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Euphorion. Chap. I.¹

July 1862.

Excerpt from:
Nietzsche's Writings as a Student.
Translation Copyright 2012, The Nietzsche Channel.

...... A flood of mellow, tranquil harmonies surges through my soul — I don't know what makes me so melancholy, I would like to weep and then die. Nothing more! I feel faint, my hand trembles ....

The red dawn plays in varied shades in the sky, a very dull fireworks that bores me. My eyes sparkle altogether differently, I fear that they burn holes in the sky. I feel that I have completely burst forth from my cocoon.² I know myself through and through and would just like to find the head of my doppelgänger in order to dissect his brain or my own goldilocks child's head ... oh .. twenty years ago .. child ... child ... the word sounds so strange to me. Have I also been a child turned and lathed ³ by the old worn-out mechanism of the world? And now do I — a clapper on the prison wheel⁴ — tug the rope that we call fate, quite comfortably and slowly until, rotted and putrefied,⁵ the slavedriver buries me hurriedly, and only a few carrion flies assure me a bit of immortality?

With this thought I almost feel a disposition for [....]

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