THE CASE OF WAGNER
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
I
THE CASE OF WAGNER
II
NIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER
III
_SELECTED APHORISMS_
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
IV
WE PHILOLOGISTS
TRANSLATED BY J. M. KENNEDY
[Illustration]
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
Edited by Dr Oscar Levy
Volume Six
T.N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1911
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THE CASE OF WAGNER
NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
SELECTED APHORISMS
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION TO "WE PHILOLOGISTS"
WE PHILOLOGISTS
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Nietzsche wrote the rough draft of "The Case of Wagner" in Turin,
during the month of May 1888; he completed it in Sils Maria towards the
end of June of the same year, and it was published in the following
autumn. "Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner" was written about the middle of
December 1888; but, although it was printed and corrected before
the New Year, it was not published until long afterwards owing to
Nietzsche's complete breakdown in the first days of 1889.
In reading these two essays we are apt to be deceived, by their
virulent and forcible tone, into believing that the whole matter is
a mere cover for hidden fire,--a mere blind of æsthetic discussion
concealing a deep and implacable personal feud which demands and will
have vengeance. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary,
many people still hold this view of the two little works before us;
and, as the actual facts are not accessible to every one, and rumours
are more easily believed than verified, the error of supposing that
these pamphlets were dictated by personal animosity, and even by
Nietzsche's envy of Wagner in his glory, seems to be a pretty common
one. Another very general error is to suppose that the point at issue
here is not one concerning music at all, but concerning religion. It
is taken for granted that the aspirations, the particular quality,
the influence, and the method of an art like music, are matters quite
distinct from the values and the conditions prevailing in the culture
with which it is in harmony, and that however many Christian elements
may be discovered in Wagnerian texts, Nietzsche had no right to raise
æsthetic objections because he happened to entertain the extraordinary
view that these Christian elements had also found their way into
Wagnerian music.
To both of these views there is but one reply:--they are absolutely
false.
In the "Ecce Homo," Nietzsche's autobiography,--a book which from
cover to cover and line for line is sincerity itself--we learn what
Wagner actually meant to Nietzsche. On pages 41, 44, 84, 122, 129, &c,
we cannot doubt that Nietzsche is speaking from his heart,--and what
does he say? --In impassioned tones he admits his profound indebtedness
to the great musician, his love for him, his gratitude to him,--how
Wagner was the only German who had ever been anything to him--how his
friendship with Wagner constituted the happiest and most valuable
experience of his life,--how his breach with Wagner almost killed him.
And, when we remember, too, that Wagner on his part also declared that
he was "alone" after he had lost "that man" (Nietzsche), we begin to
perceive that personal bitterness and animosity are out of the question
here. We feel we are on a higher plane, and that we must not judge
these two men as if they were a couple of little business people who
had had a suburban squabble.
Nietzsche declares ("Ecce Homo," p. 24) that he never attacked persons
as persons. If he used a name at all, it was merely as a means to
an end, just as one might use a magnifying glass in order to make a
general, but elusive and intricate fact more clear and more apparent;
and if he used the name of David Strauss, without bitterness or spite
(for he did not even know the man), when he wished to personify
Culture-Philistinism, so, in the same spirit, did he use the name of
Wagner, when he wished to personify the general decadence of modern
ideas, values, aspirations and Art.
Nietzsche's ambition, throughout his life, was to regenerate European
culture. In the first period of his relationship with Wagner, he
thought that he had found the man who was prepared to lead in this
direction. For a long while he regarded his master as the Saviour of
Germany, as the innovator and renovator who was going to arrest the
decadent current of his time and lead men to a greatness which had died
with antiquity. And so thoroughly did he understand his duties as a
disciple, so wholly was he devoted to this cause, that, in spite of all
his unquestioned gifts and the excellence of his original achievements,
he was for a long while regarded as a mere "literary lackey" in
Wagner's service, in all those circles where the rising musician was
most disliked.
Gradually, however, as the young Nietzsche developed and began to gain
an independent view of life and humanity, it seemed to him extremely
doubtful whether Wagner actually was pulling the same way with him.
Whereas, theretofore, he had identified Wagner's ideals with his own,
it now dawned upon him slowly that the regeneration of German culture,
of European culture, and the trans-valuation of values which would be
necessary for this regeneration, really lay off the track of Wagnerism.
He saw that he had endowed Wagner with a good deal that was more his
own than Wagner's. In his love he had transfigured the friend, and the
composer of "Parsifal" and the man of his imagination were not one. The
fact was realised step by step; disappointment upon disappointment,
revelation after revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and
though his best instincts at first opposed it, the revulsion of feeling
at last became too strong to be scouted, and Nietzsche was plunged into
the blackest despair. Had he followed his own human inclinations, he
would probably have remained Wagner's friend until the end. As it was,
however, he remained loyal to his cause, and this meant denouncing his
former idol.
