DAVID S.

THATCHER, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA

NIETZSCHE AND BYRON

By the time Nietzsche reached adolescence Byron's works had been

enjoying a European vogue for some fifty years, though it was Byron's
personality as much as his poetry which established him as the unchallenged
Napoleon of sentiment. Lamartine, Balzac, Stendhal, Berlioz and Delacroix
in France, Leopardi in Italy, Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoievsky in Russia,
Goethe, Heine, Lenau, Chamisso, Hoffmann and Grabbe in Germany were
leading spirits of the day who, in their own work, reflected back the blazing
light of his genius. Nietzsche, even without his omnivorous curiosity, could
hardly have escaped being touched and stirred, directly or indirectly, by the
man Hippolyte Taine called the greatest of all the English romantic poets,
"so great and so English that from him alone we shall learn more truths of
his country and of his age than from all the rest put together."1
Nietzsche's first acquaintance with Byron dates from his discovery of
Manfred (1817) in 1857 or 1858. Notes written in 1861, his fourth year at
Schulpforta, suggest he is looking for suitable English and German editions
of Byron's work, probably to help him in preparing the lecture he gave to
the "Germania" society in December of that year.2 At the end of Novem-
ber he had written to his sister: "Ich an Deiner Stelle würde ganz entschie-
den Byron englisch lesen" (SA III, p. 932). The following year he asks for
the Tauchnitz edition of Byron's Complete Works as a Christmas present:
"Bekanntlich werde ich mit dem neuen Jahre anfangen, Englisch zu treiben

1
History of English Literature (New York, 1900), III, 102. Nietzsche possessed the
German translation by Leopold Katscher and Gustav Gerth in 3 vols. (Leipzig,
1878—80).
2
B AW I, pp. 245, 251. The edition Nietzsche actually used for his lecture, hitherto
unidentified, was Sämtliche Werke, translated by Adolf Böttger, 8 vols. (Leipzig, 1844).
Though listed by Arthur Berthold and by Max Oehler as being in Nietzsche's library it
is missing from the Nietzsche-Archiv holdings. Another work listed by Berthold, Childe
Harolds Pilgerfahrt, is also missing. The Archiv still possesses Vermischte Schriften,
Briefwechsel und Lebensgeschichte nach Lytton Bttlwer [sie], Thomas Moore, Medwin
and Dallas, edited by Ernst Ortlepp, 3 vols. in one (Stuttgart, n. d.); Kain, Mazeppa,
Der Giour, Hebräische Gesänge, translated by Friederike Friedmann (Leipzig, 1855);
and The Works of Lord Byron, vol. IV (Leipzig, 1866). Also in the Archiv are editions
of Manfred and Marino Faliero which did not, apparently, belong to Nietzsche himself.
 Nietzsche and Byron 131

und dazu wird mir mein englischer Lieblingsdiditer der größte Sporn sein."8
Though this resolve seems to have come to nothing, enthusiasm does not
wane. In 1864 Nietzsche is absorbed in a work by his favourite composer of
that time, the symphonic overture Manfred by Robert Schumann (SA III,
pp. 119, 948), and he asks his Aunt Rosalie to send him a piano version of
the score (BAB I, pp. 289, 294). Before long he himself is composing settings
to two of Byron's poems. During military training in 1867 he is reading
Schopenhauer and Byron, both of whom, he tells Rohde, he finds more
congenial than ever before.4 Rohde responds in kind: "Und so fahre hin,
und predige — wenn nicht allen, so doch mehreren Völkern, und taufe sie
auf die Namen Goethe, Schopenhauer und Byron!"5 At Basel he is still
reading Byron with undiminished fervour. As Ida Overbeck reported: "Er
kam nicht einmal, — und er kam jede Woche mehrmals, — ohne von dem
zu erzählen, was er gerade trieb. Ich erinnere mich besonders Byronscher
Tagebücher, die er uns brachte, er erzählte von Shelley, seiner dichterischen
Art, von der Freigeisterei dieser Dichter und dem cant, der sie verfolgte. Er
erzählte von den englischen Philosophen, von Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume."6
Byron's praise of Venice in these diaries, next to the East "the greenest
island of my imagination,"7 prompted Nietzsche to ask his sister to send
him "den dicken Band über Byron" (GBr V, p. 426) when he went to
Venice in 1880. This work, Ernst Ortlepp's edition of Vermischte Schriften,
helped to sustain his interest in Byron until his breakdown in 1889.
Ida Overbeck's reminiscence is of particular interest, as it shows that
Byron was linked in Nietzsche's mind with another English poet, Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Writing from Pforta in November, 1861, Nietzsche asked

8
BAB I, p. 203. Possibly this resolve stemmed from advice Goethe gave to Eckermann
(see the entries for October 19, 1823 and December 3, 1824 in Eckermann's Gespräche
mit Goethe).
4
BAB , . 158. There is a tradition that Byron and Schopenhauer (born in the same
year, 1788) caught a glimpse of each other from their gondolas when they were staying
in Venice in 1818. "It was fitting," comments Cedric Hentschel, "that their paths
should touch, if only for a fleeting instant; for, together, they stand unrivalled as
moulders of German pessimism. But in so far as that pessimism found expression in
general literature, the influence of Byron, not Schopenhauer, was predominant." The
Byronic Teuton (Folcroft, Pa., 1940), p. 89. For another brief encounter between the
two men, and some intriguing speculations, see V. J. McGill, Schopenhauer: Pessimist
and Pagan (New York, 1931), pp. 172—174.
5
GBr II, p. 133. In other letters around this time Rohde quotes lines from Byron's
"Stanzas for Music: They say that Hope is happiness" in the original English (ibid.,
pp. 127, 188).
8
Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, Friedrich Nietzsche und Franz Overbeck: Eine Freundschaft
(Jena, 1908), I, 238.
7
The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, edited by Rowland E. Prothero
(London, 1898—1901), IV, 7 (in future references this work will be abbreviated to Lf).
132 David S. Thatcher

his sister to send him "Shelleys poetische Werke übersetzt von Seybt" (SA
III, p. 932) as a Christmas gift. The following month, unaccountably, he
changed his mind. The edition he eventually acquired was the two-part
Ausgewählte Dichtungen (1866), selected and translated by Adolf Strodt-
mann. His reading of Queen Mob, and of the important notes Shelley at-
tached to it, led him to oppose Shelley's vegetarianism (SA III, p. 1013);
but Shelley's militant atheism, his trenchant remarks on Christianity, mira-
cles and human injustice, and his appealingly idiosyncratic interpretation of
the Prometheus legend probably took a firm hold on Nietzsche's young and
impressionable mind. In Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Shelley is presented as
a martyr of the spirit, a hero figure tragically destroyed, like Hölderlin
and Kleist, by his indelible "Ungewöhnlichkeit": "Ein neuerer Engländer
schildert die allgemeinste Gefahr ungewöhnlicher Menschen, die in einer an
das Gewöhnliche gebundenen Gesellschaft leben, also: 'solche fremdartige
Charaktere werden anfänglich gebeugt, dann melancholisch, dann krank
und zuletzt sterben sie. Ein Shelley würde in England nicht haben leben
können, und eine Rasse von Shelleys würde unmöglich gewesen sein'."8 Yet,
like these and other "freie Geister," Shelley was destined to fall from
grace. In Der Wille zur Macht, aphorism 1020, Nietzsche condemns
Shelley's "soziale[n] Pessimismus" as belonging to "Verfalls- und Erkran-
kungsphänomene." And in another unpublished note Nietzsche protested
further: „Gegen den falschen Idealismus, wo durch übertriebene Feinheit
sich die Besten Naturen der Welt entfremden. Wie schade, dass der ganze
Süden Europa's um die Vererbung jener gebändigten Sinnlichkeit gekom-
men ist, durch die Abstinenz der Geistlichen! Und dass solche Shelley's,
Hölderlin's, Leopardi's zu Grunde gehn, ist billig: ich halte nicht gar viel
von solchen Menschen" (GAXIV, p. 249). Nonetheless, Shelley's poetic prin-
ciples and practice remained powerful formative influences. One need only
compare A Defence of Poetry with Die Geburt der Tragödie, or such poems
as The Revolt of Islam with Also sprach Zarathustra, which are strikingly
similar in their opening sequences: Shelley's "Eagle and a Serpent wreathed
in fight" (Canto I, viii) recalls Zarathustra's first glimpse (SA II, p. 290) of
his emblematic "Ehrentiere": "Und siehe! Ein Adler zog in weiten Kreisen
durch die Luft, und an ihm hing eine Schlange, nicht einer Beute gleich,
sondern einer Freundin: denn sie hielt sich um seinen Hals geringelt." What,
in Shelley, was a dualistic battle between good and evil becomes in
Nietzsche — who may have known that, in Egyptian symbolism, a serpent
with a hawk's head was a symbol of a good genius — a cessation of hostili-

