Chapter 5
Hope Is Fucked
In the late nineteenth century, during a mild and glorious summer in the Swiss
Alps, a hermetic philosopher, a self-anointed dynamite of mind and spirit,
metaphorically came down off his mountaintop and, with his own money,
published a book. The book was his gift to mankind, a gift that stood boldly
upon the doorstep of the modern world and announced the words that would
make the philosopher famous long after his death.
It announced, “God is dead!”—and more. It announced that the echoes of
this death would be the harbinger of a new and dangerous age that would
challenge us all.
The philosopher spoke these words as a warning. He spoke as a
watchman. He spoke for us all.
Yet, the book sold fewer than forty copies.^1Meta von Salis woke before dawn to light the fire to boil water for the
philosopher’s tea. She fetched ice to cool the blankets for his achy joints. She
gathered bones from yesterday’s dinner to begin stewing a broth that would
settle his stomach. She hand-washed his soiled linens. And soon, he would
need his hair cropped and his mustache trimmed, and she realized she had
forgotten to fetch a new razor.
This was Meta’s third summer caring for Friedrich Nietzsche and
probably, she figured, her last. She loved him—as a brother, that is. (When a
mutual friend suggested they marry, they both laughed uproariously . . . and
then became nauseated.) But Meta was approaching the limits of her charity.
She had met Nietzsche at a dinner party. She listened to him play piano
and tell jokes and rambunctious stories of his antics with his old friend,
composer Richard Wagner. Unlike in his writing, Nietzsche was polite and
mild in person. He was an affectionate listener. He was a lover of poetry and
could recite dozens of verses from memory. He’d sit and play word games for
hours, sing songs and make puns.
Nietzsche was disarmingly brilliant. A mind so sharp he could slice a
room open with only a few words. Aphorisms that would later become world