ABSTRACT
I IN dealing with Nietzsche’s final collapse one has to take into account, apart from any other reasons, at least two external circumstances which contributed to its dénouement: the conspiracy of silence on the part of the German press, and his utter isolation even among his friends. Nietzsche’s misunderstandings with the press, the savants and the literary men of Germany began with his very first book, The Birth of Tragedy. In spite of its original approach to the subject, the book was ostracized by German philologists, who succeeded in discrediting Nietzsche to such an extent as to make him lose for a while most of his students. The publication of his subsequent books was largely ignored, and this at a time when beyond anything else he needed support from outside in order to believe in himself and in his mission. This is what he wrote about it to Baron von Seydlitz in 1888, that is, in the last year of his creative life: ‘Look at our dear Germans! Although I am in my forty-fifth year, and have published about fifteen books, no one in Germany has yet succeeded in writing even a moderately good review of any of my works…. There have been enough evil and slanderous hints with regard to me, and in the papers both scholarly and unscholarly the prevailing attitude is one of extreme animosity-but how is it that no one feels insulted when I am abused? And during all these years no comfort, not a drop of human sympathy, not a breath of love.’
