"Let not your virtue fly far from terrestrial things, and beat its wings against the eternal walls! Alas! there is always so much virtue gone astray!
"Like myself, bring back towards the earth the virtue which goes astray—yea, towards the flesh and towards life; that it may give a meaning to the earth, a human meaning...."
Whilst he completed the composition of this hymn on the Genoese coast, Richard Wagner died in Venice. Nietzsche learnt the news with a grave emotion, and recognised a sort of providential accord in the coincidence of events. The poet of Siegfried was dead; so be it! humanity would not be for a moment deprived of poetry, since Zarathustra had already spoken.
For more than six years he had given no sign of life to Cosima Wagner; now he had to tell her that he had forgotten nothing of past days and that he shared her sorrows. "You will approve of me in this, I am sure" he wrote to Fräulein von Meysenbug.[7]
On the 14th of February he wrote to Schmeitzner, the publisher:
"To-day I have some news for you: I have just taken a decisive step—I mean, one profitable to you. It concerns a little work, scarcely 100 pages long, entitled: Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book for all and none. It is a poem or it is a Fifth Gospel, or something which has no name; by far the most serious, and also the most happy, of my productions and one that is open to all."
He wrote to Peter Gast and to Fräulein von Meysenbug: "This year," said he, "no society. I shall go straight from Genoa to Sils!" Thus did Zarathustra, who left the great city and returned to the mountains. But Friedrich Nietzsche is not Zarathustra; he is feeble, solitude exalts and frightens him. Some weeks passed. Schmeitzner, the publisher, was slow: Nietzsche grew impatient and modified his projects for the summer; he wished to hear the sound of human speech. His sister, at Rome with Fräulein von Meysenbug, guessed that he was accessible and weary, and seized this opportunity of a reconciliation. He did not defend himself and promised to come.
Here he was at Rome. His old friend immediately introduced him into a brilliant society. Lenbach was there, and also that Countess Dönhoff, to-day Princess von Buelow, an amiable woman and a great musician. Friedrich Nietzsche felt with vexation how different he was from these happy talkers, how he belonged to another world, how they misunderstood him. A curious, a singular man, they think; a very eccentric man. A great mind? No one ventured to pass this rash judgment. And Friedrich Nietzsche, so proud when he was alone, was astonished, disturbed, and humiliated. It seemed that he had not the strength to despise these people who did not hearken to him; he was disquieted and began to fear for his well-beloved son, Zarathustra.
"They will run through my book," he wrote to Gast, "and it will be a subject of conversation. That inspires me with disgust. Who is serious enough to hear me? If I had the authority of old Wagner, my affairs would be in a better way. But at present no one can save me from being delivered over to 'literary people.' To the devil!"