Part III. Friedrich Nietzsche's Personality and Psychotherapy

The similarities in the physiological characteristics of Leopardi and Nietzsche are especially remarkable. The same sensitivity toward weather and seasons, toward place and environment, are found in both. Leopardi feels the slightest change in the thermometer and barometer. He could create only during the summer; he traveled about, always looking for the most suitable location for his creative activity. Nietzsche expresses himself about such peculiarities of his nature in the following manner: “Now after long practice, when I observe the effects of climatic and meteorological nature upon myself, as upon a very delicate and reliable instrument, and after a short journey, perhaps from Turin to Milan, calculate the change in the degree of humidity calculated physiologically in myself, then I look with horror at the sinister fact that my life until the last ten years, the most dangerous years, has always been spent in locations treacherous and absolutely forbidden to me. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia, in fact, Bonn, Liepzig, Basel, Venice,—all of them places of misfortune for my physiology. ...” Connected with this unusual sensitivity in Leopardi as well as in Nietzsche, is a contempt for all altruistic feelings. Both of them had to overcome this in order to be able to tolerate mankind. From Nietzsche's own words one can see that his shyness in presence of strong impressions, of attractions which demand too much of his sensitivity, fill him with suspicion toward selfless impulses. He says: “I accuse those sympathetic people in that it is easy for them to lose the modesty, the awe, the delicate feeling for distances.” For Leopardi also, it was certain that a bearable human being was very seldom found; he encountered misery with irony and bitterness, just as Nietzsche had adopted as one of his principles: “As first tenet of our love for mankind, the weak and misformed shall be destroyed. And one should even assist them in this.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, page 218) About life, Nietzsche said that it is “Essentially appropriation, injury, overwhelming of strangers and weaker ones, suppression, hardness, forcing upon others one's own forms, incorporation, and, in its least and mildest form, exploitation.” ( Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 259) For Leopardi also, life is an unfeasible, frightful struggle, in which some trample others.