Friedrich Nietzsche remained some weeks at Naumburg with his own people. The family were full of joy and pride: so young and a University professor! "What great matter is it?" retorted Nietzsche impatiently; "there is an usher the more in the world, that is all!" On April 13th he writes to his friend Gersdorff:
"Here I am at the last term, the last evening that I shall spend beside my hearth; to-morrow morning I strike out into the great world; I enter a profession which is new to me, in an atmosphere heavy and oppressive with duties and obligations. Once more I must say adieu: the golden time in which one's activities are free and unfettered; in which every instant is sovereign; in which art and the world are spread out before our eyes as a pure spectacle in which we hardly participate—that time is past beyond recall. Now begins the reign of the harsh goddess of daily duty. Bemooster Bursche zieh? ich aus. ... You know that poignant student-song. Yes, yes! now comes my turn to be a philistine!
"One day or another, here or there, the saying always comes true. Offices and dignities are not to be accepted with impunity. The whole thing is to know whether the chains which you are forced to carry are of iron or of thread. And I still have courage enough to break some link on occasion, and to risk some plunge or other into the perilous life. Of the compulsory gibbosity of the professor I do not as yet discern in myself any trace. To become a philistine, a man of the crowd, ἄνθρωπος ἄμουσος—Zeus and the Muses preserve me from such a fate! Moreover, I find it hard to see how I could contrive to become what I am not. I am more afraid of another kind of philistinism, the professional species. It is only too natural that a daily task, an incessant concentration on certain facts and certain problems, should hang like a weight on the free sensibility of the mind, and strike at the roots of the philosophic sense. But I imagine that I can confront this peril more calmly than most philologists: philosophical seriousness is too deeply rooted in me: the true and essential problems of life and thought have been too clearly revealed to me by the great mystagogue Schopenhauer to permit me to be ever guilty of shameful treachery to the 'Idea.' To vivify my science with this new blood; to communicate to my hearers that Schopenhauerian earnestness which glitters on the brow of that sublime thinker—such is my desire, my audacious hope: I want to be more than a pedagogue to honest savants. I am thinking of the duties of the masters of our time; I look forward, and my mind is filled with the thought of that next generation which follows at our heels. Since we must endure life, let us at least endeavour so to use it as to give it some worth in the eyes of others when we are happily delivered from it."
Friedrich Nietzsche disquieted himself needlessly. If he could have guessed what the approaching days held for him, his joy would have been immense. Richard Wagner lived not far from Basle, and was to become his friend.
[CHAPTER III]
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND RICHARD WAGNER—TRIEBSCHEN
Nietzsche installed himself at Basle, selected his domicile, and exchanged visits with his colleagues. But Richard Wagner was constantly in his thoughts. Three weeks after his arrival some friends joined with him in an expedition to the shores of the lake of the Four Cantons. One morning he left them and set off on foot by the river bank towards the master's retreat, Triebschen. Triebschen is the name of a little cape which protrudes into the lake; a solitary villa and a solitary garden, whose high poplars are seen from afar, occupy its expanse.
He stopped before the closed gate and rang. Trees hid the house. He looked around, as he waited, and listened: his attentive ear caught the resonance of a harmony which was soon muffled up in the noise of footsteps. A servant opened the door and Nietzsche sent in his card; then he was left to hear once more the same harmony, dolorous, obstinate, many times repeated. The invisible master ceased for a moment, but almost at once was busy again with his experiments, raising the strain, modulating it, until, by modulating once more, he had brought back the initial harmony. The servant returned. Herr Wagner wished to know if the visitor was the same Herr Nietzsche whom he had met one evening at Leipsic. "Yes," said the young man. "Then would Herr Nietzsche be good enough to come back at luncheon time?" But Nietzsche's friends were awaiting him, and he had to excuse himself. The servant disappeared again, to return with another message. "Would Herr Nietzsche spend the Monday of Pentecost at Triebschen?" This invitation he was able to accept and did accept.