8
SA I, p. 300. I have not been able to discover the author of the passage quoted here.
 Nietzsche and Byron 133

ties beyond good and evil. In Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Earth is given
a speech which anticipates Zarathustra's encounters with his other self: "Ere
Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own
image walking in the garden" (I, 11. 191—193). The preface to Prometheus
Unbound describes the title figure as "the type of the highest perfection of
moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives
to the best and noblest ends," a clear adumbration of Nietzsche's "Über-
mensch". Further analogies could easily be drawn, but perhaps they are
less important, in the final analysis, than the fact that it was Shelley, to-
gether with Schopenhauer and Byron, who stimulated Nietzsche to explore
such English philosophers as Bacon, Hobbes, Berkeley and Hume.
Shelley, however, had made tortuously slow headway in Germany,
and it was the renowned Byron that Nietzsche, as a youth of seventeen,
chose as the subject of an address to the "Germania" society in December,
1861. His lecture, entitled "Ueber die dramatischen Dichtungen Byrons,"
properly belongs to the juvenilia, but it remains no less significant for that,
since it sets Byron firmly alongside Goethe in the pantheon of his literary
heroes. Goethe's judgements on Byron, whether adulatory or critical,
receive spectacular endorsement. Nietzsche notes that Byron dedicated
Sardanapalus to Goethe "als Huldigung eines literarischen Vassallen dem
Lehnsherrn dargebracht, dem ersten aller jetzt lebenden Autoren, der die
Literatur seines Vaterlandes geschaffen und die von Europa erleuchtet hat,"9
and Byron and Goethe are juxtaposed in the very first sentence: "Der
Hauptreiz der Byronsdien Dichtungen besteht in dem Bewusstsein, dass in
ihnen die eigne Gefühls- und Gedankenwelt des Lords uns entgegentritt,
nicht in ruhiger, goldklarer Fassung goethischer Poesie, sondern in dem
Sturmdrang eines Feuergeistes, eines Vulkanes, d e r . . . glühende Lava ver-
heerend einherwälzt."10 Nietzsche then proceeds to characterize Byron's
subjectivity, the element which provides the leit-motif of the entire lecture:
Die unglückliche Poesie des Weltschmerzes nimmt in Byron ihren
Ursprung und ihre genialste Entfaltung; und gerade darin, dass sich
uns der Dichter in jedem Charakter, den er zeichnet, selbst vorführt,
ohne jedoch in den Fehler grenzenloser Einseitigkeit zu verfallen —
denn. Byron verstand es, alles Hohe und Edle, die zartesten und
erhabensten Gefühle, in der grossartigen Universalität seines Geistes zu

9
Mus A I, p. 39. Though Nietzsche does not trouble to indicate it in his text, even by
quotation marks, this is a translation of the dedication on the title page of Sardana-
palus (1823). The original English reads: "To the illustrious Goethe a stranger presumes
to offer the homage of a literary vassal to his liege lord, the first of existing writers,
who has created the literature of his own country, and illustrated that of Europe."
10
MusA I, p. 37. On November 10, 1813, Byron wrote that poetry is "the lava of the
imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake" (L/, III, 405).
134 David S. Thatcher

erfassen — gerade darin ruht der Zauber, der uns eine begeisterte
Hinneigung zu ihm und seinen Dichtungen fühlen lässt. Wenn nun
vornehmlich in Ritter Harolds Pilgerfahrt und in dem grenzenlos
genialen Don Juan uns des Dichters eigenstes Wesen entgegentritt,
besonders in dem letzteren Werk, das, wie Goethe sagt, menschenfeind-
lich bis zur herbsten Grausamkeit, menschenfreundlich, in die Tiefen
süssester Neigung sich versenkend, wir dankbar geniessen müssen, wie
es uns Byron mit übermässiger Freiheit, ja mit Frechheit vorzuführen
wagt, so sind doch auch seine übrigen kleineren, epischen Dichtungen
herrliche Perlen der Poesie überhaupt, in dem wundervollsten Farben-
glanz strahlend.11

The subject of his lecture, Nietzsche continues, is not these poems, nor
the Hebrew Melodies, "jene unendlich zarten, wehmütigen Klänge der
reinsten Lyrik,"12 but the dramatic poems, those works which are "eigen-
thümlich durch die masslose Subjectivität des Dichters." It is candidly con-
ceded "dass Byron überhaupt kein Dramatiker war, indem seine Subjec-
tivität die plastische Gestaltung zu dramatischer Einheit und Objectivität
verhinderte":
Es giebt im Allgemeinen für ihn nur einen einzigen Charakter, den
er völlig und erschöpfend zu zeidinen versteht: und das ist sein eigner.
Alle ändern Charaktere sind, so zu sagen, Theile seines eignen Charak-
ters, eine Erscheinung, auf die wir dann näher eingehen wollen ... Wäh-
rend Manfred seine düstren Grundzüge, seine höhnende Resignation,
seine übermenschliche Verzweiflung hervorhebt, während Sardanapal
seine sinnliche Natur mit den grellsten Farben ins Licht stellt, lodert uns
in Marino Faliero sein glühender Freiheitsstrom entgegen, daneben aber
auch die südliche Gluth seiner Affekte; als Jacopo Foskari malt er uns
seine Begeisterung für Venedig, seine edelste Vaterlandsliebe. Und
sind dies nicht die Grundtöne seines ganzen Wesens, die er uns wie ein
Beichtbekenntniss mit höhnender Weltverachtung und göttlichem Selbst-
bewusstsein entgegenschleudert?13

11
MusA I, pp. 37—38. The words ascribed to Goethe, together with the phrase "dem
grenzenlos genialen Don Juan" (which is not acknowledged), first appeared in Über
Kunst und Altertum (1821). See Johann Wolf gang Goethe, Gedenkausgabe der
Werke, Briefe und Gespräche (Zürich and Stuttgart, 1950), XIV, 790.
12
MusA I, p. 38. It was from the Hebrew Melodies that Nietzsche selected two texts he
set to music in 1864—65: "Oh! Weep for Those" ("O, weint um sie!") and "Sun of the
Sleepless!" ("Sonne des Schlaflosen"). For full texts, scores and commentary see Curt
Paul Janz's forthcoming book on Nietzsche's musical compositions.
13
MusA I, pp. 43—45. The distinction made here was far from novel. In the chapter "Zur
Ästhetik der Dichtkunst" in the second edition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung
(1844), Schopenhauer, whose works contain scattered allusions to Byron, chooses Goethe
and Shakespeare as objective dramatists who operate like ventriloquists; Bryon, on
the other hand, is the subjective dramatist who transforms himself into the main
character. In 1827, Christian Dietrich Grabbe (whose works Nietzsche possessed) had
 Nietzsche and Byron 135

An aspect of Byron's art which arouses Nietzsche's admiration is "seine fast

weibliche Zartheit der Empfindung und Feinheit im Erfassen edler weiblicher
Charaktere":

Wenn man bedenkt, daß Byron frei von aller Religiosität, ja überhaupt
von allem Gottesglauben ist, unbeständig in der Liebe, sinnliche Genüsse
im Uebermasse schöpfend, wenn man diese ewigweiblidien Frauen be-
trachtet, von seiner Meisterhand mit den feinsten Grenzen umzeichnet, so
muss man wahrhaftig die überaus grosse Genialität seines Geistes an-
staunen.14

