THE-CASE-OF-WAGNER N1ETZSCHE-CONTRAWAGNER THE-TWILIGHTOF-THE-IDOLS
THE-ANTICHRIST FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
FROM-THE- LIBRARY-OF TWNITYCOLLEGE TORONTO
PRESENTED gy tos* David
Ouchterlony
(0
THE WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Gbc Worhs
VOL.
of
ffriefcricb
A GENEALOGY OF MORALS
I.
POEMS WILLIAM
Translated by
A.
HAUSSMANN and JOHN GRAY [Ready March
VOL.
1899.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE
II.
Translated by
ALEXANDER TlLLE. [Ready April
VOL.
20,
24,
1899.
THE CASE OF WAGNER
ill.
NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS THE ANTICHRIST Translated by
THOMAS COMMON. [Ready May
22,
1899.
Other Volumes to follow.
LONDON
T
.
FISHER U N W N I
This sole authorised edition of the Collected Works of Friedrich Nietzsche is issued under the editorship of TILLE, Ph.D., Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. It is based on the final German edition (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann) prepared by Dr. Fritz Kocgcl, and is published under the supervision of the
ALEXANDER
NictzscJie-Archiv at Nauinburg. Copyright by Macmillan and Co. All rights reserved.
in
the
United States
THE CASE OF WAGNER NIETZSCHE CONTRA
WAGNER
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS THE ANTICHRIST BY FRIEDR1CH
TRANSLATED
NIETZSCHE
THOMAS COMMON
LONDON T.
FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1899
BY
1313
CONTENTS Page
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR
THE CASE OF WAGNER
xxiii
Preface
A
vii
I
Letter from Turin of May, 1888
5
Postscript
43
Second Postscript
51
Epilogue
56
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
WAGNER
Preface
61
63
Where
I
admire
65
Where
I
make
67
Wagner
as a
Objections
Danger
A Music without We Antipodes Where Wagner Wagner
How The
a
Future
belongs to
as the Apostle of Chastity
I got free
from Wagner
Psychologist speaks
Epilogue
69 71
73
76 79 82
84 89
CONTENTS
VI
Page
THE TWILIGHT OF THE
IDOLS
95
Preface
97
Apophthegms and Darts
99
The PiQblenL of -Socrates "Reason"
How
the
in
107
116
Philosophy
"True
World"
finally
became a Fable
124
Morality as Anti-naturalness
126
The
134
four great Errors
The Improvers
What
the
of
Mankind
Germans
lack
Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher
My
Indebtedness to the Ancients
The Hammer speaketh
THE ANTICHRIST
147
154 164
222 233 237
Preface
239
The
241
Antichrist
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION If
it
be the task of philosophy
departments of learning into an uncontradictory
the various
the philosophy
whole,
to unite the results of
of half a century
that
spinning in the
died
mode
the
out,
higher
Although
ago.
longer
regarded as the
Above
all,
of speculative
science,
with
its
results
unavoidable presuppositions, has within the tury won a place in general esteem making philosophy
has
the
any longer
to
doctrine of evolution
1859 from Darwin
s
"Origin
and
the
in
discoveries.
s
"Evidence
ley
logical all
significance.
last half it
impossible
More it
cen
especially
received in
changed most of position on the earth,
his
his relation to the lower animals,
sophy has been compelled to define
new
shape
no
is
of Species
the genera] concepts about man, his descent
it.
neglect
means
well as with
as
its
for
cobweb-
tradition
for a philosopher s
test
than
position
intellectual
of Spinoza or Hegel has by no
continuation
natural
Germany and
of the present age in
Great Britain can claim a somewhat
its
and philo
position towards these
Whilst ever since the appearance of Hux Man s Place in Nature" in 1863 bio
as to
particularly phylogeny and ontogeny, have been busy to establish even the which bear on the ascent of beings by con
science,
and
over the world
minor
facts
tinual evolution,
and
to
collect ever
new evidence upon I
the
X
INTRODUCTION
method of
that development, English philosophy, so far as has taken any notice of evolutionarism, has endeavoured
it
show
to
that
sexual and
cannot possibly account century, has been called
natural
selection
"
human
and elimination
the middle of last
since
for what,
"
It
progress.
ced every attempt to apply that principle to
and the rated
two
"
movement
tribes of primeval
into
if
competition,
one
tribe
his
man,
faithful
"
society
"
"
living in the
(other
included a great
and
thetic,
in
human
Darwin himself inaugu When Descent of Man.
progress of civilisation.
that
has denoun
same country, came
circumstances
number
"
the
being equal)
of courageous,
members who were always ready
sympa to
warn
each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this would succeed better and conquer the other. That
tribe
"
sounds but
like
an application of natural selection to sociology, What we should have expected to
the very opposite.
is
hear from the great teacher of the is
an
entirely different proposition.
which (including
the
weak and
"
struggle for existence
"
In a tribe the members of sick)
assist
each other
in
of danger natural selection must soon come to an end, a kind of panmixy must arise and lead to a rapid decline of individual strength and thereby of the tribe it
every kind
The
self.
last
"Darwinism"
oning.
the "
fit
chapter
(1889)
is
of
Mr.
Alfred
a sample of the
Russel
same way
Wallace
s
of reas
This unwillingness to acknowledge the selection of and the elimination of the unfit as pre-requisites of
human
"
has, quite recently, reacted upon general by producing the Neo-Lamarckism of Sir Francis Galton and Mr. William Bateson.
progress
biological theories
whenever they touch upon the more complex problems of human existence, dare not apply to them the principles they would not question for a moment If scientists themselves,
INTRODUCTION
XI
realm of the organic world outside of man, how can if philosophers have still less courage? Mr. Herbert
in the
one wonder Spencer
own
s
philosophical development has been one long
campaign against natural selection and elimination, and in His fight with favour of heredity of acquired characters. Professor drift
Weismann
is
of Mr. Spencer
The whole
only an incidental skirmish.
thought almost
s
spired by the question
:
how
to
appears
evade and
be
to
in
the logical
veil
consequences of Darwin s evolutionarism for human existence? If that were the task he set for himself, his reasoning could scarcely
have been better than
it
is.
That he uses the word
evolution so frequently does not matter in the
he terms evolution
is
utterly at variance with
cept of development as
the natural
What
least.
Darwin
s
con
result of a struggle for
by a misunderstanding can he be called the philosopher of Darwinism, for he has never got beyond Lamarck s ideas of natural development by accumulation of existence.
Only
acquired qualities. at the
Nor have any
problem from any other
of
side.
his
disciples
looked
In the works of his
Mr. John Fiske, the gulf between Darwinism and philosophical evolutionarism becomes even more apparent, closest follower,
for
not
Mr. Fiske, despite his rival his great master
much in
greater rhetorical
gift,
does
the art of complicating expres
sion or in the patient elaboration of long lines of argument
the
of which
point
is
concealed
until
the
last
moment.
be evolved, an entirely new humanity began in of Hence the the universe was opened. chapter history forth the life of the nascent soul came to be first in im to
"When
portance,
and the bodily
Henceforth
life
became subordinated
to
it.
appeared that the process of zoological change had come to an end, and the process of psychological change was to take its place. These sentences from Mr. Fiske s it
"
I*
INTRODUCTION
Xii
book on
(1884) may be taken as position taken up by English
Destiny of
"The
Man"
the
fairly representative of
towards Darwin
philosophy
until quite recently,
doctrine
s
whenever the words
of
evolution.
"higher"
and
Thus, "lower"
were used about the animal world they were unconsciously applied in two absolutely different meanings, according as
man was meant
man
more
physical strength, its
be included or
to
world without
animal
life
In regard to the with greater
not.
meant
"
"
higher
richly differentiated,
more dangerous enemies, means of motion and of getting
against
effective
geny which otherwise
at
the
as
qualification
birth,
of
individual
gifted
food,
self-defence
for
"
higher
was used
of man,
however,
it
more
having pro
almost
acquisition always stand in the foreground. "
with
as
differentiation
Bodily
parents.
the
is
though smaller,
:
able to defend
perfect
and the
and
When
food-
the word
meant something
The savage tribes with their natural forces quite different. unimpaired were regarded as the lower types, and civilised man, although in ill-health, lame and unable to earn a penny
all
his
life,
as the
"
"
"
"
Higher
higher.
in this sense
may be taken as almost identical with more socially dependent, with milder customs, able to enjoy mental pleasures, unable :
to live
At any
under any conditions but those of modern civilisation. rate the word was used regardless of any faculty of
self-defence
or self-maintenance,
logical superiority
and other bodily
in
the
power
capacity.
The
regardless
of any physio
of locomotion,
in strength
fragile person with special
but with a progeny as fragile and strengthas himself, was without hesitation assumed as "greater"
intellectual gifts, less
man with who presents
than the ability
and daughters.
the
strong
body and average mental
his nation with half a
dozen able sons
INTRODUCTION
xiii
Thus the whole of the animal world was measured by two standards, was estimated according to two utterly diffe rent principles. These standards were nowhere denned, these
principles
There
were never examined.
point in the line of evolution at which
one
greater becomes the confusion when,
ceases
of man,
valuation
longer taken
his
to
apply
begins.
are
qualities
and regard
consideration
into
fixed
in arriving at a
intellectual
general
no
and the other
the Still
standard
is
could be said that
it
is
had only
no to
the extent of his subjection to the traditional restrictions of action
called
Whenever
morality.
that
is
the chain be
so,
tween the two standards which may be said
to exist in the
In the first case disappeared completely. being among a species is that which leaves
former case has the
"
"
higher
and more numerous progeny,
the stronger the
"
"
being
higher
which
that
is
of such acts as are believed
does
in the latter case
a
larger
number
serve certain ends particu
to
esteemed by a certain portion of the community to which it belongs. In the first case the superiority of the
larly
individual
of
superiority
own
acts
In the to the
tested
is
in
its
progeny
the individual
is
first
by the quality of
is
and
only
in
refers
the
English philosophy
of evolution
Morals ")
process
to
;
in
the second
the imagination of the
of the
century that of this duplicity of
present
become aware
has
Samuel Alexander in 1892
of ethical
in nature
in
their alleged or real happiness.
nineties
standard. While Professor
preted the
its
the
growth of the qualities of the species
fellow beings
in
second case the
in the
assumed welfare of a small community. case the superiority is physiological and refers
for
case the superiority exists merely
It
;
tested
(in
his
evolution
Essay on
still
inter
as the continuation "
Natural Selection
two independent thinkers, the Right Hon. Arthur
INTRODUCTION
Xiv
James Balfour and Professor Huxley, almost simultaneously dis covered the gulf between the two standards. But both solve the discrepancy
the
in
same way.
Regarding the
intellec
tual-moral or simply moral standard as unquestionably superior to the physiological they gladly sacrifice the latter to it, thus that
at
arriving
of thought
unity
in
requisite
every
true
philosophy.
Mr. Balfour in his
on Progress (1891) came can hardly refuse our support
"Fragment
conclusion that
to the
"we
improvement of the race may
to the view that the general in
some
lead
respects
a
to
deterioration
constitution of the individual.
the
in
natural
Humanity, must have a tendency to mitigate the harsh methods by which Nature has wrought out the variety and the per fection of organic life. And however much man as he is civilisation, progress
itself,
moulded by the
ultimately
man
gain,
he
as
"
the
If
lose.
social forces
born into
is
who
sceptic,
race
under
"
can,
improvement position
the
traditional
accepts social
at
the
prejudices
the
who is
unfortunate
forces in
general
modern
up is
more
improvement
pends,
not
to
ask
of the
called
an
himself from
free
He
daring.
physiological
not only silently consequences of the
but goes so far as to wish to
life,
that the ethical
on imitating the "
he yet
his
"Let
calls
Romanes us under
of society de
process, it."
"
in
progress
cosmic
running away from it, but in combating he calls it an audacious proposal thus to
cosm against the macrocosm
to
somewhat discouraging
this
unable
them immeasurably. Huxley said Lecture on Evolution and Ethics (1893), all,
be
rightly
increase
stand, once for
enough
"
circumstances,
takes
all,
scientist
not sceptic
is
the question whether such a
the
surrounding him may world must somewhat
less
still
And
in
although micro
pit the
man s
ends higher
INTRODUCTION
ends than
XV
and hopes that such an of success. measure with certain a meet may the
ends
of nature
"
"
enterprise
Bentham, when the belief in a mythological origin of the moral law was sufficiently shaken to raise apprehensions con the
cerning
further
of that
validity
circumscribed the
law,
the ideal of one flock
on earth
Christian ideal of happiness
by an abstract term as the maximisation
and one shepherd
of happiness, the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. fic "
Huxley
the
of as
fitting
many
merely circumscribes the ethical process to replace
This
is
confronted
mark
is
to
Origin
he does not question arrives
at the
in scienti
it
of Species
"
as
But he
"
or propose
it
proposition that
extinguish the cosmic process,
it
is
it.
the point at which English philosophy like
Our
:
it,
"
s
possible to survive.
as
Thus he
modification.
any
similarly circumscribes
from Darwin
terms borrowed
the
morality,
itself
age which
by
a
we know
startling
to
now
stands
interrogation
be the
result of a
development limited to man and extending over a few thousand years under all kinds of climatic, economical and literary influences, is asked to pronounce judgment upon
social
the whole exist
of the cosmic process.
merely
constantly record,
in
men s minds and
changing
are they to
in every particular
all
through
create a to
new
The moral known
are
the
period
world,
an
ideals,
to
which
have been
of
historical
ethical
the world of reality
world
?
opposed was once generally believed that the world at large was governed by the same moral laws which were supposed It
govern human society, that whole realm of nature, that there
to
human
justice
ruled
the
were punished, good actions rewarded, and judgment passed. Darwinism has for ever put an end to that concept of a moral order of a unisins
INTRODUCTION
XVI
verse of peace.
It
now
is
for existence
struggle
development
the
to
man now
all
to
think
and measure
physiological,
and
civilisation,
art,
The
struggle.
in spite of
If,
infinitely.
of forcing
his
Darwin has enabled us to apply to should we not look at him as a being above
Why
?
higher
which
standard
nature
all
own moral why should not we measure man by
dares
standard upon nature the
of that
effects
moral realm has thus been limited that,
and that
rages everywhere,
due
is
generally admitted that a severe
religion
of
first
by
the value of his
all
their effect
upon
his species,
by the standard of physiology ? It is not easy to say beforehand to what results such a would
valuation
undertake
to
the
currency of our time. rate will
any two of
and
lead,
thus
is
it
task
worthy of a great thinker
of transvaluing the intellectual
Whatever be the
be gained,
viz.,
that
we
result,
one thing
at
no longer have
shall
"
mutually contradictory concepts of progress, and but have only one standard, the lower, "
different, "
"
higher
"
"
physiological.
Among in
who have come forward
the independent thinkers
modern German}
,
Friedrich Nietzsche, the
first
to
under
take this task, stands foremost.
Although the period of his so late as the eighth decade was power greatest of the century, he has already become an European event and given rise to an independent school of like Hegel, creative
Be the ultimate judgment of thought on the continent. modern thought upon him what it may, certain it is that
To a large philosophy can no longer neglect his works. extent because of his highly condensed, epigrammatic and elliptic
cult
style,
even
known
in
which makes sometimes the
for a this
German country
to attain, until
full
meaning
diffi
he has been almost un
a few
years
ago.
But
it
is
INTRODUCTION
XV11
that the publication of a complete English edition of works prepared with the greatest possible care will make them known to all who are interested in the great mental
hoped his
problems of the age.
The
present volume, which initiates
the last four of Nietzsche
The
and December 1888.
them
whatever
is
all:
Physiology as is
small,
what
sole standard
mena be
Physiology
the is
sole
the
as
human, whether
drift
culture,
on what
good und what
is
facts
and
of thought per of value of
criterion
or religion!
called art, culture,
arbiter
by which the
and
civilisation
But one
the fourth with Christianity.
vades
two deal with music, the
first
some problems of
with
third
the series, contains
composed between May
s writings,
bad
is
great
and what
Physiology as the
!
of history and the pheno
of our time can be tried, and by which they have to
tried
and
to
receive
the
verdict
of
the
origin
on the great
issue
:
decline, or ascent?
The
circumstances
of
the
of this
parts
volume are simple though sad enough. As the} stand they all products of the last eight months of the year 1888.
are
"The
Case of
Wagner"
was sketched
and the manuscript completed of June.
The two
added during
for "
"
Postscripts
in
May 1888
in
Turin
the press before the end
and the
"Epilogue"
The pamphlet appeared
were
in
September small book another 1888. thereafter Immediately "Idlings of a Psvchologist was begun which was finished by the July.
"
beginning of September.
During the printing the
title
was
changed into a parody of Wagner s "Twilight of the Gods," and the book named "Twilight of the Idols." Besides, the chapter the
were
"What
the
Germans
Roving Expeditions inserted.
