Walking the Tightrope

“Nobody at this low point in his career, and probably not even Nietzsche – who felt that from the euphoric heights of Orta and the Monte sacro in early May he had been precipitated by mid-November to the dark depths of the ‘abyss’ – could guess that within a few weeks he would rebound and reach a new zenith in an astonishing ‘eruption’. But this is what happened. It was a triumph of will power, of Selbstuberwindung (self-overcoming), as he called it, and it offered dramatic proof that, as he had written Franz Overbeck, the ‘watch-spring’ of his overly tensed, ‘machine-like’ brain had not snapped and that he still possessed enough of the magic powers of the alchemist to be able to transform the ‘dung’ of misfortune into verbal ‘gold’. “Climatic factors again played a major role in this amazing resurgence. During the first two weeks of January 1883 Rapallo was so lashed by wintry gales and rain that never in his life had Nietzsche felt so frozen as in his small, seaside albergo . H...

“From Leipzig, where the first wintry snows were already falling, Nietzsche took the train to Basel, to ‘help’ Franz Overbeck celebrate his forty-fifth birthday on 16 November. He told his Basel hosts that his ‘idyll’ with Lou Salomé was finished, without explaining what had gone wrong. Lou’s health was so fragile – like his own – that she was as ill-suited to look after him as he was to take care of her. ‘Now I am going into complete solitude,’ he had abandoned as hopeless his short-lived endeavor to ‘return to the world of men.’ “If Nietzsche heard the nasty rumor that was already circulating in Basel’s academic circles – about the ‘mistress’ he had brought back from Italy and whom he had been ‘sharing’ with a friend of his in Leipzig – it was certainly not from the Overbecks. But what infuriated Nietzsche was to discover that his sister Elisabeth, in her righteous zeal as the self-appointed guardian and preserver of her brother’s ‘sullied reputation’, had taken it upon herself to ‘s...

So, for a few days after Tautenburg, Fritz was alone with his mother in the family’s Naumberg home. By this time he had apparently completed putting Lou’s ‘A Prayer to Life’ to music. He probably played his composition for his mother on the family piano. Franziska probably took some interest. This was the first new music from her son since a piano duet he composed as a wedding gift for a lady friend in early 1873. Nine years had passed.  It was good to hear him being musically creative again. For the sake of propriety, Fritz told his mother his time in Tautenburg was spent with Elizabeth and a prospective pupil. It was a complete charade. Fritz loved his mother as dearly as his sister, who he was upset with at the moment. During these days, he doubtlessly considered how to “pitch” the (in his mind) pending intellectual threesome to his mother, so Christian she had married the minister that fathered him. Of course, Fritz’s mother, Franziska, loved her son too. She felt he was...

Elizabeth did everything she could to dissuade Fritz from associating himself with that girl. But, Fritz was still in love with Lou. In spite of two marriage proposal refusals, Fritz still harbored romantic attachments even as the two explored deep philosophical and spiritual realms together. It was Fritz’s mind and thought that drove Lou Salomé to want to be with him and share her intimate writings and poetry with him. But, for her there was nothing else. Except, there was a wall at the point where Lou was stimulated by Fritz’s writings and perspective. The wall was in some ways erotic in nature, Lou was still a gorgeous girl in her early twenties. Lou had enjoyed a sensual, intellectual relationship once before with an older man. Lou still flirted a bit with Fritz, she couldn’t help herself. But, their interactions remained much more formal and intellectually exploratory than they were at Monte Sacro. Still, Fritz got what he planned for - three weeks alone with Lou at ...

Lou Salomé, Paul Rée, and Friedrich Nietzsche posed for this racy (by the standards of the day) photo in May 1882. “After a trip to Basel to visit to his friends the Overbecks, Nietzsche returned and met with Lou on May 13 at Lucerne . At the Lowengarten , they spoke (at) a stone relief of a sleeping lion. According to Lou’s memoirs he proposed to her a second time. Again she tactfully declined but continued to beseech him to be part of the intellectual commune, what she called the “trinity.” She believed working together they could inspire one another to the greatest heights; to succumb to something as ephemeral as emotion would cause it to dissolve away. And Nietzsche was game for anything involving danger and play – the world’s most dangerous plaything: live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius ! Send you ships into uncharted seas! ” ( Vickers , page 42) While Fritz visited the Overbecks, Lou got several stern talks from her mother and Paul regarding her “loose” behav...

If the late-summer of 1881 changed Nietzsche completely with his “discovery” of the eternal return of the same , then the late-spring of 1882 was equally momentous and compelling. I would argue that no single moment in his life affected Fritz more profoundly than a extended walk taken with Lou just before sunset one day in early May 1882. It would reverb through his thought and emotions for many months, if not years, afterwards. It ultimately led him down the path to composing his most famous philosophic work. Paul and Fritz joined Lou and her mother in the small town of Orta on what was apparently a beautiful spring day. As has been mentioned, the meeting was delayed by a sudden bout of illness in Fritz. But, he rallied quickly and things went pretty much as he and Lou had planned. “…so the party arrived on an early May day in the ancient town of Orta , situated on a peninsula that juts out into the lake from the eastern shore. Opposite it, like an emerging pearl, lies the Isla...

“While they waited for Nietzsche’s arrival, Rée and Lou continued their joint exploration of the sites of Rome. They spent a good deal of time at Saint Peter’s . Rée had discovered a quiet corner in one of the side chapels where he could work undisturbed on his new book in which he wanted to prove the nonexistence of God. Lou was highly amused at his choice of a study and often accompanied him there to argue her point of view.” ( Peters , page 92) Here is an example of how Nietzsche scholars disagree on a multitude of small details depending upon the different perspectives found in their research of the primary sources, letters, diaries and such. Cate tells the exact situation slightly differently but all the main facts are the same. His details reveal some intimate things about Fritz and Paul and Lou. “The momentous excursion to St. Peter’s had been carefully staged by Paul Rée, who like an impatient alchemist had been waiting for weeks to see what kind of chemical reaction would tak...