head of the asylum, would know immediately where he was. He need not have worried for Nietzsche failed to recognise Wille. Instead he waited until Wille had left the room and asked politely why he had not been introduced. Another crisis had passed but Overbeck was still afraid that any mention of Wille’s name would stir up memories for his friend and he kept silent. Nietzsche waited until Wille re-entered the room, went up to him and said in his politest manner, ‘I am sure I have seen you before, and profoundly sorry but I cannot remember your name. I wonder if you would be so kind?’ Overbeck held his breath while Wille introduced himself and was relieved to see that Nietzsche showed no sign of recognition but continued ‘Wille? ah yes you are an alienist. Some years ago we had a conversation about religious mania, the subject of our discussion was a madman called Adolph Vischer who was staying here’. Overbeck recalled the meeting well and was astonished at the fact the Nietzsche could remember it in such detail. Wille nodded in agreement but Nietzsche did not seem to relate his earlier visit to this alienist as relevant to his presence in the clinic and allowed himself to be lead out of the room by one of Wille’s assistants.
Wille decided that Nietzsche should be put into his private nursing home immediately. Only then did Overbeck feel that it was safe for him to leave.
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The Clinical records speak of Nietzsche as follows ‘The patient arrived accompanied by Professor Overbeck and Herr Miescher. He offered no resistance when he was led off. On the way he said that he regretted we were having such bad weather and added, I would prepare the loveliest weather for you good people tomorrow. He ate his breakfast ravenously. He also enjoyed his bath. He was in every way obedient and obliging. The patient gave no trouble while he was being examined and talked the whole time. He did not seem to be conscious of his illness but rather felt exceptionally well and exalted. He said that he had been ill for the previous week and often suffered from severe headaches, that he had had a few attacks and that while they were on he felt exceptionally well and that he would have liked to have embraced and kissed everyone in the street and would even have liked to have climbed up the walls. It was difficult to keep the patient’s concentration on any one definite thing. He gave only fragmentary and imperfect answers or none at all. The patient stayed in bed the whole day. He had an excellent appetite and was very grateful for everything that was given him. In the afternoons he kept up a continual confused talk, breaking occasionally into singing and shouting. The content of his conversation was a jumble of previous experiences and thoughts followed each other without any logical connection. He stated that he had infected himself on two specific occasions’.
11th January 1889, ‘The patient did not manage to sleep at all during the night and talked without a break. He got up on several occasions to brush his teeth and wash himself. Overtired in the morning. Ate his breakfast hungrily and then remained in bed until noon. In the afternoon he went out but was in a continual state of excitement. Sometimes he threw his hat on the ground and even lay down on the ground himself. He spoke confusedly and occasionally reproached himself with having caused the ruin of several people’.
12th January, ‘Was given sulfonal and got four or five hours sleep but with frequent interruptions. Was quieter in the morning. When he was asked how he felt he answered that he felt so incredibly well that he would only be able to express it in music’.
13th January, ‘Slept better - six or seven hours. Patient had an enormous appetite and kept on asking for more food. In the afternoon he went for a walk in the garden. He sang, whimpered and shouted. Sometimes he took off his coat and waistcoat and lay down on the ground. After the walk he stayed in this room’.
14th January, ‘Managed to sleep for four or five hours but when awake he talked and sang continually. He was expecting a visit from his mother today’.
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Wille’s diagnosis was paralysis progressiva. Overbeck now wrote to Nietzsche’s mother and she arrived at the clinic on 13th January with the one fixed idea of getting her son back to Naumberg where she could care for him herself. She was ushered into Nietzsche’s room where there was an emotional scene. Immediately on seeing her he embraced her warmly and said, ‘My dear good mama, I am so very glad to see you’. The two of them then sat down and reminisced about the family for some time during which Wille looked on with astonishment. In the middle of this discussion Nietzsche suddenly jumped up and shouted, ‘Behold in me the tyrant of Turin’. After which the conversation deteriorated into confusion and the visit was quietly ended. His mother was not frightened by this outburst and tried to persuade everyone to let her take him back to Naumberg with her but she was overruled.
Three days later Nietzsche was taken to a clinic nearer to Naumberg where he could be visited by his mother more easily. Her entreaties to have him with her in the house at Naumberg itself were defeated by the concerns of the medical men who were worried by his inclination to violence but they did finally agree to have him moved to Jena and stay at the clinic there run by Dr Binswanger.
