20 Overture
(1,456; WB § 5). It could be claimed that his entire philosophy was an
endeavor to cling to life even when the music stopped. Although
Nietzsche attempted to make music with language, thought, and ideas as
much as humanly possible, displeasure was his constant companion. "It
should have sung, this 'new soul'—and not spoken!" (1,15; 2?jT"Attempt
at Self-Criticism" § 3), Nietzsche wrote in a later self-critical preface to
The Birth of Tragedy. His discontentment continued to dog him. Among
his fragments written in early 1888, the following remark appears: "The
fact is 'that I am so sad'; the problem Ί don't know what that means'...
The tale from the distant past'" (13,457). Nietzsche was on the trail of
Heinrich Heine, recalling lines from Heine's famous poem "The
Lorelei," in which a beautiful woman seated on the cliffs lures sailors to
their deaths with the allure of her song. Having heard the siren song,
Nietzsche grew dissatisfied with a culture in which the sirens had fallen
silent and the Lorelei was nothing more than a tale from the past. His
philosophy originated in postsirenian melancholy. He strove to preserve
at least the spirit of music in words and an echo of farewell while tun-
ing up for the possible return of music, so that the "bow" of life "does
not break" (1,453; WB § 4).
Over the course of many years, Nietzsche used the music of Wagner
to gauge his aesthetic pleasure. After hearing the overture to the
Meistersinger for the first time, before his personal encounter with
Wagner, he wrote to Rohde: "Every fiber and nerve of my being is tin-
gling. It has been a long time since I experienced such a sustained feel-
ing of rapture" {B 2,332; Oct. 27, 1868). This feeling was heightened
when he improvised on the piano. He could surrender himself to the
lure of the piano for hours at a time, forgetting himself and the world.
One famous and infamous scene described by his childhood friend Paul
Deussen refers to this rapture. "Nietzsche," reported Deussen, "traveled
alone to Cologne one day, took a guided tour of the sights, and then
asked the tour guide to take him to a restaurant. The tour guide took him
instead to a house of ill repute. Nietzsche told me the next day, Ί sud-
denly saw myself surrounded by a half dozen apparitions in tinsel and