eternal substance:"--Question: how is this substance, this eternal
substance tested? The chemical analyst replies: Translate Wagner into
the real, into the modern,--let us be even more cruel, and say: into
the bourgeois! And what will then become of him?--Between ourselves, I
have tried the experiment. Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more
worthy of being recommended to a picnic-party, than to discuss Wagner
dressed in a more modern garb: for instance Parsifal, as a candidate
in divinity, with a public-school education (--the latter, quite
indispensable _for pure_ foolishness). What _surprises_ await one!
Would you believe it, that Wagner's heroines one and all, once they
have been divested of the heroic husks, are almost Indistinguishable
from Mdme. Bovary!--just as one can conceive conversely, of Flaubert's
being _well able_ to transform all his heroines into Scandinavian
or Carthaginian women, and then to offer them to Wagner in this
mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally speaking, Wagner
does not seem to have become interested in any other problems than
those which engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day. Always
five paces away from the hospital! All very modern problems, all
problems which are at home _in big cities!_ do not doubt it!... Have
you noticed (it is in keeping with this association of ideas) that
Wagner's heroines never have any children?--They _cannot_ have them,...
The despair with which Wagner tackled the problem of arranging in some
way for Siegfried's birth, betrays how modern his feelings on this
point actually were.--"emancipated woman"--but not with any hope of
offspring.--And now here is a fact which leaves us speechless: Parsifal
is Lohengrin's father! How ever did he do it?--Ought one at this
juncture to remember that "chastity works miracles"?...
_Wagnerus dixit princeps in castitate auctoritas._
10.
And now just a word _en passant_ concerning Wagner's writings: they are
among other things a school of _shrewdness._ The system of procedures
of which Wagner disposes, might be applied to a hundred other
cases,--he that hath ears to hear let him hear. Perhaps I may lay claim
to some public acknowledgment, if I put three ox the most valuable of
these procedures into a precise form.
Everything that Wagner _cannot_ do is bad.
Wagner could do much more than he does; but his strong principles
prevent him.
Everything that Wagner _can_ do, no one will ever be able to do after
him, no one has ever done before him, and no one must ever do after
him: Wagner is godly....
These three propositions are the quintessence of Wagner's
writings;--the rest is merely--"literature."
--Not every kind of music hitherto has been in need of literature;
and it were well, to try and discover the actual reason of this. Is
it perhaps that Wagner's music is too difficult to understand? Or did
he fear precisely the reverse.--that it was too easy,--that people
might _not understand it with sufficient difficulty?_--As a matter of
fact, his whole life long, he did nothing but repeat one proposition:
that his music did not mean music alone! But something more! Something
immeasurably more!... "_Not music alone_"--_no_ musician would speak
in this way. I repeat, Wagner could not create things as a whole; he
had no choice, he was obliged to create things in bits; with "motives,"
attitudes, formulæ, duplications, and hundreds of repetitions, he
remained a rhetorician in music,--and that is why he was at bottom
_forced_ to press "this means" into the foreground. "Music can never be
anything else than a means": this was his theory; but above all it was
the only _practice_ that lay open to him. No musician however thinks
in this way.--Wagner was in need of literature, in order to persuade
the whole world to take his music seriously, profoundly, "because it
_meant_ an infinity of things"; all his life he was the commentator of
the "Idea."--What does Elsa stand for? But without a doubt, Elsa is
"the unconscious _mind of the people_" (--"when I realised this, I
naturally became a thorough revolutionist"--).
