1
I am one thing, my creations are another. Here, before I speak of the
books themselves, I shall touch upon the question of the understanding
and misunderstanding with which they have met. I shall proceed to
do this in as perfunctory a manner as the occasion demands; for the
time has by no means come for this question. My time has not yet
come either; some are born posthumously. One s day institutions will
be needed in which men will live and teach, as I understand living
and teaching; maybe, also, that by that time, chairs will be founded
and endowed for the interpretation of _Zarathustra. _ But I should
regard it as a complete contradiction of myself, if I expected to
find ears and eyes for my truths to-day: the fact that no one listens
to me, that no one knows how to receive at my hands to-day, is not
only comprehensible, it seems to me quite the proper thing. I do not
wish to be mistaken for another--and to this end I must not mistake
myself. To repeat what I have already said, I can point to but few
instances of ill-will in my life: and as for literary ill-will, I
could mention scarcely a single example of it. On the other hand, I
have met with far too much _pure foolery_!... It seems to me that to
take up one of my books is one of the rarest honours that a man can
pay himself--even supposing that he put his shoes from off his feet
beforehand, not to mention boots.... When on one occasion Dr. Heinrich
von Stein honestly complained that he could not understand a word of
my _Zarathustra,_ I said to him that this was just as it should be: to
have understood six sentences in that book--that is to say, to have
lived them--raises a man to a higher level among mortals than "modern"
men can attain. With this feeling of distance how could I even wish to
be read by the "moderns" whom I know! My triumph is just the opposite
of what Schopenhauer's was--I say "_Non_ legor, _non_ legar."--Not
that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from
the innocence with which my works have frequently been contradicted.
As late as last summer, at a time when I was attempting, perhaps by
means of my weighty, all-too-weighty literature, to throw the rest of
literature off its balance, a certain professor of Berlin University
kindly gave me to understand that I ought really to make use of a
different form: no one could read such stuff as I wrote.--Finally, it
was not Germany, but Switzerland that presented me with the two most
extreme cases. An essay on _Beyond Good and Evil,_ by Dr. V. Widmann in
the paper called the _Bund,_ under the heading "Nietzsche's Dangerous
Book," and a general account of all my works, from the pen of Herr
Karl Spitteler, also in the _Bund,_ constitute a maximum in my life--I
shall not say of what.... The latter treated my _Zarathustra,_ for
instance as "_advanced exercises in style_," and expressed the wish
that later on I might try and attend to the question of substance as
well; Dr. Widmann assured me of his respect for the courage I showed
in endeavouring to abolish all decent feeling. Thanks to a little
trick of destiny, every sentence in these criticisms seemed, with
a consistency that I could but admire, to be an inverted truth. In
fact it was most remarkable that all one had to do was to "transvalue
all values," in order to hit the nail on the head with regard to me,
instead of striking my head with the nail.... I am more particularly
anxious therefore to discover an explanation. After all, no one can
draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man
has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access. To
take an extreme case, suppose a book contains simply incidents which
lie quite outside the range of general or even rare experience--suppose
it to be the _first_ language to express a whole series of experiences.
In this case nothing it contains will really be heard at all, and,
thanks to an acoustic delusion, people will believe that where nothing
is heard there is nothing to hear.... This, at least, has been my
usual experience, and proves, if you will, the originality of my
experience. He who thought he had understood something in my work, had
as a rule adjusted something in it to his own image--not infrequently
the very opposite of myself, an "idealist," for instance. He who
understood nothing in my work, would deny that I was worth considering
at all.--The word "Superman," which designates a type of man that
would be one of nature's rarest and luckiest strokes, as opposed to
"modern" men, to "good" men, to Christians and other Nihilists,--a
word which in the mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality,
acquires a very profound meaning,--is understood almost everywhere, and
with perfect innocence, in the light of those values to which a flat
contradiction was made manifest in the figure of Zarathustra--that is
to say, as an "ideal" type, a higher kind of man, half "saint" and half
"genius." ... Other learned cattle have suspected me of Darwinism on
account of this word: even the "hero cult" of that great unconscious
and involuntary swindler, Carlyle,--a cult which I repudiated with
such roguish malice,--was recognised in my doctrine. Once, when I
whispered to a man that he would do better I to seek for the Superman
in a Cæsar Borgia than in a Parsifal, he could not believe his ears.
The fact that I am quite free from curiosity in regard to criticisms of
my books, more particularly when they appear in newspapers, will have
to be forgiven me. My friends and my publishers know this, and never
speak to me of such things. In one particular case, I once saw all the
sins that had been committed against a single book--it was _Beyond Good
and Evil;_ I could tell you a nice story about it. Is it possible that
the _National-Zeitung_--a Prussian paper (this comment is for the sake
of my foreign readers--for my own part, I beg to state, I read only _Le
Journal des Débats_)--really and seriously regarded the book as a "sign
of the times," or a genuine and typical example of Tory philosophy,[1]
for which the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ had not sufficient courage?...
2
This was said for the benefit of Germans: for everywhere else I have
my readers--all of them exceptionally intelligent men, characters that
have won their spurs and that have been reared in high offices and
superior duties; I have even real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna,
in St Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris, and New
York--I have been discovered everywhere: I have not yet been discovered
in Europe's flatland--Germany.... And, to make a confession, I rejoice
much more heartily over those who do not read me, over those who have
neither heard of my name nor of the word philosophy. But whithersoever
I go, here in Turin, for instance, every face brightens and softens
at the sight of me. A thing that has flattered me more than anything
else hitherto, is the fact that old market-women cannot rest until
they have picked out the sweetest of their grapes for me. To this
extent must a man be a philosopher.... It is not in vain that the
Poles are considered as the French among the Slavs. A charming Russian
lady will not be mistaken for a single moment concerning my origin.