The remainder of the lecture is taken up with details concerning the compo-
sition of Byron's plays, plot summaries, extensive quotations (in German!)
to demonstrate the "wunderbare Malerei der Worte" and, finally, severe
animadversions, in approved Goethean fashion, on Byron's wrongheaded
adherence to the unities of time and place, a practice which, it is argued,
led him to absurdities,15 even in that well-nigh "übermenschliches Werk,"
Manfred:
Das erste seiner Trauerspiele ist der in der Schweiz und am Rhein be-
gonnene Manfred, in dramatischer Beziehung ein Ungethüm, man möchte

made a similar point, agreeing with Schopenhauer's view that Byron and Shakespeare
were the most important English writers, "jener als die möglichst poetisch dargestellte
Subjectivität, dieser als die eben so poetisch ausgedehnte Objektivität" ("Über die
Shakespearo-Manie," Werke (Emstetten, 1966), IV, 30). Twelve years later Giuseppe
Mazzini chose Byron and Goethe as the two figureheads of their epoch, the first being
the poet of Individuality in its subjective life, the second the poet of Individuality in
its objective life (see Hentschel, p. 24).
14
MusA I, p. 45. Cf. Goethe's comment to Eckermann (July 5, 1827): "Seine Frauen
sind gut. Es ist aber auch das einzige Gefäß, was uns Neueren noch geblieben ist um
unsere Idealität hinein zu giessen. Mit den Männern ist nichts zu tun. Am Achill und
Odysseus, dem Tapfersten und Klügsten, hat der Homer alles vorweggenommen."
Byron himself confessed: "Like Napoleon, I have always had a great contempt for
women; and formed this opinion of them not hastily, but from my own fatal expe-
rience. My writings, indeed, tend to exalt the sex; and my imagination has always
delighted in giving them a beau ideal likeness, but I only drew them as a painter or
statuary would do, — as they should be." Thomas Medwin, Conversations of Lord
Byron (London, 1824), p. 80. Nietzsche was aware (GA XII, p. 77) of another aspect of
this idealization voiced by Byron: "A woman should never be seen eating or drinking,
unless it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly feminine and becoming viands"
(Lord Byron's Correspondence, edited by John Murray (Toronto, 1922), I, 84).
15
For example: "Das Anhalten an französische Einheit des Ortes und der Zeit verleitet
den Dichter zu Missgriffen, besonders zu einem höchst weitschweifigen Dialog, dann
auch zu breiter Ausführung lyrischer Stellen" (MusA I, pp. 38—39). Goethe was
amused that Byron, who in practical life, never bothered about rules of any kind, was
ready to subject himself to the "silliest" of all laws, the law of the three unities: "Er
hat den Grund dieses Gesetzes sowenig verstanden als die übrige Welt," was his laconic
remark to Eckermann (February 24, 1825).
136 David S. Thatcher

sagen, der Monolog eines Sterbenden, in den tiefsten Fragen und Pro-
blemen wühlend, erschütternd durch die furchtbare Erhabenheit dieses
geisterbeherrschenden Uebermenschen, entzückend durch die prachtvolle,
wunderbar schöne Diktion, aber undramatisch im höchsten Grad.16
Manfred is described as "die sonderbarste Ausgeburt" of Byron's brain,
the play which "in jeder Beziehung die Grenzen des Gewöhnlichen über-
schreitet" :
Das Grossartigste und zugleich Anziehendste ist Byrons Ideenfülle in
seinen Dramen, besonders in seinem Manfred, in dem der Sturmgang
seiner Gedanken alles andre überwiegt und alles Interesse an sich reisst.
Es giebt in der That kein ideenreicheres Werk, das in solchem Grade trotz
seiner dramatischen Mängel, trotzdem dass es eigentlich eine Gedanken-
anhäufung der Verzweiflung ist, den Leser mit Zaubergewalt bannt und
in den Zustand der tiefsten Melancholie versetzen kann. (MusA I,
pp. 45—46)
To conclude his lecture Nietzsche quotes Lioni's long soliloquy from Act IV
of Marino Faliero and other passages to show Byron's command of lan-
guage and his magical skill in dramatic portraiture.
A less-known manifestation of Nietzsche's deep immersion in Byron at
this time is the weird prose fragment Eupkorion, a wild phantasmagoria
written during the summer vacation of 1862. It is so far removed from
Goethe's Euphorion-Byron figure in Faust, Part II, as to suggest that
Nietzsche was experimenting with a deliberate parody of Gothic excess, in
particular of the Byronic hero, so well described by Macaulay as "a man
proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart,
a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong
affection."17 In this regard Nietzsche's story bears some resemblance to
the novel, also unfinished, which Byron first published with Mazeppa in
1819 (see LJ, II, 446—453). Euphorion is unmistakably an expression of
adolescent unrest; its blend of erotic-cum-scatalogical fantasy, chilly sadism,
satanic blasphemy and moody Weltschmerz, so typical of Poe, Baudelaire,
Swinburne and other writers of the European decadence, makes it merci-
fully unique in Nietzsche's work. Nietzsche sent it to Raimund Granier
from Gorenzen on July 28 accompanied by a letter in which, with strained
jocularity, he apologised for perpetrating this gruesome piece of youthful
perversity, all but disowning it: "Den Plan zu meiner widerwärtigen
Novelle... habe ich, als ich das I. Kapitel geschrieben hatte, vor Ekel über

16
MusA I, p. 38. "Many people," said Byron, "think my talent 'essentially undramatic/
and I am not at all clear that they are not right" (LJt V, 218).
17
Critical and Historical Essays (London, 1903), I, 324. The description occurs in
Macaulay's 1831 review of Moore's Life. See also Peter L. Thorslev, The Byronic Hero
(Minneapolis, 1962), passim.
 Nietzsche and Byron 137

Bord geworfen. Ich sende Ihnen das Monstrummanuskript zum Gebrauch

a u f . . . nun, wie Sie wollen. Als ich's geschrieben, schlug ich eine diabolische
Lache auf — Sie werden selbst schwerlich nach der Fortsetzung Appetit
haben."18 Euphorion, äs Nietzsche presents him, is a sick, world-weary,
disillusioned youth, prematurely old, morbidly obsessed with corruption,
excrement and death, who finds it "als fetter Wurm zu krabbeln süßer als
Mensch — ein wandelndes Fragezeichen — zu sein," and who is bothered
by the "bunte, geputzte, zierliche, lustige Menschen" parading on the
streets: "Was sind sie? Uebertünchte Gräber sind sie, wie weiland irgend
ein Mauschel gesagt hat" (BAW II, p. 70). The room in which he sits at his
desk writing is deathly still: "Vor mir ein Tintenfaß, um mein schwarzes
Herz drin zu ersäufen, eine Sdieere um mich an das Halsabschneiden zu ge-
wöhnen, Manuscripte, um midi zu wischen und ein Nachttopf. Mir gegen-
über wohnt eine Nonne, die ich mitunter besuche um midi an ihrer Sittsam-
keit zu erfreuen. Sie ist mir sehr genau bekannt, von Kopf bis zur Zehe, ge-
nauer als idi mir selber. Früher war sie Nonne, dünn und schmächtig — idi
war Arzt und machte daß sie bald dick wurde. Mit ihr wohnt ihr Bruder
zusammen in zeitlicher Ehe, der war mir zu fett und blühend, den habe ich
mager gemacht — wie eine Leiche. Er wird in diesen Tagen sterben — was
mir angenehm — denn ich werde ihn secieren" (BAW II, p. 71). The medi-
tation is brought to a timely close by a groan from Euphorion, "denn er litt
an der Rückenmarksdarre ..." "The rebellious mood of which this is a pro-
duct," says one of the understandably few scholars prepared to concern
himself with Euphonon, "lasted well into 1863. One of the poems of that
year, 'Vor dem Kruzifix', depicts a drunkard throwing a bottle of Schnaps
at a figure of Christ on the Cross. This gesture is of course pseudo-Byronic,
but it also expresses something more profound and lasting in Nietzsche than
his passing phase of Byronic revolt."19 What this element was will shortly
become apparent.
In 1864 Nietzsche, now a student at Bonn University, was offered a
further inducement to savour the tempestuous atmosphere of Byron's Man-
fred, this time in the form of Schumann's Manfred Overture, written in
1848—49 and first performed at Weimar under the direction of Franz
Liszt in 1852. On his own admission he revelled in playing the piano ver-
sion of the score.20 Five years later he closes a letter to Rohde by quoting
18
Quoted in Richard Blunck, Friedrich Nietzsche: Kindheit und Jugend (Basel, 1953),
p. 87.
19
R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (London, 1965), pp. 29—
30. To Hollingdale, Euphorion is "Nietzsche posing as Byron" (p. 29 n) — a fair
comment.
20
SA III, pp. 119, 948. He also heard about this time Ferdinand Hiller's Byron setting,
"O weint um sie" (ibid., p. 121).
138 David S. Thatcher

