Retreat to Rapallo

As often happens, the pain of the Salomé affair spread out to engulf the place where it happened. Nietzsche could bear to be in Germany no longer and so, in Overbeck's word, ‘fled’ to Italy. Settling finally, as we saw, in Rapallo at the end of November, 1882, he would remain there until the end of February of the following year. He found an albergo directly on the palm-lined waterfront with cheap, off-season rates.

Predictably, his recently vibrant health now declined to a point as low as it had ever reached. Suffering prolonged attacks of vomiting, headaches, eye pain, and insomnia – he could only sleep with high doses of chloral hydrate – he became, once again, extremely depressed. Above all, his mother's words about his being a ‘disgrace to his father's grave’ went round and round in his head, making ‘the barrel of a pistol’ a tempting thought. Only his mission, his overriding commitment to his ‘main task’, prevented him from taking the beckoning exit from an ‘extraordinarily painful life’.

Local conditions did not help. Food in the albergo was bad, and, for the normally mild Gulf of Genoa, it was extremely cold, the wind lashing the palms on the promenade and the windows of the hotel with grey sea-spray. Nietzsche blamed not only Germany but also his unaccustomed return to sociability for the Salomé affair.