The abundant and generous, as opposed to the seeking and the desiring.
844.
A romanticist is an artist whose great dissatisfaction with himself
makes him productive--; who looks away from himself and his fellows,
and sometimes, therefore, looks backwards.
845.
Is art the result of dissatisfaction with reality? or is it the
expression of gratitude for happiness experienced? In the first case,
it is romanticism; in the second, it is glorification and dithyramb
(in short, apotheosis art): even Raphael belongs to this, except for
the fact that he was guilty of the duplicity of having defied the
appearance of the Christian view of the world. He was thankful for life
precisely where it was not exactly Christian.
With a moral interpretation the world is insufferable; Christianity was
the attempt to overcome the world with morality: _i.e._ to deny it.
_In praxi_ such a mad experiment--an imbecile elevation of man above
the world--could only end in the beglooming, the dwarfing, and the
impoverishment of mankind: the only kind of man who gained anything by
it, who was promoted by it, was the most mediocre, the most harmless
and gregarious type.
Homer as an apotheosis artist; Rubens also. Music has not yet had such
an artist.
The idealisation of the great criminal (the feeling for his greatness)
is Greek; the depreciation, the slander, the contempt of the sinner, is
Judæo-Christian.
846.
Romanticism and its opposite. In regard to all æsthetic values I now
avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every individual
case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been creative
here? At first another distinction might perhaps seem preferable, it
is far more obvious,--_e.g._ the distinction which decides whether a
desire for stability, for eternity, for Being, or whether a desire for
destruction, for change, for Becoming, has been the cause of creation.
But both kinds of desire, when examined more closely, prove to be
ambiguous, and really susceptible of interpretation only according to
that scheme already mentioned and which I think is rightly preferred.
The desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, may be the
expression of an overflowing power pregnant with promises for the
future (my term for this, as is well known, is Dionysian); it may,
however, also be the hate of the ill-constituted, of the needy and of
the physiologically botched, that destroys, and must destroy, because
such creatures are indignant at, and annoyed by everything lasting and
stable.
The act of immortalising can, on the other hand, be the outcome
of gratitude and love: an art which has this origin is always an
apotheosis art; dithyrambic, as perhaps with Rubens, happy, as perhaps
with Hafiz; bright and gracious, and shedding a ray of glory over all
things, as in Goethe. But it may also, however, be the outcome of the
tyrannical will of the great sufferer who would make the most personal,
individual, and narrow trait about him, the actual idiosyncrasy of his
pain--in fact, into a binding law and imposition, and who thus wreaks
his revenge upon all things by stamping, branding, and violating them
with the image of his torment. The latter case is romantic pessimism
in its highest form, whether this be Schopenhauerian voluntarism or
Wagnerian music.
847.
It is a question whether the antithesis, classic and romantic, does not
conceal that other antithesis, the active and the reactive.
848.
In order to be a classic, one must be possessed of all the strong and
apparently contradictory gifts and passions: but in such a way that
they run in harness together, and culminate simultaneously in elevating
a certain species of literature or art or politics to its height and
zenith (they must not do this after that elevation has taken place
...). They must reflect the complete state (either of a people or of
a culture), and express its most profound and most secret nature,
at a time when it is still stable and not yet discoloured by the
imitation of foreign things (or when it is still dependent ...); not
a reactive but a deliberate and progressive spirit, saying Yea in all
circumstances, even in its hate.
"And does not the highest personal value belong thereto?" It is worth
considering whether moral prejudices do not perhaps exercise their
influence here, and whether great moral loftiness is not perhaps a
contradiction of the classical? ... Whether the moral monsters must
not necessarily be romantic in word and deed? Any such preponderance
of one virtue over others (as in the case of the moral monster) is
precisely what with most hostility counteracts the classical power in
equilibrium, supposing a people manifested this moral loftiness and
were classical notwithstanding, we should have to conclude boldly that
they were also on the same high level in immorality! this was perhaps
the case with Shakespeare (provided that he was really Lord Bacon).