the chord which signals the appearance of Astarte: in his own lonely life, he
comments ruefully, there is "nicht einmal wie bei Manfred 'Erscheinung
eines schönen Weibes'" (GBr II, p. 179). In the spring of 1872 he teils
Gustav Krug of his new composition for two pianos, a "Stück des düster-
sten Pathos," a piece with "lauter Beschwörungsformeln" (BAB III,
pp. 237, 240). To this composition Nietzsche gave the title "Manfred Me-
ditation," sending it to his publisher Fritzsch as the work of a non-existent
English composer: "Hier kommt die von mir neulich angekündigte Über-
raschung — eine vierhändige Composition meines Freundes George Chat-
ham, zum Beweis dienend, wie stark schon in England das Walten des
Wagnerischen Genius nachempfunden wird" (BAB, III, p. 230). In May,
1872 he played it to Rohde while both were attending ceremonies in
Bayreuth to mark the laying of the Festspielhaus foundation stone. Rohde
willingly submitted to hearing Nietzsche "manfredisieren," as he put it,
but sadly confessed that he was "von allen Tönen dieser Tage ganz over-
powered, ... so obturiert, daß ich gar nicht folgen konnte" (GBr II, p.
380). Friedrich Hegar was favoured with a copy of the score and, after
what must have seemed to Nietzsche an interminable and rather undiplo-
matic delay, handed down his verdict: though intrigued to see how
Nietzsche had set about giving musical expression to the underlying mood
of Byron's work, he was dismayed by the cavalier attitude to form: "Frei-
lich fehlt dem Ganzen, was die Gestaltung der musikalischen Ideen anbe-
trifft, die Erfüllung gewisser architektonischer Bedingungen, so dass mir die
Komposition mehr den Eindruck einer stimmungsvollen Improvisation als
eines durchgedachten Kunstwerkes macht."21 Hans von Bülow, less guarded
in his sentiments, was scandalized: he called it the most fantastic extra-
vagance, the most disagreeable and anti-musical piece he had heard for
quite some time. He wondered whether it had been intended as a joke,
perhaps as a parody of the so-called Zukunftsmusik. He wondered, too,
whether Nietzsche was conscious of breaking all the laws of musical
harmony:
Abgesehen vom psychologischen Interesse — denn in Ihrem musikalisdien
Fieberprodukte ist ein ungewöhnlicher, bei aller Verirrung distinguierter
Geist zu spüren — hat Ihre Meditation vom musikalisdien Standpunkte
aus nur den Wert eines Verbrechens in der moralischen Welt. Vom apolli-
nischen Elemente habe ich keine Spur entdecken können, und das diony-
sische anlangend, habe ich, offen gestanden, mehr an den lendemain eines
Bacchanals als an dieses selbst denken müssen... eine in Erinnerungs-
21
BAB IV, p. 383. Hegar's judgement seems implicit in a Nietzsche note of the early
1880s: "Die Musik hat keinen Klang für die Entzückungen des Geistes; will sie den
Zustand von Faust und Hamlet und Manfred wiedergeben, so lässt sie den Geist weg
und malt Gemüthszustände, die höchst unangenehm sind ohne Geist und gar nicht zum
 Nietzsche and Byron 139

schwelgerei an Wagner'sche Klänge taumelnde Phantasie ist keine Pro-

duktionsbasis.22
Nietzsche excused himself, as he had done in the case of Euphorion (in some
ways the prose equivalent of the "Manfred-Meditation"), on the grounds
that it was an oddity:
Meine andre 'Musik' ist, was Sie mir glauben müssen, mensdilicher,
sanfter und auch reinlicher... Gerade bei dieser Manfredmusik hatte ich
eine so grimmig, ja höhnisch pathetische Empfindung, es war ein Ver-
gnügen, wie bei einer teuflischen Ironie ... Selbst der Titel war ironisch —
denn ich vermag mir bei dem Byron'schen 'Manfred', den ich als Knabe
fast als Lieblingsgedicht anstaunte, kaum etwas anderes zu denken, als
daß es ein toll-formloses und monotones Unding sei. (BAB III, p. 310 f.)
This astonishing revaluation can be attributed, at least in part, to a letter
Nietzsche had received from Cosima Wagner only a week before: "Midi
hat der Gegenstand, Manfred, verwundert. Sind Sie noch des Byronianis-
mus fähig? Ich gewinne diesem Lieblingsdichter(!) meiner Jugend, und
besonders Manfred, nicht den mindesten Eindruck mehr ab."23 Under
pressure from Cosima and the other Wagnerians, like Biilow, whose good
favour he was not then prepared to forfeit, Nietzsche reneged on his earlier
loyalty to Manfred, freely acknowledging the error of his musical ways.
Later, during the period of the anti-Wagnerian writings, the check was
removed, and the "Manfred-Meditation" won, in Nietzsche's own estima-
Ansehen taugen" (GA XI, p. 336). The relevant works are Schumann's Faust-Musik
(1849), whidi Nietzsdie heard in June, 1865, and Wagner's Faust-Ouvertüre (1840),
whidi Krug had discussed in the "Germania" — perhaps also Liszt's Faust-Symphonie
(1854) and the work of its dedicatee Berlioz, The Damnation of Faust (1846); Liszt's
symphonic poem Hamlet (1858) and Ambroise Thomas's opera Hamlet, composed
1865 (see Nietzsche's letter to Peter Gast, October 27, 1887); Sdiumann's overture and
incidental music to Manfred (1848—49). (Tchaikovsky, whose Manfred Symphony
(1885) was composed in response to Balakirev's suggestion after the ailing Berlioz had
turned it down, does not appear to be a composer Nietzsche knew.)
22
GBr III, pp.349—352. — Cf. Frederick Love: "In the gloomy 'Manfred' music such
interpretive directions as 'langsam und brütend/ 'sehr ausdrucksvoll,' 'stark und
pathetisch,' 'klagend,' 'sehr feierlich und langsam!' 'zart und geheimnisvoll' — appear
as compensations for qualities basically lacking in the musical realization... Although
there are no identifiable quotations from Wagner's music, there are more than a few
instances of thematic parallels and borrowed techniques... The opening motif...
reflects even the shape of the opening line of the Tristan prelude, an upward leap
followed by descending chromatics... We are served a potpourri of advanced and
conservative practice, of the banal and the inspired, of the noisy and the delicate, all
strung together as though illustrating a text which is not supplied. The tonal anarchy
which reigns here must not, in all fairness, be imputed to Wagner, although his example
did little to counteract Nietzsche's tendency in this direction" Young Nietzsche and the
Wagnerian Experience (Chapel Hill, 1963), pp. 70, 72. For further commentary, and
the complete score, see Curt Paul Janz's forthcoming book on Nietzsche's musical
compositions.
23
Die Briefe Cosima Wagners an Nietzsche (Weimar, 1940), II, 40.
140 David S. Thatcher

tion, a kind of reprieve as a work superior to Schumann's. The qualities

once admired in Schumann, "verschwimmendes Ruhegefühl/' "krystallne
Entrücktheit,'' "warmes Selbstmitleid," qualities which, for him, had
made "ein Musikstück werth und unvergeßlich,"24 were now evaluated as
a "schändliche Verweichlichung des Gefühls," as a sea of fizzy lemonade.25
It was a relief that "diese Schumannsche Romantik" had at last been
overcome:
Schumann, in die "Sächsische Schweiz" seiner Seele flüchtend, halb
Wertherisdi, halb Jean-Paulisdi geartet, gewiß nicht Beethovenisdi! ge-
wiß nicht Byronisdi! — seine Manfred-Musik ist ein Mißgriff und Miß-
verständnis bis zum Unrechte —, Schumann mit seinem Geschmadt, der
im Grunde ein kleiner Geschmack war (nämlich ein gefährlicher, unter
Deutschen doppelt gefährlicher Hang zur stillen Lyrik und Trunken-
boldigkeit des Gefühls), beständig beiseite gehend, sich scheu verziehend
und zurückziehend, ein edler Zärtling, der in lauter anonymem Glück
und Weh schwelgtre .. ,26
The point is established more forcibly in Ecce homo where, in the course of
rating Manfred above Faust, Nietzsche thinks of Schumann as a composer
who had set both works to music: "Die Deutschen sind unfähig jedes Be-
griffs von Größe: Beweis Schumann. Ich habe eigens, aus Ingrimm gegen
diesen süßlichen Sachsen, eine Gegenouvertüre zum Manfred komponiert,
von der Hans von Bülow sagte, dergleichen habe er nie auf Notenpapier
gesehn: das sei Notzucht an der Euterpe" (SA II, p. 1089).
The facts are patently being distorted: the "Manfred-Meditation"
was originally composed as an act of homage to Wagner, not as a counter-
blast to Schumann; Nietzsche would like to believe, and have his readers
believe, that his antipathy to Schumann began much sooner than it actually
did. The shifting evaluations of Manfred and of the "Manfred-Medita-
tion," disconcerting as they seem, can be attributed to Nietzsche's changing
allegiances and, as Martin Vogel suggests, to the desire for self-protection:
"Seine Komposition war nicht Programm-Musik über ein beliebiges Thema;
das Programm dieser Musik war er selbst..., eine Meditation über Fried-
rich Nietzsche. Er identifizierte sich mit Manfred. Daher auch seine Ver-
achtung für die Deutschen, die den Faust höher stellten."27
24
BAW IV, p. 121 f. This note is dated "Frühjahr-Herbst 1868."
25
Nietzsche to Overbeck, 17. 6. 1887 (Briefwechsel, p. 382).
26
SA II, pp. 712—713. In 1885, a Schumann-admirer found Nietzsche in no mood to be
reconverted: "Doch nahm ich mich der Musik zu Manfred an, die Nietzsche ganz be-
sonders zu widerstreben schien. Hierbei entwaffnete er mich damit, daß er mit ein helles
Lachen entlockte, indem er ganz ernsthaft die Frage an mich richtete, ob ich mir den
Gemsjäger, Astarte, die Alpenfee in die sächsische Schweiz versetzt vorstellen könne?"
Adolf Ruthardt, "Friedrich Nietzsche und Robert Schumann," Neue Zeitsdarijt für
Musik, 88. Jahrgang (1921), 491.
 Nietzsche and Byron 141

