Nietzsche left Nice next day. He wished, before going up to the
Engadine, to make the experiment of a stay in Turin. Its dry air and
spacious streets had been praised in his hearing. He travelled with
difficulty; he lost his luggage and his temper, quarrelled with the
porters, and remained for two days ill at Sampiedarena, near Genoa;
in Genoa itself, he spent three days of rest, fully occupied with the
happy memories which he found again. "I thank my luck," he wrote to
Peter Gast, "that it led me back to this town, where the will rises,
where one cannot be cowardly. I have never felt more gratitude than
during this pilgrimage to Genoa...." On Saturday, April 6th, he arrived
at Turin, broken with fatigue. "I am no longer capable of travelling
alone," he said to Peter Gast in the same letter. "It agitates me too
much, everything affects me stupidly."
III
_Towards the Darkness_
Here we should discontinue our story to forewarn the reader. Hitherto,
we have been following the history of Nietzsche's thought. Nietzsche's
thought has now no longer a history, for an influence, come not from
the mind, but from the body, has affected it. People sometimes say that
Nietzsche was mad long before this. It may be that they are right; it
is impossible to reach an assured diagnosis. At least he had retained
his power of reflection, his will. He could still hold himself and his
judgments in check. In the spring of 1888 he lost this faculty. His
intelligence is not yet darkened; there is not a word he writes but is
penetrating and trenchant. His lucidity is extreme, but disastrous,
since it exercises itself only to destroy. As one studies the last
months of this life, one feels as though one were watching the work of
some engine of war which is no longer governed by the hand of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche abandoned those moral researches which had
strengthened his work till now, enriched and elevated it. Let us recall
a letter addressed to Peter Gast in February, 1888: "I am in a state
of chronic irritability which allows me, in my better moments, a sort
of revenge, not the finest sort--it takes the form of an excess of
hardness." These words shed light on the three coming books: _The Case
of Wagner, The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist._
We shall hurry on with the story of those months in which Nietzsche is
no longer quite himself.
* * * * *