the longest; I was uncertain (and am sometimes so still) whether one
could not get at the dangerous conception of "artist"—a conception
hitherto treated with unpardonable leniency—from this point of view.
Falsity with a good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking forth
as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and sometimes extinguishing the
so-called "character"; the inner longing to play a rôle, to assume a
mask, to put on an _appearance_; a surplus of capacity for adaptations
of every kind, which can no longer gratify themselves in the service of
the nearest and narrowest utility: all that perhaps does not pertain
_solely_ to the actor in himself?... Such an instinct would develop most
readily in families of the lower class of the people, who have had to
pass their lives in absolute dependence, under shifting pressure and
constraint, who (to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to adapt
themselves always to new circumstances) had again and again to pass
themselves off and represent themselves as different persons,—thus
having gradually qualified themselves to adjust the mantle to _every_
wind, thereby almost becoming the mantle itself, as masters of the
embodied and incarnated art of eternally playing the game of hide and
seek, which one calls _mimicry_ among the animals:—until at last this
ability, stored up from generation to generation, has become
domineering, irrational and intractable, till as instinct it begins to
command the other instincts, and begets the actor, the "artist" (the
buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-Pudding, the fool, and the clown in the
first place, also the classical type of servant, Gil Blas: for in such
types one has the precursors of the artist, and often enough even of the
"genius"). Also under higher social conditions there grows under similar
pressure a similar species of men. Only the histrionic instinct is there
for the most part held strictly in check by another instinct, for
example, among "diplomatists";—for the rest, I should think that it
would always be open to a good diplomatist to become a good actor on the
stage, provided his dignity "allowed" it. As regards the _Jews_,
however, the adaptable people _par excellence_, we should, in conformity
to this line of thought, expect to see among them a world-historical
institution from the very beginning, for the rearing of actors, a
genuine breeding-place for actors; and in fact the question is very
pertinent just now: what good actor at present is _not_—a Jew? The Jew
also, as a born literary man, as the actual ruler of the European press,
exercises this power on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the
literary man is essentially an actor,—he plays the part of "expert," of
"specialist."—Finally _women_. If we consider the whole history of
women, are they not _obliged_ first of all, and above all to be
actresses? If we listen to doctors who have hypnotised women, or,
finally, if we love them—and let ourselves be "hypnotised" by them,—what
is always divulged thereby? That they "give themselves airs," even when
they—"give themselves."... Woman is so artistic....
362.
_My Belief in the Virilising of Europe._—We owe it to Napoleon (and not
at all to the French Revolution, which had in view the "fraternity" of
the nations, and the florid interchange of good graces among people
generally) that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like
in past history, may now follow one another—in short, that we have
entered upon _the classical age of war_, war at the same time scientific
and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and
discipline), to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy
and awe as a work of perfection:—for the national movement out of which
this martial glory springs, is only the counter-_choc_ against Napoleon,
and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will
one day be able to attribute the fact that _man_ in Europe has again got
the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of
"woman" also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity and the
extravagant spirit of the eighteenth century, and still more owing to
"modern ideas." Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in
civilisation, something like a personal enemy, has by this hostility
proved himself one of the greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he
has brought to the surface a whole block of the ancient character, the
decisive block perhaps, the block of granite. And who knows but that
this block of ancient character will in the end get the upper hand of
the national movement, and will have to make itself in a _positive_
sense the heir and continuator of Napoleon:—who, as one knows, wanted
_one_ Europe, which was to be _mistress of the world_.—
363.
