good talking: indeed they had an eager inclination for it, which
distinguished them more than anything else from non-Greeks. And so they
required good talking even from passion on the stage, and submitted to
the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with delight:—in nature, forsooth,
passion is so sparing of words! so dumb and confused! Or if it finds
words, so embarrassed and irrational and a shame to itself! We have now,
all of us, thanks to the Greeks, accustomed ourselves to this
unnaturalness on the stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the
_singing_ passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to the Italians.—It
has become a necessity to us, which we cannot satisfy out of the
resources of actuality, to hear men talk well and in full detail in the
most trying situations: it enraptures us at present when the tragic hero
still finds words, reasons, eloquent gestures, and on the whole a bright
spirituality, where life approaches the abysses, and where the actual
man mostly loses his head, and certainly his fine language. This kind of
_deviation from nature_ is perhaps the most agreeable repast for man's
pride: he loves art generally on account of it, as the expression of
high, heroic unnaturalness and convention. One rightly objects to the
dramatic poet when he does not transform everything into reason and
speech, but always retains a remnant of _silence_:—just as one is
dissatisfied with an operatic musician who cannot find a melody for the
highest emotion, but only an emotional, "natural" stammering and crying.
Here nature _has to_ be contradicted! Here the common charm of illusion
_has to_ give place to a higher charm! The Greeks go far, far in this
direction—frightfully far! As they constructed the stage as narrow as
possible and dispensed with all the effect of deep backgrounds, as they
made pantomime and easy motion impossible to the actor, and transformed
him into a solemn, stiff, masked bogey, so they have also deprived
passion itself of its deep background, and have dictated to it a law of
fine talk; indeed, they have really done everything to counteract the
elementary effect of representations that inspire pity and terror: _they
did not want pity and terror_,—with due deference, with the highest
deference to Aristotle! but he certainly did not hit the nail, to say
nothing of the head of the nail, when he spoke about the final aim of
Greek tragedy! Let us but look at the Grecian tragic poets with respect
to _what_ most excited their diligence, their inventiveness, and their
emulation,—certainly it was not the intention of subjugating the
spectators by emotion! The Athenian went to the theatre _to hear fine
talking_! And fine talking was arrived at by Sophocles!—pardon me this
heresy!—It is very different with _serious opera_: all its masters make
it their business to prevent their personages being understood. "An
occasional word picked up may come to the assistance of the inattentive
listener; but on the whole the situation must be self-explanatory,—the
_talking_ is of no account!"—so they all think, and so they have all
made fun of the words. Perhaps they have only lacked courage to express
fully their extreme contempt for words: a little additional insolence in
Rossini, and he would have allowed la-la-la-la to be sung throughout—and
it might have been the rational course! The personages of the opera are
_not_ meant to be believed "in their words," but in their tones! That is
the difference, that is the fine _unnaturalness_ on account of which
people go to the opera! Even the _recitativo secco_ is not really
intended to be heard as words and text: this kind of half-music is meant
rather in the first place to give the musical ear a little repose (the
repose from _melody_, as from the sublimest, and on that account the
most straining enjoyment of this art),—but very soon something different
results, namely, an increasing impatience, an increasing resistance, a
new longing for _entire_ music, for melody.—How is it with the art of
Richard Wagner as seen from this standpoint? Is it perhaps the same?
Perhaps otherwise? It would often seem to me as if one needed to have
learned by heart both the words _and_ the music of his creations before
the performances; for without that—so it seemed to me—one _may hear_
neither the words, nor even the music.
81.
_Grecian Taste._—"What is beautiful in it?"—asked a certain
geometrician, after a performance of the _Iphigenia_—"there is nothing
proved in it!" Could the Greeks have been so far from this taste? In
Sophocles at least "everything is proved."
82.