That Nietzsche did identify with Manfred there can be no doubt: "Mit
Byrons Manfred muß ich tief verwandt sein: ich fand alle diese Abgründe
in mir — mit dreizehn Jahren war ich für dieses Werk reif."28 One abyss,
it might be surmised, was Nietzsche's personal relationship with his sister.
Could it be that in Manfred's incestuous or near-incestuous love for his
sister, Astarte, Nietzsche recognized an attitude disturbingly close to his
own highly ambivalent feelings towards Elisabeth? An aphorism in Mensch-
liches, Allzumenschliches, entitled "Tragödie der Kindheit," lends some
credibility to this view:
Es kommt vielleicht nicht selten vor, daß edel- und hochstrebende
Menschen ihren härtesten Kampf in der Kindheit zu bestehen haben:
etwa dadurch, daß sie ihre Gesinnung gegen einen niedrig denkenden,
dem Schein und der Lügnerei ergebenen Vater durchsetzen müssen oder
fortwährend, wie Lord Byron, im Kampfe mit einer kindischen und
zornwütigen Mutter leben. Hat man so etwas erlebt, so wird man sein
Leben lang es nicht versdimerzen, zu wissen, wer einem eigentlich der
größte, der gefährlichste Feind gewesen ist. (SA I, pp. 656—657)

No figure in Nietzsche's life was better qualified for the invidious role of
"gefährlichste Feind" than Elisabeth: her narrow and stifling Christian
piety, her blithely complacent conservatism, her luck-lustre disingeniousness
made her a dubious ally in any philosophical cause. Embittered by her
brother's decision to abandon theology at Bonn, she wrote him a letter of
impassioned protest. In his famous reply (June 11, 1865) Nietzsche asks
her, in a friendly but pointed tone, whether treading the path of religious
orthodoxy is really more arduous than "im Kampf mit Gewöhnung, in der
Unsicherheit des selbständigen Gehens, unter häufigen Schwankungen des
Gemüts, ja des Gewissens, oft trostlos, aber immer mit dem ewigen Ziel des
Wahren, des Schönen, des Guten neue Bahnen zu gehn?" (SA III, p. 953).

27
"Nietzsches Wettkampf mit Wagner," Beiträge zur Gesaickte der Musikanscbauung
im 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Walter Salmen (Regensburg, 1965), p. 212.
28
SA II, p. 1089. A more oblique statement of this personal identification with Manfred
occurs in a note deploring the sensationalism of the theatre, the artificial ecstasies and
narcoticism it induces: "Wer an sich der Tragödie und Komödie genug hat, bleibt wohl
am liebsten fern vom Theater; oder, zur Ausnahme, der ganze Vorgang — Theater und
Publikum und Dichter eingerechnet — wird ihm zum eigentlichen tragischen und
komischen Schauspiel, so daß das aufgeführte Stück dagegen ihm nur wenig bedeutet.
Wer etwas wie Faust und Manfred ist, was liegt dem an den Fausten und Manfreden
des Theaters! — während es ihm gewiß noch zu denken gibt, daß man überhaupt der-
gleichen Figuren aufs Theater bringt" (ibid., p. 96). The "Germania" lecture makes it
clear that Nietzsche knew, probably from reading Byron's prefaces, that Manfred and
the other dramatic poems constituted "a mental theatre39 (LJ3 V, 347) not intended for
performance; he may also have known of Byron's professed "horror of the stage"
(L]y IV, 71), very much in Byron's mind when he wrote Manfred.
142 David S. Thatcher

The issue, he continues, is clear-cut: "Hier scheiden sich nun die Wege der
Menschen; willst Du Seelenruhe und Glück erstreben, nun so glaube, willst
Du ein Jünger der Wahrheit sein, so forsche." At this point the uncom-
fortable personal abyss widens into the terrifying abyss of metaphysical
emptiness, of cosmic malaise. How pleasant it would be, says Nietzsche
elsewhere, to exchange the false ideas of Christianity for truths which
would be equally healing, consoling and beneficial!
Doch solche Wahrheiten gibt es nicht; die Philosophie kann ihnen höch-
stens wiederum metaphysische Scheinbarkeiten (im Grunde ebenfalls Un-
wahrheiten) entgegensetzen. Nun ist aber die Tragödie die, daß man jene
Dogmen der Religion und Metaphysik nicht glauben kann, wenn man
die strenge Methode der Wahrheit im Herzen und Kopfe hat, anderer-
seits durch die Entwiddung der Menschheit so zart, reizbar, leidend ge-
worden ist, um Heil- und Trostmittel der höchsten Art nötig zu haben;
woraus also die Gefahr entsteht, daß der Mensch sich an der erkannten
Wahrheit verblute. Dies drückt Byron in unsterblichen Versen aus:
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The tree of knowledge is not that of life.29
Manfred's phrase "sorrow is knowledge" had already been alluded to in a
letter written to Raimund Granier in September, 1865, a document so
crucial to our sense of Nietzsche's intellectual development that it is extra-
ordinary how consistently it has been overlooked:
Ich habe mich oft schon gefragt, ob wirklich das Glück für den Menschen
das Erstrebenswürdigste ist, darum wäre ja der Dummkopf der schönste
Vertreter der Mensdiheit, und unsre Helden des Geistes, 'so wahr Denken
Gram ist' mindestens Narren, von der Gattung abfallende Affen oder
Halbgötter, und das letztere wäre wahrlich das schlimmere Loos. Denn
unsre Naturforscher leiten uns mit Vorliebe von Affen ab und vernichten
alles, was überthierisch ist als unlogisch. Und beim Zeus, lieber Affe als
unlogisch. Sieh jede Richtung der Wissenschaft, der Kunst an, der Affe
zeigt sich in unsrer Zeit eclatant, aber wo bleibt der Gott? Nicht ein-
mal weltsdhmerzlich darf man sein, wenn nicht Byron uns eine große
Affenfratze schneiden soll, ja ich dürfte nicht einmal Deinen Brief
in dieser schnöden Weise beantworten, wenn ich eben nicht Affe sein
wollte oder etwas anderes sein könnte. (BAB II, p. 8)
Repeated here is the doubt, expressed in the letter to his sister the previous
June, that happiness is the worthiest aim of human endeavour, a line of
thought that leads directly to subsequent attacks on English utilitarian

