It was a strange summer, the summer of 1882. Friedrich Nietzsche had followed his doctors suggestion and left his gloomy home town in Germany to visit a holiday vacation spot on the shores of the Atlantic in Canada. There he met Anne. That’s Anne of Green Gables. She now lives in the Public Domain. And so does the immortal soul of F. Nietzsche and all his published and unpublished works along with the representation of his character and person in works of fiction.

Yes, a strange summer indeed.

Anne wondered if she was up to the task when the grumpy German ‘philosopher’ got out of the carriage and ambled slowly up to the gate of the guest house. Anne was an orphan girl who had been sent to help out at an older couple’s seaside inn and guest house. The couple had wanted a boy, but settled for Anne when she proved she had a boyish side and worked hard to please the guests at he hotel.

On that memorable day Anne put on a big smile and her best ‘glad to see you’ persona and stepped forward. She did not give a hint that she had read a number of Nietzsche’s dreary works. His tired arguments matched his tired body. No wonder he was depressed and depressing. Anne vowed to do the best to fix that. This was ‘can do’ Canada, not ‘Don’t do that!’ Deutschland!

There is nothing perky spirit can not defeat.

Anne decided to take a direct approach to the stiff shirt German writer. When Nietzsche sat down to tea in the outside dinning area Anne deliberately spilled very hot deep brewed hot coffee on his starched white shirt front.

“Oh, pardon me,” Anne said in a mocking tone. “I must be one of those utermenschen you write of in your books about. I have spilled coffee on a Superman. Maybe coffee is your kryptonite.” She laughed and laughed and laughed at the dower German sage.

“I’ll have you fired!” he thundered.

“They don’t pay me,” she retorted. “I’m an orphan who was sent here by mistake. I became a big tourist attraction and national heroine because of my poignant antics and ability to draw people out of themselves. The government publishes stories about me.”

“What?” Nietzsche blustered. “I’ve never heard of you!”

“Maybe you’re not reading young adult teenage girl literature. Do you know who Nancy Drew is?” She wiped off his shirt giving the man his first human contact since he bumped into a station porter near a train in Berlin two weeks earlier. “Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into at least 36 languages. The original book is taught to students around the world. More people have heard of me than have heard of you. Your works are practically unreadable.”

Again Nietzsche was astounded that a young slip of a girl would speak to him in such an impudent tone. What could she know of his work? “Do you read German?” he asked dismissively.

“No,” she retorted looking him right in the eye. “I must rely on translators. Are you so arcane that you can’t be translated into simple English?”

“Perhaps.”

“Ha. Charlatan! Your ‘philosophy’ is nothing but ruling class bully logic. I’m top dog, so, what I do is right! Say I’m wrong, and I will bite you to death!” She laughed more. “What a sophisticated outgrowing of the ‘weakness’ of supposed Christian softness. Ancient Hellas would have seen you for what you are – a worshiper of tyranny. Might makes right dressed up in five hundred page books. A clear eyed school girl can see through you.”

That night Nietzsche hastened to read up on Anne of Green Gables. “I believe I have met my match,” the cranky old ‘confirmed’ bachelor said out loud as he slipped between his bed covers with one of Anne’s volumes in his hand.

……………

The next morning Anne served Nietzsche his breakfast in the cheerful sunny breakfast patio. Birds were singing in the trees and a few wispy clouds drifted by a blue, blue sky.

“God’s right in his world, ” Anne sighed as she poured a cup of coffee into a cup for Nietzsche.



“God is dead!” responded Nietzsche.

“Oh, not today, you,” Anne said playfully. “I promise not to pour coffee on you today if you’ll give us a smile.”

The man tried his best to smile. He wondered if he had smiled in the last month or more. He did not make a habit of going around grinning at people like a monkey on a chain with an organ grinder playing for money. He paid people for services, and they provided the services for money, there was no need for smiling as if customers and workers are friends. That is the way of the real world. Anyone can see that except maybe for a young girl. A sweet summer child.

But, then it was summer.

Each night, alone in his room, with one light on, Nietzsche read about Anne of Green Gables. What a girl. He had never met a girl like her. He had never read about a girl like her in Classical or German literature. Well, except maybe for ‘Heidi’ by sssss

……………..

