certain faces I see the expression of gratitude; I even hear modest but
merry laughter. I prefer to be understood here as in other things. But
since a certain animal, _the worm of_ Empire, the famous _Rhinoxera,_
has become lodged in the vineyards of the German spirit, nobody any
longer understands a word I say. The _Kreuz-Zeitung_ has brought this
home to me, not to speak of the _Litterarisches Centralblatt_ I have
given the Germans the deepest books that they have ever possessed--a
sufficient reason for their not having understood a word of them.... If
in this essay I declare war against Wagner--and incidentally against a
certain form of German taste, if I seem to use strong language about
the cretinism of Bayreuth, it must not be supposed that I am in the
least anxious to glorify any other musician. Other musicians are not to
be considered by the side of Wagner. Things are generally bad. Decay
is universal. Disease lies at the very root of things. If Wagner's
name represents the ruin of music, just as Bernini's stands for the
ruin of sculpture, he is not on that account its cause. All he did
was to accelerate the fall,--though we are quite prepared to admit
that he did it in a way which makes one recoil with horror from this
almost instantaneous decline and fall to the depths. He possessed
the ingenuousness of decadence: this constituted his superiority. He
believed in it. He did not halt before any of its logical consequences.
The others hesitated--that is their distinction. They have no
other. What is common to both Wagner and "the others" consists in
this: the decline of all organising power; the abuse of traditional
means, without the capacity or the aim that would justify this. The
counterfeit imitation of grand forms, for which nobody nowadays is
strong, proud, self-reliant and healthy enough; excessive vitality in
small details; passion at all costs; refinement as an expression of
impoverished life, ever more nerves in the place of muscle. I know
only one musician who to-day would be able to compose an overture as
an organic whole: and nobody else knows him.[7] He who is famous now,
does not write better music than Wagner, but only less characteristic,
less definite music:--less definite, because half measures, even in
decadence, cannot stand by the side of completeness. But Wagner was
complete; Wagner represented thorough corruption; Wagner has had
the courage, the will, and the conviction for corruption. What does
Johannes Brahms matter? ... It was his good fortune to be misunderstood
by Germany he was taken to be an antagonist of Wagner--people required
an antagonist!--But he did not write necessary music, above all he
wrote too much music!--When one is not rich one should at least have
enough pride to be poor!... The sympathy which here and there was meted
out to Brahms, apart from party interests and party misunderstandings,
was for a long time a riddle to me: until one day through an accident,
almost, I discovered that he affected a particular type of man. He
has the melancholy of impotence. His creations are not the result of
plenitude, he thirsts after abundance. Apart from what he plagiarises,
from what he borrows from ancient or exotically modern styles--he is
a master in the art of copying,--there remains as his most individual
quality a _longing...._ And this is what the dissatisfied of all
kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little
of a personality, too little of a central figure.... The "impersonal,"
those who are not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the
musician of a species of dissatisfied women. Fifty steps further on,
and we find the female Wagnerite--just as we find Wagner himself fifty
paces ahead of Brahms.--The female Wagnerite is a more definite, a more
interesting, and above all, a more attractive type. Brahms is touching
so long as he dreams or mourns over himself in private--in this respect
he is modern;--he becomes cold, we no longer feel at one with him
when he poses as the child of the classics. ... People like to call
Brahms Beethoven's heir: I know of no more cautious euphemism.--All
that which to-day makes a claim to being the grand style in music is
on precisely that account either false to us or false to itself. This
alternative is suspicious enough: in itself it contains a casuistic
question concerning the value of the two cases. The instinct of the
majority protests against the alternative; "false to us"--they do not
wish to be cheated;--and I myself would certainly always prefer this
type to the other ("False to itself"). This is _my_ taste.--Expressed
more clearly for the sake of the "poor in spirit" it amounts to this:
Brahms _or_ Wagner.... Brahms is _not_ an actor.--A very great part
of other musicians may be summed up in the concept Brahms.--I do not
wish to say anything about the clever apes of Wagner, as for instance
Goldmark: when one has "The Queen of Sheba" to one's name, one belongs
to a menagerie,--one ought to put oneself on show.--Nowadays all things
that can be done well and even with a master hand are small. In this
department alone is honesty still possible. Nothing, however, can cure
music as a whole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to be the
expression of general physiological contradiction,--which is, in fact,
to be modern.
