I made my first plunge into life armed with some errors and some
exaggerations, but that, in any case, I began with _hope_ in my
heart. In the philosophical pessimism of the nineteenth century, I
recognised--who knows by what by-paths of personal experience--the
symptom of a higher power of thought, a more triumphant plenitude
of life, than had manifested itself hitherto in the philosophies of
Hume, Kant and Hegel!--I regarded _tragic_ knowledge as the most
beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most noble,
most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of its
overflowing wealth, as a justifiable _luxury._ In the same way, I
began by interpreting Wagner's music as the expression of a Dionysian
powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means
of which a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ages,
was seeking at last to burst its bonds, quite indifferent to how
much of that which nowadays calls itself culture, would thereby be
shaken to ruins. You see how I misinterpreted, you see also, what I
_bestowed_ upon Wagner and Schopenhauer--myself.... Every art and
every philosophy may be regarded either as a cure or as a stimulant
to ascending or declining life: they always presuppose suffering and
sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers:--those that suffer
from _overflowing vitality,_ who need Dionysian art and require
a tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook upon, the phenomenon
life,--and there are those who suffer from _reduced_ vitality, and
who crave for repose, quietness, calm seas, or else the intoxication,
the spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy provide. Revenge
upon life itself--this is the most voluptuous form of intoxication
for such indigent souls!... Now Wagner responds quite as well as
Schopenhauer to the twofold cravings of these people,--they both deny
life, they both slander it but precisely on this account they are my
antipodes.--The richest creature, brimming over with vitality,--the
Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself to gaze upon the
horrible and the questionable; but he can also lend his hand to the
terrible deed, and can indulge in all the luxury of destruction,
disaggregation, and negation,--in him evil, purposelessness and
ugliness, seem just as allowable as they are in nature--because of
his bursting plenitude of creative and rejuvenating powers, which
are able to convert every desert into a luxurious land of plenty.
Conversely, it is the greatest sufferer and pauper in vitality, who
is most in need of mildness, peace and goodness--that which to-day is
called humaneness--in thought as well as in action, and possibly of a
God whose speciality is to be a God of the sick, a Saviour, and also
of logic or the abstract intelligibility of existence even for idiots
(--the typical "free-spirits," like the idealists, and "beautiful
souls," are _décadents_--); in short, of a warm, danger-tight, and
narrow confinement, between optimistic horizons which would allow of
stultification.... And thus very gradually, I began to understand
Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian Greek; and also the Christian
who in fact is only a kind of Epicurean, and who, with his belief
that "faith saves," carries the principle of Hedonism _as far as
possible_--far beyond all intellectual honesty.... If I am ahead of
all other psychologists in anything, it is in this fact that my eyes
are more keen for tracing those most difficult and most captious of
all deductions, in which the largest number of mistakes have been
made,--the deduction which makes one infer something concerning the
author from his work, something concerning the doer from his deed,
something concerning the idealist from the need which produced this
ideal, and something concerning the imperious _craving_ which stands at
the back of all thinking and valuing.--In regard to all artists of what
kind soever, I shall now avail myself of this radical distinction: does
the creative power in this case arise from a loathing of life, or from
an excessive _plenitude_ of life? In Goethe, for instance, an overflow
of vitality was creative, in Flaubert--hate: Flaubert, a new edition
of Pascal, but as an artist with this instinctive belief at heart:
"_Flaubert est toujours haïssable, l'homme n'est rien, l'œuvre est
tout...._" He tortured himself when he wrote, just as Pascal tortured
himself when he thought--the feelings of both were inclined to be
"non-egoistic." ... "Disinterestedness"--the principle of decadence,
the will to nonentity in art as well as in morality.
WHERE WAGNER IS AT HOME.
