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URBAN PLANNING FOR CLIMATE
CHANGE

This book tackles the future challenges and opportunities for planning our cities
and towns in a changing climate, and recommends key actions for more resilient
urban futures.
Urban Planning for Climate Change focuses on how urban planning is fundamental
to action on climate change. In doing so it particularly looks at current practice and
opportunities for innovation and capacity building in the future – carbon-neutral
development, building back better and creating more resilient urban settlements
around the world. The complex challenge of possible urban resettlement from the
impact of climate change is covered as a special issue bringing a focus on adapta­
tion, working with nature and delivering real action on climate change with local
communities. Norman recommends ten essential actions for urban planning for
climate change, along with some suggestions to inspire the next generations to
embrace these opportunities with creativity and innovation.
Featuring key messages and implications for practice in each chapter, this book
will be of great interest to students, scholars, practitioners and communities
involved in planning more climate resilient urban and regional futures.

Barbara Norman is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University

of Canberra and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. She is a
Life Fellow and past National President of the Planning Institute of Australia, Co-chair
of Planners for Climate Action, and Director of Urban Climate Change Research
Network (UCCRN Oceania Hub).
ROUTLEDGE ADVANCES IN CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH

Climate Change Law in China in Global Context

Edited by Xiangbai He, Hao Zhang, and Alexander Zahar

The Ethos of the Climate Event

Ethical Transformations and Political Subjectivities
Kellan Anfinson

Perceptions of Climate Change from North India

An Ethnographic Account
Aase J. Kvanneid

Climate Change in the Global Workplace

Labour, Adaptation and Resistance
Edited by Nithya Natarajan and Laurie Parsons

Governing Climate Change in Southeast Asia

Critical Perspectives
Edited by Jens Marquardt, Laurence L. Delina and Mattijs Smits

Kick-Starting Government Action against Climate Change

Effective Political Strategies
Ian Budge

The Social Aspects of Environmental and Climate Change

Institutional Dynamics Beyond a Linear Model
E. C. H. Keskitalo

Climate Change and Tourism in Southern Africa

Jarkko Saarinen, Jennifer Fitchett and Gijsbert Hoogendoorn

Climate Cultures in Europe and North America

New Formations of Environmental Knowledge and Action
Edited by Thorsten Heimann, Jamie Sommer, Margarethe Kusenbach and Gabriela
Christmann

Urban Planning for Climate Change

Barbara Norman

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge­

Advances-in-Climate-Change-Research/book-series/RACCR
URBAN PLANNING FOR
CLIMATE CHANGE

Barbara Norman
Cover image: David Flannery
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Barbara Norman
The right of Barbara Norman to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-48601-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-48599-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-48600-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780367486006

Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
To friends, colleagues and communities around the world
for their amazing contributions to creating a more
sustainable world; stay strong and keep going!
CONTENTS

List of illustrations x
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiv

1 Introduction 1
Purpose 6
Approach 6
Climate Change: IPCC 6, COP26 and beyond 12
Urban planning 18
Urban planning for climate change 21
Implications 22
Key messages 23
Conclusion 23

2 Challenges present and future 26

Introduction 26
Global challenges and opportunities 27
Regional challenges and opportunities 30
National challenges and opportunities 32
Local challenges and opportunities 39
Professional practice 40
Implications 45
Key messages 47
Conclusion 48
viii Contents

3 Urban planning for climate risks: Coastal inundation, wildfire,

extreme heat and floods 51
Introduction 51
Coastal inundation, wildfire, extreme heat and floods: recent
experience 52
Coastal inundation 54
Catastrophic wildfire 61
Extreme heat 67
Flooding 69
Implications for urban futures 71
Key messages 73
Conclusion 73

4 Climate-induced resettlement: Options for the future 77

Introduction 77
Limits to adaptation 78
Disasters, displacement and climate change refugees 79
Urban resettlement: recent plans and practice 81
Planning options for urban resettlement and climate change 95
Implications 97
Key messages 101
Conclusion 102

5 Climate-sensitive towns: Key considerations for the

future 106
Introduction 106
Implementation 111
Bouncing forward 113
Interviews with leading professionals and academics 115
Implications for urban planning for climate change 124
Key messages 128
Conclusion 129

6 Key actions 132

Introduction 132
Climate urban futures 132
Key findings 136
Ten actions for urban planning for climate change 143
Wider considerations for implementation 151
Implications 153
 Contents ix

Key messages 154

Conclusion 155

7 Planning a liveable climate urban future 157

Introduction 157
Urban planning for climate change 158
Future challenges and opportunities 163
Further research 167
Next steps 169
The last word 170

Index 173
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
1.1 Climate-resilient development 4
3.1 Sea wall at Collaroy Beach, NSW, Australia 56
3.2 Mallacoota, Victoria, Australia, in the immediate aftermath of
the 2019/2020 bushfires in southeastern Australia 63
4.1 Roles in planning for climate change (UK) 90
4.2 Percentage of homes in Australia that will be effectively
uninsurable by 2030 100
6.1 Opportunities for systematic change in infrastructure planning 135

Tables
1.1 Seven sustainable pathways for cities and regions 8
6.1 Key messages from each chapter of this book 138
6.2 Ten essential actions for urban planning for climate change 144
PREFACE

We need a revolution in urban planning and in urban mobility: including better fuel
efficiency; zero emission vehicles; and shifts toward walking, cycling, public transport,
and shorter commutes.
(UN Secretary-General’s remarks to Meeting with Leading Mayors Supported by
C40 Cities: Advancing a Carbon-Neutral, Resilient Recovery for Cities and Nation,
16 April 2021)

Urban planning is one of the key instruments for effective action on climate
change. The global population now largely lives in urban settlements with this
trend of urbanisation expected to continue through the twenty-first century. The
future planning and design of our cities, towns and villages provides a unique
opportunity to lay the foundations for a more sustainable, liveable and prosperous
future, working with nature and delivering real action on climate change with
local communities.
This book brings together my research and work in coastal planning, regional
development, sustainable cities and climate change adaptation. It draws upon my
primary disciplinary background of urban and regional planning and is intended to
be a positive practical contribution to action on climate change and more broadly
implementing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It
builds on my previous book Sustainable Pathways for Our Cities and Regions: Plan­
ning within Planetary Boundaries (Norman 2018), which had a wider global
perspective on urban sustainability.
This book focusses more deeply on the ‘how’, in this case how urban planning
is fundamental to action on climate change. In doing so it particularly looks at
current practice and opportunities for innovation and capacity building in the
future. It is designed to appeal to a broad audience. This includes the next gen­
eration searching for more sustainable solutions, decision makers and leading pri­
vate and public sector participants facing increasingly complex land use and
planning in regions of climate risk and the broad array of participants involved in
designing better urban futures.
xii Preface

The approach to the research is applied including a review of current publica­

tions, interviews with leading academics and practitioners, and fieldwork where
possible during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020–2021. There is greater atten­
tion on adaptation, influenced by the series of extreme events in my own country
Australia with disastrous wildfires of 2019–2020 and floods of 2022, preceded by a
long drought. Some communities have experienced all three impacts and then
COVID-19. They are now exhausted and facing a long recovery. The reality of
the impacts of climate change is here and now and affecting millions of people
around the world. As the recent IPCC 6 report on impacts, adaptation and
vulnerability states:

It is estimated by the IPCC with high confidence that ‘approximately 3.3 to

3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate
change … current unsustainable development patterns are increasing exposure
of ecosystems and people to climate hazards.
(IPCC 2022, p. 11)

