Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chapter 15 The Wanderer and His Shadow
- Chapter 16 Dawn
- Chapter 17 The Gay Science
- Chapter 18 The Salomé Affair
- Chapter 19 Zarathustra
- Chapter 20 Nietzsche's Circle of Women
- Chapter 21 Beyond Good and Evil
- Chapter 22 Clearing the Decks
- Chapter 23 T he Genealogy of Morals
- Chapter 24 1888
- Chapter 25 Catastrophe
- Chapter 26 The Rise and Fall of The Will to Power
- Chapter 27 The End
- Chapter 28 Nietzsche's Madness
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 19 - Zarathustra
from PART THREE - The Nomad
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chapter 15 The Wanderer and His Shadow
- Chapter 16 Dawn
- Chapter 17 The Gay Science
- Chapter 18 The Salomé Affair
- Chapter 19 Zarathustra
- Chapter 20 Nietzsche's Circle of Women
- Chapter 21 Beyond Good and Evil
- Chapter 22 Clearing the Decks
- Chapter 23 T he Genealogy of Morals
- Chapter 24 1888
- Chapter 25 Catastrophe
- Chapter 26 The Rise and Fall of The Will to Power
- Chapter 27 The End
- Chapter 28 Nietzsche's Madness
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
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.
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- Friedrich NietzscheA Philosophical Biography, pp. 357 - 386Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010