In the days that pass the talkative outgoing Anne draws the moody sullen Nietzsche out of his shell. The old man learns of Anne’s bleak early childhood spent being shuttled from household to household after her parents died in a hot air balloon crash, caring for younger children. She is excited to finally have a real home at Green Gables.

“Have you ever had a bosom companion?” Anne asked as she passed buttered whole wheat toast to Her N.

Flustered, Nietzsche reached for his German-English translation guide book and tried to get the exact meaning of the girls words. Was she asking if he had ever had sex with a woman? That’s how he caught Sisyphus and started rotting his brain. But, apparently that’s not what she meant. Anne had a close girlfriend, that’s what she meant by a true friend of the bosom.

“I had friends and admirers when I signed up to be a Prussian cavalry officer when I was young, ” Nietzsche said. “I was very good, but one day I cut my leg jumping onto a horse. I thought I was a superman flying through the air. But, cold steel brought me down. I had to leave the army and my friends behind. When Prussia made war on France in 1870 I went to help stop the Paris Commune. First we fought the French forces of Napoleaon III who we defeated. But then the workers and leftists and socialists in Paris rose up and declared a workers government. Both the Prussians and the French then immediately joined together to face the common enemy of the common people. I was only a medical worker, but I got wounded with diphtheria and dysentery. I think that’s when I caught the sexual diseases that eat away at my brain. I was out celebrating our victory over France by fucking a French whore, but I think the whore gave me a virus that causes syphilis.

Over the days and then weeks of that summer Anne spent many hours at table talking with Nietzsche about life and love. Friedrick found that although she was a young girl she had big ideas and read widely.

She listened with keen interest as Friedrick told her of his German nationalist sister who wanted to set up a colony of pure Germans in South America. Nietzsche’s sister wanted to get far away from Jewish people.

“But,” Anne pointed out, “Doesn’t Germany have the greatest number of Germans in the world. If you wanted to have a pure German state, isn’t that where you’d start?”

“Don’t ask me,” chuckled Nietzsche, “I’m a stateless person, I renounced my Prussian citizenship.”

“Why?”

“I wrote a whole book about that, it has to do with master – slave relationships.”

“Are there slaves in Germany today?”

“No.”

“But you wrote a whole book about the master – slave thinking in Germany, and how Christians, the masters of the imperialist world, are somehow hobbled by a passive slave way of thinking,” Anne looked at Nietzsche. “Are you on drugs?”

“Yes, morphine and opium.” He made a screwy motion with his finger next to his head. “I write out prescriptions for myself and sign them Doctor Nietzsche. I have a doctorate in literature, and I guess that’s good enough.”

“Why are you in such constant pain that you can’t face the world without being sedated. Did you ever wonder that you write such unending ‘philosophical’ drivel when you are basically high all the time. Clear writing comes from clear thinking. Only crackpots like yourself enjoy the bizarre word salad of your body of ‘thought.’ What nasty trash. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“You’re pretty blunt in your assessment. You come from stories that are a bunch of sugar coated sermons about how girls should get along in the world. Who are you to preach?”

“Too preachy, but… I preach. That’s your self serving ‘logic’ in a nutshell. Imagine, you are going nuts from the virus you picked up at a brothel when you thought you were being a ‘superman’ because you were in charge, because you were paying. Ha. Looks like the ‘super virus’ from the reality that’s only an illusion defeated your ‘will to power.’ What a bunch of upper class clap trap. Philosophy? Ha!”

“What should I do”

As they grew closer Anne convinced Nietzsche to drop out of sight. Nietzsche let his sister take control of his writings and she hired an actor who sat propped up in a chair and pretended to be the incommunicado philosopher guru hiding behind a giant mustache with wild eyes and a hidden message.

Back in Prince Edward Island Friedrich became a kind of Mister Anne of Green Gables. He abandoned his old ways and left his old habits and way of thinking behind. He spent many hours out and about in a boat with Anne as she helped him come to terms with life and indeed love.

Anne explained to Nietzsche that the idea of God was as important as any story about God that people had a need for. God was a kind of metaphor for human cooperation and goodness. A metaphor could not die, and therefore, God could not die…’

“You know,” he scratched his freshly shaven upper lip, “you’re right. I never thought of it that way.”

“Just one last thing before we go any further… your autobiography was entitled “Ecce Homo…”

“I can explain that…”