849.
_Concerning the future. Against the romanticism of great passion._--We
must understand how a certain modicum of coldness, lucidity,
and hardness is inseparable from all classical taste: above all
consistency, happy intellectuality, "the three unities," concentration,
hatred of all feeling, of all sentimentality, of all _esprit,_
hatred of all multiformity, of all uncertainty, evasiveness, and of
all nebulosity, as also of all brevity, finicking, prettiness and
good nature. Artistic formulæ must not be played with: life must be
remodelled so that it should be forced to formulate itself accordingly.
It is really an exhilarating spectacle which we have only learned
to laugh at quite recently, because we have only seen through it
quite recently: this spectacle of Herder's, Winckelmann's, Goethe's,
and Hegel's contemporaries claiming that they had rediscovered the
classical ideal ... and at the same time, Shakespeare! And this same
crew of men had scurvily repudiated all relationship with the classical
school of France! As if the essential principle could not have been
learnt as well here as elsewhere! ... But what people wanted was
"nature," and "naturalness": Oh, the stupidity of it! It was thought
that classicism was a kind of naturalness!
Without either prejudice or indulgence we should try and investigate
upon what soil a classical taste can be evolved. The hardening,
the simplification, the strengthening, and the bedevilling of man
are inseparable from classical taste. Logical and psychological
simplification. A contempt of detail, of complexity, of obscurity.
The romanticists of Germany do not protest against classicism, but
against reason, against illumination, against taste, against the
eighteenth century.
The essence of romantico-Wagnerian music is the opposite of the
classical spirit.
The will to unity (because unity tyrannises. _e.g._ the listener and
the spectator), but the artist's inability to tyrannise over himself
where it is most needed--that is to say, in regard to the work itself
(in regard to knowing what to leave out, what to shorten, what to
clarify, what to simplify). The overwhelming by means of masses
(Wagner, Victor Hugo, Zola, Taine).
850.
_The Nihilism of artists._--Nature is cruel in her cheerfulness;
cynical in her sunrises. We are hostile to emotions. We flee thither
where Nature moves our senses and our imagination, where we have
nothing to love, where we are not reminded of the moral semblances and
delicacies of this northern nature; and the same applies to the arts.
We prefer that which no longer reminds us of good and evil. Our moral
sensibility and tenderness seem to be relieved in the heart of terrible
and happy Nature, in the fatalism of the senses and forces. Life
without goodness.
Great well-being arises from contemplating Nature's indifference to
good and evil.
No justice in history, no goodness in Nature. That is why the
pessimist when he is an artist prefers those historical subjects where
the absence of justice reveals itself with magnificent simplicity,
where perfection actually comes to expression--and likewise he prefers
that in Nature, where her callous evil character is not hypocritically
concealed, where that character is seen in perfection.... The
Nihilistic artist betrays himself in willing and preferring cynical
history and cynical Nature.
851.
What is tragic?--Again and again I have pointed to the great
misunderstanding of Aristotle in maintaining that the tragic emotions
were the two depressing emotions--fear and pity. Had he been right,
tragedy would be an art unfriendly to life: it would have been
necessary to caution people against it as against something generally
harmful and suspicious. Art, otherwise the great stimulus of life, the
great intoxicant of life, the great will to life, here became a tool of
decadence, the hand-maiden of pessimism and ill-health (for to suppose,
as Aristotle supposed, that by exciting these emotions we thereby
purged people of them, is simply an error). Something which habitually
excites fear or pity, disorganises, weakens, and discourages: and
supposing Schopenhauer were right in thinking that tragedy taught
resignation (_i.e._ a meek renunciation of happiness, hope, and of
the will to live), this would presuppose an art in which art itself
was denied. Tragedy would then constitute a process of dissolution;
the instinct of life would destroy itself in the instinct of art.
