*Friedrich Nietzsche*
*I: The Case Of Wagner*
*II: Nietzsche *_Contra_* Wagner*
*III: Selected Aphorisms*
Translated By
Anthony M. Ludovici
Third Edition
T. N. Foulis
13 & 15 Frederick Street
Edinburgh and London
1911
CONTENTS
Translator’s Preface.
Preface To The Third Edition
The Case Of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem
Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner
Selected Aphorisms from Nietzsche’s Retrospect of his Years of Friendship
with Wagner.
Footnotes
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
Nietzsche wrote the rough draft of “The Case of Wagner” in Turin, during
the month of May 1888; he completed it in Sils Maria towards the end of
June of the same year, and it was published in the following autumn.
“Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner” was written about the middle of December 1888;
but, although it was printed and corrected before the New Year, it was not
published until long afterwards owing to Nietzsche’s complete breakdown in
the first days of 1889.
In reading these two essays we are apt to be deceived, by their virulent
and forcible tone, into believing that the whole matter is a mere cover
for hidden fire,—a mere blind of æsthetic discussion concealing a deep and
implacable personal feud which demands and will have vengeance. In spite
of all that has been said to the contrary, many people still hold this
view of the two little works before us; and, as the actual facts are not
accessible to every one, and rumours are more easily believed than
verified, the error of supposing that these pamphlets were dictated by
personal animosity, and even by Nietzsche’s envy of Wagner in his glory,
seems to be a pretty common one. Another very general error is to suppose
that the point at issue here is not one concerning music at all, but
concerning religion. It is taken for granted that the aspirations, the
particular quality, the influence, and the method of an art like music,
are matters quite distinct from the values and the conditions prevailing
in the culture with which it is in harmony, and that however many
Christian elements may be discovered in Wagnerian texts, Nietzsche had no
right to raise æsthetic objections because he happened to entertain the
extraordinary view that these Christian elements had also found their way
into Wagnerian music.
To both of these views there is but one reply:—they are absolutely false.
In the “Ecce Homo,” Nietzsche’s autobiography,—a book which from cover to
cover and line for line is sincerity itself—we learn what Wagner actually
meant to Nietzsche. On pages 41, 44, 84, 122, 129, &c, we cannot doubt
that Nietzsche is speaking from his heart,—and what does he say?—In
impassioned tones he admits his profound indebtedness to the great
musician, his love for him, his gratitude to him,—how Wagner was the only
German who had ever been anything to him—how his friendship with Wagner
constituted the happiest and most valuable experience of his life,—how his
breach with Wagner almost killed him. And, when we remember, too, that
Wagner on his part also declared that he was “alone” after he had lost
“that man” (Nietzsche), we begin to perceive that personal bitterness and
animosity are out of the question here. We feel we are on a higher plane,
and that we must not judge these two men as if they were a couple of
little business people who had had a suburban squabble.
Nietzsche declares (“Ecce Homo,” p. 24) that he never attacked persons as
persons. If he used a name at all, it was merely as a means to an end,
just as one might use a magnifying glass in order to make a general, but
elusive and intricate fact more clear and more apparent, and if he used
the name of David Strauss, without bitterness or spite (for he did not
even know the man), when he wished to personify Culture-Philistinism, so,
in the same spirit, did he use the name of Wagner, when he wished to
personify the general decadence of modern ideas, values, aspirations and
Art.
Nietzsche’s ambition, throughout his life, was to regenerate European
culture. In the first period of his relationship with Wagner, he thought
that he had found the man who was prepared to lead in this direction. For
a long while he regarded his master as the Saviour of Germany, as the
innovator and renovator who was going to arrest the decadent current of
his time and lead men to a greatness which had died with antiquity. And so
thoroughly did he understand his duties as a disciple, so wholly was he
devoted to this cause, that, in spite of all his unquestioned gifts and
the excellence of his original achievements, he was for a long while
regarded as a mere “literary lackey” in Wagner’s service, in all those
circles where the rising musician was most disliked.