Even at the present day, France is still the refuge of the most
intellectual and refined culture in Europe, it remains the high school
of taste: but one must know where to find this France of taste. The
_North-German Gazette,_ for instance, or who-ever expresses his
sentiments in that paper, thinks that the French are "barbarians,"--as
for me, if I had to find the _blackest_ spot on earth, where slaves
still required to be liberated, I should turn in the direction of
Northern Germany.... But those who form part of _that select_ France
take very good care to _conceal themselves_: they are a small body
of men, and there may be some among them who do not stand on very
firm legs--a few may be fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids; others
may be enervated, and artificial,--such are those who would fain be
artistic,--but all the loftiness and delicacy which still remains to
this world, is in their possession. In this France of intellect, which
is also the France of pessimism, Schopenhauer is already much more at
home than he ever was in Germany; his principal work has already been
translated twice, and the second time so excellently that now I prefer
to read Schopenhauer in French (--he was an _accident_ among Germans,
just as I am--the Germans have no fingers wherewith to grasp us; they
haven't any fingers at all,--but only claws). And I do not mention
Heine--l'_adorable Heine,_ as they say in Paris--who long since has
passed into the flesh and blood of the more profound and more soulful
of French lyricists. How could the horned cattle of Germany know how
to deal with the _délicatesses_ of such a nature!--And as to Richard
Wagner, it is obvious, it is even glaringly obvious, that Paris is
the very _soil_ for him: the more French music adapts itself to the
needs of _l'âme moderne,_ the more Wagnerian it will become,--it is
far enough advanced in this direction already.--In this respect one
should not allow one's self to be misled by Wagner himself--it was
simply dis-graceful on Wagner's part to scoff at Paris, as he did, in
its agony in 1871.... In spite of it all, in Germany Wagner is only a
misapprehension: who could be more incapable of understanding anything
about Wagner than the Kaiser, for instance?--To everybody familiar with
the movement of European culture, this fact, however, is certain, that
French romanticism and Richard Wagner are most intimately related. All
dominated by literature, up to their very eyes and ears--the first
European artists with a _universal literary_ culture,--most of them
writers, poets, mediators and minglers of the senses and the arts, all
fanatics in _expression,_ great discoverers in the realm of the sublime
as also of the ugly and the gruesome, and still greater discoverers
in passion, in working for effect, in the art of dressing their
windows,--all possessing talent far above their genius,--virtuosos to
their backbone, knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures,
constrains or overthrows; born enemies of logic and of straight lines,
thirsting after the exotic, the strange and the monstrous, and all
opiates for the senses and the understanding. On the whole, a daring
dare-devil, magnificently violent, soaring and high-springing crew of
artists, who first had to teach their own century---it is the century
of the mob--what the concept "artist" meant. But they were _ill...._
WAGNER AS THE APOSTLE OF CHASTITY.
1.
Is this the German way?
Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts?
Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves,
Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness,
Exalt their feelings with the censer's fumes,
And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee,
And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer?
Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell,
And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven?
Is this the German way?
Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords.
What yonder lures is Rome, Rome's faith sung
without words.
2.
There is no necessary contrast between sensuality and chastity; every
good marriage, every genuine love affair is above this contrast; but
in those cases where the contrast exists, it is very far from being
necessarily a tragic one. This, at least, ought to hold good of all
well-constituted and good-spirited mortals, who are not in the least
inclined to reckon their unstable equilibrium between angel and _petite
bête,_ without further ado, among the objections to existence, the more
refined and more intelligent like Hafis and Goethe, even regarded it as
an additional attraction. It is precisely contradictions of this kind
which lure us to life.... On the other hand, it must be obvious, that
when Circe's unfortunate animals are induced to worship chastity, all
they see and _worship_ therein, is their opposite--oh! and with what
tragic groaning and fervour, may well be imagined--that same painful
and thoroughly superfluous opposition which, towards the end of his
life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly wished to set to music and to put on
the stage, _And to what purpose?_ we may reasonably ask.
3.
And yet this other question can certainly not be circumvented: what
business had he actually with that manly (alas! so unmanly) "bucolic
simplicity," that poor devil and son of nature--Parsifal, whom he
ultimately makes a catholic by such insidious means--what?--was Wagner
in earnest with Parsifal? For, that he was laughed at, I cannot deny,
any more than Gottfried Keller can.... We should like to believe that
"Parsifal" was meant as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and
satyric drama, with which Wagner the tragedian wished to take leave of
us, of himself, and above all _of tragedy,_ in a way which befitted
him and his dignity, that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty and
most malicious parody of tragedy itself, of all the past and terrible
earnestness and sorrow of this world, of the most _ridiculous_ form of
the unnaturalness of the ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For Parsifal
is the subject _par excellence_ for a comic opera.... Is Wagner's
"Parsifal" his secret laugh of superiority at himself, the triumph
of his last and most exalted state of artistic freedom, of artistic
transcendence--is it Wagner able to _laugh_ at himself? Once again we
only wish it were so; for what could Parsifal be if he were _meant
seriously?_ Is it necessary in his case to say (as I have heard people
say) that "Parsifal" is "the product of the mad hatred of knowledge,
intellect, and sensuality?" a curse upon the senses and the mind in one
breath and in one fit of hatred? an act of apostasy and a return to
Christianly sick and obscurantist ideals? And finally even a denial of
self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who theretofore had
worked with all the power of his will in favour of the opposite cause,
the spiritualisation and sensualisation of his art? And not only of his
art, but also of his life? Let us remember how enthusiastically Wagner
at one time walked in the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach.