"Joyful Wisdom," "Thus Spake Zarathustra," "Beyond Good and Evil," "The
Genealogy of Morals," "The Twilight of the Idols," "The Antichrist"
--all these books were but so many exhortations to mankind to step
aside from the general track now trodden by Europeans. And what
happened? Wagner began to write some hard things about Nietzsche;
the world assumed that Nietzsche and Wagner had engaged in a paltry
personal quarrel in the press, and the whole importance of the real
issue was buried beneath the human, all-too-human interpretations which
were heaped upon it.
Nietzsche was a musician of no mean attainments. For a long while, in
his youth, his superiors had been doubtful whether he should not be
educated for a musical career, so great were his gifts in this art; and
if his mother had not been offered a six-years' scholarship for her son
at the famous school of Pforta, Nietzsche, the scholar and philologist,
would probably have been an able composer. When he speaks about music,
therefore, he knows what he is talking about, and when he refers to
Wagner's music in particular, the simple fact of his long intimacy
with Wagner during the years at Tribschen, is a sufficient guarantee
of his deep knowledge of the subject. Now Nietzsche was one of the
first to recognise that the principles of art are inextricably bound
up with the laws of life, that an æsthetic dogma may therefore promote
or depress all vital force, and that a picture, a symphony, a poem or
a statue, is just as capable of being pessimistic, anarchic, Christian
or revolutionary, as a philosophy or a science is. To speak of a
certain class of music as being compatible with the decline of culture,
therefore, was to Nietzsche a perfectly warrantable association of
ideas, and that is why, throughout his philosophy, so much stress is
laid upon æsthetic considerations.
But if in England and America Nietzsche's attack on Wagner's art may
still seem a little incomprehensible, let it be remembered that the
Continent has long known that Nietzsche was actually in the right Every
year thousands are now added to the large party abroad who have ceased
from believing in the great musical revolutionary of the seventies;
that he was one with the French Romanticists and rebels has long since
been acknowledged a fact in select circles, both in France and Germany,
and if we still have Wagner with us in England, if we still consider
Nietzsche as a heretic, when he declares that "Wagner was a musician
for unmusical people," it is only because we are more removed than we
imagine, from all the great movements, intellectual and otherwise,
which take place on the Continent.
In Wagner's music, in his doctrine, in his whole concept of art,
Nietzsche saw the confirmation, the promotion--aye, even the
encouragement, of that decadence and degeneration which is now rampant
in Europe; and it is for this reason, although to the end of his life
he still loved Wagner, the man and the friend, that we find him, on
the very eve of his spiritual death, exhorting us to abjure Wagner the
musician and the artist.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION[1]
In spite of the adverse criticism with which the above preface has met
at the hands of many reviewers since the summer of last year, I cannot
say that I should feel justified, even after mature consideration, in
altering a single word or sentence it contains. If I felt inclined
to make any changes at all, these would take the form of extensive
additions, tending to confirm rather than to modify the general
argument it advances; but, any omissions of which I may have been
guilty in the first place, have been so fully rectified since, thanks
to the publication of the English translations of Daniel Halévy's and
Henri Lichtenberger's works, "The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche,"[2] and
"The Gospel of Superman,"[3] respectively, that, were it not for the
fact that the truth about this matter cannot be repeated too often, I
should have refrained altogether from including any fresh remarks of my
own in this Third Edition.
In the works just referred to (pp. 129 _et seq._ in Halévy's book, and
pp. 78 _et seq._ in Lichtenberger's book), the statement I made in my
preface to "Thoughts out of Season," vol. i., and which I did not think
it necessary to repeat in my first preface to these pamphlets, will be
found to receive the fullest confirmation.
The statement in question was to the effect that many long years before
these pamphlets were even projected, Nietzsche's apparent _volte-face_
in regard to his hero Wagner had been not only foreshadowed, but
actually stated in plain words, in two works written during his
friendship with Wagner,--the works referred to being "The Birth of
Tragedy" (1872), and "Wagner in Bayreuth" (1875) of which Houston
Stuart Chamberlain declares not only that it possesses "undying
classical worth" but that "a perusal of it is indispensable to all who
wish to follow the question [of Wagner] to its roots."[4]
The idea that runs through the present work like a leitmotif--the idea
that Wagner was at bottom more of a mime than a musician--was so far
an ever present thought with Nietzsche that it is even impossible to
ascertain the period when it was first formulated.
In Nietzsche's wonderful autobiography (_Ecce Homo,_ p. 88), in
the section dealing with the early works just mentioned, we find
the following passage: "In the second of the two essays [Wagner
in Bayreuth] with a profound certainty of instinct, I already
characterised the elementary factor in Wagner's nature as a
theatrical talent which, in all his means and aspirations, draws
its final conclusions." And as early as 1874, Nietzsche wrote in
his diary:--"Wagner is a born actor. Just as Goethe was an abortive
painter, and Schiller an abortive orator, so Wagner was an abortive
theatrical genius. His attitude to music is that of the actor; for he
knows how to sing and speak, as it were out of different souls and from
absolutely different worlds (_Tristan_ and the _Meistersinger_)".
