Once more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north; it is in fact so far the only letter that puts a "good face," or any face at all on my attack on Wagner. For people do not write to me. I have irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest. There is, for instance, my old friend, Baron Seydlitz of Munich, who unfortunately happens to be President of the Munich Wagner Society; my still older friend, Justizrath Krug of Cologne, president of the local Wagner Society; my brother-in-law, Dr. Bernhard Förster in South America, the not unknown Anti—Semite, one of the keenest contributors to the Bayreuther Blätter—and my respected friend, Malwida von Meysenbug, the authoress of Memoirs of an Idealist, who continues to confuse Wagner with Michel Angelo....
On the other side I have been given to understand that I must be on my guard against the female Wagnerite: in certain cases she is said to be without scruple. Perhaps Bayreuth will defend itself in the German Imperial manner, by the prohibition of my writings—as "dangerous to public morals"; for here the Emperor is a party to the case.
My dictum, "we all know the inæsthetic concept of the Christian Junker," might even be interpreted as lèse-majesté.
Your intervention on behalf of Bizet's widow gave me great pleasure. Please let me have her address; also that of prince Urussov. A copy has been sent to your friend, the Princess Dmitrievna Ténicheff. When my next book is published, which will be before very long (the title is now The Twilight of the Idols. Or, How to Philosophise with the Hammer), I should much like to send a copy to the Swede you introduce to me in such laudatory terms. But I do not know where he lives. This book is my philosophy in nuce—radical to the point of criminality....
As to the effect of Tristan, I, too, could tell strange tales. A regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a Wagnerian repast. The Reichsgerichtsrath Dr. Wiener of Leipzig gave me to understand that a Carlsbad cure was also a good thing....
Ah, how industrious you are! And idiot that I am, not to understand Danish! I am quite willing to take your word for it that one can "revive" in Russia better than elsewhere; I count any Russian book, above all Dostoievsky (translated into French, for Heaven's sake not German!!) among my greatest sources of relief.
Cordially and, with good reason, gratefully,
Yours,
NIETZSCHE.
19. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.
Copenhagen, Nov. 16, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,