34 Nietzsche
territory of religious philosophy. The 1859 autobiography had concluded
with this devout formula: "God has guided me safely in everything as a
father would his weak litde child" (/1,31). By May 1861, however, this
guiding hand of God was subjected to intricate analysis. Nietzsche wrote
that the rationale of the "power that metes out" our destinies (/1,277)
is unfathomable; there is too much injustice and evil in the world, and
even coincidence plays a major, often wicked role. Is the basis of it all a
blind or perhaps even evil power? That cannot be the case, because the
origin and essence of the world cannot be beneath the human mind,
which seeks sense and meaning and is receptive to goodness. Thus, the
world as a whole cannot be meaningless, let alone ruled by an evil prin-
ciple. The essence of the world cannot be more arbitrary than the human
mind that seeks to fathom it. "Chance does not exist; everything that
happens has meaning" (/1,278). The text, which began as a sketch of
his life, breaks off with these words. Shortly thereafter, Nietzsche took
up the task of outlining his life story once again, but his overwrought
search for "meaning" obviously discouraged him, and he abandoned it
yet again. "The things I know about the first years of my life are too
insignificant to be told" (/1,279). A third attempt followed soon after,
in the form of a narrative centering on the death of his father and the
family's departure from Röcken. He depicted these events in terms that
suggest an expulsion from paradise. "That was the first, fateful period,
which reshaped my whole life to come" (/1,280). A wistfulness coupled
with a "certain sense of tranquillity and serenity" (/1,281) stole over
him, as did a feeling of alien existence in the world beyond paradise, a feel-
ing of desolation. He was on the lookout for figures with whom he felt
some spiritual bond or who roused him to self-empowerment: he
immersed himself in studies of Hölderlin, Lord Byron, and Napoleon ΙΠ.
Nietzsche had to defend his Hölderlin against the teachers who
wanted nothing to do with "the ravings of a lunatic" (/2,2). He praised
the "music" of his prose, the "soft melting timbres" that resonate like
uncanny dirges yet wax triumphant in "divine majesty" (/ 2,3). He con-
sidered Hölderlin the king of an as yet undiscovered empire, and him-