There is, however, no need to multiply examples, seeing, as I have
said, that in the translations of Halévy's and Lichtenberger's
books the reader will find all the independent evidence he could
possibly desire, disproving the popular, and even the learned belief
that, in the two pamphlets before us we have a complete, apparently
unaccountable, and therefore "demented" _volte-face_ on Nietzsche's
part. Nevertheless, for fear lest some doubt should still linger in
certain minds concerning this point, and with the view of adding
interest to these essays, the Editor considered it advisable, in the
Second Edition, to add a number of extracts from Nietzsche's diary of
the year 1878 (ten years before "The Case of Wagner," and "Nietzsche
_contra_ Wagner" were written) in order to show to what extent those
learned critics who complain of Nietzsche's "morbid and uncontrollable
recantations and revulsions of feeling," have overlooked even the plain
facts of the case when forming their all-too-hasty conclusions. These
extracts will be found at the end of "Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner." While
reading them, however, it should not be forgotten that they were never
intended for publication by Nietzsche himself--a fact which accounts
for their unpolished and sketchy form--and that they were first
published in vol. xi. of the first German Library Edition (pp. 99-129)
only when he was a helpless invalid, in 1897. Since then, in 1901 and
1906 respectively, they have been reprinted, once in the large German
Library Edition (vol. xi. pp. 181-202), and once in the German Pocket
Edition, as an appendix to "Human-All-too-Human," Part II.
An altogether special interest now attaches to these pamphlets; for, in
the first place we are at last in possession of Wagner's own account
of his development, his art, his aspirations and his struggles, in the
amazing self-revelation entitled _My Life_[5]; and secondly, we now
have _Ecce Homo,_ Nietzsche's autobiography, in which we learn for the
first time from Nietzsche's own pen to what extent his history was that
of a double devotion--to Wagner on the one hand, and to his own life
task, the Transvaluation of all Values, on the other.
Readers interested in the Nietzsche-Wagner controversy will naturally
look to these books for a final solution of all the difficulties which
the problem presents. But let them not be too sanguine. From first
to last this problem is not to be settled by "facts." A good deal of
instinctive choice, instinctive aversion, and instinctive suspicion
are necessary here. A little more suspicion, for instance, ought
to be applied to Wagner's _My Life,_ especially in England, where
critics are not half suspicious enough about a continental artist's
self-revelations, and are too prone, if they have suspicions at all, to
apply them in the wrong place.
An example of this want of _finesse_ in judging foreign writers is to
be found in Lord Morley's work on Rousseau,--a book which ingenuously
takes for granted everything that a writer like Rousseau cares to say
about himself, without considering for an instant the possibility that
Rousseau might have practised some hypocrisy. In regard to Wagner's
life we might easily fall into the same error--that is to say, we might
take seriously all he says concerning himself and his family affairs.
We should beware of this, and should not even believe Wagner when he
speaks badly about himself. No one speaks badly about himself without
a reason, and the question in this case is to find out the reason. Did
Wagner--in the belief that genius was always immoral--wish to pose as
an immoral Egotist, in order to make us believe in his genius, of which
he himself was none too sure in his innermost heart? Did Wagner wish to
appear "sincere" in his biography, in order to awaken in us a belief in
the sincerity of his music, which he likewise doubted, but wished to
impress upon the world as "true"? Or did he wish to be thought badly
of in connection with things that were not true, and that consequently
did not affect him, in order to lead us off the scent of true things,
things he was ashamed of and which he wished the world to ignore--just
like Rousseau (the similarity between the two is more than a
superficial one) who barbarously pretended to have sent his children to
the foundling hospital, in order not to be thought incapable of having
had any children at all? In short, where is the bluff in Wagner's
biography? Let us therefore be careful about it, and all the more so
because Wagner himself guarantees the truth of it in the prefatory
note. If we were to be credulous here, we should moreover be acting in
direct opposition to Nietzsche's own counsel as given in the following
aphorisms (Nos. 19 and 20, p. 89):--
"It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner's development,--no
trust must be placed in his own description of his soul's experiences.
He writes party-pamphlets for his followers.
"It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about
himself."
While on p. 37 (the note), we read:--"He [Wagner] was not proud enough
to be able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride
than he. Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in his
biography,--he remained an actor."
However, as a famous English judge has said:-- "Truth will come out,
even in the witness box," and, as we may add in this case, even in
an autobiography. There is one statement in Wagner's _My Life_ which
sounds true to my ears at least-a statement which, in my opinion,
has some importance, and to which Wagner himself seems to grant a
mysterious significance. I refer to the passage on p. 93 of vol.
i., in which Wagner says:--"Owing to the exceptional vivacity and
innate susceptibility of my nature ... I gradually became conscious
of a certain power of transporting or bewildering my more indolent
companions."
This seems innocent enough. When, however, it is read in conjunction
with Nietzsche's trenchant criticism, particularly on pp. 14, 15, 16,
17 and 18 of this work, and also with a knowledge of Wagner's music, it
becomes one of the most striking passages in Wagner's autobiography;
for it records how soon he became conscious of his dominant instinct
and faculty.