I am not successful at being pompous, the most I can do is to appear
embarrassed.... I can think in German, I can feel in German--I can do
most things; but this is beyond my powers.... My old master Ritschl
went so far as to declare that I planned even my philological treatises
after the manner of a Parisian novelist--that I made them absurdly
thrilling. In Paris itself people are surprised at "_toutes mes audaces
et finesses_";--the words are Monsieur Taine's;--I fear that even in
the highest forms of the dithyramb, that salt will be found pervading
my work which never becomes insipid, which never becomes "German"--and
that is, wit.... I can do nought else. God help me! Amen.--We all know,
some of us even from experience, what a "long-ears" is. Well then, I
venture to assert that I have the smallest ears that have ever been
seen. This fact is not without interest to women--it seems to me they
feel that I understand them better!... I am essentially the anti-ass,
and on this account alone a monster in the world's history--in Greek,
and not only in Greek, I am the _Antichrist._
3
I am to a great extent aware of my privileges as a writer: in one
or two cases it has even been brought home to me how very much the
habitual > reading of my works "spoils" a man's taste. Other books
simply cannot be endured after mine, and least of all philosophical
ones. It is an incomparable distinction to cross the threshold of
this noble and subtle world--in order to do so one must certainly
not be a German; it is, in short, a distinction which one must have
deserved. He, however, who is related to me through loftiness of
will, experiences genuine raptures of understanding in my books:
for I swoop down from heights into which no bird has ever soared; I
know abysses into which no foot has ever slipped. People have told
me that it is impossible to lay down a book of mine--that I disturb
even the night's rest.... There is no prouder or at the same time more
subtle kind of books: they sometimes attain to the highest pinnacle
of earthly endeavour, cynicism; to capture their thoughts a man must
have the tenderest fingers as well as the most intrepid fists. Any
kind of spiritual decrepitude utterly excludes all intercourse with
them--even any kind of dyspepsia: a man must have no nerves, but he
must have a cheerful belly. Not only the poverty of a man's soul and
its stuffy air excludes all intercourse with them, but also, and to a
much greater degree, cowardice, uncleanliness, and secret intestinal
revengefulness; a word from my lips suffices to make the colour of
all evil instincts rush into a face. Among my acquaintances I have
a number of experimental subjects, in whom I see depicted all the
different, and instructively different, reactions which follow upon
a perusal of my works. Those who will have nothing to do with the
contents of my books, as for instance my so-called friends, assume an
"impersonal" tone concerning them: they wish me luck, and congratulate
me for having produced another work; they also declare that my writings
show progress, because they exhale a more cheerful spirit.... The
thoroughly vicious people, the "beautiful souls," the false from top to
toe, do not know in the least what to do with my books--consequently,
with the beautiful consistency of all beautiful souls, they regard
my work as beneath them. The cattle among my acquaintances, the mere
Germans, leave me to understand, if you please, that they are not
always of my opinion, though here and there they agree with me.... I
have heard this said even about _Zarathustra._ "Feminism," whether in
mankind or in man, is likewise a barrier to my writings; with it, no
one could ever enter into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge. To
this end, a man must never have spared himself, he must have been hard
in his habits, in order to be good-humoured and merry among a host of
inexorable truths. When I try to picture the character of a perfect
reader, I always imagine a monster of courage and curiosity, as well as
of suppleness, cunning, and prudence--in short, a born adventurer and
explorer. After all, I could not describe better than _Zarathustra_ has
done unto whom I really address myself: unto whom alone would he reveal
his riddle?
"Unto you, daring explorers and experimenters, and unto all who have
ever embarked beneath cunning sails upon terrible seas;
"Unto you who revel in riddles and in twilight, whose souls are lured
by flutes unto every treacherous abyss:
"For ye care not to grope your way along a thread with craven fingers;
and where ye are able to _guess,_ ye hate to _argue_?"
4
I will now pass just one or two general remarks about my _art of
style._ To communicate a state an inner tension of pathos by means
of signs, including the tempo of these signs,--that is the meaning of
every style; and in view of the fact that the multiplicity of inner
states in me is enormous, I am capable of many kinds of style--in
short, the most multifarious art of style that any man has ever had at
his disposal. Any style is _good_ which genuinely communicates an inner
condition, which does not blunder over the signs, over the tempo of the
signs, or over _moods_--all the laws of phrasing are the outcome of
representing moods artistically. Good style, in itself, is a piece of
sheer foolery, mere idealism, like "beauty in itself," for instance,
or "goodness in itself," or "the thing-in-itself." All this takes for
granted, of course, that there exist ears that can hear, and such men
as are capable and worthy of a like pathos, that those are not wanting
unto whom one may communicate one's self. Meanwhile my Zarathustra,
for instance, is still in quest of such people--alas! he will have to
seek a long while yet! A man must be worthy of listening to him....
And, until that time, there will be no one who will understand the art
that has been squandered in this book. No one has ever existed who has
had more novel, more strange, and purposely created art forms to fling
to the winds. The fact that such things were possible in the German
language still awaited proof; formerly, I myself would have denied
most emphatically that it was possible. Before my time people did not
know what could be done with the German language--what could be done
with language in general. The art of grand rhythm, of grand style in
periods, for expressing the tremendous fluctuations of sublime and
superhuman passion, was first discovered by me: with the dithyramb
entitled "The Seven Seals," which constitutes the last discourse of
the third part of _Zarathustra,_ I soared miles above all that which
heretofore has been called poetry.