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The records of the final three days of Nietzsche’s stay at Basle are as follows
15th January, ‘Slept between four and five hours during the night but was noisy for the remainder of the time. Settled down during the afternoon. Patient drank a great deal of water. During his afternoon walk in the garden he strolled about gesticulating and shouting. Bath with cold water in the evening. Sulfinal 2.0. ‘
16th January, no entry.
17th January, ‘Slept very well last night and was calmer early in the day. Paresis of the left facial muscle was much more noticeable than during the last few days but there is no obvious disturbance in his speech. He is going to be transferred to the asylum at Jena this evening. Weight 10th January 65 Kilos. 17th January 65.5 Kilos’.
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The insistence of his mother finally overruled all objections and that evening Nietzsche left the clinic at Basle against the judgement of both Overbeck and Wille. With his mother went a doctor and another helper. They reached the Central Station of Basle early in the evening and Nietzsche got down from the cab and walked in absolute silence across the brightly lit station with rapid uncertain steps. He looked unnaturally stiff and his face was like a mask. They took him to a compartment which had been reserved and the small party settled in. Just as the train was about to leave, Overbeck, who had done so much for his friend over the previous few days, came to say good-bye. Nietzsche recognised him in the gloom of the compartment, got up from his seat and embraced him. As he did so he told Overbeck that ‘he was the man he had loved most of all’. Overbeck was overcome with grief as he watched the train pull slowly out of the station, guilty that he left his friend in other hands but sad, too, that this was no longer his friend but another man, a mask, a mystery. Later Overbeck, thinking back on those few days, wondered whether he had done the right thing in drawing Nietzsche into the realm of doctors, asylums and medication. Were these, he now wondered, the actions of a true friend? He wrote to Gast that ‘it would have been a far more genuine act of real friendship to have taken his life. Now, I have no other wish than that he should have his life taken from him and feel no hesitation at all in saying so. No-one who had been with me over these last days would wish it otherwise. It is all over with Friedrich! I do not need any reports from doctors to confirm that all hope of a cure is out of the question. Judge of this yourself by one point only. Friedrich can not even hate me now for the one thing of which I am most guilty, the sin of robbing him of his freedom. This is the tragedy of this hero of freedom - he no longer thinks of freedom’.
The journey started off well enough. Mother and son seemed happy to be together after their long separation. She handed him some sandwiches and he commented on how nice they were. When she gave him some cherries he said, ‘I suppose that you have brought these all the way from the Cherry Fair at Naumberg’. He seemed perfectly well, better than the attendant who had been with him at Basle had yet seen him. He told his mother that he had been in a bad way and had been taken to a lunatic asylum but that he would soon be well again because, after all, he was still young, a mere twenty-two. However, the doctor’s fears finally proved well founded and the thing they most feared soon happened. Nietzsche flew into a rage against his mother. Although it only lasted a minute or two it was a dreadful thing for her to have to see and she quickly moved to another compartment and left him to the doctors until they arrived at Frankfort.
On the Friday, 18th January, Nietzsche was admitted to the Mental Home of the Grand Duchy of Sachsen Weimar at Jena. On admission he walked through the building with majestic strides and a great deal of polite bowing. He thanked everyone for the magnificent reception he had been given. He seemed to have no idea where he was. At one moment he imagined himself to be in Naumberg and at another he spoke as if he were in Turin. He constantly offered to shake the doctors’ hands. But all the personal information which he provided was accurate. To look at he seemed self-assured. He gesticulated a lot and spoke continuously even during the nights and in a rather affected voice, sometimes in Italian and sometimes in French. He didn’t speak German to these Germans. But what he said was somewhat disconnected. He spoke of his grand compositions and insisted in singing some of them as a demonstration. He told them of his many councillors and servants.
His mother was told that she must keep away from the clinic for the time being as the aim was to try to calm the patient down. She agreed finally and returned home. The treatment, however, did not immediately succeed.
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On his arrival at Jena we have
- Behaviour: On admission brought here by his mother and a Basle doctor from the Basle Mental Clinic where he had stayed for several days after he was fetched from Turin. Record of his illness from Basle; Bath. Put to bed. Medium build.