Gradually, however, as the young Nietzsche developed and began to gain an
independent view of life and humanity, it seemed to him extremely doubtful
whether Wagner actually was pulling the same way with him. Whereas,
theretofore, he had identified Wagner’s ideals with his own, it now dawned
upon him slowly that the regeneration of German culture, of European
culture, and the transvaluation of values which would be necessary for
this regeneration, really lay off the track of Wagnerism. He saw that he
had endowed Wagner with a good deal that was more his own than Wagner’s.
In his love he had transfigured the friend, and the composer of “Parsifal”
and the man of his imagination were not one. The fact was realised step by
step; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation,
ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best instincts at first
opposed it, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong to be
scouted, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair. Had he
followed his own human inclinations, he would probably have remained
Wagner’s friend until the end. As it was, however, he remained loyal to
his cause, and this meant denouncing his former idol.
“Joyful Wisdom,” “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” “Beyond Good and Evil,” “The
Genealogy of Morals,” “The Twilight of the Idols,” “The Antichrist”—all
these books were but so many exhortations to mankind to step aside from
the general track now trodden by Europeans. And what happened? Wagner
began to write some hard things about Nietzsche; the world assumed that
Nietzsche and Wagner had engaged in a paltry personal quarrel in the
press, and the whole importance of the real issue was buried beneath the
human, all-too-human interpretations which were heaped upon it.
Nietzsche was a musician of no mean attainments. For a long while, in his
youth, his superiors had been doubtful whether he should not be educated
for a musical career, so great were his gifts in this art; and if his
mother had not been offered a six-years’ scholarship for her son at the
famous school of Pforta, Nietzsche, the scholar and philologist, would
probably have been an able composer. When he speaks about music,
therefore, he knows what he is talking about, and when he refers to
Wagner’s music in particular, the simple fact of his long intimacy with
Wagner during the years at Tribschen, is a sufficient guarantee of his
deep knowledge of the subject. Now Nietzsche was one of the first to
recognise that the principles of art are inextricably bound up with the
laws of life, that an æsthetic dogma may therefore promote or depress all
vital force, and that a picture, a symphony, a poem or a statue, is just
as capable of being pessimistic, anarchic, Christian or revolutionary, as
a philosophy or a science is. To speak of a certain class of music as
being compatible with the decline of culture, therefore, was to Nietzsche
a perfectly warrantable association of ideas, and that is why, throughout
his philosophy, so much stress is laid upon æsthetic considerations.
But if in England and America Nietzsche’s attack on Wagner’s art may still
seem a little incomprehensible, let it be remembered that the Continent
has long known that Nietzsche was actually in the right. Every year
thousands are now added to the large party abroad who have ceased from
believing in the great musical revolutionary of the seventies; that he was
one with the French Romanticists and rebels has long since been
acknowledged a fact in select circles, both in France and Germany, and if
we still have Wagner with us in England, if we still consider Nietzsche as
a heretic, when he declares that “Wagner was a musician for unmusical
people,” it is only because we are more removed than we imagine, from all
the great movements, intellectual and otherwise, which take place on the
Continent.
In Wagner’s music, in his doctrine, in his whole concept of art, Nietzsche
saw the confirmation, the promotion—aye, even the encouragement, of that
decadence and degeneration which is now rampant in Europe; and it is for
this reason, although to the end of his life he still loved Wagner, the
man and the friend, that we find him, on the very eve of his spiritual
death, exhorting us to abjure Wagner the musician and the artist.
Anthony M. Ludovici.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION(1)
In spite of the adverse criticism with which the above preface has met at
the hands of many reviewers since the summer of last year, I cannot say
that I should feel justified, even after mature consideration, in altering
a single word or sentence it contains. If I felt inclined to make any
changes at all, these would take the form of extensive additions, tending
to confirm rather than to modify the general argument it advances; but,
any omissions of which I may have been guilty in the first place, have
been so fully rectified since, thanks to the publication of the English
translations of Daniel Halévy’s and Henri Lichtenberger’s works, “The Life
of Friedrich Nietzsche,”(2) and “The Gospel of Superman,”(3) respectively,
that, were it not for the fact that the truth about this matter cannot be
repeated too often, I should have refrained altogether from including any
fresh remarks of my own in this Third Edition.