5
The fact that the voice which speaks in my works is that of a
psychologist who has not his peer, is perhaps the first conclusion
at which a good reader will arrive--a reader such as I deserve, and
one who reads me just as the good old philologists used to read their
Horace. Those propositions about which all the world is fundamentally
agreed--not to speak of fashionable philosophy, of moralists and
other empty-headed and cabbage-brained people--are to me but ingenuous
blunders: for instance, the belief that "altruistic" and "egoistic";
are opposites, while all the time the "ego" itself is merely a "supreme
swindle," an "ideal." ... There are no such things as egoistic or
altruistic actions: both concepts are psychological nonsense. Or
the proposition that "man pursues happiness"; or the proposition
that "happiness is the reward of virtue." ... Or the proposition
that "pleasure and pain are opposites." ... Morality, the Circe of
mankind, has falsified everything psychological, root and branch--it
has demoralised everything, even to the terribly nonsensical point
of calling love "unselfish." A man must first be firmly poised, he
must stand securely on his two legs, otherwise he cannot love at
all. This indeed the girls know only too well: they don't care two
pins about unselfish and merely objective men.... May I venture to
suggest, incidentally, that I know women? This knowledge is part of my
Dionysian patrimony. Who knows? maybe I am the first psychologist of
the eternally feminine. Women all like me.... But that's an old story:
save, of course, the abortions among them, the emancipated ones, those
who lack the where-withal to have children. Thank goodness I am not
willing to let myself be torn to pieces! the perfect woman tears you
to pieces when she loves you: I know these amiable Mænads.... Oh! what
a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of prey she is! And
so agreeable withal! ... A little woman, pursuing her vengeance, would
force open even the iron gates of Fate itself. Woman is incalculably
more wicked than man, she is also cleverer. Goodness in a woman is
already a sign of _degeneration._ All cases of "beautiful souls" in
women may be traced to a faulty physiological condition--but I go no
further, lest I should become medicynical. The struggle for equal
rights is even a symptom of disease; every doctor knows this. The more
womanly a woman is, the more she fights tooth and nail against rights
in general: the natural order of things, the eternal war between the
sexes, assigns to her by far the foremost rank. Have people had ears
to hear my definition of love? It is the only definition worthy of a
philosopher. Love, in its means, is war; in its foundation, it is the
mortal hatred of the sexes. Have you heard my reply to the question
how a woman can be cured, "saved" in fact?--Give her a child! A woman
needs children, man is always only a means, thus spake Zarathustra.
"The emancipation of women,"--this is the instinctive hatred of
physiologically botched--that is to say, barren--women for those of
their sisters who are well constituted: the fight against "man" is
always only a means, a pretext, a piece of strategy. By trying to rise
to "Woman _per se_," to "Higher Woman," to the "Ideal Woman," all they
wish to do is to lower the general level of women's rank: and there are
no more certain means to this end than university education, trousers,
and the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emancipated are
the anarchists in the "eternally feminine" world, the physiological
mishaps, the most deep-rooted instinct of whom is revenge. A whole
species of the most malicious "idealism"--which, by the bye, also
manifests itself in men, in Henrik Ibsen for instance, that typical
old maid--whose object is to poison the clean conscience, the natural
spirit, of sexual love.... And in order to leave no doubt in your minds
in regard to my opinion, which, on this matter, is as honest as it
is severe, I will reveal to you one more clause out of my moral code
against vice--with the word "vice" I combat every kind of! opposition
to Nature, or, if you prefer fine words, idealism. The clause reads:
"Preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices.
All depreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of it by means
of the concept 'impure,' is the essential crime against Life--is the
essential crime against the Holy Spirit of Life."
In order to give you some idea of myself as a psychologist, let me
take this curious piece of psychological analysis out of the book
_Beyond Good and Evil,_ in which it appears. I forbid, by the bye, any
guessing as to whom I am describing in this passage. "The genius of
the heart, as that great anchorite possesses it, the divine tempter
and born Pied Piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to sink into
the inmost depths of every soul, who neither utters a word nor casts a
glance, in which some seductive motive or trick does not lie: a part
of whose masterliness is that he understands the art of seeming--not
what he is, but that which will place a fresh constraint upon his
followers to press ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more
enthusiastically and whole-heartedly.... The genius of the heart,
which makes all loud and self-conceited things hold their tongues and
lend their ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them taste a
new longing--to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be
reflected in them.... The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy
and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more tenderly; which scents
the hidden and forgotten treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet
spirituality, beneath thick black ice, and is a divining rod for every
grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in heaps of mud and sand....
The genius of the heart, from contact with which every man goes away
richer, not 'blessed' and overcome, not as though favoured and crushed
by the good things of others; but richer in himself, fresher to
himself than before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing
wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more
bruised; but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will
and striving, full of a new unwillingness and counter-striving." ...
[Footnote 1: _Junker-Philosophie._ The landed proprietors constitute
the dominating class in Prussia, and it is from this class that all
officers and higher officials are drawn. The _Kreuz-Zeitung_ is the
organ of the Junker party.--TR.]
