220 Nietzsche23, 1881). Nietzsche declared to his friend Franz Overbeck in Basel:
'This is the book with which people are likely to associate my name" (B
6,71; March 18,1881). He laid it on even thicker to his mother and sis-
ter, although his words were tinged with irony. He sent them a copy of
his new book with the following comment: "This is how the object
looks that will make our none-too-beautiful name immortal" {B 6,91;
June 11,1881). Their reactions led him to conclude that they had a poor
grasp of the situation. For his mother, Nietzsche was nothing but a
failed professor who traveled resdessly from place to place in poor
health and had yet to find a wife. She still had to send him socks and
sausages. Well aware of her attitude, Nietzsche addressed an earnest let-
ter to his mother and sister: "If you take into account the enormous
amount of work my nervous system has to accomplish, it is in splendid
shape.... Thanks to it, I have produced one of the boldest and most
sublime and most thought-provoking books ever born of the human
brain and heart" (B 6,102f.; July 9,1881).
A scant two months later, his assessment of Daybreak had changed
dramatically. He wrote to Paul Rèe: "And this same year that has seen the
publication of this work is now to see publication of another work as
well, in which I may be permitted to forget my poor piecemeal philoso-
phy in the larger context" (B 6,124; late Aug. 1881). Daybreak, which he
was so recendy calling an "immortal" work, was now a "poor piecemeal
philosophy"? Something must have happened in the interim that had so
drastically altered his view of his own work.
Nietzsche began the first of a series of extended stays in Sils-Maria,
in the Upper Engadine mountains of Switzerland, in July 1881. During
one of his walks around the lake in Silvaplana, he experienced a vision
concerning the nature of inspiration, which he later described in the
"Zarathustra" chapter of Ecce Homo in terms that suggested a momen-
tous event in European history: "Does anyone at the end of the nine-
teenth century have a clear idea of what poets of strong eras called
inspiration? If not, I would like to describe it. With the slightest remnant
of superstition remaining in ourselves, we would scarcely be capable of