myself," he wrote later, "I trembled; before long I was ill, more than ill, namely weary—weary from the irresistible disillusionment about everything that remains as inspiration to us modern men, about the everywhere wasted force, labor, hope, youth, love, weary from disgust with the whole idealistic falsification and effeminacy of conscience, which had again won the victory over one of our bravest; weary finally and not least from the grief of a pitiless suspicion—that I was henceforth condemned to mistrust more deeply, to despise more deeply, to be more deeply alone, than ever before. For I had no one but Richard Wagner."[1] He confessed to a friend, "I have experienced so much in relation to this man and his art: it was a whole long passion—I find no other word for it. The renunciation required, the finding myself again which at last became necessary, belongs to the hardest and most melancholy things that fate has brought me."[2] His mistake had been, he bitterly said, that he came to Bayreuth with an ideal.[3] He had painted an "ideal monstrosity"; "I have had the fate of idealists, whose object is spoiled for them by the very fact that they have made so much of it."[4]
Yes, Nietzsche was ill—ill spiritually and ill physically; indeed he had more or less suffered physically ever since his period of service in the Franco-Prussian war, as noted in the opening chapter. In the summer of 1875 he had been obliged to go to cure in the Black Forest—and now (1876) he has to ask for a year's leave from University. m This is granted him with marked signs of favor from the authorities, and he goes to Italy.[5]