I know perfectly well that the Wagnerites will not be influenced by
these remarks. Their gratitude to Wagner is too great for this. He has
supplied the precious varnish wherewith to hide the dull ugliness of
our civilisation. He has given to souls despairing over the materialism
of this world, to souls despairing of themselves, and longing to be
rid of themselves, the indispensable hashish and morphia wherewith to
deaden their inner discords. These discords are everywhere apparent
nowadays. Wagner is therefore a common need, a common benefactor.
As such he is bound to be worshipped and adored in spite of all
egotistical and theatrical autobiographies.
Albeit, signs are not wanting--at least among his Anglo-Saxon
worshippers who stand even more in need of romanticism than their
continental brethren, --which show that, in order to uphold Wagner,
people are now beginning to draw distinctions between the man and
the artist. They dismiss the man as "human-all-too-human," but they
still maintain that there are divine qualities in his music. However
distasteful the task of disillusioning these psychological tyros may
be, they should be informed that no such division of a man into two
parts is permissible, save in Christianity (--the body and the soul--);
but that outside purely religious spheres it is utterly unwarrantable.
There can be no such strange divorce between a bloom and the plant on
which it blows, and has a black woman ever been known to give birth to
a white child?
Wagner, as Nietzsche tells us on p. 19, "was something complete, he was
a typical _decadent,_ in whom every sign of 'free will' was lacking,
in whom every feature was necessary." Wagner, allow me to add, was
a typical representative of the nineteenth century, which was the
century of contradictory values, of opposed instincts, and of every
kind of inner disharmony. The genuine, the classical artists of that
period, such men as Heine, Goethe, Stendhal, and Gobineau, overcame
their inner strife, and each succeeded in making a harmonious whole
out of himself--not indeed without a severe struggle; for everyone of
them suffered from being the child of his age, _i.e.,_ a decadent. The
only difference between them and the romanticists lies in the fact
that they (the former) were conscious of what was wrong with them, and
possessed the will and the strength to overcome their illness; whereas
the romanticists chose the easier alternative--namely, that of shutting
their eyes on themselves.
"I am just as much a child of my age as Wagner--_i.e.,_ I am a
_decadent"_ says Nietzsche. "The only difference is that I recognised
the fact, that I struggled against it."[6]
What Wagner did was characteristic of all romanticists and contemporary
artists: he drowned and overshouted his inner discord by means of
exuberant pathos and wild exaltation. Far be it from me to value
Wagner's music _in extenso_ here--this is scarcely a fitting
opportunity to do so;--but I think it might well be possible to show,
on purely psychological grounds, how impossible it was for a man like
Wagner to produce real art. For how can harmony, order, symmetry,
mastery, proceed from uncontrolled discord, disorder, disintegration,
and chaos? The fact that an art which springs from such a marshy soil
may, like certain paludal plants, be "wonderful," "gorgeous," and
"overwhelming," cannot be denied; but true art it is not. It is so just
as little as Gothic architecture is,--that style which, in its efforts
to escape beyond the tragic contradiction in its mediæval heart, yelled
its hysterical cry heavenwards and even melted the stones of its
structures into a quivering and fluid jet, in order to give adequate
expression to the painful and wretched conflict then raging between the
body and the soul.
That Wagner, too, was a great sufferer, there can be no doubt; not,
however, a sufferer from strength, like a true artist, but from
weakness--the weakness of his age, which he never overcame. It is for
this reason that he should be rather pitied than judged as he is now
being judged by his German and English critics, who, with thoroughly
neurotic suddenness, have acknowledged their revulsion of feeling a
little too harshly.
"I have carefully endeavoured not to deride, or deplore, or detest ..."
says Spinoza, "but to understand"; and these words ought to be our
guide, not only in the case of Wagner, but in all things.
Inner discord is a terrible affliction and nothing is so certain to
produce that nervous irritability which is so trying to the patient
as well as to the outer world, as this so-called spiritual disease.
Nietzsche was probably quite right when he said the only real and
true music that Wagner ever composed did not consist of his elaborate
arias and overtures, but of ten or fifteen bars which, dispersed here
and there, gave expression to the composer's profound and genuine
melancholy. But this melancholy had to be overcome, and Wagner with
the blood of a _cabotin_ in his veins, resorted to the remedy that
was nearest to hand--that is to say, the art of bewildering others
and himself. Thus he remained ignorant about himself all his life;
for there was, as Nietzsche rightly points out (p. 37, _note_),
not sufficient pride in the man for him to desire to know or to
suffer gladly the truth concerning his real nature. As an actor his
ruling passion was vanity; but in his case it was correlated with a
semi-conscious knowledge of the fact that all was not right with him
and his art. It was this that caused him to suffer. His egomaniacal
behaviour and his almost Rousseauesque fear and suspicion of others
were only the external manifestations of his inner discrepancies. But,
to repeat what I have already said, these abnormal symptoms are not in
the least incompatible with Wagner's music, they are rather its very
cause, the root from which it springs.