The best instruction, the most conscientious schooling, the most
thorough familiarity, yea, and even isolation, with the Old
Masters,--all this only acts as a palliative, or, more strictly
speaking, has but an illusory effect, because the first condition
of the right thing is no longer in our bodies; whether this first
condition be the strong race of a Händel or the overflowing animal
spirits of a Rossini. Not everyone has the right to every teacher:
and this holds good of whole epochs.--In itself it is not impossible
that there are still remains of stronger natures, typical unadapted
men, somewhere in Europe: from this quarter the advent of a somewhat
belated form of beauty and perfection, even in music, might still be
hoped for. But the most that we can expect to see are exceptional
cases. From the rule, that corruption is paramount, that corruption is
a fatality,--not even a God can save music.
EPILOGUE
And now let us take breath and withdraw a moment from this narrow world
which necessarily must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries
relative to the value of _persons._ A philosopher feels that he wants
to wash his hands after he has concerned himself so long with the "Case
of Wagner." I shall now give my notion of what is _modern._ According
to the measure of energy of every age, there is also a standard that
determines which virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden. The
age either has the virtues of _ascending_ life, in which case it
resists the virtues of degeneration with all its deepest instincts.
Or it is in itself an age of degeneration, in which case it requires
the virtues of declining life,--in which case it hates everything
that justifies itself, solely as being the outcome of a plenitude,
or a superabundance of strength. Æsthetic is inextricably bound up
with these biological principles: there is decadent æsthetic, and
_classical_ æsthetic,--"Beauty in itself" is just as much a chimera
as any other kind of idealism.--Within the narrow sphere of the
so-called moral values, no greater antithesis could be found than that
of _master-morality_ and the morality of _Christian_ valuations: the
latter having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (--The gospels
present us with the same physiological types, as do the novels of
Dostoiewsky), the master-morality ("Roman," "pagan," "classical,"
"Renaissance"), on the other hand, being the symbolic speech of
well-constitutedness, of _ascending_ life, and of the Will to Power
as a vital principle. Master-morality _affirms_ just as instinctively
as Christian morality _denies_ ("God," "Beyond," "self-denial,"--all
of them negations). The first reflects its plenitude upon things,--it
transfigures, it embellishes, it _rationalises_ the world,--the latter
impoverishes, bleaches, mars the value of things; it _suppresses_ the
world. "World" is a Christian term of abuse. These antithetical forms
in the optics of values, are _both_ necessary: they are different
points of view which cannot be circumvented either with arguments or
counter-arguments. One cannot refute Christianity: it is impossible to
refute a diseased eyesight. That people should have combated pessimism
as if it had been a philosophy, was the very acme of learned stupidity.
The concepts "true" and "untrue" do not seem to me to have any sense in
optics.--That, alone, which has to be guarded against is the falsity,
the instinctive duplicity which _would fain_ regard this antithesis as
no antithesis at all: just as Wagner did,--and his mastery in this
kind of falseness was of no mean order. To cast side-long glances at
master-morality, at _noble_ morality (--Icelandic saga is perhaps the
greatest documentary evidence of these values), and at the same time to
have the opposite teaching, the "gospel of the lowly," the doctrine of
the _need_ of salvation, on one's lips!... Incidentally, I admire the
modesty of Christians who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I could _not_
endure to hear the sound of certain words on Wagner's lips. There are
some concepts which are too good for Bayreuth.... What? Christianity
adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps _by_ female Wagnerites--for,
in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly _feminini generis--?_ Again I
say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me,... If Wagner were
a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the Church!--The need
of _salvation,_ the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing in
common with such clowns: it is the most straightforward expression of
decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful affirmation of
decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian wishes _to
be rid_ of himself. _Le mot est toujours haïssable._ Noble morality,
master-morality, on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant saying of
yea to _one's self,_--it is the self-affirmation and self-glorification
of life; it also requires sublime symbols and practices; but only
"because its heart is too full." The whole of beautiful art and of
great art belongs here: their common essence is gratitude. But we must
allow it a certain instinctive repugnance _to décadents,_ and a scorn
and horror of the latter's symbolism: such things almost prove it.
The noble Romans considered Christianity as a _fœda superstitio_:
let me call to your minds the feelings which the last German of noble
taste--Goethe--had in regard to the cross. It is idle to look for more
valuable, more _necessary_ contrasts....[8]
But the kind of falsity which is characteristic of the Bayreuthians is
not exceptional to-day. We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian
gentleman. This _innocence_ in contradiction, this "clean conscience"
in falsehood, is rather modern _par excellence,_ with it modernity is
almost defined. Biologically, modern man represents a _contradiction of
values,_ he sits between two stools, he says yea and nay in one breath.
