The second summer: 1883

In the summer of 1883, the philosopher arrived with a “club foot” of 104 kg, 230 lbs of books. His tremendous diligence – he completed the second part of “Zarathustra” and started on the third part – created a counterweight to his growing isolation. “An unworldly, transitory, roaming kind of feeling sits deep within me – and (…) not only because of the great discomfort of my external life. I seldom hear a friendly word.”
The Upper Engadine was soon “my proper refuge and home”, “here my muses live”, Sils Maria the “spot where I hope one day to die; meanwhile it offers me the best incentive to live on.”

 

The landlords “are so kind to me and happy that I have returned (…) In the house itself (…) I can buy English biscuits, corned-beef, tea, soap, in fact, everything you can think of: quite convenient.”
Due to his sensitive eyes he had his room wallpapered in dark green, “but it continues to be cold and very low.” He wished that he had “enough money (…), to build a kind of ideal dog house (…) a wooden house with 2 rooms, (…) on a peninsula, stretching into Lake Sils.”