writing once to a friend, "The fearful and almost unceasing sufferings of my life allow me to long for the end, and according to some indications the stroke of the brain that will release me (der erlösende Hirnschlag) is near enough to warrant my hope. So far as torture and renunciation are concerned, I may measure the life of my last years with that of any ascetic of any time" (I am unable to locate this letter, and borrow the quotation from Richard Beyer, Nietzsches Versuch einer Umwerthung alter Werthe, pp. 34-5).
g Havelock Ellis (Affirmations, p. 11) quotes this. Some years later (1876), Edouard Schuré saw him in Bayreuth and describes his impression as follows: "In talking with him I was struck by the superiority of his intellect and by the strangeness of his physiognomy. A broad forehead, short hair brushed back, the prominent cheekbones of the Slav. The heavy, drooping mustache and the bold cut of the face would have given him the aspect of a cavalry officer, if there had not been something at once timid and haughty in his air. The musical voice and slow speech indicated the artist's organization, while the circumspect meditative carriage was that of a philosopher. Nothing more deceptive than the apparent calm of his expression. The fixed eye revealed the painful travail of thought. It was at once the eye of an acute observer and of a fanatical visionary. The double character of the gaze produced a disquieted and disquieting expression, all the more so since it seemed to be always fixed on a single point. In moments of effusion the gaze was softened to a dream-like sweetness, but soon became hostile again. His whole appearance had the distant air, the discreet and veiled disdain which often characterizes aristocrats of thought" (Revue des deux mondes, August 15, 1895, pp. 782-3).
h It is Nietzsche's own story, as narrated by P. Deussen, Erinnerungen an F. Nietzsche, p. 24.
i Cf. Möbius, op. cit., p. 50. See, however, R. H. Grützmacher, op. cit., pp. 16, 17. R. Freiherr von Seydlitz, who knew Nietzsche well, says, "One thing was lacking in him which accompanies the 'great man' as ordinarily understood: he had no dark, ignoble sides to his nature—not even 'sensual coarseness'" (Der neue deutsche Rundschau, June, 1899, p. 627).
j H. L. Mencken says that Nietzsche "fell in love" with Frauein Lou Salomé, and "pursued her over half of Europe when she fled" (The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 42) . Both of these statements are exaggerations. Meyer, the best all-round authority on Nietzsche, remarks that there is no indication of warmer feelings in the case than those of friendship, and that Nietzsche thought of her rather as a wife for his friend Paul Rée (op. cit., p. 168). Nietzsche did once (spring of 1876) make an offer of marriage to a young Dutch woman, but she was already engaged (the letters are given by Meyer, op. cit., 156-9). See further a summary of Nietzsche's various views, and half-formed wishes, on the subject of marriage for himself, by Richter, op. cit., p. 59.
k I have to borrow here from Riehl, op. cit., p. 23. Cf. the apt remarks of A. Wolf, The Philosophy of Nietzsche, p. 23.
l Meyer ascribes it in part to the influence of Rée (op. cit., p. 153—cf. the fuller discussion of the subject, pp. 295-300, where Meyer questions the inference often drawn that Nietzsche was naturally unsystematic) .
m So in a letter to Georg Brandes, April 10, 1888, referring to some unspecified year in the past. Meyer (op. cit., p. 161) says that there were 118 sick days in 1879. After the autumn of 1881, Nietzsche did better—for in 1888 he said that in the previous six years he had never had during each year less than five or more than fifteen bad days (so his sister, Werke, pocket ed., VI, xxviii).