In the works just referred to (pp. 129 _et seq._ in Halévy’s book, and pp.
78 _et seq._ in Lichtenberger’s book), the statement I made in my preface
to “Thoughts out of Season,” vol. i., and which I did not think it
necessary to repeat in my first preface to these pamphlets, will be found
to receive the fullest confirmation.
The statement in question was to the effect that many long years before
these pamphlets were even projected, Nietzsche’s apparent _volte-face_ in
regard to his hero Wagner had been not only foreshadowed but actually
stated in plain words, in two works written during his friendship with
Wagner,—the works referred to being “The Birth of Tragedy” (1872), and
“Wagner in Bayreuth” (1875) of which Houston Stuart Chamberlain declares
not only that it possesses “undying classical worth” but that “a perusal
of it is indispensable to all who wish to follow the question [of Wagner]
to its roots.”(4)
The idea that runs through the present work like a leitmotif—the idea that
Wagner was at bottom more of a mime than a musician—was so far an ever
present thought with Nietzsche that it is ever impossible to ascertain the
period when it was first formulated.
In Nietzsche’s wonderful autobiography (_Ecce Homo_, p. 88), in the
section dealing with the early works just mentioned, we find the following
passage—“In the second of the two essays [Wagner in Bayreuth] 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 aspirations, draws its final conclusions.” And as early as 1874,
Nietzsche wrote in his diary—“Wagner is a born actor. Just as Goethe was
an abortive painter, and Schiller an abortive orator, so Wagner was an
abortive theatrical genius. His attitude to music is that of the actor;
for he knows how to sing and speak, as it were out of different souls and
from absolutely different worlds (_Tristan_ and the _Meistersinger_).”
There is, however, no need to multiply examples, seeing, as I have said,
that in the translations of Halévy’s and Lichtenberger’s books the reader
will find all the independent evidence he could possibly desire,
disproving the popular, and even the learned belief that, in the two
pamphlets before us we have a complete, apparently unaccountable, and
therefore “demented” _volte-face_ on Nietzsche’s part. Nevertheless, for
fear lest some doubt should still linger in certain minds concerning this
point, and with the view of adding interest to these essays, the Editor
considered it advisable, in the Second Edition, to add a number of
extracts from Nietzsche’s diary of the year 1878 (ten years before “The
Case of Wagner,” and “Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner” were written) in order to
show to what extent those learned critics who complain of Nietzsche’s
“morbid and uncontrollable recantations and revulsions of feeling,” have
overlooked even the plain facts of the case when forming their
all-too-hasty conclusions. These extracts will be found at the end of
“Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner.” While reading them, however, it should not be
forgotten that they were never intended for publication by Nietzsche
himself—a fact which accounts for their unpolished and sketchy form—and
that they were first published in vol. xi. of the first German Library
Edition (pp. 99-129) only when he was a helpless invalid, in 1897. Since
then, in 1901 and 1906 respectively, they have been reprinted, once in the
large German Library Edition (vol. xi. pp. 181-202), and once in the
German Pocket Edition, as an appendix to “Human-All-too-Human,” Part II.
An altogether special interest now attaches to these pamphlets; for, in
the first place we are at last in possession of Wagner’s own account of
his development, his art, his aspirations and his struggles, in the
amazing self-revelation entitled _My Life_;(5) and secondly, we now have
_Ecce Homo_, Nietzsche’s autobiography, in which we learn for the first
time from Nietzsche’s own pen to what extent his history was that of a
double devotion—to Wagner on the one hand, and to his own life task, the
Transvaluation of all Values, on the other.
