Walking the Tightrope

Nietzsche as Professor of Philology at the University of Basel is captured by Ludwig von Scheffle, one of his admiring students, reminiscing upon the summer of the Ring at Bayreuth, but a few months before. He gives us some remarkable intimate details of Fritz. Professor Nietzsche entering the classroom… “I had not expected the professor to come into the room in the fire of thought, like Burckhardt. And I probably was already learning that provocative tone in a writer does not always match his behavior as a private person. But such modesty, indeed humility, of deportment was surprising to me in Nietzsche. “Moreover he was of short rather then medium height. His head deep in his shoulders of his stocky yet delicate body. And the gleaming horn-rimmed glasses and the long hanging mustache deprived the face of that intellectual expression which often gives short men an impressive air. “And yet his whole personality showed anything but indifference to his personal appearance. Here one saw n...