{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_25012/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_25012","id":"gutenberg_25012","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25012","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays","Literature -- Collections","Music -- History and criticism","Philosophy","Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883"],"text":"*Friedrich Nietzsche*\n\n                         *I: The Case Of Wagner*\n\n                    *II: Nietzsche *_Contra_* Wagner*\n\n                        *III: Selected Aphorisms*\n\n                              Translated By\n\n                           Anthony M. Ludovici\n\n                              Third Edition\n\n                               T. N. Foulis\n\n                         13 & 15 Frederick Street\n\n                           Edinburgh and London\n\n                                   1911\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nTranslator\u2019s Preface.\nPreface To The Third Edition\nThe Case Of Wagner: A Musician\u2019s Problem\nNietzsche _contra_ Wagner\nSelected Aphorisms from Nietzsche\u2019s Retrospect of his Years of Friendship\nwith Wagner.\nFootnotes\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR\u2019S PREFACE.\n\n\nNietzsche wrote the rough draft of \u201cThe Case of Wagner\u201d in Turin, during\nthe month of May 1888; he completed it in Sils Maria towards the end of\nJune of the same year, and it was published in the following autumn.\n\u201cNietzsche _contra_ Wagner\u201d was written about the middle of December 1888;\nbut, although it was printed and corrected before the New Year, it was not\npublished until long afterwards owing to Nietzsche\u2019s complete breakdown in\nthe first days of 1889.\n\nIn reading these two essays we are apt to be deceived, by their virulent\nand forcible tone, into believing that the whole matter is a mere cover\nfor hidden fire,\u2014a mere blind of \u00e6sthetic discussion concealing a deep and\nimplacable personal feud which demands and will have vengeance. In spite\nof all that has been said to the contrary, many people still hold this\nview of the two little works before us; and, as the actual facts are not\naccessible to every one, and rumours are more easily believed than\nverified, the error of supposing that these pamphlets were dictated by\npersonal animosity, and even by Nietzsche\u2019s envy of Wagner in his glory,\nseems to be a pretty common one. Another very general error is to suppose\nthat the point at issue here is not one concerning music at all, but\nconcerning religion. It is taken for granted that the aspirations, the\nparticular quality, the influence, and the method of an art like music,\nare matters quite distinct from the values and the conditions prevailing\nin the culture with which it is in harmony, and that however many\nChristian elements may be discovered in Wagnerian texts, Nietzsche had no\nright to raise \u00e6sthetic objections because he happened to entertain the\nextraordinary view that these Christian elements had also found their way\ninto Wagnerian music.\n\nTo both of these views there is but one reply:\u2014they are absolutely false.\n\nIn the \u201cEcce Homo,\u201d Nietzsche\u2019s autobiography,\u2014a book which from cover to\ncover and line for line is sincerity itself\u2014we learn what Wagner actually\nmeant to Nietzsche. On pages 41, 44, 84, 122, 129, &c, we cannot doubt\nthat Nietzsche is speaking from his heart,\u2014and what does he say?\u2014In\nimpassioned tones he admits his profound indebtedness to the great\nmusician, his love for him, his gratitude to him,\u2014how Wagner was the only\nGerman who had ever been anything to him\u2014how his friendship with Wagner\nconstituted the happiest and most valuable experience of his life,\u2014how his\nbreach with Wagner almost killed him. And, when we remember, too, that\nWagner on his part also declared that he was \u201calone\u201d after he had lost\n\u201cthat man\u201d (Nietzsche), we begin to perceive that personal bitterness and\nanimosity are out of the question here. We feel we are on a higher plane,\nand that we must not judge these two men as if they were a couple of\nlittle business people who had had a suburban squabble.\n\nNietzsche declares (\u201cEcce Homo,\u201d p. 24) that he never attacked persons as\npersons. If he used a name at all, it was merely as a means to an end,\njust as one might use a magnifying glass in order to make a general, but\nelusive and intricate fact more clear and more apparent, and if he used\nthe name of David Strauss, without bitterness or spite (for he did not\neven know the man), when he wished to personify Culture-Philistinism, so,\nin the same spirit, did he use the name of Wagner, when he wished to\npersonify the general decadence of modern ideas, values, aspirations and\nArt.\n\nNietzsche\u2019s ambition, throughout his life, was to regenerate European\nculture. In the first period of his relationship with Wagner, he thought\nthat he had found the man who was prepared to lead in this direction. For\na long while he regarded his master as the Saviour of Germany, as the\ninnovator and renovator who was going to arrest the decadent current of\nhis time and lead men to a greatness which had died with antiquity. And so\nthoroughly did he understand his duties as a disciple, so wholly was he\ndevoted to this cause, that, in spite of all his unquestioned gifts and\nthe excellence of his original achievements, he was for a long while\nregarded as a mere \u201cliterary lackey\u201d in Wagner\u2019s service, in all those\ncircles where the rising musician was most disliked.\n\nGradually, however, as the young Nietzsche developed and began to gain an\nindependent view of life and humanity, it seemed to him extremely doubtful\nwhether Wagner actually was pulling the same way with him. Whereas,\ntheretofore, he had identified Wagner\u2019s ideals with his own, it now dawned\nupon him slowly that the regeneration of German culture, of European\nculture, and the transvaluation of values which would be necessary for\nthis regeneration, really lay off the track of Wagnerism. He saw that he\nhad endowed Wagner with a good deal that was more his own than Wagner\u2019s.\nIn his love he had transfigured the friend, and the composer of \u201cParsifal\u201d\nand the man of his imagination were not one. The fact was realised step by\nstep; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation,\nultimately brought it home to him, and though his best instincts at first\nopposed it, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong to be\nscouted, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair. Had he\nfollowed his own human inclinations, he would probably have remained\nWagner\u2019s friend until the end. As it was, however, he remained loyal to\nhis cause, and this meant denouncing his former idol.\n\n\u201cJoyful Wisdom,\u201d \u201cThus Spake Zarathustra,\u201d \u201cBeyond Good and Evil,\u201d \u201cThe\nGenealogy of Morals,\u201d \u201cThe Twilight of the Idols,\u201d \u201cThe Antichrist\u201d\u2014all\nthese books were but so many exhortations to mankind to step aside from\nthe general track now trodden by Europeans. And what happened? Wagner\nbegan to write some hard things about Nietzsche; the world assumed that\nNietzsche and Wagner had engaged in a paltry personal quarrel in the\npress, and the whole importance of the real issue was buried beneath the\nhuman, all-too-human interpretations which were heaped upon it.\n\nNietzsche was a musician of no mean attainments. For a long while, in his\nyouth, his superiors had been doubtful whether he should not be educated\nfor a musical career, so great were his gifts in this art; and if his\nmother had not been offered a six-years\u2019 scholarship for her son at the\nfamous school of Pforta, Nietzsche, the scholar and philologist, would\nprobably have been an able composer. When he speaks about music,\ntherefore, he knows what he is talking about, and when he refers to\nWagner\u2019s music in particular, the simple fact of his long intimacy with\nWagner during the years at Tribschen, is a sufficient guarantee of his\ndeep knowledge of the subject. Now Nietzsche was one of the first to\nrecognise that the principles of art are inextricably bound up with the\nlaws of life, that an \u00e6sthetic dogma may therefore promote or depress all\nvital force, and that a picture, a symphony, a poem or a statue, is just\nas capable of being pessimistic, anarchic, Christian or revolutionary, as\na philosophy or a science is. To speak of a certain class of music as\nbeing compatible with the decline of culture, therefore, was to Nietzsche\na perfectly warrantable association of ideas, and that is why, throughout\nhis philosophy, so much stress is laid upon \u00e6sthetic considerations.\n\nBut if in England and America Nietzsche\u2019s attack on Wagner\u2019s art may still\nseem a little incomprehensible, let it be remembered that the Continent\nhas long known that Nietzsche was actually in the right. Every year\nthousands are now added to the large party abroad who have ceased from\nbelieving in the great musical revolutionary of the seventies; that he was\none with the French Romanticists and rebels has long since been\nacknowledged a fact in select circles, both in France and Germany, and if\nwe still have Wagner with us in England, if we still consider Nietzsche as\na heretic, when he declares that \u201cWagner was a musician for unmusical\npeople,\u201d it is only because we are more removed than we imagine, from all\nthe great movements, intellectual and otherwise, which take place on the\nContinent.\n\nIn Wagner\u2019s music, in his doctrine, in his whole concept of art, Nietzsche\nsaw the confirmation, the promotion\u2014aye, even the encouragement, of that\ndecadence and degeneration which is now rampant in Europe; and it is for\nthis reason, although to the end of his life he still loved Wagner, the\nman and the friend, that we find him, on the very eve of his spiritual\ndeath, exhorting us to abjure Wagner the musician and the artist.\n\nAnthony M. Ludovici.\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION(1)\n\n\nIn spite of the adverse criticism with which the above preface has met at\nthe hands of many reviewers since the summer of last year, I cannot say\nthat I should feel justified, even after mature consideration, in altering\na single word or sentence it contains. If I felt inclined to make any\nchanges at all, these would take the form of extensive additions, tending\nto confirm rather than to modify the general argument it advances; but,\nany omissions of which I may have been guilty in the first place, have\nbeen so fully rectified since, thanks to the publication of the English\ntranslations of Daniel Hal\u00e9vy\u2019s and Henri Lichtenberger\u2019s works, \u201cThe Life\nof Friedrich Nietzsche,\u201d(2) and \u201cThe Gospel of Superman,\u201d(3) respectively,\nthat, were it not for the fact that the truth about this matter cannot be\nrepeated too often, I should have refrained altogether from including any\nfresh remarks of my own in this Third Edition.\n\nIn the works just referred to (pp. 129 _et seq._ in Hal\u00e9vy\u2019s book, and pp.\n78 _et seq._ in Lichtenberger\u2019s book), the statement I made in my preface\nto \u201cThoughts out of Season,\u201d vol. i., and which I did not think it\nnecessary to repeat in my first preface to these pamphlets, will be found\nto receive the fullest confirmation.\n\nThe statement in question was to the effect that many long years before\nthese pamphlets were even projected, Nietzsche\u2019s apparent _volte-face_ in\nregard to his hero Wagner had been not only foreshadowed but actually\nstated in plain words, in two works written during his friendship with\nWagner,\u2014the works referred to being \u201cThe Birth of Tragedy\u201d (1872), and\n\u201cWagner in Bayreuth\u201d (1875) of which Houston Stuart Chamberlain declares\nnot only that it possesses \u201cundying classical worth\u201d but that \u201ca perusal\nof it is indispensable to all who wish to follow the question [of Wagner]\nto its roots.\u201d(4)\n\nThe idea that runs through the present work like a leitmotif\u2014the idea that\nWagner was at bottom more of a mime than a musician\u2014was so far an ever\npresent thought with Nietzsche that it is ever impossible to ascertain the\nperiod when it was first formulated.\n\nIn Nietzsche\u2019s wonderful autobiography (_Ecce Homo_, p. 88), in the\nsection dealing with the early works just mentioned, we find the following\npassage\u2014\u201cIn the second of the two essays [Wagner in Bayreuth] with a\nprofound certainty of instinct, I already characterised the elementary\nfactor in Wagner\u2019s nature as a theatrical talent which, in all his means\nand aspirations, draws its final conclusions.\u201d And as early as 1874,\nNietzsche wrote in his diary\u2014\u201cWagner is a born actor. Just as Goethe was\nan abortive painter, and Schiller an abortive orator, so Wagner was an\nabortive theatrical genius. His attitude to music is that of the actor;\nfor he knows how to sing and speak, as it were out of different souls and\nfrom absolutely different worlds (_Tristan_ and the _Meistersinger_).\u201d\n\nThere is, however, no need to multiply examples, seeing, as I have said,\nthat in the translations of Hal\u00e9vy\u2019s and Lichtenberger\u2019s books the reader\nwill find all the independent evidence he could possibly desire,\ndisproving the popular, and even the learned belief that, in the two\npamphlets before us we have a complete, apparently unaccountable, and\ntherefore \u201cdemented\u201d _volte-face_ on Nietzsche\u2019s part. Nevertheless, for\nfear lest some doubt should still linger in certain minds concerning this\npoint, and with the view of adding interest to these essays, the Editor\nconsidered it advisable, in the Second Edition, to add a number of\nextracts from Nietzsche\u2019s diary of the year 1878 (ten years before \u201cThe\nCase of Wagner,\u201d and \u201cNietzsche _contra_ Wagner\u201d were written) in order to\nshow to what extent those learned critics who complain of Nietzsche\u2019s\n\u201cmorbid and uncontrollable recantations and revulsions of feeling,\u201d have\noverlooked even the plain facts of the case when forming their\nall-too-hasty conclusions. These extracts will be found at the end of\n\u201cNietzsche _contra_ Wagner.\u201d While reading them, however, it should not be\nforgotten that they were never intended for publication by Nietzsche\nhimself\u2014a fact which accounts for their unpolished and sketchy form\u2014and\nthat they were first published in vol. xi. of the first German Library\nEdition (pp. 99-129) only when he was a helpless invalid, in 1897. Since\nthen, in 1901 and 1906 respectively, they have been reprinted, once in the\nlarge German Library Edition (vol. xi. pp. 181-202), and once in the\nGerman Pocket Edition, as an appendix to \u201cHuman-All-too-Human,\u201d Part II.\n\nAn altogether special interest now attaches to these pamphlets; for, in\nthe first place we are at last in possession of Wagner\u2019s own account of\nhis development, his art, his aspirations and his struggles, in the\namazing self-revelation entitled _My Life_;(5) and secondly, we now have\n_Ecce Homo_, Nietzsche\u2019s autobiography, in which we learn for the first\ntime from Nietzsche\u2019s own pen to what extent his history was that of a\ndouble devotion\u2014to Wagner on the one hand, and to his own life task, the\nTransvaluation of all Values, on the other.\n\nReaders interested in the Nietzsche-Wagner controversy will naturally look\nto these books for a final solution of all the difficulties which the\nproblem presents. But let them not be too sanguine. From first to last\nthis problem is not to be settled by \u201cfacts.\u201d A good deal of instinctive\nchoice, instinctive aversion, and instinctive suspicion are necessary\nhere. A little more suspicion, for instance, ought to be applied to\nWagner\u2019s _My Life_, especially in England, where critics are not half\nsuspicious enough about a continental artist\u2019s self-revelations, and are\ntoo prone, if they have suspicions at all, to apply them in the wrong\nplace.\n\nAn example of this want of _finesse_ in judging foreign writers is to be\nfound in Lord Morley\u2019s work on Rousseau,\u2014a book which ingenuously takes\nfor granted everything that a writer like Rousseau cares to say about\nhimself, without considering for an instant the possibility that Rousseau\nmight have practised some hypocrisy. In regard to Wagner\u2019s life we might\neasily fall into the same error\u2014that is to say, we might take seriously\nall he says concerning himself and his family affairs.\n\nWe should beware of this, and should not even believe Wagner when he\nspeaks badly about himself. No one speaks badly about himself without a\nreason, and the question in this case is to find out the reason. Did\nWagner\u2014in the belief that genius was always immoral\u2014wish to pose as an\nimmoral Egotist, in order to make us believe in his genius, of which he\nhimself was none too sure in his innermost heart? Did Wagner wish to\nappear \u201csincere\u201d in his biography, in order to awaken in us a belief in\nthe sincerity of his music, which he likewise doubted, but wished to\nimpress upon the world as \u201ctrue\u201d? Or did he wish to be thought badly of in\nconnection with things that were not true, and that consequently did not\naffect him, in order to lead us off the scent of true things, things he\nwas ashamed of and which he wished the world to ignore\u2014just like Rousseau\n(the similarity between the two is more than a superficial one) who\nbarbarously pretended to have sent his children to the foundling hospital,\nin order not to be thought incapable of having had any children at all? In\nshort, where is the bluff in Wagner\u2019s biography? Let us therefore be\ncareful about it, and all the more so because Wagner himself guarantees\nthe truth of it in the prefatory note. If we were to be credulous here, we\nshould moreover be acting in direct opposition to Nietzsche\u2019s own counsel\nas given in the following aphorisms (Nos. 19 and 20, p. 89):\u2014\n\n\u201cIt is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner\u2019s development,\u2014no\ntrust must be placed in his own description of his soul\u2019s experiences. He\nwrites party-pamphlets for his followers.\n\n\u201cIt is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about\nhimself.\u201d\n\nWhile on p. 37 (the note), we read:\u2014\u201cHe [Wagner] was not proud enough to\nbe able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride than he.\nLike Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in his biography,\u2014he\nremained an actor.\u201d\n\nHowever, as a famous English judge has said\u2014\u201cTruth will come out, even in\nthe witness box,\u201d and, as we may add in this case, even in an\nautobiography. There is one statement in Wagner\u2019s _My Life_ which sounds\ntrue to my ears at least\u2014a statement which, in my opinion, has some\nimportance, and to which Wagner himself seems to grant a mysterious\nsignificance. I refer to the passage on p. 93 of vol i., in which Wagner\nsays:\u2014\u201cOwing to the exceptional vivacity and innate susceptibility of my\nnature \u2026 I gradually became conscious of a certain power of transporting\nor bewildering my more indolent companions.\u201d\n\nThis seems innocent enough. When, however, it is read in conjunction with\nNietzsche\u2019s trenchant criticism, particularly on pp. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18\nof this work, and also with a knowledge of Wagner\u2019s music, it becomes one\nof the most striking passages in Wagner\u2019s autobiography, for it records\nhow soon he became conscious of his dominant instinct and faculty.\n\nI know perfectly well that the Wagnerites will not be influenced by these\nremarks. Their gratitude to Wagner is too great for this. He has supplied\nthe precious varnish wherewith to hide the dull ugliness of our\ncivilisation. He has given to souls despairing over the materialism of\nthis world, to souls despairing of themselves, and longing to be rid of\nthemselves, the indispensable hashish and morphia wherewith to deaden\ntheir inner discords. These discords are everywhere apparent nowadays.\nWagner is therefore a common need, a common benefactor. As such he is\nbound to be worshipped and adored in spite of all egotistical and\ntheatrical autobiographies.\n\nAlbeit, signs are not wanting\u2014at least among his Anglo-Saxon worshippers\nwho stand even more in need of romanticism than their continental\nbrethren,\u2014which show that, in order to uphold Wagner, people are now\nbeginning to draw distinctions between the man and the artist. They\ndismiss the man as \u201chuman-all-too-human,\u201d but they still maintain that\nthere are divine qualities in his music. However distasteful the task of\ndisillusioning these psychological tyros may be, they should be informed\nthat no such division of a man into two parts is permissible, save in\nChristianity (the body and the soul), but that outside purely religious\nspheres it is utterly unwarrantable. There can be no such strange divorce\nbetween a bloom and the plant on which it blows, and has a black woman\never been known to give birth to a white child?\n\nWagner, as Nietzsche tells us on p. 19, \u201cwas something complete, he was a\ntypical _decadent_ in whom every sign of \u2018free will\u2019 was lacking, in whom\nevery feature was necessary.\u201d Wagner, allow me to add, was a typical\nrepresentative of the nineteenth century, which was the century of\ncontradictory values, of opposed instincts, and of every kind of inner\ndisharmony. The genuine, the classical artists of that period, such men as\nHeine, Goethe, Stendhal, and Gobineau, overcame their inner strife, and\neach succeeded in making a harmonious whole out of himself\u2014not indeed\nwithout a severe struggle; for everyone of them suffered from being the\nchild of his age, _i.e._, a decadent. The only difference between them and\nthe romanticists lies in the fact that they (the former) were conscious of\nwhat was wrong with them, and possessed the will and the strength to\novercome their illness; whereas the romanticists chose the easier\nalternative\u2014namely, that of shutting their eyes on themselves.