For both Nietzsche and Jackson, thorough alienation from society was two-fold. On the one hand, some of it was self-imposed. Both figures spent much of their personal lives in seclusion, and neither felt any real compulsion to mask or bury what others might view as idiosyncratic behavior. Yet on the other, their subversion — in behavior for Jackson, in thought for Nietzsche — ultimately made them targets for rumors aimed to degrade their credibility. In 1887, Nietzsche wrote in a letter to his friend, the musician Carl Fuchs, that, “In Germany they are crying out aloud against my eccentricities. But, as they do not know where my centrum is, it is not easy for them to hit the nail on the head in their efforts to determine where and when I have been ‘eccentric’ in the past”.15
Both Nietzsche and Jackson carved out a great deal of freedom for themselves, and made the utmost good use of that freedom. Of course, this freedom came at a significant cost. A man apart is a man who must face great pain. This means the self-inflicted trials meant to cleanse and perfect his own mode of existing, as well as the public backlash towards that individual’s refusal to conform to stable mores. In these pages, I have attempted to do some healing work. We should envision these two figures reaching across time to lend each other a hand of sympathy — for in both of their cases, their ability to overcome and thrive entitled them to the deepest of joys: the heart which creates fearlessly.
