[Footnote 2: There is a wonderful promenade along the banks of the Po,
for which Turin is famous, and of which Nietzsche was particularly
fond.--TR.]
"THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM"
1
In order to do justice to this essay a man ought to suffer from the
fate of music as from an open wound.--From what do I suffer when I
suffer from the fate of music? From the fact that music has lost
its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character--that it is decadent
music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Supposing, however, that
the fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and
suffering are alike bound up with it; then he will find this pamphlet
comparatively mild and full of consideration. To be cheerful in
such circumstances, and laugh good-naturedly with others at one's
self,--_ridendodicere severum_[1] when the _verum dicere_ would
justify every sort of hardness,--is humanity itself. Who doubts that
I, old artillery-man that I am, would be able if I liked to point my
_heavy_ guns at Wagner?--Everything decisive in this question I kept
to myself--I have loved Wagner.--After all, an attack upon a more than
usually subtle "unknown person" whom another would not have divined
so easily, lies in the meaning and path of my life-task. Oh, I have
still quite a number of other "unknown persons" to unmask besides a
Cagliostro of Music! Above all, I have to direct an attack against
the German people, who, in matters of the spirit, grow every day
more indolent, poorer in instincts, and more _honest_ who, with an
appetite for which they are to be envied, continue to diet themselves
on contradictions, and gulp down "Faith" in company with science,
Christian love together with anti-Semitism, and the will to power (to
the "Empire"), dished up with the gospel of the humble, without showing
the slightest signs of indigestion. Fancy this absence of party-feeling
in the presence of opposites! Fancy this gastric neutrality and
"disinterestedness"! Behold this sense of justice in the German palate,
which can grant equal rights to all,--which finds everything tasteful!
Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans are idealists. When I was last
in Germany, I found German taste striving to grant Wagner and the
_Trumpeter of Sakkingen_[2] equal rights; while I myself witnessed
the attempts of the people of Leipzig to do honour to one of the most
genuine and most German of musicians,--using German here in the old
sense of the word,--a man who was no mere German of the Empire, the
master Heinrich Schütz, by founding a Liszt Society, the object of
which was to cultivate and spread artful (_listige_[3]) Church music.
Without a shadow of doubt the Germans are idealists.
2
But here nothing shall stop me from being rude, and from telling the
Germans one or two unpleasant home truths: who else would do it if I
did not? I refer to their laxity in matters historical. Not only have
the Germans entirely lost the _breadth of vision_ which enables one
to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture; not only
are they one and all political (or Church) puppets; but they have
also actually _put a ban upon_ this very breadth of vision. A man
must first and foremost be "German," he must belong to "_the_ race";
then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values
in history--then only can he establish them.... To be German is in
itself an argument, "Germany, Germany above all,"[4] is a principle;
the Germans stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history;
compared with the Roman Empire, they are the up-holders of freedom;
compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of
morality, of the "Categorical Imperative." There is such a thing as
the writing of history according to the lights of Imperial Germany;
there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history--there is also history written
with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed
of himself. Quite recently an idiotic opinion _in historicis,_ an
observation of Vischer the Swabian æsthete, since happily deceased,
made the round of the German newspapers as a "truth" to which every
German _must assent_ The observation was this: "The Renaissance _and_
the Reformation only together constitute a whole--the æsthetic
rebirth, and the moral rebirth." When I listen to such things, I lose
all patience, and I feel inclined, I even feel it my duty, to tell the
Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience.
_Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies
on their conscience...._ And always for the same reason, always owing
to their bottomless cowardice in the face of reality, which is also
cowardice in the face of truth; always owing to the love of falsehood
which has become almost instinctive in them--in short, "idealism."
It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole
meaning of her last period of greatness--the period of the Renaissance.