"THE BIRTH Of TRAGEDY"
1
In order to be fair to the _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) it is necessary
to forget a few things. It created a sensation and even fascinated by
means of its mistakes--by means of its application to Wagnerism, as
if the latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that account
alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward
great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day, people
remind me, sometimes in the middle of _Parsifal,_ that it rests on
my conscience if the opinion, that this movement is of great value
to culture, at length became prevalent I have often seen the book
quoted as "The Second Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music":
people had ears only for new formulæ for Wagner's art, his object
and his mission--and in this way the real hidden value of the book
was overlooked. "Hellenism and Pessimism"--this would have been a
less equivocal title, seeing that the book contains the first attempt
at showing how the Greeks succeeded in disposing: of pessimism--in
what manner they overcame it. ... Tragedy itself is the proof of
the fact that the Greeks were not pessimists: Schopenhauer blundered
here as he blundered in everything else.--Regarded impartially,
_The Birth of Tragedy_ is a book quite strange to its age: no one
would dream that it was begun in the thunder of the battle of Wörth.
I thought out these problems on cold September nights beneath the
walls of Metz, in the midst of my duties as nurse to the wounded; it
would be easier to think that it was written fifty years earlier. Its
attitude towards politics is one of indifference,--"un-German,"[1]
as people would say to-day,--it smells offensively of Hegel; only in
one or two formulæ is it infected with the bitter odour of corpses
which is peculiar to Schopenhauer. An idea--the antagonism of the two
concepts Dionysian and Apollonian--is translated into metaphysics;
history itself is depicted as the development of this idea; in tragedy
this antithesis has become unity; from this standpoint things which
theretofore had never been face to face are suddenly confronted, and
understood and illuminated by each other.... Opera and revolution,
for instance.... The two decisive innovations in the book are, first,
the comprehension of the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks--it
provides the first psychological analysis of this phenomenon, and
sees in it the single root of all Greek art; and, secondly, the
comprehension of Socraticism--Socrates being presented for the first
time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as a typical decadent.
"Reason" _versus_ Instinct. "Reason" at any cost, as a dangerous,
life-undermining force. The whole book is profoundly and politely
silent concerning Christianity: the latter is neither Apollonian nor
Dionysian; it denies all æsthetic values, which are the only values
that _The Birth of Tragedy_ recognises. Christianity is most profoundly
nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian symbol, the most extreme limits of
a yea-saying attitude to life are attained. In one part of the book the
Christian priesthood is referred to as a "perfidious order of goblins,"
as "subterraneans."
This start of mine was remarkable beyond measure. As a confirmation of
my inmost personal experience I had discovered the only example of this
fact that history possesses,--with this I was the first to understand
the amazing Dionysian phenomenon. At the same time, by recognising
Socrates as a decadent, I proved most conclusively that the certainty
of my psychological grasp of things ran very little risk at the hands
of any sort of moral idiosyncrasy: to regard morality itself as a
symptom of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of the first
order in the history of knowledge. How high I had soared above the
pitifully foolish gabble about Optimism and Pessimism with my two new
doctrines! I was the first to see the actual contrast: the degenerate
instinct which turns upon life with a subterranean lust of vengeance
(Christianity, Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects too
even Plato's philosophy--in short, the whole of idealism in its typical
forms), as opposed to a formula of the highest yea-saying to life,
born of an abundance and a superabundance of life--a I yea-saying free
from all reserve, applying even to suffering, and guilt, and all that
is questionable and strange in existence.... This last, most joyous,
most exuberant and exultant yea to life, is not only the highest,
but also the profoundest conception, and one which is most strictly
confirmed and supported by truth and science. Nothing that exists must
be suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those aspects of life
which Christians and other Nihilists reject, belong to an incalculably
higher order in the hierarchy of values, than that which the instinct
of degeneration calls good, and _may_ call good. In order to understand
this, a certain courage is necessary, and, as a prerequisite of this,
a certain superfluity of strength: for a man can approach only as near
to truth as he has the courage to advance--that is to say, everything
depends strictly upon the measure of his strength. Knowledge, and
the affirmation of reality, are just as necessary to the strong man
as cowardice, the flight from reality--in fact, the "ideal"--are
necessary to the weak inspired by weakness.... These people are not
at liberty to "know,"--decadents stand in need of lies,--it is one of
their self-preservative measures. He who not only understands the word
"Dionysian," but understands _himself_ in that term, does not require
any refutation of Plato, or of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer--for
his nose _scents decomposition._
3
The extent to which I had by means of these doctrines discovered the
idea of "tragedy," the ultimate explanation of what the psychology of
tragedy is, I discussed finally in _The Twilight of the Idols_ (Aph.
5, part 10).... "The saying of yea to life, and even to its weirdest
and most difficult problems: the will to life rejoicing at its own
infinite vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types--that is what I
called Dionysian, that is what I meant as the bridge to the psychology
of the tragic poet. Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge one's
self of dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence,--this was
Aristotle's[2] misunderstanding of it,--but to be far beyond terror
and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself--that lust
which also involves the joy of destruction." ... In this sense I have
the right to regard myself as the first _tragic philosopher_--that is
to say, the most extreme antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic
philosopher. Before my time no such thing existed as this translation
of the Dionysian phenomenon into philosophic emotion: tragic wisdom was
lacking; in vain have I sought for signs of it even among the great
Greeks in philosophy--those belonging to the two centuries before
Socrates. I still remained a little doubtful about Heraclitus, in whose
presence, alone, I felt warmer and more at ease than anywhere else.
The yea-saying to the impermanence and annihilation of things, which
is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; the yea-saying to
contradiction and war, the postulation of Becoming, together with the
radical rejection even of the concept _Being_-- in all these things, at
all events, I must recognise him who has come nearest to me in thought
hither to. The doctrine of the "Eternal Recurrence"--that is to say,
of the absolute and eternal repetition of all things in periodical
cycles--this doctrine of Zarathustra's might, it is true, have been
taught before. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly all their
fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show traces of it.