No wonder that it is precisely in our age that falseness itself became
flesh and blood, and even genius! No wonder _Wagner_ dwelt amongst
us! It was not without reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of
modernity.... But all of us, though we do not know it, involuntarily
have values, words, formulæ, and morals in our bodies, which are
quite _antagonistic_ in their origin--regarded from a physiological
standpoint, we are _false...._ How would a _diagnosis of the modern
soul_ begin? With a determined incision into this agglomeration of
contradictory instincts, with the total suppression of its antagonistic
values, with vivisection applied to its most _instructive_ case. To
philosophers the "Case of Wagner" is a _windfall_--this essay, as you
observe, was inspired by gratitude.
[Footnote 1: Senta is the heroine in the "Flying Dutchman,"--Tr.]
[Footnote 2: A character in "Tannhäuser."--_Tr._]
[Footnote 3: See "The Will to Power," vol. ii, authorised English
edition.--_Tr._]
[Footnote 4: _Note._--It was a real disaster for æsthetics when the
word drama got to be translated by "action." Wagner is not the only
culprit here; the whole world does the same;--even the philologists
who ought to know better. What ancient drama had in view was _grand
pathetic scenes,_--it even excluded action (or placed it _before_
the piece or _behind_ the scenes). The word drama is of Doric
origin, and according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant
"event," "history,"--both words in a hieratic sense. The oldest drama
represented local legends, "sacred history," upon which the foundation
of the cult rested (--thus it was not "action," but fatality: dran in
Doric has nothing to do with action).]
[Footnote 5: Hegel and his school wrote notoriously obscure German.
--_Tr._]
[Footnote 6: Was Wagner a German at all? There are reasons enough for
putting this question. It is difficult to find a single German trait
in his character. Great learner that he was, he naturally imitated a
great deal that was German--but that is all. His very soul contradicts
everything which hitherto has been regarded as German; not to mention
German musicians!--His father was an actor of the name of Geyer....
That which has been popularised hitherto as "Wagner's life" is _fable
convenue_ if not something worse. I confess my doubts on any point
which is vouched for by Wagner alone. He 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.]
[Footnote 7: This undoubtedly refers to Nietzsche's only disciple and
friend, Peter Gast.--_Tr._]
[Footnote 8: My "Genealogy of Morals" contains the best exposition of
the antithesis _"noble morality"_ and _"Christian_ _morality_"; a more
decisive turning point in the history of religious and moral science
does not perhaps exist. This book, which is a touchstone by which I can
discover who are my peers, rejoices in being accessible only to the
most elevated and most severe minds: the others have not the ears to
hear me. One must have one's passion in things, _wherein_ no one has
passion nowadays.]
NIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
By
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
PREFACE
The following chapters have been selected from past works of mine,
and not without care. Some of them date back as far as 1877. Here and
there, of course, they will be found to have been made a little more
intelligible, but above all, more brief. Read consecutively, they can
leave no one in any doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning
Wagner: we are antipodes. The reader will come to other conclusions,
too, in his perusal of these pages: for instance, that this is an
essay for psychologists and _not_ for Germans.... I have my readers
everywhere, in Vienna, St Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and
New York--but _1 have none_ in Europe's Flat-land--Germany.... And I
might even have something to say to Italians whom I love just as much
as I ... _Quousque tandem, Crispi_ ... Triple alliance: a people can
only conclude a _misalliance_ with the "Empire." ...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
TURIN, _Christmas_ 1888.
NIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER
WHEREIN I ADMIRE WAGNER.