_Esprit Un-Grecian._—The Greeks were exceedingly logical and plain in
all their thinking; they did not get tired of it, at least during their
long flourishing period, as is so often the case with the French; who
too willingly made a little excursion into the opposite, and in fact
endure the spirit of logic only when it betrays its _sociable_ courtesy,
its sociable self-renunciation, by a multitude of such little excursions
into its opposite. Logic appears to them as necessary as bread and
water, but also like these as a kind of prison-fare, as soon as it is to
be taken pure and by itself. In good society one must never want to be
in the right absolutely and solely, as all pure logic requires; hence,
the little dose of irrationality in all French _esprit_.—The social
sense of the Greeks was far less developed than that of the French in
the present and the past; hence, so little _esprit_ in their cleverest
men, hence, so little wit, even in their wags, hence—alas! But people
will not readily believe these tenets of mine, and how much of the kind
I have still on my soul!—_Est res magna tacere_—says Martial, like all
garrulous people.
83.
_Translations._—One can estimate the amount of the historical sense
which an age possesses by the way in which it makes _translations_ and
seeks to embody in itself past periods and literatures. The French of
Corneille, and even the French of the Revolution, appropriated Roman
antiquity in a manner for which we would no longer have the
courage—owing to our superior historical sense. And Roman antiquity
itself: how violently, and at the same time how naïvely, did it lay its
hand on everything excellent and elevated belonging to the older Grecian
antiquity! How they translated these writings into the Roman present!
How they wiped away intentionally and unconcernedly the wing-dust of the
butterfly moment! It is thus that Horace now and then translated Alcæus
or Archilochus, it is thus that Propertius translated Callimachus and
Philetas (poets of equal rank with Theocritus, if we _be allowed_ to
judge): of what consequence was it to them that the actual creator
experienced this and that, and had inscribed the indication thereof in
his poem!—as poets they were averse to the antiquarian, inquisitive
spirit which precedes the historical sense; as poets they did not
respect those essentially personal traits and names, nor anything
peculiar to city, coast, or century, such as its costume and mask, but
at once put the present and the Roman in its place. They seem to us to
ask: "Should we not make the old new for ourselves, and adjust
_ourselves_ to it? Should we not be allowed to inspire this dead body
with our soul? for it is dead indeed: how loathsome is everything
dead!"—They did not know the pleasure of the historical sense; the past
and the alien was painful to them, and as Romans it was an incitement to
a Roman conquest. In fact, they conquered when they translated,—not only
in that they omitted the historical: no, they added also allusions to
the present; above all, they struck out the name of the poet and put
their own in its place—not with the feeling of theft, but with the very
best conscience of the _imperium Romanum_.
84.
_The Origin of Poetry._—The lovers of the fantastic in man, who at the
same time represent the doctrine of instinctive morality, draw this
conclusion: "Granted that utility has been honoured at all times as the
highest divinity, where then in all the world has poetry come from?—this
rhythmising of speech which thwarts rather than furthers plainness of
communication, and which, nevertheless, has sprung up everywhere on the
earth, and still springs up, as a mockery of all useful purpose! The
wildly beautiful irrationality of poetry refutes you, ye utilitarians!
The wish _to get rid of_ utility in some way—that is precisely what has
elevated man, that is what has inspired him to morality and art!" Well,
I must here speak for once to please the utilitarians,—they are so
seldom in the right that it is pitiful! In the old times which called
poetry into being, people had still utility in view with respect to it,
and a very important utility—at the time when rhythm was introduced into
speech, the force which arranges all the particles of the sentence anew,
commands the choosing of the words, recolours the thought, and makes it
more obscure, more foreign, and more distant: to be sure a
_superstitious utility_! It was intended that a human entreaty should be
more profoundly impressed upon the Gods by virtue of rhythm, after it
had been observed that men could remember a verse better than an
unmetrical speech. It was likewise thought that people could make
themselves audible at greater distances by the rhythmical beat; the
rhythmical prayer seemed to come nearer to the ear of the Gods. Above
all, however, people wanted to have the advantage of the elementary
conquest which man experiences in himself when he hears music: rhythm is
a constraint; it produces an unconquerable desire to yield, to join in;
not only the step of the foot, but also the soul itself follows the
measure,—probably the soul of the Gods also, as people thought! They
attempted, therefore, to _constrain_ the Gods by rhythm and to exercise
a power over them; they threw poetry around the Gods like a magic noose.
