The history of the development of culture since the time of the Greeks
is short enough, when we take into consideration the actual ground it
covers, and ignore the periods during which man stood still, went
backwards, hesitated or strayed. The Hellenising of the world--and to
make this possible, the Orientalising of Hellenism--that double
mission of Alexander the Great, still remains the most important
event: the old question whether a foreign civilisation may be
transplanted is still the problem that the peoples of modern times are
vainly endeavouring to solve. The rhythmic play of those two factors
against each other is the force that has determined the course of
history heretofore. Thus Christianity appears, for instance, as a
product of Oriental antiquity, which was thought out and pursued to
its ultimate conclusions by men, with almost intemperate thoroughness.
As its influence began to decay, the power of Hellenic culture was
revived, and we are now experiencing phenomena so strange that they
would hang in the air as unsolved problems, if it were not possible,
by spanning an enormous gulf of time, to show their relation to
analogous phenomena in Hellenistic culture. Thus, between Kant and the
Eleatics, Schopenhauer and Empedocles, Æschylus and Wagner, there is
so much relationship, so many things in common, that one is vividly
impressed with the very relative nature of all notions of time. It
would even seem as if a whole diversity of things were really all of a
piece, and that time is only a cloud which makes it hard for our eyes
to perceive the oneness of them. In the history of the exact sciences
we are perhaps most impressed by the close bond uniting us with the
days of Alexander and ancient Greece. The pendulum of history seems
merely to have swung back to that point from which it started when it
plunged forth into unknown and mysterious distance. The picture
represented by our own times is by no means a new one: to the student
of history it must always seem as though he were merely in the
presence of an old familiar face, the features of which he recognises.
In our time the spirit of Greek culture is scattered broadcast. While
forces of all kinds are pressing one upon the other, and the fruits of
modern art and science are offering themselves as a means of exchange,
the pale outline of Hellenism is beginning to dawn faintly in the
distance. The earth which, up to the present, has been more than
adequately Orientalised, begins to yearn once more for Hellenism. He
who wishes to help her in this respect will certainly need to be
gifted for speedy action and to have wings on his heels, in order to
synthetise the multitudinous and still undiscovered facts of science
and the many conflicting divisions of talent so as to reconnoitre and
rule the whole enormous field. It is now necessary that a generation
of _anti-Alexanders_ should arise, endowed with the supreme strength
necessary for gathering up, binding together, and joining the
individual threads of the fabric, so as to prevent their being
scattered to the four winds. The object is not to cut the Gordian knot
of Greek culture after the manner adopted by Alexander, and then to
leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions; it is rather to
_bind it after it has been loosed_. That is our task to-day. In the
person of Wagner I recognise one of these anti-Alexanders: he rivets
and locks together all that is isolated, weak, or in any way
defective; if I may be allowed to use a medical expression, he has an
_astringent_ power. And in this respect he is one of the greatest
civilising forces of his age. He dominates art, religion, and
folklore, yet he is the reverse of a polyhistor or of a mere
collecting and classifying spirit; for he constructs with the
collected material, and breathes life into it, and is a _Simplifier of
the Universe_. We must not be led away from this idea by comparing the
general mission which his genius imposed upon him with the much
narrower and more immediate one which we are at present in the habit
of associating with the name of Wagner. He is expected to effect a
reform in the theatre world; but even supposing he should succeed in
doing this, what would then have been done towards the accomplishment
of that higher, more distant mission?
But even with this lesser theatrical reform, modern man would also be
altered and reformed; for everything is so intimately related in this
world, that he who removes even so small a thing as a rivet from the
framework shatters and destroys the whole edifice. And what we here
assert, with perhaps seeming exaggeration, of Wagner's activity would
hold equally good of any other genuine reform. It is quite impossible
to reinstate the art of drama in its purest and highest form without
effecting changes everywhere in the customs of the people, in the
State, in education, and in social intercourse. When love and justice
have become powerful in one department of life, namely in art, they
must, in accordance with the law of their inner being, spread their
influence around them, and can no more return to the stiff stillness
of their former pupal condition. In order even to realise how far the
attitude of the arts towards life is a sign of their decline, and how
far our theatres are a disgrace to those who build and visit them,
everything must be learnt over again, and that which is usual and
commonplace should be regarded as something unusual and complicated.