I believe that artists very often do not know what they are best
able to do. They are much too vain. Their minds are directed to
something prouder than merely to appear like little plants, which,
with freshness, rareness, and beauty, know how to sprout from their
soil with real perfection. The ultimate goodness of their own garden
and vineyard is superciliously under-estimated by them, and their love
and their insight are not of the same quality. Here is a musician who
is a greater master than anyone else in the discovering of tones,
peculiar to suffering, oppressed, and tormented souls, who can endow
even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can approach him in the colours
of late autumn, in the indescribably touching joy of a last, a very
last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses
those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul, when cause and
effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment something may
spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating from out
the nethermost depths of human happiness, and, so to speak, from out
man's empty bumper, in which the bitterest and most repulsive drops
have mingled with the sweetest for good or evil at last. He knows
that weary shuffling along of the soul which is no longer able either
to spring or to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk; he has
the modest glance of concealed suffering, of understanding without
comfort, of leave-taking without word or sign; verily as the Orpheus
of all secret misery he is greater than anyone, and many a thing was
introduced into art for the first time by him, which hitherto had not
been given expression, had not even been thought worthy of art--the
cynical revolts, for instance, of which only the greatest sufferer is
capable, also many a small and quite microscopical feature of the soul,
as it were the scales of its amphibious nature--yes indeed, he is the
master of everything very small. But this he refuses to be! His tastes
are much more in love with vast walls and with daring frescoes! ... He
does not see that his spirit has another desire and bent--a totally
different outlook--that it prefers to squat peacefully in the corners
of broken-down houses: concealed in this way, and hidden even from
himself, he paints his really great masterpieces, all of which are very
short, often only one bar in length--there, only, does he become quite
good, great and perfect, perhaps there alone.--Wagner is one who has
suffered much--and this elevates him above other musicians.--I admire
Wagner wherever he sets _himself_ to music.--
WHEREIN I RAISE OBJECTIONS.
With all this I do not wish to imply that I regard this music as
healthy, and least of all in those places where it speaks of Wagner
himself. My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections.
Why should I therefore begin by clothing them in æsthetic formulæ?
Æsthetic is indeed nothing more than applied physiology.--The fact I
bring forward, my _"petit fait vrai"_ is that I can no longer breathe
with ease when this music begins to have its effect upon me; that my
foot immediately begins to feel indignant at it and rebels: for what
it needs is time, dance, march: even the young German Kaiser could
not march to Wagner's Imperial March,--what my foot demands in the
first place from music is that ecstasy which lies in good walking,
stepping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my circulation
also protest? Are not my intestines also troubled? And do I not become
hoarse unawares? ... in order to listen to Wagner I require Géraudel's
Pastilles.... And then I ask myself, what is it that my whole body
must have from music in general? for there is no such thing as a
soul.... I believe it must have relief: as if all animal functions
were accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant
rhythms; as if brazen and leaden life could lose its weight by means of
delicate and smooth melodies. My melancholy would fain rest its head
in the haunts and abysses of perfection: for this reason I need music.
But Wagner makes one ill--What do I care about the theatre? What do I
care about the spasms of its moral ecstasies in which the mob--and
who is not the mob to-day?--rejoices? What do I care about the whole
pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor? You are beginning to see that I
am essentially anti-theatrical at heart. For the stage, this mob art
_par excellence,_ my soul has that deepest scorn felt by every artist
to-day. With a stage success a man sinks to such an extent in my esteem
as to drop out of sight; failure in this quarter makes me prick my
ears, makes me begin to pay attention. But this was not so with Wagner;
next to the Wagner who created the most unique music that has ever
existed there was the Wagner who was essentially a man of the stage,
an actor, the most enthusiastic mimomaniac that has perhaps existed
on earth, even as a musician. And let it be said _en passant_ that if
Wagner's theory was "drama is the object, music is only a means"--his
practice was from beginning to end, the attitude is the end, drama and
even music can never be anything else than means." Music as the manner
of accentuating, of strengthening, and deepening dramatic poses and all
things which please the senses of the actor; and Wagnerian drama only
an opportunity for a host of interesting attitudes!--Alongside of all
other instincts he had the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in
everything: and, as I have already said, as a musician also.--On one
occasion, and not without trouble, I made this clear to a Wagnerite
_pur sang,_--clearness and a Wagnerite! I won't say another word.
There were reasons for adding; "For heaven's sake, be a little more
true unto yourself! We are not in Bayreuth now. In Bayreuth people
are only upright in the mass; the individual lies, he even lies to
himself. One leaves oneself at home when one goes to Bayreuth, one
gives up all right to one's own tongue and choice, to one's own taste
and even to one's own courage, one knows these things no longer as one
is wont to have them and practise them before God and the world and
between one's own four walls. In the theatre no one brings the finest
senses of his art with him, and least of all the artist who works for
the theatre,--for here loneliness is lacking; everything perfect does
not suffer a witness.... In the theatre one becomes mob, herd, woman,
Pharisee, electing cattle, patron, idiot--Wagnerite: there, the most
personal conscience is bound to submit to the levelling charm of the
great multitude, there the neighbour rules, there one _becomes_ a
neighbour."
WAGNER AS A DANGER.
1.