Do not let us forget that, when Hegel and Schelling were misleading
the minds of Germany, Wagner was still young: that he guessed, or
rather fully grasped, that the only thing which Germans take seriously
is--"the idea,"--that is to say, something obscure, uncertain,
wonderful; that among Germans lucidity is an objection, logic a
refutation. Schopenhauer rigorously pointed out the dishonesty of
Hegel's and Schelling's age,--rigorously, but also unjustly; for he
himself, the pessimistic old counterfeiter, was in no way more "honest"
than his more famous contemporaries. But let us leave morality out of
the question, Hegel is a _matter of taste...._ And not only of German
but of European taste! ... A taste which Wagner understood!--which he
felt equal to! which he has immortalised!--All he did was to apply
it to music--he invented a style for himself, which might mean an
"infinity of things,"--he was _Hegel's_ heir.... Music as "Idea."--
And how well Wagner was understood!--The same kind of man who used
to gush over Hegel, now gushes over Wagner; in his school they
even _write_ Hegelian.[5] But he who understood Wagner best, was
the German youthlet. The two words "infinity" and "meaning" were
sufficient for this: at their sound the youthlet immediately began
to feel exceptionally happy. Wagner did _not_ conquer these boys
with music, but with the "idea":--it is the enigmatical vagueness
of his art, its game of hide-and-seek amid a hundred symbols, its
polychromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads. It is Wagner's
genius for forming clouds, his sweeps and swoops through the air,
his ubiquity and nullibiety--precisely the same qualities with which
Hegel led and lured in his time!--Moreover in the presence of Wagner's
multifariousness, plenitude and arbitrariness, they seem to themselves
justified--"saved." Tremulously they listen while the _great symbols_
in his art seem to make themselves heard from out the misty distance,
with a gentle roll of thunder, and they are not at all displeased if at
times it gets a little grey, gruesome and cold. Are they not one and
all, like Wagner himself, on _quite intimate terms_ with bad weather,
with German weather! Wotan is their God: but Wotan is the God of bad
weather.... They are right, how could these German youths--in their
present condition,--miss what we others, we _halcyonians,_ miss in
Wagner? _i.e.: la gaya scienza;_ light feet, wit, fire, grave, grand
logic, stellar dancing, wanton intellectuality, the vibrating light of
the South, the calm sea--perfection....
11.
--I have mentioned the sphere to which Wagner belongs--certainly not to
the history of music. What, however, does he mean historically?--_The
rise of the actor in music,_ a momentous event which not only leads me
to think but also to fear.
In a word: "Wagner and Liszt." Never yet have the "uprightness"
and "genuineness" of musicians been put to such a dangerous test.
It is glaringly obvious: great success, mob success is no longer
the achievement of the genuine,--in order to get it a man must be
an actor!--Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner--they both prove one
and the same thing: that in declining civilisations, wherever
the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes superfluous,
prejudicial, unfavourable. The actor, alone, can still kindle _great_
enthusiasm.--And thus it is _his golden age_ which is now dawning--his
and that of all those who are in any way related to him. With drums
and fifes, Wagner marches at the head of all artists in declamation,
in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing the conductors
of orchestras, the scene-shifters and stage-singers, not to forget
the orchestra:--he "delivered" them from monotony.... The movement
that Wagner created has spread even to the land of knowledge: whole
sciences pertaining to music are rising slowly, out of centuries
of scholasticism. As an example of what I mean, let me point more
particularly to _Riemann's_ services to rhythmics; he was the first
who called attention to the leading idea in punctuation--even
for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad word; he called it
"phrasing").--All these people, and I say it with gratitude, are
the best, the most respectable among Wagner's admirers--they have a
perfect right to honour Wagner. The same instinct unites them with one
another; in him they recognise their highest type, and since he has
inflamed them with his own ardour they feel themselves transformed
into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if anywhere,
Wagner's influence has really been _beneficent._ Never before has
there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere.
Wagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now
exact and _obtain_ from themselves, they had never exacted before
Wagner's time--before then they had been too modest. Another spirit
prevails on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most difficult
things are expected, blame is severe, praise very scarce,--the good
and the excellent have become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary,
nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this
has a more "dramatic" effect. Even talent is out of the question.
Expressiveness at all costs, which is what the Wagnerian ideal--the
ideal of decadence--demands, is hardly compatible with talent. All that
is required for this is virtue--that is to say, training, automatism,
"self-denial." Neither taste, voices, nor gifts; Wagner's stage
requires but one thing: _Germans!..._ The definition of a German:
an obedient man with long legs.... There is a deep significance in
the fact that the rise of Wagner should have coincided with the rise
of the "Empire": both phenomena are a proof of one and the same
thing--obedience and long legs.--Never have people been more obedient,
never have they been so well ordered about. The conductors of Wagnerian
orchestras, more particularly, are worthy of an age, which posterity
will one day call, with timid awe, the _classical age of war._ Wagner
understood how to command; in this respect, too, he was a great
teacher. He commanded as a man who had exercised an inexorable will
over himself--as one who had practised lifelong discipline: Wagner
was, perhaps, the greatest example of self-violence in the whole of
the history of art (--even Alfieri, who in other respects is his
next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a Torinese).