_How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love._—Notwithstanding all the
concessions which I am inclined to make to the monogamic prejudice, I
will never admit that we should speak of _equal_ rights in the love of
man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that man
and woman understand something different by the term love,—and it
belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does
_not_ presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in the
other sex. What woman understands by love is clear enough: complete
surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive,
without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought of
a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. In this
absence of conditions her love is precisely a _faith_: woman has no
other.—Man, when he loves a woman, _wants_ precisely this love from her;
he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the
prerequisites of feminine love; granted, however, that there should also
be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is not
unfamiliar,—well, they are really—not men. A man who loves like a woman
becomes thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like a woman
becomes thereby a _more perfect_ woman.... The passion of woman in its
unconditional renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact that
there does _not_ exist on the other side an equal _pathos_, an equal
desire for renunciation: for if both renounced themselves out of love,
there would result—well, I don't know what, perhaps a _horror vacui_?
Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be
merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently
she wants one who _takes_, who does not offer and give himself away, but
who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"—by the increase
of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him.
Woman gives herself, man takes her.—I do not think one will get over
this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very best will
to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing the severe,
frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism
constantly before our eyes. For love, regarded as complete, great, and
full, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something
"unmoral."—_Fidelity_ is accordingly included in woman's love, it
follows from the definition thereof; with man fidelity _may_ readily
result in consequence of his love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy
of taste, and so-called elective affinity, but it does not belong to the
_essence_ of his love—and indeed so little, that one might almost be
entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and fidelity in
man, whose love is just a desire to possess, and _not_ a renunciation
and giving away; the desire to possess, however, comes to an end every
time with the possession.... As a matter of fact it is the more subtle
and jealous thirst for possession in the man (who is rarely and tardily
convinced of having this "possession"), which makes his love continue;
in that case it is even possible that the love may increase after the
surrender,—he does not readily own that a woman has nothing more to
"surrender" to him.—
364.
_The Anchorite Speaks._—The art of associating with men rests
essentially on one's skilfulness (which presupposes long exercise) in
accepting a repast, in taking a repast in the cuisine of which one has
no confidence. Provided one comes to the table with the hunger of a wolf
everything is easy ("the worst society gives thee _experience_"—as
Mephistopheles says); but one has not got this wolf's-hunger when one
needs it! Alas! how difficult are our fellow-men to digest! First
principle: to stake one's courage as in a misfortune, to seize boldly,
to admire oneself at the same time, to take one's repugnance between
one's teeth, to cram down one's disgust. Second principle: to "improve"
one's fellow-man, by praise for example, so that he may begin to sweat
out his self-complacency; or to seize a tuft of his good or
"interesting" qualities, and pull at it till one gets his whole virtue
out, and can put him under the folds of it. Third principle:
self-hypnotism. To fix one's eye on the object of one's intercourse, as
on a glass knob, until, ceasing to feel pleasure or pain thereat, one
falls asleep unobserved, becomes rigid, and acquires a fixed pose: a
household recipe used in married life and in friendship, well tested and
prized as indispensable, but not yet scientifically formulated. Its
proper name is—patience.—
365.
_The Anchorite Speaks once more._—We also have intercourse with "men,"
we also modestly put on the clothes in which people know us (_as such_),
respect us and seek us; and we thereby mingle in society, that is to
say, among the disguised who do not wish to be so called; we also do
like all prudent masqueraders, and courteously dismiss all curiosity
which has not reference merely to our "clothes." There are however other
modes and artifices for "going about" among men and associating with
them: for example, as a ghost,—which is very advisable when one wants to
scare them, and get rid of them easily. An example: a person grasps at
us, and is unable to seize us. That frightens him. Or we enter by a
closed door. Or when the lights are extinguished. Or after we are dead.
The latter is the artifice of _posthumous_ men _par excellence_.
("What?" said such a one once impatiently, "do you think we should
delight in enduring this strangeness, coldness, death-stillness about
us, all this subterranean, hidden, dim, undiscovered solitude, which is
called life with us, and might just as well be called death, if we were
not conscious of what _will arise_ out of us,—and that only after our
death shall we attain to _our_ life and become living, ah! very living!
we posthumous men!"—)
366.
