248 Nietzsche
tory. Although he himself devoted considerable research to the subject
of instinctual behavior, he considered it infinitely diverse. He
approached instinctual behavior from a polytheistic perspective and did
not subscribe to the unimaginative monotheism of the sexual deter-
minists. It was none other than Richard Wagner who first offended and
then "mortally" wounded him with this sort of psychology of sexualist
suspicion.
In the early 1870s, Wagner gendy counseled Nietzsche not to cultivate
ovedy intimate friendships with men at the expense of women if he
wanted to overcome his melancholy and dark moods. Wagner wrote to
him on April 6,1874: "Among other things, I found that I have never in
my life had the kind of contact with men that you have in Basel in the
evening hours What young men seem to be lacking is women:... it
is a question of knowing where to find them without stealing them. Of
course, you could always steal one if necessary. I think you ought to
marry" (7V/ÌF241).
The Wagners were not the only ones on the hunt for a bride for
Nietzsche. His mother and Malwida von Meysenbug went to great
lengths to get him married οίξ and he did not always resent their inter-
ference. Sometimes he even sought help in finding a wife. Behind the
scenes, though, Wagner often spread rumors and gossip, as Nietzsche
probably learned much later, just following Wagner's death in early 1883.
Even before then, the rumor was circulating that Nietzsche was an
effeminate man and chronic masturbator, and it is quite possible that he
had already caught wind of these rumors during the bittersweet summer
he spent with Lou Salomé in Tautenburg.
On March 13,1882, Paul Rèe traveled from Genoa, where he was vis-
iting Nietzsche, to Rome. It was in Rome that Rée met a twenty-year-old
Russian woman named Lou Salomé at the house of Malwida von
Meysenbug. This highly gifted daughter of a Russian general of
Huguenot descent had left Russia with her mother after the death of her
father in 1880 in order to study in Zurich. The young woman suffered
from a severe lung disease, and doctors gave her only a few years to live.