Feuerbach's words "healthy sensuality" struck Wagner in the thirties
and forties very much as they struck many other Germans--they called
themselves the young Germans--that is to say, as words of salvation.
Did he ultimately _change his mind_ on this point? It would seem that
he had at least had the desire of _changing_ his doctrine towards the
end.... Had _the hatred of life_ become dominant in him as in Flaubert?
For "Parsifal" is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most secret
concoction of poisons with which to make an end of the first conditions
of life; _it is a bad work._ The preaching of chastity remains an
incitement to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not regard
"Parsifal" as an outrage upon morality.--
HOW I GOT RID OF WAGNER.
1.
Already in the summer of 1876, when the first festival at Bayreuth
was at its height, I took leave of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure
anything double-faced. Since Wagner had returned to Germany, he had
condescended step by step to everything that I despise--even to
anti-Semitism. ... As a matter of fact, it was then high time to bid
him farewell: but the proof of this came only too soon. Richard Wagner,
ostensibly the most triumphant creature alive; as a matter of fact,
though, a cranky and desperate _décadent,_ suddenly fell helpless
and broken on his knees before the Christian cross.... Was there no
German at that time who had the eyes to see, and the sympathy in his
soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this spectacle? Was I the only
one who _suffered from_ it?--Enough, the unexpected event, like a
flash of lightning, made me see only too clearly what kind of a place
it was that I had just left,--and it also made me shudder as a man
shudders who unawares has just escaped a great danger. As I continued
my journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I was ill, more
than ill--I was _tired;_--tired of the continual disappointments over
everything which remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic about,
of the energy, industry, hope, youth, and love that are _squandered
everywhere;_ tired out of loathing for the whole world of idealistic
lying and conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case of
Wagner, had scored a victory over a man who was of the bravest; and
last but not least, tired by the sadness of a ruthless suspicion--that
I was now condemned to be ever more and more suspicious, ever more and
more contemptuous, ever more and more _deeply_ alone than I had been
theretofore. For I had no one save Richard Wagner.... I was always
_condemned_ to the society of Germans....
2.
Henceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of myself, I then took
up sides--not without anger--_against myself_ and _for_ all that
which hurt me and fell hard upon me: and thus I found the road to
that courageous pessimism which is the opposite of all idealistic
falsehood, and which, as it seems to me, is also the road to _me--to
my mission...._ That hidden and dominating thing, for which for long
ages we have had no name, until ultimately it comes forth as our
mission,--this tyrant in us wreaks a terrible revenge upon us for every
attempt we make either to evade him or to escape him, for every one
of our experiments in the way of befriending people to whom we do not
belong, for every active occupation, however estimable, which may make
us diverge from our principal object:--aye, and even for every virtue
which would fain protect us from the rigour of our most intimate sense
of responsibility. Illness is always the answer, whenever we venture
to doubt our right to _our_ mission, whenever we begin to make things
too easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the same time! It is
for our relaxation that we have to pay most dearly! And should we wish
after all to return to health, we then have no choice: we are compelled
to burden ourselves _more_ heavily than we had been burdened before....
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS.
1.
The oftener a psychologist--a born, an unavoidable psychologist
and soul-diviner--turns his attention to the more select cases and
individuals, the greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by
sympathy: he needs greater hardness and cheerfulness than any other
man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher men, is in fact the
rule: it is terrible to have such a rule always before our eyes.