29
S A I, p. 518. This is the only instance in which Nietzsche, departing from his usual
practice, quotes Byron in the original English.
 Nietzsdie and Byron 143

philosophy and to Zarathustra's contemptuous dismissal of happiness as

"Armut und Schmutz und ein erbärmliches Behagen" (SA II, 280), an
obstacle in the path of the "Übermensch". The reference to evolutionary
theories of natural scientists presupposes an acquaintance with Darwinistic
ideas which antedates the momentous discovery of Lange's Geschichte des
Materialismus in 1866; these theories are mentioned in the pamphlet on
David Strauss30 and in Zarathustra's first proclamation of the "Über-
mensch": "Was ist der Affe für den Menschen? Ein Gelächter oder eine
schmerzliche Scham. Und ebendas soll der Mensch für den Übermenschen
sein: ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Ihr habt den Weg vom
Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst
wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt noch ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgendein
Affe" (SA II, p. 279). The baffling question "wo bleibt der Gott?" is
answered by the madman in his parable in Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft,
"Gott ist tot," and by Zarathustra's "Gott starb: nun wollen wir — daß
der Übermensch lebe" (SA II, 523). Byron, described in the "Germania"
lecture as being "frei von aller Religiosität, ja überhaupt von allem Gottes-
glauben,"31 is the "Held des Geistes" who stands on guard, ready to quell
with a reproving, ironic glance all those who would defect to Weltschmerz
or pure animality. Even at this early date, Nietzsdie knew of the anti-
romantic strain in Byron's personality.
The interwoven themes of this letter to Granier cluster around what
became for Nietzsdie a central concept, that of the "Übermensch," a term
first used in the "Germania" lecture on Byron in which Manfred is des-
cribed as "ein übermenschliches Werk" and in whidi attention is drawn to
"die furchtbare Erhabenheit dieses geisterbeherrsdienden Uebermensdien,"
Manfred, a hero whose "übermenschliche Verzweiflung" reflected his crea-
tor's volcanic personality. In fact, the word "superhuman" occurs twice in
Byron's play. Kaufmann reminds us that Nietzsdie did not coin the word
"Übermensch":
The hyperanthropos is to be found in the writings of Lucian, in the
second century A. D. — and Nietzsdie, as a classical philologist, had
studied Lucian and made frequent reference to him in his philologica. In

30
On Strauss Nietzsdie writes: "Mit einem gewissen rauhen Wohlbehagen hüllt er sich in
das zottige Gewand unserer Affengenealogen und preist Darwin als einen der größten
Wohltäter der Menschheit, — aber mit Beschämung sehen wir, daß seine Ethik ganz los-
gelöst von der Frage: 'wie begreifen wir die Welt?' sich aufbaut" (SA I, p. 167).
31
It should be pointed out that Lady Blessington, Thomas Medwin and the Methodist
preacher James Kennedy, who had long discussions with Byron in 1823, all felt that
Byron was a sceptic rather than a thorough-going atheist (H. G. Schenk, The Mind of
the European Romantics (London, 1966), p. 143). A modern scholar, G. Wilson Knight,
thinks it quite mistaken to regard Byron as an atheist.
144 David S. Thatcher

German, the word had been used by Heinrich Müller (Geistliche Er-
quickungsstunden, 1664), by J. G. Herder, by Jean Paul — and by
Goethe, in a poem (Zueignung) and in Faust (Part I, line 490), where a
spirit scorns the frightened Faust who has conjured him and calls him
Übermenschen?*
Manfred has frequently been called "the English Faust"; it was Goethe's
firm belief that Byron had adroitly stolen a leaf or two from his play and
incorporated it into his own work. Byron protested that he had taken no
such liberties: "All I know of that drama is from a sorry French translation,
from an occasional reading or two into English parts of it by Monk Lewis
when at Diodati, and from the Hartz mountain-scene, that Shelley ver-
sified the other day."33 Despite this disclaimer, the similarities cannot be
denied. Faust and Manfred are both proud, solitary men, supremely con-
scious that their superior gifts of imagination, insight and sensibility place
them immeasurably above the common run of men whose capacity to enjoy
the simple pleasures of life they know they are never to share: they were
born to experience suffering and self-torture. Frustrated to the point of
despair by their inability to attain real knowledge and to succeed in solving
the riddle of the universe, they communicate, unlawfully, with the powers
of the transcendent world. Faust, after dabbling unsuccessfully in magic,
makes a pact with the devil; but Manfred, in no less desperate a plight,
disdains to capitulate to the spirits he has conjured up, electing, in his final
speech, to die what Zarathustra called "a free death":
Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts, —
Is its own origin of ill and end —
And its own place and time: its innate sense,
When stripp'd of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
(Ill; iv; 125—136)

32
Nietzsche, 3rd ed. (Princeton, 1968), pp. 308—309.
33
Medwin, p. 170. Herbert Read comments: "This last remark is the most significant one,
for in style and spirit Manfred belongs to Shelley's rather than to Goethe's world. In
the year preceding its composition the two poets had been thrown together at a critical
 Nietzsche and Byron 145

Manfred questions and defies all established authority, whether institution-

al, political, moral or religious. He defies the spirits he has conjured up:
Slaves, scoff not at my will!
The mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark,
The lightning of my being, is as bright,
Pervading, and far-darting as your own,
And shall not yield to yours, though coop'd in clay!
(I; i; 153-157)
Manfred's rebellion is more radical than Faust's; it is titanic, Promethean.
His final speech is strikingly reminiscent of the closing lines of Byron's
poem "Prometheus," written at about the same time. Aesdiylus's Pro-
metheus, remarked Byron in reference to Manfred, "if not exactly in my
plan, has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its
influence over all or any thing that I have written" (LJ, IV, 174). This
Promethean element, which distinguishes Manfred from Faust, helps to
explain why Byron's protagonist, like Shelley's Prometheus, was instrumen-
tal in Nietzsche's developing vision of the "Übermensch"; it also helps us
to understand a burst of irritation in Ecce homo: "Ich habe kein Wort,
bloß einen Blick für die, welche in Gegenwart des Manfred das Wort Faust
auszusprechen wagen."34 Peter Heller's comment on this preference could
hardly be bettered:
Wenn . . . Nietzsdie Byron gegen Gothes Faust ausgespielt, so nicht etwa
deshalb, weil Faust das echte Symbol der Erkenntnistragödie ist, sondern
weil er dies nicht ist, indes Byrons Manfred, von der Niditigkeit des
Wissensstrebens und zugleidi von moralischem Schuldbewußtsein ge-
quält, viel radikaler auf seiner Autonomie besteht, keiner illusorischen
Gnade von oben teilhaftig wird, vielmehr in jener parodoxen Haltung
des prometheisdien, — wenn audi vom Sündenbewußtsein geschundenen
— "Vorforderer" Gottes, — einer Haltung, die zugleich als Feindschaft

moment in both their lives, and they became very intimate. Shelley's influence on
Byron was direct and deep, and Manfred springs from the same poetic atmosphere as
Julian and Maddalo and Prometheus Unbound. It has all Shelley's expressive energy,
but it lacks his subtle fire" (Byron (London, 1961), pp. 30—31). Alastor and Queen
Mab might be added to these Shelley titles. Brandes saw Shelley's influence at work
"in the spirit scenes in Manfred, and very specially in the third act of the drama,
which was re-written by his advice" (Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature
(New York, 1906) IV, 301).
34
SA II, p. 1089. "Into what mediocrity and platitude sinks the Faust of Goethe, com-
pared to Manfred!" (Taine, III, 131). According to Brandes, Manfred exhibits "a
higher ideal of independent manhood" than does Faust (op. cit.t IV, 308).
146 David S. Thatcher

gegen Gott und als Gottesleugnung empfunden wird, — allein auf sich
selbst gestellt zugrunde geht.35
Manfred possessed the same "göttliche Hoheit" Nietzsche found in Hölder-
lin's Empedocles. Like Manfred, Empedocles suffered "ein Tod aus Götter-
stolz, aus Menschenverachtung, aus Erdensattheit und Pantheismus" (SA
III, pp. 97—98). It is likely that Manfred served as a model for the
prophet-hero of Also sprach Zarathustra, for a note of the 1880s reads:
"Ich will das Ganze als eine Art Manfred und ganz persönlich schreiben.
Von den Menschen suche ich weder 'Lob noch Mitleid noch Hülfe', ich will
sie vielmehr "durch midi überwältigen* "*%
Nietzsche's intense absorption in Manfred's "inquietude metaphysi-
que"zl gradually yielded to a more inclusive interest in Byron's work,
particularly the letters and the journals, during the period at Basel.
Manfred, as Nietzsche knew, was begun in Switzerland, and the Swiss alps
provide the scenic backdrop of the play. Byron wrote: "It was the Stan-
bach [sic] and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus,
that made me write Manfred" (L], V, 37). It was in Switzerland,
Nietzsche reminded himself, that the young Goethe discovered "seine hohen
deutschen Antriebe"; it was in Switzerland that Voltaire, Gibbon and
Byron were able to cultivate their "übernationale Empfindungen"; more-
over, in Switzerland "Alpen- und Alpenthalpflanzen des Geistes" con-
tinued to flourish (GA XII, p. 199). In 1878, one year before leaving Basel,
Nietzsche quotes Goethe's rebuttal of Eckermann's suggestion that no de-
cided gain for "reine Menschenbildung" is obtainable from Byron's writ-
ings: "Byron's Kühnheit, Keckheit und Grandiosität, ist das nicht alles
bildend? Wir müssen uns hüten, es stets im entschieden Reinen und Sitt-
lichen suchen zu wollen. Alles Große bildet, sobald wir es gewahr werden"
(GA XI, p. 403). The reference to Voltaire and Gibbon — both of whom
Byron revered — suggests that Nietzsche is becoming more keenly aware of
the classical side of Byron, the Byron who, especially in his plays, espoused
the classical virtues of formal simplicity, compression and "regularity" in
order to dramatise "suppressed passion" as opposed to "the rant of the
present day" (LJ, V, 371—372). In an abrupt reversal of opinion,