On
Sep.
lack"
of an
"
3
and some sections of
Inopportune
Philosopher"
Nietzsche applied himself to the
INTRODUCTION
XV111
a work
of
completion
number
the
philosophy,
had occupied
that
and was projected
of years "
Transvaluation
of
mind
his
He had
"
Values.
all
a
for
masterpiece in
as his
by him extensive preliminary sketches of the entire work, but having altered the original plan had to rewrite almost The plan on which he now worked was the the whole. following
The
:
of four books,
title
of the whole work, which was to consist
was
to
be
"
towards a Transvaluation
was
called
"
:
The
of Christianity. 3
and
the
30,
name
"The
"
The
Free
A
Immoralist.
Spirit.
:
Morality
the
Book
First
most
of the
of
the
"
Dionysos.
Transvaluation
which had appeared in 1876 "
"
Inopportune
Contemplations,
having made
"
Wagner
various
of Nietzsche from Wagner,
made
They
in
the
fourth
of
The
Case
of
speak of an apostasy
December
I
admire"
"Where
I
make
"Wagner as a I.
later
than
"Richard
1888,
Wagner
are taken from the following places
"Where
Part
critics
"
from
"Joyful
Objections" "
Danger,
i.
Aphorism 134.
Science,"
from
from
"Joyful
Nietzsche
in
Wagner
Baireuth,"
:
Aphorism Science,"
87.
Aphorism 368. Vol II. "
"Human,
all
Wagner
as
and
of
The con
a selection of most of the passages refering to
from his writings*
*
in
:
"
:
"
Baireuth,"
called
"
"
his
bear
kind of
fatal
and the Fourth Book
;
to
of Philosophy
Criticism
Nietzsche turned once more to Wagner. trast between his first Wagner attempt, Richard
Values
Book
Essay towards a Criticism final form between Sep.
A
Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.
From
Essay
The Third Book was
"
Criticism
"
Ignorance
its
The
"
The Second Book was intended
Movement.
as a Nihilistic
Values.
An
received
It
An first
Will to Power.
all
Antichrist.
"
1888.
The
of
All-too-Human,
INTRODUCTION
order
in
show
to
antagonists.
and
he
that
the
After
satirical
XIX
Wagner
pleasantries
were of
natural
the
first
pamphlet he wished, besides, to point to the graver side the
of
case
He
of Wagner.
arranged
the
inde
twelve
pendent passages,* the style of which he changed somewhat, Nietzsche contra Wagner into a little book printed in the "
"
An
Intermezzo he had put in between the second and third passage he later withdrew. "Nietzsche
last
weeks of 1888.
was to appear in course of 1889, But even perhaps Twilight of the Idols previous to the he was not fated to see the publication of his last three contra
Wagner"
"
".
writings or even to finish his
Transvaluation of
"
all Values."
In the middle of the winter of 1888/9 he succumbed to a serious nervous disturbance which led to hopeless insanity and a temporary confinement in a lunatic asylum. Since
summer
the
relatives at
"
"
as a Danger.
Part
Aphorism
A
II.
i.
Antipodes"
Where Wagner
"Wagner Evil,"
his
Human, All-too-Human,
"
Vol
II.
Vol
II.
"
165. "
from
All-too-Human,
"Human,
"
171.
from
to
"
Aphorism 370. Beyond Good and
Science,"
"Joyful
belongs
from
"
"
Evil,
Sec
as
the Apostle
of Chastity,
"
i.
from
"Beyond
Good and
Section 256.
A Genealogy Essay Third, Sections 2 and 3. I got free from Wagner" from "Human, All-too-Human,"
Wagner of
under the care of
254 and 256.
tions
as the Apostle of Chastity.
2.
and
"
3.
from
"
Morals,"
"How
Vol "
Aphorism
lived
has never, however, again been
from
"
2.
Music without a Future
"We
"
He
Naumburg.
Wagner
Part
"
1890 he has
of
The
II,
Preface, Sections 3 "
Psychologist speaks
269 and 270. "Epilogue" from
"Joyful
and
from
4. "
Science,"
Beyond Good and
"
Evil,
Preface, Sections 3 and 4.
Sections
INTRODUCTION
XX
able to write or give directions about the publication of his
works, which passed into the hands of his heirs and relatives. "
The
1889.
January Wagner"
of
Twilight
of
The
the first
Idols
"
did
impression of
not "
appear until Nietzsche contra
1888 was never published, and the
little
pam
phlet was only issued with "The Antichrist," in Vol. VIII of Nietzsches Werke which appeared towards the end of 1894, with 1895 on the titlepage.
For most of the position of
the four
and dates regarding the com
facts
works
of
German
Koegel
present
volume,
Thomas Common,
has been translated by Mr. obliged to Dr. Fritz
the
s
which
the Editor
is
Nachbericht in Vol. VIII of the
edition.
ALEXANDER
TILLE.
THE CASE OF WAGNER NIETZ SCHE CONTRA WAGNER; THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS; THE ;
ANTICHRIST
THE CASE OF WAGNER A MUSI CIAN S PROBLEM BEING A LET TER FROM TURIN, MAY 1888 :
:
"idcndo
dicere sever urn
.
.
.
PREFACE relieve
I
myself a
It
little.
is
not solely out of
sheer wickedness that I praise Bizet at the expense of in this
Wagner
work. In the midst of
much
pleasantry,
bring forward a case which is serious enough. It was my fate to turn the back on Wagner to be fond I
;
of
No
aught afterwards was a triumph.
one, perhaps,
had been more dangerously entangled in Wagnerism, no one has defended himself harder against it, no one has been more glad to get rid of
word wanted
Is there a
who knows how
I
for
it.
A
If I
it ?
should designate
long history
were a
it
!
!
moralist,
Perhaps
self-
But the philosopher never loves mora neither does he love fancy words
overcoming. lists
.
.
.
.
What of himself
does a philosopher ?
To overcome
With what, strife ? With the
"timeless."
hardest
just the child of his age.
his
firstly
age
then,
and
!
has he to
I
am
.
lastly require
in himself, to
characteristics in
Well
.
become
wage
the
which he
is
the child of this
PREFACE
2
age, just like
Wagner,
of
conscious
it
I
;
The problem reasons for
defended myself against
most
"Good
it.
When
that problem.
itself
of decadence
me
occupied
a decadent ; I am, however,
e.,
.
defended
philosophic spirit
has
/
against
is,
and
Evil"
is
had
have
I
;
which
that
in fact,
profoundly
My
it.
it.
only a variety of
one has learned to discern the
one also understands morality, one understands what conceals itselt under its holiest
symptoms of
decline,
names and valuation-formube life,
tives
life
.
discipline
.
I
:
was morbid
For such a task
.
had
in
to
impoverished
namely,
;
desire for the end, great lassitude. I
Morality nega
required
some
self-
engage in combat against whatever
me, including Wagner, including Schopen
modern
all
"
humanity. "A pro found estrangement, coolness, and sobriety with refe rence to everything temporary or opportune and as hauer,
including
;
my
highest wish,
the
of Zarathustra,
eye
an eye,
an immense height, surveys the whole phenomenon of man, looks down on it ...
which,
To
exalted
to
what
such an object
attain
be appropriate
What
?
sacrifice "
"
self-overcoming
!
would not
What
"
self-
"
denying My most important experience was a convalescence !
Wagner Not malady. that
belongs only to
If in
Wagner
my
would wish
that I
is
;
maladies.
to
be ungrateful to
this
work
I
maintain the proposition
hurtful,
I
want none the
this
less
to
PREFACE maintain
pensable
whom,
to
to
may
people
the
in spite of
3
it
all,
In
philosopher.
Wagner
other
perhaps get along without
indis
is
departments
Wagner
;
the
philosopher, however,
is
not free to dispense with him.
The philosopher has
to
be the bad conscience of
time
;
his
he must possess its best know But where would he find a better initiated
for that purpose
ledge.
guide for the labyrinth of modern soul, a more elo
quent psychological expert than Wagner? Modernism speaks its most familiar language in Wagner it con :
ceals
neither
its
sense of shame.
good nor
And
its
reversely
a clear notion about what
is
evil, :
it
has lost
all its
when one has formed
good and
evil in
Wagner,
one has almost determined the value of modernism. I
understand perfectly, when a musician says now,
I
Wagner, but I no longer stand any other music. should however also understand a philosopher who
hate I
"
"
"
declared,
no help
Wagner siimmarises modernism. There it we must first be Wagnerians "...
for
;
is
I
heard
will
yesterday
believe
you
it
the
?
masterpiece of Bizet for the twentieth time.
I again in succeeded held out with meek devotion, again not running away. This victory over my impatience How such a work -perfects one One surprises me. I
!
becomes a
And
"
"
really,
masterpiece I
have
one
s self
by
influence.
its
every time
appeared to myself,
I
have heard Carmen, to be more of a philosopher, a I have become better philosopher than at other times :
Five
so patient, so happy, so Indian, so sedate
hours sitting
:
the
first
stage of holiness
ture to say that Bizet s orchestra music sole orchestration I yet endure
music which
is all
orchestration, at
that
at
the
same
is
time,
the
artificial,
three
ho\v
Wagnerian orchestration
!
I
ven
almost the
That other orchestra
?
the rage at present, the
once brutal,
thereby speaking to soul
May
!
and
call
\
it
innocent
of
senses
detrimental I
Wagnerian "
to
"
modern
me
is
the Sirocco.
THE CASE OF WAGNER
An
unpleasant sweat breaks out on me.
time
music seems to
This
My
me
to
be
it
does not produce sweat.
everything
proposition of subtle,
vidual. it
my
What
is
with light feet
It is
good "
easy
the
:
This music
^Esthetics.
is
ap ami ;
first
wicked,
is
remains popular at the same has the subtlety of a race, not of an indi
and it
time,
runs
divine
"
It
perfect.
proaches lightly, nimbly, and with courtesy. able,
good
an end.
at
is
fatalistic
It is rich.
completes
;
it
;
it
It is precise.
It builds,
it
organises,
thus the antithesis to the polypus
is
Have more painful, melody. accents been ever heard on the stage ? And tragic how are they obtained ? Without grimace Without in
"
music,
"
infinite
!
counterfeit
coinage
Without the imposture of the
!
Finally, this music takes the auditor for grand style an intelligent being, even for a musician here also !
;
Bizet
Wagner, who, whatever else the most un courteous genius in
the contrast to
is
he was, was certainly
(Wagner takes us
the world.
he says until one
just as if
,
a thing again and again until one despairs, believes
it.)
And Bizet
once more,
exhorts me.
auditor.
my of
Is
ears it.
before
I
I
it
become
a better
man when
Also a better musician, a better
at all possible to listen better
under
seem dangers
this
this
music,
to assist at
which
I its
?
I
bury
hear the very reason production
accompany
any
I
tremble
hazardous
THE CASE OF WAGNER
am
I
enterprise,
of which Bizet
fortune
of
think
I
after
it
to
.
spirit
.
.
free f that
it
gives
one becomes so much more
that
?
thought
all,
For quite other thoughts the time Has it been
it.
run through my mind at noticed that music makes the
wings
of
good And, curiously or I don t know
innocent.
is
don t think of
I
enough,
how much
strokes
by
enraptured
7
a philosopher, the more one becomes a musician
The grey heaven of by
lightnings
filigree
grasped summit.
And
;
the light
of things ;
abstraction thrilled,
the
;
as for
enough
strong
it
?
were, the
all
problems ready to be
great
the universe surveyed as from a mountain I
have
answers
just defined
into
fall
my
philosophical
pathos.
lap unexpectedly
a
;
little
hail-shower of ice and wisdom, of solved problems
Where am is
I
?
makes me
good makes me productive.
tude, nor
have
This work "
Bizet
Saviour.
"
I
saves
also
Bizet s
;
north,
and
all
ideal.
Even
the
dramatic
from.
It
possesses,
the
has borrowed shortest
above
all,
Wagner
is
is
.
.
All that
have no other
grati
good.
not the
work one takes
humid
passion,
I
any other proof of what
With
the
productive.
.
only
leave of the
steam of the Wagnerian saves
action
us
there
from Merimee the logic route,
stern
what belongs
necessity.
to the
warm
in It cli-
THE CASE OF WAGNER mate,
the dry ness
in
respects,
all
ferent
of the climate
the
German
has not a French or a
African
destiny hangs over
;
not hitherto of
find
look
.
we
did
:
I
it
gaiety
is
envy
the
in
How
.
.
happiness benefit us
its
but
gay Its
this sensibility,
expression
scorched sensibility of
is
;
is
with
music
cultured
We
!
yellow afternoons
the
contemplate the out
ever see the sea smoother ?
lascivious
And how
cultured maiden
love as
the
nature
war of
hatred.
Not
the
love of a
Senta - sentimentality
Love, which in
!
the sexes, and in
know
I
No
of
* !
its
cludes
yes
:
!
expedients
/ myself have
Senta
is
one of
Wagner
!
s
killed her
my Carmen
itself
so terribly, as in
itself
Jose, with which the
Oh my Carmen *
and
no case where tragic humour,
so strenuously, has formulated
Don
But
basis their mortal
its
which forms the essence of love, has expressed the last cry of
How love
Finally, love,
as fatality, cynical, innocent, cruel,
fate,
thus true to is
"
!
!
natiire /
!
once to be satiated
for
melancholy into
retranslated again "
learns
insatiability
its
for
which did
tranquilisingly the Moorish dance appeals to us
even our
short,
Bizet
more southern, more tawny, more
this
Europe
sensi
happiness
sudden, and without forgiveness.
dif
different
gaiety. its
it,
having had the courage for
Here a
a
itself,
This music
a different gaiety.
bility,
Here,
limpidezza.
altered.
is
expresses
sensuality
its
air,
;
adored
female personages.
"
!
work con
THE CASE OF WAGNER
Such a conception of love is
worthy of a philosopher)
work
of art
among
only one which
(the
rare
is
9
it
;
distinguishes a
thousands of others.
average, artists do like
For, on an
the world, or worse even
all
they misunderstand love. Wagner also has mis understood it. People imagine they are unselfish in love because they seek the advantage of another often
being,
But
so
for
being
.
rule.
He
.
far
he
if
terror,
own
to
possess
advantage. other
the
no exception to this from thinking, What need you if I love you ? he becomes a himself
is
"
"
it,
L Amour
not loved in return.
is
word one gains one s
est de toits les
sequent,
their
want
they
Even God is
to
opposition
doing
about
trouble
this
.
in
sentiments
lorsqu
il
cst
case with gods and le
plus
bless e,
le
egoiste, et,
with
men
par con
moins genereux
(B.
Constant).
You
me
?
already see
//
how much
faut meditcrraniser
la
music improves musique : I have
this
reasons for using this formula (Beyond Nr. 255).
The
return to nature, to health, to gaiety, to
youth, and to virtue
!
And
yet
I
most corrupt of the Wagnerians ... taking to
Good and Evil,
Wagner
seriously
.
.
.
Ah,
was one of the I
this
was capable of old magician
what extent has he imposed upon us
thing
his
art
furnishes
is
a
!
The
magnifying -glass.
!
first
We
THE CASE OF WAGNER
IO
look into
comes
we don t
it,
even
great,
a wise rattlesnake
us about
becomes great
Wagner !
All his
about
"devotion,"
everything be
trust our eyes
life
.
.
What
.
he has rattled before about
"loyalty,"
"purity;"
with a panegyric on chastity, he withdrew from the And we have believed him corrupt world
But you do not of
the problem
.
.
!
to
listen
to
Wagner
me
You
?
prefer even
of Bizet
that
.
don t
I
?
The problem it has its charm. even a venerable problem. There is nothing which Wagner has meditated on more pro
undervalue
it
of salvation
myself,
is
foundly than salvation vation.
works time
;
his opera
;
Someone always wants to be saved in Wagner s at one time it is some little man, at another some
is
it
woman
little
And with what opulence he What rare, what profound Wagner for
the opera of sal
is
that
is
his problem.
varies his leading motive sallies
!
Who
was
!
but
it
taught us that innocence has a preference
saving
sinners
interesting
Or
(the
case
in
Tann-
even the Wandering Jew will be saved, will become settled, if he marries (the case in ?
hduser]
the Flying prefer
to
Kundry best
to
that
Dutchman]
in Parsifal]
be
Or
?
that corrupt
that
young
old
women case
(the
of
hysterics like
saved
by their doctor (the case in Or that handsome girls like best to be
Lohengrin] ? saved by a cavalier in
Or
?
be saved by chaste youths
the Master-singers]
who ?
is
Or
a Wagnerian
(the
that even married
case
women
THE CASE OF WAGNER are willingly saved
Or
that
a cavalier (the case of Isolde]
by
old
"the
I I
God,"
?
he has compromised
after
himself morally in every respect,
is
finally
freethinker and immoralist (the case in the
saved by a
Nibelung
s
Do Ring] ? Admire especially this last profundity understand it ? I take good care not to understand you !
it
...
may be
That other lessons also
these
w orks,
one
can
r
I
be
and
ballet
derived from
would rather prove than deny. to
brought
to virtue
a
by
despair
(once more
That
Wagnerian
case of Tann-
the
That the worst consequences may result if one does not go to bed at the right time (once more
hduser]
\
That one should never know
the case of Lohengrin].
too exactly case
whom
one question
me
Answer
who on
in his
that sooner
(for
and
Tristan
of Lohengrin],
perfect husband,
told
one marries
Isolde
extols
the
a certain occasion has only
mouth
But why have you not Nothing was simpler than that "
:
"
?