The aim after which more modern music is striving, which is now
given the strong but obscure name of "unending melody," can be
clearly understood by comparing it to one's feelings on entering the
sea. Gradually one loses one's footing and one ultimately abandons
oneself to the mercy or fury of the elements: one has to swim. In the
solemn, or fiery, swinging movement, first slow and then quick, of
old music--one had to do something quite different; one had to dance.
The measure which was required for this and the control of certain
balanced degrees of time and energy, forced the soul of the listener
to continual sobriety of thought.--Upon the counterplay of the cooler
currents of air which came from this sobriety, and from the warmer
breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all good music rested--Richard
Wagner wanted another kind of movement,--he overthrew the physiological
first principle of all music before his time. It was no longer a matter
of walking or dancing,--we must swim, we must hover.... This perhaps
decides the whole matter. "Unending melody" really wants to break all
the symmetry of time and strength; it actually scorns these things--Its
wealth of invention resides precisely in what to an older ear sounds
like rhythmic paradox and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence
of such a taste there would arise a danger for music--so great that we
can imagine none greater--the complete degeneration of the feeling
for rhythm, _chaos_ in the place of rhythm.... The danger reaches
its climax when such music cleaves ever more closely to naturalistic
play-acting and pantomime, which governed by no laws of form, aim at
effect and nothing more.... Expressiveness at all costs and music a
servant, a slave to attitudes--this is the end....
2.
What? would it really be the first virtue of a performance (as
performing musical artists now seem to believe), under all
circumstances to attain to a _haut-relief_ which cannot be surpassed?
If this were applied to Mozart, for instance, would it not be a
real sin against Mozart's spirit,--Mozart's cheerful, enthusiastic,
delightful and loving spirit? He who fortunately was no German, and
whose seriousness is a charming and golden seriousness and not by any
means that of a German clodhopper.... Not to speak of the earnestness
of the "marble statue." ... But you seem to think that all music is the
music of the "marble statue"? --that all music should, so to speak,
spring out of the wall and shake the listener to his very bowels? ...
Only thus could music have any effect! But on whom would the effect
be made? Upon something on which a noble artist ought never to deign
to act,--upon the mob, upon the immature! upon the blasts! upon the
diseased! upon idiots! upon _Wagnerites_!...
A MUSIC WITHOUT A FUTURE.
Of all the arts which succeed in growing on the soil of a particular
culture, music is the last plant to appear; maybe because it is the
one most dependent upon our innermost feelings, and therefore the
last to come to the surface--at a time when the culture to which it
belongs is in its autumn season and beginning to fade. It was only in
the art of the Dutch masters that the spirit of mediæval Christianity
found its expression--, its architecture of sound is the youngest,
but genuine and legitimate, sister of the Gothic. It was only in
Handel's music that the best in Luther and in those like him found
its voice, the Judeo-heroic trait which gave the Reformation a touch
of greatness--the Old Testament, _not_ the New, become music. It was
left to Mozart, to pour out the epoch of Louis XIV., and of the art
of Racine and Claude Lorrain, in _ringing_ gold; only in Beethoven's
and Rossini's music did the Eighteenth Century sing itself out--the
century of enthusiasm, broken ideals, and _fleeting joy._ All real and
original music is a swan song.--Even our last form of music, despite
its prevalence and its will to prevail, has perhaps only a short time
to live: for it sprouted from a soil which was in the throes of a
rapid subsidence,--of a culture which will soon be _submerged._ A
certain Catholicism of feeling, and a predilection for some ancient
indigenous (so-called national) ideals and eccentricities, was its
first condition. Wagner's appropriation of old sagas and songs,
in which scholarly prejudice taught us _to_ see something German
_par excellence_--now we laugh at it all, the resurrection of these
Scandinavian monsters with a thirst for ecstatic sensuality and
spiritualisation--the whole of this taking and giving on Wagner's part,
in the matter of subjects, characters, passions, and nerves, would also
give unmistakable expression to the _spirit of his music_ provided that
this music, like any other, did not know how to speak about itself save
ambiguously: for _musica is a woman...._ We must not let ourselves
be misled concerning this state of things, by the fact that at this
very moment we are living in a reaction, _in the heart itself_ of a
reaction. The age of international wars, of ultramontane martyrdom,
in fact, the whole interlude-character which typifies the present
condition of Europe, may indeed help an art like Wagner's to sudden
glory, without, however, in the least ensuring its _future prosperity._
The Germans themselves have no future....
WE ANTIPODES.