Rare ALS in German, one page both sides, 5.25 x 8.25, no date but circa February 1877. Handwritten letter by Nietzsche from Sorrento, Villa Rubinacci, to his friend, the writer and painter Reinhart von Seydlitz in Davos, Switzerland, inviting him to join Nietzsche and Malwida von Meysenbug in Sorrento. In part (translated): "My dear good friend, nothing but a query—apart from my most cordial thanks for your letter. Are you in sufficient health to make plans for the spring? I hope and wish so with all my heart. You would still find me in Sorrento. My two friends and companions [the philosopher Paul Rée and his student Albert Brenner] will be leaving me at the end of March, and I remain with Miss von Meysenbug…My eyes are worse, my head not significantly better—thus, to employ an ancient Italian phrase (first used by a Papal nepot when the bailiffs came to lead him to his death), ‘Va bene, patienza!’—The days are of exceptional beauty; there is here a mixture of ocean, forest, and mountain climate, and numerous semi-darkened, quiet pathways. Many plans cross our minds (those of Miss v. M. and myself), and you always figure in them." In fine condition.
During his 1876-77 sojourn on the gulf of Naples, Nietzsche was working on 'Menschliches, Allzumenschliches [Human, All Too Human],' his first work in the aphoristic style that would come to dominate his writings. On November 6th, Richard and Cosima Wagner had abruptly quit Sorrento, departing for Rome; it had been the last meeting between the philosopher and the composer whom he had formerly idolized. A rare and well-preserved letter by the profoundly influential philosopher.
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