A tremendous hope finds expression in this work. After all, I have
absolutely no reason to renounce the hope for a Dionysian future of
music. Let us look a century ahead, and let us suppose that my attempt
to destroy two millenniums of hostility to Nature and of the violation
of humanity be crowned with success That new party of life-advocates,
which will undertake the greatest of all tasks, the elevation and
perfection of mankind, as well as the relentless destruction of all
degenerate and parasitical elements, will make that _superabundance
of life_ on earth once more possible, out of which the Dionysian
state will perforce arise again. I promise the advent of a tragic
age: the highest art in the saying of yea to life, "tragedy," will be
born again when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest, but most
necessary of wars, behind it, without, however, suffering from that
knowledge.... A psychologist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing whatsoever to do with
Wagner; that when I described Dionysian music, I described merely
what _I_ personally had heard--that I was compelled instinctively to
translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit which filled
my breast. A proof of this, and as strong a proof as you could have,
is my essay, _Wagner in Bayreuth_: in all its decisive psychological
passages I am the only person concerned--without any hesitation you may
read my name or the word "Zarathustra" wherever the text contains the
name of Wagner. The whole panorama of the _dithyrambic_ artist is the
representation of the already existing author of _Zarathustra,_ and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not even once come into
contact with the real Wagner. Wagner himself had a notion of the truth;
he did not recognise himself in the essay.--In this way, "the idea of
Bayreuth" was changed into something which to those who are acquainted
with my _Zarathustra_ will be no riddle--that is to say, into the
Great Noon when the highest of the elect will consecrate themselves
for the greatest of all duties--who knows? the vision of a feast which
I may live to see.... The pathos of the first few pages is universal
history; the look which is discussed on page 105[3] of the book, is the
actual look of _Zarathustra;_ Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty
German wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata Morgana
of the future is reflected. Even from the psychological standpoint,
all the decisive traits in my character are introduced into Wagner's
nature--the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most fatal forces,
a Will to Power such as no man has ever possessed--inexorable bravery
in matters spiritual, an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this essay is a prophecy:
the proximity of the resurrection of the Greek spirit, the need of men
who will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie the Gordian knot
of Greek culture, after it has been cut. Listen to the world-historic
accent with which the concept "sense for the tragic" is introduced
on page 180: there are little else but world-historic accents in
this essay. This is the strangest kind of "objectivity" that ever
existed: my absolute certainty in regard to what I _am,_ projected
itself into any chance reality--truth about myself was voiced from out
appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175 the style of _Zarathustra_ is
described and foretold with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever be found than that on pages 144-147 for the event
for which _Zarathustra_ stands--that prodigious act of the purification
and consecration of mankind.
[Footnote 1: Those Germans who, like Nietzsche or Goethe, recognised
that politics constituted a danger to culture, and who appreciated the
literature of maturer cultures, such as that of France, are called
_un-deutsch_ (un-German) by Imperialistic Germans.--Tr.]
[Footnote 2: Aristotle's _Poetics_, c. vi.--Tr.]
[Footnote 3: This number and those which follow refer to _Thoughts out
of Season,_ Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works.--TR.]
"THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON"
1
The four essays composing the _Thoughts out of Season_ are thoroughly
warlike in tone. They prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
in drawing the sword--and perhaps, also, that my wrist is dangerously
supple. The first onslaught (1873) was directed against German culture,
upon which I looked down even at that time with unmitigated contempt
Without either sense, substance, or goal, it was simply "public
opinion." There could be no more dangerous misunderstanding than to
suppose that Germany's success at arms proved anything in favour of
German culture--and still less the triumph of this culture; over
that of France. The second essay (1874) brings to light that which
is dangerous, that which corrodes and poisons life in our manner of
pursuing scientific study: Life is diseased, thanks to this dehumanised
piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to the "impersonality" of
the workman, 1 and the false economy of the "division of labour." The
object, which is culture, is lost sight of: modern scientific activity
as a means thereto simply produces barbarism. In this treatise, the
"historical sense," of which this century is so proud, is for the first
time recognised as sickness, as a typical symptom of decay. In the
third and fourth essays, a sign-post is set up pointing to a higher
concept of culture, to a re-establishment of the notion "culture";
and two pictures of the hardest self-love and self-discipline are
presented, two essentially un-modern types, full of the most sovereign
contempt for all that which lay around them and was called "Empire,"
"Culture," "Christianity," "Bismarck," and "Success,"--these two types
were Schopenhauer and Wagner, _or,_ in a word, Nietzsche....
