Ecce Homo: Reflections on Nietzsche's Collapse, Solitude, and Turin

It is a story familiar to even people unfamiliar with philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche, existing in a state of mental frailty likely brought on by syphilis or actual mental illness, breaks down emotionally in the Piazza Carlo Alberto at the sight of a horse being flogged by its driver. Sobbing, he rushed to the horse and threw his arms around it's neck. The police were called and his landlord, arriving late on the scene, brought Nietzsche back up to his apartment and locked the door. Nietzsche, as the story goes, proceeded to dance and scream naked in a bacchanal fury. It wasn't long after that he was escorted to a psychiatric hospital in Basel and placed in his anti-semitic sister's care. The year he spent in Turin (which might have been longer had he not taken the wrong train due to his horrendous eyesight at the time) was probably his most productive and is easily his most famous. In that year alone he produced, almost in a stream of consciousness, three of his major works: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, and Twilight of the Idols. However, this output was accompanied by his sanity dancing on the precipice of destruction and despair (the two strands here-his output and his sanity- are barely, if at all related). The letters he wrote to those he kept in his life abroad in 1888 became more and more frayed. He began to sign his letters, in particular to his alleged secret love Cosima Wagner (wife of Richard Wagner), as Dionysus (an irony which, being on a wine trip, does not fall lightly on me).

It's a shame- prior to this final descent into vegetable status he seemed to have finally found a certain peace and quiet in Turin. He would often wax romantically about its streets, the river, the bridge, and the music. He delighted in walking up and down the streets during the day. The one thing he enjoyed the most in Turin was that, unlike the other cities that he had stayed in Italy, it was quiet. He said of the city:

"…What a dignified and serious city! Not at all a metropolis, not at all modern, as I had feared, but a princely residence of the seventeenth century, one that had only a single commanding taste in all things—the court and the noblesse.Everywhere the aristocratic calm has been kept: there are no petty suburbs; a unity of taste even in matters of color (the whole city is yellow or reddish-brown). And a classical place for the feet as for the eyes! What robustness, what sidewalks, not to mention the buses and trams, the organization of which verges on the marvelous here! One can live, it seems, more cheaply here than in the other large Italian cities I know; also, nobody has swindled me so far. I am regarded as an ufficiale tedesco (whereas I figured last winter in the official aliens’ register of Nice comme Polonais). Incredible—what serious and solemn palaces! And the style of the palaces, without any pretentiousness; the streets clean and serious—and everything far more dignified than I had expected! The most beautiful cafés I have ever seen. These arcades are somewhat necessary when the climate is so changeable, but they are spacious—they do not oppress one. The evening on the Po Bridge—glorious! Beyond good and evil!"

In the forward to Ecce Homo he writes one of my favorite passages:

"On this perfect day when everything is ripening and not only the grapes are becoming brown, a ray of sunshine has fallen on my life: I looked behind me, I looked before me, never have I seen so many and such good things together. Not in vain have I buried my forty-forth year today; I had the right to bury it- the life within it has been saved and is immortal...*yada,yada,yada my books are a gift I'm awesome yada, yada,yada* How could I not be grateful to the whole of my life?"

During this final year in Turin, Nietzsche was someone who is at once content with the solitude and unbearably alone. In a comment on Schopenhauer early in his career, Nietzsche stated that "the fate of solitude is the gift he receives from his fellow human beings; regardless of where he lives, the desert and the cave are with him." It rang true during his time in Turin

For a philosopher who sought to, as he put it, "philosophize with a hammer"and transvalue the values of care for the ordinary individual that had taken hold after the rise of Christianity, he seemed in desperate need of some form of ordinary human compassion in that last year of sanity. John Banville said in his book review of Chamberlain's biography of this period, "Nietzsche wanted to say yes to the ordinary realities of life, yet it was those very realities that were beyond him. Of his own emotional and spritiual infirmities he was well aware, yet he refused to forgive himself or to allow himself to relax in his struggle to formulate a philosophy that would strip away illusions. In this he is surely a wonderful example of what it is possible to achieve with even the poorest of materials." If any further interest

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When I first drove into the city and parked my car in front of the hotel, admittedly I was not charmed by this city in the least. It was grey, people seemed very closed off and intimidating, the hotel had a funny smell. I set myself up in my room, which I'm pretty sure has not been technologically updated since before I was born (the tv has this brick of a remote and only 12 channels. In order to preempt any 'first world problems' meme I'm less complaining about this and more just painting the scene). The internet made my AOL 56k dialup in the 90s on my Dell seem like high speed fiber optics. What should've been a five minute job of looking at google maps to see where things were AT BEST turned into a half hour. I decided it best to save all of the sight seeing for the next day since I was (a) still exhausted from the hike the day before and (b) I wasn't in the mood for museums and churches today. So I began how I normally do in an Italian town I'm unfamiliar with (which is most of them)-- walking, taking pictures, and casually looking for a place to have espresso and read. It was through walking aimlessly that I began to see the charm of this calm, maze like city. Turin slowly warmed up to me and I to it. We had a bad introduction so lets try this again, Si? What Nietzsche wrote about the city was not entirely off. It was relaxing walking through the arcades (no, not the video games) and seeing how people went about their day to day. The cafe's, the bar's (this city is the birth place of vermouth fyi), each had a history and an identity about it. Not to mention that most things had these amazing marble structures inside them. I had a great fuckin' pizza (at a place that I'm sure I couldn't find again if I tried), half a liter of wine, and another shot of espresso. I grabbed some gelato and sat in the piazza, which name escapes me at the moment. They had seats and a stage set up in the square. Apparently, there is a giant Mozart Festival at the end of the week (I'll be in Tuscany by then =( I also missed out on Neil Young in Barolo at the end of the week =( x5). I sat there eating my gelato as the loudspeakers blasted Mozart and it was awesome (sorry haters). I wandered back to my hotel and, in a surreal moment of television, I watched some WWF from 1993 on the EuroSports channel with German overdubs. I sat in bed reading and laughing to myself.

Turin is an odd city. Aside from the Nietzsche thing and the obvious- the Shroud of Turin- it houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo. Jean Francois Champollion, responsible for the first translation of the Rosetta Stone, said "The road to Memphis and Thebes passes through Turin." Going to that museum was a lot of fun for me because it brought back memories of playing the PC version of "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego" and having to prepare a mummy for burial (this level was only second in annoyance to the Ancient Rome level where you had to rearrange the plumbing). 

I think, in just the two days spent here, I understood the charm and the solitude that Nietzsche found in the city. I don't think I've been to a city where I could occupy myself by just walking around. This city forced me into many situations where I had to go outside of my comfort zone and not be embarrassed by my horrendous grasp of the italian language. I enjoyed what it had to give. Ultimately, I am glad to be leaving the city; I feel as though it gave me all that it could give me for now. I don't have much purpose here other than reading, eating, drinking, and taking pictures of people. I leave tomorrow for Siena and Tuscany will be the new region of focus. Since tomorrow is bound to be relatively uneventful I'll post some of my favorite pictures that I took of Turin. In the meantime here's a few stock ones off google.

Ciao Bambino,

Tyler