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