In reality, therefore, Wagner the man and Wagner the artist were
undoubtedly one, and constituted a splendid romanticist. His music as
well as his autobiography are proofs of his wonderful gifts in this
direction. His success in his time, as in ours, is due to the craving
of the modern world for actors, sorcerers, bewilderers and idealists
who are able to conceal the ill-health and the weakness that prevail,
and who please by intoxicating and exalting. But this being so, the
world must not be disappointed to find the hero of a preceding age
explode in the next. It must not be astonished to find a disparity
between the hero's private life and his "elevating" art or romantic and
idealistic gospel. As long as people will admire heroic attitudes more
than heroism, such disillusionment is bound to be the price of their
error. In a truly great man, life-theory and life-practice, if seen
from a sufficiently lofty point of view, must and do always agree; in
an actor, in a romanticist, in an idealist, and in a Christian, there
is always a yawning chasm between the two, which, whatever well-meaning
critics may do, cannot be bridged posthumously by acrobatic feats _in
psychologicis._
Let anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche's life and theory.
Let anyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in
his _Ecce Homo,_ but as we find it related by all his biographers,
friends and foes alike; and what will be the result? Even if we ignore
his works--the blooms which blowed from time to time from his life--we
absolutely cannot deny the greatness of the man's _private practice,_
and if we fully understand and appreciate the latter, we must be
singularly deficient in instinct and in _flair_ if we do not suspect
that some of this greatness is reflected in his life-task.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
LONDON, JULY 1911.
[Footnote 1: It should be noted that the first and second editions of
these essays on Wagner appeared in pamphlet form, for which the above
first preface was written.]
[Footnote 2: Fisher Unwin, 1911.]
[Footnote 3: T. N. Foulis, 1910.]
[Footnote 4: See _Richard Wagner,_ by Houston Stuart Chamberlain
(translated by G. A. Hight), pp. 15, 16.]
[Footnote 5: Constable & Co., 1911.]
[Footnote 6: See Author's Preface to "The Case of Wagner" in this
volume.]
THE CASE OF WAGNER
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM
A LETTER FROM TURIN, MAY 1888
"RIDENDO DICERE SEVERUM ..."
PREFACE
I am writing this to relieve my mind. It is not malice alone which
makes me praise Bizet at the expense of Wagner in this essay. Amid a
good deal of jesting I wish to make one point clear which does not
admit of levity. To turn my back on Wagner was for me a piece of fate;
to get to like anything else whatever afterwards was for me a triumph.
Nobody, perhaps, had ever been more dangerously involved in Wagnerism,
nobody had defended himself more obstinately against it, nobody had
ever been so overjoyed at ridding himself of it. A long history!--Shall
I give it a name?--If I were a moralist, who knows what I might not
call it! Perhaps a piece of _self-mastery._--But the philosopher does
not like the moralist, neither does he like high-falutin' words....
What is the first and last thing that a philosopher demands of himself?
To overcome his age in himself, to become "timeless." With what then
does the philosopher have the greatest fight? With all that in him
which makes him the child of his time. Very well then! I am just as
much a child of my age as Wagner--_i.e.,_ I am a decadent. The only
difference is that I recognised the fact, that I struggled against it.
The philosopher in me struggled against it.
My greatest preoccupation hitherto has been the problem of _decadence,_
and I had reasons for this. "Good and evil" form only a playful
subdivision of this problem. If one has trained one's eye to detect
the symptoms of decline, one also understands morality,--one
understands what lies concealed beneath its holiest names and tables
of values: _e.g., impoverished_ life, the will to nonentity, great
exhaustion. Morality _denies_ life.... In order to undertake such a
mission I was obliged to exercise self-discipline:--I had to side
against all that was morbid in myself including Wagner, including
Schopenhauer, including the whole of modern _humanity._--A profound
estrangement, coldness and soberness towards all that belongs to my
age, all that was contemporary: and as the highest wish, Zarathustra's
eye, an eye which surveys the whole phenomenon--mankind--from an
enormous distance,--which look down upon it.--For such a goal--what
sacrifice would not have been worth while? What "self-mastery"! What
"self-denial"!
The greatest event of my life took the form of a _recovery._ Wagner
belongs only to my diseases.
Not that I wish to appear ungrateful to this disease. If in this essay
I support the proposition that Wagner is _harmful,_ I none the less
wish to point out unto whom, in spite of all, he is indispensable--to
the philosopher. Anyone else may perhaps be able to get on without
Wagner: but the philosopher is not free to pass him by. The philosopher
must be the evil conscience of his age,--but to this end he must
be possessed of its best knowledge. And what better guide, or more
thoroughly efficient revealer of the soul, could be found for the
labyrinth of the modern spirit than Wagner? Through Wagner modernity
speaks her most intimate language: it conceals neither its good nor
its evil; it has thrown off all shame. And, conversely, one has almost
calculated the whole of the value of modernity once one is clear
concerning what is good and evil in Wagner. I can perfectly well
understand a musician of to-day who says: "I hate Wagner but I can
endure no other music." But I should also understand a philosopher who
said: "Wagner is modernity in concentrated form." There is no help for
it, we must first be Wagnerites....