85
"Von den ersten und letzten Dingen," (Berlin, 1972), p. 468 n. Heller attributes to
Nietzsche's liking for Prometheus an uncritical admiration for Siegfried Lipiner's
Entfesselte Prometheus (see the letter to Rohde, August 28, 1877, SA III, p. 1143).
Christopher Middleton, in his Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (Chicago, 1969),
p. 164, errs in ascribing this work to Shelley.
86
GA XII, p. 217.
87
Schenk, p. 147.
 Nietzsche and Byron 147

Nietzsche even laments the disappearance of the three unities and other
classical restrictions:
Einer der Großen, auf dessen Instinkt man sich wohl verlassen kann und
dessen Theorie nichts weiter als ein dreißig Jahre Mehr von Praxis fehlte,
— Lord Byron hat einmal ausgesprochen: "Was die Poesie im allge-
meinen anlangt, so bin ich, je mehr ich darüber nachdenke, immer fester
der Überzeugung, daß wir allesamt auf dem falschen Wege sind, einer
wie der andere. Wir folgen alle einem innerlich falschen revolutionären
System — unsere oder die nächste Generation wird noch zu derselben
Überzeugung gelangen." Es ist dies derselbe Byron, welcher sagt: "Ich
betrachte Shakespeare als das schlechteste Vorbild, wenn auch als den
außerordentlichsten Dichter." Und sagt im Grunde Goethes gereifte
künstlerische Einsicht aus der zweiten Hälfte seines Lebens nicht
genau dasselbe?88
It was because Byron did not have thirty years more to put his theories into
practice that Nietzsche feels justified in condemning him, with increasingly
outspoken vehemence, as the arch-instigator and arch-representative of
romantic attitudes. Unlike Goethe, Byron did not learn, in Nietzsche's view,
to discipline the inherently destructive energies of his poetic imagination,
"die welche das, was wird und werden könnte, vorwegnimmt, vorweg ge-
nießt, vorweg erleidet und im endlichen Augenblick des Geschehens und der
Tat bereits müde ist," though he knew of its dangers: "Lord Byron, der
dies alles gut kannte, schrieb in sein Tagebuch: 'Wenn ich einen Sohn habe,
so soll er etwas ganz prosaisches werden — Jurist oder Seeräuber'."39
Nietzsche refers to Byron and Alfred de Musset äs "jene Menschen der
intellektuellen Krämpfe, welche gegen sich selber ungeduldig und verfinstert
sind," men who derive from their creative activity "nur eine kurze, die
Adern fast sprengende Lust und Glut und dann eine um so winterlichere
Öde und Vergrämheit." Nietzsche wonders how such men are able to
bear up:

88
SA I, p. 580. Byron wrote on September 15, 1817: "With regard to poetry in general,
I am convinced, the more I think of it, that he [Moore] and all of us — Scott,
Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Campbell, I, — are all in the wrong, one as much as
another: that we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system, or systems, not
worth a damn in itself, and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free; and
that the present and next generations will finally be of this opinion" (LJ, IV, 169). On
July 14, 1821 he wrote of Shakespeare: "I look upon him to be the worst of models,
though the most extraordinary of writers" (LJ, V, 323). Goethe both knew of and
agreed with this view of Shakespeare (see Eckermann's entry for December 25, 1825).
89
S A I, p. 1175. Nietzsche has torn Byron's remark out of its proper context — hostility
towards authors: "They seem to be an irritable set, and I wish myself well out of i t . . .
What the devil had I to do with scribbling? ... If I have a wife, and that wife has a
son — by any body — I will bring up mine heir in the most anti-poetical way —
make him a lawyer, or a pirate, or — any thing" (LJ, II, 402, (March 17, 1814)).
148 David S. Thatcher

Ist man Byron, so dürstet man nach Taten, weil diese noch mehr uns von
uns abziehen als Gedanken, Gefühle und Werke. Und so wäre vielleicht
doch der Tatendrang im Grunde Selbstflucht? — würde Pascal uns
fragen ... man erwäge doch ..., daß vier von den Tatendurstigsten aller
Zeiten Epileptiker gewesen sind (nämlich Alexander, Cäsar, Mohammed
und Napoleon) so wie auch Byron diesem Leiden unterworfen war.40
Though it would be incorrect to say that Byron suffered from epilepsy, it
is true that he was haunted by a dread of this terrible disease; for in a low
state of hypochondria he would vent his sorrows "in language which,
though sometime sublime, was at others as peevish and capricious, as that
of an unruly and quarrelsome child."41 This volatile element in Byron
disturbed Nietzsche; he recognized it in other "große Dichter" like Musset,
Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol, men of different nationalities bound by a
common affliction:
Menschen der Augenblicke, begeistert, sinnlich, kindsköpfisch, im Miß-
trauen und Vertrauen leichtfertig und plötzlich; mit Seelen, an denen ge-
wöhnlich irgendein Bruch verhehlt werden soll; oft mit ihren Werken
Rache nehmend für eine innere Besudelung, oft mit ihren Aufflügen
Vergessenheit suchend vor einem allzu treuen Gedächtnis.42
It was "Vergessenheit" that Manfred was vainly seeking: "Forgetfulness /
I sought it all, save where e tis to be found, / And that I have to learn"
(II; ii; 145—147). That example was ready to Nietzsche's hand:
Da gab es einen sehr stolzen Menschen, der durchaus nur von sich selber
etwas annehmen wollte, Gutes und Schlimmes: als er aber das Vergessen
nötig hatte, konnte er es sich selber nicht geben, sondern mußte dreimal
die Geister beschwören; sie kamen, sie hörten sein Verlangen, und zuletzt
sagten sie: "nur dies gerade steht nicht in unserer Macht!" (SA I,
p. 1126).

40
SA I, p. 1269. Byron wrote on November 10, 1813: "I by no means rank poetry or
poets high in the scale of intellect. This may look like affectation, but it is my real
opinion ... I prefer the talents of action — of war, or the senate, or even of science,
— to all the speculations of those mere dreamers of another existence (I don't mean
religiously, but fancifully) and spectators of this apathy" (LJ, III, 405). Nietzsche was
probably thinking less of this and similar remarks (LJ, II, 329, 345, or III, 400) than
of the fateful Greek expedition.
41
These are Dr. Millingen's words, quoted by Leslie A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography
(New York, 1957), III, 1210—1211.
42
S A II, p. 743. Byron found it impossible to lose his "own wretched identity" even in
"the majesty, and the power, and the glory" of natural scenery (LJ, III, 364). The
third canto of Childe Harold was expressly undertaken, Byron confesses in the fourth
stanza, "that it wean me from the weary dream / Of selfish grief or gladness — so it
fling / Forgetfulness around me." "To withdraw myself from myself (oh, that cursed
selfishness!) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all"
(LJ, II, p. 351). To Byron, writing poetry was a means of "getting rid of thinking."
 Nietzsche and Byron 149

