He lived, nevertheless. Paul Rée came to see him, read to him, and succeeded in distracting his thoughts. The weather, which had tried him so severely, grew warmer, and the snow, which had dimmed his eyesight, melted. Peter Gast, living as in the previous year at Venice, steadily wrote and called to him. In the middle of February he felt, with surprise, a reawakening of strength; his desires, his curiosities returned to him, and he set out at once.
He stayed for a month on the shores of Lake Garda, at Riva, and the improvement in his letters gave his relatives some hope. On the 13th of March he was at Venice: from that day the end of this crisis and his convalescence must be dated.
He had not yet loved Italy. What parts of it did he know? The Lakes: but their somewhat oppressive tepidity was ill-suited to him, and he did not relish their over-soft harmonies. Naples and its Gulf: but he was repelled by the Neapolitan crowd; the splendour of the spectacle had no doubt conquered, but it had scarcely charmed him. No intimate union had been established between this dazzling scenery and his spiritual passions. But from the first moment he yielded to the fascination of Venice. In Venice he found, at a glance, without effort, what his Greek masters—Homer, Theognis, Thucydides—had formerly given him: the sensation of a lucid intellect, which lived without dreams or scruples. Against dreams, against scruples, against the prestige of a romantic art, he had been fighting for four years. The beauty of Venice was his deliverance. He remembered his agonies and smiled at himself. Had he not flattered himself in supposing that he was the most wretched of men? What man who suffered has not had this thought, this childish conceit?
"When a first dawn of assuagement, of recovery, supervenes," he wrote, "then we ungratefully humiliate the pride which formerly made us bear our sorrow, we deal with ourselves like naïve simpletons—as if something unique had happened to us! Again we look around at men and at nature, with desire; the tempered lights of life recomfort us; again health plays its magical tricks with us. We contemplate the spectacle as if we were transformed, benevolent and still fatigued. In this condition one cannot hear music without weeping."
Peter Gast attended him with touching kindness. He accompanied him in his walks, read to him, played him his favourite music. At this period Friedrich Nietzsche liked Chopin above all musicians; he discovered a daring, a freedom of passion in his rhapsodies, which is seldom the gift of German art. Doubtless we must think of Chopin in reading those last words, "In this condition one cannot hear music without weeping."
Peter Gast also played the part of secretary, for Nietzsche had recovered his ardour for work. Day by day he dictated his thoughts. He chose, immediately, the title for a new collection (he gave up the idea quickly), L'Ombra di Venezia. Indeed, did he not owe to the presence of Venice this richness, this force, this subtlety of his mind? He essayed new researches. Was it true, as he had written, that a cold calculation of interest determines the actions of men? that a mean desire for safety, for ease, for happiness, had created that excessive beauty to which Venice stands witness? Venice is unique; nevertheless, she exists and must be explained. A spiritual portent must explain the physical marvel. What, then, are the hidden springs which determine our acts? Life, Schopenhauer used to say, is a pure Will to Live; every being desires to persevere in being. We may go further, thinks Friedrich Nietzsche, and say that life aspires ever to extend and surpass itself. Its desire is, not conservation, but growth; a principle of conquest and of exaltation must be linked to its essence. How is this principle to be formulated? Nietzsche did not yet know; but the idea was with him, and importunate. He felt that he was on the eve of a discovery, on the threshold of an unknown world; and he wrote, or dictated, to his friend:
"Actions are never what they appear to be. We have had such difficulty in learning that external things are not what they appear to us. Well, it is the same with the internal world! Deeds are in reality 'something other'—more we cannot say of them, and all deeds are essentially unknown."
In July he tried the waters of Marienbad. He lived in a little inn, situated opposite the wood, where he walked all the length of the day.
"I am absorbed, and excavate zealously in my moral mines," he wrote to Peter Gast, "and it seems to me that I have become an altogether subterranean being—it seems to me, at this moment, that I have found a passage, an opening; a hundred times I shall be thus persuaded and then deceived."