The life I am living is really dangerous because. I am one of those machines that could explode. In the town square in Turin, Italy on 3 January , Friedrich Nietzsche threw his arms around the neck of a horse being beaten, lost consciousness, and turned the bend to madness. That night Nietzsche kept everyone awake, singing, shouting, and banging on the piano. He composed a series of mad post cards, most of which were confiscated by the Turin post office.
When his former colleague, Jacob Burckhardt, received a four-page clearly unstable letter from Nietzsche written in tiny, almost illegible script, he immediately consulted Overbeck, who set out that day for Turin in time to keep a frightened Fino from having Nietzsche arrested.
Nietzsche had broken into tears and embraced Overbeck. Unspeakably horrible things would be audible, about himself as the successor of the dead God, the whole thing punctuated, as it were, on the piano, whereupon more convulsions and outbursts would follow. The next day Overbeck persuaded Nietzsche to accompany him to Basel pretending that there was to be a great festival in his honor. Short of money, they had to travel third class. A peasant woman with a hen in a basket was in their compartment with them.
Walter feared a violent incident. As they were going through the St. In Basel Professor Nietzsche was admitted to the nerve clinic of Dr. Wille, an expert on General Paralysis of the Insane. The sign-in sheet recorded: Friedrich Nietzsche, Professor at Basel at age of There were times before the well-known episode with the horse when Nietzsche was showing clear anticipatory signs of paresis, and times in the asylum when he seemed so normal that his friends wondered if it might all be a ruse.
I have seen Nietzsche in certain conditions where it seemed to meβa terrible thought! It is highly probable that he could write his philosophy of Dionysus only as a madman.