The chapters commence with a wider discussion on urban planning for climate
change and then focus on climate risks and adaptation with a special chapter on
climate induced resettlement. This is followed by series of interviews examining
the challenges and opportunities in urban planning for climate change and its
potential contribution to creating more liveable urban environments in a warmer
world. Taking the key messages from the first four chapters, there is a discussion
on the major considerations for future urban planning and what that might mean,
namely, a more positive and responsive approach to managing urban growth, dis­
aster recovery after extreme events and possible relocation of vulnerable commu­
nities. Chapter 6 brings together all of the research and crystalises it into ten steps
for urban planning for climate change. This book is a contribution to action on
climate change and planning for more sustainable urban futures, supported by
increasing global commitments on climate change and community demands for
more climate resilient cities and towns.
Climate induced resettlement is a part of this scenario and our global urban
future. This mass movement of people will be one of the biggest social changes
experienced during the twenty-first century. It will be very expensive – socially,
economically and environmentally – if we do not plan for adaptation. The OECD
estimates that ‘by 2100, sea level rise induced floods are projected to affect 360
million people generating USD 50 trillion in annual losses (equivalent to 4 per
cent of global GDP)’ (OECD 2021, p. 3). Climate induced resettlement requires a
dynamic and adaptive planning system that responds quickly to disaster.
Community based planning is also central to developing options as well new
tools such as scenario planning, use of smart digital technology and cutting-edge
research. There will also be a demand for new skills and ongoing professional
development. In the growing number of cases of where communities have recently
moved, there have been already been a couple of very important lessons – involve
 Preface xiii

everyone in the process and it takes time, whether it has been a village in Alaska
facing inundation following thawing permafrost and erosion, an island in Louisiana
eroded to only ten per cent of its original land mass or Grantham Australia,
moving to higher ground following successive flooding.
Similarly in the Pacific Islands there is an urgent need for research and colla­
boration for developing in-country climate adaptation plans. If we are going to
make a meaningful contribution to helping vulnerable communities to prepare for
the impacts of climate change, this needs to be based on a long-term commitment
to sharing knowledge, listening to the communities and planning culturally sensitive
and appropriate climate resilient futures.
The contribution of UN agencies, urban global networks and national urban
policies that incorporate action on climate change and adaptation is recognised as
the broader policy framework for more local actions. Support by higher levels of
government is important to accelerate the pace of change. Indigenous commu­
nities, their leadership and knowledge, are fundamental in planning a more resi­
lient future. Our science agencies and universities must be well funded to provide
the critical data and analysis to feed into future planning.
Finally, the positive value of urban and regional planning comes through the
research strongly whether it be through the latest IPCC 6 reports, the global urban
agenda led by UN-Habitat in response to rapid urbanisation, the interviews with
leaders in the field and leading practice or the series of natural disasters and the
need to ‘build back better’. Urban planning has the ability to connect the dots,
facilitate collaboration and co design urban and rural futures while protecting our
environment. If not convinced, then have a think of the alternative … the future
with no planning. Now that’s a scenario I don’t anything of us want for our future
(ABC Australia 2022).

References
ABC Australia, 2022, What’s the future without planning? Speech by Professor Barbara
Norman to Ockham’s Razor program. Retrieved from www.abc.net.au/radionational/p
rograms/ockhamsrazor/urban-planning-and-sustainability-in-australia/13896714.
IPCC, 2022, Summary for policymakers. In Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and
Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Norman, B., 2018, Sustainable Pathways for our Cities and Regions: planning within Planetary
Boundaries. Routledge, Abingdon.
OECD, 2021, Adapting to a changing climate in the management of coastal zones.
Retrieved from www.oecd-ilibrary.org/fr/environment/adapting-to-a-changing-clima
te-in-the-management-of-coastal-zones_b21083c5-en.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my family and close friends, particularly my mother Jean
Downing and my daughter Amanda Neilson, for their steadfast support through a
couple of very challenging years, with bushfires and floods in Australia, and
COVID-19 lockdowns. I wish to particularly thank my great friends Alison
Foulsham (for her invaluable editing and independent advice along the way) and
David Flannery (for assisting with the images). I would like to thank all the won­
derful people that I interviewed and their amazing contributions to creating a
more sustainable world. Urban planning for climate change requires cooperation
and collaboration of many people involved in planning and designing more climate
resilient urban futures. I would like to thank the University of Canberra for sup­
porting my research, and Routledge editor Annabelle Harris for her continuing
support in my endeavours.
Many thanks to the 20 interview participants who agreed to be quoted and
named (positions at time of interview during 2021-mid 2022):

• Bernhard Barth is a Human Settlements Officer at UN-Habitat, Fukuoka,

Japan.
• Dyan Currie is Chief Planner, Brisbane City Council, Queensland, Australia.
• Trudi Elliott is a chartered town planner and lawyer and visiting professor at
Henley Business School, University of Reading; former Chair of the Planning
Inspectorate’s Board of Directors, United Kingdom.
• Dave Griggs is an Adjunct Professor with the Monash Sustainable Development
Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
• Elisabeth Hamin Infield is Professor of Regional Planning, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, United States.
• Richard Hu is a Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Canberra,
Australia.
 Acknowledgements xv

� Martina Juvara is Director of Urban Silence specialising in strategic planning

and urbanism, London, UK.
� Romilly Madew is Chief Executive Officer, Infrastructure Australia, Canberra,
Australia.
� Jo Mummery is Chair at Climate Systems Hub Steering Committee, National
Environmental Science Program and a PhD scholar in climate adaptation and
governance at the University of Canberra, Australia.
� Hitomi Nakanishi is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the University
of Canberra, Australia.
� Peter Newman is a Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University, Western
Australia, Australia.
� Rob Roggema is Professor Landscape Driven Design at InHolland University of
Applied Sciences, and founder of Cittaideale, Holland.
� Malcolm Snow is Chief Executive Officer, City Renewal Authority, Canberra,
Australia.
� Will Steffen is a councillor on the Climate Council of Australia, a senior fellow
at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and an emeritus professor at the
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
� Bruce Stiftel is Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States and Co-chair of
Planners for Climate action.
� Olafiyin Taiwo is an urban planner and currently the Coordinator of the
Commonwealth Association of Young Planners Network, UK.
� Khairiah Talha is an experienced urban planning consultant in Malaysia and
former President of the Malaysian Planning Institute
� Choi Heng Tan is Advisor, School of Design & Environment, Ngee Ann
Polytechnic, Singapore.
� Joel Towers is a Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design at Parsons
School of Design and Co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate
Change, NY.
� Maibritt Pedersen Zari is Associate Professor, School of Future Environments,
Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
1
INTRODUCTION

Urban planning for climate change is a rapidly evolving space and this is a contribu­
tion to provide a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities to be
found in developing more sustainable solutions for urban communities. This research
builds on my previous book Sustainable Cities and Regions: Planning within Planetary
Boundaries (Norman 2018). While the earlier book took a more global perspective and
examined a wider range of issues, the focus this time is more on the contribution of
urban planning as a valuable instrument for action on climate change.
A couple of unexpected events influenced the writing, including a global pan­
demic and, in my country of Australia, two extreme events: the wildfires of 2019–
2020 and the floods of 2022. The fires affected me personally, and the floods
affected my colleagues and friends. What was really unexpected was that although
I have studied and practised in planning for over 40 years, I did not anticipate the
enormous impact these events have had collectively on urban communities, some
of whom have been affected by all three events – fires, floods and COVID-19.
The upside has been some serious reflection of the possible contribution of
urban planning for climate change and with that, the hope for a better future for
all. The other result is that there is more content from the southern hemisphere
due to both closed domestic borders for most of the period of writing and at the
same time a region of extreme events influenced or some would say, supercharged
by climate change. Fortunately, due to digital technology some great interviews
were able to be undertaken to retain a global perspective on these issues. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6 reports were also
published, providing up-to-date climate science assessments including for regions.
Urban planning for climate change is central to implementing climate action in
human settlements across around the world – be it in global cities, secondary cities,
regional centres, townships, villages and hamlets. Enormous effort has gone into
global climate agreements and national climate strategies supported by regional and
local climate plans covering mitigation and adaptation.
DOI: 10.4324/9780367486006-1
2 Introduction

