Friedrich Nietzsche re-opened his Greek books, so invariably beautiful and satisfying. He explained—before very few pupils, because the evil fame of the Gebürt withdrew young philologists from him—the Choephores of Æschylus and some passages of ante-Platonic philosophy.
Across a gulf of twenty-five centuries that clear radiance descended upon him, scattering all doubts and shadows. Nietzsche often heard with misgiving the fine words which it pleased his Wagnerian friends to use. "Millions of men embrace each other," the chorus sang at Bayreuth in the work of Wagner. It sang well, but, after all, men did not embrace each other; and here Nietzsche suspected a certain extravagance, a certain falsehood. Look at the ancient Greeks, those ambitious and evil men. They do not embrace each other much, their hymns never speak of embraces. They desire to excel, and are devoured by envy; their hymns glorify these passions. Nietzsche liked their naïve energy, their precise speech. He refreshed himself at this source and wrote a short essay: Homer's Wettkampf (The Homeric Joust). We find ourselves driven at the very beginning far away from the Wagnerian mysticism.
"When you speak of Humanity," he writes, "you imagine an order of sentiment by which man distinguishes himself from nature, but such a separation does not exist; these qualities called 'natural' and those called 'human' grow together and are blended. Man in his noblest aspirations is still branded by sinister nature.
"These formidable tendencies which seem inhuman are perhaps the fruitful soil which supports all humanity, its agitations, its acts, and its work.
"Thus it is that the Greeks, the most human of all men, remain cruel, happy in destruction."
This rapid sketch was the occupation of a few days. Nietzsche undertook a long work. He studied the texts of Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles. He tried to approach those philosophers who were truly worthy of the name which they themselves had invented, those masters of life, scornful of argument and of books; citizens and at the same time thinkers, and not déracinés like those who followed them—Socrates and his school of mockers, Plato and his school of dreamers, philosophers of whom each one dares to bring a philosophy of his own, that is to say, an individual point of view in the consideration of things, in the deliberation of acts. Nietzsche, in a few days, filled a copybook with notes.
All the same, he continued to be interested in the successes of his glorious friend. In July Tristan was played at Munich. He went, and met many other disciples; Gersdorff, Fräulein von Meysenbug, whom he had met at the May festivals of Bayreuth. She had preserved, despite her fifty years, that tender charm that never left her, and the physical grace of a frail and nervous body. Friedrich Nietzsche passed some pleasant days in the company of his comrade and his new friend. All three regretted them when they were gone, and at the moment of departure expressed a hope of meeting each other soon again. Gersdorff wished to return in August to hear Tristan, and once more Nietzsche promised to be there, but at the last moment Gersdorff was unable to be present, and Nietzsche had not the courage to return alone to Munich. "It is insupportable," he wrote to Fräulein von Meysenbug, "to find yourself face to face with an art so serious and profound. In short, I remain at Basle." Parmenides, on whom he was meditating, consoled him for the loss of Tristan.
Fräulein von Meysenbug kept Nietzsche advised of all news, whether trivial or important, in connection with the Wagnerian campaign. The master had just terminated The Twilight of the Gods, the last of the four dramas of the Tetralogy. He had at last finished his great work. Fräulein von Meysenbug was informed in a note written to her by Cosima Wagner. "In my heart I hear sung 'Praise be to God,'" wrote the wife. "Praise be to God," repeated Fräulein von Meysenbug, and she adds—these few words indicate the tone of the place and of the time: "The disciples of the new spirit need new mysteries by which they may solemnise together their instinctive knowledge. Wagner creates them in his tragic works, and the world will not have recovered its beauty until we have built for the new Dionysian myth a Temple worthy of it." Fräulein von Meysenbug confided to Nietzsche the measures she was taking to win Marguerite of Savoy, the Queen of Italy, to the cause, and to make her accept the Presidency of a small circle of noble patronesses. A few women of the highest aristocracy, friends of Liszt's, initiated by him into the Wagnerian cult, composed this sublime Verein.