\n\n\u201cI am just as much a child of my age as Wagner\u2014_i.e._, I am a _decadent_,\u201d\nsays Nietzsche. \u201cThe only difference is that I recognised the fact, that I\nstruggled against it\u201d(6)\n\nWhat Wagner did was characteristic of all romanticists and contemporary\nartists: he drowned and overshouted his inner discord by means of\nexuberant pathos and wild exaltation. Far be it from me to value Wagner\u2019s\nmusic _in extenso_ here\u2014this is scarcely a fitting opportunity to do\nso;\u2014but I think it might well be possible to show, on purely psychological\ngrounds, how impossible it was for a man like Wagner to produce real art.\nFor how can harmony, order, symmetry, mastery, proceed from uncontrolled\ndiscord, disorder, disintegration, and chaos? The fact that an art which\nsprings from such a marshy soil may, like certain paludal plants, be\n\u201cwonderful,\u201d \u201cgorgeous,\u201d and \u201coverwhelming,\u201d cannot be denied; but true\nart it is not. It is so just as little as Gothic architecture is,\u2014that\nstyle which, in its efforts to escape beyond the tragic contradiction in\nits medi\u00e6val heart, yelled its hysterical cry heavenwards and even melted\nthe stones of its structures into a quivering and fluid jet, in order to\ngive adequate expression to the painful and wretched conflict then raging\nbetween the body and the soul.\n\nThat Wagner, too, was a great sufferer, there can be no doubt; not,\nhowever, a sufferer from strength, like a true artist, but from\nweakness\u2014the weakness of his age, which he never overcame. It is for this\nreason that he should be rather pitied than judged as he is now being\njudged by his German and English critics, who, with thoroughly neurotic\nsuddenness, have acknowledged their revulsion of feeling a little too\nharshly.\n\n\u201cI have carefully endeavoured not to deride, or deplore, or detest\u2026\u201d says\nSpinoza, \u201cbut to understand\u201d; and these words ought to be our guide, not\nonly in the case of Wagner, but in all things.\n\nInner discord is a terrible affliction, and nothing is so certain to\nproduce that nervous irritability which is so trying to the patient as\nwell as to the outer world, as this so-called spiritual disease. Nietzsche\nwas probably quite right when he said the only real and true music that\nWagner ever composed did not consist of his elaborate arias and overtures,\nbut of ten or fifteen bars which, dispersed here and there, gave\nexpression to the composer\u2019s profound and genuine melancholy. But this\nmelancholy had to be overcome, and Wagner with the blood of a _cabotin_ in\nhis veins, resorted to the remedy that was nearest to hand\u2014that is to say,\nthe art of bewildering others and himself. Thus he remained ignorant about\nhimself all his life; for there was, as Nietzsche rightly points out (p.\n37, _note_), not sufficient pride in the man for him to desire to know or\nto suffer gladly the truth concerning his real nature. As an actor his\nruling passion was vanity, but in his case it was correlated with a\nsemi-conscious knowledge of the fact that all was not right with him and\nhis art. It was this that caused him to suffer. His egomaniacal behaviour\nand his almost Rousseauesque fear and suspicion of others were only the\nexternal manifestations of his inner discrepancies. But, to repeat what I\nhave already said, these abnormal symptoms are not in the least\nincompatible with Wagner\u2019s music, they are rather its very cause, the root\nfrom which it springs.\n\nIn reality, therefore, Wagner the man and Wagner the artist were\nundoubtedly one, and constituted a splendid romanticist. His music as well\nas his autobiography are proofs of his wonderful gifts in this direction.\nHis success in his time, as in ours, is due to the craving of the modern\nworld for actors, sorcerers, bewilderers and idealists who are able to\nconceal the ill-health and the weakness that prevail, and who please by\nintoxicating and exalting. But this being so, the world must not be\ndisappointed to find the hero of a preceding age explode in the next. It\nmust not be astonished to find a disparity between the hero\u2019s private life\nand his \u201celevating\u201d art or romantic and idealistic gospel. As long as\npeople will admire heroic attitudes more than heroism, such\ndisillusionment is bound to be the price of their error. In a truly great\nman, life-theory and life-practice, if seen from a sufficiently lofty\npoint of view, must and do always agree, in an actor, in a romanticist, in\nan idealist, and in a Christian, there is always a yawning chasm between\nthe two, which, whatever well-meaning critics may do, cannot be bridged\nposthumously by acrobatic feats _in psychologicis_.\n\nLet anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche\u2019s life and theory. Let\nanyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in his\n_Ecce Homo_, but as we find it related by all his biographers, friends and\nfoes alike, and what will be the result? Even if we ignore his works\u2014the\nblooms which blowed from time to time from his life\u2014we absolutely cannot\ndeny the greatness of the man\u2019s _private practice_, and if we fully\nunderstand and appreciate the latter, we must be singularly deficient in\ninstinct and in _flair_ if we do not suspect that some of this greatness\nis reflected in his life-task.\n\nANTHONY M. LUDOVICI\n\nLondon, _July 1911_.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN\u2019S PROBLEM\n\n\nA LETTER FROM TURIN, MAY 1888\n\n\u201cRIDENDO DICERE SEVERUM.\u2026\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\n\nI am writing this to relieve my mind. It is not malice alone which makes\nme praise Bizet at the expense of Wagner in this essay. Amid a good deal\nof jesting I wish to make one point clear which does not admit of levity.\nTo turn my back on Wagner was for me a piece of fate, to get to like\nanything else whatever afterwards was for me a triumph. Nobody, perhaps,\nhad ever been more dangerously involved in Wagnerism, nobody had defended\nhimself more obstinately against it, nobody had ever been so overjoyed at\nridding himself of it. A long history!\u2014Shall I give it a name?\u2014If I were a\nmoralist, who knows what I might not call it! Perhaps a piece of\n_self-mastery_.\u2014But the philosopher does not like the moralist, neither\ndoes he like high-falutin\u2019 words.\u2026\n\nWhat is the first and last thing that a philosopher demands of himself? To\novercome his age in himself, to become \u201ctimeless.\u201d With what then does the\nphilosopher have the greatest fight? With all that in him which makes him\nthe child of his time. Very well then! I am just as much a child of my age\nas Wagner\u2014_i.e._, I am a decadent. The only difference is that I\nrecognised the fact, that I struggled against it. The philosopher in me\nstruggled against it.\n\nMy greatest preoccupation hitherto has been the problem of _decadence_,\nand I had reasons for this. \u201cGood and evil\u201d form only a playful\nsubdivision of this problem. If one has trained one\u2019s eye to detect the\nsymptoms of decline, one also understands morality,\u2014one understands what\nlies concealed beneath its holiest names and tables of values: _e.g._,\n_impoverished_ life, the will to nonentity, great exhaustion. Morality\n_denies_ life.\u2026 In order to undertake such a mission I was obliged to\nexercise self-discipline:\u2014I had to side against all that was morbid in\nmyself including Wagner, including Schopenhauer, including the whole of\nmodern _humanity_.\u2014A profound estrangement, coldness and soberness towards\nall that belongs to my age, all that was contemporary: and as the highest\nwish, Zarathustra\u2019s eye, an eye which surveys the whole\nphenomenon\u2014mankind\u2014from an enormous distance,\u2014which looks down upon\nit.\u2014For such a goal\u2014what sacrifice would not have been worth while? What\n\u201cself-mastery\u201d! What \u201cself-denial\u201d!\n\nThe greatest event of my life took the form of a _recovery_. Wagner\nbelongs only to my diseases.\n\nNot that I wish to appear ungrateful to this disease. If in this essay I\nsupport the proposition that Wagner is _harmful_, I none the less wish to\npoint out unto whom, in spite of all, he is indispensable\u2014to the\nphilosopher. Anyone else may perhaps be able to get on without Wagner: but\nthe philosopher is not free to pass him by. The philosopher must be the\nevil conscience of his age,\u2014but to this end he must be possessed of its\nbest knowledge. And what better guide, or more thoroughly efficient\nrevealer of the soul, could be found for the labyrinth of the modern\nspirit than Wagner? Through Wagner modernity speaks her most intimate\nlanguage: it conceals neither its good nor its evil: it has thrown off all\nshame. And, conversely, one has almost calculated the whole of the value\nof modernity once one is clear concerning what is good and evil in Wagner.\nI can perfectly well understand a musician of to-day who says: \u201cI hate\nWagner but I can endure no other music.\u201d But I should also understand a\nphilosopher who said, \u201cWagner is modernity in concentrated form.\u201d There is\nno help for it, we must first be Wagnerites.\u2026\n\n\n\n\n1.\n\n\nYesterday\u2014would you believe it?\u2014I heard _Bizet\u2019s_ masterpiece for the\ntwentieth time. Once more I attended with the same gentle reverence; once\nagain I did not run away. This triumph over my impatience surprises me.\nHow such a work completes one! Through it one almost becomes a\n\u201cmasterpiece\u201d oneself\u2014And, as a matter of fact, each time I heard _Carmen_\nit seemed to me that I was more of a philosopher, a better philosopher\nthan at other times: I became so forbearing, so happy, so Indian, so\n_settled_.\u2026 To sit for five hours: the first step to holiness!\u2014May I be\nallowed to say that Bizet\u2019s orchestration is the only one that I can\nendure now? That other orchestration which is all the rage at present\u2014the\nWagnerian\u2014is brutal, artificial and \u201cunsophisticated\u201d withal, hence its\nappeal to all the three senses of the modern soul at once. How terribly\nWagnerian orchestration affects me! I call it the _Sirocco_. A\ndisagreeable sweat breaks out all over me. All my fine weather vanishes.\n\nBizet\u2019s music seems to me perfect. It comes forward lightly, gracefully,\nstylishly. It is lovable, it does not sweat. \u201cAll that is good is easy,\neverything divine runs with light feet\u201d: this is the first principle of my\n\u00e6sthetics. This music is wicked, refined, fatalistic, and withal remains\npopular,\u2014it possesses the refinement of a race, not of an individual. It\nis rich. It is definite. It builds, organises, completes, and in this\nsense it stands as a contrast to the polypus in music, to \u201cendless\nmelody\u201d. Have more painful, more tragic accents ever been heard on the\nstage before? And how are they obtained? Without grimaces! Without\ncounterfeiting of any kind! Free from the _lie_ of the grand style!\u2014In\nshort: this music assumes that the listener is intelligent even as a\nmusician,\u2014thereby it is the opposite of Wagner, who, apart from everything\nelse, was in any case the most _ill-mannered_ genius on earth (Wagner\ntakes us as if \u2026 , he repeats a thing so often that we become\ndesperate,\u2014that we ultimately believe it).\n\nAnd once more: I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a\nbetter musician, a better _listener_. Is it in any way possible to listen\nbetter?\u2014I even burrow behind this music with my ears. I hear its very\ncause. I seem to assist at its birth. I tremble before the dangers which\nthis daring music runs, I am enraptured over those happy accidents for\nwhich even Bizet himself may not be responsible.\u2014And, strange to say, at\nbottom I do not give it a thought, or am not aware how much thought I\nreally do give it. For quite other ideas are running through my head the\nwhile.\u2026 Has any one ever observed that music _emancipates_ the spirit?\ngives wings to thought? and that the more one becomes a musician the more\none is also a philosopher? The grey sky of abstraction seems thrilled by\nflashes of lightning; the light is strong enough to reveal all the details\nof things; to enable one to grapple with problems; and the world is\nsurveyed as if from a mountain top\u2014With this I have defined philosophical\npathos\u2014And unexpectedly _answers_ drop into my lap, a small hailstorm of\nice and wisdom, of problems _solved_. Where am I? Bizet makes me\nproductive. Everything that is good makes me productive. I have gratitude\nfor nothing else, nor have I any other touchstone for testing what is\ngood.\n\n\n\n\n2.\n\n\nBizet\u2019s work also saves; Wagner is not the only \u201cSaviour.\u201d With it one\nbids farewell to the _damp_ north and to all the fog of the Wagnerian\nideal. Even the action in itself delivers us from these things. From\nMerim\u00e9e it has this logic even in passion, from him it has the direct\nline, _inexorable_ necessity, but what it has above all else is that which\nbelongs to sub-tropical zones\u2014that dryness of atmosphere, that\n_limpidezza_ of the air. Here in every respect the climate is altered.\nHere another kind of sensuality, another kind of sensitiveness and another\nkind of cheerfulness make their appeal. This music is gay, but not in a\nFrench or German way. Its gaiety is African; fate hangs over it, its\nhappiness is short, sudden, without reprieve. I envy Bizet for having had\nthe courage of this sensitiveness, which hitherto in the cultured music of\nEurope has found no means of expression,\u2014of this southern, tawny, sunburnt\nsensitiveness.\u2026 What a joy the golden afternoon of its happiness is to us!\nWhen we look out, with this music in our minds, we wonder whether we have\never seen the sea so _calm_. And how soothing is this Moorish dancing!\nHow, for once, even our insatiability gets sated by its lascivious\nmelancholy!\u2014And finally love, love translated back into _Nature_! Not the\nlove of a \u201ccultured girl!\u201d\u2014no Senta-sentimentality.(7) But love as fate,\nas a fatality, cynical, innocent, cruel,\u2014and precisely in this way\n_Nature_! The love whose means is war, whose very essence is the _mortal\nhatred_ between the sexes!\u2014I know no case in which the tragic irony, which\nconstitutes the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so\nterrible a formula, as in the last cry of Don Jos\u00e9 with which the work\nends:\n\n\u201cYes, it is I who have killed her,\nI\u2014my adored Carmen!\u201d\n\n\u2014Such a conception of love (the only one worthy of a philosopher) is rare:\nit distinguishes one work of art from among a thousand others. For, as a\nrule, artists are no better than the rest of the world, they are even\nworse\u2014they _misunderstand_ love. Even Wagner misunderstood it. They\nimagine that they are selfless in it because they appear to be seeking the\nadvantage of another creature often to their own disadvantage. But in\nreturn they want to _possess_ the other creature.\u2026 Even God is no\nexception to this rule, he is very far from thinking \u201cWhat does it matter\nto thee whether I love thee or not?\u201d\u2014He becomes terrible if he is not\nloved in return \u201c_L\u2019amour_\u2014and with this principle one carries one\u2019s point\nagainst Gods and men\u2014_est de tous les sentiments le plus \u00e9goiste, et par\ncons\u00e9quent, lorsqu\u2019il est bless\u00e9, le moins g\u00e9n\u00e9reux_\u201d (B. Constant).\n\n\n\n\n3.\n\n\nPerhaps you are beginning to perceive how very much this music _improves_\nme?\u2014_Il faut m\u00e9diterraniser la musique._ and I have my reasons for this\nprinciple (\u201cBeyond Good and Evil,\u201d pp. 216 _et seq._) The return to\nNature, health, good spirits, youth, _virtue_!\u2014And yet I was one of the\nmost corrupted Wagnerites.\u2026 I was able to take Wagner seriously. Oh, this\nold magician! what tricks has he not played upon us! The first thing his\nart places in our hands is a magnifying glass: we look through it, and we\nno longer trust our own eyes\u2014Everything grows bigger, _even Wagner grows\nbigger_.\u2026 What a clever rattlesnake. Throughout his life he rattled\n\u201cresignation,\u201d \u201cloyalty,\u201d and \u201cpurity\u201d about our ears, and he retired from\nthe _corrupt_ world with a song of praise to chastity!\u2014And we believed it\nall.\u2026\n\n\u2014But you will not listen to me? You _prefer_ even the _problem_ of Wagner\nto that of Bizet? But neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The\nproblem of salvation is even a venerable problem. Wagner pondered over\nnothing so deeply as over salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation.\nSomeone always wants to be saved in his operas,\u2014now it is a youth; anon it\nis a maid,\u2014this is _his problem_\u2014And how lavishly he varies his\n_leitmotif_! What rare and melancholy modulations! If it were not for\nWagner, who would teach us that innocence has a preference for saving\ninteresting sinners? (the case in \u201cTannhauser\u201d). Or that even the eternal\nJew gets saved and _settled down_ when he marries? (the case in the\n\u201cFlying Dutchman\u201d). Or that corrupted old females prefer to be saved by\nchaste young men? (the case of Kundry). Or that young hysterics like to be\nsaved by their doctor? (the case in \u201cLohengrin\u201d). Or that beautiful girls\nmost love to be saved by a knight who also happens to be a Wagnerite? (the\ncase in the \u201cMastersingers\u201d). Or that even married women also like to be\nsaved by a knight? (the case of Isolde). Or that the venerable Almighty,\nafter having compromised himself morally in all manner of ways, is at last\ndelivered by a free spirit and an immoralist? (the case in the \u201cRing\u201d).\nAdmire, more especially this last piece of wisdom! Do you understand it?\nI\u2014take good care not to understand it.\u2026 That it is possible to draw yet\nother lessons from the works above mentioned,\u2014I am much more ready to\nprove than to dispute. That one may be driven by a Wagnerian ballet to\ndesperation\u2014_and_ to virtue! (once again the case in \u201cTannhauser\u201d). That\nnot going to bed at the right time may be followed by the worst\nconsequences (once again the case of \u201cLohengrin\u201d).\u2014That one can never be\ntoo sure of the spouse one actually marries (for the third time, the case\nof \u201cLohengrin\u201d). \u201cTristan and Isolde\u201d glorifies the perfect husband who,\nin a certain case, can ask only one question: \u201cBut why have ye not told me\nthis before? Nothing could be simpler than that!\u201d Reply:\n\n\u201cThat I cannot tell thee.\nAnd what thou askest,\nThat wilt thou never learn.\u201d\n\n\u201cLohengrin\u201d contains a solemn ban upon all investigation and questioning.\nIn this way Wagner stood for the Christian concept, \u201cThou must and shalt\n_believe_\u201d. It is a crime against the highest and the holiest to be\nscientific.\u2026 The \u201cFlying Dutchman\u201d preaches the sublime doctrine that\nwoman can moor the most erratic soul, or to put it into Wagnerian terms\n\u201csave\u201d him. Here we venture to ask a question. Supposing that this were\nactually true, would it therefore be desirable?\u2014What becomes of the\n\u201ceternal Jew\u201d whom a woman adores and _enchains_? He simply ceases from\nbeing eternal, he marries,\u2014that is to say, he concerns us no\nlonger.\u2014Transferred into the realm of reality, the danger for the artist\nand for the genius\u2014and these are of course the \u201ceternal Jews\u201d\u2014resides in\nwoman: _adoring_ women are their ruin. Scarcely any one has sufficient\ncharacter not to be corrupted\u2014\u201csaved\u201d when he finds himself treated as a\nGod\u2014he then immediately condescends to woman.\u2014Man is a coward in the face\nof all that is eternally feminine, and this the girls know.\u2014In many cases\nof woman\u2019s love, and perhaps precisely in the most famous ones, the love\nis no more than a refined form of _parasitism_, a making one\u2019s nest in\nanother\u2019s soul and sometimes even in another\u2019s flesh\u2014Ah! and how\nconstantly at the cost of the host!\n\nWe know the fate of Goethe in old-maidish moralin-corroded Germany. He was\nalways offensive to Germans, he found honest admirers only among Jewesses.\nSchiller, \u201cnoble\u201d Schiller, who cried flowery words into their ears,\u2014he\nwas a man after their own heart. What did they reproach Goethe with?\u2014with\nthe Mount of Venus, and with having composed certain Venetian epigrams.\nEven Klopstock preached him a moral sermon; there was a time when Herder\nwas fond of using the word \u201cPriapus\u201d when he spoke of Goethe. Even\n\u201cWilhelm Meister\u201d seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral\n\u201cgoing to the dogs\u201d. The \u201cMenagerie of tame cattle,\u201d the worthlessness of\nthe hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a\nplaint which _Biterolf_(8) might well have sung: \u201cnothing so easily makes\na painful impression as _when a great mind despoils itself of its wings\nand strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while it\nrenounces more lofty aims_.\u201d But the most indignant of all was the\ncultured woman\u2014all smaller courts in Germany, every kind of \u201cPuritanism\u201d\nmade the sign of the cross at the sight of Goethe, at the thought of the\n\u201cunclean spirit\u201d in Goethe.\u2014This history was what Wagner set to music. He\n_saves_ Goethe, that goes without saying; but he does so in such a clever\nway that he also takes the side of the cultured woman. Goethe gets saved:\na prayer saves him, a cultured woman _draws him out of the mire_.