2
Of these four attacks, the first met with extraordinary success. The
stir which it created was in every way gorgeous. I had put my finger
on the vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation--I had told it that its
victory was not a red-letter day for culture, but, perhaps, something
very different. The reply rang out from all sides, and certainly not
only from old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made ridiculous
as the type of a German Philistine of Culture and a man of smug
self-content--in short, as the author of that suburban gospel of his,
called _The Old and the New Faith_ (the term "Philistine of Culture"
passed into the current language of Germany after the appearance of my
book). These old friends, whose vanity as Würtembergians and Swabians
I had deeply wounded in regarding their unique animal, their bird
of Paradise, as a trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as
grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian replies were smarter; they
contained more "Prussian blue." The most disreputable attitude was
assumed by a Leipzig paper, the egregious _Grentzboten_; and it cost me
some pains to prevent my indignant friends in Bâle from taking action
against it. Only a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for
very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons. Among them was one,
Ewald of Göttingen, who made it clear that my attack on Strauss had
been deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer, who from that
time became one of my most attentive readers. In his later years he
liked to refer to me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr von
Treitschke, the Prussian Historiographer, a hint as to where he could
obtain information about the notion "Culture," of which he (Herr von
T.) had completely lost sight. The weightiest and longest notice of my
book and its author appeared in Würzburg, and was written by Professor
Hoffmann, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader. The essays made
him foresee a great future for me, namely, that of bringing about a
sort of crisis and decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism,
of which he recognised in me the most instinctive and most radical
advocate. It was atheism that had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review
which received by far the most attention, and which excited the most
bitterness, was an extraordinarily powerful and plucky appreciation of
my work by Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild, and the last
_humane_ German who knew how to wield a pen. The article appeared in
the _Augsburg Gazette,_ and it can be read to-day, couched in rather
more cautious language, among his collected essays. In it my work was
referred to as an event, as a decisive turning-point, as the first sign
of an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as an actual revival
of German earnestness and of German passion in things spiritual.
Hillebrand could speak only in the terms of the highest respect, of
the form of my book, of its consummate taste, of its perfect tact in
discriminating between persons and causes: he characterised it as the
best polemical work in the German language,--the best performance in
the art of polemics, which for Germans is so dangerous and so strongly
to be deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he laid even
greater stress upon what I had dared to say about the deterioration of
language in Germany (nowadays writers assume the airs of Purists[1]
and can no longer even construct a sentence); sharing my contempt for
the literary stars of this nation, he concluded by expressing his
admiration for my courage--that "greatest courage of all which places
the very favourites of the people in the dock." ... The after-effects
of this essay of mine proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has
ever tried to meddle with me since. People are silent. In Germany
I am treated with gloomy caution: for years I have rejoiced in the
privilege of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one nowadays,
least of all in the "Empire," has enough liberty to claim. My paradise
is "in the shadow of my sword." At bottom all I had done was to put
one of Stendhal's maxims into practice: he advises one to make one's
entrance into society by means of a duel. And how well I had chosen my
opponent!--the foremost free-thinker of Germany. As a matter of fact,
quite a novel kind of free thought found its expression in this way:
up to the present nothing has been more strange and more foreign to my
blood than the whole of that European and American species known as
_litres penseurs._ Incorrigible blockheads and clowns of "modern ideas"
that they are, I feel much more profoundly at variance with them than
with any one of their adversaries. They also wish to "improve" mankind,
after their own fashion--that is to say, in their own image; against
that which I stand for and desire, they would wage an implacable war,
if only they understood it; the whole gang of them still believe in an
"ideal." ... I am the first _Immoralist_.
3
I should not like to say that the last two essays in the _Thoughts
out of Season,_ associated with the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner
respectively, serve any special purpose in throwing light upon these
two cases, or in formulating their psychological problems. This of
course does not apply to a few details. Thus, for instance, in the
second of the two essays, with a profound certainty of instinct I
already characterised the elementary factor in Wagner's nature as a
theatrical talent which in all his means and inspirations only draws
its final conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay was to do
something very different from writing psychology: an unprecedented
educational problem, a new understanding of self-discipline and
self-defence carried to the point of hardness, a road to greatness
and to world-historic duties, yearned to find expression. Roughly
speaking, I seized two famous and, theretofore, completely undefined
types by the forelock, after the manner in which one seizes
opportunities, simply in order to speak my mind on certain questions,
in order to have a few more formulas, signs, and means of expression
at my disposal. Indeed I actually suggest this, with most unearthly
sagacity, on page 183 of _Schopenhauer as Educator._ Plato made use
of Socrates in the same way--that is to say, as a cipher for Plato.
Now that, from some distance, I can look back upon the conditions of
which these essays are the testimony, I would be loth to deny that they
refer simply to me. The essay _Wagner in Bayreuth_ is a vision of my
own future; on the other hand, my most secret history, my development,
is written down in _Schopenhauer as Educator._ But, above all, the
_vow_ I made I What I am to-day, the place I now hold--at a height from
which I speak no longer with words but with thunderbolts!--oh, how
far I was from all this in those days! But I saw the land--I did not
deceive myself for one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger--_and_
success! The great calm in promising, this happy prospect of a future
which must not remain only a promise!--In this book every word has
been lived, profoundly and intimately; the most painful things are not
lacking in it; it contains words which are positively running with
blood. But a wind of great freedom blows over the whole; even its
wounds do not constitute an objection. As to what I understand by being
a philosopher,--that is to say, a terrible explosive in the presence
of which everything is in danger; as to how I sever my idea of the
philosopher by miles from that other idea of him which includes even a
Kant, not to speak of the academic "ruminators" and other professors of
philosophy,--concerning all these things this essay provides invaluable
information, even granting that at bottom, it is not "Schopenhauer as
Educator" but "Nietzsche as Educator," who speaks his sentiments in
it. Considering that, in those days, my trade was that of a scholar,
and perhaps, also, that I understood my trade, the piece of austere
scholar psychology which suddenly makes its appearance in this essay is
not without importance: it expresses the feeling of distance, and my
profound certainty regarding what was my real life-task, and what were
merely means, intervals, and accessory work to me. My wisdom consists
in my having been many things, and in many places, in order to become
one thing--in order to be able to attain to one thing. It was part of
my fate to be a scholar for a while.
