Friedrich Nietzsche by Georg Brandes

Author:Georg Brandes [Brandes, Georg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

[1] See Tilskueren (Copenhagen) for August and November-December 1889, January, February-March, April and May 1890.

* * *

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND GEORGE BRANDES

1. BRANDES TO NIETZSCHE.

Copenhagen, Nov. 26, 1887.

DEAR SIR,

A year ago I received through your publisher your work Beyond Good and Evil; the other day your latest book reached me in the same way. Of your other books I have Human, all-too-Human. I had just sent the two volumes I possess to the binder, when The Genealogy of Morals arrived, so that I have not been able to compare it with the earlier works, as I mean to do. By degrees I shall read everything of yours attentively.

This time, however, I am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks for the book sent. It is an honour to me to be known to you, and known in such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader.

A new and original spirit breathes to me from your books. I do not yet fully understand what I have read; I cannot always see your intention. But I find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies, the depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with democratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. Your contempt for the morality of pity is not yet clear to me. There were also in the other work some reflections on women in general which did not agree with my own line of thought. Your nature is so absolutely different from mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home. In spite of your universality you are very German in your mode of thinking and writing. You are one of the few people with whom I should enjoy a talk.

I know nothing about you. I see with astonishment that you are a professor and doctor. I congratulate you in any case on being intellectually so little of a professor.

I do not know what you have read of mine. My writings only attempt the solution of modest problems. For the most part they are only to be had in Danish. For many years I have not written German. I have my best public in the Slavonic countries, I believe. I have lectured in Warsaw for two years in succession, and this year in Petersburg and Moscow, in French. Thus I endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my native land.

Although no longer young, I am still one of the most inquisitive of men and one of the most eager to learn. You will therefore not find me closed against your ideas, even when I differ from you in thought and feeling. I am often stupid, but never in the least narrow.

Let me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the trouble.

Yours gratefully,

GEORGE BRANDES.

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