\n\n\u2014As to what Goethe would have thought of Wagner?\u2014Goethe once set himself\nthe question, \u201cwhat danger hangs over all romanticists\u2014the fate of\nromanticists?\u201d\u2014His answer was: \u201cTo choke over the rumination of moral and\nreligious absurdities.\u201d In short: _Parsifal_.\u2026 The philosopher writes\nthereto an epilogue: _Holiness_\u2014the only remaining higher value still seen\nby the mob or by woman, the horizon of the ideal for all those who are\nnaturally short-sighted. To philosophers, however, this horizon, like\nevery other, is a mere misunderstanding, a sort of slamming of the door in\nthe face of the real beginning of their world,\u2014their danger, their ideal,\ntheir desideratum.\u2026 In more polite language: _La philosophie ne suffit pas\nau grand nombre. Il lui faut la saintet\u00e9.\u2026_\n\n\n\n\n4.\n\n\nI shall once more relate the history of the \u201cRing\u201d. This is its proper\nplace. It is also the history of a salvation except that in this case it\nis Wagner himself who is saved\u2014Half his lifetime Wagner believed in the\n_Revolution_ as only a Frenchman could have believed in it. He sought it\nin the runic inscriptions of myths, he thought he had found a typical\nrevolutionary in Siegfried.\u2014\u201cWhence arises all the evil in this world?\u201d\nWagner asked himself. From \u201cold contracts\u201d: he replied, as all\nrevolutionary ideologists have done. In plain English: from customs, laws,\nmorals, institutions, from all those things upon which the ancient world\nand ancient society rests. \u201cHow can one get rid of the evil in this world?\nHow can one get rid of ancient society?\u201d Only by declaring war against\n\u201ccontracts\u201d (traditions, morality). _This Siegfried does._ He starts early\nat the game, very early\u2014his origin itself is already a declaration of war\nagainst morality\u2014he is the result of adultery, of incest.\u2026 Not the saga,\nbut Wagner himself is the inventor of this radical feature, in this matter\nhe _corrected_ the saga.\u2026 Siegfried continues as he began: he follows only\nhis first impulse, he flings all tradition, all respect, all _fear_ to the\nwinds. Whatever displeases him he strikes down. He tilts irreverently at\nold god-heads. His principal undertaking, however, is to emancipate\nwoman,\u2014\u201cto deliver Brunnhilda.\u201d\u2026 Siegfried and Brunnhilda, the sacrament\nof free love, the dawn of the golden age, the twilight of the Gods of old\nmorality\u2014_evil is got rid of_.\u2026 For a long while Wagner\u2019s ship sailed\nhappily along this course. There can be no doubt that along it Wagner\nsought his highest goal.\u2014What happened? A misfortune. The ship dashed on\nto a reef; Wagner had run aground. The reef was Schopenhauer\u2019s philosophy;\nWagner had stuck fast on a _contrary_ view of the world. What had he set\nto music? Optimism? Wagner was ashamed. It was moreover an optimism for\nwhich Schopenhauer had devised an evil expression,\u2014_unscrupulous_\noptimism. He was more than ever ashamed. He reflected for some time; his\nposition seemed desperate.\u2026 At last a path of escape seemed gradually to\nopen before him\u2014what if the reef on which he had been wrecked could be\ninterpreted as a goal, as the ulterior motive, as the actual purpose of\nhis journey? To be wrecked here, this was also a goal:\u2014_Bene navigavi cum\nnaufragium feci_ \u2026 and he translated the \u201cRing\u201d into Schopenhauerian\nlanguage. Everything goes wrong, everything goes to wrack and ruin, the\nnew world is just as bad as the old one:\u2014Nonentity, the Indian Circe\nbeckons \u2026 Brunnhilda, who according to the old plan had to retire with a\nsong in honour of free love, consoling the world with the hope of a\nsocialistic Utopia in which \u201call will be well\u201d; now gets something else to\ndo. She must first study Schopenhauer. She must first versify the fourth\nbook of \u201cThe World as Will and Idea.\u201d _Wagner was saved.\u2026_ Joking apart,\nthis _was_ a salvation. The service which Wagner owes to Schopenhauer is\nincalculable. It was the _philosopher of decadence_ who allowed the\n_artist of decadence_ to find himself.\u2014\n\n\n\n\n5.\n\n\n_The artist of decadence._ That is the word. And here I begin to be\nserious. I could not think of looking on approvingly while this _d\u00e9cadent_\nspoils our health\u2014and music into the bargain. Is Wagner a man at all? Is\nhe not rather a disease? Everything he touches he contaminates. _He has\nmade music sick._\n\nA typical _d\u00e9cadent_ who thinks himself necessary with his corrupted\ntaste, who arrogates to himself a higher taste, who tries to establish his\ndepravity as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment.\n\nAnd no one guards against it. His powers of seduction attain monstrous\nproportions, holy incense hangs around him, the misunderstanding\nconcerning him is called the Gospel,\u2014and he has certainly not converted\nonly the _poor in spirit_ to his cause!\n\nI should like to open the window a little:\u2014Air! More air!\u2014\n\nThe fact that people in Germany deceive themselves concerning Wagner does\nnot surprise me. The reverse would surprise me. The Germans have modelled\na Wagner for themselves, whom they can honour: never yet have they been\npsychologists; they are thankful that they misunderstand. But that people\nshould also deceive themselves concerning Wagner in Paris! Where people\nare scarcely anything else than psychologists. And in Saint Petersburg!\nWhere things are divined, which even Paris has no idea of. How intimately\nrelated must Wagner be to the entire decadence of Europe for her not to\nhave felt that he was decadent! He belongs to it, he is its protagonist,\nits greatest name.\u2026 We bring honour on ourselves by elevating him to the\nclouds\u2014For the mere fact that no one guards against him is in itself\nalready a sign of decadence. Instinct is weakened, what ought to be\neschewed now attracts. People actually kiss that which plunges them more\nquickly into the abyss.\u2014Is there any need for an example? One has only to\nthink of the r\u00e9gime which an\u00e6mic, or gouty, or diabetic people prescribe\nfor themselves. The definition of a vegetarian: a creature who has need of\na corroborating diet. To recognise what is harmful as harmful, to be able\nto deny oneself what is harmful, is a sign of youth, of vitality. That\nwhich is harmful lures the exhausted: cabbage lures the vegetarian.\nIllness itself can be a stimulus to life but one must be healthy enough\nfor such a stimulus!\u2014Wagner increases exhaustion\u2014_therefore_ he attracts\nthe weak and exhausted to him. Oh, the rattlesnake joy of the old Master\nprecisely because he always saw \u201cthe little children\u201d coming unto him!\n\nI place this point of view first and foremost: Wagner\u2019s art is diseased.\nThe problems he sets on the stage are all concerned with hysteria; the\nconvulsiveness of his emotions, his over-excited sensitiveness, his taste\nwhich demands ever sharper condimentation, his erraticness which he togged\nout to look like principles, and, last but not least, his choice of heroes\nand heroines, considered as physiological types (\u2014a hospital ward!\u2014): the\nwhole represents a morbid picture; of this there can be no doubt. _Wagner\nest une n\u00e9vrose_. Maybe, that nothing is better known to-day, or in any\ncase the subject of greater study, than the Protean character of\ndegeneration which has disguised itself here, both as an art and as an\nartist. In Wagner our medical men and physiologists have a most\ninteresting case, or at least a very complete one. Owing to the very fact\nthat nothing is more modern than this thorough morbidness, this\ndilatoriness and excessive irritability of the nervous machinery, Wagner\nis the _modern artist par excellence_, the Cagliostro of modernity. All\nthat the world most needs to-day, is combined in the most seductive manner\nin his art,\u2014the three great stimulants of exhausted people: _brutality_,\n_artificiality_ and _innocence_ (idiocy).\n\nWagner is a great corrupter of music. With it, he found the means of\nstimulating tired nerves,\u2014and in this way he made music ill. In the art of\nspurring exhausted creatures back into activity, and of recalling\nhalf-corpses to life, the inventiveness he shows is of no mean order. He\nis the master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the strongest like\nbullocks. Wagner\u2019s _success_\u2014his success with nerves, and therefore with\nwomen\u2014converted the whole world of ambitious musicians into disciples of\nhis secret art. And not only the ambitious, but also the _shrewd_.\u2026 Only\nwith morbid music can money be made to-day; our big theatres live on\nWagner.\n\n\n\n\n6.\n\n\n\u2014Once more I will venture to indulge in a little levity. Let us suppose\nthat Wagner\u2019s _success_ could become flesh and blood and assume a human\nform; that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant, it could move\namong budding artists. How do you think it would then be likely to express\nitself?\u2014\n\nMy friends, it would say, let us exchange a word or two in private. It is\neasier to compose bad music than good music. But what, if apart from this\nit were also more profitable, more effective, more convincing, more\nexalting, more secure, more _Wagnerian_?\u2026 _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum._\nBad enough in all conscience! We understand Latin, and perhaps we also\nunderstand which side our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks: we\nknow that. Wherefore beauty then? Why not rather aim at size, at the\nsublime, the gigantic, that which moves the _masses_?\u2014And to repeat, it is\neasier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we know that.\u2026\n\nWe know the masses, we know the theatre. The best of those who assemble\nthere,\u2014German youths, horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require the\nsublime, the profound, and the overwhelming. This much still lies within\nour power. And as for the others who assemble there,\u2014the cultured\n_cr\u00e9tins_, the _blas\u00e9_ pigmies, the eternally feminine, the gastrically\nhappy, in short the people\u2014they also require the sublime, the profound,\nthe overwhelming. All these people argue in the same way. \u201cHe who\noverthrows us is strong; he who elevates us is godly; he who makes us\nwonder vaguely is profound.\u201d\u2014Let us make up our mind then, my friends in\nmusic: we do want to overthrow them, we do want to elevate them, we do\nwant to make them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within our powers.\n\nIn regard to the process of making them wonder: it is here that our notion\nof \u201cstyle\u201d finds its starting-point. Above all, no thoughts! Nothing is\nmore compromising than a thought! But the state of mind which _precedes_\nthought, the labour of the thought still unborn, the promise of future\nthought, the world as it was before God created it\u2014a recrudescence of\nchaos.\u2026 Chaos makes people wonder.\u2026\n\nIn the words of the master: infinity but without melody.\n\nIn the second place, with regard to the overthrowing,\u2014this belongs at\nleast in part, to physiology. Let us, in the first place, examine the\ninstruments. A few of them would convince even our intestines (\u2014they\n_throw open_ doors, as Handel would say), others becharm our very marrow.\nThe _colour of the melody is_ all-important here, _the melody itself_ is\nof no importance. Let us be precise about _this_ point. To what other\npurpose should we spend our strength? Let us be characteristic in tone\neven to the point of foolishness! If by means of tones we allow plenty of\nscope for guessing, this will be put to the credit of our intellects. Let\nus irritate nerves, let us strike them dead: let us handle thunder and\nlightning,\u2014that is what overthrows.\u2026\n\nBut what overthrows best, is _passion_.\u2014We must try and be clear\nconcerning this question of passion. Nothing is cheaper than passion! All\nthe virtues of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no need to\nhave learnt anything,\u2014but passion is always within our reach! Beauty is\ndifficult: let us beware of beauty!\u2026 And also of _melody!_ However much in\nearnest we may otherwise be about the ideal, let us slander, my friends,\nlet us slander,\u2014let us slander melody! Nothing is more dangerous than a\nbeautiful melody! Nothing is more certain to ruin taste! My friends, if\npeople again set about loving beautiful melodies, we are lost!\u2026\n\n_First principle_: melody is immoral. _Proof_: \u201cPalestrina\u201d.\n_Application_: \u201cParsifal.\u201d The absence of melody is in itself\nsanctifying.\u2026\n\nAnd this is the definition of passion. Passion\u2014or the acrobatic feats of\nugliness on the tight-rope of enharmonic\u2014My friends, let us dare to be\nugly! Wagner dared it! Let us heave the mud of the most repulsive\nharmonies undauntedly before us. We must not even spare our hands! Only\nthus, shall we become _natural_.\u2026\n\nAnd now a last word of advice. Perhaps it covers everything\u2014_Let us be\nidealists!_\u2014If not the cleverest, it is at least the wisest thing we can\ndo. In order to elevate men we ourselves must be exalted. Let us wander in\nthe clouds, let us harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great\nsymbols all around us! _Sursum! Bumbum!_\u2014there is no better advice. The\n\u201cheaving breast\u201d shall be our argument, \u201cbeautiful feelings\u201d our\nadvocates. Virtue still carries its point against counterpoint. \u201cHow could\nhe who improves us, help being better than we?\u201d man has ever thought thus.\nLet us therefore improve mankind!\u2014in this way we shall become good (in\nthis way we shall even become \u201cclassics\u201d\u2014Schiller became a \u201cclassic\u201d). The\nstraining after the base excitement of the senses, after so-called beauty,\nshattered the nerves of the Italians: let us remain German! Even Mozart\u2019s\nrelation to music\u2014Wagner spoke this word of comfort to us\u2014was at bottom\nfrivolous.\u2026\n\nNever let us acknowledge that music \u201cmay be a recreation,\u201d that it may\n\u201cenliven,\u201d that it may \u201cgive pleasure.\u201d _Never let us give pleasure!_\u2014we\nshall be lost if people once again think of music hedonistically.\u2026 That\nbelongs to the bad eighteenth century.\u2026 On the other hand, nothing would\nbe more advisable (between ourselves) than a dose of\u2014_cant, sit venia\nverbo_. This imparts dignity.\u2014And let us take care to select the precise\nmoment when it would be fitting to have black looks, to sigh openly, to\nsigh devoutly, to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their eyes. \u201cMan\nis corrupt who will save him? _what will save him?_\u201d Do not let us reply.\nWe must be on our guard. We must control our ambition, which would bid us\nfound new religions. But no one must doubt that it is _we_ who save him,\nthat in _our_ music alone salvation is to be found.\u2026 (See Wagner\u2019s essay,\n\u201cReligion and Art.\u201d)\n\n\n\n\n7.\n\n\nEnough! Enough! I fear that, beneath all my merry jests, you are beginning\nto recognise the sinister truth only too clearly\u2014the picture of the\ndecline of art, of the decline of the artist. The latter, which is a\ndecline of character, might perhaps be defined provisionally in the\nfollowing manner: the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is\ndeveloping ever more and more into a talent for _telling lies_. In a\ncertain chapter of my principal work which bears the title \u201cConcerning the\nPhysiology of Art,\u201d(9) I shall have an opportunity of showing more\nthoroughly how this transformation of art as a whole into histrionics is\njust as much a sign of physiological degeneration (or more precisely a\nform of hysteria), as any other individual corruption, and infirmity\npeculiar to the art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the\nrestlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary to change one\u2019s\nattitude to it every second. They understand nothing of Wagner who see in\nhim but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter of accidents. He\nwas not the \u201cdefective,\u201d \u201cill-fated,\u201d \u201ccontradictory\u201d genius that people\nhave declared him to be. Wagner was something _complete_, he was a typical\n_d\u00e9cadent_, in whom every sign of \u201cfree will\u201d was lacking, in whom every\nfeature was necessary. If there is anything at all of interest in Wagner,\nit is the consistency with which a critical physiological condition may\nconvert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion, into a method,\na form of procedure, a reform of all principles, a crisis in taste.\n\nAt this point I shall only stop to consider the question of _style_. How\nis _decadence_ in _literature_ characterised? By the fact that in it life\nno longer animates the whole. Words become predominant and leap right out\nof the sentence to which they belong, the sentences themselves trespass\nbeyond their bounds, and obscure the sense of the whole page, and the page\nin its turn gains in vigour at the cost of the whole,\u2014the whole is no\nlonger a whole. But this is the formula for every decadent style: there is\nalways anarchy among the atoms, disaggregation of the will,\u2014in moral\nterms: \u201cfreedom of the individual,\u201d\u2014extended into a political theory\n\u201c_equal_ rights for all.\u201d Life, equal vitality, all the vibration and\nexuberance of life, driven back into the smallest structure, and the\nremainder left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, distress, and\nnumbness, or hostility and chaos both striking one with ever increasing\nforce the higher the forms of organisation are into which one ascends. The\nwhole no longer lives at all: it is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a\nfictitious thing.\n\nIn Wagner\u2019s case the first thing we notice is an hallucination, not of\ntones, but of attitudes. Only after he has the latter does he begin to\nseek the semiotics of tone for them. If we wish to admire him, we should\nobserve him at work here: how he separates and distinguishes, how he\narrives at small unities, and how he galvanises them, accentuates them,\nand brings them into pre-eminence. But in this way he exhausts his\nstrength the rest is worthless. How paltry, awkward, and amateurish is his\nmanner of \u201cdeveloping,\u201d his attempt at combining incompatible parts. His\nmanner in this respect reminds one of two people who even in other ways\nare not unlike him in style\u2014the brothers Goncourt; one almost feels\ncompassion for so much impotence. That Wagner disguised his inability to\ncreate organic forms, under the cloak of a principle, that he should have\nconstructed a \u201cdramatic style\u201d out of what we should call the total\ninability to create any style whatsoever, is quite in keeping with that\ndaring habit, which stuck to him throughout his life, of setting up a\nprinciple wherever capacity failed him. (In this respect he was very\ndifferent from old Kant, who rejoiced in another form of daring, _i.e._:\nwhenever a principle failed him, he endowed man with a \u201ccapacity\u201d which\ntook its place\u2026) Once more let it be said that Wagner is really only\nworthy of admiration and love by virtue of his inventiveness in small\nthings, in his elaboration of details,\u2014here one is quite justified in\nproclaiming him a master of the first rank, as our greatest musical\n_miniaturist_ who compresses an infinity of meaning and sweetness into the\nsmallest space. His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery of a\ndying light, so pampers our senses that afterwards almost every other\nmusician strikes us as being too robust. If people would believe me, they\nwould not form the highest idea of Wagner from that which pleases them in\nhim to-day. All that was only devised for convincing the masses, and\npeople like ourselves recoil from it just as one would recoil from too\ngarish a fresco. What concern have we with the irritating brutality of the\noverture to the \u201cTannhauser\u201d? Or with the Walkyrie Circus? Whatever has\nbecome popular in Wagner\u2019s art, including that which has become so outside\nthe theatre, is in bad taste and spoils taste. The \u201cTannhauser\u201d March\nseems to me to savour of the Philistine; the overture to the \u201cFlying\nDutchman\u201d is much ado about nothing; the prelude to \u201cLohengrin\u201d was the\nfirst, only too insidious, only too successful example of how one can\nhypnotise with music (\u2014I dislike all music which aspires to nothing higher\nthan to convince the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who paints\nfrescoes and practises magnetism, there is yet another Wagner who hoards\nsmall treasures: our greatest melancholic in music, full of side glances,\nloving speeches, and words of comfort, in which no one ever forestalled\nhim,\u2014the tone-master of melancholy and drowsy happiness.\u2026 A lexicon of\nWagner\u2019s most intimate phrases\u2014a host of short fragments of from five to\nfifteen bars each, of music which _nobody knows_.\u2026 Wagner had the virtue\nof _d\u00e9cadents_,\u2014pity.\u2026\n\n\n\n\n8.\n\n\n\u2014\u201cVery good! But how can this _d\u00e9cadent_ spoil one\u2019s taste if perchance\none is not a musician, if perchance one is not oneself a\n_d\u00e9cadent_?\u201d\u2014Conversely! How can one _help_ it! _Just_ you try it!\u2014You\nknow not what Wagner is: quite a great actor! Does a more profound, a more\n_ponderous_ influence exist on the stage? Just look at these\nyouthlets,\u2014all benumbed, pale, breathless! They are Wagnerites: they know\nnothing about music,\u2014and yet Wagner gets the mastery of them. Wagner\u2019s art\npresses with the weight of a hundred atmospheres: do but submit, there is\nnothing else to do.