- Heredity: Father died of softening of the brain - Some of father’s, brothers and sisters suffering from rickets, very talented. Mother living, untalented. Brothers and sisters 1, Friedrich, 2. Elizabeth, living married to Bernhard Förster, in good health. 3, Joseph, deceased, stroke at age of 2.
- Life history: Always rather peculiar. Very gifted. Pupil of Ritschl. On his recommendation Professor at Basle at age of 23. 1866. Suphilit. infect. 1869 appointed Professor of Classical Philology at Basle.
- History of disease: 1878 Gave up professorship because of nervousness and eye trouble.
Over the next three days a more detailed examination was carried out. The notes read:
Present condition 19-21. 1.89. Large sized man (171 cm), fairly muscular, muscles moderately well covered. 132 lbs. Hair brown, somewhat sparse. Iris, brownish green. Right ear 5.8, left 5.6 long. Circumference of skull 57 cm, high arched pallet. Face very flushed. Heart sound low-pitched, normal. Vasomotor system normal. Arteries soft, tortuous. Lung apices normal. Tongue slightly furred. Pupils, right wide, left rather narrower, left contracted with slight irregularity, all reactions normal on left, on right only reaction to convergence, consensual reaction only on left. Considerable anophthalmia on left side, no secondary internal strabismus. Forehead wrinkled, eyes half closed symmetrically. Shows teeth more on left, right corner of mouth turned down somewhat, mouth closed more firmly on right. Symmetrical smile. Tongue non-tremulous with deviations to right. Uvula in midline, pressure of hand firmer on left than on right (specimens of handwriting).
Romberg sign negative. When walking, patient screws left shoulder up spasmodically leaving right shoulder down. Sways when turning right. Increased muscular irritability. Myodema. Anconaeus reflex slightly increased. Patellar reflex ditto. Ankle jerk ditto, slight ankle clonus on left, abdominal reflex slightly increased. Cremaster reflex weak on left. Plantar reflex increased. Condition of patient does not allow sensibility test at present. Apparently general hyperaesthesia. Head percussion not sensitive. Facial nerves sensitive. Pressure on body cannot be tested because of hyperaesthesia. Bone conduction apparently better on right. Hearing distance apparently intact left and right. No disturbance in reading. Considerable myopia. No defect of speech, rarely hesitates over initial consonants. Tactile discrimination normal.
After this the records read as follows
20th January, ‘did not sleep despite being given amylene hydrate. Finally transferred to a ward which allowed for constant supervision’.
21st January, ‘was noisy continually despite being given chloral and had finally to be isolated. Mentioned on one occasion that his father had suffered from softening of the brain’.
22nd January, ‘insistent that one of his compositions be performed. Complained of headaches and thought that this was the reason that he was so lively’.
24th January, ‘very noisy. Has had to be isolated once again’.
10th February, ‘still very noisy. Regular outbursts of rage with inarticulate shouting for no apparent reason’.
The man who had so very carefully studied himself was now being very carefully studied by others.
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The records continue in this way for some little while. The patient scrawled incomprehensibly on the walls of the clinic, continued with his fits of rage, smashed a window. He spent a lot of time in bed, sometimes insisting that he needed a sleep in the middle of the day and refusing to get up again and still the grimacing and the shouting. He was being tortured during the night and there were attempts on his life. He demanded a revolver for protection.
Eventually a change occurred, he began to calm down and his mother was allowed in to see him from time to time in a separate room put aside for the purpose. Nietzsche was still exultant, ‘Is this not a magnificent room. I give my lectures here in front of a select public’. While she was with him he found a pencil and, pleading for an envelope which he had seen his mother carrying, began to make notes on it. Before she left, she saw him take another pencil and gather together some pieces of paper that were lying around. She said as a joke, ‘Dear Friedrich, you are becoming a thievish little mouse’ and he whispered in her ear, ‘Now I shall have something to do when I creep back into my cave’.
Nietzsche continued much the same. He began to understand that he was in an asylum and some of the more fixed notions which he had had earlier began to disappear. He tended to keep himself to himself. When he spoke it was usually in French and often about music. Sometimes he would pick up a newspaper and read it for a few moments but then would crumple it up and throw it on the floor. One particular patient he would watch with care. This was a musician who would spend his time writing down his compositions. One day Nietzsche smashed a window and cut himself. While the wound was being looked at in the asylum lending library he looked at some of the books with interest. When he was walking in the garden he drew geometric figures in the sand. Things improved although there were still bad lapses which were considered dangerous. Little by little he was allowed to see more visitors, especially his mother. He was now more manageable and his helpers were discovering how to control him.
