THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 335
generous word of praise when almost all others ignored or reviled him;
Brandos wrote to toll him that he was giving a course of lectures on the
"aristocratic radicalism" of Niet&sche at the University of Copenhagen;
Strindberg wrote to say that he was turning Nietzsche's ideas to dramatic
use; perhaps host of all, an anonymous admirer sent a check for $400,
But when these bits of light came, Nietzsche was almost blind in
sight
:md soul; and he had abandoned hope. "My time is not yet," he wrote;
"only the day after tomorrow 1 -8
belongs to me,"
The last blow came at Turin in January, 1889, in the form of a stroke
of apoplexy. He stumbled blindly back to his attic room, and dashed off
mad letters: to Gosima Wagner four words "Ariadne, I love you"; to
Brandos a longer message, signed "The Crucified"; and to Burckhardt
and Ovcrheck such fantastic missives that the latter hurried to his aid.
Ho found Nietzsche ploughing the piano with his elbows, singing and
crying his Dionysian ecstasy.
They took him at first to an asylum, 120 but soon his old mother came
to claim him and take him under her own forgiving care. What a picture!
the pious woman who had borne sensitively but patiently the shock of
her son's apostasy from all that she held dear, and who, loving him none
the less, received him now into her arms, like another Pz>*. She died in
1897, and Nietzsche was taken by his sister to live in Weimar. There a
statue of him was made by Kramer a pitiful thing, showing the once
powerful mind broken, helpless, and resigned. Yet he was not all unhappy;
the peace and quiet which he had never had when sane were his
now; Nature had had mercy on him when she made him mad. He
caught his sister once weeping as she looked at him, and he could not
understand her tears: "Lisbeth," he asked, *Svhy do you cry? Are we
not happy ?" On one occasion he heard talk of books; his pale face lit up:
"Ah!" he said* brightening, "I too have written some good books" and
the lucid moment passed.
He died in 1900. Seldom has a man paid so great a price for genius.
""B. H., 33.
****Thc right man in the right place/ 1
*ay
the brutal Nordau.