Readers interested in the Nietzsche-Wagner controversy will naturally look
to these books for a final solution of all the difficulties which the
problem presents. But let them not be too sanguine. From first to last
this problem is not to be settled by “facts.” A good deal of instinctive
choice, instinctive aversion, and instinctive suspicion are necessary
here. A little more suspicion, for instance, ought to be applied to
Wagner’s _My Life_, especially in England, where critics are not half
suspicious enough about a continental artist’s self-revelations, and are
too prone, if they have suspicions at all, to apply them in the wrong
place.
An example of this want of _finesse_ in judging foreign writers is to be
found in Lord Morley’s work on Rousseau,—a book which ingenuously takes
for granted everything that a writer like Rousseau cares to say about
himself, without considering for an instant the possibility that Rousseau
might have practised some hypocrisy. In regard to Wagner’s life we might
easily fall into the same error—that is to say, we might take seriously
all he says concerning himself and his family affairs.
We should beware of this, and should not even believe Wagner when he
speaks badly about himself. No one speaks badly about himself without a
reason, and the question in this case is to find out the reason. Did
Wagner—in the belief that genius was always immoral—wish to pose as an
immoral Egotist, in order to make us believe in his genius, of which he
himself was none too sure in his innermost heart? Did Wagner wish to
appear “sincere” in his biography, in order to awaken in us a belief in
the sincerity of his music, which he likewise doubted, but wished to
impress upon the world as “true”? Or did he wish to be thought badly of in
connection with things that were not true, and that consequently did not
affect him, in order to lead us off the scent of true things, things he
was ashamed of and which he wished the world to ignore—just like Rousseau
(the similarity between the two is more than a superficial one) who
barbarously pretended to have sent his children to the foundling hospital,
in order not to be thought incapable of having had any children at all? In
short, where is the bluff in Wagner’s biography? Let us therefore be
careful about it, and all the more so because Wagner himself guarantees
the truth of it in the prefatory note. If we were to be credulous here, we
should moreover be acting in direct opposition to Nietzsche’s own counsel
as given in the following aphorisms (Nos. 19 and 20, p. 89):—
“It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner’s development,—no
trust must be placed in his own description of his soul’s experiences. He
writes party-pamphlets for his followers.
“It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about
himself.”
While on p. 37 (the note), we read:—“He [Wagner] was not proud enough to
be able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride than he.
Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in his biography,—he
remained an actor.”
However, as a famous English judge has said—“Truth will come out, even in
the witness box,” and, as we may add in this case, even in an
autobiography. There is one statement in Wagner’s _My Life_ which sounds
true to my ears at least—a statement which, in my opinion, has some
importance, and to which Wagner himself seems to grant a mysterious
significance. I refer to the passage on p. 93 of vol i., in which Wagner
says:—“Owing to the exceptional vivacity and innate susceptibility of my
nature … I gradually became conscious of a certain power of transporting
or bewildering my more indolent companions.”
This seems innocent enough. When, however, it is read in conjunction with
Nietzsche’s trenchant criticism, particularly on pp. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18
of this work, and also with a knowledge of Wagner’s music, it becomes one
of the most striking passages in Wagner’s autobiography, for it records
how soon he became conscious of his dominant instinct and faculty.
I know perfectly well that the Wagnerites will not be influenced by these
remarks. Their gratitude to Wagner is too great for this. He has supplied
the precious varnish wherewith to hide the dull ugliness of our
civilisation. He has given to souls despairing over the materialism of
this world, to souls despairing of themselves, and longing to be rid of
themselves, the indispensable hashish and morphia wherewith to deaden
their inner discords. These discords are everywhere apparent nowadays.
Wagner is therefore a common need, a common benefactor. As such he is
bound to be worshipped and adored in spite of all egotistical and
theatrical autobiographies.
