46 Nietzschebearable for those of us who do not wish to remain trapped in animal
existence,^ <cbecause our burden is dispelled and no strings bind us to life
anymore. Life is bearable because it can be disposed of without pain" (Β
2,95f.). As Nietzsche wrote to Rohde in October 1868, the "ethical air,
the Faustian odor, cross, death, and grave" (Β 2,322) were what fascinated
him about Schopenhauer. "Cross, death, and grave" did not depress him;
on the contrary, they seemed to be an elixir of life. Nietzsche found
Schopenhauer's gloomy oudook enticingly provocative. He absorbed it
into himself to test how much of it he could bear without losing his lust
for life. Terminologically, his early jottings while caught up in reading
Schopenhauer were not framed as a "Will to Power," but in practice he
was already experimenting with this will to power, because, in his view,
Schopenhauer's negation of the will was not denial but extreme affirma-
don. It signaled the victory of the mental will over the natural will.
Nietzsche considered both internal and external forces of life sub-
lime when regarded from a Schopenhauerian perspective. Describing
the impression a thunderstorm made on him, he wrote on April 7,1866:
"How different the lightning, the storm, the hail, free powers, without
ethics! How happy, how powerful they are, pure will, untarnished by
intellect!" (2? 2,122). He even saw his neighbors in a different light. Since
Schopenhauer had removed the "blindfold of optimism" from his eyes,
his vision had grown keener, and life seemed "more interesting, albeit
uglier," he wrote to his friend Hermann Mushacke on July 11, 1866 (B
2,140). When his friend Carl von Gersdorff was in the depths of despair
over the death of his cherished brother, Nietzsche wrote to him on
January 16,1867: "It is a period in which you yourself can put to the test
what is true in the doctrine of Schopenhauer. If the fourth book of his
major work now leaves an ugly, dreary, annoying impression on you, if it
does not have the power to lift you up and to lead you out from the out-
ward intense pain to that melancholy but happy mood we experience
when listening to noble music, in which you see the earthly veils fall
away: then I will have nothing further to do with this philosophy. Only
a person who is filled with pain may pronounce a decisive judgment: the