A Winter Solstice: An Old Master, His Young Disciple and The Darkest Evening of the Year

(This post is dedicated to Brad M. Dolinsky, MD, a giant of a man, and a rising star in the medical profession).

Arrival of Professor Nietzsche's book. I looked at it, turned over idly pages of it with curiosity. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. What of it, though?

On January 2, 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche sent Richard Wagner an uncut advance copy of his book, now entitled The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, as a "token of goodwill and friendship." Many of the ideas to which Wagner had undoubtedly given livelier expression in conversation with Nietzsche than in his essays on art . . . recurred in an intensified and spiritualized form in Nietzsche's sublime prose.

Let's see how it begins. I suppose . . . I could paraphrase. No, no; wait! He can say in his own words, much better, what I as his ambassador in my enthusiasm might only hint at:

It was in dreams, says Lucretius, that the glorious divine figures first appeared to the souls of men; in dreams the great shaper beheld the splendid bodies of superhuman beings; and the Hellenic poet, if questioned about the mysteries of poetic inspiration, would likewise have suggested dreams and he might have given an explanation like that of Hans Sachs in the Meistersinger . . .

“This is the book I have been longing for,” says Richard—

Opening a path for yourself, with a paper-knife in the barrier of strange pages of virgin manuscript becomes linked with the thoughts of how much the word contains and conceals: you cut your way through your reading as if through a dense forest.

Where now?

Drove into town, home with Richard, through fog, darkness, and snow. We both felt dazed, contemplating that whiteness as if each of us were hypnotized looking fixedly at blank manuscript pages. I at last, a blanket to my chin, thought of the times when I lived here against all the rules like a dream figure, and when this landscape seemed so appropriate.

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

What does it mean? Why this:

In the middle of the journey, in long winter nights, we find ourselves in dark woods where the right path seems lost. But even so melancholy a poet saw for a prophetic moment that at the end of the confusion in the rosy light of morning there is sometimes a clearing in whose sunlight things appear more distinct and precious than ever before. Can you conceive what new and vital power I draw from living in the wilderness?

Returning home I felt as if I had come out of a bleak, harsh woods into a cozy lair.

—In the evening read more of Nietzsche's book, which gives Richard ever-increasing satisfaction, but we wonder where the public for it will be found.

On my way upstairs to bed I stopped to sit on my spiral staircase and reflect, reflect, until the mildness of my thoughts lulls and calms me; and then from downstairs I hear music: I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. Only within. Inside the brain. An indescribable impression— All my senses now want to sink into slumber. Winter’s revenant invites you into it, and there you lie while the bleached sheet of snow accumulating just beyond the window pane translates you to an angel in a solitary bed.

In the meantime Richard comes up and shows me a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, which he has written to the professor telling him what he thinks of the book and its author.

Yes. This. Here.

Friedrich!--

In your rural letter box I leave this note without a stamp to tell you, My friend! Never have I read anything more beautiful than your book! You thought it out excellently! How splendid it all is! An amazing tour de force. No rule seemed to fit it, and yet there was no fault in it.— Whether or not one enjoys such a technique as you have achieved is a matter of taste on which disagreement or argument is futile, but to subject that technique to the standards of some other technique seems to me to be little short of absurd.

I am writing to you quickly now because reading it has left me so inordinately excited that I must first await the return of reason before reading it properly.

And it is partly to compel myself, in forma pauperis, to say as much I write you this. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law, but always meeting ourselves.

You’re a giant of a man, and our meeting calls to mind an Allegory of two stars’ having coalesced a couple of stars which came together in constellation as never before, while the other stars all look’d on in amazement, and did not know what next.

What more remains? We were born one for another and are certain to do fine things together.
—There's nothing more I can say. Be thanked. I now depart a debtor.

Your friend,

Richard Wagner

Nietzsche's first book was a vivid visual poem, a creative condensation of life, death, and immortality.

Nietzsche had, in fact, become a second Joseph: a man famous in the Bible as an interpreter of dreams. Joseph who was becoming daily more conscious of his own powers, more convinced of his mission pieced Pharaoh's dreams together exactly as they had visited Pharaoh in the night, and the king was greatly amazed. Joseph was able to accomplish this feat, because he had dreamed the same dream as Pharaoh, at the same time as he.

Pharaoh was, of course, the Master who stood for a great deal that the younger man, longing to do immortal work, was beginning to envisage as his own special world.