There was a still more wonderful idea, and it has perhaps operated most
powerfully of all in the originating of poetry. Among the Pythagoreans
it made its appearance as a philosophical doctrine and as an artifice of
teaching: but long before there were philosophers music was acknowledged
to possess the power of unburdening the emotions, of purifying the soul,
of soothing the _ferocia animi_—and this was owing to the rhythmical
element in music. When the proper tension and harmony of the soul were
lost a person had to _dance_ to the measure of the singer,—that was the
recipe of this medical art. By means of it Terpander quieted a tumult,
Empedocles calmed a maniac, Damon purged a love-sick youth; by means of
it even the maddened, revengeful Gods were treated for the purpose of a
cure. First of all, it was by driving the frenzy and wantonness of their
emotions to the highest pitch, by making the furious mad, and the
revengeful intoxicated with vengeance:—all the orgiastic cults seek to
discharge the _ferocia_ of a deity all at once and thus make an orgy, so
that the deity may feel freer and quieter afterwards, and leave man in
peace. _Melos_, according to its root, signifies a soothing means, not
because the song is gentle itself, but because its after-effect makes
gentle.—And not only in the religious song, but also in the secular song
of the most ancient times the prerequisite is that the rhythm should
exercise a magical influence; for example, in drawing water, or in
rowing: the song is for the enchanting of the spirits supposed to be
active thereby; it makes them obliging, involuntary, and the instruments
of man. And as often as a person acts he has occasion to sing, _every_
action is dependent on the assistance of spirits: magic song and
incantation appear to be the original form of poetry. When verse also
came to be used in oracles—the Greeks said that the hexameter was
invented at Delphi,—the rhythm was here also intended to exercise a
compulsory influence. To make a prophecy—that means originally
(according to what seems to me the probable derivation of the Greek
word) to determine something; people thought they could determine the
future by winning Apollo over to their side: he who, according to the
most ancient idea, is far more than a foreseeing deity. According as the
formula is pronounced with literal and rhythmical correctness, it
determines the future: the formula, however, is the invention of Apollo,
who as the God of rhythm, can also determine the goddesses of
fate.—Looked at and investigated as a whole, was there ever anything
_more serviceable_ to the ancient superstitious species of human being
than rhythm? People could do everything with it: they could make labour
go on magically; they could compel a God to appear, to be near at hand,
and listen to them; they could arrange the future for themselves
according to their will; they could unburden their own souls of any kind
of excess (of anxiety, of mania, of sympathy, of revenge), and not only
their own soul, but the souls of the most evil spirits,—without verse a
person was nothing, by means of verse a person became almost a God. Such
a fundamental feeling no longer allows itself to be fully
eradicated,—and even now, after millenniums of long labour in combating
such superstition, the very wisest of us occasionally becomes the fool
of rhythm, be it only that one _perceives_ a thought to be _truer_ when
it has a metrical form and approaches with a divine hopping. Is it not a
very funny thing that the most serious philosophers, however anxious
they are in other respects for strict certainty, still appeal to
_poetical sayings_ in order to give their thoughts force and
credibility?—and yet it is more dangerous to a truth when the poet
assents to it than when he contradicts it! For, as Homer says, "The
singers speak much falsehood!"—
85.
_The Good and the Beautiful._—Artists _glorify_ continually—they do
nothing else,—and indeed they glorify all those conditions and things
that have a reputation, so that man may feel himself good or great, or
intoxicated, or merry, or pleased and wise by it. Those _select_ things
and conditions whose value for human _happiness_ is regarded as secure
and determined, are the objects of artists: they are ever lying in wait
to discover such things, to transfer them into the domain of art. I mean
to say that they are not themselves the valuers of happiness and of the
happy ones, but they always press close to these valuers with the
greatest curiosity and longing, in order immediately to use their
valuations advantageously. As besides their impatience, they have also
the big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, they are likewise
always among the first to glorify the _new_ excellency, and often _seem_
to be those who first of all called it good and valued it as good. This,
however, as we have said, is an error; they are only faster and louder
than the actual valuers:—And who then are these?—They are the rich and
the leisurely.
