Only a few can see so clearly as to be muddled in the thoughts of gods....All history, narratives, in a sense our self naratives of the otherness (but likewise the otherness narrates us), to see the underlyning epigenesis of each facet, each character, each historical precedent as a self narrative, one that takes place and is situated in any given lived experience and aleatory conjecture....thus the crucified speeks to me....I recall someone saying that what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence, or was it me who narrated that phrase, anwyays now it has lost all sense of belonging and is thrown in the gallows for all to see hang, for the crowds would take us as bafoons if it were otherwise!

Turin, January 3, 1889: Letter to Cosima Wagner

To Princess Ariadne, My Beloved.

It is a mere prejudice that I am a human being. Yet I have often enough dwelled among human beings and I know the things human beings experience, from the lowest to the highest. Among the Hindus I was Buddha, in Greece Dionysus—Alexander and Caesar were incarnations of me, as well as the poet of Shakespeare, Lord Bacon. Most recently I was Voltaire and Napoleon, perhaps also Richard Wagner ... However, I now come as Dionysus victorious, who will prepare a great festival on Earth ... Not as though I had much time ... The heavens rejoice to see me here ... I also hung on the cross ...

F. Nietzsche

to

Cosima Wagner (1837-1930)

She was the daughter of Franz Liszt, and was married to Richard Wagner. Her diary indicates that "Ariadne" received at least three love notes from "Dionysus" at the time of Nietzsche's mental collapse. "My wife Cosima brought me here," Nietzsche told his doctors at the psychiatric clinic in Jena in March, 1889.