An extraordinary lack of clear judgment, a badly-concealed lust of
pleasure, of entertainment at any cost, learned scruples, assumed airs
of importance, and trifling with the seriousness of art on the part of
those who represent it; brutality of appetite and money-grubbing on
the part of promoters; the empty-mindedness and thoughtlessness of
society, which only thinks of the people in so far as these serve or
thwart its purpose, and which attends theatres and concerts without
giving a thought to its duties,--all these things constitute the
stifling and deleterious atmosphere of our modern art conditions:
when, however, people like our men of culture have grown accustomed to
it, they imagine that it is a condition of their healthy existence,
and would immediately feel unwell if, for any reason, they were
compelled to dispense with it for a while. In point of fact, there is
but one speedy way of convincing oneself of the vulgarity, weirdness,
and confusion of our theatrical institutions, and that is to compare
them with those which once flourished in ancient Greece. If we knew
nothing about the Greeks, it would perhaps be impossible to assail our
present conditions at all, and objections made on the large scale
conceived for the first time by Wagner would have been regarded as the
dreams of people who could only be at home in outlandish places. "For
men as we now find them," people would have retorted, "art of this
modern kind answers the purpose and is fitting--and men have never
been different." But they have been very different, and even now there
are men who are far from satisfied with the existing state of
affairs--the fact of Bayreuth alone demonstrates this point. Here you
will find prepared and initiated spectators, and the emotion of men
conscious of being at the very zenith of their happiness, who
concentrate their whole being on that happiness in order to strengthen
themselves for a higher and more far-reaching purpose. Here you will
find the most noble self-abnegation on the part of the artist, and the
finest of all spectacles--that of a triumphant creator of works which
are in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic triumphs. Does
it not seem almost like a fairy tale, to be able to come face to face
with such a personality? Must not they who take any part whatsoever,
active or passive, in the proceedings at Bayreuth, already feel
altered and rejuvenated, and ready to introduce reforms and to effect
renovations in other spheres of life? Has not a haven been found for
all wanderers on high and desert seas, and has not peace settled over
the face of the waters? Must not he who leaves these spheres of ruling
profundity and loneliness for the very differently ordered world with
its plains and lower levels, cry continually like Isolde: "Oh, how
could I bear it? How can I still bear it?" And should he be unable to
endure his joy and his sorrow, or to keep them egotistically to
himself, he will avail himself from that time forward of every
opportunity of making them known to all. "Where are they who are
suffering under the yoke of modern institutions?" he will inquire.
"Where are my natural allies, with whom I may struggle against the
ever waxing and ever more oppressive pretensions of modern erudition?"
For at present, at least, we have but one enemy--at present!--and it
is that band of æsthetes, to whom the word Bayreuth means the
completest rout--they have taken no share in the arrangements, they
were rather indignant at the whole movement, or else availed
themselves effectively of the deaf-ear policy, which has now become
the trusty weapon of all very superior opposition. But this proves
that their animosity and knavery were ineffectual in destroying
Wagner's spirit or in hindering the accomplishment of his plans; it
proves even more, for it betrays their weakness and the fact that all
those who are at present in possession of power will not be able to
withstand many more attacks. The time is at hand for those who would
conquer and triumph; the vastest empires lie at their mercy, a note of
interrogation hangs to the name of all present possessors of power, so
far as possession may be said to exist in this respect. Thus
educational institutions are said to be decaying, and everywhere
individuals are to be found who have secretly deserted them. If only
it were possible to invite those to open rebellion and public
utterances, who even now are thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of
affairs in this quarter! If only it were possible to deprive them of
their faint heart and lukewarmness! I am convinced that the whole
spirit of modern culture would receive its deadliest blow if the tacit
support which these natures give it could in any way be cancelled.
Among scholars, only those would remain loyal to the old order of
things who had been infected with the political mania or who were
literary hacks in any form whatever. The repulsive organisation which
derives its strength from the violence and injustice upon which it
relies--that is to say, from the State and Society--and which sees its
advantage in making the latter ever more evil and unscrupulous,--this
structure which without such support would be something feeble and
effete, only needs to be despised in order to perish. He who is
struggling to spread justice and love among mankind must regard this
organisation as the least significant of the obstacles in his way; for
he will only encounter his real opponents once he has successfully
stormed and conquered modern culture, which is nothing more than their
outworks.
