/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20388632]

>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.
- Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78

>How could I ever forget this friend of mine [Nietzsche] who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.
- Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79

[Anonymous No.20388678]

Nietzsche strikes me as a particularly dramatic example of the old saying, "If someone is an asshole, they're an asshole. If everyone's an asshole, you're the asshole."