At a moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble,
that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had succeeded
in triumphing over the opposite values, the values of degeneration,
in the very seat of Christianity itself,--and _even in the hearts of
those sitting there,_--Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored the
Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, restored Christianity,
and at a time too when it lay defeated. Christianity, the _Denial of
the Will to Live,_ exalted to a religion! Luther was an impossible
monk who, thanks to his own "impossibility," attacked the Church,
and in so doing restored it! Catholics would be perfectly justified
in celebrating feasts in honour of Luther, and in producing festival
plays[5] in his honour. Luther and the "rebirth of morality"! May all
psychology go to the devil! Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans
are idealists. On two occasions when, at the cost of enormous courage
and self-control, an upright, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific
attitude of mind had been attained, the Germans were able to discover
back stairs leading down to the old "ideal" again, compromises between
truth and the "ideal," and, in short, formulæ for the right to reject
science and to perpetrate falsehoods. Leibniz and Kant--these two
great breaks upon the intellectual honesty of Europe! Finally, at a
moment when there appeared on the bridge that spanned two centuries
of decadence, a superior force of genius and will which was strong
enough to consolidate Europe and to convert it into a political and
economic unit, with the object of ruling the world, the Germans, with
their Wars of Independence, robbed Europe of the significance--the
marvellous significance, of Napoleon's life. And in so doing they laid
on their conscience everything that followed, everything that exists
to-day,--this sickliness and want of reason which is most opposed to
culture, and which is called Nationalism,--this _névrose nationale_
from which Europe is suffering acutely; this eternal subdivision of
Europe into petty states, with politics on a municipal scale: they have
robbed Europe itself of its significance, of its reason,--and have
stuffed it into a cul-de-sac. Is there any one except me who knows the
way out of this cul-de-sac? Does anyone except me know of an aspiration
which would be great enough to bind the people of Europe once more
together?
3
And after all, why should I not express my suspicions? In my case,
too, the Germans will attempt to make a great fate give birth merely
to a mouse. Up to the present they have compromised themselves with
me; I doubt whether the future will improve them. Alas! how happy I
should be to prove a false prophet in this matter! My natural readers
and listeners are already Russians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen--will
they always be the same? In the history of knowledge, Germans are
represented only by doubtful names, they have been able to produce only
"_unconscious_" swindlers (this word applies to Fichte, Schelling,
Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, just as well as to Kant or
Leibniz; they were all mere _Schleiermachers_).[6] The Germans must
not have the honour of seeing the first upright intellect in their
history of intellects, that intellect in which truth ultimately got the
better of the fraud of four thousand years, reckoned as one with the
German intellect. "German intellect" is my foul air: I breathe with
difficulty in the neighbourhood of this psychological uncleanliness
that has now become instinctive--an uncleanliness which in every
word and expression betrays a German. They have never undergone a
seventeenth century of hard self-examination, as the French have,--a
La Rochefoucauld, a Descartes, are a thousand times more upright
than the very first among Germans,--the latter have not yet had any
psychologists. But psychology is almost the standard of measurement
for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race.... For if a man is
not even clean, how can he be deep? The Germans are like women, you
can scarcely ever I fathom their depths--they haven't any, and that's
the end of it. Thus they cannot even be called shallow. That which is
called "deep" in Germany, is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness
towards one's self, of which I have just spoken: people refuse to be
clear in regard to their own natures. Might I be allowed, perhaps, to
suggest the word "German" as an international epithet denoting this
psychological depravity?--At the moment of writing, for instance, the
German Emperor is declaring it to be his Christian duty to liberate
the slaves in Africa; among us Europeans, then, this would be called
simply "German." ... Have the Germans ever produced even a book that
had depth? They are lacking in the mere idea of what constitutes a
book. I have known scholars who thought that Kant was deep. At the
Court of Prussia I fear that Herr von Treitschke is regarded as deep.
And when I happen to praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have
often been compelled, in the company of German University Professors,
to spell his name aloud.