\u2026 Wagner the actor is a tyrant, his pathos flings all\ntaste, all resistance, to the winds.\n\n\u2014Who else has this persuasive power in his attitudes, who else sees\nattitudes so clearly before anything else! This holding-of-its-breath in\nWagnerian pathos, this disinclination to have done with an intense\nfeeling, this terrifying habit of dwelling on a situation in which every\ninstant almost chokes one.\u2014\u2014\n\nWas Wagner a musician at all? In any case he was something else to _a much\ngreater degree_\u2014that is to say, an incomparable _histrio_, the greatest\nmime, the most astounding theatrical genius that the Germans have ever\nhad, our _scenic artist par excellence_. He belongs to some other sphere\nthan the history of music, with whose really great and genuine figure he\nmust not be confounded. Wagner _and_ Beethoven\u2014this is blasphemy\u2014and above\nall it does not do justice even to Wagner.\u2026 As a musician he was no more\nthan what he was as a man, he _became_ a musician, he _became_ a poet,\nbecause the tyrant in him, his actor\u2019s genius, drove him to be both.\nNothing is known concerning Wagner, so long as his dominating instinct has\nnot been divined.\n\nWagner was _not_ instinctively a musician. And this he proved by the way\nin which he abandoned all laws and rules, or, in more precise terms, all\nstyle in music, in order to make what he wanted with it, _i.e._, a\nrhetorical medium for the stage, a medium of expression, a means of\naccentuating an attitude, a vehicle of suggestion and of the\npsychologically picturesque. In this department Wagner may well stand as\nan inventor and an innovator of the first order\u2014_he increased the powers\nof speech __ of music to an incalculable degree_\u2014he is the Victor Hugo of\nmusic as language, provided always we allow that under certain\ncircumstances music may be something which is not music, but\nspeech\u2014instrument\u2014_ancilla dramaturgica_. Wagner\u2019s music, _not_ in the\ntender care of theatrical taste, which is very tolerant, is simply bad\nmusic, perhaps the worst that has ever been composed. When a musician can\nno longer count up to three, he becomes \u201cdramatic,\u201d he becomes\n\u201cWagnerian\u201d.\u2026\n\nWagner almost discovered the magic which can be wrought even now by means\nof music which is both incoherent and _elementary_. His consciousness of\nthis attains to huge proportions, as does also his instinct to dispense\nentirely with higher law and _style_. The elementary factors\u2014sound,\nmovement, colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music\u2014suffice.\nWagner never calculates as a musician with a musician\u2019s conscience, all he\nstrains after is effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows what he\nhas to make an effect upon!\u2014In this he is as unhesitating as Schiller was,\nas any theatrical man must be; he has also the latter\u2019s contempt for the\nworld which he brings to its knees before him. A man is an actor when he\nis ahead of mankind in his possession of this one view, that everything\nwhich has to strike people as true, must not be true. This rule was\nformulated by Talma: it contains the whole psychology of the actor, it\nalso contains\u2014and this we need not doubt\u2014all his morality. Wagner\u2019s music\nis never true.\n\n\u2014But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything is as it should be. As\nlong as we are young, and Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as\nrich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as a great landlord in\nthe realm of sound. We admire him in very much the same way as young\nFrenchmen admire Victor Hugo\u2014that is to say, for his \u201croyal liberality.\u201d\nLater on we admire the one as well as the other for the opposite reason:\nas masters and paragons in economy, as _prudent_ amphitryons. Nobody can\nequal them in the art of providing a princely board with such a modest\noutlay.\u2014The Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even sated with the\nfare which his master conjures up before him. But we others who, in books\nas in music, desire above all to find _substance_, and who are scarcely\nsatisfied with the mere representation of a banquet, are much worse off.\nIn plain English, Wagner does not give us enough to masticate. His\nrecitative\u2014very little meat, more bones, and plenty of broth\u2014I christened\n\u201c_alla genovese_\u201d: I had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this\nremark, but rather the _older recitativo_, the _recitativo secco_. And as\nto Wagnerian _leitmotif_, I fear I lack the necessary culinary\nunderstanding for it. If hard pressed, I might say that I regard it\nperhaps as an ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one\u2019s self of\nwhat remains of one\u2019s meal. Wagner\u2019s \u201carias\u201d are still left over. But now\nI shall hold my tongue.\n\n\n\n\n9.\n\n\nEven in his general sketch of the action, Wagner is above all an actor.\nThe first thing that occurs to him is a scene which is certain to produce\na strong effect, a real _actio_,(10) with a basso-relievo of attitudes; an\n_overwhelming_ scene, this he now proceeds to elaborate more deeply, and\nout of it he draws his characters. The whole of what remains to be done\nfollows of itself, fully in keeping with a technical economy which has no\nreason to be subtle. It is not Corneille\u2019s public that Wagner has to\nconsider, it is merely the nineteenth century. Concerning the \u201cactual\nrequirements of the stage\u201d Wagner would have about the same opinion as any\nother actor of to-day, a series of powerful scenes, each stronger than the\none that preceded it,\u2014and, in between, all kinds of _clever_ nonsense. His\nfirst concern is to guarantee the effect of his work; he begins with the\nthird act, he _approves_ his work according to the quality of its final\neffect. Guided by this sort of understanding of the stage, there is not\nmuch danger of one\u2019s creating a drama unawares. Drama demands _inexorable_\nlogic: but what did Wagner care about logic? Again I say, it was not\nCorneille\u2019s public that he had to consider; but merely Germans! Everybody\nknows the technical difficulties before which the dramatist often has to\nsummon all his strength and frequently to sweat his blood: the difficulty\nof making the _plot_ seem necessary and the unravelment as well, so that\nboth are conceivable only in a certain way, and so that each may give the\nimpression of freedom (the principle of the smallest expenditure of\nenergy). Now the very last thing that Wagner does is to sweat blood over\nthe plot; and on this and the unravelment he certainly spends the smallest\npossible amount of energy. Let anybody put one of Wagner\u2019s \u201cplots\u201d under\nthe microscope, and I wager that he will be forced to laugh. Nothing is\nmore enlivening than the dilemma in \u201cTristan,\u201d unless it be that in the\n\u201cMastersingers.\u201d Wagner is _no_ dramatist; let nobody be deceived on this\npoint. All he did was to love the word \u201cdrama\u201d\u2014he always loved fine words.\nNevertheless, in his writings the word \u201cdrama\u201d is merely a\nmisunderstanding (\u2014_and_ a piece of shrewdness: Wagner always affected\nsuperiority in regard to the word \u201copera\u201d\u2014), just as the word \u201cspirit\u201d is\na misunderstanding in the New Testament.\u2014He was not enough of a\npsychologist for drama; he instinctively avoided a psychological plot\u2014but\nhow?\u2014by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place.\u2026 Very modern\u2014eh? Very\nParisian! very decadent!\u2026 Incidentally, the _plots_ that Wagner knows how\nto unravel with the help of dramatic inventions, are of quite another\nkind. For example, let us suppose that Wagner requires a female voice. A\nwhole act without a woman\u2019s voice would be impossible! But in this\nparticular instance not one of the heroines happens to be free. What does\nWagner do? He emancipates the oldest woman on earth, Erda. \u201cStep up, aged\ngrandmamma! You have got to sing!\u201d And Erda sings. Wagner\u2019s end has been\nachieved. Thereupon he immediately dismisses the old lady. \u201cWhy on earth\ndid you come? Off with you! Kindly go to sleep again!\u201d In short, a scene\nfull of mythological awe, before which the Wagnerite _wonders_ all kinds\nof things.\u2026\n\n\u2014\u201cBut the substance of Wagner\u2019s texts! their mythical substance, their\neternal substance\u201d\u2014Question: how is this substance, this eternal substance\ntested? The chemical analyst replies: Translate Wagner into the real, into\nthe modern,\u2014let us be even more cruel, and say into the bourgeois! And\nwhat will then become of him?\u2014Between ourselves, I have tried the\nexperiment. Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more worthy of being\nrecommended to a picnic-party, than to discuss Wagner dressed in a more\nmodern garb: for instance Parsifal, as a candidate in divinity, with a\npublic-school education (\u2014the latter, quite indispensable _for pure_\nfoolishness). What _surprises_ await one! Would you believe it, that\nWagner\u2019s heroines one and all, once they have been divested of the heroic\nhusks, are almost indistinguishable from Mdme. Bovary!\u2014just as one can\nconceive conversely, of Flaubert\u2019s being _well able_ to transform all his\nheroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian women, and then to offer them\nto Wagner in this mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally\nspeaking, Wagner does not seem to have become interested in any other\nproblems than those which engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day.\nAlways five paces away from the hospital! All very modern problems, all\nproblems which are at home _in big cities!_ do not doubt it!\u2026 Have you\nnoticed (it is in keeping with this association of ideas) that Wagner\u2019s\nheroines never have any children?\u2014They _cannot_ have them.\u2026 The despair\nwith which Wagner tackled the problem of arranging in some way for\nSiegfried\u2019s birth, betrays how modern his feelings on this point actually\nwere.\u2014Siegfried \u201cemancipated woman\u201d\u2014but not with any hope of\noffspring.\u2014And now here is a fact which leaves us speechless: Parsifal is\nLohengrin\u2019s father! How ever did he do it?\u2014Ought one at this juncture to\nremember that \u201cchastity works miracles\u201d?\u2026\n\n_Wagnerus dixit princeps in castitate auctoritas._\n\n\n\n\n10.\n\n\nAnd now just a word _en passant_ concerning Wagner\u2019s writings: they are\namong other things a school of _shrewdness_. The system of procedures of\nwhich Wagner disposes, might be applied to a hundred other cases,\u2014he that\nhath ears to hear let him hear. Perhaps I may lay claim to some public\nacknowledgment, if I put three of the most valuable of these procedures\ninto a precise form.\n\nEverything that Wagner _cannot_ do is bad.\n\nWagner could do much more than he does; but his strong principles prevent\nhim.\n\nEverything that Wagner _can_ do, no one will ever be able to do after him,\nno one has ever done before him, and no one must ever do after him. Wagner\nis godly.\n\nThese three propositions are the quintessence of Wagner\u2019s writings;\u2014the\nrest is merely\u2014\u201cliterature\u201d.\n\n\u2014Not every kind of music hitherto has been in need of literature; and it\nwere well, to try and discover the actual reason of this. Is it perhaps\nthat Wagner\u2019s music is too difficult to understand? Or did he fear\nprecisely the reverse\u2014that it was too easy,\u2014that people might _not\nunderstand it with sufficient difficulty_?\u2014As a matter of fact, his whole\nlife long, he did nothing but repeat one proposition: that his music did\nnot mean music alone! But something more! Something immeasurably more!\u2026\n\u201c_Not music alone_\u201d\u2014_no_ musician would speak in this way. I repeat,\nWagner could not create things as a whole; he had no choice, he was\nobliged to create things in bits, with \u201cmotives,\u201d attitudes, formul\u00e6,\nduplications, and hundreds of repetitions, he remained a rhetorician in\nmusic,\u2014and that is why he was at bottom _forced_ to press \u201cthis means\u201d\ninto the foreground. \u201cMusic can never be anything else than a means\u201d: this\nwas his theory, but above all it was the only _practice_ that lay open to\nhim. No musician however thinks in this way.\u2014Wagner was in need of\nliterature, in order to persuade the whole world to take his music\nseriously, profoundly, \u201cbecause it _meant_ an infinity of things\u201d, all his\nlife he was the commentator of the \u201cIdea.\u201d\u2014What does Elsa stand for? But\nwithout a doubt, Elsa is \u201cthe unconscious _mind of the people_\u201d (\u2014\u201cwhen I\nrealised this, I naturally became a thorough revolutionist\u201d\u2014).\n\nDo not let us forget that, when Hegel and Schelling were misleading the\nminds of Germany, Wagner was still young: that he guessed, or rather fully\ngrasped, that the only thing which Germans take seriously is\u2014\u201cthe\nidea,\u201d\u2014that is to say, something obscure, uncertain, wonderful; that among\nGermans lucidity is an objection, logic a refutation. Schopenhauer\nrigorously pointed out the dishonesty of Hegel\u2019s and Schelling\u2019s\nage,\u2014rigorously, but also unjustly, for he himself, the pessimistic old\ncounterfeiter, was in no way more \u201chonest\u201d than his more famous\ncontemporaries. But let us leave morality out of the question, Hegel is a\n_matter of taste_.\u2026 And not only of German but of European taste!\u2026 A taste\nwhich Wagner understood!\u2014which he felt equal to! which he has\nimmortalised!\u2014All he did was to apply it to music\u2014he invented a style for\nhimself, which might mean an \u201cinfinity of things,\u201d\u2014he was _Hegel\u2019s_ heir.\u2026\nMusic as \u201cIdea.\u201d\u2014\n\nAnd how well Wagner was understood!\u2014The same kind of man who used to gush\nover Hegel, now gushes over Wagner, in his school they even _write_\nHegelian.(11) But he who understood Wagner best, was the German youthlet.\nThe two words \u201cinfinity\u201d and \u201cmeaning\u201d were sufficient for this: at their\nsound the youthlet immediately began to feel exceptionally happy. Wagner\ndid _not_ conquer these boys with music, but with the \u201cidea\u201d:\u2014it is the\nenigmatical vagueness of his art, its game of hide-and-seek amid a hundred\nsymbols, its polychromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads. It is\nWagner\u2019s genius for forming clouds, his sweeps and swoops through the air,\nhis ubiquity and nullibiety\u2014precisely the same qualities with which Hegel\nled and lured in his time!\u2014Moreover in the presence of Wagner\u2019s\nmultifariousness, plenitude and arbitrariness, they seem to themselves\njustified\u2014\u201csaved\u201d. Tremulously they listen while the _great symbols_ in\nhis art seem to make themselves heard from out the misty distance, with a\ngentle roll of thunder, and they are not at all displeased if at times it\ngets a little grey, gruesome and cold. Are they not one and all, like\nWagner himself, on _quite intimate terms_ with bad weather, with German\nweather! Wotan is their God, but Wotan is the God of bad weather.\u2026 They\nare right, how could these German youths\u2014in their present condition,\u2014miss\nwhat we others, we _halcyonians_, miss in Wagner? _i.e._: _la gaya\nscienza_; light feet, wit, fire, grave, grand logic, stellar dancing,\nwanton intellectuality, the vibrating light of the South, the calm\nsea\u2014perfection.\u2026\n\n\n\n\n11.\n\n\n\u2014I have mentioned the sphere to which Wagner belongs\u2014certainly not to the\nhistory of music. What, however, does he mean historically?\u2014_The rise of\nthe actor in music_: a momentous event which not only leads me to think\nbut also to fear.\n\nIn a word: \u201cWagner and Liszt.\u201d Never yet have the \u201cuprightness\u201d and\n\u201cgenuineness\u201d of musicians been put to such a dangerous test. It is\nglaringly obvious: great success, mob success is no longer the achievement\nof the genuine,\u2014in order to get it a man must be an actor!\u2014Victor Hugo and\nRichard Wagner\u2014they both prove one and the same thing: that in declining\ncivilisations, wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes\nsuperfluous, prejudicial, unfavourable. The actor, alone, can still kindle\n_great_ enthusiasm.\u2014And thus it is his _golden age_ which is now\ndawning,\u2014his and that of all those who are in any way related to him. With\ndrums and fifes, Wagner marches at the head of all artists in declamation,\nin display and virtuosity. He began by convincing the conductors of\norchestras, the scene-shifters and stage-singers, not to forget the\norchestra:\u2014he \u201cdelivered\u201d them from monotony.\u2026 The movement that Wagner\ncreated has spread even to the land of knowledge: whole sciences\npertaining to music are rising slowly, out of centuries of scholasticism.\nAs an example of what I mean, let me point more particularly to\n_Riemann\u2019s_ services to rhythmics; he was the first who called attention\nto the leading idea in punctuation\u2014even for music (unfortunately he did so\nwith a bad word; he called it \u201cphrasing\u201d).\u2014All these people, and I say it\nwith gratitude, are the best, the most respectable among Wagner\u2019s\nadmirers\u2014they have a perfect right to honour Wagner. The same instinct\nunites them with one another; in him they recognise their highest type,\nand since he has inflamed them with his own ardour they feel themselves\ntransformed into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if\nanywhere, Wagner\u2019s influence has really been _beneficent_. Never before\nhas there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere.\nWagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now\nexact and _obtain_ from themselves, they had never exacted before Wagner\u2019s\ntime\u2014before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the\nstage since Wagner rules there the most difficult things are expected,\nblame is severe, praise very scarce,\u2014the good and the excellent have\nbecome the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice.\nWagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more \u201cdramatic\u201d effect.\nEven talent is out of the question. Expressiveness at all costs, which is\nwhat the Wagnerian ideal\u2014the ideal of decadence\u2014demands, is hardly\ncompatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue\u2014that is to\nsay, training, automatism, \u201cself-denial\u201d. Neither taste, voices, nor\ngifts, Wagner\u2019s stage requires but one thing: _Germans!_\u2026 The definition\nof a German: an obedient man with long legs.\u2026 There is a deep significance\nin the fact that the rise of Wagner should have coincided with the rise of\nthe \u201cEmpire\u201d: both phenomena are a proof of one and the same\nthing\u2014obedience and long legs.\u2014Never have people been more obedient, never\nhave they been so well ordered about. The conductors of Wagnerian\norchestras, more particularly, are worthy of an age, which posterity will\none day call, with timid awe, the _classical age of war_.\n\nWagner understood how to command; in this respect, too, he was a great\nteacher. He commanded as a man who had exercised an inexorable will over\nhimself\u2014as one who had practised lifelong discipline: Wagner was, perhaps,\nthe greatest example of self-violence in the whole of the history of art\n(\u2014even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by\nhim. The note of a Torinese).\n\n\n\n\n12.\n\n\nThis view, that our actors have become more worthy of respect than\nheretofore, does not imply that I believe them to have become less\ndangerous.\u2026 But who is in any doubt as to what I want,\u2014as to what the\n_three requisitions_ are concerning which my wrath and my care and love of\nart, have made me open my mouth on this occasion?\n\n_That the stage should not become master of the arts._\n\n_That the actor should not become the corrupter of the genuine._\n\n_That music should not become an art of lying._\n\n_Friedrich Nietzsche._\n\n\n\n\nPostscript\n\n\nThe gravity of these last words allows me at this point to introduce a few\nsentences out of an unprinted essay which will at least leave no doubt as\nto my earnestness in regard to this question. The title of this essay is:\n\u201cWhat Wagner has cost us.\u201d\n\nOne pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Even to-day a vague\nfeeling that this is so, still prevails. Even Wagner\u2019s success, his\ntriumph, did not uproot this feeling thoroughly. But formerly it was\nstrong, it was terrible, it was a gloomy hate throughout almost\nthree-quarters of Wagner\u2019s life. The resistance which he met with among us\nGermans cannot be too highly valued or too highly honoured. People guarded\nthemselves against him as against an illness,\u2014not with arguments\u2014it is\nimpossible to refute an illness,\u2014but with obstruction, with mistrust, with\nrepugnance, with loathing, with sombre earnestness, as though he were a\ngreat rampant danger. The \u00e6sthetes gave themselves away when out of three\nschools of German philosophy they waged an absurd war against Wagner\u2019s\nprinciples with \u201cifs\u201d and \u201cfors\u201d\u2014what did he care about principles, even\nhis own!\u2014The Germans themselves had enough instinctive good sense to\ndispense with every \u201cif\u201d and \u201cfor\u201d in this matter. An instinct is weakened\nwhen it becomes conscious: for by becoming conscious it makes itself\nfeeble. If there were any signs that in spite of the universal character\nof European decadence there was still a modicum of health, still an\ninstinctive premonition of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the\nGerman soul, then it would be precisely this blunt resistance to Wagner\nwhich I should least like to see underrated. It does us honour, it gives\nus some reason to hope: France no longer has such an amount of health at\nher disposal. The Germans, these _loiterers par excellence_, as history\nshows, are to-day the most backward among the civilised nations of Europe;\nthis has its advantages,\u2014for they are thus relatively the youngest.