Albeit, signs are not wanting—at least among his Anglo-Saxon worshippers
who stand even more in need of romanticism than their continental
brethren,—which show that, in order to uphold Wagner, people are now
beginning to draw distinctions between the man and the artist. They
dismiss the man as “human-all-too-human,” but they still maintain that
there are divine qualities in his music. However distasteful the task of
disillusioning these psychological tyros may be, they should be informed
that no such division of a man into two parts is permissible, save in
Christianity (the body and the soul), but that outside purely religious
spheres it is utterly unwarrantable. There can be no such strange divorce
between a bloom and the plant on which it blows, and has a black woman
ever been known to give birth to a white child?
Wagner, as Nietzsche tells us on p. 19, “was something complete, he was a
typical _decadent_ in whom every sign of ‘free will’ was lacking, in whom
every feature was necessary.” Wagner, allow me to add, was a typical
representative of the nineteenth century, which was the century of
contradictory values, of opposed instincts, and of every kind of inner
disharmony. The genuine, the classical artists of that period, such men as
Heine, Goethe, Stendhal, and Gobineau, overcame their inner strife, and
each succeeded in making a harmonious whole out of himself—not indeed
without a severe struggle; for everyone of them suffered from being the
child of his age, _i.e._, a decadent. The only difference between them and
the romanticists lies in the fact that they (the former) were conscious of
what was wrong with them, and possessed the will and the strength to
overcome their illness; whereas the romanticists chose the easier
alternative—namely, that of shutting their eyes on themselves.
“I am just as much a child of my age as Wagner—_i.e._, I am a _decadent_,”
says Nietzsche. “The only difference is that I recognised the fact, that I
struggled against it”(6)
What Wagner did was characteristic of all romanticists and contemporary
artists: he drowned and overshouted his inner discord by means of
exuberant pathos and wild exaltation. Far be it from me to value Wagner’s
music _in extenso_ here—this is scarcely a fitting opportunity to do
so;—but I think it might well be possible to show, on purely psychological
grounds, how impossible it was for a man like Wagner to produce real art.
For how can harmony, order, symmetry, mastery, proceed from uncontrolled
discord, disorder, disintegration, and chaos? The fact that an art which
springs from such a marshy soil may, like certain paludal plants, be
“wonderful,” “gorgeous,” and “overwhelming,” cannot be denied; but true
art it is not. It is so just as little as Gothic architecture is,—that
style which, in its efforts to escape beyond the tragic contradiction in
its mediæval heart, yelled its hysterical cry heavenwards and even melted
the stones of its structures into a quivering and fluid jet, in order to
give adequate expression to the painful and wretched conflict then raging
between the body and the soul.
That Wagner, too, was a great sufferer, there can be no doubt; not,
however, a sufferer from strength, like a true artist, but from
weakness—the weakness of his age, which he never overcame. It is for this
reason that he should be rather pitied than judged as he is now being
judged by his German and English critics, who, with thoroughly neurotic
suddenness, have acknowledged their revulsion of feeling a little too
harshly.
“I have carefully endeavoured not to deride, or deplore, or detest…” says
Spinoza, “but to understand”; and these words ought to be our guide, not
only in the case of Wagner, but in all things.
Inner discord is a terrible affliction, and nothing is so certain to
produce that nervous irritability which is so trying to the patient as
well as to the outer world, as this so-called spiritual disease. Nietzsche
was probably quite right when he said the only real and true music that
Wagner ever composed did not consist of his elaborate arias and overtures,
but of ten or fifteen bars which, dispersed here and there, gave
expression to the composer’s profound and genuine melancholy. But this
melancholy had to be overcome, and Wagner with the blood of a _cabotin_ in
his veins, resorted to the remedy that was nearest to hand—that is to say,
the art of bewildering others and himself. Thus he remained ignorant about
himself all his life; for there was, as Nietzsche rightly points out (p.
