42
PARTISAN REVIEW
even somewhat more, a bridge between two millennia, decisive and
doom-laden." According to Freud, the sustained mastery of form in
Ecce Homo
indicates that the work is fully valid, but, nervous of being
influenced by Nietzsche, he had been scrupulous not to read much of
his writing. To those familiar with the earlier books, the change in
manner of self-assertion is unmistakable. In April, replying to Georg
Brandes's request for biographical information, Nietzsche felt either
free to depart from the facts or unable to distinguish between fact and
fantasy: he said he had been born "on the battlefield of Lutzen"; the
first name he had heard spoken was Gustavus Adolphus; his ancestors
were Polish aristocrats called Niezky; outside Germany he was usually
taken for a Pole; he had been an officer in the artillery. Writing to an
American journalist in June, he called
Zarathustra
"the profoundest
work in the German language," and his books "in the front rank by
virtue of the richness of the psychological experience, the courage in
face of the greatest dangers and their sublime frankness." In September,
writing a preface for the
Revaluation of All Values,
which he was never
to complete, he said: "This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none
of them are alive yet . .. Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me.
Some men are born posthumously." (A businessman in the same
advanced phase of neurosyphilis would have been liable to over invest,
working under the delusion that his assets were far greater than they in
fact were.) Settling in Turin for the winter, Nietzsche was euphoric.
" Everywhere I am given the most distinguished treatment.
If
only you
could see how pleased everyone here is when I arrive, and how in all
quarters they involuntarily bring the best, the most tactful parts of
their nature to the fore, putting on their best, their most considerate
manners." He enjoyed his food more than ever before, took more
trouble over his appearance. A letter to his sister was signed "Your
Brother, now
quite a great person."
On his forty-fourth birthday, 15
October 1888, he heard from none of his friends except Gast, but
adopting, as he was, more and more insane strategies to achieve self–
sufficiency, he celebrated single-handed by starting
Ecce Homo.
Some
critics regard it as one of his best books, but it is full of what he had
once called "the noisiness of self-applause," and full of indications that
his mind was already unbalanced. In claiming to be the first immoral–
ist, he also claims the right to indulge his pleasure in destroying, and
his powers of destruction. "I obey my Dionysian nature which does not
know how to separate negation from affirmation." By the end of the
year he was manically convinced that nothing was beyond his powers:
"The most unheard of tasks are easy as a game; my health like the