86.
_The Theatre._—This day has given me once more strong and elevated
sentiments, and if I could have music and art in the evening, I know
well what music and art I should _not_ like to have; namely, none of
that which would fain intoxicate its hearers and _excite_ them to a
crisis of strong and high feeling,—those men with commonplace souls, who
in the evening are not like victors on triumphal cars, but like tired
mules to whom life has rather too often applied the whip. What would
those men at all know of "higher moods," unless there were expedients
for causing ecstasy and idealistic strokes of the whip!—and thus they
have their inspirers as they have their wines. But what is their drink
and their drunkenness to _me_! Does the inspired one need wine? He
rather looks with a kind of disgust at the agency and the agent which
are here intended to produce an effect without sufficient reason,—an
imitation of the high tide of the soul! What? One gives the mole wings
and proud fancies—before going to sleep, before he creeps into his hole?
One sends him into the theatre and puts great magnifying-glasses to his
blind and tired eyes? Men, whose life is not "action" but business, sit
in front of the stage and look at strange beings to whom life is more
than business? "This is proper," you say, "this is entertaining, this is
what culture wants!"—Well then! culture is too often lacking in me, for
this sight is too often disgusting to me. He who has enough of tragedy
and comedy in himself surely prefers to remain away from the theatre;
or, as the exception, the whole procedure—theatre and public and poet
included—becomes for him a truly tragic and comic play, so that the
performed piece counts for little in comparison. He who is something
like Faust and Manfred, what does it matter to him about the Fausts and
Manfreds of the theatre!—while it certainly gives him something to think
about _that_ such figures are brought into the theatre at all. The
_strongest_ thoughts and passions before those who are not capable of
thought and passion—but of _intoxication_ only! And _those_ as a means
to this end! And theatre and music the hashish-smoking and betel-chewing
of Europeans! Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of
narcotics!—It is almost the history of "culture," the so-called higher
culture!
87.
_The Conceit of Artists._—I think artists often do not know what they
can do best, because they are too conceited, and have set their minds on
something loftier than those little plants appear to be, which can grow
up to perfection on their soil, fresh, rare, and beautiful. The final
value of their own garden and vineyard is superciliously underestimated
by them, and their love and their insight are not of the same quality.
Here is a musician, who, more than any one else, has the genius for
discovering the tones peculiar to suffering, oppressed, tortured souls,
and who can endow even dumb animals with speech. No one equals him in
the colours of the late autumn, in the indescribably touching happiness
of a last, a final, and all too short enjoyment; he knows a chord for
those secret and weird midnights of the soul when cause and effect seem
out of joint, and when every instant something may originate "out of
nothing." He draws his resources best of all out of the lower depths of
human happiness, and so to speak, out of its drained goblet, where the
bitterest and most nauseous drops have ultimately, for good or for ill,
commingled with the sweetest. He knows the weary shuffling along of the
soul which can no longer leap or fly, yea, not even walk; he has the shy
glance of concealed pain, of understanding without comfort, of
leave-taking without avowal; yea, as the Orpheus of all secret misery,
he is greater than anyone; and in fact much has been added to art by him
which was hitherto inexpressible and not even thought worthy of art, and
which was only to be scared away, by words, and not grasped—many small
and quite microscopic features of the soul: yes, he is the master of
miniature. But he does not _wish_ to be so! His _character_ is more in
love with large walls and daring frescoes! He fails to see that his
_spirit_ has a different taste and inclination, and prefers to sit
quietly in the corners of ruined houses:—concealed in this way,
concealed even from himself, he there paints his proper 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 only.—But
he does not know it! He is too conceited to know it.