\n\nOne pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. It is only quite\nrecently that the Germans have overcome a sort of dread of him,\u2014the desire\nto be rid of him occurred to them again and again.(12) Does anybody\nremember a very curious occurrence in which, quite unexpectedly towards\nthe end, this old feeling once more manifested itself? It happened at\nWagner\u2019s funeral. The first Wagner Society, the one in Munich, laid a\nwreath on his grave with this inscription, which immediately became\nfamous: \u201cSalvation to the Saviour!\u201d Everybody admired the lofty\ninspiration which had dictated this inscription, as also the taste which\nseemed to be the privilege of the followers of Wagner. Many also, however\n(it was singular enough), made this slight alteration in it: \u201cSalvation\n_from_ the Saviour\u201d\u2014People began to breathe again\u2014\n\nOne pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Let us try to\nestimate the influence of this worship upon culture. Whom did this\nmovement press to the front? What did it make ever more and more\npre-eminent?\u2014In the first place the layman\u2019s arrogance, the arrogance of\nthe art-maniac. Now these people are organising societies, they wish to\nmake their taste prevail, they even wish to pose as judges _in rebus\nmusicis et musicantibus_. Secondly: an ever increasing indifference\ntowards severe, noble and conscientious schooling in the service of art,\nand in its place the belief in genius, or in plain English, cheeky\ndilettantism (\u2014the formula for this is to be found in the\n_Mastersingers_). Thirdly, and this is the worst of all: _Theatrocracy_\u2014,\nthe craziness of a belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the right\nof the theatre to rule supreme over the arts, over Art in general.\u2026 But\nthis should be shouted into the face of Wagnerites a hundred times over:\nthat the theatre is something lower than art, something secondary,\nsomething coarsened, above all something suitably distorted and falsified\nfor the mob. In this respect Wagner altered nothing: Bayreuth is grand\nOpera\u2014and not even good opera.\u2026 The stage is a form of Demolatry in the\nrealm of taste, the stage is an insurrection of the mob, a _pl\u00e9biscite_\nagainst good taste.\u2026 The case of Wagner proves this fact: he captivated\nthe masses\u2014he depraved taste, he even perverted our taste for opera!\u2014\n\nOne pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. What has\nWagner-worship made out of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit? To him\nbelong that ambiguity and equivocation and all other qualities which can\nconvince the uncertain without making them conscious of why they have been\nconvinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer on a grand scale. There is\nnothing exhausted, nothing effete, nothing dangerous to life, nothing that\nslanders the world in the realm of spirit, which has not secretly found\nshelter in his art, he conceals the blackest obscurantism in the luminous\norbs of the ideal. He flatters every nihilistic (Buddhistic) instinct and\ntogs it out in music; he flatters every form of Christianity, every\nreligious expression of decadence. He that hath ears to hear let him hear:\neverything that has ever grown out of the soil of impoverished life, the\nwhole counterfeit coinage of the transcendental and of a Beyond found its\nmost sublime advocate in Wagner\u2019s art, not in formul\u00e6 (Wagner is too\nclever to use formul\u00e6), but in the persuasion of the senses which in their\nturn makes the spirit weary and morbid. Music in the form of Circe \u2026 in\nthis respect his last work is his greatest masterpiece. In the art of\nseduction \u201cParsifal\u201d will for ever maintain its rank as a stroke of\ngenius.\u2026 I admire this work. I would fain have composed it myself. Wagner\nwas never better inspired than towards the end. The subtlety with which\nbeauty and disease are united here, reaches such a height, that it casts\nso to speak a shadow upon all Wagner\u2019s earlier achievements: it seems too\nbright, too healthy. Do ye understand this? Health and brightness acting\nlike a shadow? Almost like an objection?\u2026 To this extent are we already\npure fools.\u2026 Never was there a greater Master in heavy hieratic\nperfumes\u2014Never on earth has there been such a connoisseur of paltry\ninfinities, of all that thrills, of extravagant excesses, of all the\nfeminism from out the vocabulary of happiness! My friends, do but drink\nthe philtres of this art! Nowhere will ye find a more pleasant method of\nenervating your spirit, of forgetting your manliness in the shade of a\nrosebush.\u2026 Ah, this old magician, mightiest of Klingsors; how he wages war\nagainst us with his art, against us free spirits! How he appeals to every\nform of cowardice of the modern soul with his charming girlish notes!\nThere never was such a _mortal hatred_ of knowledge! One must be a very\ncynic in order to resist seduction here. One must be able to bite in order\nto resist worshipping at this shrine. Very well, old seducer! The cynic\ncautions you\u2014_cave canem_.\u2026\n\nOne pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. I contemplate the\nyouthlets who have long been exposed to his infection. The first\nrelatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of their taste. Wagner\nacts like chronic recourse to the bottle. He stultifies, he befouls the\nstomach. His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling for rhythm. What\nthe Wagnerite calls rhythmical is what I call, to use a Greek metaphor,\n\u201cstirring a swamp.\u201d Much more dangerous than all this, however, is the\ncorruption of ideas. The youthlet becomes a moon-calf, an \u201cidealist\u201d. He\nstands above science, and in this respect he has reached the master\u2019s\nheights. On the other hand, he assumes the airs of a philosopher, he\nwrites for the _Bayreuth Journal_; he solves all problems in the name of\nthe Father, the Son, and the Holy Master. But the most ghastly thing of\nall is the deterioration of the nerves. Let any one wander through a large\ncity at night, in all directions he will hear people doing violence to\ninstruments with solemn rage and fury, a wild uproar breaks out at\nintervals. What is happening? It is the disciples of Wagner in the act of\nworshipping him.\u2026 Bayreuth is another word for a Hydro. A typical telegram\nfrom Bayreuth would read _bereits bereut_ (I already repent). Wagner is\nbad for young men; he is fatal for women. What medically speaking is a\nfemale Wagnerite? It seems to me that a doctor could not be too serious in\nputting this alternative of conscience to young women; either one thing or\nthe other. But they have already made their choice. You cannot serve two\nMasters when one of these is Wagner. Wagner redeemed woman; and in return\nwoman built Bayreuth for him. Every sacrifice, every surrender: there was\nnothing that they were not prepared to give him. Woman impoverishes\nherself in favour of the Master, she becomes quite touching, she stands\nnaked before him. The female Wagnerite, the most attractive equivocality\nthat exists to-day: she is the incarnation of Wagner\u2019s cause: his cause\ntriumphs with her as its symbol.\u2026 Ah, this old robber! He robs our young\nmen: he even robs our women as well, and drags them to his cell.\u2026 Ah, this\nold Minotaur! What has he not already cost us? Every year processions of\nthe finest young men and maidens are led into his labyrinth that he may\nswallow them up, every year the whole of Europe cries out \u201cAway to Crete!\nAway to Crete!\u201d.\u2026\n\n\n\n\nSecond Postscript\n\n\nIt seems to me that my letter is open to some misunderstanding. On certain\nfaces I see the expression of gratitude; I even hear modest but merry\nlaughter. I prefer to be understood here as in other things. But since a\ncertain animal, _the worm_ of Empire, the famous _Rhinoxera_, has become\nlodged in the vineyards of the German spirit, nobody any longer\nunderstands a word I say. The _Kreus-Zeitung_ has brought this home to me,\nnot to speak of the _Litterarisches Centralblatt_. I have given the\nGermans the deepest books that they have ever possessed\u2014a sufficient\nreason for their not having understood a word of them.\u2026 If in this essay I\ndeclare war against Wagner\u2014and incidentally against a certain form of\nGerman taste, if I seem to use strong language about the cretinism of\nBayreuth, it must not be supposed that I am in the least anxious to\nglorify any other musician. Other musicians are not to be considered by\nthe side of Wagner. Things are generally bad. Decay is universal. Disease\nlies at the very root of things. If Wagner\u2019s name represents the ruin of\nmusic, just as Bernini\u2019s stands for the ruin of sculpture, he is not on\nthat account its cause. All he did was to accelerate the fall,\u2014though we\nare quite prepared to admit that he did it in a way which makes one recoil\nwith horror from this almost instantaneous decline and fall to the depths.\nHe possessed the ingenuousness of decadence: this constituted his\nsuperiority. He believed in it. He did not halt before any of its logical\nconsequences. The others hesitated\u2014that is their distinction. They have no\nother. What is common to both Wagner and \u201cthe others\u201d consists in this:\nthe decline of all organising power, the abuse of traditional means,\nwithout the capacity or the aim that would justify this. The counterfeit\nimitation of grand forms, for which nobody nowadays is strong, proud,\nself-reliant and healthy enough, excessive vitality in small details;\npassion at all costs; refinement as an expression of impoverished life,\never more nerves in the place of muscle. I know only one musician who\nto-day would be able to compose an overture as an organic whole: and\nnobody else knows him.(13) He who is famous now, does not write better\nmusic than Wagner, but only less characteristic, less definite music:\u2014less\ndefinite, because half measures, even in decadence, cannot stand by the\nside of completeness. But Wagner was complete, Wagner represented thorough\ncorruption, Wagner has had the courage, the will, and the conviction for\ncorruption. What does Johannes Brahms matter?\u2026 It was his good fortune to\nbe misunderstood by Germany; he was taken to be an antagonist of\nWagner\u2014people required an antagonist!\u2014But he did not write necessary\nmusic, above all he wrote too much music!\u2014When one is not rich one should\nat least have enough pride to be poor!\u2026 The sympathy which here and there\nwas meted out to Brahms, apart from party interests and party\nmisunderstandings, was for a long time a riddle to me, until one day\nthrough an accident, almost, I discovered that he affected a particular\ntype of man. He has the melancholy of impotence. His creations are not the\nresult of plenitude, he thirsts after abundance. Apart from what he\nplagiarises, from what he borrows from ancient or exotically modern\nstyles\u2014he is a master in the art of copying,\u2014there remains as his most\nindividual quality a _longing_.\u2026 And this is what the dissatisfied of all\nkinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little of a\npersonality, too little of a central figure.\u2026 The \u201cimpersonal,\u201d those who\nare not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the musician of\na species of dissatisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we find the\nfemale Wagnerite\u2014just as we find Wagner himself fifty paces ahead of\nBrahms.\u2014The female Wagnerite is a more definite, a more interesting, and\nabove all, a more attractive type. Brahms is touching so long as he dreams\nor mourns over himself in private\u2014in this respect he is modern;\u2014he becomes\ncold, we no longer feel at one with him when he poses as the child of the\nclassics.\u2026 People like to call Brahms Beethoven\u2019s heir: I know of no more\ncautious euphemism\u2014All that which to-day makes a claim to being the grand\nstyle in music is on precisely that account either false to us or false to\nitself. This alternative is suspicious enough: in itself it contains a\ncasuistic question concerning the value of the two cases. The instinct of\nthe majority protests against the alternative; \u201cfalse to us\u201d\u2014they do not\nwish to be cheated;\u2014and I myself would certainly always prefer this type\nto the other (\u201cFalse to itself\u201d). This is _my_ taste.\u2014Expressed more\nclearly for the sake of the \u201cpoor in spirit\u201d it amounts to this: Brahms\n_or_ Wagner.\u2026 Brahms is _not_ an actor.\u2014A very great part of other\nmusicians may be summed up in the concept Brahms\u2014I do not wish to say\nanything about the clever apes of Wagner, as for instance Goldmark: when\none has \u201cThe Queen of Sheba\u201d to one\u2019s name, one belongs to a\nmenagerie,\u2014one ought to put oneself on show.\u2014Nowadays all things that can\nbe done well and even with a master hand are small. In this department\nalone is honesty still possible. Nothing, however, can cure music as a\nwhole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to be the expression of\ngeneral physiological contradiction,\u2014which is, in fact, to be modern.\n\nThe best instruction, the most conscientious schooling, the most thorough\nfamiliarity, yea, and even isolation, with the Old Masters,\u2014all this only\nacts as a palliative, or, more strictly speaking, has but an illusory\neffect, because the first condition of the right thing is no longer in our\nbodies; whether this first condition be the strong race of a Handel or the\noverflowing animal spirits of a Rossini. Not everyone has the right to\nevery teacher: and this holds good of whole epochs.\u2014In itself it is not\nimpossible that there are still remains of stronger natures, typical\nunadapted men, somewhere in Europe: from this quarter the advent of a\nsomewhat belated form of beauty and perfection, even in music, might still\nbe hoped for. But the most that we can expect to see are exceptional\ncases. From the rule, that corruption is paramount, that corruption is a\nfatality,\u2014not even a God can save music.\n\n\n\n\nEpilogue\n\n\nAnd now let us take breath and withdraw a moment from this narrow world\nwhich necessarily must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries\nrelative to the value of _persons_. A philosopher feels that he wants to\nwash his hands after he has concerned himself so long with the \u201cCase of\nWagner\u201d. I shall now give my notion of what is _modern_. According to the\nmeasure of energy of every age, there is also a standard that determines\nwhich virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden. The age either has the\nvirtues of _ascending_ life, in which case it resists the virtues of\ndegeneration with all its deepest instincts. Or it is in itself an age of\ndegeneration, in which case it requires the virtues of declining life,\u2014in\nwhich case it hates everything that justifies itself, solely as being the\noutcome of a plenitude, or a superabundance of strength. \u00c6sthetic is\ninextricably bound up with these biological principles: there is decadent\n\u00e6sthetic, and _classical_ \u00e6sthetic,\u2014\u201cbeauty in itself\u201d is just as much a\nchimera as any other kind of idealism.\u2014Within the narrow sphere of the\nso-called moral values, no greater antithesis could be found than that of\n_master-morality_ and the morality of _Christian_ valuations: the latter\nhaving grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (\u2014The gospels present us\nwith the same physiological types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky), the\nmaster-morality (\u201cRoman,\u201d \u201cpagan,\u201d \u201cclassical,\u201d \u201cRenaissance\u201d), on the\nother hand, being the symbolic speech of well-constitutedness, of\n_ascending_ life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle.\nMaster-morality _affirms_ just as instinctively as Christian morality\n_denies_ (\u201cGod,\u201d \u201cBeyond,\u201d \u201cself-denial,\u201d\u2014all of them negations). The\nfirst reflects its plenitude upon things,\u2014it transfigures, it embellishes,\nit _rationalises_ the world,\u2014the latter impoverishes, bleaches, mars the\nvalue of things; it _suppresses_ the world. \u201cWorld\u201d is a Christian term of\nabuse. These antithetical forms in the optics of values, are _both_\nnecessary: they are different points of view which cannot be circumvented\neither with arguments or counter-arguments. One cannot refute\nChristianity: it is impossible to refute a diseased eyesight. That people\nshould have combated pessimism as if it had been a philosophy, was the\nvery acme of learned stupidity. The concepts \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cuntrue\u201d do not\nseem to me to have any sense in optics.\u2014That, alone, which has to be\nguarded against is the falsity, the instinctive duplicity which _would\nfain_ regard this antithesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner\ndid,\u2014and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of no mean order. To\ncast side-long glances at master-morality, at _noble_ morality (\u2014Icelandic\nsaga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence of these values), and at\nthe same time to have the opposite teaching, the \u201cgospel of the lowly,\u201d\nthe doctrine of the _need_ of salvation, on one\u2019s lips!\u2026 Incidentally, I\nadmire the modesty of Christians who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I\ncould _not_ endure to hear the sound of certain words on Wagner\u2019s lips.\nThere are some concepts which are too good for Bayreuth \u2026 What?\nChristianity adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps _by_ female\nWagnerites\u2014for, in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly _feminini\ngeneris_\u2014? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.\u2026\nIf Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the\nChurch!\u2014The need of _salvation_, the quintessence of all Christian needs,\nhas nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward\nexpression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful\naffirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian\nwishes _to be rid_ of himself. _Le moi est toujours haissable._ Noble\nmorality, master-morality, on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant\nsaying of yea to _one\u2019s self_,\u2014it is the self-affirmation and\nself-glorification of life; it also requires sublime symbols and\npractices; but only \u201cbecause its heart is too full.\u201d The whole of\nbeautiful art and of great art belongs here; their common essence is\ngratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive repugnance _to\nd\u00e9cadents_, and a scorn and horror of the latter\u2019s symbolism: such things\nalmost prove it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as a _f\u0153da\nsuperstitio_: let me call to your minds the feelings which the last German\nof noble taste\u2014Goethe\u2014had in regard to the cross. It is idle to look for\nmore valuable, more _necessary_ contrasts.(14)\n\nBut the kind of falsity which is characteristic of the Bayreuthians is not\nexceptional to-day. We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian\ngentleman. This _innocence_ in contradiction, this \u201cclean conscience\u201d in\nfalsehood, is rather modern _par excellence_, with it modernity is almost\ndefined. Biologically, modern man represents a _contradiction of values_,\nhe sits between two stools, he says yea and nay in one breath. No wonder\nthat it is precisely in our age that falseness itself became flesh and\nblood, and even genius! No wonder _Wagner_ dwelt amongst us! It was not\nwithout reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of modernity.\u2026 But all\nof us, though we do not know it, involuntarily have values, words,\nformul\u00e6, and morals in our bodies, which are quite _antagonistic_ in their\norigin\u2014regarded from a physiological standpoint, we are _false_.\u2026 How\nwould a _diagnosis of the modern soul_ begin? With a determined incision\ninto this agglomeration of contradictory instincts, with the total\nsuppression of its antagonistic values, with vivisection applied to its\nmost _instructive_ case. To philosophers the \u201cCase of Wagner\u201d is a\n_windfall_\u2014this essay, as you observe, was inspired by gratitude.\n\n\n\n\n\nNIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER\n\n\nTHE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\n\nThe following chapters have been selected from past works of mine, and not\nwithout care. Some of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there, of\ncourse, they will be found to have been made a little more intelligible,\nbut above all, more brief. Read consecutively, they can leave no one in\nany doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning Wagner: we are\nantipodes. The reader will come to other conclusions, too, in his perusal\nof these pages: for instance, that this is an essay for psychologists and\n_not_ for Germans.\u2026 I have my readers everywhere, in Vienna, St\nPetersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and New York\u2014but _I have none_\nin Europe\u2019s Flat-land\u2014Germany.\u2026 And I might even have something to say to\nItalians whom I love just as much as I \u2026 _Quousque tandem, Crispi_ \u2026\nTriple alliance: a people can only conclude a _m\u00e9salliance_ with the\n\u201cEmpire.