_At the Sight of a Learned Book._—We do not belong to those who only get
their thoughts from books, or at the prompting of books,—it is our
custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing
on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the
paths become thoughtful. Our first question concerning the value of a
book, a man, or a piece of music is: Can it walk? or still better: Can
it dance?... We seldom read; we do not read the worse for that—oh, how
quickly do we divine how a person has arrived at his thoughts:—whether
sitting before an ink-bottle with compressed belly and head bent over
the paper: oh, how quickly we are then done with his book! The
constipated bowels betray themselves, one may wager on it, just as the
atmosphere of the room, the ceiling of the room, the smallness of the
room, betray themselves.—These were my feelings as I was closing a
straightforward, learned book, thankful, very thankful, but also
relieved.... In the book of a learned man there is almost always
something oppressive and oppressed: the "specialist" comes to light
somewhere, his ardour, his seriousness, his wrath, his over-estimation
of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hump—every specialist has
his hump. A learned book also always mirrors a distorted soul: every
trade distorts. Look at our friends again with whom we have spent our
youth, after they have taken possession of their science: alas! how the
reverse has always taken place! Alas! how they themselves are now for
ever occupied and possessed by their science! Grown into their nook,
crumpled into unrecognisability, constrained, deprived of their
equilibrium, emaciated and angular everywhere, perfectly round only in
one place,—we are moved and silent when we find them so. Every
handicraft, granting even that it has a golden floor,[13] has also a
leaden ceiling above it, which presses and presses on the soul, till it
is pressed into a strange and distorted shape. There is nothing to alter
here. We need not think that it is at all possible to obviate this
disfigurement by any educational artifice whatever. Every kind of
_perfection_ is purchased at a high price on earth, where everything is
perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one's department at the
price of being also a victim of one's department. But you want to have
it otherwise—"more reasonable," above all more convenient—is it not so,
my dear contemporaries? Very well! But then you will also immediately
get something different: that is to say, instead of the craftsman and
expert, the literary man, the versatile, "many-sided" littérateur, who
to be sure lacks the hump—not taking account of the hump or bow which he
makes before you as the shopman of the intellect and the "porter" of
culture—, the littérateur, who _is_ really nothing, but "represents"
almost everything: he plays and "represents" the expert, he also takes
it upon himself in all modesty _to see that he is_ paid, honoured and
celebrated in this position.—No, my learned friends! I bless you even on
account of your humps! And also because like me you despise the
littérateurs and parasites of culture! And because you do not know how
to make merchandise of your intellect! And have so many opinions which
cannot be expressed in money value! And because you do not represent
anything which you _are_ not! Because your sole desire is to become
masters of your craft; because you reverence every kind of mastership
and ability, and repudiate with the most relentless scorn everything of
a make-believe, half-genuine, dressed-up, virtuoso, demagogic,
histrionic nature in _litteris et artibus_—all that which does not
convince you by its absolute _genuineness_ of discipline and preparatory
training, or cannot stand your test! (Even genius does not help a person
to get over such a defect, however well it may be able to deceive with
regard to it: one understands this if one has once looked closely at our
most gifted painters and musicians,—who almost without exception, can
artificially and supplementarily appropriate to themselves (by means of
artful inventions of style, make-shifts, and even principles), the
_appearance_ of that genuineness, that solidity of training and culture;
to be sure, without thereby deceiving themselves, without thereby
imposing perpetual silence on their bad consciences. For you know well
enough that all great modern artists suffer from bad consciences?...)
367.
_How one has to Distinguish first of all in Works of Art._—Everything
that is thought, versified, painted and composed, yea, even built and
moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to art before witnesses.
Under the latter there is also to be included the apparently monologic
art which involves the belief in God, the whole lyric of prayer; because
for a pious man there is no solitude,—we, the godless, have been the
first to devise this invention. I know of no profounder distinction in
all the perspective of the artist than this: Whether he looks at his
growing work of art (at "himself—") with the eye of the witness; or
whether he "has forgotten the world," as is the essential thing in all
monologic art,——it rests _on forgetting_, it is the music of forgetting.
368.