!
In truth : cannot
:
the third time the
"What
tell
it>
them dost ask
Remains
unanswered.
for aye
"
Lohengrin contains a solemn proscription of investi gation and questioning. Wagner, accordingly, ad vocates the
and must and
Christian
doctrine,
"
believe.
holiest to
be
It is
shalt
believe,
an offence against the highest
scientific
.
.
preaches the sublime doctrine the most
"Thou
vagabond person
.
The Flying Dutchman that woman makes even
settle
down,
or, in
Wagnerian
THE CASE OF WAGNER
12
language,
Granted that
ask a question.
same time be
the
desirable
Wandering Jew,
He
?
of no
is
lated into actuality
these
woman
What becomes
?
it
at
of the a
by
are
more
interest to us.
Trans
the danger of artists, of geniuses
:
the
"
Wandering Jews
women
adoring
:
would
true,
simply ceases to be the eternal wanderer,
he marries,, and
for
is
it
the liberty to
adored and settled down
"
"
woman
Here we take
him.
"saves"
anyone has sufficient
are
their
character
to
in
"lies
ruin.
Hardly
being cor
resist
when he finds himself treated being saved as a god he forthwith condescends to woman. Man "
"
rupted
:
is
before
cowardly
women know
(perhaps precisely is
that
many
feminine
eternally
of feminine
most celebrated
the
in
is
cases
cases),
sometimes
even
in
:
love
love
only a more refined parasitism, a nestling in
a
a
strange body what expense always to the host Goethe s fate in moralic-acid, old-maidenish Ger soul,
strange
Ah
all
In
it.
!
at
many
-
!
known.
is
Germans
;
he
He was
always a scandal to the has had honest admirers only among "
Jewesses.
round
Schiller,
their
according
Goethe
"
"
?
to
ears
w ith r
their
For the
noble
"
"
Schiller,
high-flown
taste.
Why
who
blustered
phrases,
did
Mountain of Venus,
he was
they reproach "
and because
he had composed Venetian epigrams. Klopstock had there was a time already preached to him on morals ;
when Herder had
a preference for the
word
"Priapus,"
THE CASE OF WAGNER
13
when speaking of Goethe. Even Wilhelm Meister was only regarded as a symptom of decadence, of going to the dogs in morals. The menagerie of "
"
"
tame
"
cattle
which
it
exhibits,
and the
"
meanness
who
the hero, exasperated Xiebuhr, for example,
"
of
finally
breaks out into a lamentation which Biterolf* might have chanted Hardly anything can produce a more "
:
painful impression than a great
of
wings, and seeking
its
far
while
lower,
cultured maiden little
it
virtuosity in
renounces the
was however
every sort of
courts
its
mind despoiling
something
higher"
"
in
Wartburg
in
spirit
Goethe.
He
music.
but he does
Goethe
that
such a
way
it
in
saved
is
Wagner
saves Goethe,
of the
the part
has
cultured ;
a
set
:
The
.
all
the
"
unclean
this history
to
goes without saying, that he adroitly takes
maiden
at
the
saves him,
prayer
.
Germany-
crossed themselves before Goethe, before the "
.
especially roused
"
itself
same a
time.
cultured
maiden draws him iipivard What Goethe would have thought of Wagner ? Goethe once proposed to himself the question, What .
.
.
"
is
the danger which hovers over
fate of the romanticist
by chewing "
again.
adds
epilogue
*
A
and :
Parsifal that
to
Wagner
s
the
over
-The philosopher
answer.
Tannhduser.
:
"Suffocation
absurdities
religious
higher values perhaps
personage in
romanticists
His answer was,
?"
In fewer words
an
of the
last
moral
all
still
Holiness seen
the
by the
THE CASE OF WAGNER
14
populace and woman, the horizon
who
all
are
however,
it
myopic.
naturally
ideal
for
philosophers,
every other horizon, a mere misap
like
is
of the
For
prehension, a sort of door-closing of the region where
commences
their
world
ideal,
their desirability
only
ne
la philosophic
.
.
their
their
danger,
Expressed more politely pas au grand nombre. II :
.
sujfit
hii faut la saintete.
recount
further
I
belongs to
It
Ring.
the this
For the half of
saved.
in
racters
in
He
it.
his
world
conventions"
ideologist.
sought for
"
it
in the
believed
Runic cha
?
"
"
like
world
?
from
that
all
How does one How does one
"
the
old
old
He commences
his procreation
already
is
world,
old
get rid of the evil
do away with old
?"
does.
the
every revolutionary
Only by declaring war against That (traditional usage and morality).
fried
who
That means from customs, laws, morals,
society rest on.
society
story
Whence comes all Wagner asked himself. From
he answered,
institutions,
the
is
of myths, he believed that he found in Sieg
evil in the
in
a
himself
Wagner life, Wagner has
it
fried the typical revolutionist.
and
also
none but a Frenchman has ever
as
revolution,
believed
It is
place.
of salvation, only, this time, is
of the Nibelung s
story
early with
"conventions"
is it,
a declaration of
what Sieg very early
:
war against
THE CASE OF WAGNER
5
he comes into the world through adultery
morality
and incest ... is
I
not the legend, but
It is
the inventor of this radical trait
has corrected the legend
he commenced he casts aside
Whatever
:
Siegfried
.
.
.
on
;
he follows only the
all
tradition,
all
Wagner who continues as first
to
the
reverence,
on the old
attack
principal undertaking, however,
emancipating woman fried and Brunnhilde
is
the
;
fear.
He
runs
His
Deities.
purpose of
for the
saving Brunnhilde
"
impulse, all
displeases him, he stabs down.
irreverently
he
this point
Sieg sacrament of free love "...
;
dawn of the golden age the twilight of the Gods of old morality evil is done away with Wagner s vessel ran merrily on this course for a
the
;
.
!
time.
long
Wagner sought
Here, undoubtedly,
.
.
his
What happened ? A misfortune. The went on a reef Wagner was run aground.
highest goal. vessel
The
;
was Schopenhauer s
reef
philosophy
was run aground on a contrary view had he
hauer
music
set to
In addition,
had
it
long over
formed
it
;
Wagner was ashamed.
Optimism.
was an optimism
He was
optimism.
?
his
a
The
reef if
purpose,
on which
real
was
he
he interpreted the
epithet
it
infamous
He
thought
seemed desperate ...
way be
which Schopen
once more ashamed.
out of the difficulty finally
it
for
malicious
situation
Wagner What
;
of things.
as
meaning of
dawned on wrecked
his
A
mind.
how would
the goal, the ultimate his
voyage
?
To be
I
THE CASE OF WAGNER
6
wrecked here
was a goal
that
Bene navigavi
also.
cum naufragium fed And he translated the Nibelung s Ring into Schopenhauerism. Everything goes wrong, everything goes to ruin, the new world .
is
bad as the
as
makes
a sign
earlier
.
.
honour of
Nothingness, the Indian Circe,
old.
who
Brunnhilde,
.
had
design
.
.
take
to
of a Socialistic Utopia in which
Schopenhauer
book of the
to
"
all will
She has
do.
a
song
in
in anticipation
be
"
well,
first
has
to study
she has to put into verse the fourth
;
World
"
was saved Wanner o salvation.
to
else
with
world
free love, solacing the
now something
according to the
leave
The
as Will
In
...
all
and Representation. seriousness, that was a "
which Wagner is indebted immense. It was only the philo
service for
Schopenhauer
is
sopher of decadence
who
enabled the
of deca
artist
dence to discover himself.
The it
at
is
artist of decadence
my
here that
all
inclined
to
Wagner
a
man
is
the word.
seriousness commences.
be
a
decadent ruins our health Is
that
at all
?
quiet
spectator,
typical
decadent,
with his corrupt
taste,
am
when
not this
and music along with it. Is he not rather a disease ?
Everything he touches he makes morbid music morbid.
A
I
And
who feels who claims
he has made
himself necessary that
it
is
a higher
THE CASE OF WAGNER
who knows how
taste,
make
to
I
his
7
depravity be
regarded as a law, as a progress, as fulfilment.
And nobody
defends himself.
of
Wagner s power
becomes prodigious, the smoke of incense steams around him, the misunderstanding about him seduction
by no means the poor
"
calls
itself
"
whom
spirit exclusively
is
it
Gospel
he has convinced.
should like to open the windows a
I
More
air
Air
little.
!
!
does not surprise
It
in
selves
about
would
surprise
themselves a
me
them
that people deceive
Germany. The contrary The Germans have created for
Wagner me.
in
Wagner whom
they can worship; they
were never psychologists, they are grateful by mis But that people also deceive them understanding. selves about
in Paris
Wagner
!
where people are almost
And
nothing else but psychologists.
where things are even
still
How
in Paris.
not
recognised it
:
People skies.
he
is
by
its
Petersburg
!
divined which are not divined intimately related to the entire
European decadence must Wagner to
in St.
it
as
a
be,
decadent.
Protagonist,
its
when he
He
greatest
is
belongs
name
.
.
.
honour themselves by exalting him to the For it is already a sign of decadence that
no one defends himself against Wagner. Instinct is weakened. What should be shunned attracts people.
What the
drives
lips.
still
faster
You want
an
into
the
example?
abyss
is
put to
One need
only
I
THE CASE OF WAGNER
8
observe the regime which the anaemic, the gouty, and the
diabetic
the vegetarian
To
diet.
recognise what is deny one s self \vhat is
able to
and
the vegetarian
;
may be
stimulus
a
sound enough exhaustion
;
by
to
on
is
master,
children I
art
him
by what
allured
is
Disease
!
morbid.
itself
increases
Wagner
he allures
account that
Oh, the rattlesnake joy of "
just
the
little
!
Wagner s
:
The problems which he brings upon
nothing
stage
is
must be
only, a person
when he always saw to
a sign of youth
is
give prominence to this point of view
is
the
come
"
:
that
weak and exhausted.
the old
hurtful,
for such a stimulus
it
strengthening
his pot-herbs.
life
of
Definition
a
hurtful, as hurtful, to be
The exhausted
vitality.
hurtful
the
who needs
a being
:
themselves.
for
prescribe
but problems of hysterics
convulsiveness of his emotion,
,
the
his over-excited sensi
which
always asked for stronger stimulants, his instability, which he disguised as prin ciples, and, not least, the choice of his heroes and
bility,
his
heroines,
taste,
regarded as physiological types
of morbid individuals
!
)
:
(a
altogether these
gallery
symptoms
represent a picture of disease about which there can
no mistake.
be is
perhaps
nothing
is
better
Wagner known
studied
est at
more than
unc
nevrose.
present,
at
the Protean
Nothing
any
character
of degeneracy, which here crystallises as art and
Our
physicians
and
physiologists
have
in
rate
artist.
Wagner
THE CASE OF WAGNER
most interesting case, Just because nothing
their case.
least a
at is
ig
very complete
more modern than
this
and over-excitability Wagner is the modern
entire morbidness, this decrepitude
of
nervous mechanism,
the
artist
the
excellence,
par
In his art there
in the
mixed,
is
of modernism.
Cagliostro
most seductive manner,
the things at present most necessary for
everybody
the three great stimulants of the exhausted, brutality, artifice,
and innocence
Wagner
is
a
(idiocy).
great
ruin
He
music.
for
has
divined in music the expedient for exciting fatigued
sesses
no small inventive
ability in the art of
up once more the most exhausted, and to life those
hypnotic
all
who
are half-dead.
passes, he upsets,
strongest.
the
He
he has thus made music morbid.
nerves
nerves,
The
success
like
He
is
pos
pricking
calling
back
the master of
the bulls, the very
of
Wagner his and consequently on women
success
has
on
made
the ambitious musical world disciples of his magical
art.
And
At
present
not the ambitious only, the shrewd also
money
is
made by morbid
only
.
.
music,
our great theatres live by Wagner.
I
again allow myself a
the case that the Success of
took
form,
and
that,
little
gaiety.
Wagner became
disguised
as
a
I
suppose
embodied,
philanthropic
THE CASE OF WAGNER
2O
musical savant,
do you think cumstances ?
My
mixed among young artists. How would express itself under the cir
it
it
it
friends,
would
ourselves.
among
than good music.
It
easier
is
What,
if,
us have five words
let
say,
make bad music
to
apart from that,
were
it
more advantageous ? more effective, more per suasive, more inspiriting, more sure ? more Wagnerian ? also
Pulchruvi
est
understand
paucorum hominuvi. Bad enough
Latin,
we
advantage. The beautiful has
What
of that.
is
understand our
also
perhaps
thorns
its
We
!
we
;
are aware
the good, then, of beauty
Why
?
not rather the grand, the sublime, the gigantic, that
which moves the
once more
be gigantic than to be beautiful
easier to
aware of that
We
And
masses ?
know
best that
sit
.
.
we
are
.
the masses, in
;
is
it
:
it,
we know
German
the theatre.
The
youths, horned Siegfrieds
and other Wagnerians, require the sublime, the pro the
found,
And
complish. the
the others that
culture - cretins,
the
feminine,
good
the
overpowering.
He who
divine
Let
;
us
he
sit
the
biases,
in
short
is
have strong
all
eternally
the people
;
and the
one kind of
logic.
he who raises us
who makes
us imaginative
Messrs,
the musicians
decide,
the theatre
in
sublime, the profound,
Those
upsets us
little
digesters,
similarly require the
"
Thus much we can ac
overpowering.
is "
is :
profound.
let
us upset
THE CASE OF WAGNER them,
us raise them,
let
make them
us
let
2
I
imaginative.
Thus much we can accomplish.
As
regards the making imaginative,
our conception of
"
"
style
has
its
here that
is
it
Above more com
starting point.
must be no thought Nothing is promising than a thought But the state of mind which all,
there
!
!
precedes thought,
the travail of yet unborn thoughts,
the promise of future thoughts, the world
before
God
created
as
w as r
it
a recrudescence of chaos
it
chaos makes imaginative
.
.
.
.
.
.
In the language of the master
but without
infinity,
:
melody. In the second place, as concerns the upsetting,
it
Let us study
already belongs in part to physiology.
them persuade first of all the instruments. Some even the bo\vels (they open the doors, as Handel The colour says), others charm the spinal marrow. of
of sound
is
decisive here
;
what resounds
Let us refine on this point
indifferent.
!
use of wasting ourselves on other matters characteristic
in
sound,
attributed to our genius
jecture
in
our sounds
us strike them dead,
Above be
all,
.
us
?
give
the
is
Let us be
foolishness
to
when we Let us
!
let
that upsets
thunder,
even
almost
is
What
much
It
!
to
con
irritate the nerves,
make
.
however, passion
Nothing
is
let
use of lightning and
upsets.
Let there
no misunderstanding among us with regard
passion.
is
less
expensive than passion.
to
One
THE CASE OF WAGNER
22
can dispense with not have
need
use passion.
learned
Beauty
against beauty
.
And
.
the
one
anything, let
is difficult:
friends,
about
serious
.
!
my
disparage,
the virtues of counterpoint, one
all
melody us
let
more
my
Application sanctifies
And
.
.
:
immoral.
is
The
Parsifal.
of
\vant
melody
We
Proof :
are
melody
fine
melodies are again loved
Melody
:
Principle
we
disparage
more dangerous than a Nothing more certainly ruins the taste. friends, if fine
Let us
!
if
disparage,
is
Nothing
always
us guard ourselves
still
us
let
ideal,
can
!
are .
!
!
lost,
.
.
Palestrina.
even
melody
.
this
the definition of passion.
is
Passion
gymnastics of the loathsome on the rope of enharmonics. Let us dare, my friends, to be loath or
the
some
Let us splash before us, undismayed, the mire of the most odious harmonies It is thus only that we Let us not spare our hands
Wagner
!
has dared
it
!
!
!
become natural
A
last
Let us
to
raise
can do,
men,
we
walk above the let
.
.
!
Perhaps
be idealists ! If this
we
thing
.
counsel
it
is
embraces
it
is
all in
!
Bumbuui
at least the wisest.
In order
ourselves must be exalted. clouds, let us
!
there
is
:
not the most expedient
harangue the
us surround ourselves with grand symbols
suin
one
Let us infinite, !
no better counsel.
