Nietzsche's works are poetic effusions more than philosophical expositions and yet we would hesitate to call him a poet. His poems are not poetical in the usual sense. They lack poetry and yet they appeal not only to his admirers, but also to his critics and enemies. Most of them are artificial yet they are so characteristic that they are interesting specimens of a peculiar kind of taste. They strike us as ingenious, because they reflect his eccentricities.
In a poem entitled "Ecce Homo"[11] he characterizes himself:
"Yea, I know from whence I came!
Never satiate, like the flame
Glow I and consume me too
Into light turns what I find,
Cinders do I leave behind,
Flame am I, 'tis surely true."
[1] E.g.:
"Bitte nie! Lass dies Gewimmer!
Nimm, ich bitte dich, nimm immer!"
[2] Compare Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.
[3] Leben, pp. 90-97.
[4] (See, e. g., Leben, II., 1, pp. 108-111.) "Nach dem Kriege missfiel mir der Luxus, die Franzosenverachtung," etc., p. 108. "Ich halte das jetzige Preussen für eine der Cultur höchst gefährliche Macht." Nietzsche ridicules the German language as barbarous in sound (La Gaya Scienza, pp. 138-140), "wälderhaft, heiser, wie aus räucherigen Stuben und unhöflichen Gegenden." Unique is the origin of the standard style of modern high German from the bureaucratic slang, "kanzleimässig schreiben, das war etwas Vornehmes" (La Gaya Scienza, p. 138), and at present the German changes into an "Offizierdeutsch" (ibid., p. 139). Nietzsche suspects, "the German depth," "die deutsche Tiefe," to be a mere mental dyspepsia (see "Jenseits von Gut und Böse," p. 211), saying, "Der Deutsche verdaut seine Ereignisse schlecht, or wird nie damit fertig; die deutsche Tiefe ist oft nur eine schwere, zögernde Verdauung." Nevertheless, he holds that the old-fashioned German depth is better than modern Prussian "Schneidigkeit und Berliner Witz und Sand." He prefers the company of the Swiss to that of his countrymen. (See also "Was den Deutschen abgeht," Vol. 8, p. 108.)
[5] "Unser lieber König," "der Landesvater," etc. See Leben, I., p. 24, and IL, 1, p. 248, "Unser lieber alter Kaiser Wilhelm," and "wir Preussen waren wirklich stolz." These expressions occur in Nietzsche's description of the Emperor's appearance at Bayreuth.
[6] E.g., "Auch der schädlichste Mensch ist vielleicht immer noch der allernützlichste in Hinsicht auf Erhaltung der Art," etc. La Gaya Scienza, p. 3 ff.