37, _note_), not sufficient pride in the man for him to desire to know or
to suffer gladly the truth concerning his real nature. As an actor his
ruling passion was vanity, but in his case it was correlated with a
semi-conscious knowledge of the fact that all was not right with him and
his art. It was this that caused him to suffer. His egomaniacal behaviour
and his almost Rousseauesque fear and suspicion of others were only the
external manifestations of his inner discrepancies. But, to repeat what I
have already said, these abnormal symptoms are not in the least
incompatible with Wagner’s music, they are rather its very cause, the root
from which it springs.
In reality, therefore, Wagner the man and Wagner the artist were
undoubtedly one, and constituted a splendid romanticist. His music as well
as his autobiography are proofs of his wonderful gifts in this direction.
His success in his time, as in ours, is due to the craving of the modern
world for actors, sorcerers, bewilderers and idealists who are able to
conceal the ill-health and the weakness that prevail, and who please by
intoxicating and exalting. But this being so, the world must not be
disappointed to find the hero of a preceding age explode in the next. It
must not be astonished to find a disparity between the hero’s private life
and his “elevating” art or romantic and idealistic gospel. As long as
people will admire heroic attitudes more than heroism, such
disillusionment is bound to be the price of their error. In a truly great
man, life-theory and life-practice, if seen from a sufficiently lofty
point of view, must and do always agree, in an actor, in a romanticist, in
an idealist, and in a Christian, there is always a yawning chasm between
the two, which, whatever well-meaning critics may do, cannot be bridged
posthumously by acrobatic feats _in psychologicis_.
Let anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche’s life and theory. Let
anyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in his
_Ecce Homo_, but as we find it related by all his biographers, friends and
foes alike, and what will be the result? Even if we ignore his works—the
blooms which blowed from time to time from his life—we absolutely cannot
deny the greatness of the man’s _private practice_, and if we fully
understand and appreciate the latter, we must be singularly deficient in
instinct and in _flair_ if we do not suspect that some of this greatness
is reflected in his life-task.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
London, _July 1911_.
THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM
A LETTER FROM TURIN, MAY 1888
“RIDENDO DICERE SEVERUM.…”
Preface
I am writing this to relieve my mind. It is not malice alone which makes
me praise Bizet at the expense of Wagner in this essay. Amid a good deal
of jesting I wish to make one point clear which does not admit of levity.
To turn my back on Wagner was for me a piece of fate, to get to like
anything else whatever afterwards was for me a triumph. Nobody, perhaps,
had ever been more dangerously involved in Wagnerism, nobody had defended
himself more obstinately against it, nobody had ever been so overjoyed at
ridding himself of it. A long history!—Shall I give it a name?—If I were a
moralist, who knows what I might not call it! Perhaps a piece of
_self-mastery_.—But the philosopher does not like the moralist, neither
does he like high-falutin’ words.…
What is the first and last thing that a philosopher demands of himself? To
overcome his age in himself, to become “timeless.” With what then does the
philosopher have the greatest fight? With all that in him which makes him
the child of his time. Very well then! I am just as much a child of my age
as Wagner—_i.e._, I am a decadent. The only difference is that I
recognised the fact, that I struggled against it. The philosopher in me
struggled against it.
My greatest preoccupation hitherto has been the problem of _decadence_,
and I had reasons for this. “Good and evil” form only a playful
subdivision of this problem. If one has trained one’s eye to detect the
symptoms of decline, one also understands morality,—one understands what
lies concealed beneath its holiest names and tables of values: _e.g._,
_impoverished_ life, the will to nonentity, great exhaustion. Morality
_denies_ life.… In order to undertake such a mission I was obliged to
exercise self-discipline:—I had to side against all that was morbid in
myself including Wagner, including Schopenhauer, including the whole of
modern _humanity_.—A profound estrangement, coldness and soberness towards
all that belongs to my age, all that was contemporary: and as the highest
wish, Zarathustra’s eye, an eye which surveys the whole
phenomenon—mankind—from an enormous distance,—which looks down upon
it.—For such a goal—what sacrifice would not have been worth while? What
“self-mastery”! What “self-denial”!
