But he could not. Soon he weakened and had to fly. "I should be insane to stay here. I await with terror each of these long musical evenings, and yet I stay. I can bear no more.... I shall go, no matter where, but I will go: here everything is torture to me...."
The heights which separate Bohemia from Franconia rise some miles from Bayreuth, and the village of Klingenbrunn, where Nietzsche retired, is situated in the forests which cover them. The crisis was brief and less severe than he had dreaded. Now that he had perceived in a clearer manner the dangers of the Wagnerian art, he saw the remedy more plainly. "Religiosity," he wrote, "when it is not upheld by a clear thought, rouses disgust." He renewed his Steinabad meditations and re-affirmed the resolutions then made. He would make a clean sweep of the past; resist the seductions of metaphysics; deprive himself of art; reserve judgment; like Descartes, begin by doubting. Then, if some new security could be discovered, he would raise the new grandeur on immovable foundations.
He wandered up and down the silent forests; their severe peace was a discipline: "If we do not give firm and serene horizons to our souls like those of the woods and mountains," he wrote, "then our inner life will lose all serenity. It will be broken up like that of the men of towns; it will not know happiness and will not be able to give it." Then, all of a sudden he released the cry of his sick soul: "I shall give back to men," said he, "the serenity which is the condition of all culture. And the simplicity. Serenity, Simplicity, Greatness!"
Nietzsche, once more master of himself, returned to Bayreuth without delay: he wished to complete his experience. The excitement of the crowd was even greater than on the day of his departure. The old Emperor William was present, on his way to the grand manœuvres. He had paid Wagner the compliment of being present on two evenings. From all Bavaria and Franconia, citizens and peasants had hurried hither to salute their Emperor, and there was almost a famine in the little invaded town.
The performances began; Nietzsche heard them all. He listened in silence to the observations of the faithful and measured the abyss which he had so long skirted. He continued to see his friends: Fräulein von Meysenbug, Miss Zimmern, Gabriel Monod, E. Schuré, Alfred Brenner, who did not fail to notice in him a reserve and a silence singular at times. Often he went off alone, during the intervals or in the afternoons, with a pleasant and charming spectator, Madame O——, who was slightly Parisian, slightly Russian. He liked the delicate and surprising conversation of women, and he excused this one for being a Wagnerian.
M. Schuré, who met Nietzsche at these festivals, gives a description of him which merits repetition. "As I talked to him I was struck by the superiority of his mind and the strangeness of his physiognomy. A large forehead; short hair brushed up off his forehead; the projecting cheekbones of the Slav. The strong drooping moustache, the sharp cut of the face, would have given him the air of a cavalry officer, had it not been for an indescribable something in his address that was at the same time timid and haughty. The musical voice, the slow speech, denoted the organism of the artist; the prudent and meditative bearing was a philosopher's. Nothing was more deceiving than the apparent calm of his expression. The fixed glance betrayed the melancholy labour of his thought. It was the glance of a fanatic, of a keen observer, and of a visionary. This double character added a disturbed and disturbing element, the more so because it always seemed riveted upon one point. In his effusive moments this look was moistened with the softness of a dream, but very soon it became hostile again.... During the general rehearsals, and the first three performances of the Tetralogy, Nietzsche appeared to be sad and dejected...."
Each evening was a triumph, and each of them added to Nietzsche's distress. The Rhinegold, the Valkyrie—these old pieces recalled his youth, his enthusiasms for Wagner, whom he did not know, whom he did not dare hope to know. Siegfried: souvenirs of Triebschen; Wagner was completing this score when Nietzsche entered into his intimacy.
Siegfried was Nietzsche's favourite among the Wagnerian heroes. He found himself again in this young man, who had never known fear. "We are the knights of the spirit," he had then written in his notes, "we understand the song of the birds and follow them." No doubt he was almost happy when he heard Siegfried; it was the only one of Wagner's dramas which he could listen to without remorse. Lastly, The Twilight of the Gods. Siegfried has mixed in the crowd of men; they deceive him; one evening he naïvely relates his life; a traitor strikes him from behind and kills him. The giants are annihilated, the dwarfs vanquished, the heroes powerless; the gods abdicate; the gold is given back to the depths of the Rhine, whose surging waters cover over the world, and as they await death, men contemplate the universal disaster.
It was the end. The curtain fell slowly, the symphony was extinguished in the night, and the spectators rose suddenly, with one accord, and gave vent to a loud burst of cheering. Then the curtain rose once more and Richard Wagner appeared, alone, dressed in a redingote and cloth trousers, holding his little figure erect. With a sign he called for silence; every murmur ceased.