There is now a demand for the detail on the ‘how’ – that is how do we
implement climate action through everyday decisions concerning land use activity
in urban environments? This can range from big city plans to urban designs for
precincts and neighbourhoods to net zero carbon buildings and smart infra­
structure. The key point is that everything we develop, build and construct from
airports to pedestrian walkways should embed climate action, that is to seek a
reduction in carbon emissions and be designed to adapt to the changing climate in
the future. Climate resilience should be the long-term goal.
Climate change is an enormous field where we seek to better understand the
science, the consequences for people and the planet and the policy implications for
all sectors. This book is a contribution to better understanding the role of urban
planning in achieving the global climate emission reduction targets and minimising
risks to urban communities in the Global North and Global South.
This book takes a holistic approach to action on climate change and the role
urban planning can take in implementation. This includes mitigation (e.g. reducing
greenhouse gas emissions), and climate adaptation and climate resilience in relation
to disaster recovery and rebuilding and community adaptation. In this book there is a
strong focus on adaptation with a chapter specifically on the issue of climate
induced resettlement. In my earlier book on sustainable cities and regions there
was considerable coverage of renewable energy, electric transport and greener built
environments (Norman 2018). This is updated here too; but in my view, there
continues to be a serious lag in adapting our built environments to the already
locked in impacts of climate change. Nevertheless, it is continually emphasised that
any action of adaptation should also seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and
equally any action on mitigation should not lead to maladaptation.
At this stage it is important to define the following key words used throughout
this book, drawn from the most recent IPCC reports and the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC):

• Climate change. UNFCCC, in its Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘a

change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity
that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition
to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods’.
• Climate change mitigation, ‘in the context of climate change, [is] a human
intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases’
(UNFCCC 2022).
• Adaptation is ‘defined, in human systems, as the process of adjustment to actual
or expected climate and its effects in order to moderate harm or take advan­
tage of beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, adaptation is the process of
adjustment to actual climate and its effects; human intervention may facilitate
this’ (IPCC 2022a, p. 7).
• Maladaptation refers to ‘actions that may lead to increased risk of adverse cli­
mate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions,
increased or shifted vulnerability to climate change, more inequitable
 Introduction 3

outcomes, or diminished welfare, now or in the future. Most often,

maladaptation is an unintended consequence’ (IPCC 2022a, p. 10).
• Resilience is defined ‘as the capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to
cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorga­
nising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure as
well as biodiversity in case of ecosystems while also maintaining the capacity
for adaptation, learning and transformation. Resilience is a positive attribute
when it maintains such a capacity for adaptation, learning, and/or
transformation’ (IPCC 2022a, p. 10).
• Urban planning comprises strategic planning (city plans), urban planning laws
(zoning, rules and regulations) and guidelines (often used as overlays such as
heritage or urban design considerations). The definition of urban planning
adopted is necessarily a broad one given the range of tools available to act on
climate change (further discussed below).

Urban planning has evolved significantly since Keeble defined it as ‘the art and
science of ordering the use of land and the character and siting of buildings and
communication routes so as to secure the maximum practicable degree of econ­
omy, convenience and beauty’ (Keeble 1969, p. 1). Contemporary urban planning
involves community engagement, social equity considerations and protection of
the environment, including climate change, as key elements to urban sustainability.
The value of urban planning can be found in its integrating nature and its future
planning capability. Presenting this in a spatial perspective allows the multiple players to
better understand the implications of actions in an urban system for both people
and place.
The IPCC 6 report on adaptation (IPCC 2022a, 2022b) has sought to bring a
number of concepts together under the umbrella of climate-resilient development
(Figure 1.1).
As shown in Figure 1.1, the options for more climate-resilient development are
there if appropriate pathways are taken that integrate action on climate change and
the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Embed­
ding climate impacts and risks into decision making processes, programmes and
projects is key to achieving long term positive change. The IPCC diagram on
climate-resilient development is also a reminder of the important UN Sustainable
Goals. In this context, goals 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and 13 (cli­
mate action) are most relevant, although all of the goals apply in some way and the
links between the goals are important for urban sustainability. For example,
building and infrastructure design to mitigate heat exposure is imperative for good
health outcomes or green infrastructure such as urban waterways and water sensi­
tive urban design contribute to greener, healthier and cooler cities with multiple
benefits (Nilsson, Griggs and Visbeck 2016).
UN SDG goal 11 (Sustainable cities and communities) is to ‘make cities and
human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’; with 11 targets cover­
ing housing transport, community engagement, heritage, accessibility, urban
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the Queen of Italy, to the cause, and to make her accept the
Presidency of a small circle of noble patronesses. A few women of
the highest aristocracy, friends of Liszt's, initiated by him into the
Wagnerian cult, composed this sublime Verein.
In all this there was an irritating atmosphere of snobbery and
excessive religiosity. Yet Fräulein von Meysenbug was an exquisite
woman with irreproachable intentions, pure with that purity which
purifies all that it touches: Nietzsche did not practise his criticism on
this friend's letters. He soon felt the fatigue of continuous work. He
lost his sleep and was obliged to rest. Travel had often lightened his
mind. He set out, at the end of summer, for Italy, and went as far as
Bergamo but no further. This country, which he was afterwards to
love so much, displeased him. "Here reigns the Apollonian cult,"
Fräulein von Meysenbug, who was staying at Florence, told him; "it
is good to bathe in." Nietzsche was very little of an Apollonian. He
perceived only voluptuousness, excessive sweetness, harmony of
line. His German tastes were disconcerted and he returned to the
mountains, where he became, as he wrote, "more audacious and
more noble." There, in a poor village inn at Splügen, he had a few
days of happiness.
"Here, on the extreme border of Switzerland and Italy," he wrote in
August, 1872, to Gersdorff, "I am alone, and I am very well satisfied
with my choice. A rich and marvellous solitude, with the most
magnificent roads in the world, along which I go meditating for
hours, buried in my thoughts, and yet I never fall over a precipice.
And whenever I look around me there is something new and great
to see. No sign of life except when the diligence arrives and stops
for relays. I take my meals with the men, our one contact. They
pass like the Platonic shadows before my cave."
Until now Nietzsche had not cared much for high mountains; he
preferred the moderate valleys and woods of the Jura, which
reminded him of his native country, the hills of the Saale and
Bohemia. At Splügen a new joy was revealed to him; the joy of
solitude and of meditation in the mountain air. It was like a flash of
lightning. He went down to the plains and forgot; but six years later,
with the knowledge of his eternal loneliness on him, he found,
sheltered in mean inns like this one, once again the same lyrical élan
that he had discovered in October, 1872.
He soon left his sanctuary and returned without vexation to Basle,
whither his professional duties drew him. There he had made
friendships and established a way of life. He liked the town, and
tolerated the inhabitants. Basle had truly become his centre.
"Overbeck and Romundt, my companions of table and of thought,"
he writes to Rohde, "are the best society in the world. With them I
cease my lamentations and my gnashing of teeth. Overbeck is the
most serious, the most broad-minded of philosophers, and the most
simple and amiable of men. He has that radical temper, failing which
I can agree with no one."
His first impression on his return was trying. All his pupils left him.
He was not at a loss to understand the reason of this exodus; the
German philologists had declared him to be "a man scientifically
dead." They had condemned him personally, and put an interdict
upon his lectures. "The Holy Vehmgericht has done its duty well," he
wrote to Rohde. "Let us act as if nothing had happened. But I do not
like the little University to suffer on my account, it hurts me. We lose
twenty entries in the last half-year. I can hardly as much as give a
course on Greek and Latin rhetoric. I have two pupils, one is a
Germanist, the other a Jurist."
At last he received some comfort. Rohde had written in defence of
his book an article which no review would accept. Weary of refusal,
he touched up his work and published it under the form of a letter
addressed to Richard Wagner. Nietzsche thanked him. "Nobody
dared to print my name," he wrote to Rohde.
"... It was as if I had committed a crime, and now your book comes,
so ardent, so daring a witness to our fraternal combat! My friends
are delighted with it. They are never tired of praising you, for the
details and the whole; they think your polemics worthy of a Lessing.
... What pleases me most is the deep and threatening clamour of it,
like the sound of a waterfall. We must be brave, dear, dear friend. I
always have faith in progress, in our progress. I believe that we will
always go on increasing in loyal ambitions, and in strength. I believe
in the success of our advance towards ends more noble yet, and
more aspiring. Yes, we will reach them, and then as conquerors,
who discover goals yet further off, we shall push on, always brave!
What does it matter to us that they will be few, so few, those
spectators whose eyes can follow the path we are pursuing? What
does it matter if we have for spectators only those who have the
necessary qualities for judging this combat? All the crowns which my
time might give me I sacrifice to that unique spectator, Wagner. The
ambition to satisfy him animates me more, and more nobly, than any
other influence. Because he is difficult and he says everything, what
pleases him and what displeases him; he is my good conscience, to
praise and to punish."
At the commencement of December, Nietzsche was lucky enough to
find his master again for a few hours, and to live with him in the
intimate way that reminded him of the days at Triebschen. Wagner,
passing through Strassburg, called to him; and he went at once. The
meeting was untroubled by any discord, a harmony now, no doubt,
rare enough; for Cosima Wagner, after having remarked this in one
of her letters, expressed the hope that such perfect hours would
suffice to dissipate all misunderstandings and to prevent their
recrudescence.

