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I think these letters prove that:
>The friendship deepened into something like a father-son connection. "Strictly speaking, you are, aside from my wife, the one prize I have received in life," Wagner wrote to his disciple in 1872. Later, in a draft of the preface to the second part of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche described the relationship as "my only love-affair," before striking the phrase from his proofs.
>"I always think of him with gratitude, because to him I am indebted for some of the strongest incitements to intellectual independence" (letter, 14 January 1880).
>"Certainly those were the best days of my life, the ones I spent with him at Tribschen and through him in Bayreuth (1872, not 1876)… And the disillusionment and leaving Wagner – was not that putting my very life in danger? Have I not needed almost six years to recover from that pain?" (3 February 1882).
>"I have had such experiences with this man and his work, and it was a passion which lasted a long time – passion is the only word for it. The renunciation that it required, the rediscovering of myself that eventually became necessary, was among the hardest and most melancholy things that have befallen me" (16 July 1882).
>"I am better now and I even believe that Wagner's death was the most substantial relief that could have been given me just now. It was hard for six years to have to be the opponent of the man one had most reverenced on earth, and my constitution is not sufficiently coarse for such a position. After all it was Wagner grown senile whom I was forced to resist; as to the genuine Wagner, I shall yet attempt to become in a great measure his heir (as I have often assured Fräulein Malvida, though she would not believe it)." (19 February 1883).