SurLet
be our argument let fine feeling be our advocate. Virtue still wins the case against
"
fulness of heart
"
"
;
"
THE CASE OF WAGNER "
counterpoint.
He who makes
us better
be that he was not good himself been the conclusion of mankind. it
make mankind
better
(one thereby becomes
a
"
Seeking
"classic").
after so-called beauty,
German
us remain
!
classic
serves for recreation,
?
how
could
such has always
Let us therefore
"
:
after ignoble sense -excitement,
has enervated the Italians
Even Mozart s
relation to music
of
way
let
;
consolation
was
!
Let us never admit that music
frivolous after all ... "
"
one thereby becomes good even Schiller became
!
has told us by
Wagner
23
"
that
"
it
cheers up,
"
that
"
it
fur
Let us never furnish enjoyment ! nishes enjoyment. we are lost, if people again think of art as hedonis "
tic
On
... That belongs to the bad eighteenth century the other hand, nothing might be it
(we say verbo.
hour when
it is
sympathy. will save
.
more advisable
And
let
us
choose the
suitable to look black, to sigh publicly,
to sigh in a Christian "
.
hypocrisy, sit venia
apart) than a dose of
That gives dignity.
.
Man
hivi?"
manner, to exhibit large Christian
depraved who will save him ? What Let us not answer. Let us be careful.
is
:
Let us struggle against our ambition, which would like to found religions. But nobody must venture to doubt that we save him, that our music alone brings salvation
.
.
.
(Wagner s Essay,
"
Religion and Art
").
THE CASE OF WAGNER
24
7
Enough
Enough
!
fear
I
!
sinister
have been too plainly recognised under of
the picture
lines
decline
a
The
also in the artists.
in
will
reality
art,
my
cheerful
of a
decline
a decline of character,
latter,
would perhaps receive a provisory expression with this
formula his
player, talent
for
A
the musician
art
my
principal work,
Physiology of Art total
this
now becoming
is
a stage-
developing more and more into a I shall have an opportunity (in a
is
lying.
chapter of "
:
")
which bears the
of showing
transformation of art into
in
detail
title,
how
stage -playing
is
an expression of physiological degene ration (more exactly, a form of hysterics) as any of
just as definite
the corruptions and weaknesses of the art inaugurated
by Wagner
;
for
which
optics,
posture before
it.
the
example,
of
restlessness
continual
necessitates
changing
One understands nothing
of
its
of
Wagner
him a sport of nature, a an accident. He was no defec
so long as one only sees in caprice, "
tive,
a whim, or "
"
abortive,
or
"
"
"
contradictory,
genius as has oc
casionally been said.
Wagner was something
a typical decadent, in
whom
all
If
whose
characteristics
anything
is
all
"
free will
interesting
in
Wagner,
it
as
innovation in
principles
complete,
was
were determined by
with which a physiological trouble, as procedure,
"
is
lacking,
necessity.
the logic
practice
and
crisis
and in
THE CASE OF WAGNER advances step by
taste,
25
from conclusion to con
step,
clusion.
confine myself this time solely to the question
I
of
What
style.
the
is
characteristic
of
all
literary
no longer resides in the whole. The word gets the upper hand and jumps out of the sentence, the sentence stretches too far and decadencel
It
that
is
the
life
obscures the meaning of the page, the page acquires
longer a whole. of decadence
of
gation of
the
"
equal
whole
of the
the expense
at
life
But
that
the
will,
the language of morality,
in
widened
individual,"
rights for
"
all.
Life,
life
a
to
always becoming more
as
he
Everywhere hostility and chaos,
striking,
ceased to live altogether
Wagner seeks
want
life.
it
;
is
one
ascends to
The whole has
summed
composite,
an unnatural product.
is
not the
hallucination
of tones,
how he
at
but
appropriate
to admire him, see
separates,
theory,
political
higher forms of organisation.
artificial,
liberty
pushed back into the most in
There
"
equal vitality, vibration
minute structures, the others poor paralysis, distress, and torpor, or
up,
no
is
always anarchy of the atoms, disgre-
:
and exuberance of
ever
whole
the simile for every style
is
commencement
of gestures
semeiotic
him
arrives
the
at
at
for
;
little
If
tones.
work here
:
unities,
his
power exhausts
itself
:
these
you
how he how he
animates them, inflates them, and renders them
But by so doing
in
visible.
the rest
THE CASE OF WAGNER
26 is
How
worth nothing.
mode
laic is his
how
pitiable, "
of
how
confused,
his attempt to pierce
"
developing,
one another, things which have not grown out of one another His manner here reminds one of
at least into
!
Frcrcs
the
Wagner s aroused
G on court,
dc
whose
other respects also.
in
so
for
much
for
A
of pity
sort
principle his incapacity
creating organically, that he asserts a
where we
"
is
That Wagner has
trouble.
masked under the guise of a
approaches
style
"
dramatic
assert
merely his incapacity for any style, corresponds to an audacious habit which has accompanied Wagner all his life he posits a principle style
:
where he lacks a faculty (very different in this respect, let us say in passing, from old Kant, who loved another kind of audacity whenever he lacked a prin :
ciple,
he posited a
Once more
let it
of admiration in
the
in
faculty
be said that
and love
elaboration
right to
human beings Wagner is only worthy
"
"
in
.
.
.).
the invention of mimittce,
of details
here
;
we have
proclaim him as a master of the
as our greatest miniaturist in music,
first
every rank,
who compresses
into the smallest space an infinitude of
meaning and
sweetness.
His wealth of colours, of demi-tints, of the
mysteries
of
vanishing
degree that almost afterwards.
ception at
of
If
all
Wagner
present pleases
other musicians
will
you
in
spoils
light,
is
us to
such
a
seem too robust
believe me, the highest con
not
to
his works.
be
got
from
what
That has been
in-
THE CASE OF WAGNER vented to persuade the masses
back
presence of
in
it,
What do we
fresco.
of the Overture of
Wagner
all
Tannhauser ? or
music apart from the theatre
me
too impudent
care for the agacante brutality
flavour and spoils the taste.
seems to
one of our class bounds
as before an
for
the Circus
Whatever has become popular
of the Walkyrie ? s
;
27
is
in
of a doubtful
The Tannhauser March
to raise a suspicion of Philistinism
the
;
Overture of the Plying Dutchman is much ado about nothing the Prelude to Lohengrin gave the first ex ;
ample, only too insidious, only too successful, of
one
may
hypnotise with music
(I
dislike all
how
music that
has no higher ambition than to persuade the nerves). Apart, however, from Wagner the magnetiser and fresco -painter, little
there
is
yet a
Wagner who
deposits
jewels in his works, our greatest melancholist in full
music,
of flashes, delicacies, and
words of comfort
which no one has anticipated him, the master of the tones of a melancholy and comatose happiness in
.
A
lexicon of the most familiar language of
nothing
but
short
phrases
of from
five
the virtue of the decadents, pity
"
Very good for this decadent,
!
if
But how can one one
is
lose
.
Wagner,
to
fifteen
measures, nothing but music which nobody knows
Wagner had
.
one
.
.
.
.
.
.
s taste
not perchance a musician,
THE CASE OF WAGNER
28 if
one
versely
You
not perchance a decadent one s self
is
How
!
we can t do it aware who Wagner
are not
is it
great stage-player
Does there
!
?
Just attempt
is
at
he
;
is
a
exist
all
are
They them
.
.
.
art
Wagner s
a hundred
atmospheres
unavoidable
.
.
who
of attitude,
pale,
pathos,
choke one
?
Do
comparable
yourselves
kind
of
is
this
attitude
so
every
definitely
breath
to let
unwillingness
this
is
a tyrant,
taste,
This holding the
?
it
just,
has such convincing power
be of
an ex
dread-inspiring duration of is
enough
to
!
else
a musician at
in
liistrio,
a
higJier
the
At
all ?
greatest
least
he was
an
namely,
degree,
the
mime,
astonishing threatrical genius that the
in
most
Germans have
our scenic artist par excellence.
His place
is
with the grand must not be true geniuses of winch he confounded. is a and Beethoven that blasphemy and Wagner
elsewhere than
in
!
with the weight of
where momentary suspense
Was Wagner something
every
the
sees
treme feeling escape,
had,
more
nothing of
the stage-player
Who
else
everything-
Wagnerian
bow
:
overthrows
pathos
conditions
presses
Wagner
.
kind of resistance.
fore
a
and breathless
they understand
Wagnerians,
!
and nevertheless Wagner becomes master over
music
his
benumbed,
it
quite
profound, a more oppressive effect in the theatre
look at these youths
Re
"
?
the
end an
in the history of music,
injustice
even to
Wagner
.
.
.
He was
THE CASE OF WAGNER also
a
as
respects
because
the
became a musician, he became a poet, tyrant
compelled him
Wagner
to
himself
speak more
make
tudes,
nothing about
out
not a musician by
all
definitely
out of
for
it
domi
surably increased Victor
lawfulness, in
proved and to order
in
music,
for strengthening
for the
suggestion,
He
instinct.
required, a theatrical rhe
for expression,
here
and an innovator of the
the
all
style
what he
Wagner might
esque.
is
genius
stage -player
finds
by abandoning
means
a
toric,
his
him,
One
as long as one has not found out his
Wagner was
to
in
it.
instinct.
nating
this
9
only that which he \vas in other
musician
he
:
2
atti
psychologically pictur for
pass
first
an
inventor
he has immea
rank
speaking power of music ; he of music as language. Pro
tJie
Hugo
vided always one grants that music may, under cer tain
not
conditions,
ancilla
be
dramaturgica. %
music,
Wagner s
under protection by theatrical taste,
is
speech, tool,
music,
three,
he
When
becomes
not
or
taken
taste, a very tolerant
simply bad music, perhaps the
has ever been made.
count
but
worst that
a musician can no longer "
"
dramatic,
he
becomes
"
Wagnerian
"...
has almost discovered what magic can be wrought with a music decomposed and reduced, as it
Wagner
were, to the elementary. His consciousness of it goes so far as to be disquieting, like his instinct for finding
THE CASE OF WAGNER
30
The elemen
a higher lawfulness and a style unnecessary.
sound, movement, colour, in short, the
tary suffices
of music.
sensuality
musician from
wants
any kind of musical conscience
he wants nothing but
effect,
knows
never calculates as a
Wagner
that on which he has to operate
which every one possesses who
sessed,
the stage
he has also Schiller
;
which has
to
player
sit
virtue
in
at
his
as true
must not be true
been formulated
A
that
at
by Talma
all. :
it
psychology of the stage-player, not doubt it his morality also. never true.
But
it is
As long in addition,
for the
person
in
what has
The
r
a stage-
to operate
proposition has
contains it
is
w orld,
discernment in
a certain
viz.,
!
connected with
is
contempt
feet.
of having
advance of other men,
s
he
which Schiller pos
respect, the unscrupulousness
this
he
;
And He has,
effect.
the
contains
entire
us
let
Wagner s music
taken as true, and so
it
is
is
all right.
and Wagnerian they think of Wagner even as rich, as a
as people continue childish,
paragon of lavishness, as a great landed proprietor in the empire of sound. They admire in him what young
French people admire in Victor Hugo, the royal Later on people admire both of them for generosity. "
"
the very reverse reasons
:
as
masters and models of
economy, as prudent amphitryons. Nobody equals them in the ability to present an apparently princely table
at
a
modest
cost.
The Wagnerian, with
his
THE CASE OF WAGXER
3
I
devout stomach, becomes satiated even with the fare
which
however, who, alike stance
more than "
"
books and
in
anything"
else,
Speaking
are
does
Wagner
plainly,
whom
for
we
others,
want sub
in music,
and
feasts hardly suffice,
represented off.
We
master conjures up for him.
his
merely
much worse
not
us
give
enough to chew. His rccitatwo little meat, some what more bone, and very much sauce has been wherewith by me "Alia genovese do not mean to flatter the Genoese, but
christened tainly
;"
As
the older recitative, the recitative secco.
Wagnerian
occasion
The
I
leading motive,
telligence for
assign to
"
"
it
for
"arias"
If I
it.
lack
were pressed,
the value of an
ideal
dispensing with
the
of
Wagner
are
still
I cer
rather
would perhaps
I
toothpick,
of
rest
as
the
And now
left.
the
for
culinary in
all
an
food. I
do
not say a word more.
In is
sketching
above
itself to
all
him
dramatic
action,
is
Wagner
likewise,
That which
a stage-player.
first
suggests
a scene with an absolutely sure effect,
a veritable actio *, with a haut-retief of gesture, a scene *
the
Note.
It
has
been a
veritable
word drama has always been
not the only one who errs here the matter even the philologists, ;
;
ancient drama action
misfortune
translated all
by the world
who ought
"
is
to
for ^Esthetics
action. still
know
that
"
\Vagner
is
in error
about
better.
The
had grand pathetic scenes in view, it just excluded (relegated it previous to the commencement, or behind the scene).
THE CASE OF WAGNER
32
which
he thinks
iipsets ;
this
out thoroughly,
it
only out of this that he derives his characters.
is
All
the rest follows therefrom in accordance with a tech
economy which has no reasons
nical It
not
is
indulge
the
it
;
of
public
decides now-a-days
:
stronger than
other,
the
He
between.
act,
tests for
With such of
requires
hard
of
logic
:
each
and of
first
work
all
much sage
stupidity
to guarantee to
he begins with the third
;
work by
its
final effect.
but what did
is
A
drama unawares.
a
him
Wagner
in
no
drama
ever care
it Let us repeat was not the public he had to indulge, it was mere Ger
!
:
One knows
!
"
as every other stage-player
himself his
creating
Corneille
mans
to
"
a theatrical talent for guide, one
danger
about logic
has
Wagner
a series of strong scenes,
seeks
self the effect of his
he
subtle.
merely the nineteenth century. Wagner to the one thing needful
is
would decide with regard in much the same manner
in
Corneille
be
to
the technical problem in solving
which the dramatist applies sweats blood
:
all
his
power and
to give necessity to the plot,
and
often like
wise to the denouement, so that both are possible only in
one way, so that both give the impression of free
dom
(principle of the least expenditure of force).
The word
"
drama
"
is
signifies
"event,
"
"history,
local
and according to Dorian usage both words in a hieratic sense. The oldest
of Doric origin,
"
drama represented
Now
legend,
the
"
sacred
"
history
on
which the
establishment of the cult rested (consequently no doing, but a happening: in Dorian does not at all signify to do "
").
THE CASE OF WAGNER sweats the least blood here
Wagner
33 it is
;
certain that
he makes the least expenditure of force on plot and You may put any one of Wagner s denouement.
under the microscope
"
"
plots
I
;
promise you will
Nothing more en livening than the plot of Tristan, unless it be that of the Master -singers. Wagner is not a dramatist let have to laugh
\vhat
at
see.
you
;
us not be imposed upon
was
that
word
he
all "
"
He
!
loved the word
in his writings, is nevertheless
drama,
New
in the
same manner
Testament
as the
word
purely
Wagner
:
toward the word
affected superiority
al
"
opera "
"
"),
in the
spirit
From
purely a misunderstanding.
is
"
;
The
always loved fancy \vords.
a misunderstanding (and shrewd policy
ways much
drama
"
first, he was not enough of a psychologist for the drama he avoided instinctively psychological motiva
the
;
tion.
By what means
crasy in Parisian
its
place
Wagner
without for the
does
.
a
I
.
.
Wagner
woman s
really
Wagner do
got to sing
!
!
Erda.
Erda
not
it
let
?
very
us say in
knows how
work
to
invention, are of quite an
woman s
voice
that
Let us take the case voice.
An
entire act
does not do
!
But
What woman He emancipates the oldest Up old grandmother You have
moment none
"
.
give an example.
requiring a
in the world,
always putting idiosyn
Very modern, is / The plots,
by means of dramatic
other kind.
of
.
very decadent
!
passing, which
out
.
By
?
of the
"
heroines
"
are free.
"
!
sings.
!
Wagner s purpose
is 3
served.
THE CASE OF WAGNER
34
He
immediately discharges the old dame again.
you come
really did
In summa
"
again
!
Retire
? :
Why
Please go to sleep
!
scene
a
"
of
full
mythological
horrors, which makes the Wagnerians imaginative But the contents of the Wagnerian texts their .
.
.
"
!
"
mythical contents, their eternal contents
How
:
does one test these contents, these eternal con
tents
The chemist
!
the
into
Wagner more
still
Question
!
gives the reply into
real,
into civil
cruel,
To speak
modern
the
life
!
one translates
:
What
let
be
us
then becomes
have attempted it. Nothing more entertaining, nothing more recommendable for pleasure walks, than to recount Wagner of
Wagner
!
to one s self in
Parsifal as
a
in confidence, I
more modern proportions candidate
in
divinity,
:
for
with
example, a public
school education (the latter indispensable for pure folly*}.