Nietzsche worked a great deal during these last months of 1872. His
studies on the tragic philosophies of the Greeks were well advanced;
he left them over. Those wise men had restored his serenity, and he
profited by the help which they had given him to contemplate once
more the problems of his century. The problems—this is hardly a
correct expression, for he knew of only one. He questioned himself
how a culture should be founded, that is to say, a harmony of
traditions, of rules, of beliefs, by submission to which a man may
become nobler. Actual modern societies have for their end the
production of certain comforts; how should different societies be
substituted which would not only satisfy men, but benefit them? Let
us know our wretchedness; we are stripped of culture. Our thoughts
and our acts are not ruled by the authority of any style; the idea
even of such an authority is lost to us. We have perfected in an
extraordinary manner the discipline of knowledge, and we seem to
have forgotten that others exist. We succeed in describing the
phenomena of life, in translating the Universe into an abstract
language, and we scarcely perceive that, in writing and translating
thus, we lose the reality of the Universe of Life. Science exercises on
us a "barbarising action," wrote Nietzsche. He analysed this action.
"The essential point of all science has become merely accessory, or
else it is entirely absent.
"The study of languages—without the discipline of style and rhetoric.
"Indian studies—without philosophy.
"Classical antiquity—without a suspicion of how closely everything in
it is bound up with practical efforts.
"The sciences of nature—without that beneficent and serene
atmosphere which Goethe found in them.
"History—without enthusiasm.
"In short, all the sciences without their practical uses, that is to say,
studied otherwise than as really cultivated men would study them.
Science as a means of livelihood."
It is necessary, therefore, that the sense of beauty, of virtue, and of
strong and regulated passions should be restored. How can a
philosopher employ himself in this task? Alas! the experience of
antiquity teaches and discourages us. The philosopher is a hybrid
being, half logician, half artist, a poet, an apostle, who constructs his
dreams and his commandments in a logical manner. Men listen
willingly enough to poets and apostles, they do not listen to
philosophers, they are not moved by their analyses and their
deductions. Consider that long line of genius, the philosophers of
tragic Greece. What did they realise? Their lives were given in vain
to their race. Empedocles alone moved the mob, but he was as
much a magician as philosopher; he invented myths and poems; he
was eloquent, he was magnificent; it was the legend, and not the
thought of Empedocles, that was effective. Pythagoras founded a
sect, a philosopher cannot hope for more: his labour grouped
together a few friends, a few disciples, who passed over the human
masses like a ripple on the ocean; not one of the great philosophers
has swayed the people, writes Nietzsche. Where they have failed,
who will succeed? It is impossible to found a popular culture on
philosophy.
What is then the destiny of these singular souls? Is their force,
which is at times immense, lost? Will the philosopher always be a
paradoxical being, and useless to men? Friedrich Nietzsche was
troubled; it was the utility of his own life that he questioned. He
would never be a musician, that he knew at last; never a poet, he
had ceased to hope for it. He had not the faculty of conceiving the
uniformities, of animating a drama, of creating a soul. One evening
he confessed this to Overbeck with such sadness that his friend was
moved. He was therefore a philosopher, moreover, a very ignorant
one, an amateur of philosophy, an imperfect lyrical artist; and he
questioned himself: Since I have for weapons only my thoughts, the
thoughts of a philosopher, what can I do? He answered: I can help.
Socrates did not create the truths that error kept prisoners in the
souls of his interlocutors, he only aspired to the title of accoucheur.
Such is the task of a philosopher. He is an inefficient creator, but a
very efficient critic. He is obliged to analyse the forces which are
operative around him, in science, in religion, and in art; he is obliged
to give the directions, to fix the values and the limits. Such shall be
my task. I will study the souls of my contemporaries, and I shall
have every authority to say to them: Neither science nor religion can
save you; seek refuge in art, the power of modern times, and in the
artist who is Richard Wagner. "The philosopher of the future," he
wrote, "he must be the supreme judge of an æsthetic culture, a
censor of every digression."
Nietzsche went to Naumburg for the Christmas holidays. Wagner
sent him word to ask him to stop at Bayreuth on his way home to
Basle, but he was hard pressed by work and perhaps a little ill, and
no doubt a secret instinct warned him that solitude would be best
for the meditation of the problems which he had to determine for
himself. He made his apologies. Besides, he had had for some weeks
many opportunities of proving his attachment. He had written an
article (the only one in all his work) in answer to an alienist who had
undertaken to prove that Wagner was mad. He had offered a sum of
money to help in the propaganda. This anonymous and distant
manner was the only one that suited him at the time. Even at Basle
he tried to found a Wagnerian Verein. He was therefore astounded
when he discovered that the master was displeased at his absence.
Already in the past year an invitation, also declined, had helped to
provoke a mild lecture.
"It is Burckhardt who is keeping you at Basle," wrote Cosima
Wagner. Nietzsche wrote and remedied things, but the painful
impression remained.
"Everything is quieted," he told the friend who had informed him;
"but I cannot quite forget. Wagner knows that I am ill, absorbed in
work, and in need of a little liberty. I shall be, henceforth, whether I
wish it or no, more anxious than in the past. God knows how many
times I have wounded him. Each time I am astonished, and I never
succeed in precisely locating the point in which we have clashed."
This annoyance did not affect his thought; we can follow it to its
smallest shades of meaning, thanks to the notes published in the
tenth volume of his complete works. It is quite active and fecund. "I
am the adventurer of the spirit," he was to write. "I wander in my
thought. I go to the idea that calls me...."
He was never to wander so audaciously as in the first weeks of
1876.
He completed a finer and sober essay, Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im
ausser moralischen Sinne (On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral
Sense.) (It is a pity that it is necessary to translate these high-
sounding expressions, and we render them word for word.)
Nietzsche always liked high-sounding words; he does not recoil here
from using the word "untruth," and essays for the first time a
"reversal of values." To the true he opposes the false and prefers it.
He exalts the imaginary worlds which poets add to the real world.
"Dare to deceive thyself and dream," Schiller had said; Friedrich
Nietzsche repeats this advice. It was the happy audacity of the
Greeks; they intoxicated themselves with their divine histories, their
heroic myths, and this intoxication set their souls on high
adventures. The loyal Athenian, persuaded that Pallas dwelt in his
city, lived in a dream. More clear-sighted, would he have been
stronger; more passionate, braver? Truth is good in proportion to the
services which it assures, and illusion is preferable if it performs its
duty better. Why deify the truth? It is the tendency of the moderns;
Pereat vita, fiat veritas! they say readily. Why this fanaticism? It is an
