That I may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your access to my cave—that is, my philosophy—my Leipzig publisher shall send you all my older books en bloc. I recommend you especially to read the new prefaces to them (they have nearly all been republished); these prefaces, if read in order, will perhaps throw some light upon me, assuming that I am not obscurity in itself (obscure in myself) as obscurissimus obscurorum virorum. For that is quite possible.
Are you a musician? A work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just being published, a "Hymn to Life." This is intended to represent my music to posterity and one day to be sung "in my memory"; assuming that there is enough left of me for that. You see what posthumous thoughts I have. But a philosophy like mine is like a grave—it takes one from among the living. Bene vixit qui bene latuit—was inscribed on Descartes' tombstone. What an epitaph, to be sure!
I too hope we may meet some day,
Yours,
NIETZSCHE.
N.B.—I am staying this winter at Nice. My summer address is Sils-Maria, Upper-Engadine, Switzerland—I have resigned my professorship at the University. I am three parts blind.
3. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.
Copenhagen, Dec. 15, 1887.
MY DEAR SIR,
The last words of your letter are those that have made most impression on me; those in which you tell me that your eyes are seriously affected. Have you consulted good oculists, the best? It alters one's whole psychological life if one cannot see well. You owe it to all who honour you to do everything possible for the preservation and improvement of your sight.
I have put off answering your letter because you announced the sending of a parcel of books, and I wished to thank you for them at the same time. But as the parcel has not yet arrived I will send you a few words to-day. I have your books back from the binder and have gone into them as deeply as I was able amid the stress of preparing lectures and all kinds of literary and political work.