With his mother he behaved more and more like his earlier self. His appearance and carriage seemed to have been restored. He had a healthy look in his eyes and was cheerful. Only his talk was still strange, somewhat affected or regimental especially when he wanted to say something important. Of one of her visits she writes, ‘He did not give a wrong opinion or use a wrong word for two hours or more although you do have to lead him in conversation’. They spoke about Förster and about his old school at Pforta and about Ritschl at Leipzig and his answers were all quite clear and based on a good recollection of his life. But finally he looked at her and then around at the asylum and said, ‘When shall I get out of this place?’ She assured him that she would get him away soon and he told her, ‘I have had a lot of headaches and I have been ill a lot of my life and have often vomited as well’.
On 21st January Gast visited and saw him for the first time in over two years. He wrote of that meeting, ‘He did not look too bad, I would almost like to say that his mental disturbance consists merely in an accentuation of the humorous side of his nature which he used to show to his friends. He knew me immediately, embraced and kissed me and was delighted to see me. He gave me his hand over and over again as if he could not believe that I was actually there’.
By the beginning of February 1890 he had become much more malleable. Gast wrote on the first of the month, ‘Today I am enormously strengthened in my feeling that we shall have our Friedrich back again. Yesterday and today he was splendid!’
In the middle of the February his mother moved to a little flat which she had rented in Jena and began to get ready for the arrival of her son. She called at the clinic every day and stayed there from nine in the morning until after six in the evening. Gast was with her. Nietzsche was now childishly docile and soon he was allowed to spend part of each day in his mother’s flat. Gast had rented the floor below so that he could be on call. Sometimes he was needed. Once, after his mother had cleaned his spectacles, they fell of the ground and the lens fell out of its gold frame. Nietzsche began to cry. It was only when Gast came and fixed the lens back again that he calmed down.
On 24th February Overbeck arrived and, like Gast, was allowed to pass a lot of time with Nietzsche outside the asylum. He wrote, ‘A third person, a perfect stranger who might have come upon us together would have noticed hardly anything strange in Nietzsche’s behaviour save for one or two oddities. At table or in the street he sometimes tried to hit dogs or even people who appeared suddenly’. But Nietzsche was now in his posthumous existence. Overbeck continues, ‘Outwardly we were old friends and I alone knew that our association was now entirely based upon the past. Nietzsche greeted me at our first meeting in his mother’s flat as though nothing had changed in our old friendship and so it remained until I left Jena. His loquacity increased during our conversations but these talks were based almost entirely on events which had occurred before his insanity. I often tried to direct his thoughts to more recent events but in vain because his responses were confused. He seemed to have no memory of his immediate past or of his life in the asylum. Indeed, he seemed at times to be avoiding it on purpose, as if this was something that was not available for speech. Our talks were restricted entirely to the past that lay behind that moment in Turin. It was as though we existed on two different planets, myself in an old and he in a new one. We could speak only of the old planet and then his memories of it came only in fragments. We spoke sometimes of his returning to teach at the University at Basle. He mentioned it often in the belief that he would soon re-enter that old world. But such fragments were always of the external events of his past. He never spoke of his internal life, of his writings or his thought. There were none of those moments of vision, of imagination, to which I had become accustomed. It was as if he had left all that behind and had calmed down to the point of depression or of weariness. There was no opposition to one’s point of view, none of the old energy in argument. Merely agreement with everything that was said and an easy ability to be swayed from one subject to another. At the end of our walks he was easily led back into the asylum without the slightest difficulty’.
Gast left Jena at the beginning of March and he noted, ‘When I went away there were tears in his eyes. He was particularly lucid on that day and the farewell touched me very much’. He added, ‘to see this titan broken because his mental gifts were too strong for the physical frame which held them, to see the noblest of human beings broken and become a mockery of himself because in all things he was too divine, to see him an object of pity for those over whom he should wield his sceptre was terrible’.
An earlier hint, ‘I too have been in the underworld like Odysseus and shall often be there again. I have not merely sacrificed sheep but have not spared even my own blood in order to converse with some of the dead. May the living forgive me if at times they seem to me as shadows’.