The manifold torments of the psychologist who has discovered this
ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers almost repeatedly
throughout all history, this universal inner "hopelessness" of
higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every sense--may perhaps
one day be the cause of his "going to the dogs "himself. In almost
every psychologist we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour of
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men: and this betrays
how constantly he requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight
and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness--from
what his "business"--has laid upon his conscience. A horror of his
memory is typical of him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of
others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour, admire,
love, and glorify, where he has opened his eyes and _seen_--or he
even conceals his silence by expressly agreeing with some obvious
opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that,
precisely where he has learnt _great sympathy,_ together with _great
contempt,_ the educated have on their part learnt great reverence. And
who knows but in all great instances, just this alone happened: that
the multitude worshipped a God, and that the "God" was only a poor
sacrificial animal! _Success_ has always been the greatest liar--and
the "work" itself, the _deed,_ is a success too; the great statesman,
the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their creations until
they can no longer be recognised; the "work" of the artist, of the
philosopher, only invents him who has created it, who is reputed to
have created it; the "great men," as they are reverenced, are poor
little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values
counterfeit coinage _prevails._
2.
Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,
Kleist, Gogol (I do not dare to mention much greater names, but I
imply them), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be:
men of the moment, sensuous, absurd, versatile, light-minded and
quick to trust and to distrust; with souls in which usually some flaw
has to be concealed; often taking revenge with their works for an
internal blemish, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from
a too accurate memory, idealists out of proximity to the mud:--what
a _torment_ these great artists are and the so-called higher men
in general, to him who has once found them out! We are all special
pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It is conceivable that it is just
from woman--who is clair-voyant in the world of suffering, and, alas!
also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her
powers--that _they_ have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless
_sympathy_ which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude,
overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This
sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would
like to believe that love can do _everything_--it is the _superstition_
peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor,
helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love
is--how much more readily it _destroys_ than saves....
3.
The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of every man who has suffered
deeply--the extent to which a man can suffer, almost determines the
order of rank--the chilling uncertainty with which he is thoroughly
imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he _knows more_
than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar
with, and "at home" in many distant terrible worlds of which _"you_
know nothing!"--this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of
the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost sacrificed,
finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact
with gushing and sympathising hands, and in general from all that
is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it
separates.--One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism,
along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste which takes
suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that
is sorrowful and profound. There are "cheerful men" who make use of
good spirits, because they are misunderstood on account of them--they
_wish_ to be misunderstood. There are "scientific minds" who make use
of science, because it gives a cheerful appearance, and because love of
science leads people to conclude that a person is shallow--they _wish_
to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free insolent spirits which
would fain conceal and deny that they are at bottom broken, incurable
hearts--this is Hamlet's case: and then folly itself can be the mask of
an unfortunate and alas! all too dead-certain knowledge.
EPILOGUE
I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted
to the hardest years of my life than to any others. According to the
voice of my innermost nature, everything necessary, seen from above and
in the light of a _superior_ economy, is also useful in itself--not
only should one bear it, one should _love_ it.... _Amor fati:_ this is
the very core of my being.--And as to my prolonged illness, do I not
owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a _higher_
kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything
that does not actually kill it!--_To it, I owe even my philosophy...._
Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit; for it
teaches one that _vast suspiciousness_ which makes an X out of every
U, a genuine and proper X, _i.e.,_ the antepenultimate letter: Only
great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over
a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time--forces us
philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of
all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness,
all mediocrity,--on which things we had formerly staked our humanity.
I doubt whether such suffering improves a man; but I know that it
makes him _deeper...._ Supposing we learn to set our pride, our scorn,
our strength of will against it, and thus resemble the Indian who,
however cruelly he may be tortured, considers himself revenged on his
tormentor by the bitterness of his own tongue. Supposing we withdraw
from pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid sphere of
self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-effacement: one is another
person when one leaves these protracted and dangerous exercises in the
art of self-mastery; one has one note of interrogation the more, and
above all one has the will henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner,
harder, more wicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever
asked on earth before.... Trust in life has vanished; life itself has
become a _problem._ --But let no one think that one has therefore
become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still
possible,--but it is a _different kind_ of love.... It is the love for
a woman whom we doubt....
2.
The rarest of all things is this: to have after all another taste--a
_second_ taste. Out of such abysses, out of the abyss of _great
suspicion_ as well, a man returns as though born again, he has a
new skin, he is more susceptible, more full of wickedness; he has a
finer taste for joyfulness; he has a more sensitive tongue for all
good things; his senses are more cheerful; he has acquired a second,
more dangerous, innocence in gladness; he is more childish too, and a
hundred times more cunning than ever he had been before.