The greatest event of my life took the form of a _recovery_. Wagner
belongs only to my diseases.
Not that I wish to appear ungrateful to this disease. If in this essay I
support the proposition that Wagner is _harmful_, I none the less wish to
point out unto whom, in spite of all, he is indispensable—to the
philosopher. Anyone else may perhaps be able to get on without Wagner: but
the philosopher is not free to pass him by. The philosopher must be the
evil conscience of his age,—but to this end he must be possessed of its
best knowledge. And what better guide, or more thoroughly efficient
revealer of the soul, could be found for the labyrinth of the modern
spirit than Wagner? Through Wagner modernity speaks her most intimate
language: it conceals neither its good nor its evil: it has thrown off all
shame. And, conversely, one has almost calculated the whole of the value
of modernity once one is clear concerning what is good and evil in Wagner.
I can perfectly well understand a musician of to-day who says: “I hate
Wagner but I can endure no other music.” But I should also understand a
philosopher who said, “Wagner is modernity in concentrated form.” There is
no help for it, we must first be Wagnerites.…
1.
Yesterday—would you believe it?—I heard _Bizet’s_ masterpiece for the
twentieth time. Once more I attended with the same gentle reverence; once
again I did not run away. This triumph over my impatience surprises me.
How such a work completes one! Through it one almost becomes a
“masterpiece” oneself—And, as a matter of fact, each time I heard _Carmen_
it seemed to me that I was more of a philosopher, a better philosopher
than at other times: I became so forbearing, so happy, so Indian, so
_settled_.… To sit for five hours: the first step to holiness!—May I be
allowed to say that Bizet’s orchestration is the only one that I can
endure now? That other orchestration which is all the rage at present—the
Wagnerian—is brutal, artificial and “unsophisticated” withal, hence its
appeal to all the three senses of the modern soul at once. How terribly
Wagnerian orchestration affects me! I call it the _Sirocco_. A
disagreeable sweat breaks out all over me. All my fine weather vanishes.
Bizet’s music seems to me perfect. It comes forward lightly, gracefully,
stylishly. It is lovable, it does not sweat. “All that is good is easy,
everything divine runs with light feet”: this is the first principle of my
æsthetics. This music is wicked, refined, fatalistic, and withal remains
popular,—it possesses the refinement of a race, not of an individual. It
is rich. It is definite. It builds, organises, completes, and in this
sense it stands as a contrast to the polypus in music, to “endless
melody”. Have more painful, more tragic accents ever been heard on the
stage before? And how are they obtained? Without grimaces! Without
counterfeiting of any kind! Free from the _lie_ of the grand style!—In
short: this music assumes that the listener is intelligent even as a
musician,—thereby it is the opposite of Wagner, who, apart from everything
else, was in any case the most _ill-mannered_ genius on earth (Wagner
takes us as if … , he repeats a thing so often that we become
desperate,—that we ultimately believe it).
And once more: I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a
better musician, a better _listener_. Is it in any way possible to listen
better?—I even burrow behind this music with my ears. I hear its very
cause. I seem to assist at its birth. I tremble before the dangers which
this daring music runs, I am enraptured over those happy accidents for
which even Bizet himself may not be responsible.—And, strange to say, at
bottom I do not give it a thought, or am not aware how much thought I
really do give it. For quite other ideas are running through my head the
while.… Has any one ever observed that music _emancipates_ the spirit?
gives wings to thought? and that the more one becomes a musician the more
one is also a philosopher? The grey sky of abstraction seems thrilled by
flashes of lightning; the light is strong enough to reveal all the details
of things; to enable one to grapple with problems; and the world is
surveyed as if from a mountain top—With this I have defined philosophical
pathos—And unexpectedly _answers_ drop into my lap, a small hailstorm of
ice and wisdom, of problems _solved_. Where am I? Bizet makes me
productive. Everything that is good makes me productive. I have gratitude
for nothing else, nor have I any other touchstone for testing what is
good.
2.
