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Turin, April 10, 1888: Letter to Georg Brandes

But what a surprise, dear Sir! — What emboldened you to want to speak in public about one of the world’s most obscure men!.. Surely you don't think I’m well known in my beloved fatherland? I’m treated there as if I were something singularly absurd, something one needn't for a moment take seriously...They seem to sense that I don't take them seriously either; and indeed how could I, at a time when "the spirit of Germany" has become a contradiction in terms! — [....]

I've enclosed a small vita, my first [....]

The Birth of Tragedy was written between the summer of 1870 and the winter of 1871 (finished in Lugano, where I was living with Field Marshal Moltke’s family).

Untimely Meditations between 1872 and the summer of 1875 (there were to have been thirteen in all; fortunately my state of health said No!)

What you say about "Schopenhauer as Educator" pleases me very much. This little piece serves as my identification card: he to whom it says nothing personal has very likely no other business with me either. It contains in essence the pattern according to which I've lived up to now; it is a stern resolve.

Human, All Too Human, including the two additions, the summer of 1876 to 1879. The Dawn, 1880. The Gay Science, January 1882. Zarathustra, 1883 to 1885 (each part took about ten days; I was absolutely "inspired." It was conceived entirely during vigorous hikes, with complete assurance, as if every sentence had been dictated to me. I wrote it with the greatest physical resilience and exuberance —).

Beyond Good and Evil, summer of 1885 in the Upper Engadine and the winter following in Nice.

The Genealogy decided on, completed, and sent ready for printing to my Leipzig publisher, all between the tenth and thirtieth of July 1887.

(Of course I did some philological things too. But they are no longer of any concern to either of us.)

[....] Vita. I was born October 15, 1844, on the battlefield of Lützen. The first name I heard was that of Gustävus Adolphus [King of Sweden, who fell on the battlefield of Lützen in 1632.]. My ancestors were Polish nobility (Niëzky). The stock appears to have stood up well despite three German mothers. Abroad I usually pass for a Pole; just this last winter in Nice they had me down of the foreigners’ list as Polish. I’m told thay my head appears in Matejko’s paintings [Jan Alois Matejko (1838-1893)]. My grandmother belonged to the Schiller-Goethe circle in Weimar; her brother became Herder’s successor as ecclesiastical superintendent in Weimar. I was fortunate enough to be a pupil in the venerable Pforta school from which so many distinguished figures in German literature (Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel, Ranke, etc., etc.) graduated. We had teachers who'd have brought (or did bring—) honor to any university. I studied in Bonn, later in Leipzig; old Ritschl, then Germany’s foremost philologist, singled me out almost from the first. At twenty-two I was a collaborator on the Literarisches Zentralblatt (Zarncke). The founding of the Philological Society in Leipzig, which still exists, was my doing. In the winter of 1868-69 the University of Basel offered me a professorship; I didn't even have a doctorate at the time. The University of Leipzig thereupon gave me this degree, in a most flattering manner, without any examination, without even a dissertation. From Easter 1869 till 1879 I was in Basel; I had to give up my German citizenship, since as an officer ("mounted artillery") I would have been called up too often and would have had my academic duties disrupted. I’m nonetheless expert with two weapons, saber and cannon—and possibly even a third ... Everything went very well in Basel, despite my youth; on occasion, the examiner was younger than the candidate at doctoral examinations. I was very fortunate in that a cordial relationship developed between Jacob Burckhardt and myself, something quite uncommon for this aloof and hermitlike thinker. I had the even greater luck, right from the start of my life in Basel, to become indescribably intimate with Richard and Cosima Wagner. They were then living at their country place in Tribschen near Lucerne, cut off from all previous ties as though they were on an island. For several years our lives were as one, our trust in each other boundless. In Wagner’s collected works, volume VII, there’s a copy of an "open letter" sent to me on the occasion of The Birth of Tragedy. These connections gave me access to a large circle of interesting men (and women)—just about everyone between Paris and Petersburg. Around 1876 my health deteriorated. I then spent a winter in Sorrento with my old friend Baroness Meysenbug (Memoirs of an Idealist) and the congenial Dr. Rée. I didn't improve. An extremely persistent and agonizing pain in the head set in, exhausting all my energies. For several interminable years it got worse, reaching a peak of constantly recurring pain at which I had two hundred days of suffering a year. The malady must have had a purely localized source, there being no neurological foundation whatsoever for it. I have never had any symptoms of mental disorder, not even fever or fainting spells. My pulse at that time was as slow as the first Napoleon’s (60). My specialty was resisting this extreme pain for two or three days at a stretch, remaining alert and fully lucid, though I was continuously spitting up mucus. There was a rumor going about that I was in a lunatic asylum (and had even died there). Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, it was during this dreadful time that my mind first came to maturity. Witness The Dawn, which I wrote in 1881, during a winter of unbelievable misery in Genoa, far from doctors, friends, and relatives. The book is a kind of "dynamometer" for me: I wrote it with a minimum of health and strength. From 1882 on things took a turn for the better, though very slowly. The crisis was overcome (—my father died very young, at exactly the same age at which I myself stood closest to death). Even today I have to be extremely careful; I find certain climactic and atmospheric conditions indispensable. It’s by necessity, not by choice, that I spend summers in the Upper Engadine, winters on the Riviera ... My illness has been my greatest boon: it unblocked me, it gave me the courage to be myself ... [....] Am I a philosopher? — Who cares!..