12.
This view, that our actors have become more worthy of respect than
heretofore, does not imply that I believe them to have become less
dangerous ... But who is in any doubt as to what I want,--as to what
the _three requisitions_ are concerning which my wrath and my care and
love of art, have made me open my mouth on this occasion?
_That the stage should not become master of the arts. That the actor
should not become the corrupter of the genuine._
_That music should not become an art of lying._
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
POSTSCRIPT
The gravity of these last words allows me at this point to introduce a
few sentences out of an unprinted essay which will at least leave no
doubt as to my earnestness in regard to this question. The title of
this essay is: "What Wagner has cost us."
One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Even to-day a
vague feeling that this is so, still prevails. Even Wagner's success,
his triumph, did not uproot this feeling thoroughly. But formerly it
was strong, it was terrible; it was a gloomy hate throughout almost
three-quarters of Wagner's life. The resistance which he met with
among us Germans cannot be too highly valued or too highly honoured.
People guarded themselves against him as against an illness,--not
with arguments--it is impossible to refute an illness--, but with
obstruction, with mistrust, with repugnance, with loathing, with sombre
earnestness, as though he were a great rampant danger. The æsthetes
gave themselves away when out of three schools of German philosophy
they waged an absurd war against Wagner's principles with "ifs" and
"fors"--what did he care about principles, even his own!--The Germans
themselves had enough instinctive good sense to dispense with every
"if" and "for" in this matter. An instinct is weakened when it becomes
conscious: for by becoming conscious it makes itself feeble. If there
were any signs that in spite of the universal character of European
decadence there was still a modicum of health, still an instinctive
premonition of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the German
soul, then it would be precisely this blunt resistance to Wagner which
I should least like to see underrated. It does us honour, it gives us
some reason to hope: France no longer has such an amount of health at
her disposal. The Germans, these _loiterers par excellence,_ as history
shows, are to-day the most backward among the civilised nations of
Europe: this has its advantages,--for they are thus relatively the
youngest.
One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. It is only
quite recently that the Germans have overcome a sort of dread of
him,--the desire to be rid of him occurred to them again and again.[6]
Does anybody remember a very curious occurrence in which, quite
unexpectedly towards the end, this old feeling once more manifested
itself? It happened at Wagner's funeral. The first Wagner Society,
the one in Munich, laid a wreath on his grave with this inscription,
which immediately became famous: "Salvation to the Saviour!" Everybody
admired the lofty inspiration which had dictated this inscription, as
also the taste which seemed to be the privilege of the followers of
Wagner. Many also, however (it was singular enough), made this slight
alteration in it: "Salvation _from_ the Saviour" --People began to
breathe again.--
One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Let us try to
estimate the influence of this worship upon culture. Whom did this
movement press to the front? What did it make ever more and more
pre-eminent?--In the first place the layman's arrogance, the arrogance
of the art-maniac. Now these people are organising societies, they
wish to make their taste prevail, they even wish to pose as judges
_in rebus musicis et musicantibus._ Secondly: an ever increasing
indifference towards severe, noble and conscientious schooling in
the service of art; and in its place the belief in genius, or in
plain English, cheeky dilettantism (--the formula for this is to be
found in the _Mastersingers)._ Thirdly, and this is the worst of
all: _Theatrocracy_--, the craziness of a belief in the pre-eminence
of the theatre, in the right of the theatre to rule supreme over
the arts, over Art in general.... But this should be shouted into
the face of Wagnerites a hundred times over: that the theatre is
something lower than art, something secondary, something coarsened,
above all something suitably distorted and falsified for the mob. In
this respect Wagner altered nothing: Bayreuth is grand Opera--and not
even good opera.... The stage is a form of Demolatry in the realm of
taste, the stage is an insurrection of the mob, a _plebiscite_ against
good taste.... The case of Wagner proves this fact: he captivated the
masses--he depraved taste, he even perverted our taste for opera!--
One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. What has
Wagner-worship made out of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit?