_The Cynic Speaks._—My objections to Wagner's music are physiological
objections. Why should I therefore begin by disguising them under
æsthetic formulæ? My "point" is that I can no longer breathe freely when
this music begins to operate on me; my _foot_ immediately becomes
indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance and march;
it demands first of all from music the ecstasies which are in _good_
walking, striding, leaping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart,
my blood and my bowels also protest? Do I not become hoarse unawares
under its influence? And then I ask myself what it is really that my
body _wants_ from music generally. I believe it wants to have _relief_:
so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light,
bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life
should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies. My
melancholy would fain rest its head in the hiding-places and abysses of
_perfection_: for this reason I need music. What do I care for the
drama! What do I care for the spasms of its moral ecstasies, in which
the "people" have their satisfaction! What do I care for the whole
pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor!... It will now be divined that I am
essentially anti-theatrical at heart,—but Wagner on the contrary, was
essentially a man of the stage and an actor, the most enthusiastic
mummer-worshipper that has ever existed, even among musicians!... And
let it be said in passing that if Wagner's theory was that "drama is the
object, and music is only the means to it,"—his _practice_ on the
contrary from beginning to end has been to the effect that "attitude is
the object, drama and even music can never be anything else but means to
_that_." Music as a means of elucidating, strengthening and intensifying
dramatic poses and the actor's appeal to the senses, and Wagnerian drama
only an opportunity for a number of dramatic attitudes! Wagner
possessed, along with all other instincts, the dictatorial instinct of a
great actor in all and everything, and as has been said, also as a
musician.—I once made this clear with some trouble to a thorough-going
Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:—"Do be a little more honest
with yourself: we are not now in the theatre. In the theatre we are only
honest in the mass; as individuals we lie, we belie even ourselves. We
leave ourselves at home when we go to the theatre; we there renounce the
right to our own tongue and choice, to our taste, and even to our
courage as we possess it and practise it within our own four walls in
relation to God and man. No one takes his finest taste in art into the
theatre with him, not even the artist who works for the theatre: there
one is people, public, herd, woman, Pharisee, voting animal, democrat,
neighbour, and fellow-creature; there even the most personal conscience
succumbs to the levelling charm of the 'great multitude'; there
stupidity operates as wantonness and contagion; there the neighbour
rules, there one _becomes_ a neighbour...." (I have forgotten to mention
what my enlightened Wagnerian answered to my physiological objections:
"So the fact is that you are really not healthy enough for our music?"—)
369.
_Juxtapositions in us._—Must we not acknowledge to ourselves, we
artists, that there is a strange discrepancy in us; that on the one hand
our taste, and on the other hand our creative power, keep apart in an
extraordinary manner, continue apart, and have a separate growth;—I mean
to say that they have entirely different gradations and _tempi_ of age,
youth, maturity, mellowness and rottenness? So that, for example, a
musician could all his life create things which _contradict_ all that
his ear and heart, spoilt as they are for listening, prize, relish and
prefer:—he would not even require to be aware of the contradiction! As
an almost painfully regular experience shows, a person's taste can
easily outgrow the taste of his power, even without the latter being
thereby paralysed or checked in its productivity. The reverse, however,
can also to some extent take place,—and it is to this especially that I
should like to direct the attention of artists. A constant producer, a
man who is a "mother" in the grand sense of the term, one who no longer
knows or hears of anything except pregnancies and child-beds of his
spirit, who has no time at all to reflect and make comparisons with
regard to himself and his work, who is also no longer inclined to
exercise his taste, but simply forgets it, letting it take its chance of
standing, lying or falling,—perhaps such a man at last produces works
_on which he is then not at all fit to pass a judgment_: so that he
speaks and thinks foolishly about them and about himself. This seems to
me almost the normal condition with fruitful artists,—nobody knows a
child worse than its parents—and the rule applies even (to take an
immense example) to the entire Greek world of poetry and art, which was
never "conscious" of what it had done....
370.