What
surprises one then
experiences
!
Would you
Wagnerian heroines, each and all, when one has only stripped them of their heroic trap believe
it
that the
are like
pings,
counterparts
of
Madame Bovary
!
And how
one comprehends, inversely, that Flaubert liberty to translate his heroine into Scandi
was at
navian, or Carthaginian, and then to offer her, mytho-
whole,
to
Wagner as Wagner appears
logised,
a to
libretto.
Yes, taken as a
have had no
interest in
any
other problems than those which at present interest *
Nietzsche here refers to the etymology of Parsifal (pure fool)
which Wagner adopted.
THE CASE OF WAGNER petty Parisian decadents.
Always
35
from
just five steps
Nothing but quite modern problems, nothing but problems of a great city ! don t you doubt it ... Have you remarked (it belongs to this associa the hospital
!
!
Wagnerian heroines have no The despair They cannot have children
of ideas) that the
tion
children
?
.
with which
Wagner
permitting Siegfried to be
modern
his sentiments
"
emancipates
woman
.
.
has dealt with the problem of
"
born
were on
at
all,
this point.
Siegfried
but without hope of posterity.
Parsifal which perplexes us How has he done that ? father of Lohengrin
Finally, a fact
:
here to recollect that
Wagnerus
"
chastity
the
is
Have
!
we
how
reveals
works miracles ?
"
.
.
.
dixit princeps in castitate auctoritas.
10
A
word
writings
:
in
yet,
passing,
concerning
other things,
are
Wagner s
a school of
among The system of procedure which Wagner
they
expediency.
be employed in a hundred other cases, he that hath an ear, let him hear. Perhaps I shall have uses, is to
a claim to public gratitude,
if I
give precise expression
most valuable principles of procedure Whatever Wagner cannot accomplish is objection
to his three
:
able.
Wagner might unwilling
owing
accomplish
much more,
but he
to strictness of principle. 3*
is
THE CASE OF WAGXER
36
Whatever Wagner can accomplish,
.
.
will
no one has anticipated, no one ought to imi
imitate,
tate
no one
Wagner
.
divine
is
.
.
.
These three propositions are the quintessence of
Wagner s
writings
Not literature
reason.
all
the rest
:
the music up
"
literature.
now
till
has had need of
one does well here to seek for a satisfactory Is it that Wagner s music is too difficult to :
understand
Or
?
he
did
would be understood too
the contrary,
fear
that
easily,
understand
to
enough
difficult
"
is
it
that
it
would not
be
In fact, he has
?
all
one phrase that his music does not But more Infinitely more simply mean music "Not simply music "no musician speaks in such a
his life repeated
:
!
manner able to
.
.
.
be said once more, Wagner was un cut out of the block he had no choice at all, !
Let
it
;
he was obliged tudes,
!
!
to
formulae,
make
patch- work
reduplications,
"
motives,"
centuplications
musician he remained a rhetorician
:
;
atti
as
a
on that account
he was compelled as a matter of principle to bring the It implies, into the foreground. Music is device, "
"
always just a means
"
"
;
that
was
his theory, that w^as
possible for him.
But no musician
the only praxis at
all
thinks in such
Wagner had need of litera persuade all the world to take his
a way.
order to
ture in
music seriously, to take
meant of the
it
"
Infinity "
Idea.
;
"
all
his life
What
as profound,
"because
it
he was the commentator
does Elsa signify
?
There
is
THE CASE OF WAGNER
no doubt however the
people"
Elsa
:
into a complete revolutionist
Let us recollect that
Hegel and Schelling led found
out, that
the unconscious spirit of
"
is
idea I necessarily developed
this
("with
"*).
Wagner was young when men s minds astray that he ;
he grasped firmly what only a German
takes seriously
the
"
Idea,"
that
obscure, uncertain, mysterious clearness
is
37
an
;
something
among Germans
that
and
objection,
to say,
is
is
logic
disproof.
Schopenhauer has, with severity, accused the epoch of Hegel and Schelling of dishonesty with severity, and also with injustice he himself, the old pessimistic :
no way acted
false-coiner, has in
more celebrated
his
morality out of the
"
more honestly
Let us leave
contemporaries.
game
is
Hegel
:
a flavour
.
.
only
a
!
himself equal to
merely made for
which he has immortalised
!
application of
himself a style which
it "
to
Music as came the heir of Hcgcl And how Wagner was understood .
of
men who were even
written
.
enthusiastic
sent enthusiastic for is
.
/
Wagner Above
:
Quotations from Wagner.
Idea
in
sort
Hegelian
German youth "
"
"-
are at pre
his school
the
all,
felt
He
!
The same
for Hegel,
understood him. The two words,
*
!
A
he be
"
Infinity "
!
he invented
music
meant
And
.
German, but a European flavour which he flavour which Wagner understood hot
than
"
infinite
and
"
signi-
THE CASE OF WAGNER
38
he enjoyed an incomparable pleasure in hearing them. It is not with music that Wagner has won the youth over to himself, it is with ficance
the
"
quite sufficed
Idea
"
"
the mysteriousness of his
it is
:
;
of hide-and-seek
a hundred symbols,
among
game
art, its its
poly-
of the ideal, which has led and allured these
chromy
youths to
Wagner
!
genius for forming
Wagner s
is
it
sweeping and roving through the his ubiquity and nullibiety air, precisely the same proceedings with w^hich once Hegel misled and clouds, his gripping,
seduced
the
youths
multiplicity, fulness,
as
in
were,
it
In
!
and
the
of
Wagner s
arbitrariness, they are justified,
o\vn eyes
their
midst
they
are
"
saved."-
They hear with trembling how in his art the sublime symbols become audible with gentle thunder out of the they are not out of temper if the cloudy distance atmosphere here sometimes becomes grey, frightful, ;
and
For they are
cold.
each
bad weather, German w eather, r
Woden of
their
is
bad w eather
God
r
.
.
.
youths, such as they
Wagner what w e la
:
They are
:
uality
;
others,
gay a scienza
lofty logic
like
;
are
Wagner
right,
is
these
how could they we Halcyonians,
light
feet
the tremor of southern light
perfection
related
;
wit,
to
himself!
God German
the
miss in miss in
fire,
grace,
the dance of the stars, haughty intellect
;
.
all
Woden, however,
:
r
him
and
.
.
;
the smooth sea
THE CASE OF WAGNER
39
I I
I
have explained where
not to the history his
of music.
Wagner
a
:
what
Nevertheless,
is
The advent of momentous event, which
import for the history of music
the stage-player in music
belongs to
?
gives occasion to reflect, perhaps also to fear. In a for
mula, ness
and
"Wagner
of musicians, their
such a dangerous
Never has the upright genuineness," been put to
Liszt." "
It is easily
test.
enough understood
no longer one has to be a stage-
great success, the success with the masses,
on the side of genuineness, player in order to obtain
it
Victor
!
:
is
Hugo and Richard
Wagner they imply one and the same truth, that in declining civilisations, wherever the arbitrating power falls into the hands of the masses, genuineness becomes superfluous, disadvantageous, and a drawback. It
is
only
awakens great enthusiasm. Thus dawns the golden age for the stage-player for him and all that is related to his species. Wagner marches
the stage-player that
with drums and
still
fifes
at the
head of
of display, of virtuosity
elocution,
;
all
the artists of
he has
first
con
vinced the leaders of the orchestras, the machinists, and theatrical singers.
orchestra
:
he
"
Not saved
forget the musicians of the
to "
them from tedium
movement which Wagner the domain of thereto
knowledge
.
.
.
The
created encroaches even on ;
entire sciences belonging
emerge slowly out of a scholasticism which
THE CASE OF WAGNER
4O is
To
centuries old.
give an example,
which Riemann has rendered
attention to the service to rhythmics
he
;
the
is
first
who
of an ugly
made
has
music
essential idea of punctuation in
by means
I call special
word he
(it
current the
is
a pity that
"
calls
it
phrasing
").
All
these,
the
most worthy of regard, eimong the worshippers
of
Wagner
I
with
it
say
are
they
The same
Wagner.
instinct
him
another, they see in
simply
to
right
unites
the
are
gratitude,
best,
worship
them with one
their highest type,
they feel
themselves transformed and elevated to power, even great power, ever since he inflamed them with his
to
peculiar
fluence of sphere,
much
much
never been so
has
there
anywhere, the
if
has really been beneficent.
Wagner
in
In this
thought,
much work. Wagner has with a new conscience what
purpose, so
these artists
all
Here indeed,
ardour.
so
inspired
they at
:
present require of themselves, what they obtain from themselves, they have never required before
time
different
to
demanded, there
rule.
Wagner a
"
rule
is
is
there
severe
the good, the
Taste
for
:
most
the
excellent,
cspressivo at
is
is
;
"
effect.
any
Even
price,
difficult
blaming, there
talent
such as
is
is
is
rarely
regarded as the not even voice.
no longer necessary only sung with a ruined voice
dramatic
A
that.
rules in the theatre since the spirit of
spirit
Wagner began praising,
modest
they w^ere too
formerly
Wagner s
:
that has
excluded.
The
demanded by
the
is
THE CASE OF WAGNER decadence
ideal, the
Wagnerian with talent.
Virtue only
nor voice, nor talent
Wagner
Germanics
s
:
self-denial."
is
is
taste,
only one thing needful
Germanics
/
.
.
of
Definition
.
obedience and long legs ...
:
that
Neither
"
there
stage
along badly
ideal, gets
the proper thing here
is
to say, drilling, automatism,
for
4!
It is full
of
deep significance that the advent of Wagner coincides both facts furnish with the advent of the Empire "
"
;
long
and
one
of
proof
the
same thing
obedience
and
There has never been better obedience
legs.
there has never been better
The
commanding.
nerian musical directors, in particular, are
;
Wag
worthy of
an age which posterity will one day designate with timorous reverence, the classical age of war. Wagner understood how to command by that means he was ;
the great teacher also.
He commanded
orable will
as
himself
to
himself,
Wagner, who
:
the
life-long
as the inex discipline of
perhaps furnishes
the
most
example of self-tyranny which the history of supplies (even Alfieri, otherwise most nearly
striking art
related
to
him,
has been
surpassed.
Remark
of a
Turinese). 12
By means are
insight that our
more worthy of adoration than
ousness
who
of this
yet
stage -players
ever, their danger-
not
been
conceived as less
doubts
what
I
has
am
after
what
.
.
.
are
But the
THE CASE OF WAGNER
42 three
demands
for
tude,
and
love
my mouth
my
which
my
for art,
resentment,
have
at
my
solici
present opened
?
That the theatre may not become the master of art. That the stage-player may not become the corrupter of the gemiine ones. That mnsic may not become an art of
lying.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
POSTSCRIPT The
gravity of the last words permits
me
in this
some passages from which at least leave no
place to communicate in addition
an
dissertation,
imprinted
doubt concerning dissertation
is
of
consciousness
Wagner s
to this
success,
formidable,
almost
was
three
resistance
his
exists
still
Even
present.
it
was
of
Wagner which he encountered among s
it
strong,
gloomy hatred
like a
fourths
at
obscure
triumph, did not outroot
But formerly
feeling radically. it
What Wagner Wagner costs dear. An
costs us.
entitled,
The adherence
The
seriousness in this matter.
my
life
this
was
throughout
That
-time.
us Germans,
cannot be estimated highly enough, nor sufficiently honoured. against
not
a
refute
We
defended
disease
a
not
disease,
ourselves
with
but
against
arguments with
him
as
one does
obstruction,
with
with aversion, with loathing, with a sullen seriousness, as if a great danger prowled around us
mistrust,
THE CASE OF WAGNER
44
The
in him.
gentlemen compromised them
aesthetic
when, out of three schools of German philo sophy they made an absurd attack upon Wagner s and for "-what did he care principles with selves,
"
"if"
even his own
for principles,
have had enough of reason themselves every
hibit
An
instinct
is
"if"
The Germans, however,
!
in their instincts to
and
weakened when
by rationalising itself
weakens
it
is
it
rationalised; If there
itself.
spite of the totality
indications that, in
decadence, there yet resides in the
of
injurious to
all
valued
to
us.
European character
hope
pense with so
:
much
P"rance
Wagner under us,
no
could
healthfulness.
what
should like least
I
does honour to
It
are
German
see this stolid resistance to
among
even
us
and threatens danger,
for
of
a degree of healthfulness, an instinctive scent for is
pro
this matter.
in
"for"
it
permits dis
longer
The Germans,
the
rctarders
par excellence in history, are at present the most backward among, the civilised peoples of Europe
:
has
this
its
they are thus re
advantage,
latively the youngest.
The adherence
mans have only dread of him
to
Wagner
quite
lately
*
NOTE.
"Was
reasons for asking trait
whatsoever.
unlearned
the desire to get rid of
them on every occasion*. Wagner
Do you German
difficult to
this.
It
is
Being
a
great
learner,
The Ger
costs dear.
at
sort
of
him came upon
recollect a curious
We
all ?
discover in
he
a
has
have
some
him any German
learned
to
imitate
POSTSCRIPT
45
occurrence, in which, just at the end, that old feeling
Wagner
the
at
happened
his
"-was
!
its
appearance
Wagner
celebrated.
how
everybody admired a taste Wagner have a privilege the
first
Salvation
enough
made
!)
"
inscription
:
the
to
Everybody admired the
read.
it
"
sublime inspiration which had dictated
singular
It
?
the
that
in
immediately became Saviour
of
funeral
Germany, that of Munich, depo tomb a wreath, the inscription on which
Society
on
sited
made
quite unexpectedly,
again,
which the partisans of
in
but
;
this inscription,
many
the
same
little
Salvation
from
the
also
was
(it
correction in "
Saviour
!
People recovered breath.
The adherence measure
it
movement has
upon
that to
of
the
Geyer. in
put worse.
is
Whom has his
the arrogance of the layman,
else,
of the idiotic art-amateur.
much
Let us
dear.
civilisation.
brought into the foreground ? What and more reared into magnitude ?
More than anything
sition
costs
Wagner
really
more
it
to
in its effect
German
that
is
all.
He
organises societies just
His character
itself
is
in
oppo
what has hitherto been regarded as German not to speak His father was a stage-player named German musician !
A
Geyer
is
almost an Adler*
circulation as the
I confess
my
"
Life
of
.
.
What
.
Wagner
has hitherto
been
"
distrust of every point
is
fable convemte,
which
rests solely
if
not
on the
testimony of Wagner himself. He had not pride enough for any truth whatsoever about himself, nobody was less proud he remained, just like Victor Hugo, true to himself even in biographical matters, he ;
remained a stage player. *
Geyer
(vulture)
and Adler (eagle) are both names of Jewish
families.
THE CASE OF WAGXER
46
now, he wants to make
his
"taste"
prevail,
he would
even to become the judge in rebus musicis et musicantibus. In the second place, an ever greater
like
indifference to
severe, noble, conscientious training
all
the service of art
in
for
it
mula
;
plain words, insolent dilettanteism (the for
in
for
the belief in genius substituted
;
the
third
the
absurdity
be found
to
is
it
and worst of
place,
a
of
In
in the Master-singers].
belief
in
Theatrocracy
all,
;
of the
a precedence
theatre, in the right of sovercignity of the theatre over
the
rians a is
:
over art
arts,
.
.
But one has
.
hundred times
to tell the
to their face
what the theatre
always just something in subterposition to
always something merely secondary,
Even Wagner has changed
suitably falsified for them.
of that
nothing
good opera matters of
.
.
.
:
is
Bayreuth
The
theatre
big opera
taste, the theatre is
this
Wagner just proves he depraved the taste, for the opera
an insurrection of the
The
He
is
vocation,
case
of
he gained the multitude, he depraved even our taste :
!
The adherence of the
but never
a form of demolatry in
is
masses, a plebiscite against good taste.
make
art,
something vul
something suitably adapted for the masses,
garised,
it
Wagne-
to
mind
possessed
?
of
everything,
Wagner costs dear. What does Does Wagner free the mind ?every in
ambiguity,
fact,
which
every
persuades
equi the
undecided, without making them conscious what they
POSTSCRIPT
are persuaded
Wagner
to.
There
the grand style.
is
thereby a seducer in
is
nothing fatigued, nothing
and derogatory to matters, which would not be
decrepit, nothing dangerous to
world
the
spiritual
under
taken
secretly
the
in
47
life
his
by
protection
luminous husks of the
He
ideal.
flatters
is
it
art,
obscurantism which he conceals
blackest
the
in
nihil
every
and disguises it in music, he every kind of Christianity, and every religious
(Buddhistic) instinct
istic
flatters
form of expression of decadence. ears
of
has
that
everything
:
impoverished
Let us open our grown up on the soil
the
life,
entire
transcendence and another world, has in its
sublimest
too
prudent
advocate use
to
sensuality, which, in
not
turn,
of
Wagner s
art
formulae
in
is
(Wagner
but in persuasion
formulae), its
coinage
false
of
again makes the mind
tender
and
w^ork
in this respect his greatest masterpiece. Parsifal
will
is
fatigued.
always maintain
seduction,
work,
I
as
was never
/
so,
His
at least understand
admire that
I
myself; not
it
it
.
.
.
better inspired than at the end.
quisiteness in
the
alliance
Wagner
Do you
ness acting as a
of beauty casts, as
it
s earlier art
:
it
?
it
Wagner The ex-
and disease were, a
is
shadow
appears too bright, too
understand that
shadow
last
place in the art of
chief
stroke of genius ...
its
here carried so far that
healthy.
the
should like to have composed
having done
over
Music as Circe ...
?
Health and bright
as an objection almost
?
.
.
.
THE CASE OF WAGNER
48
We
so
are
far
pure fools already
.
.
Never was
.
there a greater connoisseur of musty, hieratic perfumes, there never lived such an expert in the
of
the
all
little
uberant, of piness art
my
drink,
You nowhere
!
of
knowledge
the tremulous and ex
all
the femininism in the thesaurus of hap
all
Just
!
infinite,
find
Ah
.
.
more pleasant mode of
a
of forgetting your manliness
enervating your mind, under a rose-bush .
the philtres of this
friends,
old magician
this
!
This
!
How he makes war Klingsor of all the Klingsors against us therewith against us, the free spirits How !
!
!
humours every cowardice of modern soul with Siren tones There was never such a mortal hatred
he
!
One
of
knowledge
to
escape being
!
be a Cynic one requires to be able
here
seduced
requires to
;
Well
to bite to avoid worshipping.
Cynic warns thee
The adherence
to
canem
Wagner
.
.
The proximate
Wagner
alcohol.
It dulls,
Specific effect
:
TheWagnerian I myself,
effect,
s
it
is
!
The
costs dear. I observe the
relatively
influence
old seducer
.
who have long been exposed
youths
taste.
cave
!
to
his infection.
innocent,
relates
to
like a continuous use of
obstructs the stomach with phlegm.
degeneracy of the sense of rhythm. at last
comes
to call rhythmical,
borrowing a Greek proverb,
call
what
"
agitating
The corruption of the conceptions is undoubtedly much more dangerous. The youth be comes a moon -calf an idealist." He has got the
swamp."
"
POSTSCRIPT
science, in that respect he stands at the height
beyond
On
of the master.
losopher
the other hand, he plays the phi
he writes Bayreuth journals
;
name
in the
problems
the
of the
ruin
he solves
;
all
of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Master. The most is
49
disquieting thing, to be sure,
You may go
nerves.
at
night
and everywhere you hear instruments violated with solemn fury a savage through any of the larger
cities,
What
howling mingling therewith. the
are
youths
rhymes
hydropathic
already).
seems to
conscience :
establishment.
A
:
in
medical language,
me
either the
made
masters
if
has saved
a
Wagnerienne
?
is
therefore
seriousness
to
But they have One cannot serve two
choice.
one of them
much
too
one or the
their
woman,
is
that a physician could not put this
alternative with
-
already
for
?-
Bayreuth
.
;
women. What,
brides
-
.
.
from Bayreuth Bereits bereut (rued for is bad he is fatal to Wagner youths
typical telegram
It
taking place
Wagner
worshipping with
itself
is
other.
called
Wagner
Wagner.
woman
has built Bayreuth
Entire sacrifice, entire devotion, they have
him.
Woman
nothing they would not give him.
The Wagnerienne
she stands naked before him.
most gracious equivocalness she embodies
Wagner s
cause
impoverishes
becomes touching,
herself in favour of the master, she
to
be found in
at
the
present
:
her sign, his cause
He plunders us Ah, this old robber triumphs of our youths, he takes even our women as plunder, .
.
.
!
4
THE CASE OF WAGNER
50
and drags them taur
!
What
into his cavern
.
Ah,
.
.
he has already cost us
!
Mino
this old
Every year
trains
of the finest maidens and youths are led into his laby
may devour
rinth, that
he
strikes
the cry
up
"
:
them,
Off to Crete
every year !
all
Off to Crete
Europe "
!
SECOND POSTSCRIPT My On
it
letter,
appears,
is
liable to a
misapprehension.
countenances the indications of gratitude
certain
show themselves
I
;
hear even a discreet mirth.
I
should
many things, to be understood. new animal ravages in the vineyards of
prefer here, as in
But
since a
German xera,
intellect,
nothing
Kreuzzeitung
I
say
Centralblatt.
the profoundest
a sufficient reason
a
word
of
is
itself attests this to
the Literarisches
Germans
worm, celebrated Rhinoany longer understood. The
the Empire
them ...
why
me, not to speak of
have given
I
books they
at
to
all
the
possess
they should not understand
If in this
work
I
make an
attack
on Wagner and incidentally on a German taste, if I have hard words for the Bayreuth cretinism, I should like least of all to make an entertainment "
therewith for any other musicians.
do not come into consideration
Things are bad everywhere.
in
"
Other musicians
presence of Wagner.
The decay
is
universal. 4*
THE CASE OF WAGNER
52
The
disease
Wagner s name
If
deep seated.
is
name
the ruin of music, as Bernini s
fies
ruin of sculpture, he
He
not
is
has only accelerated
way
almost
instantaneous
his
that
He had
downwards,
descent,
believed in
rate
it
the
of traditional
!
end
;
;
emotion
at
the expression of impoverished
present
still
I
know
incomplete *
It is
referred to.
is
;
always more nerves
.
.
.
What
is
set
aside
who
is at
but only music which
more
is
self-
refinement as
;
in
:
nobody
sufficiently
music
indifferent
capacity,
is
at
an overture out of the
"better"
more
the abuse
;
the overliveliness of
;
life
in a position to cut
Wagner s,
was
.
at present
any price
and nobody knows him* famous does not create
cisive,
.
only one musician
block,
with
.
power
strong, sufficiently proud,
confident, or sufficiently healthy
in place of flesh.
that
the false coinage in the imi
which
tation of great forms, for
the smallest details
the
others hesitate
means without the justifying
that of attaining the
sufficiently
into
"
"
the decline of organising
:
the
That which Nothing else others have in common I enume
that distinguishes them.
Wagner and
:
in
sure,
he did not stop
it,
The
before any logic of decadence.
cause.
before
the naivete of decadence
He
superiority.
its
be
to
tempo,
one stands frightened
such a
abysm.
typifies the
by any means
its
typi
indifferent,
present
comparison
more inde because the
by the presence of the com-
Peter Gast, a disciple and friend of Nietzsche,
who
is
here
SECOND POSTSCRIPT
Wagner was complete
pletc.
;
53
but he was complete cor
he was courage, he was will, he was convic corruption of what import, then, is Johannes Brahms His good fortune was a German mis ruption tion
;
in
!
.
.
.
apprehension
:
he was taken
an antagonist to
Wagner
for
Wagner s needed
\vas
not produce indispensable music,
much music
instance too
enough
for
poverty
!
.
.
it
antagonist,
That does
!
produces
in the first
you are not rich, be proud The sympathy which Brahms If
!
.
and undeniably inspires, apart altogether from such party interest and party misunderstanding, was for a long time an enigma to me, until finally, here
there
almost by accident,
I
came
he operated
to perceive that
on a certain type of persons. He has the melancholy of impotency he does not create out of plenitude, he is thirsty for plenitude. If one deducts his imitations, ;
what he borrows exotic
of copying,
art
peculiarity, all
either
modern forms of
who
little
the
from the great ancient or the he is a master in the style
there remains,
the longing
mood
all
who
of a person, too
little
long,
by
"impersonal,"
of a
further find
on
of
class
we
Wagner
find
fifty
.
.
That
is
are dissatisfied. centralised
.
.
.
divined
He
That
is
He
is
unsatisfied
the
what they
especially the musi ladies.
Wagnerienne
paces further
by too
is
the peripheristic understand,
love him on that account. cian
.
most striking
as his
Fifty just
paces as
we
on than Brahms,
the Wagnerienne, a better stamped,
more
interesting,
THE CASE OF WAGNER
54
above
and,
he
moving, as long as mourns over himself
becomes
he
cold,
Brahms
more gracious type.
a
all,
he
that
in
more
of no
is
secret
in
is
is
he
"
;
imme
interest to us,
he becomes the heir of the
diately that
or
reveries,
modern
"
is
classics
.
.
.
One likes to speak of Brahms as the heir of Beethoven I know of no more considerate euphemism. All that :
makes pretensions
at present
music
is
with respect to
false
it
respect to us
:
is
or
suffi
the instinct of most
False with
"
people protests
they do not want to be deceived though myself, to be sure, should still prefer this type to the
against that I
us,
involves a casuistry with
regard to the worth of the two cases. "
in
grand style
This alternative
itself.
ciently thought-worthy, for
"
"
with respect to
false
eitJier
thereby
to the
other
;
with respect to
("false
Expressed more simply
Brahms
One
or
Wagner
.
.
may subsume
the
for
Brahms
.
a
This
itself"}. "
"
:
is
example, of Goldmark
:
What be
done
things.
be
can a
in It
Nothing,
is
done
one
masterly
main
can
may at
exhibit one s
present,
manner,
cure
do not
Wagner, for Queen of Shcba one
is
only
here only that honesty
however,
thing, of the
well
I
of
apes
with his
belongs to the menagerie
other
of the
musicians under the conception of Brahms.
say a word of the sagacious
taste.
poor in spirit no stage-player.
many
good
my
is
is
music
thing, of the fatality
what the
still
in
self.
can small
possible.
the
main
of being the
SECOND POSTSCRIPT
55
expression of a physiological contradiction,
The
modern.
of being
best instruction, the most conscientious
most thorough intimacy with the old all that masters, yea, even isolation in their society the
schooling,
or, speaking more strictly, illusory ; one has no because longer the physical capacity which be it that of the strong race of a is presupposed is
only palliative,
:
Handel, be
it
the overflowing animality of a Rossini.
Not everyone has the right is
true
of whole
excluded
itself
epochs.
that
there
to
The still
every teacher
that in
somewhere
in
possibility exist,
:
not
is
Europe, remains of stronger races, men typically in opportune from thence a delayed beauty and perfection :
even
music might still be hoped for. It is only exceptions we can still experience under the best for
circumstances. valent,
music.
that
From
the rule that corruption
corruption
is
fatalistic,
is
pre
no God can save
EPILOGUE Let us for
a
order to take breath, withdraw
in
finally,
moment from
world to which
narrow
the
all
concerning the worth of persons condemn the mind. philosopher requires to wash his hands questions
A
after "
case
he of
Modern.
has
so
himself
occupied
long "
I give has in Every age
Wagner.
my its
with
conception
the
of the
quantum of energy,
quantum determining what virtues are permitted to It has either the vir it, what virtues are proscribed. a
tues of ascending
life,
and then
it
resists to the utter
or it is itself most the virtues of descending life an epoch of descending life, and then it requires the ;
virtues of decline, then solely
by
^Esthetics
is
"
self
is
hates
all
that justifies itself
by superabundance of strength. indissolubly bound up with these biological
plenitude, is
presuppositions there
it
:
classical
there
is
decadence
aesthetics,
a chimera, like
all
the
idealism.
"
aesthetics,
beautiful
in
and it
In the narrower
EPILOGUE
57
no greater contrast than that of master morality and morality sphere of so-called moral values there
valuation
Christian
to
according
up on a thoroughly morbid
the latter
:
soil (the
the romances of Dostoiewsky depict) ("Roman,"
"heathen,"
versely, as the symbolic
of ascending of
life,
"classical,"
of the will to
as Christian morality denies "self-renunciation"
communicates embellishes,
to it
types
master morality
;
insult.
are
These
both
("
as the principle
power just
as instinctively
"the
God,"
other
things out of
its
fulness
it
"The
antithetical
indispensable
:
world,"
forms
in
im
things,
it
a Christian term of the optics of values
they are modes
of
seeing
refutations.
not refute Christianity, one does not refute
To have combated pessimism
combats a philosophy was the acme of learned The concepts true and untrue have not, "
"
"
"
idiocy.
glorifies,
rationalises the world, the latter
a disease of the eye. as one
world,"
nothing but negations). The former
which one does not reach with reasons and
One does
re
"Renaissance")
poverishes, blanches, and mars the value of
denies the world.
which
language of well-constitutedness
Master morality affirms,
life.
grown
Gospels present
us precisely the same physiological
to
it
is
any meaning in optics. That against which alone one has to defend one s self is the not be sen falsity, the instinctive duplicity, which will
as
it
seems
to
me,
sible of these antitheses as antitheses
with Wagner, for example,
who
:
as
was the case
possessed
no
little
THE CASE OF WAGNER
58
masterliness in such
To
falsities.
look enviously towards
master morality, noble morality (the Icelandic legend is almost its most important document), and at the same time to have in his mouth the contrary doctrine, the "
"
Gospel of the Lowly,
passing, let
me
need of salvation
!
... In
admire the modesty of the Bayreuth. I myself should not
say that
who go
Christians
the
to
I
endure certain words out of the mouth of Wagner. There are conceptions which do not belong to Bay reuth
What
.
.
.
A
?
Wag-
Wagner in his days was positively feminini generis) ? Let me say
neriennes, perhaps by old
Christianity adjusted for
Wagneriennes
(for
once more that the Christians of today are too modest me ... If Wagner was a Christian, then Liszt w as r
for
perhaps a Church-Father the essence of
all
The need
!*
Christian needs, has
with such harlequins
nothing to do
the sincerest form of ex
is
it
;
of salvation,
pression of decadence, the most convinced and most painful affirmation of tices.
The
Le moi
Christian wishes to get loose from himself.
has,
glorifying of
life
;
*
is
Liszt
it
roots
a
gratitude. s
because
On
triumphing the
self -affirming,
equally needs "
in
its
self-
sublime symbols heart
great art belongs here
art, all
was Wagner
the
is
it
practices, but only
All beautiful
its
reversely,
^^/"-affirmation,
of both
Noble morality, master
est toujours Jiaissable.
morality,
and
sublime symbols and prac
in
it
is :
too
"
full.
the essence
the other hand, one cannot
father-in-law.
EPILOGUE discount from
59
an instinctive aversion from the deca
it
dents, a disdain, a horror even, before their
such
almost
is
:
The noble Roman
demonstration.
its
symbolism
recognised Christianity as a fee da superstitio ; I here
how
remind you taste, felt
for
more
Goethe, the last
One
with regard to the cross. valuable, for
But such a no exception.
German
of noble
seeks in vain
more indispensable
contrasts.*
falsity as that of the Bayreuthians
We
of the Christian
all
know
the unaesthetic conception "
"
gentleman.
now
is
Indeed that innocence
the midst of contradictions, that
"
good conscience
"
in in
modern par excellence ; one almost defines modernism by it. Modern man represents biologically is
lying,
a contradiction of moral values, he
sits
between two
one breath, Yea and Nay. What chairs, wonder, then, that just in our time, falsity itself became
he says
in
and even genius
flesh
?
what wonder
that
Wagner
It was not without reason that among us ? But I named Wagner the Cagliostro of modernism we all, unconsciously and involuntarily, have in our "
dwelt
"
.
selves
*
.
.
standards, phrases, formulae, and moralities
of
furnished the first in of Morals formation concerning the contrast between "noble morality" and "Chris tian morality there is perhaps no more decisive modification of thought
My
Note.
"
"
Genealogy
"
;
in the history of religious
and moral knowledge.
That book,
my
touch
what belongs to me, has the good fortune to be accessible others have only to the most elevated and the most rigorous minds not got ears for it. One has to have one s passion in things, where stone
for
:
nobody has
it
at present
THE CASE OF WAGXER
60
contradictory origin,
would
regarded physiologically,
we
are
A
diagnostic of modern soul what commence with ? With a resolute incision
spurious ... it
into this contradictoriness of instincts, with the disent
of
angling
its
antithetical
vivisection performed on
The
case
of
philosopher gratitude
.
Wagner
this .
.
work,
is
its
moral
values,
most instructive
a fortunate
one
hears,
is
with
a
case.
for
the
inspired
by
case
NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER: THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
PREFACE The following ed out of
my
chapters are
rather carefully select
all
some
older writings
to 1877,
they are perhaps simplified
above
they are shortened.
all,
Wagner or
myself:
we
are antipodes. Something further
be understood
:
my
Copenhagen
and Stockholm,
New -York I
have not them
Germany
And
.
.
love just
Crispi
.
.
I
as
much
intelligent people will
alliance
.
I
.
in
Paris,
in
Europe s Flatland, might perhaps also have a word as
Triple alliance
.
.
an
in
to whisper in the ear of Messrs, I
is
readers everywhere, in Vienna, in St. Peters
in
burg,
for example, that this
but not for Germans ...
essay for psychologists,
have
read in succession,
leave no doubt concerning either Richard
they will
will also
When
them go back here and there,
of
...
I :
never
the Italians,
whom
Quousque tandem,
with the
"
"
Empire
make aught but
an
a mes
.
Turin, Christmas-tide 1888.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
WHERE I
believe
can do best attention little
promise
of,
they Their
which know how
actual perfection, new,
in
soil.
The
and vineyard
them, and
know what
do not
they are too conceited for that.
give
on their
garden
ADMIRE
directed to something prouder than those
plants
grow up ful,
is
often
artists :
I
their
equal quality.
love
There
final is
and beauti
excellency of their
superficially
and is
rare,
their
are
not
any
other, has the genius for finding the tones
liar
to suffering,
for
giving speech to
him
in
oppressed, tortured souls, misery.
No
by of
more than
a musician, who,
dumb
own
estimated
insight
to
pecu and even
one equals
the colours of the late autumn, the indescri
bably pathetic happiness of a
last,
he knows
alder-last,
sound
alder-
those enjoyment secretly haunted midnights of the soul when cause and effect seem to have gone out of joint and
shortest
;
a
for
every instant something can originate out of nothing. draws his resources best of all out of the lowest
He
depth of
human
happiness, and as
it
were out of
its
WAGNER
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
66
drained goblet, where the bitterest and most nauseous
end
drops have at the
met with the
the
good or the bad end-
He knows
sweetest.
that
self-
weary
impelling of the soul which can no longer leap or yea, not even \valk that
is
he has the shy glance of pain
;
concealed, of understanding without comfort, of
leave-taking without confession of
secret misery, he
all
fly,
;
yea, as the
Orpheus
greater than anyone, and
is
through him only, much which was hitherto inexpressible and even seemingly
much has been added
unworthy of art which only the likewise
many
belonging
the cynical revolts, for greatest
sufferers
are
example, of
and
capable,
and microscopic matters as it were the scales of its
small
quite
the
to
to art
soul,
amphibious nature, yes, he is the master of minutiae. But he does not wisli to be so His character loves !
rather ting
.
the .
He
.
walls
large
to
fails
and
different taste
and the audacious wall-pain observe that his
inclination
he paints
his
proper master-pieces, which are
one measure
sorely cians.
sets
I
in length,
becomes quite good,
perhaps there only. that
broken
concealed there, concealed from himself,
:
short, often only
there that he
a
and
antithetical optics,
likes best of all to sit quietly in the corners of
down houses
has
spirit
is
is
is
and
very
not
till
perfect,
one who has suffered
pre-eminence over the other musi Wagner in everything in which he
his
admire
Wagner
great,
it
all
himself to music.
67
WHERE That
not to
is
MAKE
I
say that
healthy,
and
there
Wagner.
My
objections to
logical objections
by
^Esthetics
My I
no
I
of
least
regard
this
where
all
are physio
be served
what purpose same under aesthetic
:
is
music as speaks of
it
Wagner s music
for
the
disguising
OBJECTIONS
to
formulae
?
certainly nothing but applied Physiology.
is
of
"matter
breathe
longer
my
fact,"
"
petit fait
vrai,"
when once
easily
this
is
that
music
operates on me, that my foot immediately becomes angry at it and revolts my foot has need of measure, :
even the young German Kaiser cannot
dance, march
march according
to
Wagner s
Kaiser-march,
my
foot
from music the raptures which lie in good walking, stepping, and dancing. But does not my stomach also protest ? my heart ? my circulation ? desires first of all
do not
bowels
my
fret
hoarse thereby ...
Do
?
I
not unawares become
In order to listen to
Wagner
I
need pastilles Ge raudel And so I ask myself, what it at all that whole body specially wants from my music ? For there is no soul ... I believe it wants .
.
.
is
Ls
alleviation
:
as
accelerated
by
as
leaden
if iron,
golden,
wants
light, bold,
tender, to
the animal functions were to be
if all
take
-tw^
life
wanton, self-assured rhythms
were
unctuous its
/
to lose
melodies.
repose in
the
/Ar^yA AI f
/fff f.:-C
its
heaviness
My
;
by
melancholy and
hiding-places
WAGXER
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
68
abysses of perfection
:
for that
purpose
But Wagner makes people morbid. is
me
the theatre to
its
mob
which the
ecstasies in
has
The convulsions
?
satisfaction
and who
It
?
my
at present
excellence-
person thereby sinks in again seen
;
:
I
"
moral
mob
"
"
!
my
non-success
am
I
have, from the this
art of the
which profound Success in the theatre a scorn
that
artist has.
every
not
is
the theatre
for
soul,
"
its
obvious that
is
essentially antitheatrically constituted
masses par
of
The whole pantomime hocus-
?
pocus of the stage-player
bottom of
need music.
I
Of what account
estimation,
till
then I prick up
he
my
is
never
and
ears
But Wagner was the reverse (besides the Wagner who had made the lonesomest of all music), essentially a theatre man and stage-player,
begin to esteem
.
.
.
perhaps the most enthusiastic mimomaniac that has And in passing, we existed, even as a musician .
.
.
would say that if it has been Wagner s theory, the drama is the end, music is always but the means, "
"
his praxis, close,
on the contrary, from the beginning to the
has been,
well as music, a
means
"
is
the attitude
is
the end, the drama, as
always only the mea.ns.
for elucidating, strengthening,
Music as
"
and internalising
the dramatic pantomime and stage-player concreteness
and the Wagnerian drama only an occasion interesting attitudes
other instincts,
the
stage-player in
all
!
He
for
possessed, along with
commanding
instincts
and everything
:
;
many all
the
of a great
and, as
we have
WAGXER
AS A DAXGER
also as a musician.
said,
I
once made
without trouble, to a Wagnerian
and Wagnerians
was reason
!
I
honest with yourself
pur
this clear,
sang,
!
for
we
"
Be but a
little
more
are not in Bayreuth.
In
only honest in the mass, as in
Bayreuth people
are
dividuals they
they deceive themselves.
lie,
not
clearness
do not say a word more. There
adding further
for
69
They
leave
home when they go to Bayreuth, they right to their own tongue and choice, to
themselves at
renounce the
even to their courage, as they have it and within their own four walls with respect to
their taste,
use
it
God and
the world.
Nobody
takes the most refined
sentiments of his art into the theatre with him, least of is
all
who works
the artist
for the theatre,
solitude
wanting, the perfect does not tolerate witnesses.
the theatre one becomes mob, herd,
woman,
In
Pharisee,
I
voting animal,
patron, idiot
Wagnerian
:
there even
the most personal conscience succumbs to the levelling
charm
of the
great
multitude,
there
rules, there one becomes neighbour
/*
.
.
the
neighbour
."
)
W/Vr^ (,4p*>
WAGNER AS A DANGER The
object which recent music pursues in
at present called "
infinite
"
melody
what
is
by a strong though obscure name one can explain to one s self by going
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
70
WAGNER
gradually losing secure footing on the
into the sea,
bottom, and finally submitting one at discretion
one has to swim.
:
the element
s self to
In older music, in an
elegant, or solemn, or passionate to-and-fro, faster
slower, one to dance.
had
The
to do
something quite
and
namely,
different,
proportion necessary thereto, the ob
servance of definite balance in measures of time and intensity, extorted
from the soul of the hearer a conti
nuous
consideration,
cooler
breeze,
on
the
between
contrast
which originated
from
this
consideration,
and the breath of enthusiasm warmed through, the charm of all good music rested. Richard Wagner
wanted another kind of movement
he overthrew the
physiological pre-requisite of previous music.
hovering the
no longer walking, dancing
decisive
just seeks to
word
is
intensity, at times
it
all
Swimming,
.
Perhaps
.
"
Infinite
melody of measure and symmetry
thereby
break up
said.
"
.
derides
it
even
it
has
wealth
its
of invention precisely in what sounded to the ears of
Out
former times as rhythmical paradox and abuse.
of an imitation, out of a predominance of such a taste, there might arise such a danger to music that a greater
could not even be imagined
the complete degeneration
of rythmical feeling, chaos in place of rhythm
.
.
.
The
danger reaches its climax when such a music rests always more and more upon entirely naturalistic stageplaying and pantomime, which, subject to no law of plastic
art,
desire
effect
and nothing more
.
.
.
The
A MUSIC WITHOUT A FUTURE espressivo at
any
price,
the slavery of attitude
What formance
seem
would
?
it
and music
in
that
end
really
be the
.
.
virtue of a per
first
the performing musical artists at present
(as
to
believe),
under
attain
hautrelief which cannot be
circumstances a
all
surpassed
Is
?
not
this,
applied, for example, to Mozart, the special sin
against tender,
the
of Mozart,
spirit
amorous
spirit
the
mention the seriousness of the
But you think that statue,"
was
a gracious, golden
is
seriousness, and not that of a German to
enthusiastic,
gay,
of Mozart, who, fortunately,
not German, and whose seriousness
Not
.
1
to
when
the
is
the service, in
music
all
that all music
is
Philistine
.
"marble statue"
music of the
must spring
"
.
.
.
.
.
marble
forth out of the
wall and agitate the hearer to his very bowels .... It
is
only thus that music
is
said
to
operate
!
Who
Something on which a noble must never operate, the masses! the immature! the used up the morbid the idiots the Wagnerians / ... is
there operated upon?
artist
!
!
!
A MUSIC WITHOUT A FUTURE Music,
up on
the
of
all
soil
the of a
arts
that
certain
know how civilisation,
to
grow makes its
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
72
appearance
most
WAGNER
perhaps because
last of the plants,
and consequently arrives
intrinsic,
the
it is
latest
in the
autumn and withering of each civilisation. It was only in the art of the Dutch masters that the soul of the Middle Ages found
Christian
tone-architecture
the
is
its
their
dying echo,
posthumous, though genuine
and equally legitimate sister of Gothic. It was only Handel s music that the best re-echoed out of the
in
of Luther and
soul
wilich
his
kin
:
the heroic Jewish
become music, not
the Old Testament
ment.
It
was reserved
for
the
Mozart to pay
New
Testa
in clinking
gold pieces the balance due to the age of Louis
and the in
ideals,
original
music
music,
and Rossini s music
s
century sang
broken
Racine and Claude Lorrain
art of
Beethoven
latest
itself out,
a
the century of enthusiasm,
swan s song. its
notwithstanding
originated out of a
*i~ VlV ,
civilisat-in"
sunken
-a iurtnwith
All true,
national
are
Wagner s
its
pre-requisites.
legends and songs
")
in
all
it
;
for
-./nose basis is rapidly
civilisation.
indigenous (so-called
of"
Perhaps even our predominance and
Catholicism of sentiment, and a delight in "
XIV
was only
that the eighteenth
and ^fugitive happiness. is
;
it
ambition, has but a brief space of time before it
trait,
gave the Reformation a touch of greatness,
A
certain
some ancient
existence, or nuisance,
appropriation
which learned
of old
prejudice
had
taught us to see something Germanic par excellence
we laugh
at
that
now,
and the new
inspiration
of
WE
ANTIPODES
73
these Scandinavian monsters with a thirst for ecstatic
and supersensuality
sensuality
giving of
Wagner
passions,
and nerves, would
Wagner
spirit of
music, should not
of
itself:
for
in respect to
music
also
know how is
taking"
express plainly the
to speak
a woman,,.
We
this itself, like
unambiguously must not allow
ourselves to be misled with regard to this affairs
the fact that for the
by
moment we
national
wars,
ultramontane
of
state
of
are living
The age
precisely in the reaction within the reaction.
of
and
materials, characters,
provided that
s music,
all
this
all
:
martyrdom,
this
whole interlude-character which the circumstances of
Europe assist
at
present
are
such art as that of
glory,
without
thereby
possessed
Wagner
in obtaining a
guaranteeing"
The Germans themselves have no
WE It will
commencement
modern world with some and
to
future
a future.
it
.
.
fact,
sudden
.
ANTIPODES
be remembered perhaps,
friends, that at the
in
may,
of,
at least I
among my
rushed upon
this
errors and overestimates,
any case as a hopeful person. I understood who knows from what personal experiences ? the philo in
sophical pessimism
symptom
of the
nineteenth century as the
of a higher thinking power, of a
phal fulness of
life
more trium
than had found expression in the
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
74
WAGNER
Hume, Kant, and Hegel,
philosophy of
I
took tragical
perception for the choicest luxury of our civilisation,
most precious, most noble, most dangerous mode of squandering, but always, on the ground of its super as
its
abundance, as
its
Wagner s
preted
permitted luxury. I similarly inter music in my own way, as the expres
sion of a Dionysian powerfulness of soul, I believed that I heard in
force of
it
suppressed for ages, finally relieves
life,
whether
indifferent as to civilisation
the earthquake with which a primitive
all
that at present calls itself
shaken thereby.
is
misunderstood,
It
obvious what I
is
obvious in like manner what
is
it
itself,
Wagner and Schopenhauer myself every philosophy may be regarded as
bestowed icpon
Every
art,
.
and
medicine
life
decaying
helping :
expedient
of
.
.
a or
adv^Incing
they always presuppose suffering and
But there are two kinds of
sufferers.
I
sufferers
on
:
the one hand those suffering from the superabundance of
who want
life,
a
Dionysian
art
and
similarly
a
and prospect with regard to life, and on the other hand those suffering from the impoverish
tragic insight
ment
of
who
life,
sea, or else ecstasy,
desire
repose,
stillness,
smooth
convulsion, intoxication furnished
and philosophy. The revenge on life itself the most voluptuous kind of ecstasy for such impover
by
art
ished ones
Wagner deny
!
.
.
.
To
just like
life,
the double requirement of the latter
Schopenhauer corresponds
they calumniate
it
;
they both
they are thereby
my
WE The
antipodes.
75
richest in fulness of
God and man, may of the
ANTIPODES
life,
the Dionysian
not only allow himself the spectacle
and the questionable, but even the
frightful
frightful deed, and every luxury of destruction, de composition and denial, with him the evil, the sense
and the loathsome appear as it were permitted, as a con as they appear to be permitted in nature
less,
superabundance of the procreative, which out of every desert is still restorative powers able to create a luxuriant orchard. On the other hand of the
sequence
those suffering most, the poorest in
most
need
volence in
that
thinking
God who "
of
Heiland
is
well
as
quite
;
at
present
as
in
specially
called
is
practice
a
also
similarly
would have
peaceableness
gentleness,
which
life,
God logic,
:
and
bene
humanity
if
possible,
a a
for
the
the
understand-
sick,
ableness of existence as a conception, even for idiots the typical "
"
"
like the
freethinkers,
beautiful souls,
"
are
decadents
all
;
"
"
idealists,
and
in short, a certain
warm, fear-excluding narrowness and inclusion in opti mistic horizons which permit stupefaction ... In this
manner
I
gradually learned to understand Epicurus,
the antithesis of a Dionysian Christian,
who,
who, with the doctrine, out the principle of
he
is
beyond
something
in
;
in like
manner the
only a species of Epicurean
in fact, is "
Greek
belief
Hedonism
all intellectual
advance of
makes
"
blessed,
carries
as far as possible
till
righteousness ... If I have
all
psychologists,
it
is
that
WAGNER
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
76
my
is
insight
sharper for that nicest and most insidious
species of inference a posteriori in which most errors
made
are
the inference from the
:
from the deed
to the doer,
work
to
its
originator,
from the ideal to him who
from every mode of thinking and valuing In respect to to the ruling requirement behind it. needs
it,
artists of
every kind,
distinction
of
:
has the hatred of
become
life
now make
I
creative here
life,
became
hatred
new
Flaubert, a
:
of this
or the superabundance
creative, in Flaubert the
edition of Pascal, but as
with instinctive judgment at bottom
artist
est toujours liaissablc, I tout".
.
He
.
lwmme n
they both
felt
:
an
"Flaubert
est rien, I ceuvre est
when he composed, himself when he thought
tortured himself
as Pascal tortured
quite
main
In Goethe, for example,
?
the superabundance
use
"
"
Unselfishness
"
unegotistic.
the
"
de cadence-^rmc\^\Q, the will to the end in art as well as in morals.
WHERE WAG^R Even
at the present
time France
is still
the seat of
the most intellectual and refined civilisation of Europe,
and the high school of taste but one must know how to find this France of taste. The Norddeutsche :
"
"
Zcitung,
for
example,
or
he
mouthpiece, sees in the French,
me,
I
seek for the . ,
fa
h(. A
black
r if AT-
(}
part
who
has
it
"barbarians,"
for
his
as
for
of earth, where
"
the
WHERE WAGXER BELONGS TO ought to be Norddeutsche
"
slaves
of the
in
freed,
the
77
neighbourhood
He who
belongs to that France keeps himself well concealed there may be .
.
.
