I had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with Jakob Burkhardt, an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded thinker. A still greater piece of good fortune was that from the earliest days of my Basle existence an indescribably close intimacy sprang up between me and Richard and Cosima Wagner, who were then living on their estate of Triebschen, near Lucerne, as though on an island, and were cut off from all former ties. For some years we had everything, great and small, in common, a confidence without bounds. (You will find printed in Volume VII of Wagner's complete works a "message" to me, referring to The Birth of Tragedy.) As a result of these relations I came to know a large circle of persons (and "personesses"), in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between Paris and Petersburg. By about 1876 my health became worse. I then spent a winter at Sorrento, with my old friend, Baroness Meysenbug (Memoirs of an Idealist) and the sympathetic Dr. Rée. There was no improvement. I suffered from an extremely painful and persistent headache, which exhausted all my strength. This went on for a number of years, till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering, that at that time I had 200 days of torment in the year. The trouble must have been due entirely to local causes, there is no neuropathic basis for it of any sort. I have never had a symptom of mental disturbance; not even of fever, nor of fainting. My pulse was at that time as slow as that of the first Napoleon (= 60). My speciality was to endure extreme pain, cru, vert, with perfect clarity, for two or three consecutive days, accompanied by constant vomiting of bile. The report has been put about that I was in a madhouse (and indeed that I died there). Nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact my intellect only came to maturity during that terrible time: witness the Dawn of Day, which I wrote in 1881 during a winter of incredible suffering at Genoa, away from doctors, friends or relations. This book serves me as a sort of "dynamometer": I composed it with a minimum of strength and health. From 1882 on I went forward again, very slowly, it is true: the crisis was past (my father died very young, just at the age at which I was myself so near to death). I have to use extreme care even to-day; certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are indispensable to me. It is not from choice but from necessity that I spend the summer in the Upper Engadine and the winter at Nice.... After all, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it has released me, it has restored to me the courage to be myself.... And, indeed, in virtue of my instincts, I am a brave animal, a military one even. The long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride. Am I a philosopher, do you ask?—But what does that matter!...

11. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, April 29, 1888.

MY DEAR SIR,

The first time I lectured on your works, the hall was not quite full, an audience of perhaps a hundred and fifty, since no one knew who and what you are. But as an important newspaper reported my first lecture, and as I have myself written an article on you, interest was roused, and next time the hall was full to bursting. Some three hundred people listened with the greatest attention to my exposition of your works. Nevertheless, I have not ventured to repeat the lectures, as has been my practice for many years, since the subject is hardly of a popular nature. I hope the result will be to get you some good readers in the North.

Your books now stand on one of my shelves, very handsomely bound. I should be very glad to possess everything you have published.

When, in your first letter, you offered me a musical work of yours, a Hymn to Life, I declined the gift from modesty, being no great judge of music. Now I think I have deserved the work through my interest in it and should be much obliged if you would have it sent to me.

I believe I may sum up the impression of my audience in the feeling of a young painter, who said to me: "What makes this so interesting is that it has not to do with books, but with life." If any objection is taken to your ideas, it is that they are "too out-and-out."

It was unkind of you not to send me a photograph; I really only sent mine to put you under an obligation. It is so little trouble to sit to a photographer for a minute or two, and one knows a man far better when one has an idea of his appearance.

Yours very sincerely,
GEORGE BRANDES.