power. The idea of revelation in the sense that something becomes
suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy,
which profoundly convulses and upsets one--describes simply the matter
of fact. One hears--one does not seek; one takes--one does not ask
who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with
necessity, unhesitatingly--I have never had any choice in the matter.
There is an ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes
relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush
or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is
completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an
endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes;--there
is a depth of happiness in which the painfullest and gloomiest do not
operate as antitheses, but as conditioned, as demanded in the sense of
necessary shades of colour in such an overflow of light. There is an
instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces wide areas of forms
(length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of
the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and
tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous
outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The
involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable
thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and
what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as
the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression.
It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all
things came unto one, and would fain be similes: 'Here do all things
come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee, for they want to ride
upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to every truth. Here
fly open unto thee all being's words and word-cabinets; here all being
wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of thee how
to talk.' This is MY experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that
one would have to go back thousands of years in order to find some one
who could say to me: It is mine also!--"

In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the Engadine for Germany and
stayed there a few weeks. In the following winter, after wandering
somewhat erratically through Stresa, Genoa, and Spezia, he landed in
Nice, where the climate so happily promoted his creative powers tha