Christianity, Nihilism, tragic art, physiological decadence; these
things would then be linked, they would then preponderate together
and assist each other onwards--downwards.... Tragedy would thus be a
symptom of decline.
This theory may be refuted in the most cold-blooded way, namely, by
measuring the effect of a tragic emotion by means of a dynamometer
The result would be a fact which only the bottomless falsity of
a doctrinaire could misunderstand: that tragedy is a tonic. If
Schopenhauer refuses to see the truth here, if he regards general
depression as a tragic condition, if he would have informed the Greeks
(who to his disgust were not "resigned") that they did not firmly
possess the highest principles of life: it is only owing to his _parti
pris,_ to the need of consistency in his system, to the dishonesty of
the doctrinaire--that dreadful dishonesty which step for step corrupted
the whole psychology of Schopenhauer (he who had arbitrarily and almost
violently misunderstood genius, art itself, morality, pagan religion,
beauty, knowledge, and almost everything).
852.
_The tragic artist._--Whether, and in regard to what, the judgment
"beautiful" is established is a question of an individual's or of a
people's strength The feeling of plenitude, of overflowing strength
(which gaily and courageously meets many an obstacle before which
the weakling shudders)--the feeling of power utters the judgment
"beautiful" concerning things and conditions which the instinct of
impotence can only value as hateful and ugly. The _flair_ which
enables us to decide whether the objects we encounter are dangerous,
problematic, or alluring, likewise determines our æsthetic Yea. ("This
is beautiful," is an affirmation).
From this we see that, generally speaking, a preference for
questionable and terrible things is a symptom of strength; whereas the
taste for pretty and charming trifles is characteristic of the weak
and the delicate. The love of tragedy is typical of strong ages and
characters: its _non plus ultra_ is perhaps the _Divina Commedia._ It
is the heroic spirits which in tragic cruelty say Yea unto themselves:
they are hard enough to feel pain as a pleasure.
On the other hand, supposing weaklings desire to get pleasure from
an art which was not designed for them, what interpretation must we
suppose they would like to give tragedy in order to make it suit their
taste? They would interpret their own feeling of value into it: _e.g._
the "triumph of the moral order of things," or the teaching of the
"uselessness of existence," or the incitement to "resignation" (or also
half-medicinal and half-moral outpourings, _à la_ Aristotle). Finally,
the art of terrible natures, in so far as it may excite the nerves,
may be regarded by the weak and exhausted as a stimulus: this is now
taking place, for instance, in the case of the admiration meted out to
Wagner's art. A test of man's well-being and consciousness of power is
the extent to which he can acknowledge the terrible and questionable
character of things, and whether he is in any need of a faith at the
end.
This kind of artistic pessimism is precisely the reverse of that
religio-moral pessimism which suffers from the corruption of man
and the enigmatic character of existence: the latter insists upon
deliverance, or at least upon the hope of deliverance. Those
who suffer, doubt, and distrust themselves,--the sick, in other
words,--have in all ages required the transporting influence of visions
in order to be able to exist at all (the notion "blessedness" arose in
this way). A similar case would be that of the artists of decadence,
who at bottom maintain a Nihilistic attitude to life, and take
refuge in the beauty of form,--in those select cases in which Nature
is perfect, in which she is indifferently great and indifferently
beautiful. (The "love of the beautiful" may thus be something very
different from the ability to see or create the beautiful: it may be
the expression of impotence in this respect.) The most convincing
artists are those who make harmony ring out of every discord, and
who benefit all things by the gift of their power and inner harmony:
in every work of art they merely reveal the symbol of their inmost
experiences--their creation is gratitude for life.
The depth of the tragic artist consists in the fact that his æsthetic
instinct surveys the more remote results, that he does not halt
shortsightedly at the thing that is nearest, that he says Yea to the
whole cosmic economy, which justifies the terrible, the evil, and the
questionable; which more than justifies it.
853.
_Art in the "Birth of Tragedy."_