[Footnote 1: The Purists constitute a definite body in Germany, which
is called the _Deutscher Sprach-Verein._ Their object is to banish
every foreign word from the language, and they carry this process of
ostracism even into the domain of the menu, where their efforts at
rendering the meaning of French dishes are extremely comical. Strange
to say, their principal organ, and their other publications, are by
no means free either from solecisms or faults of style, and it is
doubtless to this curious anomaly that Nietzsche here refers.--TR.]
"HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN"
1
_Human all-too-Human,_ with its two sequels, is the memorial of a
crisis. It is called a book for free spirits: almost every sentence in
it is the expression of a triumph--by means of it I purged myself of
everything in me which was foreign to my nature. Idealism is foreign
to me: the title of the book means: "Where ye see ideal things I
see--human, alas! all-too-human things!" ... I know men better. The
word "free spirit" in this book must not be understood as anything
else than a spirit that has become free, that has once more taken
possession of itself. My tone, the pitch of my voice, has completely
changed; the book will be thought clever, cool, and at times both
hard and scornful. A certain spirituality, of noble taste, seems to
be ever struggling to dominate a passionate torrent at its feet. In
this respect there is some sense in the fact that it was the hundredth
anniversary of Voltaire's death that served, so to speak, as an excuse
for the publication of the book as early as 1878. For Voltaire, as the
opposite of every one who wrote after him, was above all a grandee of
the intellect; precisely what I am also. The name of Voltaire on one
of my writings--that was verily a step forward--in my direction....
Looking into this book a little more closely, you perceive a pitiless
spirit who knows all the secret hiding-places in which ideals are wont
to skulk--where they find their dungeons, and, as it were, their last
refuge. With a torch in my hand, the light of which is not by any
means a flickering one, I illuminate this nether world with beams that
cut like blades. It is war, but war without powder and smoke, without
warlike attitudes, without pathos and contorted limbs--all these things
would still be "idealism." One error after the other is quietly laid
upon ice; the ideal is not refuted,--it freezes. Here, for instance,
"genius" freezes; round the corner the "saint" freezes; under a thick
icicle the "hero" freezes; and in the end "faith" itself freezes.
So-called "conviction" and also "pity" are considerably cooled--and
almost everywhere the "thing in itself" is freezing to death.
2
This book was begun during the first musical festival at Bayreuth; a
feeling of profound strangeness towards everything that surrounded
me there, is one of its first conditions. He who has any notion of
the visions which even at that time had flitted across my path, will
be able to guess what I felt when one day I came to my senses in
Bayreuth. It was just as if I had been dreaming. Where on earth was I?
I recognised nothing that I saw; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was
in vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen--remote island of
bliss: not the shadow of a resemblance! The incomparable days devoted
to the laying of the first stone, the small group of the initiated
who celebrated them, and who were far from lacking fingers for the
handling of delicate things: not the shadow of a resemblance! _What
had happened?_--Wagner had been translated into German! The Wagnerite
had become master of Wagner!_--German_ art! the German master! German
beer!... We who know only too well the kind of refined artists and
cosmopolitanism in taste, to which alone Wagner's art can appeal, were
beside ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with German virtues.
I think I know the Wagnerite, I have experienced three generations
of them, from Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded Wagner with
Hegel, to the "idealists" of the _Bayreuth Gazette,_ who confound
Wagner with themselves,--I have been the recipient of every kind of
confession about Wagner, from "beautiful souls." My kingdom for just
one intelligent word I--In very truth, a blood-curdling company! Nohl,
Pohl, and _Kohl_[1] and others of their kidney to infinity! There
was not a single abortion that was lacking among them--no, not even
the anti-Semite.--Poor Wagner! Into whose hands had he fallen? If
only he had gone into a herd of swine! But among Germans! Some day,
for the edification of posterity, one ought really to have a genuine
Bayreuthian stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit,--for
it is precisely spirit that is lacking in this quarter,--with this
inscription at the foot of the jar: "A sample of the spirit whereon
the 'German Empire' was founded." ... But enough! In the middle of
the festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the place for a
few weeks, despite the fact that a charming Parisian lady sought to
comfort me; I excused myself to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic
telegram. In a little spot called Klingenbrunn, deeply buried in the
recesses of the Bohmerwald, I carried my melancholy and my contempt of
Germans about with me like an illness--and, from time to time, under
the general title of "The Plough-share," I wrote a sentence or two down
in my note-book, nothing but severe psychological stuff, which it is
possible may have found its way into _Human, all-too-Human._
3
That which had taken place in me, then, was not only a breach with
Wagner--I was suffering from a general aberration of my instincts,
of which a mere isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or my
professorship at Bâle, was nothing more than a symptom. I was seized
with a fit of impatience with myself; I saw that it was high time that
I should turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I realised, with
appalling clearness, how much time had already been squandered--how
futile and how senseless my whole existence as a philologist appeared
by the side of my life-task. I was ashamed of this false modesty....
Ten years were behind me, during which, to tell the truth, the
nourishment of my spirit had been at a standstill, during which I had
added not a single useful fragment to my knowledge, and had forgotten
countless things in the pursuit of a hotch-potch of dry-as-dust
scholarship. To crawl with meticulous care and short-sighted eyes
through old Greek metricians--that is what I had come to!... Moved to
pity I saw myself quite thin, quite emaciated: realities were only too
plainly absent from my stock of knowledge, and what the "idealities"
were worth the devil alone knew! A positively burning thirst overcame
me: and from that time forward I have done literally nothing else than
study physiology, medicine, and natural science--I even returned to
the actual study of history only when my life-task compelled me to. It
was at that time, too, that I first divined the relation between an
instinctively repulsive occupation, a so-called vocation, which is the
last thing to which one is "called" and that need of lulling a feeling
of emptiness and hunger, by means of an art which is a narcotic--by
means of Wagner's art, for instance. After looking carefully about
me, I have discovered that a large number of young men are all in the
same state of distress: one kind of unnatural practice perforce leads
to another. In Germany, or rather, to avoid all ambiguity, in the
Empire,[2] only too many are condemned to determine their choice too
soon, and then to pine away beneath a burden that they can no longer
throw off.... Such creatures crave for Wagner as for an opiate,--they
are thus able to forget themselves, to be rid of themselves for a
moment.... What am I saying!--for five or six hours.