THE CASE OF WAGNER
1.
Yesterday--would you believe it?--I heard _Bizet's_ masterpiece for the
twentieth time. Once more I attended with the same gentle reverence;
once again I did not run away. This triumph over my impatience
surprises me. How such a work completes one! Through it one almost
becomes a "masterpiece" oneself.--And, as a matter of fact, each time
I heard _Carmen_ it seemed to me that I was more of a philosopher, a
better philosopher than at other times: I became so forbearing, so
happy, so Indian, so _settled...._ To sit for five hours: the first
step to holiness!--May I be allowed to say that Bizet's orchestration
is the only one that I can endure now? That other orchestration which
is all the rage at present--the Wagnerian--is brutal, artificial and
"unsophisticated" withal, hence its appeal to all the three senses of
the modern soul at once. How terribly Wagnerian orchestration affects
me! I call it the _Sirocco._ A disagreeable sweat breaks out all over
me. All my fine weather vanishes.
Bizet's music seems to me perfect. It comes forward lightly,
gracefully, stylishly. It is lovable, it does not sweat. "All that
is good is easy, everything divine runs with light feet": this is
the first principle of my æsthetics. This music is wicked, refined,
fatalistic: and withal remains popular,--it possesses the refinement of
a race, not of an individual. It is rich. It is definite. It builds,
organises, completes: and in this sense it stands as a contrast to the
polypus in music, to "endless melody." Have more painful, more tragic
accents ever been heard on the stage before? And how are they obtained?
Without grimaces! Without counterfeiting of any kind! Free from the
_lie_ of the grand style!--In short: this music assumes that the
listener is intelligent even as a musician,--thereby it is the opposite
of Wagner, who, apart from everything else, was in any case the most
_ill-mannered_ genius on earth (Wagner takes us as if ... he repeats a
thing so often that we become desperate,--that we ultimately believe
it).
And once more: I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a
better musician, a better _listener._ Is it in any way possible to
listen better?--I even burrow behind this music with my ears. I hear
its very cause. I seem to assist at its birth. I tremble before the
dangers which this daring music runs, I am enraptured over those happy
accidents for which even Bizet himself may not be responsible.--And,
strange to say, at bottom I do not give it a thought, or am not aware
how much thought I really do give it. For quite other ideas are running
through my head the while.... Has any one ever observed that music
_emancipates_ the spirit? gives wings to thought? and that the more
one becomes a musician the more one is also a philosopher? The grey
sky of abstraction seems thrilled by flashes of lightning; the light
is strong enough to reveal all the details of things; to enable one to
grapple with problems; and the world is surveyed as if from a mountain
top.--With this I have defined philosophical pathos.--And unexpectedly
_answers_ drop into my lap, a small hailstorm of ice and wisdom, of
problems _solved._ Where am I? Bizet makes me productive. Everything
that is good makes me productive. I have gratitude for nothing else,
nor have I any other touchstone for testing what is good.
2.
Bizet's work also saves; Wagner is not the only "Saviour." With it one
bids farewell to the _damp_ north and to all the fog of the Wagnerian
ideal. Even the action in itself delivers us from these things. From
Mérimée it has this logic even in passion, from him it has the direct
line, _inexorable_ necessity; but what it has above all else is that
which belongs to sub-tropical zones--that dryness of atmosphere, that
_limpidezza_ of the air. Here in every respect the climate is altered.
Here another kind of sensuality, another kind of sensitiveness and
another kind of cheerfulness make their appeal. This music is gay, but
not in a French or German way. Its gaiety is African; fate hangs over
it, its happiness is short, sudden, without reprieve. I envy Bizet
for having had the courage of this sensitiveness, which hitherto in
the cultured music of Europe has found no means of expression,--of
this southern, tawny, sunburnt sensitiveness.... What a joy the golden
afternoon of its happiness is to us! When we look out, with this music
in our minds, we wonder whether we have ever seen the sea so _calm._
And how soothing is this Moorish dancing! How, for once, even our
insatiability gets sated by its lascivious melancholy!--And finally
love, love translated back into _Nature!_ Not the love of a "cultured
girl!"--no Senta-sentimentality.[1] But love as fate, as a fatality,
cynical, innocent, cruel,--and precisely in this way _Nature!_ The love
whose means is war, whose very essence is the _mortal hatred_ between
the sexes!--I know no case in which the tragic irony, which constitutes
the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so terrible
a formula, as in the last cry of Don José with which the work ends:
"Yes, it is I who have killed her,
I--my adored Carmen!"
--Such a conception of love (the only one worthy of a philosopher)
is rare: it distinguishes one work of art from among a thousand
others. For, as a rule, artists are no better than the rest of the
world, they are even worse--they _misunderstand_ love. Even Wagner
misunderstood it. They imagine that they are selfless in it because
they appear to be seeking the advantage of another creature often
to their own disadvantage. But in return they want to _possess_ the
other creature.... Even God is no exception to this rule, he is
very far from thinking "What does it matter to thee whether I love
thee or not?"--He becomes terrible if he is not loved in return.
"_L'amour_--and with this principle one carries one's point against
Gods and men--_est de tous les sentiments le plus égoïste, et par
conséquent, lorsqu'il est blessé, le moins généreux"_ (B. Constant).
3.
Perhaps you are beginning to perceive how very much this music
_improves_ me?--_Il faut méditerraniser la musique:_ and I have my
reasons for this principle ("Beyond Good and Evil," pp. 216 _et seq._).
The return to Nature, health, good spirits, youth, _virtue!_--And yet I
was one of the most corrupted Wagnerites.... I was able to take Wagner
seriously. Oh, this old magician! what tricks has he not played upon
us! The first thing his art places in our hands is a magnifying glass:
we look through it, and we no longer trust our own eyes.--Everything
grows bigger, _even Wagner grows bigger...._ What a clever rattlesnake.
Throughout his life he rattled "resignation," "loyalty," and "purity"
about our ears, and he retired from the _corrupt_ world with a song of
praise to chastity! !--And we believed it all....
--But you will not listen to me? You _prefer_ even the _problem_
of Wagner to that of Bizet? But neither do I underrate it; it has
its charm. The problem of salvation is even a venerable problem.
Wagner pondered over nothing so deeply as over salvation: his opera
is the opera of salvation. Someone always wants to be saved in
his operas,--now it is a youth; anon it is a maid,--this is _his
problem._--And how lavishly he varies his _leitmotif_! What rare and
melancholy modulations! If it were not for Wagner, who would teach us
that innocence has a preference for saving interesting sinners? (the
case in "Tannhäuser"). Or that even the eternal Jew gets saved and
_settled down_ when he marries? (the case in the "Flying Dutchman").
Or that corrupted old females prefer to be saved by chaste young men?
(the case of Kundry). Or that young hysterics like to be saved by
their doctor? (the case in "Lohengrin"). Or that beautiful girls most
love to be saved by a knight who also happens to be a Wagnerite? (the
case in the "Mastersingers"). Or that even married women also like
to be saved by a knight? (the case of Isolde). Or that the venerable
Almighty, after having compromised himself morally in all manner of
ways, is at last delivered by a free spirit and an immoralist? (the
case in the "Ring"). Admire, more especially this last piece of wisdom!
Do you understand it? I--take good care not to understand it....
That it is possible to draw yet other lessons from the works above
mentioned,--I am much more ready to prove than to dispute. That one
may be driven by a Wagnerian ballet to desperation--_and_ to virtue!
(once again the case in "Tannhäuser"). That not going to bed at the
right time may be followed by the worst consequences (once again the
case of "Lohengrin"),--That one can never be too sure of the spouse
one actually marries (for the third time, the case of "Lohengrin").
"Tristan and Isolde" glorifies the perfect husband who, in a certain
case, can ask only one question: "But why have ye not told me this
before? Nothing could be simpler than that!" Reply:
"That I cannot tell thee.
And what thou askest,
That wilt thou never learn."
"Lohengrin" contains a solemn ban upon all investigation and
questioning. In this way Wagner stood for the Christian concept,
"Thou must and shalt _believe!_" It is a crime against the highest
and the holiest to be scientific.... The "Flying Dutchman" preaches
the sublime doctrine that woman can moor the most erratic soul, or
to put it into Wagnerian terms "save" him. Here we venture to ask a
question. Supposing that this were actually true, would it therefore
be desirable?--What becomes of the "eternal Jew" whom a woman adores
and _enchains?_ He simply ceases from being eternal; he marries,--that
is to say, he concerns us no longer.--Transferred into the realm of
reality, the danger for the artist and for the genius--and these
are of course the "eternal Jews"--resides in woman: _adoring_ women
are their ruin. Scarcely any one has sufficient character not to be
corrupted--"saved" when he finds himself treated as a God:--he then
immediately condescends to woman.--Man is a coward in the face of all
that is eternally feminine: and this the girls know.--In many cases of
woman's love, and perhaps precisely in the most famous ones, the love
is no more than a refined form of _parasitism,_ a making one's nest
in another's soul and sometimes even in another's flesh--Ah! and how
constantly at the cost of the host!
We know the fate of Goethe in old-maidish moralin-corroded Germany. He
was always offensive to Germans, he found honest admirers only among.
Jewesses. Schiller, "noble" Schiller, who cried flowery words into
their ears,--he was a man after their own heart. What did they reproach
Goethe with?--with the Mount of Venus, and with having composed certain
Venetian epigrams. Even Klopstock preached him a moral sermon; there
was a time when Herder was fond of using the word "Priapus" when he
spoke of Goethe. Even "Wilhelm Meister" seemed to be only a symptom
of decline, of a moral "going to the dogs." The "Menagerie of tame
cattle," the worthlessness of the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr,
who finally bursts out in a plaint which _Biterolf_[2] might well
have sung: "nothing so easily makes a painful impression as _when a
great mind despoils itself of its wings and strives for virtuosity in
something greatly inferior, while it renounces more lofty aims."_ But
the most indignant of all was the cultured woman: all smaller courts
in Germany, every kind of "Puritanism" made the sign of the cross
at the sight of Goethe, at the thought of the "unclean spirit" in
Goethe.--This history was what Wagner set to music. He _saves_ Goethe,
that goes without saying; but he does so in such a clever way that he
also takes the side of the cultured woman.
Goethe gets saved: a prayer saves him, a cultured woman _draws him out
of the mire._
--As to what Goethe would have thought of Wagner?--Goethe once set
himself the question, "what danger hangs over all romanticists: the
fate of romanticists?" His answer was: "To choke over the rumination
of moral and religious absurdities." In short: _Parsifal...._ The
philosopher writes thereto an epilogue. _Holiness_--the only remaining
higher value still seen by the mob or by woman, the horizon of the
ideal for all those who are naturally short-sighted. To philosophers,
however, this horizon, like every other, is a mere misunderstanding, a
sort of slamming of the door in the face of the real beginning of their
world,--their danger, their ideal, their desideratum.... In more polite
language: _La Philosophie ne suffit pas au grand nombre. Il lui faut la
sainteté...._
4.
I shall once more relate the history of the "Ring." This is its proper
place. It is also the history of a salvation: except that in this case
it is Wagner himself who is saved,--Half his life-time Wagner believed
in the _Revolution_ as only a Frenchman could have believed in it. He
sought it in the runic inscriptions of myths, he thought he had found
a typical revolutionary in Siegfried.-"Whence arises all the evil in
this world?" Wagner asked himself. From "old contracts": he replied,
as all revolutionary ideologists have done. In plain English: from
customs, laws, morals, institutions, from all those things upon which
the ancient world and ancient society rests. "How can one get rid of
the evil in this world? How can one get rid of ancient society?" Only
by declaring war against "contracts" (traditions, morality). _This
Siegfried does._ He starts early at the game, very early: his origin
itself is already a declaration of war against morality--he is the
result of adultery, of incest.... Not the saga, but Wagner himself is
the inventor of this radical feature; in this matter he _corrected_
the saga.... Siegfried continues as he began: he follows only his
first impulse, he flings all tradition, all respect, all _fear_ to the
winds. Whatever displeases him he strikes down. He tilts irreverently
at old god-heads. His principal undertaking, however, is to emancipate
woman,--"to deliver Brunnhilda." ... Siegfried and Brunnhilda; the
sacrament of free love; the dawn of the golden age; the twilight of the
Gods of old morality--_evil is got rid of...._
For a long while Wagner's ship sailed happily along this course. There
can be no doubt that along it Wagner sought his highest goal.--What
happened? A misfortune. The ship dashed on to a reef; Wagner had run
aground. The reef was Schopenhauer's philosophy; Wagner had stuck fast
on a _contrary_ view of the world. What had he set to music? Optimism?
Wagner was ashamed. It was moreover an optimism for which Schopenhauer
had devised an evil expression,--_unscrupulous_ optimism. He was more
than ever ashamed. He reflected for some time; his position seemed
desperate.... At last a path of escape seemed gradually to open before
him: what if the reef on which he had been wrecked could be interpreted
as a goal, as the ulterior motive, as the actual purpose of his
journey? To be wrecked here, this was also a goal. _Bene navigavi cum
naufragium feci ..._ and he translated the "Ring" into Schopenhauerian
language. Everything goes wrong, everything goes to wrack and ruin, the
new world is just as bad as the old one:--Nonentity, the Indian Circe
beckons.... Brunnhilda, who according to the old plan had to retire
with a song in honour of free love, consoling the world with the hope
of a socialistic Utopia in which "all will be well"; now gets something
else to do. She must first study Schopenhauer. She must first versify
the fourth book of "The World as Will and Idea." _Wagner was saved...._
Joking apart, this _was_ a salvation. The service which Wagner owes to
Schopenhauer is incalculable. It was the _philosopher of decadence_ who
allowed the _artist of decadence_ to find himself.--
5.
_The artist of decadence._ That is the word. And here I begin to
be serious. I could not think of looking on approvingly while this
_décadent_ spoils our health--and music into the bargain. Is Wagner
a man at all? Is he not rather a disease? Everything he touches he
contaminates. _He has made music sick._
A typical _décadent_ who thinks himself necessary with his corrupted
taste, who arrogates to himself a higher taste, who tries to establish
his depravity as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment.
And no one guards against it. His powers of seduction attain monstrous
proportions, holy incense hangs around him, the misunderstanding
concerning him is called the Gospel,--and he has certainly not
converted only the _poor in spirit_ to his cause!
I should like to open the window a little. Air! More air!--