17. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.
Copenhagen, Oct. 6, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Your letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work. This accounts for my delay in answering.
The mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement.
It is sad news that you have had a bad summer. I was foolish enough to think that you had already got over all your physical troubles.
I have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much enjoyment. I am not so unmusical that I cannot enter into the fun of it. I am merely not an expert. A few days before receiving the little book I heard a very fine performance of Carmen; what glorious music! However, at the risk of exciting your wrath I confess that Wagner's Tristan und Isolde made an indelible impression on me. I once heard this opera in Berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of mind, and I felt every note. I do not know whether the impression was so deep because I was so ill.
Do you know Bizet's widow? You ought to send her the pamphlet. She would like it. She is the sweetest, most charming of women, with a nervous tic that is curiously becoming, but perfectly genuine, perfectly sincere and full of fire. Only she has married again (an excellent man, a barrister named Straus, of Paris). I believe she knows some German. I could get you her address, if it does not put you against her that she has not remained true to her god—any more than the Virgin Mary, Mozart's widow or Marie Louise.
Bizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming.—But I am gossiping.
I have given a copy of the book to the greatest of Swedish writers, August Strindberg, whom I have entirely won over to you. He is a true genius, only a trifle mad like most geniuses (and non-geniuses). The other copy I shall also place with care.