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Under the South Wind.— A. I can no longer understand myself! It was only yesterday that I felt myself so tempestuous and ardent, and at the same time so warm and sunny and exceptionally bright! but to-day! Now everything is calm, wide, oppressive, and dark like the lagoon at Venice. I wish for nothing, and draw a deep breath, and yet I feel inwardly indignant at this “wish for nothing”—so the waves rise and fall in the ocean of my melancholy. B. You describe a petty, agreeable illness. The next wind from the north-east will blow it away. A. Why so?

Under the South Wind.— A. I can no longer understand myself! It was only yesterday that I felt myself so tempestuous and ardent, and at the same time so warm and sunny and exceptionally bright! but to-day! Now everything is calm, wide, oppressive, and dark like the lagoon at Venice. I wish for nothing, and draw a deep breath, and yet I feel inwardly indignant at this “wish for nothing”—so the waves rise and fall in the ocean of my melancholy. B. You describe a petty, agreeable illness. The next wind from the north-east will blow it away. A. Why so?

Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Friedrich Nietzsche
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
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Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
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Recorded source
The Dawn of Day (1911 English edition) (1911 AD)

The Dawn of Day, complete printed unit 492; John McFarland Kennedy translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1911

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

The voice behind the words.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Photographic portrait, 1882

Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.

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