4
And why should I not proceed to the end? I am fond of clearing the
air. It is even part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a
despiser of Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the German character
even at the age of six-and-twenty (see _Thoughts out of Season,_
vol. ii. pp. 164, 165),--to my mind the Germans are impossible.
When I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all
my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a German. The first
thing I ask myself when I begin analysing a man, is, whether he has a
feeling for distance in him; whether he sees rank, gradation, and order
everywhere between man and man; whether he makes distinctions; for
this is what constitutes a gentleman. Otherwise he belongs hopelessly
to that open-hearted, open-minded--alas! and always very good-natured
species, _la canaille_! But the Germans are _canaille_--alas! they are
so good-natured! A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of
Germans: the German places every one on an equal footing. With the
exception of my intercourse with one or two artists, and above all
with Richard Wagner, I cannot say that I have spent one pleasant hour
with Germans. Suppose, for one moment, that the profoundest spirit
of all ages were to appear among Germans, then one of the saviours
of the Capitol would be sure to arise and declare that his own ugly
soul was just as great. I can no longer abide this race with which
a man is always in bad company, which; has no idea of nuances--woe
to me! I am a nuance--and which has not _esprit_ in its feet, and
cannot even walk withal! In short, the Germans have no feet at all,
they simply have legs. The Germans have not the faintest idea of how
vulgar they are--but this in itself is the acme of vulgarity,--they are
not even ashamed of being merely Germans. They will have their say in
everything, they regard themselves as fit to decide all questions; I
even fear that they have decided about me. My whole life is essentially
a proof of this remark. In vain have I sought among them for a sign of
tact and delicacy towards myself. Among Jews I did indeed find it, but
not among Germans. I am so constituted as to be gentle and kindly to
every one,--I have the right not to draw distinctions,--but this does
not prevent my eyes from being open. I except no one, and least of all
my friends,--I only trust that this has not prejudiced my reputation
for humanity among them? There are five or six things which I have
always made points of honour. Albeit, the truth remains that for many
years I have considered almost every letter that has reached me as a
piece of cynicism. There is more cynicism in an attitude of goodwill
towards me than in any sort of hatred. I tell every friend to his face
that he has never thought it worth his while to _study_ any one of my
writings: from the slightest hints I gather that they do not even know
what lies hidden in my books. And with regard even to my _Zarathustra,_
which of my friends would have seen more in it than a piece of
unwarrantable, though fortunately harmless, arrogance? Ten years have
elapsed, and no one has yet felt it a duty to his conscience to defend
my name against the absurd silence beneath which it has been entombed.
It was a foreigner, a Dane, who first showed sufficient keenness of
instinct and of courage to do this, and who protested indignantly
against my so-called friends. At what German University to-day would
such lectures on my philosophy be possible, as those which Dr. Brandes
delivered last spring in Copenhagen, thus proving once more his right
to the title psychologist? For my part, these things have never caused
me any pain; that which is _necessary_ does not offend me. _Amor fati_
is the core of my nature. This, however, does not alter the fact that
I love irony and even world-historic irony. And thus, about two years
before hurling the destructive thunderbolt of the _Transvaluation,_
which will send the whole of civilisation into convulsions, I sent
my _Case of Wagner_ out into the world. The Germans were given the
chance of blundering and immortalising their stupidity once more on my
account, and they still have just enough time to do it in. And have
they fallen in with my plans? Admirably! my dear Germans. Allow me to
congratulate you.
[Footnote 1: The motto of _The Case of Wagner._--TR.]
[Footnote 2: An opera by Nessler which was all the rage in Germany
twenty years ago.--TR.]
[Footnote 3: Unfortunately it is impossible to render this play on the
words in English.--TR.]
[Footnote 4: The German National Song (_Deutschland, Deutschland über
alles_).--TR.]
[Footnote 5: Ever since the year 1617 such plays have been produced by
the Protestants of Germany.--TR.]
[Footnote 6: _Schleiermacher_ literally means a weaver or maker of
veils.--TR.]