:
number
a small
sides perhaps
in
whom
men who do
embodied and
it is
be
lives,
not stand upon the strongest
legs, in part fatalistic, melancholy, sick,
in part
over-
pampered, over-refined, such as have the ambition to be artificial but they have in their possession all the elevation and delicacy that is still left in the In this France of intellect, which
world.
also the
is
France of pessimism, Schopenhauer is at present more at home than he ever has been in Germany his principal ;
work twice ably, so
French
translated already, the second time admir
that I (he
an accident
now
prefer to read Schopenhauer in
was an accident among Germans, the Germans have no fingers for
as I
am
us, they have they only claws). Not to speak of Heinrich Heine I adorable Heine they say in Paris who has long ago passed over into the flesh
have no fingers
at
all,
and blood of the profounder and more soul-breathing What would German horned lyric poets of France.
know how
cattle
a nature
would
!
deal with the delicatesses of such
Finally, as regards
seize
that Paris
to
is
with hands,
not
perhaps
the proper soil for
Wagner
it
French music shapes the it
"
dme
Richard Wagner
moderne,"
itself
the
:
:
one
with
fists,
the
more
according to the needs of
more
it
already does so sufficiently.
becomes Wagnerian,
One must
not allow
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
WAGNER
be misled here by Wagner himself sheer wickedness of Wagner to mock at Paris one
s self to
agony
in
theless a
in its
Germany Wagner is never mere misunderstanding who would be more :
young
Kaiser, for example
movement
than
Wagner
The
?
remains
fact
who
nevertheless, for everyone
certain,
was
In
1871 ...
incapable of understanding anything of the
it
is
acquainted
French European Romanticism and Richard Wagner are very closely connected. Altogether dominated by literature up to their eyes and ears the first artists of Europe possessing with the
of
a universal literary
civilisation, that
writers, poets, intermediaries
and
arts,
mostly even themselves
culture,
and blenders of the senses
altogether fanatics of expression, great dis
domain of the sublime,
coverers in the
loathsome and the shocking, in
effect,
in
in
display,
altogether talented far
still
also
of the
greater discoverers
the art of the shop window,
beyond
virtuosi
their geniuses,
through and through with dismal accesses to every thing which seduces, allures, forces, or upsets, born enemies of logic
and the straight
line,
covetous of
the foreign, the exotic, the monstrous, and of
a
the
senses
and
rashly-venturing,
understanding.
magnificently-violent,
and high up-pulling kind of to
teach to
mass
their
On
century
the conception of
it
artists, is
"artist."
all
opiates
the
w hole, r
high-flying,
who had
first
the century of the
But
sick
.
.
.
79
WAGNER AS THE APOSTLE OF CHASTITY i
Is this
our
mode
?
From German heart came this vexed ululating From German body this self-lacerating ?
?
Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming excitation
?
Is ours this plunging, faltering, brangling,
This, sweet as sugar, ding-dong-dangling
?
This sly nun ogling, Ave-hour-bell tinkled, This whole false rapturous flight beyond the heavens star-sprinkled Is this our
Think well
!
Ye
mode still
For what ye hear
is
?
,
.
.
?
stay for ingression
Rome,
Rome
,
.
s faith
.
without
expression.
Chastity and sensuality are not
necessarily
anti
thetical; every true marriage, every genuine love-affair
beyond any such which this antithesis
is
not at least
all
be
to
antithesis.
be a tragical
who
it
really exists,
the case with
cheerful mortals,
But
all
in those cases in
fortunately needs
antithesis.
better
are not at
all
This might at
constituted,
more
disposed, without
further ado, to reckon their fluctuating state
of equi-
WAGNER
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
SO
betwixt
librium
and petite
angel
bete
among
the
arguments against existence, the finest, the brightest, such as Hafiz and Goethe, have even discerned an additional
charm
that allure to
therein.
life
.
.
It is just
But
.
if,
chastity,
worship in
it
they
antithesis
but too plain, see and
own antithesis and oh, one how much tragic grunting and eager
same
and absolutely superfluous which Richard Wagner at the end of his
that
!
is
only their
can imagine with ness
as
will,
on the other hand, the can be induced to wor
ill-constituted beasts of Circe
ship
such contradictions
painful
days undoubtedly intended to set to music and pro duce on the stage. For what purpose really f we
may
reasonably ask. 3
Here, to be sure, that other question cannot be
avoided what had :
(alas,
Wagner
so very unmanly)
really to
"rustic
do with that manly
simplicity,"
the poor devil
and country lad, Parsifal, whom, by such insidious means, he finally succeeded in making a Roman Catholic
meant seriously f For that people have laughed over him I would least of all dispute, nor would Gottfried Keller do so ...
what
?
was
this
One might wish meant which,
to
tragedian
that the
be gay,
precisely
Parsifal
really
Wagnerian Parsifal had been
like a finale or satiric in
a due
Wagner had
and
drama, with
worthy manner, the
intended to take his farewell
WAGNER
AS THE APOSTLE OF CHASTITY
of us, also of himself, and above
all
8
I
of tragedy, namely,
with an excess of the greatest and most wanton parody
on the tragical itself, on all the awful earth-earnestness and earth-sorrowfulness of the past, on the stupidest form of the antinaturalness of the ascetic ideal
For Parsifal
surmounted. excellence as his
.
.
Are we
.
laugh of superiority at himself,
secret
finally
an operetta theme par to understand Wagner s Parsifal is
as the
triumph of his greatest, finally attained artistic freedom
and
artistic
to laugh at himself
wish that
?
were so
it
.
is
"
(as
the product of a
has been
said,
one might
what sense could we attach
for
:
meant
have been
I
As
.
.
to a Parsifal seriously
suppose
Wagner, who knows how
other-worldness
?
Is
it
told) that
really necessary to
Wagner s
maddened hatred
Parsifal
of perception,
an anathema on sense and and sensuality ? in one breath, in a fit of hatred ? an apostasy "
intellect,
intellect
and return to
sickly, Christian,
And
worst of
finally,
annulment of an all
his
all,
artist
who had
for the
will-power,
and obscurantist
ideals
the self-negation and striven so
opposite,
far,
?
self-
with
namely, for the
And
highest spiritualising and sensualism g of his art
?
not only of his
Let us
recollect
how
art,
but of his
enthusiastically
in the footsteps of
life
as well.
Wagner
once walked
Feuerbach the philosopher.
Feuer-
bach s phrase of healthy sensuality," echoed in the third and fourth decades of this century to Wagner as "a
to
many
other
Germans
they called themselves the
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
82
young Germans older
like
word of
the
Wagner unlearn
WAGNER
former creed
his
Did the
salvation.
Very
?
likely
he did judging from the disposition he evinced toward !
the end of his
life
the hatred of
life
Flaubert
?
.
.
to iinteach his first belief
got the upper hand
For Parsifal
.
a
is
.
.
.
in him,
work
Has as
in
of cunning,
of revengefulness, of secret poison-brewing, hostile to
the pre-requisites of of chastity
life
The preaching
a bad work.
;
an incitement to antinaturalness
is
:
I despise
everyone who does not regard Parsifal as an outrage on morals.
HOW
I
GOT FREE FROM WAGNER i
As
far
back as the summer of 1876,
the period of the farewell
first festival
plays,
middle of
in the
my heart had taken
cannot stand anything ambi and since Wagner s return to Germany, he of
Wagner.
I
guous had condescended step by step to everything that I despise even to Anti-Semitism ... It was, in fact, ;
high time to take got proof of
most
that.
triumphal,
farewell
then
soon
:
Richard Wagner, while
in
despairing decadent, sank
truth
down
I
apparently the
become
a
decayed,
suddenly, helpless and
disjointed, before the Christian cross
German then with eyes
enough
.
in his head,
.
.
or
Was
there no
sympathy
in
HOW
I
GOT FREE FROM WAGNER
83
his conscience, for this awe-inspiring spectacle
only one
I the
who
from
siiffered
Was
?
Enough,
it ?
to
myself the unexpected event, like a flash of lightning, had left, and also that subse
illuminated the position I
quent horror which every one
who
feels
When
unconsciously through a fearful danger. further on alone, I shivered sick,
more than
sick,
;
I
went
not long thereafter I
namely, fatigued
the incessant undeceiving concerning
mained
has passed
for the inspiration of us
:
was
by
fatigued
that yet re
all
modern men, concerning
the strength, labour, hope, youth, and love squandered
on
all
istic
sides
falsity
;
fatigued out of disgust for the whole ideal
and softening of conscience, which here
once more had scored a victory over one of the bravest fatigued, finally, and not least, by the grief of an unrelent ing suspicion mistrust to I
was henceforth condemned
that I
more profoundly,
to despise
;
to
more profoundly,
be more profoundly alone, than ever before. For had had no one but Richard Wagner ... I was
condemned perpetually
to the
Germans
.
.
.
Lonely, henceforth, and sadly mistrustful of myself, I
then,
not without
indignation,
took
sides
against
myself, and for everything which gave pain
was hard upon me
;
that brave pessimism
I thus
which
found the is
the
way
to,
and
again to
antithesis 6*
of
all
WAGNER
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
84
would appear to me, the way to myself, to my task That concealed and imperious something for which for a long time we have had no name, until it finally proves itself to be and
idealistic falsity,
as
also,
it
.
our task,
tyrant in
this
every attempt which
from
it,
for
it
every
happen
.
us retaliates
we make
shirk
to
for
frightfully
or escape
it
every premature decision, for every thinking
ourselves equal to those of for
.
activity,
whose number we are
however honourable
to distract us
it
may
not,
be,
from our main business
if
nay
even, for every virtue which might shield us from the
sternness
of
our special responsibility.
Sickness
is
always the answer, when we are inclined to doubt con cerning our right to our task, w hen we begin to make r
it
easier
for
ourselves in any respect.
same time
frightful at the
It is
!
our alleviations for
which we must do the severest penance
want afterwards for us
:
Strange and
!
And
to return to health, there is
we must burden
ourselves
were ever burdened before
if
we
no choice
heavier than
we
.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS i
The more
a psychologist, a born, an unavoidable
psychologist and soul-diviner, turns his attention to the
more
select cases
and
individuals, the greater
becomes
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS
>5
by sympathy. He needs more than another man. For cor
danger of suffocation
his
sternness and gaiety
of higher
ruin
the
ruption,
men,
the
is
rule
it
:
is
dreadful to have such a rule always before one s eyes.
The manifold
tortures of the psychologist
and has then
discovered this ruin, case throughout "
unblessedness "
late
!
in
of higher
almost every
in
eternal
this
man,
.
every psychologist, a
common and
that
he
always
.
.
tell-tale
preference for intercourse
well-ordered men, such as betrays
requires
curing,
of flight and forgetfulness
he
that
conscience.
He
is
easily silenced before the
his his
judgment of
how
others,
others re
and glorify where he has per
verence, admire, love,
his
upon
a
possessed by a fear of his memory.
he hears with unmoved countenance
ceived,
needs
away from what
insight, his incisions, his business have laid
is
too-
-may perhaps one day become ruin One perceives, in almost
own
with
He
"
every sense
the cause of his
sort
has once
history discovered this entire internal
all
"
who
or he even conceals his silence
agreement with some
by expressing
superficial opinion.
Perhaps
the paradox of his situation gets to be so horrible that the
"
educated classes,
"
on
their part, learn great re
verence precisely where he has learned great sympathy
and great contempt cases nothing
.
.
.
And who knows
more than
this
took place,
was worshipped, and the God was only ficial
animal
.
.
.
if in all
-that
great a
God
a poor sacri
Success has always been the greatest
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
86
and the work, the deed
liar
The
the
great statesman,
WAGNER a success as well
is
are
unrecognisable
;
work
the
philosopher, only invents him
said to have created
it
wards, is
in the
current
world of
who
discoverer,
away
of the
The
...
are reverenced, are poor
the
conqueror,
are disguised in their creations, hidden
until
artist,
little fictions
men,"
is
it,
as they
composed
historical values spurious
they
of the
has created
"great
.
.
.
after
coinage
.
Those great
example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol I do not ven ture to as
name much avowedly
they
for
poets,
greater names, but I think are
and
must
men
be,
them of
the
moment, sensuous, absurd, five-fold, light-minded and with souls in which hasty in mistrust and in trust ;
usually some flaw has revenge by their works
to
be concealed
for
an inner contamination, often
often taking
;
seeking forgetfulness with their upward
flights
from
memory, idealists out of the neighbourhood swamp what torments these great artists are,
a too-true
of the
and the so-called higher men generally, for him who has once found them out We are all advocates of .
the mediocre ...
woman and far
(who
is
alas, also,
beyond her
It is
.
.
conceivable that
it
is
just
from
clairvoyant in the world of suffering,
ready to help and save
"to
an extent
po\vers) that they experience so easily
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS outbreaks
of
multitude, above
all
those
unlimited
87
which the
sympathy,
the reverent multitude, overloads
with inquisitive and self-satisfying interpretations.
sympathising deceives
woman would it
is
itself
constantly as to
like to believe that
the heart finds
tentious,
and
love
how
is
out
liable to error it
how
its
power love can do all,
a superstition peculiar to herself.
knows
This :
who
Alas, he
poor, helpless, pre
even the
best, the deepest
rather destroys than saves
.
.
.
3
The
intellectual
man who
loathing and haughtiness of any
has suffered profoundly
it
almost deter
mines rank, how profoundly a person can suffer, the chilling certainty, with which he is entirely imbued and coloured, that in virtue of his suffering he knows
more than the shrewdest and wisest could know, that he has been familiar with, and at home in many distant, worlds,
frightful
of which
"you
know
nothing"
.
.
.
this tacit intellectual haughtiness, this pride of the elect
perception, of the
deems
all
"initiated,"
of the almost sacrificed,
kinds of disguises necessary to protect
itself
from contact with over-officious and sympathising hands, and, in general, from all that is not its equal in Profound suffering makes noble it separates. most refined forms of disguise is Epi curism, and a certain ostentatious boldness of taste,
suffering.
One
of the
;
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
88
which
takes
the
suffering
in defence against all that
There are
"
gay men
cause, on account of
WAGNER
and puts itself sorrowful and profound.
lightly,
is
who make
"
it,
they are misunderstood,
wish to be misunderstood. There are
which make use of
science,
appearance and because the that a person false
is
conclusion
which would
superficial .
.
.
use of gaiety, be
:
and then
minds,
gives a gay
it
scientific
spirit
suggests
they wish to mislead to a insolent
free,
and deny that
they are disjointed, incurable souls
Hamlet
they "
scientific
because
There are
fain conceal
"
folly itself
may be
unhappy over-assured knowledge.
it
at the is
the
minds
bottom
the case of
mask
for
an
EPILOGUE
I
have often asked myself
if I
am
obligation to the hardest years of
not under deeper
my
than to any
life
As my innermost nature tea.ches me, all necessary, when viewed from an elevation and other.
sense of a great economy,
also the useful in
is
that
is
in the itself,
one should not only bear it, one should love it ... Amor fati: that is my innermost nature. And as long sickness, do I not owe to it un utterably more than to my health ? I owe to it a higher health, such a health as becomes stronger by regards
my
everything that does not
my
philosophy ...
It
is
kill
it
!
/ owe
to
it
also
great affliction only that
is
the ultimate emancipator of the mind, as the instruc
makes an
tor of strong suspicion which
U, a of
true,
the
affliction
correct
alphabet,
only
are burned as
X, that before
is,
the
X
out of every
the penultimate letter last
...
It
that long, slow affliction in it
is
great
which we
were with green wood, which takes
NIETZSCHE CONTRA
QO
WAGNER
compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depth and divest ourselves of all trust, that
time,
all
good-nature, glossing, gentleness, and averageness,
where we have perhaps formerly I doubt whether such affliction
know
that
of
will,
he
may
by
his
"
humanity. us
improves
:
but I
Be it that we learn deepens us ... with our pride, our scorn, our strength
it
to confront
installed our "
it
doing like the Indian who, however sorely be tortured, takes revenge on his tormentor
bad tongue into
affliction
;
be
we withdraw from
that
it
into
dumb, benumbed, self-forgetfulness, and self-extinc
nothingness,
deaf self-surrender,
from such long, dangerous exercises of selfmastery one emerges as another man, with several
tion
;
additional interrogation will to question
more
strictly,
than
has
above
sternly,
with the
more wickedly, more
ever been questioned on life
May
all,
henceforward more, more profoundly,
more
Confidence in problem.
marks,
it
quietly
earth before
.
.
.
life itself has become a gone never be believed that one has
is
;
thereby necessarily become a gloomy person, a moping owl Even love to life is still possible, only one loves !
differently ...
us doubts
The other
It is
the love to a
woman
that causes
.
strangest thing
is this
second
taste.
taste,
a
>>
*.
:
one has afterwards an
Out
of such
abysses,
-
"