inversion of the sane law for men: Pereat Veritas, fiat vita!
Nietzsche wrote down these dogmatic formulas, but did not stop at
them. He went on writing. It was thus that he worked and advanced
in his researches. Let us not forget that these thoughts, firm though
they were in manner, were only indications, steps on the road. He
would give birth to other and perhaps contrary thoughts. Friedrich
Nietzsche had in him two instincts, opposed to each other; the one,
that of the philosopher, and the other, that of the artist; the one was
bent on truth, the other was ready to fabricate. He hesitated at the
moment when he had to sacrifice one or the other. The instinct for
the true protested within him. He did not abandon his formulas; he
took them up again, he essayed new definitions, he indicated the
difficulties, the hiatus. His thoughts had no disguise, and we can
follow his researches. Let us translate this significant disorder:
"The philosopher of the tragic knowledge. He binds the disordered
instinct of knowledge, but not by a new metaphysic. He does not
establish new beliefs. He sees with a tragic emotion that the ground
of metaphysics opens under him, and he knows that the many-
coloured whirlwind of science can never satisfy him. He builds for
himself a new life; to art he restores its rights.
"The philosopher of the desperate knowledge abandons himself to
blind science: knowledge at any price.
"Even if metaphysics be only an anthropomorphic appearance, for
the tragic philosopher that achieves the image of being. He is not
sceptical. Here there is an idea to create; for scepticism is not the
end. The instinct of knowledge forced to its extreme limits turns
against itself to transform itself into a criticism of the faculty of
knowledge. Knowledge in the service of the best kind of life. One
should even will illusion, therein lies the tragic."
What is then this philosopher of the desperate knowledge whose
attitude Nietzsche defines in two lines. Must he not love him, having
found for him already such a beautiful name? There is an idea to
create, writes Nietzsche; what then is this idea? It seems that in
many passages Nietzsche is pleased to contemplate, without its
veils, that terrible reality, whose aspect alone, says the Hindu
legend, means death.
"How," he writes, "do they dare talk of a destiny for the earth? In
infinite time and space there are no ends: what is there, is eternally
there, whatever the forms. What can result from it for a
metaphysical world one does not see.
"Without support of this order humanity should stand firm; a terrible
task for the artist!
"The terrible consequences of Darwinism, in which, moreover, I
believe. We respect certain qualities which we hold as eternal,
moral, artistic, religious, &c., &c., &c. The spirit, a production of the
brain, to consider it as supernatural! To deify it, what folly!
"To speak of an unconscious end of humanity, to me, that is false.
Humanity is not a whole like an ant-hill. Perhaps one may speak of
the unconscious ends of an ant-hill—but of all the ant-hills of the
world!
"Our duty is not to take shelter in metaphysics, but actively to
sacrifice ourselves to the birth of culture. Hence my severity against
misty idealism."
At that instant Nietzsche had almost reached the term of his
thought, but with great labour and consequent suffering.
Headaches, pains in the eyes and stomach, laid hold of him once
more. The softest light hurt him, he was obliged to give up reading.
Nevertheless, his thought never halted. He was again occupied with
the philosophers of tragic Greece; he listened to the words which
come down to us diminished by the centuries, but always firm. He
heard the concert of the everlasting responses—
Thales. Everything derives from a unique element. Anaximander. The
flux of things is their punishment. Heraclitus. A law governs the flux
and the institution of things.
Parmenides. The flux and the institution of things is illusion. The One
alone exists.
Anaxagoras. All qualities are eternal; there is no becoming.
The Pythagoreans. All qualities are quantities. Empedocles. All
causes are magical. Democritus. All causes are mechanical. Socrates.
Nothing is constant except thought.
Friedrich Nietzsche is moved by these opposing voices, by these
rhythms of thought which accuse nature in their eternal collisions.
"The vicissitudes of the ideas and systems of man affect me more
tragically than the vicissitudes of real life," said Hölderlin. Nietzsche's
feeling was the same. He admired and envied those primitives who
discovered nature and who found the first answers. He threw aside
the devices of art, he confronted life as Œdipus confronted the
Sphinx, and under this very title Œdipus he wrote a fragment to the
mysterious language of which we may open our ears.
Œdipus. I call myself the last philosopher because I am the last
man. I speak alone and I hear my voice sounding like that of a dying
man. With thee, dear voice, whose breath brings to me the last
memories of all human happiness, with thee let me speak yet a
moment more: thou wilt deceive my solitude; thou wilt give me back
the illusion of society and love, because my heart will not believe
that love is dead. It cannot endure the terror of the most solitary
solitude, and forces me to speak as if I were two. Is it thou that I
hear, my voice? Thou murmurest, and thou cursest? Yet—thy
malediction should rend the entrails of the world! Alas, in spite of
everything it subsists, more dazzling and colder than ever; it looks at
me with its stars pitilessly; it exists blind and deaf as before, and
nothing dies but man. And yet, you still speak to me, beloved voice!
I die not alone in this universe. I, the last man: the last plaint, your
plaint, dies with me. Misery, misery! pity me, the last man of misery,
Œdipus!
It seems that Nietzsche, now at the extreme limits of his thought,
experiences a sudden need of rest. He wants to speak to his friends,
to feel himself surrounded by them and diverted. The Easter
holidays in 1873 gave him a fortnight's release. He left for Bayreuth,
where he was not expected.
"I leave this evening," he writes to Fräulein von Meysenbug. "Guess
where I am going? You've guessed, and, height of bliss, I shall meet
the best of men, Rohde, to-morrow at half-past four. I shall be
staying with Wagner, and then see me quite happy! We shall speak
much of you, much of Gersdorff. He has copied my lectures, you
say? It touches me, and I will not forget it. What good friends I
have! It is really shameful.
"I hope to bring back from Bayreuth courage and gaiety, and to
strengthen myself in everything that is good. I dreamt last night that
I was having my Gradus ad Parnassum carefully rebound. This
mixture of bookbinding and symbolism is comprehensible; moreover,
very insipid. But it is a truth! It is necessary from time to time to
rebind ourselves by frequenting men more valorous and stronger
than ourselves or else we lose a few of our pages, then a few more,
still a few more, until the last page is destroyed. And that our life
should be a Gradus ad Parnassum, that also is a truth that we must
often repeat to ourselves. The future to which I shall attain if I take
plenty of trouble, if I have a little happiness and much time, is to
become a more sober writer, and from the first and ever better to
pursue my calling as a man of letters more soberly. From time to
time I feel a childish repugnance to printed paper, I think that I see
soiled paper. And I can very well picture a period when reading was
not much liked, writing even less so; but one far preferred to think a
lot, and to act still more. For everything to-day awaits that
efficacious man, who, condemning in himself and us our millenarian
routines, will live better and will give us his life to imitate."
Friedrich Nietzsche left for Bayreuth.