\u201d\u2026\n\nFriedrich Nietzsche.\n\nTurin, _Christmas 1888_.\n\n\n\n\nWherein I Admire Wagner.\n\n\nI believe that artists very often do not know what they are best able to\ndo. They are much too vain. Their minds are directed to something prouder\nthan merely to appear like little plants, which, with freshness, rareness,\nand beauty, know how to sprout from their soil with real perfection. The\nultimate goodness of their own garden and vineyard is superciliously\nunder-estimated by them, and their love and their insight are not of the\nsame quality. Here is a musician who is a greater master than anyone else\nin the discovering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed, and\ntormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can\napproach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching\njoy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a\nchord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul,\nwhen cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment\nsomething may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating\nfrom out the nethermost depths of human happiness, and, so to speak, from\nout man\u2019s empty bumper, in which the bitterest and most repulsive drops\nhave mingled with the sweetest for good or evil at last. He knows that\nweary shuffling along of the soul which is no longer able either to spring\nor to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk, he has the modest glance\nof concealed suffering, of understanding without comfort, of leave-taking\nwithout word or sign; verily as the Orpheus of all secret misery he is\ngreater than anyone, and many a thing was introduced into art for the\nfirst time by him, which hitherto had not been given expression, had not\neven been thought worthy of art\u2014the cynical revolts, for instance, of\nwhich only the greatest sufferer is capable, also many a small and quite\nmicroscopical feature of the soul, as it were the scales of its amphibious\nnature\u2014yes indeed, he is the master of everything very small. But this he\nrefuses to be! His tastes are much more in love with vast walls and with\ndaring frescoes!\u2026 He does not see that his spirit has another desire and\nbent\u2014a totally different outlook\u2014that it prefers to squat peacefully in\nthe corners of broken-down houses: concealed in this way, and hidden even\nfrom himself, he paints his really great masterpieces, all of which are\nvery short, often only one bar in length\u2014there, only, does he become quite\ngood, great and perfect, perhaps there alone.\u2014Wagner is one who has\nsuffered much\u2014and this elevates him above other musicians.\u2014I admire Wagner\nwherever he sets _himself_ to music\u2014\n\n\n\n\nWherein I Raise Objections.\n\n\nWith all this I do not wish to imply that I regard this music as healthy,\nand least of all in those places where it speaks of Wagner himself. My\nobjections to Wagner\u2019s music are physiological objections. Why should I\ntherefore begin by clothing them in \u00e6sthetic formul\u00e6? \u00c6sthetic is indeed\nnothing more than applied physiology\u2014The fact I bring forward, my \u201c_petit\nfait vrai_,\u201d is that I can no longer breathe with ease when this music\nbegins to have its effect upon me; that my foot immediately begins to feel\nindignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance, march; even\nthe young German Kaiser could not march to Wagner\u2019s Imperial March,\u2014what\nmy foot demands in the first place from music is that ecstasy which lies\nin good walking, stepping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my\ncirculation also protest? Are not my intestines also troubled? And do I\nnot become hoarse unawares? \u2026 in order to listen to Wagner I require\nG\u00e9raudel\u2019s Pastilles.\u2026 And then I ask myself, what is it that my whole\nbody must have from music in general? for there is no such thing as a\nsoul.\u2026 I believe it must have relief: as if all animal functions were\naccelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant rhythms, as\nif brazen and leaden life could lose its weight by means of delicate and\nsmooth melodies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the haunts and\nabysses of perfection; for this reason I need music. But Wagner makes one\nill\u2014What do I care about the theatre? What do I care about the spasms of\nits moral ecstasies in which the mob\u2014and who is not the mob\nto-day?\u2014rejoices? What do I care about the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of\nthe actor? You are beginning to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical\nat heart. For the stage, this mob art _par excellence_, my soul has that\ndeepest scorn felt by every artist to-day. With a stage success a man\nsinks to such an extent in my esteem as to drop out of sight; failure in\nthis quarter makes me prick my ears, makes me begin to pay attention. But\nthis was not so with Wagner, next to the Wagner who created the most\nunique music that has ever existed there was the Wagner who was\nessentially a man of the stage, an actor, the most enthusiastic mimomaniac\nthat has perhaps existed on earth, even as a musician. And let it be said\n_en passant_ that if Wagner\u2019s theory was \u201cdrama is the object, music is\nonly a means\u201d\u2014his practice was from beginning to end \u201cthe attitude is the\nend, drama and even music can never be anything else than means.\u201d Music as\nthe manner of accentuating, of strengthening, and deepening dramatic poses\nand all things which please the senses of the actor; and Wagnerian drama\nonly an opportunity for a host of interesting attitudes!\u2014Alongside of all\nother instincts he had the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in\neverything and, as I have already said, as a musician also.\u2014On one\noccasion, and not without trouble, I made this clear to a Wagnerite _pur\nsang_,\u2014clearness and a Wagnerite! I won\u2019t say another word. There were\nreasons for adding; \u201cFor heaven\u2019s sake, be a little more true unto\nyourself! We are not in Bayreuth now. In Bayreuth people are only upright\nin the mass; the individual lies, he even lies to himself. One leaves\noneself at home when one goes to Bayreuth, one gives up all right to one\u2019s\nown tongue and choice, to one\u2019s own taste and even to one\u2019s own courage,\none knows these things no longer as one is wont to have them and practise\nthem before God and the world and between one\u2019s own four walls. In the\ntheatre no one brings the finest senses of his art with him, and least of\nall the artist who works for the theatre,\u2014for here loneliness is lacking;\neverything perfect does not suffer a witness.\u2026 In the theatre one becomes\nmob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron, idiot\u2014Wagnerite:\nthere, the most personal conscience is bound to submit to the levelling\ncharm of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules, there one\n_becomes_ a neighbour.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nWagner As A Danger.\n\n\n\n1.\n\n\nThe aim after which more modern music is striving, which is now given the\nstrong but obscure name of \u201cunending melody,\u201d can be clearly understood by\ncomparing it to one\u2019s feelings on entering the sea. Gradually one loses\none\u2019s footing and one ultimately abandons oneself to the mercy or fury of\nthe elements: one has to swim. In the solemn, or fiery, swinging movement,\nfirst slow and then quick, of old music\u2014one had to do something quite\ndifferent; one had to dance. The measure which was required for this and\nthe control of certain balanced degrees of time and energy, forced the\nsoul of the listener to continual sobriety of thought.\u2014Upon the\ncounterplay of the cooler currents of air which came from this sobriety,\nand from the warmer breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all good music\nrested\u2014Richard Wagner wanted another kind of movement,\u2014he overthrew the\nphysiological first principle of all music before his time. It was no\nlonger a matter of walking or dancing,\u2014we must swim, we must hover.\u2026 This\nperhaps decides the whole matter. \u201cUnending melody\u201d really wants to break\nall the symmetry of time and strength; it actually scorns these things\u2014Its\nwealth of invention resides precisely in what to an older ear sounds like\nrhythmic paradox and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence of such a\ntaste there would arise a danger for music\u2014so great that we can imagine\nnone greater\u2014the complete degeneration of the feeling for rhythm, _chaos_\nin the place of rhythm.\u2026 The danger reaches its climax when such music\ncleaves ever more closely to naturalistic play-acting and pantomime, which\ngoverned by no laws of form, aim at effect and nothing more.\u2026\nExpressiveness at all costs and music a servant, a slave to attitudes\u2014this\nis the end.\u2026\n\n\n\n2.\n\n\nWhat? would it really be the first virtue of a performance (as performing\nmusical artists now seem to believe), under all circumstances to attain to\na _haut-relief_ which cannot be surpassed? If this were applied to Mozart,\nfor instance, would it not be a real sin against Mozart\u2019s spirit,\u2014Mozart\u2019s\ncheerful, enthusiastic, delightful and loving spirit? He who fortunately\nwas no German, and whose seriousness is a charming and golden seriousness\nand not by any means that of a German clodhopper.\u2026 Not to speak of the\nearnestness of the \u201cmarble statue\u201d.\u2026 But you seem to think that all music\nis the music of the \u201cmarble statue\u201d?\u2014that all music should, so to speak,\nspring out of the wall and shake the listener to his very bowels?\u2026 Only\nthus could music have any effect! But on whom would the effect be made?\nUpon something on which a noble artist ought never to deign to act,\u2014upon\nthe mob, upon the immature! upon the blas\u00e9s! upon the diseased! upon\nidiots! upon _Wagnerites_!\u2026\n\n\n\nA Music Without A Future.\n\n\nOf all the arts which succeed in growing on the soil of a particular\nculture, music is the last plant to appear; maybe because it is the one\nmost dependent upon our innermost feelings, and therefore the last to come\nto the surface\u2014at a time when the culture to which it belongs is in its\nautumn season and beginning to fade. It was only in the art of the Dutch\nmasters that the spirit of medi\u00e6val Christianity found its expression\u2014,\nits architecture of sound is the youngest, but genuine and legitimate,\nsister of the Gothic. It was only in Handel\u2019s music that the best in\nLuther and in those like him found its voice, the Judeo-heroic trait which\ngave the Reformation a touch of greatness-the Old Testament, _not_ the\nNew, become music. It was left to Mozart, to pour out the epoch of Louis\nXIV., and of the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain, in _ringing_ gold; only\nin Beethoven\u2019s and Rossini\u2019s music did the Eighteenth Century sing itself\nout\u2014the century of enthusiasm, broken ideals, and _fleeting joy_. All real\nand original music is a swan song\u2014Even our last form of music, despite its\nprevalence and its will to prevail, has perhaps only a short time to live,\nfor it sprouted from a soil which was in the throes of a rapid\nsubsidence,\u2014of a culture which will soon be _submerged_. A certain\ncatholicism of feeling, and a predilection for some ancient indigenous\n(so-called national) ideals and eccentricities, was its first condition.\nWagner\u2019s appropriation of old sagas and songs, in which scholarly\nprejudice taught us to see something German _par excellence_\u2014now we laugh\nat it all, the resurrection of these Scandinavian monsters with a thirst\nfor ecstatic sensuality and spiritualisation\u2014the whole of this taking and\ngiving on Wagner\u2019s part, in the matter of subjects, characters, passions,\nand nerves, would also give unmistakable expression to the _spirit of his\nmusic_ provided that this music, like any other, did not know how to speak\nabout itself save ambiguously: for _musica is a woman_.\u2026 We must not let\nourselves be misled concerning this state of things, by the fact that at\nthis very moment we are living in a reaction, _in the heart itself_ of a\nreaction. The age of international wars, of ultramontane martyrdom, in\nfact, the whole interlude-character which typifies the present condition\nof Europe, may indeed help an art like Wagner\u2019s to sudden glory, without,\nhowever, in the least ensuring its _future prosperity_. The Germans\nthemselves have no future.\u2026\n\n\n\nWe Antipodes.\n\n\nPerhaps a few people, or at least my friends, will remember that I made my\nfirst plunge into life armed with some errors and some exaggerations, but\nthat, in any case, I began with _hope_ in my heart. In the philosophical\npessimism of the nineteenth century, I recognised\u2014who knows by what\nby-paths of personal experience\u2014the symptom of a higher power of thought,\na more triumphant plenitude of life, than had manifested itself hitherto\nin the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegel!\u2014I regarded _tragic_ knowledge\nas the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most\nnoble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of\nits overflowing wealth, as a justifiable _luxury_. In the same way, I\nbegan by interpreting Wagner\u2019s music as the expression of a Dionysian\npowerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means of\nwhich a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ages, was\nseeking at last to burst its bonds, quite indifferent to how much of that\nwhich nowadays calls itself culture, would thereby be shaken to ruins. You\nsee how I misinterpreted, you see also, what I _bestowed_ upon Wagner and\nSchopenhauer\u2014myself.\u2026 Every art and every philosophy may be regarded\neither as a cure or as a stimulant to ascending or declining life: they\nalways presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of\nsufferers:\u2014those that suffer from _overflowing vitality_, who need\nDionysian art and require a tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook\nupon, the phenomenon life,\u2014and there are those who suffer from _reduced_\nvitality, and who crave for repose, quietness, calm seas, or else the\nintoxication, the spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy\nprovide. Revenge upon life itself\u2014this is the most voluptuous form of\nintoxication for such indigent souls!\u2026 Now Wagner responds quite as well\nas Schopenhauer to the twofold cravings of these people,\u2014they both deny\nlife, they both slander it but precisely on this account they are my\nantipodes.\u2014The richest creature, brimming over with vitality,\u2014the\nDionysian God and man, may not only allow himself to gaze upon the\nhorrible and the questionable; but he can also lend his hand to the\nterrible deed, and can indulge in all the luxury of destruction,\ndisaggregation, and negation,\u2014in him evil, purposelessness and ugliness,\nseem just as allowable as they are in nature\u2014because of his bursting\nplenitude of creative and rejuvenating powers, which are able to convert\nevery desert into a luxurious land of plenty. Conversely, it is the\ngreatest sufferer and pauper in vitality, who is most in need of mildness,\npeace and goodness\u2014that which to-day is called humaneness\u2014in thought as\nwell as in action, and possibly of a God whose speciality is to be a God\nof the sick, a Saviour, and also of logic or the abstract intelligibility\nof existence even for idiots (\u2014the typical \u201cfree-spirits,\u201d like the\nidealists, and \u201cbeautiful souls,\u201d are _d\u00e9cadents_\u2014); in short, of a warm,\ndanger-tight, and narrow confinement, between optimistic horizons which\nwould allow of stultification.\u2026 And thus very gradually, I began to\nunderstand Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian Greek, and also the\nChristian who in fact is only a kind of Epicurean, and who, with his\nbelief that \u201cfaith saves,\u201d carries the principle of Hedonism _as far as\npossible_\u2014far beyond all intellectual honesty.\u2026 If I am ahead of all other\npsychologists in anything, it is in this fact that my eyes are more keen\nfor tracing those most difficult and most captious of all deductions, in\nwhich the largest number of mistakes have been made,\u2014the deduction which\nmakes one infer something concerning the author from his work, something\nconcerning the doer from his deed, something concerning the idealist from\nthe need which produced this ideal, and something concerning the imperious\n_craving_ which stands at the back of all thinking and valuing\u2014In regard\nto all artists of what kind soever, I shall now avail myself of this\nradical distinction: does the creative power in this case arise from a\nloathing of life, or from an excessive _plenitude_ of life? In Goethe, for\ninstance, an overflow of vitality was creative, in Flaubert\u2014hate:\nFlaubert, a new edition of Pascal, but as an artist with this instinctive\nbelief at heart: \u201c_Flaubert est toujours haissable, l\u2019homme n\u2019est rien,\nl\u2019\u0153uvre est tout_\u201d.\u2026 He tortured himself when he wrote, just as Pascal\ntortured himself when he thought\u2014the feelings of both were inclined to be\n\u201cnon-egoistic.\u201d \u2026 \u201cDisinterestedness\u201d\u2014principle of decadence, the will to\nnonentity in art as well as in morality.\n\n\n\nWhere Wagner Is At Home.\n\n\nEven at the present day, France is still the refuge of the most\nintellectual and refined culture in Europe, it remains the high school of\ntaste: but one must know where to find this France of taste. The\n_North-German Gazette_, for instance, or whoever expresses his sentiments\nin that paper, thinks that the French are \u201cbarbarians,\u201d\u2014as for me, if I\nhad to find the _blackest_ spot on earth, where slaves still required to\nbe liberated, I should turn in the direction of Northern Germany.\u2026 But\nthose who form part of _that select_ France take very good care to\n_conceal themselves_; they are a small body of men, and there may be some\namong them who do not stand on very firm legs\u2014a few may be fatalists,\nhypochondriacs, invalids; others may be enervated, and artificial,\u2014such\nare those who would fain be artistic,\u2014but all the loftiness and delicacy\nwhich still remains to this world, is in their possession. In this France\nof intellect, which is also the France of pessimism, Schopenhauer is\nalready much more at home than he ever was in Germany, his principal work\nhas already been translated twice, and the second time so excellently that\nnow I prefer to read Schopenhauer in French (\u2014he was an _accident_ among\nGermans, just as I am\u2014the Germans have no fingers wherewith to grasp us;\nthey haven\u2019t any fingers at all,\u2014but only claws). And I do not mention\nHeine\u2014_l\u2019adorable Heine_, as they say in Paris\u2014who long since has passed\ninto the flesh and blood of the more profound and more soulful of French\nlyricists. How could the horned cattle of Germany know how to deal with\nthe _d\u00e9licatesses_ of such a nature!\u2014And as to Richard Wagner, it is\nobvious, it is even glaringly obvious, that Paris is the very _soil_ for\nhim, the more French music adapts itself to the needs of _l\u2019\u00e2me moderne_,\nthe more Wagnerian it will become,\u2014it is far enough advanced in this\ndirection already.\u2014In this respect one should not allow one\u2019s self to be\nmisled by Wagner himself\u2014it was simply disgraceful on Wagner\u2019s part to\nscoff at Paris, as he did, in its agony in 1871.\u2026 In spite of it all, in\nGermany Wagner is only a misapprehension.\u2014who could be more incapable of\nunderstanding anything about Wagner than the Kaiser, for instance?\u2014To\neverybody familiar with the movement of European culture, this fact,\nhowever, is certain, that French romanticism and Richard Wagner are most\nintimately related. All dominated by literature, up to their very eyes and\nears\u2014the first European artists with a _universal literary_ culture,\u2014most\nof them writers, poets, mediators and minglers of the senses and the arts,\nall fanatics in _expression_, great discoverers in the realm of the\nsublime as also of the ugly and the gruesome, and still greater\ndiscoverers in passion, in working for effect, in the art of dressing\ntheir windows,\u2014all possessing talent far above their genius,\u2014virtuosos to\ntheir backbone, knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures,\nconstrains or overthrows; born enemies of logic and of straight lines,\nthirsting after the exotic, the strange and the monstrous, and all opiates\nfor the senses and the understanding. On the whole, a daring dare-devil,\nmagnificently violent, soaring and high-springing crew of artists, who\nfirst had to teach their own century\u2014it is the century of the mob\u2014what the\nconcept \u201cartist\u201d meant. But they were _ill_.\u2026\n\n\n\nWagner As The Apostle Of Chastity.\n\n\n1.\n\n\nIs this the German way?\nComes this low bleating forth from German hearts?\nShould Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves,\nOr spread their palms with priestly unctuousness,\nExalt their feelings with the censer\u2019s fumes,\nAnd cower and quake and bend the trembling knee,\nAnd with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer?\nThen ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell,\nAnd thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven?\nIs this the German way?\nBeware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords.\nWhat yonder lures is Rome, Rome\u2019s faith sung without words.\n\n\n2.