88.
_Earnestness for the Truth._—Earnest for the truth! What different
things men understand by these words! Just the same opinions, and modes
of demonstration and testing which a thinker regards as a frivolity in
himself, to which he has succumbed with shame at one time or other,—just
the same opinions may give to an artist, who comes in contact with them
and accepts them temporarily, the consciousness that the profoundest
earnestness for the truth has now taken hold of him, and that it is
worthy of admiration that, although an artist, he at the same time
exhibits the most ardent desire for the antithesis of the apparent. It
is thus possible that a person may, just by his pathos of earnestness,
betray how superficially and sparingly his intellect has hitherto
operated in the domain of knowledge.—And is not everything that we
consider _important_ our betrayer? It shows where our motives lie, and
where our motives are altogether lacking.
89.
_Now and Formerly._—Of what consequence is all our art in artistic
products, if that higher art, the art of the festival, be lost by us?
Formerly all artistic products were exhibited on the great festive path
of humanity, as tokens of remembrance, and monuments of high and happy
moments. One now seeks to allure the exhausted and sickly from the great
suffering path of humanity for a wanton moment by means of works of art;
one furnishes them with a little ecstasy and insanity.
90.
_Lights and Shades._—Books and writings are different with different
thinkers. One writer has collected together in his book all the rays of
light which he could quickly plunder and carry home from an illuminating
experience; while another gives only the shadows, and the grey and black
replicas of that which on the previous day had towered up in his soul.
91.
_Precaution._—Alfieri, as is well known, told a great many falsehoods
when he narrated the history of his life to his astonished
contemporaries. He told falsehoods owing to the despotism toward himself
which he exhibited, for example, in the way in which he created his own
language, and tyrannised himself into a poet:—he finally found a rigid
form of sublimity into which he _forced_ his life and his memory; he
must have suffered much in the process.—I would also give no credit to a
history of Plato's life written by himself, as little as to Rousseau's,
or to the _Vita nuova_ of Dante.
92.
_Prose and Poetry._—Let it be observed that the great masters of prose
have almost always been poets as well, whether openly, or only in secret
and for the "closet"; and in truth one only writes good prose _in view
of poetry_! For prose is an uninterrupted, polite warfare with poetry;
all its charm consists in the fact that poetry is constantly avoided,
and contradicted; every abstraction wants to have a gibe at poetry, and
wishes to be uttered with a mocking voice; all dryness and coolness is
meant to bring the amiable goddess into an amiable despair; there are
often approximations and reconciliations for the moment, and then a
sudden recoil and a burst of laughter; the curtain is often drawn up and
dazzling light let in just while the goddess is enjoying her twilights
and dull colours; the word is often taken out of her mouth and chanted
to a melody while she holds her fine hands before her delicate little
ears—and so there are a thousand enjoyments of the warfare, the defeats
included, of which the unpoetic, the so-called prose-men know nothing at
all:—they consequently write and speak only bad prose! _Warfare is the
father of all good things_, it is also the father of good prose!—There
have been four very singular and truly poetical men in this century who
have arrived at mastership in prose, for which otherwise this century is
not suited, owing to lack of poetry, as we have indicated. Not to take
Goethe into account, for he is reasonably claimed by the century that
produced him, I look only on Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of _Imaginary
Conversations_, as worthy to be called masters of prose.
93.
_But why, then, do you Write?_—A: I do not belong to those who _think_
with the wet pen in hand; and still less to those who yield themselves
entirely to their passions before the open ink-bottle, sitting on their
chair and staring at the paper. I am always vexed and abashed by
writing; writing is a necessity for me,—even to speak of it in a simile
is disagreeable. B: But why, then, do you write? A: Well, my dear Sir,
to tell you in confidence, I have hitherto found no other means of
_getting rid of_ my thoughts. B: And why do you wish to get rid of them?
A: Why I wish? Do I really wish! I must.—B: Enough! Enough!
94.