To him belong that ambiguity and equivocation and all other qualities
which can convince the uncertain without making them conscious of why
they have been convinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer on a grand
scale. There is nothing exhausted, nothing effete, nothing dangerous
to life, nothing that slanders the world in the realm of spirit, which
has not secretly found shelter in his art; he conceals the blackest
obscurantism in the luminous orbs of the ideal. He flatters every
nihilistic (Buddhistic) instinct and togs it out in music; he flatters
every form of Christianity, every religious expression of decadence.
He that hath ears to hear let him hear: everything that has ever grown
out of the soil of impoverished life, the whole counterfeit coinage of
the transcendental and of a Beyond found its most sublime advocate in
Wagner's art, not in formulæ (Wagner is too clever to use formulæ), but
in the persuasion of the senses which in their turn makes the spirit
weary and morbid. Music in the form of Circe ... in this respect
his last work is his greatest masterpiece. In the art of seduction
"Parsifal" will for ever maintain its rank as a stroke of genius....
I admire this work. I would fain have composed it myself. Wagner was
never better inspired than towards the end. The subtlety with which
beauty and disease are united here, reaches such a height, that it
casts so to speak a shadow upon all Wagner's earlier achievements:
it seems too bright, too healthy. Do ye understand this? Health and
brightness acting like a shadow? Almost like an objection?... To this
extent are we already pure fools.... Never was their a greater Master
in heavy hieratic perfumes--Never on earth has there been such a
connoisseur of paltry infinities, of all that thrills, of extravagant
excesses, of all the feminism from out the vocabulary of happiness!
My friends, do but drink the philtres of this art! Nowhere will ye
find a more pleasant method of enervating your spirit, of forgetting
your manliness in the shade of a rosebush.... Ah, this old magician,
mightiest of Klingsors; how he wages war against us with his art,
against us free spirits! How he appeals to every form of cowardice of
the modern soul with his charming girlish notes! There never was such
a _mortal hatred_ of knowledge! One must be a very cynic in order to
resist seduction here. One must be able to bite in order to resist
worshipping at this shrine. Very well, old seducer! The cynic cautions
you--_cave canem_....
One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. I contemplate
the youthlets who have long been exposed to his infection. The first
relatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of their taste.
Wagner acts like chronic recourse to the bottle. He stultifies, he
befouls the stomach. His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling
for rhythm. What the Wagnerite calls rhythmical is what I call, to
use a Greek metaphor, "stirring a swamp." Much more dangerous than
all this, however, is the corruption of ideas. The youthlet becomes a
moon-calf, an "idealist." He stands above science, and in this respect
he has reached the master's heights. On the other hand, he assumes
the airs of a philosopher; he writes for the _Bayreuth Journal;_ he
solves all problems in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Master. But the most ghastly thing of all is the deterioration of
the nerves. Let any one wander through a large city at night, in all
directions he will hear people doing violence to instruments with
solemn rage and fury, a wild uproar breaks out at intervals. What is
happening? It is the disciples of Wagner in the act of worshipping
him.... Bayreuth is another word for a Hydro. A typical telegram from
Bayreuth would read _bereits bereut_ (I already repent). Wagner is bad
for young men; he is fatal for women. What medically speaking is a
female Wagnerite? It seems to me that a doctor could not be too serious
in putting this alternative of conscience to young women: either one
thing or the other. But they have already made their choice. You cannot
serve two Masters when one of these is Wagner. Wagner redeemed woman;
and in return woman built Bayreuth for him. Every sacrifice, every
surrender: there was nothing that they were not prepared to give him.
Woman impoverishes herself in favour of the Master, she becomes quite
touching, she stands naked before him. The female Wagnerite, the most
attractive equivocality that exists to-day: she is the incarnation of
Wagner's cause: his cause triumphs with her as its symbol.... Ah, this
old robber! He robs our young men: he even robs our women as well,
and drags them to his cell.... Ah, this old Minotaur! What has he not
already cost us? Every year processions of the finest young men and
maidens are led into his labyrinth that he may swallow them up, every
year the whole of Europe cries out "Away to Crete! Away to Crete!" ...
SECOND POSTSCRIPT