1.
Nietzsche adored his father, who died when Friedrich
was only five, compelling him to later write, “Black clouds billowed up, the
lightning flashed and damaging thunderbolts fell from the heavens.”
2.
Maybe, for Nietzsche, that is when God died; or maybe
it was six months later when he looked out his bedroom window to see a white
spirit rise from his father’s grave and enter the nearby church, organ music
playing, then returning to the grave with something beneath its arm; for when
Nietzsche awakened from this dream, his brother Little Joseph, not quite two
years old, suffered a stroke and died.
3.
It was in Leipzig in 1866, while at university, that
Nietzsche contracted syphilis after visiting a brothel.
4.
Perhaps Nietzsche felt stronger for it, but anxiety,
migraine headaches, nausea and poor eyesight compelled poor Fritz, at age 35, to relinquish his chair as a classics professor at the University
of Basle and seek a quieter, calmer place for the full-time writing of
experimental philosophy.
5.
Thus Nietzsche found Sils Maria, where walking–and the
electromagnetic power of the Engadine valley–gave him solace and inspiration,
supplemented by hashish oil, which contributed to his very deep thinking.
6.
On June 3rd, 1889, while standing on the
Piazza Carlo Alberto in Turin, Nietzsche suffered a nervous breakdown when he
saw a man beating a horse; sobbing, he rushed to embrace and comfort the horse,
placing both arms around the nag’s neck.
7.
Nietzsche was led back to his room nearby, and when he
awakened from a nap, Fritz believed he had succeeded God (whom he’d already
declared dead) as ruler of all mankind–suggesting also that he could control
the weather.
8.
Nietzsche’s doctor, a close friend, was summoned and,
upon arrival, arranged for Fritz to be smuggled out of Italy–to Basle,
Switzerland– for fear the Italians would forcibly confine him.
9.
Throughout the journey by train, Nietzsche sang,
danced, shouted and asked that women be brought to him; Swiss doctors soon
declared him insane.
10.
The mediocrity
of man, along with syphilis microbes mulching his brain, and hashish oil and
chloral hydrate (which Nietzsche took for sleep), had driven the philosopher
mad; and, faithless, since God for him had long since died, Nietzsche spent the
last ten years of his life casually strolling a lunatic asylum before
transcending from the chaos of his life into a dancing star.