\n\n\nThere is no necessary contrast between sensuality and chastity, every good\nmarriage, every genuine love affair is above this contrast; but in those\ncases where the contrast exists, it is very far from being necessarily a\ntragic one. This, at least, ought to hold good of all well-constituted and\ngood-spirited mortals, who are not in the least inclined to reckon their\nunstable equilibrium between angel and _petite b\u00eate_, without further ado,\namong the objections to existence, the more refined and more intelligent\nlike Hafis and Goethe, even regarded it as an additional attraction. It is\nprecisely contradictions of this kind which lure us to life.\u2026 On the other\nhand, it must be obvious, that when Circe\u2019s unfortunate animals are\ninduced to worship chastity, all they see and _worship_ therein, is their\nopposite\u2014oh! and with what tragic groaning and fervour, may well be\nimagined\u2014that same painful and thoroughly superfluous opposition which,\ntowards the end of his life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly wished to set to\nmusic and to put on the stage, _And to what purpose?_ we may reasonably\nask.\n\n\n3.\n\n\nAnd yet this other question can certainly not be circumvented: what\nbusiness had he actually with that manly (alas! so unmanly) \u201cbucolic\nsimplicity,\u201d that poor devil and son of nature\u2014Parsifal, whom he\nultimately makes a catholic by such insidious means\u2014what?\u2014was Wagner in\nearnest with Parsifal? For, that he was laughed at, I cannot deny, any\nmore than Gottfried Keller can.\u2026 We should like to believe that \u201cParsifal\u201d\nwas meant as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and satyric drama,\nwith which Wagner the tragedian wished to take leave of us, of himself,\nand above all _of tragedy_, in a way which befitted him and his dignity,\nthat is to say, with an extravagant, lofty and most malicious parody of\ntragedy itself, of all the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of\nthis world, of the most _ridiculous_ form of the unnaturalness of the\nascetic ideal, at last overcome. For Parsifal is the subject _par\nexcellence_ for a comic opera.\u2026 Is Wagner\u2019s \u201cParsifal\u201d his secret laugh of\nsuperiority at himself, the triumph of his last and most exalted state of\nartistic freedom, of artistic transcendence\u2014is it Wagner able to _laugh_\nat himself? Once again we only wish it were so; for what could Parsifal be\nif he were _meant seriously_? Is it necessary in his case to say (as I\nhave heard people say) that \u201cParsifal\u201d is \u201cthe product of the mad hatred\nof knowledge, intellect, and sensuality?\u201d a curse upon the senses and the\nmind in one breath and in one fit of hatred? an act of apostasy and a\nreturn to Christianly sick and obscurantist ideals? And finally even a\ndenial of self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who\ntheretofore had worked with all the power of his will in favour of the\nopposite cause, the spiritualisation and sensualisation of his art? And\nnot only of his art, but also of his life? Let us remember how\nenthusiastically Wagner at one time walked in the footsteps of the\nphilosopher Feuerbach. Feuerbach\u2019s words \u201chealthy sensuality\u201d struck\nWagner in the thirties and forties very much as they struck many other\nGermans\u2014they called themselves the young Germans\u2014that is to say, as words\nof salvation. Did he ultimately _change his mind_ on this point? It would\nseem that he had at least had the desire of _changing_ his doctrine\ntowards the end.\u2026 Had the _hatred of life_ become dominant in him as in\nFlaubert? For \u201cParsifal\u201d is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most\nsecret concoction of poisons with which to make an end of the first\nconditions of life, _it is a bad work_. The preaching of chastity remains\nan incitement to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not regard\n\u201cParsifal\u201d as an outrage upon morality.\u2014\n\n\n\nHow I Got Rid Of Wagner.\n\n\n1.\n\n\nAlready in the summer of 1876, when the first festival at Bayreuth was at\nits height, I took leave of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure anything\ndouble-faced. Since Wagner had returned to Germany, he had condescended\nstep by step to everything that I despise\u2014even to anti-Semitism.\u2026 As a\nmatter of fact, it was then high time to bid him farewell: but the proof\nof this came only too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most triumphant\ncreature alive; as a matter of fact, though, a cranky and desperate\n_d\u00e9cadent_, suddenly fell helpless and broken on his knees before the\nChristian cross.\u2026 Was there no German at that time who had the eyes to\nsee, and the sympathy in his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this\nspectacle? Was I the only one who _suffered_ from it?\u2014Enough, the\nunexpected event, like a flash of lightning, made me see only too clearly\nwhat kind of a place it was that I had just left,\u2014and it also made me\nshudder as a man shudders who unawares has just escaped a great danger. As\nI continued my journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I was ill,\nmore than ill\u2014I was _tired_;\u2014tired of the continual disappointments over\neverything which remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic about, of\nthe energy, industry, hope, youth, and love that are _squandered\neverywhere_; tired out of loathing for the whole world of idealistic lying\nand conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case of Wagner, had\nscored a victory over a man who was of the bravest; and last but not\nleast, tired by the sadness of a ruthless suspicion\u2014that I was now\ncondemned to be ever more and more suspicious, ever more and more\ncontemptuous, ever more and more _deeply_ alone than I had been\ntheretofore. For I had no one save Richard Wagner.\u2026 I was always condemned\nto the society of Germans.\u2026\n\n\n2.\n\n\nHenceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of myself, I then took up\nsides\u2014not without anger\u2014_against myself_ and _for_ all that which hurt me\nand fell hard upon me; and thus I found the road to that courageous\npessimism which is the opposite of all idealistic falsehood, and which, as\nit seems to me, is also the road to _me_\u2014_to my mission_.\u2026 That hidden and\ndominating thing, for which for long ages we have had no name, until\nultimately it comes forth as our mission,\u2014this tyrant in us wreaks a\nterrible revenge upon us for every attempt we make either to evade him or\nto escape him, for every one of our experiments in the way of befriending\npeople to whom we do not belong, for every active occupation, however\nestimable, which may make us diverge from our principal object:\u2014aye, and\neven for every virtue which would fain protect us from the rigour of our\nmost intimate sense of responsibility. Illness is always the answer,\nwhenever we venture to doubt our right to _our_ mission, whenever we begin\nto make things too easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the same\ntime! It is for our relaxation that we have to pay most dearly! And should\nwe wish after all to return to health, we then have no choice: we are\ncompelled to burden ourselves _more_ heavily than we had been burdened\nbefore.\u2026\n\n\n\nThe Psychologist Speaks.\n\n\n1.\n\n\nThe oftener a psychologist\u2014a born, an unavoidable psychologist and\nsoul-diviner\u2014turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals,\nthe greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he needs\ngreater hardness and cheerfulness than any other man. For the corruption,\nthe ruination of higher men, is in fact the rule: it is terrible to have\nsuch a rule always before our eyes. The manifold torments of the\npsychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and\nthen discovers almost repeatedly throughout all history, this universal\ninner \u201chopelessness\u201d of higher men, this eternal \u201ctoo late!\u201d in every\nsense\u2014may perhaps one day be the cause of his \u201cgoing to the dogs\u201d himself.\nIn almost every psychologist we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour\nof intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men: and this betrays how\nconstantly he requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight and\nforgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness\u2014from what his\n\u201cbusiness\u201d\u2014has laid upon his conscience. A horror of his memory is typical\nof him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of others, he hears with\nunmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he\nhas opened his eyes and _seen_\u2014or he even conceals his silence by\nexpressly agreeing with some obvious opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his\nsituation becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learnt _great\nsympathy_, together with _great contempt_, the educated have on their part\nlearnt great reverence. And who knows but in all great instances, just\nthis alone happened: that the multitude worshipped a God, and that the\n\u201cGod\u201d was only a poor sacrificial animal! _Success_ has always been the\ngreatest liar\u2014and the \u201cwork\u201d itself, the _deed_, is a success too; the\ngreat statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their\ncreations until they can no longer be recognised, the \u201cwork\u201d of the\nartist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, who is\nreputed to have created it, the \u201cgreat men,\u201d as they are reverenced, are\npoor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical\nvalues counterfeit coinage _prevails_.\n\n\n2.\n\n\nThose great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,\nKleist, Gogol (I do not dare to mention much greater names, but I imply\nthem), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the\nmoment, sensuous, absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust and\nto distrust, with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed,\noften taking revenge with their works for an internal blemish, often\nseeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too accurate memory,\nidealists out of proximity to the mud:\u2014what a _torment_ these great\nartists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once\nfound them out! We are all special pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It\nis conceivable that it is just from woman\u2014who is clairvoyant in the world\nof suffering, and, alas! also unfortunately eager to help and save to an\nextent far beyond her powers\u2014that _they_ have learnt so readily those\noutbreaks of boundless _sympathy_ which the multitude, above all the\nreverent multitude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying\ninterpretations. This sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its\npower; woman would like to believe that love can do _everything_\u2014it is the\n_superstition_ peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how\npoor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love\nis\u2014how much more readily it _destroys_ than saves.\u2026\n\n\n3.\n\n\nThe intellectual loathing and haughtiness of every man who has suffered\ndeeply\u2014the extent to which a man can suffer, almost determines the order\nof rank\u2014the chilling uncertainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and\ncoloured, that by virtue of his suffering he _knows more_ than the\nshrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and\n\u201cat home\u201d in many distant terrible worlds of which \u201c_you_ know\nnothing!\u201d\u2014this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of the elect of\nknowledge, of the \u201cinitiated,\u201d of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms\nof disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with gushing and\nsympathising hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in\nsuffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.\u2014One of the most\nrefined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious\nboldness of taste which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the\ndefensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. There are \u201ccheerful\nmen\u201d who make use of good spirits, because they are misunderstood on\naccount of them\u2014they _wish_ to be misunderstood. There are \u201cscientific\nminds\u201d who make use of science, because it gives a cheerful appearance,\nand because love of science leads people to conclude that a person is\nshallow\u2014they _wish_ to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free\ninsolent spirits which would fain conceal and deny that they are at bottom\nbroken, incurable hearts\u2014this is Hamlet\u2019s case: and then folly itself can\nbe the mask of an unfortunate and alas! all too dead-certain knowledge.\n\n\n\nEpilogue.\n\n\n1.\n\n\nI have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted to\nthe hardest years of my life than to any others. According to the voice of\nmy innermost nature, everything necessary, seen from above and in the\nlight of a _superior_ economy, is also useful in itself\u2014not only should\none bear it, one should _love_ it.\u2026 _Amor fati_: this is the very core of\nmy being\u2014And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than\nI owe to my health? To it I owe a _higher_ kind of health, a sort of\nhealth which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill\nit!\u2014_To it, I owe even my philosophy_.\u2026 Only great suffering is the\nultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that _vast\nsuspiciousness_ which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X,\n_i.e._, the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great\nsuffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the\nsuffering that takes its time\u2014forces us philosophers to descend into our\nnethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all\nwhittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,\u2014on which things we had\nformerly staked our humanity. I doubt whether such suffering improves a\nman; but I know that it makes him _deeper_.\u2026 Supposing we learn to set our\npride, our scorn, our strength of will against it, and thus resemble the\nIndian who, however cruelly he may be tortured, considers himself revenged\non his tormentor by the bitterness of his own tongue. Supposing we\nwithdraw from pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid sphere\nof self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-effacement: one is another\nperson when one leaves these protracted and dangerous exercises in the art\nof self-mastery, one has one note of interrogation the more, and above all\none has the will henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder, more\nwicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever asked on earth\nbefore.\u2026 Trust in life has vanished; life itself has become a\n_problem_.\u2014But let no one think that one has therefore become a spirit of\ngloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still possible,\u2014but it is a\n_different kind_ of love.\u2026 It is the love for a woman whom we doubt.\u2026\n\n\n2.\n\n\nThe rarest of all things is this: to have after all another taste\u2014a\n_second_ taste. Out of such abysses, out of the abyss of _great suspicion_\nas well, a man returns as though born again, he has a new skin, he is more\nsusceptible, more full of wickedness; he has a finer taste for joyfulness;\nhe has a more sensitive tongue for all good things; his senses are more\ncheerful; he has acquired a second, more dangerous, innocence in gladness;\nhe is more childish too, and a hundred times more cunning than ever he had\nbeen before.\n\nOh, how much more repulsive pleasure now is to him, that coarse, heavy,\nbuff-coloured pleasure, which is understood by our pleasure-seekers, our\n\u201ccultured people,\u201d our wealthy folk and our rulers! With how much more\nirony we now listen to the hubbub as of a country fair, with which the\n\u201ccultured\u201d man and the man about town allow themselves to be forced\nthrough art, literature, music, and with the help of intoxicating liquor,\nto \u201cintellectual enjoyments.\u201d How the stage-cry of passion now stings our\nears; how strange to our taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous\nbustle, which the cultured mob are so fond of, together with its\naspirations to the sublime, to the exalted and the distorted, have become.\nNo: if we convalescents require an art at all, it is _another_ art\u2014-a\nmocking, nimble, volatile, divinely undisturbed, divinely artificial art,\nwhich blazes up like pure flame into a cloudless sky! But above all, an\nart for artists, _only for artists_! We are, after all, more conversant\nwith that which is in the highest degree necessary\u2014cheerfulness, _every\nkind_ of cheerfulness, my friends!\u2026 We men of knowledge, now know\nsomething only too well: oh how well we have learnt by this time, to\nforget, _not_ to know, as artists!\u2026 As to our future: we shall scarcely be\nfound on the track of those Egyptian youths who break into temples at\nnight, who embrace statues, and would fain unveil, strip, and set in broad\ndaylight, everything which there are excellent reasons to keep\nconcealed.(15) No, we are disgusted with this bad taste, this will to\ntruth, this search after truth \u201cat all costs;\u201d this madness of\nadolescence, \u201cthe love of truth;\u201d we are now too experienced, too serious,\ntoo joyful, too scorched, _too profound_ for that.\u2026 We no longer believe\nthat truth remains truth when it is _unveiled_,\u2014we have lived enough to\nunderstand this.\u2026 To-day it seems to us good form not to strip everything\nnaked, not to be present at all things, not to desire to \u201cknow\u201d all.\n\u201c_Tout comprendre c\u2019est tout m\u00e9priser._\u201d\u2026 \u201cIs it true,\u201d a little girl once\nasked her mother, \u201cthat the beloved Father is everywhere?\u2014I think it quite\nimproper,\u201d\u2014a hint to philosophers.\u2026 The shame with which Nature has\nconcealed herself behind riddles and enigmas should be held in higher\nesteem. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for _not revealing her\nreasons?_\u2026 Perhaps her name, to use a Greek word is _Baubo_?\u2014Oh these\nGreeks, they understood the art of _living!_ For this it is needful to\nhalt bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to worship\nappearance, and to believe in forms, tones, words, and the whole _Olympus\nof appearance_! These Greeks were superficial\u2014from _profundity_.\u2026 And are\nwe not returning to precisely the same thing, we dare-devils of intellect\nwho have scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles of present\nthought, in order to look around us from that height, in order to _look\ndown_ from that height? Are we not precisely in this respect\u2014_Greeks_?\nWorshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely on that\naccount\u2014_artists_?\n\n\n\n\n\nSELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE\u2019S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP\nWITH WAGNER.\n\n\n\n\n(_Summer 1878._)\n\n\n\n1.\n\n\nMy blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast,\nand was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The\npreponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thoroughly\nrepelled me.\n\n\n\n2.\n\n\nI utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied with the decorations,\nthe scenery and the mechanical contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much\nindustry and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining the imagination\nto matters which did not belie their _epic_ origin. But as to the\nnaturalism of the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the orchestra!!\nWhat affected, artificial and depraved tones, what a distortion of nature,\nwere we made to hear!\n\n\n\n3.\n\n\nWe are witnessing the death agony of the _last Art_: Bayreuth has\nconvinced me of this.\n\n\n\n4.\n\n\nMy picture of Wagner, completely surpassed him; I had depicted an _ideal\nmonster_\u2014one, however, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling the\nenthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was\nonly like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving\nwhich was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives,\nreceived an extraordinary impetus from this humiliating experience.\n\n\n\n5.\n\n\nThis, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good deal even struck me with\nsudden fear. At last I felt, however, that if only I could be strong\nenough to take sides against myself and what I most loved I would find the\nroad to truth and get solace and encouragement from it\u2014and in this way I\nbecame filled with a sensation of joy far greater than that upon which I\nwas now voluntarily turning my back.\n\n\n\n6.\n\n\nI was in love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of\nexistence saw nothing else than art\u2014and this at an age when, reasonably\nenough, quite different passions usually possess the soul.\n\n\n\n7.\n\n\n_Goethe_ said: \u201cThe yearning spirit within me, which in earlier years I\nmay perhaps have fostered too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried\nmy utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the man, and I therefore had\nto strive to attain to more complete freedom.\u201d Conclusion?\u2014I have had to\ndo the same.\n\n\n\n8.\n\n\nHe who wakes us always wounds us.\n\n\n\n9.\n\n\nI do not possess the talent of being loyal, and what is still worse, I\nhave not even the vanity to try to appear as if I did.\n\n\n\n10.\n\n\nHe who accomplishes anything that lies beyond the vision and the\nexperience of his acquaintances,\u2014provokes envy and hatred masked as\npity,\u2014prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease, seduction. Long\nfaces.\n\n\n\n11.\n\n\nI frankly confess that I had hoped that by means of art the Germans would\nbecome thoroughly disgusted with _decaying Christianity_\u2014I regarded German\nmythology as a solvent, as a means of accustoming people to polytheism.\n\nWhat a fright I had over the Catholic revival!!\n\n\n\n12.\n\n\nIt is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely from life, nor to be\nso lifeless and emotionally weak, as to have _need_ of Wagner\u2019s art, as to\nrequire it as a medium. This is the principal reason of one\u2019s _opposition_\nto it, and not baser motives; something to which we are not driven by any\npersonal need, and which we do not _require_, we cannot esteem so highly.\n\n\n\n13.\n\n\nIt is a question either of no longer _requiring_ Wagner\u2019s art, or of still\nrequiring it.\n\nGigantic forces lie concealed in it: _it drives one beyond its own\ndomain_.\n\n\n\n14.\n\n\n_Goethe_ said: \u201cAre not Byron\u2019s audacity, sprightliness and grandeur all\ncreative? We must beware of always looking for this quality in that which\nis perfectly pure and moral. All _greatness_ is creative the moment we\nrealise it.\u201d This should be applied to Wagner\u2019s art.\n\n\n\n15.\n\n\nWe shall always have to credit Wagner with the fact that in the second\nhalf of the nineteenth century he impressed art upon our memory as an\nimportant and magnificent thing. True, he did this in his own fashion, and\nthis was not the fashion of upright and far-seeing men.\n\n\n\n16.\n\n\nWagner _versus_ the cautious, the cold and the contented of the world\u2014in\nthis lies his greatness\u2014he is a stranger to his age\u2014he combats the\nfrivolous and the super-smart\u2014But he also fights the just, the moderate,\nthose who delight in the world (like Goethe), and the mild, the people of\ncharm, the scientific among men\u2014this is the reverse of the medal.\n\n\n\n17.\n\n\nOur youth was up in arms against the _soberness_ of the age. It plunged\ninto the cult of excess, of passion, of ecstasy, and of the blackest and\nmost austere conception of the world.\n\n\n\n18.\n\n\nWagner pursues one form of madness, the age another form. Both carry on\ntheir chase at the same speed, each is as blind and as unjust as the\nother.\n\n\n\n19.\n\n\nIt is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner\u2019s inner development\u2014no\ntrust must be placed in his own description of his soul\u2019s experiences. He\nwrites party-pamphlets for his followers.\n\n\n\n20.\n\n\nIt is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about\nhimself.\n\n\n\n21.\n\n\nThere are men who try in vain to make a principle out of _themselves_.\nThis was the case with Wagner.\n\n\n\n22.\n\n\nWagner\u2019s obscurity concerning final aims; his non-antique fogginess.\n\n\n\n23.\n\n\nAll Wagner\u2019s ideas straightway become manias; he is _tyrannised_ over by\nthem. How can _such a man allow himself to be tyrannised over in this __\nway_! For instance by his hatred of Jews. He _kills_ his themes like his\n\u201cideas,\u201d by means of his violent love of repeating them. The problem of\nexcessive length and breadth; he bores us with his raptures.\n\n\n\n24.\n\n\n\u201c_C\u2019est la rage de voulour penser et sentir au del\u00e0 de sa force_\u201d\n(Doudan). The Wagnerites.\n\n\n\n25.\n\n\nWagner whose ambition far exceeds his natural gifts, has tried an\nincalculable number of times to achieve what lay beyond his powers\u2014but it\nalmost makes one shudder to see some one assail with such persistence that\nwhich defies conquest\u2014the fate of his constitution.\n\n\n\n26.\n\n\nHe is always thinking of the most _extreme_ expression,\u2014in every word. But\nin the end superlatives begin to pall.\n\n\n\n27.\n\n\nThere is something which is in the highest degree suspicious in Wagner,\nand that is Wagner\u2019s suspicion. It is such a strong trait in him, that on\ntwo occasions I doubted whether he were a musician at all.\n\n\n\n28.\n\n\nThe proposition: \u201cin the face of perfection there is no salvation save\nlove,\u201d(16) is thoroughly Wagnerian. Profound jealousy of everything great\nfrom which he can draw _fresh_ ideas. Hatred of all that which he cannot\napproach, the Renaissance, French and Greek art in style.\n\n\n\n29.\n\n\nWagner is jealous of all periods that have shown _restraint_: he despises\nbeauty and grace, and finds only his own _virtues_ in the \u201cGermans,\u201d and\neven attributes all his failings to them.\n\n\n\n30.\n\n\nWagner has not the power to unlock and liberate the soul of those he\nfrequents. Wagner is not sure of himself, but distrustful and arrogant.\nHis _art_ has this effect upon artists, it is envious of all rivals.\n\n\n\n31.\n\n\n_Plato\u2019s Envy._ He would fain monopolise Socrates. He saturates the latter\nwith himself, pretends to adorn him (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2 \u03a3\u03c9\u03ba\u03c1\u03ac\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2), and tries to\nseparate all Socratists from him in order himself to appear as the only\ntrue apostle. But his historical presentation of him is false, even to a\nparlous degree: just as Wagner\u2019s presentation of Beethoven and Shakespeare\nis false.\n\n\n\n32.\n\n\nWhen a dramatist speaks about himself he plays a part: this is inevitable.\nWhen Wagner speaks about Bach and Beethoven he speaks like one for whom he\nwould fain be taken. But he impresses only those who are already\nconvinced, for his dissimulation and his genuine nature are far too\nviolently at variance.\n\n\n\n33.\n\n\nWagner struggles against the \u201cfrivolity\u201d in his nature, which to him the\nignoble (as opposed to Goethe) constituted the joy of life.\n\n\n\n34.\n\n\nWagner has the mind of the ordinary man who prefers to trace things to\n_one_ cause. The Jews do the same: one _aim_, therefore one Saviour. In\nthis way he simplifies German and culture; wrongly but strongly.\n\n\n\n35.\n\n\nWagner admitted all this to himself often enough when in private communion\nwith his soul. I only wish he had also admitted it publicly. For what\nconstitutes the greatness of a character if it is not this, that he who\npossesses it is able to take sides even against himself in favour of\ntruth.\n\n\n\n\n_Wagner\u2019s Teutonism._\n\n\n\n36.\n\n\nThat which is un-German in Wagner. He lacks the German charm and grace of\na Beethoven, a Mozart, a Weber; he also lacks the flowing, cheerful fire\n(_Allegro con brio_) of Beethoven and Weber. He cannot be free and easy\nwithout being grotesque. He lacks modesty, indulges in big drums, and\nalways tends to surcharge his effect. He is not the good official that\nBach was. Neither has he that Goethean calm in regard to his rivals.\n\n\n\n37.\n\n\nWagner always reaches the high-water mark of his vanity when he speaks of\nthe German nature (incidentally it is also the height of his imprudence);\nfor, if Frederick the Great\u2019s justice, Goethe\u2019s nobility and freedom from\nenvy, Beethoven\u2019s sublime resignation, Bach\u2019s delicately transfigured\nspiritual life,\u2014if steady work performed without any thought of glory and\nsuccess, and without envy, constitute the true _German_ qualities, would\nit not seem as if Wagner almost wished to prove he is no German?\n\n\n\n38.\n\n\nTerrible wildness, abject sorrow, emptiness, the shudder of joy,\nunexpectedness,\u2014in short all the qualities peculiar to the Semitic race! I\nbelieve that the Jews approach Wagner\u2019s art with more understanding than\nthe Aryans do.\n\n\n\n39.\n\n\nA passage concerning the Jews, taken from Taine.\u2014As it happens, I have\nmisled the reader, the passage does not concern Wagner at all.\u2014But can it\nbe possible that Wagner is a Jew? In that case we could readily understand\nhis dislike of Jews.(17)\n\n\n\n40.\n\n\nWagner\u2019s art is absolutely the _art of the age_: an \u00e6sthetic age would\nhave rejected it. The more subtle people amongst us actually do reject it\neven now. The _coarsifying_ of everything \u00e6sthetic.\u2014Compared with Goethe\u2019s\nideal it is very far behind. The moral contrast of these self-indulgent\nburningly loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a _spur_, like an irritant\nand even this sensation is turned to account in obtaining an _effect_.\n\n\n\n41.\n\n\nWhat is it in our age that Wagner\u2019s art expresses? That brutality and most\ndelicate weakness which exist side by side, that running wild of natural\ninstincts, and nervous hyper-sensitiveness, that thirst for emotion which\narises from fatigue and the love of fatigue.\u2014All this is understood by the\nWagnerites.\n\n\n\n42.\n\n\n_Stupefaction or intoxication_ constitute all Wagnerian art. On the other\nhand I could mention instances in which Wagner stands _higher_, in which\nreal joy flows from him.\n\n\n\n43.\n\n\nThe reason why the figures in Wagner\u2019s art behave so madly, is because he\ngreatly feared lest people would doubt that they were alive.\n\n\n\n44.\n\n\nWagner\u2019s art is an appeal to inartistic people; all means are welcomed\nwhich help towards obtaining an effect. It is calculated not to produce an\n_artistic effect_ but an effect upon the _nerves in general_.\n\n\n\n45.\n\n\nApparently in Wagner we have an art _for everybody_, because coarse and\nsubtle means seem to be united in it. Albeit its pre-requisite may be\nmusico-\u00e6sthetic education, and _particularly_ with _moral_ indifference.\n\n\n\n46.\n\n\nIn Wagner we find the most ambitious _combination_ of all means with the\nview of obtaining the strongest effect whereas genuine musicians quietly\ndevelop individual _genres_.\n\n\n\n47.\n\n\nDramatists are _borrowers_\u2014their principal source of wealth\u2014artistic\nthoughts drawn from the epos. Wagner borrowed from classical music\nbesides. Dramatists are constructive geniuses, they are not inventive and\noriginal as the epic poets are. Drama takes a lower rank than the epos: it\npresupposes a coarser and more democratic public.\n\n\n\n48.\n\n\nWagner does not altogether trust _music_. He weaves kindred sensations\ninto it in order to lend it the character of greatness. He measures\nhimself on others; he first of all gives his listeners intoxicating drinks\nin order to lead them into believing that it _was the music that\nintoxicated them_.\n\n\n\n49.\n\n\nThe same amount of talent and industry which makes the classic, when it\nappears some time _too late_, also makes the baroque artist like Wagner.\n\n\n\n50.\n\n\nWagner\u2019s art is calculated to appeal to short-sighted people\u2014one has to\nget much too close up to it (Miniature): it also appeals to long-sighted\npeople, but not to those with normal sight.\n\n\n\n\n_Contradictions in the Idea of Musical Drama._\n\n\n\n51.\n\n\nJust listen to the second act of the \u201cG\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung,\u201d without the drama.\nIt is chaotic music, as wild as a bad dream, and it is as frightfully\ndistinct as if it desired to make itself clear even to deaf people. This\nvolubility _with nothing to say_ is alarming. Compared with it the drama\nis a genuine relief.\u2014Is the fact that this music when heard alone, is, as\na whole intolerable (apart from a few intentionally isolated parts) in its\n_favour_? Suffice it to say that this music without its accompanying\ndrama, is a perpetual contradiction of all the highest laws of style\nbelonging to older music: he who thoroughly accustoms himself to it, loses\nall feeling for these laws. But has the drama _been improved_ thanks to\nthis addition? A _symbolic interpretation_ has been affixed to it, a sort\nof philological commentary, which sets fetters upon the inner and free\nunderstanding of the imagination\u2014it is tyrannical. Music is the language\nof the commentator, who talks the whole of the time and gives us no\nbreathing space. Moreover his is a difficult language which also requires\nto be explained. He who step by step has mastered, first the libretto\n(language!), then converted it into action in his mind\u2019s eye, then sought\nout and understood, and became familiar with the musical symbolism\nthereto: aye, and has fallen in love with all three things: such a man\nthen experiences a great joy. But how _exacting_! It is quite impossible\nto do this save for a few short moments,\u2014such tenfold attention on the\npart of one\u2019s eyes, ears, understanding, and feeling, such acute activity\nin apprehending without any productive reaction, is far too\nexhausting!\u2014Only the very fewest behave in this way: how is it then that\nso many are affected? Because most people are only intermittingly\nattentive, and are inattentive for sometimes whole passages at a stretch;\nbecause they bestow their undivided attention now upon the music, later\nupon the drama, and anon upon the scenery\u2014that is to say they _take the\nwork to pieces_.\u2014But in this way the kind of work we are discussing is\ncondemned: not the drama but a moment of it is the result, an arbitrary\nselection. The creator of a new _genre_ should consider this! The arts\nshould not always be dished up together,\u2014but we should imitate the\nmoderation of the ancients which is truer to human nature.\n\n\n\n52.\n\n\nWagner reminds one of lava which blocks its own course by congealing, and\nsuddenly finds itself checked by dams which it has itself built. There is\nno _Allegro con fuoco_ for him.\n\n\n\n53.\n\n\nI compare Wagner\u2019s music, which would fain have the same effect as speech,\nwith that kind of sculptural relief which would have the same effect as\npainting. The highest laws of style are violated, and that which is most\nsublime can no longer be achieved.\n\n\n\n54.\n\n\nThe general heaving, undulating and rolling of Wagner\u2019s art.\n\n\n\n55.\n\n\nIn regard to Wagner\u2019s rejection of form, we are reminded of Goethe\u2019s\nremark in conversation with Eckermann: \u201cthere is no great art in being\nbrilliant if one respects nothing.\u201d\n\n\n\n56.\n\n\nOnce one theme is over, Wagner is always embarrassed as to how to\ncontinue. Hence the long preparation, the suspense. His peculiar\ncraftiness consisted in transvaluing his weakness into virtues.\u2014\n\n\n\n57.\n\n\nThe _lack_ of melody and the poverty of melody in Wagner. Melody is a\nwhole consisting of many beautiful proportions, it is the reflection of a\nwell-ordered soul. He strives after melody; but if he finds one, he almost\nsuffocates it in his embrace.\n\n\n\n58.\n\n\nThe natural nobility of a Bach and a Beethoven, the beautiful soul (even\nof a Mendelssohn) are wanting in Wagner. He is one degree lower.\n\n\n\n59.\n\n\nWagner imitates himself again and again\u2014mannerisms. That is why he was the\nquickest among musicians to be imitated. It is so easy.\n\n\n\n60.\n\n\nMendelssohn who lacked the power of radically staggering one (incidentally\nthis was the talent of the Jews in the Old Testament), makes up for this\nby the things which were his own, that is to say: freedom within the law,\nand noble emotions kept within the limits of beauty.\n\n\n\n61.\n\n\n_Liszt_, the first _representative_ of all musicians, but _no musician_.\nHe was the prince, not the statesman. The conglomerate of a hundred\nmusicians\u2019 souls, but not enough of a personality to cast his own shadow\nupon them.\n\n\n\n62.\n\n\nThe most wholesome phenomenon is _Brahms_, in whose music there is more\nGerman blood than in that of Wagner\u2019s. With these words I would say\nsomething complimentary, but by no means wholly so.\n\n\n\n63.\n\n\nIn Wagner\u2019s writings there is no greatness or peace, but presumption. Why?\n\n\n\n64.\n\n\n_Wagner\u2019s Style._\u2014The habit he acquired, from his earliest days, of having\nhis say in the most important matters without a sufficient knowledge of\nthem, has rendered him the obscure and incomprehensible writer that he is.\nIn addition to this he aspired to imitating the witty newspaper article,\nand finally acquired that presumption which readily joins hands with\ncarelessness \u201cand, behold, it was very good.\u201d\n\n\n\n65.\n\n\nI am alarmed at the thought of how much pleasure I could find in Wagner\u2019s\nstyle, which is so careless as to be unworthy of such an artist.\n\n\n\n66.\n\n\nIn Wagner, as in Brahms, there is a blind denial of the healthy, in his\nfollowers this denial is deliberate and conscious.\n\n\n\n67.\n\n\nWagner\u2019s art is for those who are conscious of an essential blunder in the\nconduct of their lives. They feel either that they have checked a great\nnature by a base occupation, or squandered it through idle pursuits, a\nconventional marriage, &c. &c.\n\nIn this quarter the condemnation of the world is the outcome of the\ncondemnation of the ego.\n\n\n\n68.\n\n\nWagnerites do not wish to alter themselves in any way, they live\ndiscontentedly in insipid, conventional and brutal circumstances\u2014only at\nintervals does art have to raise them as by magic above these things.\nWeakness of will.\n\n\n\n69.\n\n\nWagner\u2019s art is for scholars who do not dare to become philosophers: they\nfeel discontented with themselves and are generally in a state of obtuse\nstupefaction\u2014from time to time they take a bath in the _opposite\nconditions_.\n\n\n\n70.\n\n\nI feel as if I had recovered from an illness: with a feeling of\nunutterable joy I think of Mozart\u2019s _Requiem_. I can once more enjoy\nsimple fare.\n\n\n\n71.\n\n\nI understand Sophocles\u2019 development through and through\u2014it was the\nrepugnance to pomp and pageantry.\n\n\n\n72.\n\n\nI gained an insight into the injustice of _idealism_, by noticing that I\navenged myself on Wagner for the disappointed hopes I had cherished of\nhim.\n\n\n\n73.\n\n\nI leave my loftiest duty to the end, and that is to thank Wagner and\nSchopenhauer publicly, and to make them as it were take sides against\nthemselves.\n\n\n\n74.\n\n\nI counsel everybody not to fight shy of such paths (Wagner and\nSchopenhauer). The wholly _unphilosophic_ feeling of remorse, has become\nquite strange to me.\n\n\n\n_Wagner\u2019s Effects._\n\n\n75.\n\n\nWe must strive to oppose the false after-effects of Wagner\u2019s art. If he,\nin order to create Parsifal, is forced to pump fresh strength from\nreligious sources, this is not an example but a danger.\n\n\n76.\n\n\nI entertain the fear that the effects of Wagner\u2019s art will ultimately pour\ninto that torrent which takes its rise on the other side of the mountains,\nand which knows how to flow even over mountains.(18)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n    1 It should be noted that the first and second editions of these\n      essays on Wagner appeared in pamphlet form, for which the above\n      first preface was written.\n\n    2 Fisher Unwin, 1911.\n\n    3 T. N. Foulis, 1910.\n\n    4 See _Richard Wagner_, by Houston Stuart Chamberlain (translated by\n      G. A. Hight), pp. 15, 16.\n\n    5 Constable & Co., 1911.\n\n    6 See Author\u2019s Preface to \u201cThe Case of Wagner\u201d in this volume.\n\n    7 Senta is the heroine in the \u201cFlying Dutchman\u201d\u2014_Tr._\n\n    8 A character in \u201cTannhauser.\u201d\u2014_Tr_.\n\n    9 See \u201cThe Will to Power,\u201d vol. ii., authorised English edition.\u2014_Tr._\n\n_   10 Note._\u2014It was a real disaster for \u00e6sthetics when the word drama got\n      to be translated by \u201caction.\u201d Wagner is not the only culprit here,\n      the whole world does the same,\u2014even the philologists who ought to\n      know better. What ancient drama had in view was _grand pathetic\n      scenes_,\u2014it even excluded action (or placed it _before_ the piece or\n      _behind_ the scenes). The word drama is of Doric origin, and\n      according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant \u201cevent,\u201d\n      \u201chistory,\u201d\u2014both words in a hieratic sense. The oldest drama\n      represented local legends, \u201csacred history,\u201d upon which the\n      foundation of the cult rested (\u2014thus it was not \u201caction,\u201d but\n      fatality. \u03b4\u03c1\u1fb6\u03bd in Doric has nothing to do with action).\n\n   11 Hegel and his school wrote notoriously obscure German.\u2014_Tr._\n\n   12 Was Wagner a German at all? There are reasons enough for putting\n      this question. It is difficult to find a single German trait in his\n      character. Great learner that he was, he naturally imitated a great\n      deal that was German\u2014but that is all. His very soul contradicts\n      everything which hitherto has been regarded as German, not to\n      mention German musicians!\u2014His father was an actor of the name of\n      Geyer.\u2026 That which has been popularised hitherto as \u201cWagner\u2019s life\u201d\n      is _fable convenue_ if not something worse. I confess my doubts on\n      any point which is vouched for by Wagner alone. He was not proud\n      enough to be able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less\n      pride than he. Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in\n      his biography,\u2014he remained an actor.\n\n   13 This undoubtedly refers to Nietzsche\u2019s only disciple and friend,\n      Peter Gast\u2014_Tr._\n\n   14 My \u201cGenealogy of Morals\u201d contains the best exposition of the\n      antithesis \u201c_noble morality_\u201d and \u201c_Christian morality_\u201d; a more\n      decisive turning point in the history of religious and moral science\n      does not perhaps exist. This book, which is a touchstone by which I\n      can discover who are my peers, rejoices in being accessible only to\n      the most elevated and most severe minds: the others have not the\n      ears to hear me. One must have one\u2019s passion in things, _wherein_ no\n      one has passion nowadays.\n\n   15 An allusion to Schiller\u2019s poem: \u201cDas verschleierte Bild zu\n      Sais.\u201d\u2014_Tr._\n\n   16 What Schiller said of Goethe.\u2014_Tr._\n\n   17 See note on page 37.\n\n   18 It should be noted that the German Catholic party is called the\n      Ultramontane Party. The river which can thus flow over mountains is\n      Catholicism, towards which Nietzsche thought Wagner\u2019s art to be\n      tending.\u2014_Tr._","title":"The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms.","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":27658}