Nietzsche could not forget that, like himself, Byron had dwelt in the ambi-
guous romantic twilight, "jenes Zwielicht von ewigem Verlieren und ewi-
gem ausschweifendem Hoffen," when, he says, Europe dreamed with Rous-
seau, danced around the tree of revolution and worshipped at the feet of
Napoleon. The memory of such a time was both painful and absurd: "Wie
fremd klingt die Sprache jener Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, Byron an unser
Ohr, in denen zusammen dasselbe Schicksal Europas den Weg zum Wort ge-
funden hat, das in Beethoven zu singen wußte!" (SA II, p. 712). Byron, of
course, had idolized Rousseau and was steeped in his writings, especially
La NoHvelle Heloise; his mother insisted he was like Rousseau, a view
shared by Madame de Stael, Stendhal and others. Byron dismissed the
notion, meticulously listing all the points of difference he detected between
himself and the Swiss and concluding: "Altogether, I think myself justified
in thinking the comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of pique,
for Rousseau was a great man; and the thing, if true, were flattering
enough."43 In Nietzsche's view, Byron contracted from Rousseau some-
thing it took time to cure: "Das Krankhafte an Rousseau am meisten be-
wundert und nachgeahmt. (Lord Byron ihm verwandt; auch sich zu er-
habenen Attitüden aufschraubend, zum rankunösen Groll; Zeichen der
"Gemeinheit"; später, durch Venedig ins Gleichgewicht gebracht, begriff er,
was mehr erleichtert und wohltut... l3insouciance.)"** As for Napoleon's
influence, that, too, was in some degree pernicious. "Vielleicht ist gerade er
es," writes Nietzsche in a caustic note on hero-worship, "der die roman-
tische, dem Geiste der Aufklärung fremde Prostration vor dem 'Genie' und
dem 'Heros' unserem Jahrhundert in die Seele gegeben hat, er, vor dem ein

43
L], I, 192—193. Brandes saw Byron as "a direct descendant of Rousseau" — Byron's
description of Rousseau in Childe Harold, III, 77, was "a stanza which might have
been written about himself (op. cit., IV, 271, 271 n). Stendhal, who had met Byron in
Milan in 1816, wrote: "Lord Byr®n greatly resembled Rousseau in the sense that he
was constantly occupied with himself and with the effect he produced on others"
("Lord Byron en Italic," Revue de Paris, March, 1830). Nietzsche read this article
when it was collected in Racine et Shakespeare (Paris, 1854). Cf. the excerpts he
made in fragments V 7 [151] and [152] = KGW V 1, 678.
44
SA III, p. 508 (cf. 529). Byron's "insouciance" (a term not incompatible with "amor
fati") is most in evidence in Don Juan, a work which Nietzsche, surprisingly, mentions
only twice (first in the "Germania" lecture and again on the fair copy page
containing aphorism 5 of WS — cf. KGW IV 4, 303 with aph. WS 5). He seems
however to have been aware of the "new" ironic, anti-romantic Byron who
emerged in that poem: "Die Italiener allein in der blutigen Satire echt und ur-
sprünglich. Von Buratti an, der dem Genie Byron's die entscheidende Wendung gab"
(GA XIV, p. 177). Byron saw Buratti's verse satires in M.S as they were thought too
licentious for publication: Byron's literary advisers thought Don Juan itself disgrace-
fully immoral.
150 David S. Thatcher

Byron sich nicht zu sagen schämte, er sein ein 'Wurm gegen solch ein
Wesen'."45
Yet Nietzsche's attacks on Byron's romantic excesses should not blind
us to the strong possibility that in Byron Nietzsche recognized a kindred
spirit who had made some progress towards "Selbst-Überwindung", the
kind of progress the otherworldly powers had praised in Manfred: "Yet,
see, he mastereth himself, and makes / His torture tributary to his will"
(II; iv; 159—160). After all, Nietzsche admired both Byron and Napoleon
for practising "Selbst-Beherrschung" and for doing so in the same way,
that is, by associating the idea of gratification so firmly with some painful
thought that after a while the thought of gratification is itself immediately
felt as painful:
Hierhin gehört es auch, wenn der Stolz des Mensdien, wie zum Beispiel
bei Lord Byron und Napoleon, sich aufbäumt und das Übergewicht eines
einzelnen Affektes über die gesamte Haltung und die Ordnung der Ver-
nunft als Beleidigung empfindet: woraus dann die Gewohnheit und die
Lust entsteht, den Trieb zu tyrannisieren und ihn gleichsam knirschen zu
machen. ("Ich will nicht der Sklave irgendeines Appetites sein" —
schrieb Byron in sein Tagebuch.)46
Though Julius Caesar was Nietzsche's prime example of a man who exer-
cised "das Maximum von Autorität und Zucht" towards "unerbittliche
und furchtbare Instinkte," it is tempting to see Byron and his various
personae, especially Manfred and Lara, as formative influences on such a
definition of freedom as this:
Daß man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat. Daß man die
Distanz, die uns abtrennt, festhält. Daß man gegen Mühsal, Härte, Ent-
behrung, selbst gegen das Leben gleichgültig wird. Daß man bereit ist,
seiner Sache Menschen zu opfern, sich selber nidit abgerechnet. Freiheit
bedeutet, daß die männlichen, die kriegs- und siegsfrohen Instinkte die
Herrsdiaft haben über andre Instinkte, zum Beispiel über die des
«Glücks" (SA II, 1015).

45
SA I, p. 1189. Byron's actual words were "an insect compared with this creature"
(LJ, II, 409). Two years later, in 1816, Byron said he considered himself "the greatest
man existing." "Except Bonaparte," was a bystander's comment. Byron replied: "God,
I don't know that I do except even him." Quoted in Sir John A. Fox, The Byron
Mystery (London, 1924), p. 106.
40
SA I, p. 1082. "I will not be the slave of any appetite" (Z,/, II, 328). This journal
entry, dated November 17, 1813, contains a reference to Napoleon: "Ever since I
defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally time-servers, when the war
broke out in 1803, he has been a Heros de Roman of mine — on the Continent; I
don't want him here. But I don't like those same flights — leaving of armies, etc. etc.
I am sure when I fought for his bust at school, I did not think he would run away
from himself" (ibid., 323—324).
 Nietzsche and Byron 151

G. Wilson Knight is surely overstating the case when he argues that Byron,
"modern Europe's attempt at an evolutionary advance," was "the nearest
personality we know of to what Nietzsche envisioned in his 'over-man',"
but one can agree that Byron "was probably, in part, behind Nietzsche's
vision."47 It is possible that only Byron's early death prevented him from
achieving the status Nietzsche eventually accorded to Goethe (SA II,
pp. 1024—1025).
In 1886, Oberbeck loaned Nietzsche a copy of Karl Bleibtreu's Revo-
lution der Literatur; Nietzsche's brusque response was "Byron und Skott im
jetzigen Deutschland!"48 Did he mean that modern Germany was in-
capable of appreciating these writers, or perhaps more plausibly, that they
were outmoded or obsolete? Certainly Nietzsche had long since lost his taste
for Byron's poetry, as he had for Hölderlin's, but Byron's enigmatic perso-
nality, as reflected in his exuberant, racy prose, remained a powerful
attraction. Believing as he did that autobiographies should tell the un-
varnished truth, he deeply regretted the destruction of Byron's memoirs;49
but there were still the precious letters and journals, the spontaneous
expression of extempore thought, "trembling with wit, anger and enthu-
siasm,"50 as Stendhal phrased it, to delight and stimulate on the many
occasions he turned to them. "Er teilte mir mit," wrote Ida Overbeck,
"daß er beim Lesen eines Schriftstellers, immer nur durch kurze Sätze ge-
troffen, mit seinen eigenen Gedanken an ihn anknüpfe und auf derartig
sich bietende vorhandene Pfeiler einen neuen Bau setze."51 All he needed
to do was apply the hammer to the treasured stone.

47
Byron and Shakespeare (London, 1966), p. 20. Wilson Knight also detects a link bet-
ween Manfred and Zarathustra: "The surrounding mythology of Manfred, with
Arimanes (Ahriman) as a minor, more or less evil, deity, is Zoroastrian; and probably
Byron's use of this mythology prompted Nietzsche's use of Zarathustra (Zoroaster)"
(ibid., pp. 298—299).
48
Nietzsches Briefwechsel mit Franz Overbeck, edited by Oehler and Bernoulli
(Leipzig, 1916), p. 380. Nietzsche copied passages from Balzac in which Byron is
infavourably compared with Scott (GA XIV, p. 195). Karl Bleibtreu was the author
of Byron der Übermensch (1897).
49
"Lord Byron hat einiges Persönlichste über sich aufgezeichnet, aber Thomas Moore
war 'zu gut* dafür: er verbrannte die Papiere seines Freundes" (SA II, p. 878).
Nietzsche is subscribing to the legend, still regrettably current, that Moore was respon-
sible for the burning of Byron's memoirs. In fact, Moore was probably the only person
who protested against it. Details of the incident are given by Ethel Colburn Mayne in
Byron (New York, 1913), II, 320—326.
50
Quoted by Roden Noel, Life of Lord Byron (London, 1890), p. 50. In addition to
Racine et Shakespeare Nietzsche possessed Stendhal's Rome, Naples et Florence (1817)
which contains several references to Byron, including a passage excised from later
editions.
51
Bernoulli, I, 240. Cf. VM, aph. 201.