Where may I send you the Twilight of the Idols? If you will be at Copenhagen another fortnight, no answer is necessary.
21. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.
Copenhagen, Nov. 23, 1888.
MY DEAR SIR,
Your letter found me to-day in full fever of work; I am lecturing here on Goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for three quarters of an hour in the square before the University to get standing-room. It amuses me to study the greatest of the great before so many. I must stay here till the end of the year.
But on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that—as I am informed—one of my old books, lately translated into Russian, has been condemned in Russia to be publicly burnt as "irreligious."
I already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on Poland and Russia; now I must try to set in motion all the influence I can command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in Russia this winter. To make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are now confiscated. There is great anxiety since the disaster at Borki. It was just the same shortly after the famous attempts. Every letter was snapped up.
It gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through so much. Believe me, I spread your propaganda wherever I can. So late as last week I earnestly recommended Henrik Ibsen to study your works. With him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant kinship. Great and strong and unamiable, but yet worthy of love, is this singular person. Strindberg will be glad to hear of your appreciation. I do not know the French translation you mention; but they say here that all the best things in Giftas (Mariés) have been left out, especially the witty polemic against Ibsen. But read his drama Père; there is a great scene in it. I am sure he would gladly send it you. But I see him so seldom; he is so shy on account of an extremely unhappy marriage. Imagine it, he abhors his wife intellectually and cannot get away from her physically. He is a monogamous misogynist!
It seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in you. In my early days I was passionately polemical; now I can only expound; silence is my only weapon of offence. I should as soon think of attacking Christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves, I mean against the belief in werewolves.
But I see we understand one another. I too love Pascal. But even as a young man I was for the Jesuits against Pascal (in the Provinciales). The worldly-wise, they were right, of course; he did not understand them; but they understood him and—what a master-stroke of impudence and sagacity!—they themselves published his Provinciales with notes. The best edition is that of the Jesuits.