For us, Bayreuth is the consecration of the dawn of the combat. No
greater injustice could be done to us than to suppose that we are
concerned with art alone, as though it were merely a means of healing
or stupefying us, which we make use of in order to rid our
consciousness of all the misery that still remains in our midst. In
the image of this tragic art work at Bayreuth, we see, rather, the
struggle of individuals against everything which seems to oppose them
with invincible necessity, with power, law, tradition, conduct, and
the whole order of things established. Individuals cannot choose a
better life than that of holding themselves ready to sacrifice
themselves and to die in their fight for love and justice. The gaze
which the mysterious eye of tragedy vouchsafes us neither lulls nor
paralyses. Nevertheless, it demands silence of us as long as it keeps
us in view; for art does not serve the purposes of war, but is merely
with us to improve our hours of respite, before and during the course
of the contest,--to improve those few moments when, looking back, yet
dreaming of the future, we seem to understand the symbolical, and are
carried away into a refreshing reverie when fatigue overtakes us. Day
and battle dawn together, the sacred shadows vanish, and Art is once
more far away from us; but the comfort she dispenses is with men from
the earliest hour of day, and never leaves them. Wherever he turns,
the individual realises only too clearly his own shortcomings, his
insufficiency and his incompetence; what courage would he have left
were he not previously rendered impersonal by this consecration! The
greatest of all torments harassing him, the conflicting beliefs and
opinions among men, the unreliability of these beliefs and opinions,
and the unequal character of men's abilities--all these things make
him hanker after art. We cannot be happy so long as everything about
us suffers and causes suffering; we cannot be moral so long as the
course of human events is determined by violence, treachery, and
injustice; we cannot even be wise, so long as the whole of mankind
does not compete for wisdom, and does not lead the individual to the
most sober and reasonable form of life and knowledge. How, then, would
it be possible to endure this feeling of threefold insufficiency if
one were not able to recognise something sublime and valuable in one's
struggles, strivings, and defeats, if one did not learn from tragedy
how to delight in the rhythm of the great passions, and in their
victim? Art is certainly no teacher or educator of practical conduct:
the artist is never in this sense an instructor or adviser; the things
after which a tragic hero strives are not necessarily worth striving
after. As in a dream so in art, the valuation of things only holds
good while we are under its spell. What we, for the time being, regard
as so worthy of effort, and what makes us sympathise with the tragic
hero when he prefers death to renouncing the object of his desire,
this can seldom retain the same value and energy when transferred to
everyday life: that is why art is the business of the man who is
recreating himself. The strife it reveals to us is a simplification of
life's struggle; its problems are abbreviations of the infinitely
complicated phenomena of man's actions and volitions. But from this
very fact--that it is the reflection, so to speak, of a simpler world,
a more rapid solution of the riddle of life--art derives its greatness
and indispensability. No one who suffers from life can do without this
reflection, just as no one can exist without sleep. The more difficult
the science of natural laws becomes, the more fervently we yearn for
the image of this simplification, if only for an instant; and the
greater becomes the tension between each man's general knowledge of
things and his moral and spiritual faculties. Art is with us _to
prevent the bow from snapping_.
The individual must be consecrated to something impersonal--that is
the aim of tragedy: he must forget the terrible anxiety which death
and time tend to create in him; for at any moment of his life, at any
fraction of time in the whole of his span of years, something sacred
may cross his path which will amply compensate him for all his
struggles and privations. This means having _a sense for the tragic_.
And if all mankind must perish some day--and who could question this!
--it has been given its highest aim for the future, namely, to
increase and to live in such unity that it may confront its final
extermination as a whole, with one spirit--with a common sense of the
tragic: in this one aim all the ennobling influences of man lie
locked; its complete repudiation by humanity would be the saddest blow
which the soul of the philanthropist could receive. That is how I feel
in the matter! There is but one hope and guarantee for the future of
man, and that is _that his sense for the tragic may not die out_. If he
ever completely lost it, an agonised cry, the like of which has never
been heard, would have to be raised all over the world; for there is
no more blessed joy than that which consists in knowing what we
know--how tragic thought was born again on earth. For this joy is
thoroughly impersonal and general: it is the wild rejoicing of
humanity, anent the hidden relationship and progress of all that is
human.