He there learnt a piece of unexpected news. Money was lacking. Of

the twelve hundred thousand francs needed, eight hundred
thousand only had been realised with great difficulty. The enterprise
was compromised and perhaps ruined. Everyone was losing heart.
The master alone was confident and calm. Since he had attained his
manhood, he had desired to possess a theatre. He knew that a
constant will prevails over chance, and a few months of crisis did not
alarm him after forty years of waiting. Capitalists from Berlin,
Munich, Vienna, London, and Chicago were making proposals to him
which Richard Wagner invariably refused to entertain. He wished his
theatre to belong to himself alone, and to be near him: "It is not a
question of the success of the affair," he said, "but of awakening the
hidden forces of the German soul." But his remarkable serenity failed
to reassure his friends. A panic was engendered at Bayreuth, and no
one again dared to hope.
Friedrich Nietzsche looked on, listened, observed, and then fled to
Naumburg. "My despair was deep," he has written; "there was
nothing that did not seem criminal to me." He was rediscovering the
world after ten months of solitude, and finding it even more
cowardly and more miserable than he had ever judged it to be.
There was worse to endure, for he was discontented with himself.
He recalled his last meditations. "I call myself the last philosopher,
because I am the last man." And he questioned himself: Was he
really "the last philosopher "? "the last man "? Had he not flattered
himself in assigning himself a rôle so difficult and magnificent? Had
he not been ungrateful, cowardly, and vile, like the others, in
abandoning the struggle at the decisive moment to shut himself up
in his solitude and his selfish dreams? Had he not forgotten his
master? He accused himself; remorse accentuated his despair. "I
should not think of myself," was his reproach—" Wagner alone is a
hero—Wagner, so great in misfortune, great as of old at Triebschen.
It is he whom we must serve. I must henceforth be vowed to help
him."
It had been his intention to publish a few chapters of his book on
The Philosophers of Tragic Greece. He abstained from this delight;
put away in a drawer—not without a pang—his almost finished
manuscript. He wished to "spit out lava," to insult Germany and treat
her like a brute, since, imbecile brute that she was, she would only
yield to brutality.
"I return from Bayreuth in such a state of persistent melancholy," he
wrote to Rohde, "that the only hope for me is holy wrath."
Friedrich Nietzsche looked for no joy in the work which he was about
to undertake. To attack is to recognise, to condescend, to lower
oneself. He would have preferred to have had no traffic with base
humanity. But here was Richard Wagner; was it to be borne that he
should be tormented and trammelled? that the Germans should
sadden him as they saddened Goethe, and break him, as they broke
Schiller? To-morrow other men of genius would be born: was it not
necessary to fight from to-day to assure them their liberty and the
freedom of their lives? It is impossible to ignore the masses that
beset us. It is a bitter destiny, but one that may not be eluded. It is
the destiny of the best-born, and above all of the best Germans,
heroes begotten and misunderstood by a race insensible to beauty.
Friedrich Nietzsche remembered what Goethe had said of Lessing:
"Pity this extraordinary man, pity him that he lived in such a pitiable
era, that he was forced to act ceaselessly by polemics." He applied
this to himself, but polemics seemed to be a duty to him, as in other
times they had been to Lessing. He looked round for an adversary.
The illustrious D. F. Strauss now represented official philosophy; he
was its heavy pontiff. Having renounced the critical researches, in
which he was a real master, he was affecting, in his old age, the
attitude of a thinker, and was elaborating his Credo with sham
elegances borrowed from Voltaire and About.
"I simply propose," he wrote in The Old Faith and the New, "to say
how we live—how for long years past we have been wont to direct
our lives. By the side of our professions—for we belong to the most
diverse professions; we are not all artists or scholars, but also
officials, soldiers, artisans, or proprietors, and, I have already said
and I repeat it, our number is not small, we are many thousand, and
not of the worst, in every country—by the side of our professions, I
say, we try, as far as possible, to keep our minds open to the highest
interests of humanity; our hearts are exalted by these new destinies,
as unforeseen as they are magnificent, assigned by Fate to our
country which formerly endured so much. The better to understand
these things, we study history, to which easy access is opened to the
first comer by a number of both popular and attractive works. And
then we try to extend our knowledge of nature by the aid of
manuals which are within reach of everybody. Finally we find in
reading our great poets, in hearing our great musicians, stimulants
for spirit and feeling, for the imagination and the heart, stimulants
which in truth leave nothing to be desired. Thus we live, thus we
march forward in happiness."
So the Philistines are happy and very rightly, thought Nietzsche: this
is the era of their power. Assuredly the species is not new. Even
Attica had its abettors of "banausia." But the Philistine formerly lived
under humiliating conditions. He was merely tolerated. He was not
talked of, nor did he talk. Then a more indulgent period arrived, in
which he was listened to, his follies flattered; he appeared droll. This
was enough: he became a fop, proud of his prudhommerie. To-day
he triumphs; it is impossible to hold him back. He becomes a fanatic,
and founds a religion: it is the new faith, of which Strauss is the
prophet. Friedrich Nietzsche would have assuredly approved of that
classification of the ages which Gustave Flaubert suggested about
this time: "Paganisme, christianisme, muflisme" (Paganism,
Christianity, Snout-ism). The Philistine dictates his tastes, and
imposes his mannerisms. A war breaks out: he reads his paper, the
telegrams interest him, and contribute to his happiness. Great men
have suffered, and have left us their works: the Philistine knows
these works, and appreciates them—they add to his well-being.
Moreover, he appreciates with discernment. The Pastoral Symphony
ravishes him, but he condemns the exaggerated uproar of the
Symphony with chorus. David Friedrich Strauss says it distinctly: and
that clear mind of his is not to be deceived.
Friedrich Nietzsche sought no further; he had found the man whom
he wished to destroy. In the first days of May he had all his notes in
hand, his work was ready. His strength suddenly gave out: his
aching head, his eyes that could not bear the light without pain,
played traitor to his desire to work; in a few days he was all but an
invalid, almost blind. Overbeck and Romundt did their best to help
him. But they had, both of them, other work; their time was
measured by their professional duties. A third friend came to give
assistance to the invalid. The Baron von Gersdorff, a man of leisure
and a devoted friend, was travelling in Italy. He had been Friedrich
Nietzsche's comrade at the college of Pforta, and since those already
distant days had scarcely seen him again, but his friendship had
remained intact. He hastened to Basle. He was a younger son of
good family. His elder brothers having died, one in 1866 in the
Austrian campaign, the other in 1871 in the French campaign, he
had been obliged to sacrifice his tastes, to renounce philosophy and
learn farming so as to be able to manage the family estate in North
Germany. He was the only one of Nietzsche's friends who was not a
slave to paper and books. "He is a fine type of the reserved and
dignified gentleman, although extremely simple in his manners,"
wrote Overbeck; "at bottom the best fellow imaginable, and at the
first glance you are left with the impression of a man who is entirely
trustworthy." A friend of Romundt's, Paul Rée, also came to help or
distract the invalid, who, thanks to so many kindnesses, was able to
resist his sufferings. Lying always in semi-darkness, he dictated: the
faithful Gersdorff wrote down what he had to say, and by the end of
June the manuscript was sent to the publisher.
Friedrich Nietzsche's condition improved when he had finished his
work. He felt a great need of fresh air and of solitude. His sister, who
had come from Naumburg, took him to the mountains of the
Grisons. His headaches grew less severe, his eyesight became
stronger. He rested for a few weeks, correcting his proofs, rejoicing
in his new-found strength, but always haunted by his angers and his
aspirations.
One day, while walking with his sister on the outskirts of Flimms, he
came on a little château in a sequestered site. "What a beautiful
retreat," he said; "what a beautiful spot in which to establish our lay
convent." The château was for sale. "Let us visit it," said the young
girl. They went in, and were delighted with everything: the garden,
the terrace from which a wide view stretched out before them, the
big hall with its chimney-piece of sculptured stone. The rooms were
few, but why should there be more? This would be given to Richard
Wagner, that to Cosima Wagner, this other would be at the disposal
of friends of passage, Fräulein von Meysenbug or Jacob Burckhardt.
Gersdorff, Deussen, Rohde, Overbeck, Romundt, would often reside
there. "Here," declared Nietzsche, "we will build a covered walk, a
sort of cloister. Thus, in every kind of weather, we can walk as we
talk. For we shall talk much, we shall read but little, and write hardly
at all."
He returned to his familiar dream once again, fraternal intercourse
between disciples and masters. Fräulein Nietzsche grew very excited.
"You will need a woman to keep house," she said. "It will be I." She
enquired about the price and wrote to the proprietor, but matters
were not arranged.
"I looked too young," wrote Fräulein Nietzsche, who tells the
anecdote, "and the gardener did not take us seriously." What are we
to think of this affair? It is hard to know. Was it only the chatter of a
young girl to which Friedrich Nietzsche had hearkened for an
instant? Or was it, on the contrary, a serious notion? Probably the
latter. His spirit, hospitable to chimeras, ill knew what the world
admits and what it does not admit. He came back to Basle. His
pamphlet had provoked a good deal of discussion. "I read it, and re-
read it," wrote Wagner, "and I swear to the great gods that I hold
you to be the only one who knows what I want." "Your pamphlet is a
thunderbolt," wrote Hans von Bülow. "A modern Voltaire ought to
write: écr.... l'inf.... This international æsthetic is for us a far more
odious adversary than red or black bandits."
Other good judges, elderly men in many cases, approved of the
young polemist; Ewald (of Gottingen), Bruno Bauer, Karl Hildebrandt,
"dieses letzten humanen Deutschen," said Nietzsche—"this last of
the human Germans"—declared for him. "This little book," wrote the
critic, "may mark a return of the German spirit towards serious
thought and intellectual passion."
But these friendly voices were few.
"The German Empire," he had written, "is extirpating the German
spirit." He had wounded the pride of a conquering people. In return,
he suffered many an insult, many an accusation of scurviness and
treachery. He rejoiced over it. "I enter society with a duel," he said;
"Stendhal gave that advice." Complete Stendhalian that he was (or
at least he flattered himself that he was), Nietzsche was,
notwithstanding, accessible to pity. David Strauss died but a few
weeks after the publication of the pamphlet, and Nietzsche,
imagining that his work had killed the old man, was sorely grieved.
His sister and his friends tried in vain to reassure him; he did not
wish to abandon a remorse which was, moreover, so glorious.
Stimulated by this first conflict, he dreamt of vaster conflicts. With
extraordinary rapidity of conception he prepared a series of treatises
which he wished to publish under a general title: Unzeitgemässe
Betrachtungen ("Thoughts Out of Season"). D. F. Strauss had
furnished the subject of the first of the series. The second was to be
entitled The Use and Abuse of History. Twenty others were to follow.
His friends, ever the associates of his dreams, would contribute, he
thought, to the work.
Franz Overbeck had just published a little book entitled The
Christianity of our Modern Theology. He attacked the German
savants and their too modernist tendencies, which attenuated
Christianity, and allowed the irrevocable and serious doctrine, which
was that of the early Christians, to fall into oblivion. Nietzsche had
Overbeck's Christlichkeit and his D. F. Strauss bound together. On
the outside page he wrote six lines of verse.
"Two twins of the same house enter joyfully into the world—to
devour the dragons of the world. Two fathers, one work. Oh,
miracle! The mother of these twins is called Friendship."[1]
Friedrich Nietzsche hoped for a series of similar volumes, the work of
many hands but inspired by one spirit.
"With a hundred men bred up to the conflict of modern ideas, inured
to heroism," he then wrote, "all our noisy and lazy culture would be
reduced to eternal silence. A hundred men of that stamp carried the
civilisation of the Renaissance on their shoulders." A double hope
and a vain one: his friends failed him, and he himself did not write
his twenty pamphlets. Only their titles, and a few pages of rough
outline, are left to us. On The State, The City, The Social Crisis,
Military Culture, on Religion, what had he to tell us? Let us moderate
our regrets; little perhaps; little, at all events, that could be called
precious, as distinct from his desires and his complaints.
He was also busy with another work, and announced it to Gersdorff
in mysterious terms: "Let it be enough for you to know that a
danger, a terrible and unexpected one, menaces Bayreuth, and that
the task of digging the countermine has fallen to me." In fact,
Richard Wagner had begged him to write a supreme appeal to the
Germans, and he applied himself to the task of drawing it up with all
the gravity, all the profundity, all the solemnity of which he was
capable. He demanded Erwin Rohde's assistance and advice. "Can I
count on it that you will send me soon," he wrote, "a fragment
drawn up in the Napoleonic style?" Erwin Rohde, a prudent man,
declined. "One would have to be polite," he said, "when the only
true thing for the rabble is insult." Friedrich Nietzsche did not
embarrass himself with politeness.
At the end of October the presidents of the Wagner Vereine,
assembled united at Bayreuth, invited Friedrich Nietzsche to read his
manifesto, A Summons[2] to the Germans.
"We wish to be listened to, for we speak in order to give a warning;
and he who warns, whoever he be, whatever he says, always has
the right to be heard.... We lift our voices because you are in danger,
and because, seeing you so mute, so indifferent, so callous, we fear
for you.... We speak to you in all sincerity of heart, and we seek and
desire our good only because it is also yours: the salvation and the
honour of the German spirit, and of the German name...."
The manifesto was developed in the same menacing and rather
emphatic tone, and the reading was received in an embarrassing
silence. There was no murmur of approval, no look of
encouragement for the writer. He was silent. At last some voices
made themselves heard. "It is too serious; it is not politic enough,
there must be changes, a great many changes." Some opined, "It is
a monk's sermon." He did not wish to argue, and withdrew his draft
of a summons. Wagner alone had supported him with a great deal of
energy. "Wait," said he; "in a little time, a very little time, they will
be obliged to return to your challenge, they will all conform to it."
Nietzsche remained very few days at Bayreuth. The situation, which
had been serious at Easter, was now desperate. The public, who for
some months had gibed at the great enterprise, now forgot all about
it. A formidable indifference stood in the way of the propagandists,
and every day it seemed more difficult to collect the necessary
money. All idea of a commercial loan, of a lottery, had been set
aside. An appeal written in haste to replace that of Nietzsche was
spread all over Germany; ten thousand copies were printed, an
infinitesimal number were sold. A letter was addressed to the
directors of one hundred German theatres. Each was asked to give
as a subscription to Bayreuth its receipts at a single benefit
performance. Three refused, the others did not reply.

Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. He succeeded, with the aid of

Gersdorff, in drawing up his second "Thoughts Out of Season," The
Use and Abuse of History. But he wrote few letters, few notes, he
formed no new project, and for the moment almost entirely escapes
from our study. The double hope of his youth, that he might assist at
the triumph of Wagner, and have a share in achieving this triumph,
was ruined. His help had been refused. He had been told: "Your text
is too grave, too solemn." And he asks himself, What does this
mean? Is not the art of Wagner a matter of supreme gravity and
solemnity? He is unhappy, humiliated, wounded in his amour propre
and in his dreams. During these last weeks of 1873 he lived like an
earthworm in his room at Basle.
He went to spend the New Year holidays at Naumburg. There, alone
with his own people, he picked up some strength. He had always
liked the repose of anniversaries, which was so favourable to
reflection, and, as a young man, never allowed the feast of Saint
Sylvester to pass without putting on paper a meditation on his life,
his memories, and his views of the future. On December 31, 1873,
he wrote to Erwin Rohde; the tone of his letter recalls his former
habit.
"The Letters of an Heretical Æsthete, by Karl Hildebrandt, have given
me inordinate pleasure," he wrote. "What a refreshment! Read,
admire, he is one of ours, he is of the society of those who hope.
May it prosper in the New Year, this society, may we remain good
comrades! Ah! dear friend, one has no choice, one must be either of
those who hope, or of those who despair. Once and for all I have
decided on hope. Let us remain faithful and helpful to one another in
this year 1874 and until the end of our days.
 "Yours,
"FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
"NAUMBURG, Saint Sylvester's, 1873-74."
The first days of January came, and Friedrich Nietzsche applied
himself to work once more. Since the strange misadventure at
Bayreuth (no doubt the irritation of an author, whose aid has been
rejected, accounts for these unforeseen changes), he has been
tormented by anxieties and by doubts; he wished to clear them up.
In two lines, which are like an introduction to his thoughts of the
time, he brings the Wagnerian art into history. "Every thought that is
great," he writes, "is dangerous, and dangerous, above all, in its
newness. The impression is that of an isolated phenomenon which
justifies itself by itself." Then, having posited this general principle,
he approached the definitive questions: "What kind of man is
Wagner? What does his art signify?"
It was a catastrophe in fairyland. The modern Æschylus, the modern
Pindar vanished; the beautiful metaphysical and religious decorations
fell in, and the art of Wagner appeared as it really was—an art, the
late, magnificent, and often sickly flower of a humanity fifteen
centuries old.
"Let us really ask ourselves," wrote Nietzsche in his notes, of which
his friends did not know—"Let us really ask ourselves what is the
value of the time which adopts the art of Wagner as its art? It is
radically anarchical, a breathless thing, impious, greedy, shapeless,
uncertain of its groundwork, quick to despair—it has no simplicity, it
is self-conscious to the marrow, it lacks nobility, it is violent,
cowardly. This art unites pell mell in one mass all that still attracts
our modern German souls; aspects, ways of feeling, all comes pell
mell. A monstrous attempt of art to affirm and dominate itself in an
anti-artistic period. It is a poison against a poison."
The demi-god was gone, and in his place was a stage-player.
Nietzsche recognised despairingly that he had allowed himself to be
captured by the gambols of a giant. He had loved with simplicity and
with the ardour of his youth, and had been deceived. There was
jealousy in his anger, and a little of that hatred which is never far
from love. His heart, his thought, of which he was so proud, he had
given to a man: this man had trifled with these sacred gifts.
We may pass over these personal sorrows; others, even more
profound, humiliated Friedrich Nietzsche. He was humiliated because
he had betrayed Truth. He had desired to live for her; he now
perceived that for four years he had lived for Wagner. He had dared
to repeat after Voltaire, "It is necessary to tell the truth and sacrifice
oneself;" he now saw that he had neglected her, that perhaps he
had shunned her, in seeking consolation from the beauties of
Wagner's art. "If you seek for ease, believe," he had written some
years before to his young sister: "if you desire the truth, search ";
and the duty which he had indicated to this child he had himself
failed to observe. He had suffered himself to be seduced by images,
by harmonies, by the magic of words; he had fed on lies.
His fault was graver yet, for he had consented to this abasement.
The universe is evil, he had written in The Origin of Tragedy—cruel
like a dissonance of notes, and the soul of man, dissonant like the
universe, suffering from itself, would detach itself from life if it did
not invent some illusion, some myth which deceives but appeases it
and procures it a refuge of beauty. In truth, if we thus draw back, if
we create our consolations for ourselves, whither will we not let
ourselves be led? One hearkens to one's weakness; there is no
cowardice that is not thus authorised. To accept is to deliver oneself
over to the illusionist. Is it a noble or a vile illusion? How can we
know if we are deceived, if we ask to be deceived? Nietzsche felt his
memories degraded, and his hopes discouraged by the bitterness of
remorse.
The Use and Abuse of History appeared in February. It is a pamphlet
directed against that science, history, the invention and pride of the
moderns; it is a criticism of the faculty, recently acquired by men, by
which they reanimate within themselves the sentiments of past
centuries, at the risk of lessening the integrity of their instincts and
perplexing their rectitude. A brief indication gives the spirit of the
book.
"The man of the future: eccentric, energetic, hot-blooded,
indefatigable, an artist, and an enemy of books. I should desire to
hunt from my ideal State the self-styled 'cultivated' men, as Plato did
the poets: it would be my terrorism."
Thus Nietzsche affronted the ten thousand "Herr Professors" to
whom history is their daily bread and who guide the public. He was
punished by their hatred and their silence. No one spoke of his book.
His friends tried to find him some readers. Overbeck wrote to his
student friend, Treischke, the political writer, the Prussian
historiographer. "I am sure," he said to him, "that you will discern in
these contemplations of Nietzsche's the most profound, the most
serious, the most instinctive devotion to German greatness."
Treischke refused his assent; Overbeck wrote again. "It is Nietzsche,
my suffering friend, of whom I will and above all must talk to you."
Treischke showed temper in his reply and the dispute became bitter.
"Your Basle," he wrote, "is a boudoir, from which German culture is
insulted!" "If you saw the three of us, Nietzsche, Romundt, and
myself," said Overbeck, "you would see three good companions. Our
difference strikes me as a painful symbol. It is so frequent an
accident, so unfortunate a feature in our German history, this
misunderstanding between political men and men of culture." "How
unlucky for you," retorted Treischke, "that you met this Nietzsche,
this madman, who tells us so much about his inactual thoughts, and
who has nevertheless been bitten to the marrow by the most actual
of all vices, the folie des grandeurs."
Overbeck, Gersdorff and Rohde wretchedly watched the failure of
this book which they admired. "It is another thunderbolt," wrote
Rohde; "it will have no more effect than fireworks in a cellar. But one
day people will recognise it and will admire the courage and
precision with which he has put his finger on our worst wound. How
strong he is, our friend." And Overbeck: "The sensation of isolation
that our friend experiences is growing in a painful manner. Ever and
ever to sap the branch of the tree on which one supports oneself
cannot be done without grievous consequences." And Gersdorff:
"The best thing for our friend would be for him to imitate the
Pythagoreans: five years without reading or writing. When I am free,
which will be in two or three years, I shall return to my property:
that asylum will be at his disposal."
These men, with their touching solicitude concerning their friend's
lot, did not suspect either the true cause or the intensity of his
distress. They pitied his solitude, they did not know how profound it
was, or how lonely he was even with them. What mattered to him
the failure of a book from which he was separated by a revolution of
thought? "As to my book," he wrote to Rohde, "I can hardly think
that I wrote it." He had discovered his error and his fault. Hence his
sorrow, hence the agony which he dared not confess. "At the
present moment," he announced to Gersdorff, "many things ferment
within me, many extreme and daring things. I do not know in what
measure I may communicate them to my best friends, but in any
case I cannot write them." One evening, however, passion carried
him away. He was alone with Overbeck; the conversation happened
to turn on Lohengrin, and, with a sudden fury, Nietzsche pulled to
pieces this false and romantic work. Overbeck listened to him in
amazement. Nietzsche became silent, and from that moment was
more careful to practise the pretence which shamed him and
disgusted him with himself.
"Dear, true friend," he wrote to Gersdorff in April, 1874 "if only you
could have a far lower opinion of me! I am almost sure you will lose
those illusions that you have about me, and I would wish to be the
first to open your eyes, by explaining fully and conscientiously that I
deserve nothing. If you could understand how radically I am
discouraged, and from what melancholy I suffer on my own account.
I do not know if I shall ever be capable of production. Henceforward
I seek only a little liberty, a little of the real atmosphere of life, and I
am arming myself against the numerous, the unspeakably
numerous, revolting slaveries that encompass me. Shall I ever
succeed? Doubt upon doubt. The aim is too distant, and if I ever
succeed in reaching it, then I shall have consumed the better part of
myself in long and trying struggles. I shall be free and languishing
like an ephemeron at dusk. I express my lively fear! It is a
misfortune to be so conscious of one's struggles, so clairvoyant...."
This letter was written on the 1st April On the 4th of April he sent
Fräulein von Meysenbug a letter which was quite melancholy and yet
less hopeless.
"Dear Fräulein, what pleasure you give, and how deeply you touch
me! This is the first time that I have had flowers sent to me, but I
know now that these numberless living colours, voiceless though
they be, can speak plainly to us. These heralds of spring are
blooming in my room, and I have been able to enjoy them for more
than a week. It needs must be that, in our grey and painful lives,
these flowers should come and lay bare to us a mystery of nature.
They prevent our forgetting that it always is, and always must be,
possible for us to find, somewhere in the world, life and hope and
light and colour. How often do we lose this faith! And how beautiful
and happy a thing it is when those who are battling confirm
themselves and one another in courage, and by sending those
symbols of flowers or books, recall their common pledge.
"My health (forgive a word on this subject) has been satisfactory
since the new year, save that I have to be careful of my sight. But,
as you know, there are states of physical suffering that are almost a
blessing, for they produce forgetfulness of what one suffers
elsewhere. Rather one tells oneself that there are remedies for the
soul, as there are for the body. That is my philosophy of illness, and
it gives hope for the soul. And is it not a work of art, still to hope?
"Wish me strength to write my eleven 'Unseasonable Thoughts' that
still remain to be done. Then at last I shall have said everything that
weighs upon us; and it may be that after this general confession, we
shall feel ourselves liberated, in however slight a degree.
"My heartfelt wishes are with you, dear Fräulein."
At last Friedrich Nietzsche began to work. His instinct brought him
back to the philosopher who had helped his first years. He wished to
consecrate to Schopenhauer his third "Unseasonable Thought." Ten
years before, he had led a miserable existence at Leipsic;
Schopenhauer saved him. His strange gaiety, his lyricism, the irony
with which he expresses his harshest thoughts, had restored to him
the power of life. If Schopenhauer "troubles you, burdens you," he
wrote at that time to a friend, "if he has not the power to raise you,
and guide you, through the keenest sorrows of external life, to that
sorrowful, but happy state of mind that takes hold on us when we
hear great music, to that state in which the surroundings of the
earth seem to fall away from us—then I do not claim to understand
his philosophy."
Once more he experienced the impressions of his youth. He
remembered that the most productive crises of his life had been the
most sorrowful, and as a disciple in the school of his former master
he recovered his courage. "I have eleven fine melodies yet to sing,"
he writes to Rohde, in announcement of the work which was to
follow. And his Schopenhauer is a melody, a hymn to Solitude, to the
daring of a thinker. His heart was full of music at that time. He
rested from writing and composed a hymn to Friendship. "My song is
for all of you," he wrote to Erwin Rohde.
His sister joined him, and the two left Basle and settled together in
the country, near the falls of the Rhine. Friedrich Nietzsche
recovered the gaiety of his most childish days, partly, no doubt, to
amuse the girl who had come so tenderly to join him—aliis lætus,
sibi sapiens, according to the maxim that is found written in his diary
of the time—but also because he was truly happy, despite his
sorrow: happy to be himself, free and unspotted before life. "My
sister is with me," he writes to Gersdorff. "Every day we make the
finest plans for our future life, which is to be idyllic, hard-working,
and simple. All is going well: I have put well away, far from me, all
weakness and melancholy."
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