4
At this time my instincts turned resolutely against any further
yielding or following on my part, and any further misunderstanding
of myself. Every kind of life, the most unfavourable circumstances,
illness, poverty--anything seemed to me preferable to that undignified
"selfishness" into which I had fallen; in the first place, thanks to my
ignorance and youth, and in which I had afterwards remained owing to
laziness--the so-called "sense of duty." At this juncture there came to
my help, in a way that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at
the right time, that evil heritage which I derive from my father's side
of the family, and which, at bottom, is no more than a predisposition
to die young. Illness slowly liberated me from the toils, it spared me
any sort of sudden breach, any sort of violent and offensive step. At
that time I lost not a particle of the good will of others, but rather
added to my store. Illness likewise gave me the right completely to
reverse my mode of life; it not only allowed, it actually commanded,
me to forget; it bestowed upon me the necessity of lying still, of
having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising patience.... But all
this means thinking!... The state of my eyes alone put an end to all
book-wormishness, or, in plain English--philology: I was thus delivered
from books; for years I ceased from reading, and this was the greatest
boon I ever conferred upon myself! That nethermost self, which was,
as it were, entombed, and which had grown dumb because it had been
forced to listen perpetually to other selves (for that is what reading
means!), slowly awakened; at first it was shy and doubtful, but at
last it _spoke again_ Never have I rejoiced more over my condition
than during the sickest and most painful moments of my life. You have
only to examine _The Dawn of Day,_ or, perhaps, _The Wanderer and
his Shadow,_[3] in order to understand what this "return to myself"
actually meant: in itself it was the highest kind of recovery!... My
cure was simply the result of it.
5
_Human, all-too-Human,_ this monument of a course of vigorous
self-discipline, by means of which I put an abrupt end to all the
"Superior Bunkum," "Idealism," "Beautiful Feelings," and other
effeminacies that had percolated into my being, was written principally
in Sorrento; it was finished and given definite shape during a winter
at Bâle, under conditions far less favourable than those in Sorrento.
Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast, at that time a student at the
University of Bâle, and a devoted friend of mine, who was responsible
for the book. With my head wrapped in bandages, and extremely painful,
I dictated while he wrote and corrected as he went along--to be
accurate, he was the real composer, whereas I was only the author.
When the completed book ultimately reached me,--to the great surprise
of the serious invalid I then was,--I sent, among others, two copies
to Bayreuth. Thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the part
of chance, there reached me precisely at the same time a splendid copy
of the _Parsifal_ text, with the following inscription from Wagner's
pen: "To his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche, from Richard Wagner,
Ecclesiastical Councillor." At this crossing of the two books I seemed
to hear an ominous note. Did it not sound as if two swords had crossed?
At all events we both felt this was so, for each of us remained silent.
At about this time the first Bayreuth Pamphlets appeared: and I then
understood the move on my part for which it was high time. Incredible!
Wagner had become pious.
6
My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and the unearthly certitude
with which I grasped my life-task and all its world-historic
consequences, is well revealed throughout the book, but more
particularly in one very significant passage, despite the fact that,
with my instinctive cunning, I once more circumvented the use of
the little word "I,"--not however, this time, in order to shed
world-historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner, but on
that of another of my friends, the excellent Dr. Paul Rée--fortunately
much too acute a creature to be deceived--others were less subtle.
Among my readers I have a number of hopeless people, the typical
German professor for instance, who can always be recognised from the
fact that, judging from the passage in question, he feels compelled to
regard the whole book as a sort of superior Realism. As a matter of
fact it contradicts five or six of my friend's utterances: only read
the introduction to _The Genealogy of Morals_ on this question.--The
passage above referred to reads: "What, after all, is the principal
axiom to which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author of the
book "_On the Origin of Moral Sensations_" (read Nietzsche, the first
Immoralist), "has attained by means of his incisive and decisive
analysis of human actions? 'The moral man,' he says is no nearer to the
intelligible (metaphysical) world than is the physical man, for there
is no intelligible world.' This theory, hardened and sharpened under
the hammer-blow of historical knowledge" (read _The Transvaluation
of all Values_), "may some time or other, perhaps in some future
period,--1890!--serve as the axe which is applied to the root of the
'metaphysical need' of man,--whether more as a blessing than a curse to
the general welfare it is not easy to say; but in any case as a theory
with the most important consequences, at once fruitful and terrible,
and looking into the world with that Janus-face which all great
knowledge possesses."[4]
[Footnote 1: Nohl and Pohl were both writers on music; Kohl, however,
which literally means cabbage, is a slang expression, denoting superior
nonsense.--TR.]
[Footnote 2: Needless to say, Nietzsche distinguishes between
Bismarckian Germany and that other Germany--Austria, Switzerland, and
the Baltic Provinces--where the German language is also spoken.--TR.]
[Footnote 3: _Human, all-too-Human,_ Part II. in this edition.--TR.]
[Footnote 4: _Human, all-too-Human,_ vol. i. Aph. 37.]
"THE DAWN OF DAY: