Funny looking Nietzsche – creators paradox

I found this funny looking photo of Nietzsche, with a drawn sword and the “patriotic” look of a “prussian” officer (plus a moustache that would have look good on one of the Marx brothers – of course, I’m not talking about Karl…) And I’ve read about him, enlisting as a “voluntary” in the French-Prussian war of 1870-71… Of course, I know about his “living dangerously” stuff and about some of his aphorism recommanding war as an interesting and revigorating experience…

Anyway, my point is than often, even VERY often, we are puzzled by the aspect, the behavior and some of the ideas of people considered, by general acceptation, as geniuses… Dali, for instance, cultivated with an equal genius his paradoxes, his weirdness… He sympatized with the Spanish fascists, he went bathing in the nude with his wife Gala (of course, equally nude) in the Atlantic ocean (not without letting know the international press about the exact date and place and hour…)

Toulouse-Lautrec, with his dwarf-like aspect and many excentricities, is another example. And even the most uncultivated and not-art-oriented persons have heard about Vincent Van Gogh’s ear cutting… Maybe, in geniuses, the paradoxes (quite usual, in some mesure, in ordinary people) are brought to paroxism? The Yang-Yin thing being much more accentuated, more powerfully revealed? Not an uninteresting theme, I think…