The appearance of Human, All-Too-Human in May, 1878, coincided with a yet further deterioration of Nietzsche's health which, the previous March, had reached such a state that he was finally released from all teaching obligations to the grammar school. His health cannot have been improved by a weird letter from the formerly admired Siegfried Lipiner (p. 237 above) virtually demanding to run the life of his ‘dearly beloved’, which Nietzsche rightly described as an ‘unbelievable impertinence’. Neither can his health have been improved by the reactions to his radically new line of thinking.

Reception of Human, All-Too-Human

Nietzsche's nervousness concerning the book's reception was entirely justified. About the only positive response came from Burckhardt, who, delighted that Nietzsche was ‘healed’ of Wagner, who had always offended his classical taste, called the work a ‘sublime book’. In Russia the book was banned outright. Much more serious, however, was the Bayreuth reaction, about which he had been most nervous.

Schmeitzner reported that Wagner claimed to have read only a few pages ‘in order not to upset the delightful impression left by [Nietzsche's] earlier works’. But this did not stop him issuing a counterblast in the September edition of the Bayreuther Blätter : though Nietzsche is not mentioned by name, his article, entitled ‘The Public and Popularity’, held up to ridicule a book supposedly called Menschliches und Unmenschliches [The Human and Inhuman].