On the scale of my experiences and circumstances, the predominance is given to the rarer, remoter, more attenuated tones as against the normal, medial ones. Besides (as an old musician, which is what I really am), I have an ear for quarter-tones. Finally--and this probably does more to make my books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of reasons. What a person already holds "true," or has not yet acknowledged as true, seems to me to depend mainly on his courage, on the relative strength of his courage (I seldom have the courage for what I really know). To which Brandes comments with his usual clarity. ... You write more for yourself, think more of yourself in writing, than for the general public; whereas most non-German writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of style, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to keep to himself his most intimate and best individuality, the anonymous in him. I have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my inmost self is more than hinted at in my writings. The earnest tone of Brandes' letters is at times counteracted by a humorous frolic on the part of his correspondent. I even suspect an ironical smile curving around the Polish mustache, when, for instance, Nietzsche confesses his "admiration for the tolerance of your judgment, as much as for the moderation of your sentences." Or as when Brandes confesses: At the risk of exciting your wrath ... Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_ made an indelible impression on me. I once heard this opera in Berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of mind, and I felt every note. I do not know whether the impression was so deep because I was so ill. Nietzsche mischievously retorts: As to the effect of _Tristan_, I, too, could tell strange tales. A regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a Wagnerian repast. The _Reichsgerichtsrath_, Dr. Wiener, of Leipzig, gave me to understand that a Carlsbad cure was also a good thing.... Only once irony passes into impatient sarcasm. Nietzsche expresses his regret at not knowing either Swedish or Danish. Yet Brandes continuously tantalizes him with such exclamations as, "What a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand Danish." Back comes a flash: "Ah, how industrious you are! And idiot that I am, not to understand Danish!" I am tempted to bring another illustration of the profound earnestness of the Priest as against the plausible light-mindedness of the Prophet. Brandes writes: