Nietzsche, Friedrich - Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of Idols & Other Writings (Cambridge, 2005)

In Turin, on 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered an irrevocable mental

collapse. By the time of his death, in 1900, he had become wholly physically

incapacitated as well. I It seems probable that the cause was syphilis.

It is apparently common for syphilitics to experience a period of uplift,

a remarkable sense of well-being, in the months preceding the final collapse.

Certainly this was so in Nietzsche's case. In the year before his

breakdown his letters are increasingly touched with euphoria. His health,

extremely poor for well over a decade, seems to him to be on the mend:

'I have just looked at myself in a mirror - I have never before appeared

as I do now: in exemplary good spirits, well-nourished, and looking ten

years younger than I ought to';2 'my health, like the weather, appears

every day with irrepressible brightness and gaiety'.3 He feels more equal

than he has ever felt to the most demanding of intellectual tasks: 'it is

my great harvest-time. Everything comes easily to me, everything I try

succeeds, notwithstanding that no one has yet had such great matters in

hand as I have';4 'the heaviest tasks, for which no man has yet been sufficiently

strong, come easily'. 5 His estimate of himself and of his abilities

acquires a megalomanic tinge: 'in two months I shall be the first name

on earth'; 'What is remarkable here in Turin is the fascination I exercise

on people .