Bizet’s work also saves; Wagner is not the only “Saviour.” With it one
bids farewell to the _damp_ north and to all the fog of the Wagnerian
ideal. Even the action in itself delivers us from these things. From
Merimée it has this logic even in passion, from him it has the direct
line, _inexorable_ necessity, but what it has above all else is that which
belongs to sub-tropical zones—that dryness of atmosphere, that
_limpidezza_ of the air. Here in every respect the climate is altered.
Here another kind of sensuality, another kind of sensitiveness and another
kind of cheerfulness make their appeal. This music is gay, but not in a
French or German way. Its gaiety is African; fate hangs over it, its
happiness is short, sudden, without reprieve. I envy Bizet for having had
the courage of this sensitiveness, which hitherto in the cultured music of
Europe has found no means of expression,—of this southern, tawny, sunburnt
sensitiveness.… What a joy the golden afternoon of its happiness is to us!
When we look out, with this music in our minds, we wonder whether we have
ever seen the sea so _calm_. And how soothing is this Moorish dancing!
How, for once, even our insatiability gets sated by its lascivious
melancholy!—And finally love, love translated back into _Nature_! Not the
love of a “cultured girl!”—no Senta-sentimentality.(7) But love as fate,
as a fatality, cynical, innocent, cruel,—and precisely in this way
_Nature_! The love whose means is war, whose very essence is the _mortal
hatred_ between the sexes!—I know no case in which the tragic irony, which
constitutes the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so
terrible a formula, as in the last cry of Don José with which the work
ends:
“Yes, it is I who have killed her,
I—my adored Carmen!”
—Such a conception of love (the only one worthy of a philosopher) is rare:
it distinguishes one work of art from among a thousand others. For, as a
rule, artists are no better than the rest of the world, they are even
worse—they _misunderstand_ love. Even Wagner misunderstood it. They
imagine that they are selfless in it because they appear to be seeking the
advantage of another creature often to their own disadvantage. But in
return they want to _possess_ the other creature.… Even God is no
exception to this rule, he is very far from thinking “What does it matter
to thee whether I love thee or not?”—He becomes terrible if he is not
loved in return “_L’amour_—and with this principle one carries one’s point
against Gods and men—_est de tous les sentiments le plus égoiste, et par
conséquent, lorsqu’il est blessé, le moins généreux_” (B. Constant).
3.
Perhaps you are beginning to perceive how very much this music _improves_
me?—_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._ and I have my reasons for this
principle (“Beyond Good and Evil,” pp. 216 _et seq._) The return to
Nature, health, good spirits, youth, _virtue_!—And yet I was one of the
most corrupted Wagnerites.… I was able to take Wagner seriously. Oh, this
old magician! what tricks has he not played upon us! The first thing his
art places in our hands is a magnifying glass: we look through it, and we
no longer trust our own eyes—Everything grows bigger, _even Wagner grows
bigger_.… What a clever rattlesnake. Throughout his life he rattled
“resignation,” “loyalty,” and “purity” about our ears, and he retired from
the _corrupt_ world with a song of praise to chastity!—And we believed it
all.…
—But you will not listen to me? You _prefer_ even the _problem_ of Wagner
to that of Bizet? But neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The
problem of salvation is even a venerable problem. Wagner pondered over
nothing so deeply as over salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation.
Someone always wants to be saved in his operas,—now it is a youth; anon it
is a maid,—this is _his problem_—And how lavishly he varies his
_leitmotif_! What rare and melancholy modulations! If it were not for
Wagner, who would teach us that innocence has a preference for saving
interesting sinners? (the case in “Tannhauser”). Or that even the eternal
Jew gets saved and _settled down_ when he marries? (the case in the
“Flying Dutchman”). Or that corrupted old females prefer to be saved by
chaste young men? (the case of Kundry). Or that young hysterics like to be
saved by their doctor? (the case in “Lohengrin”). Or that beautiful girls
most love to be saved by a knight who also happens to be a Wagnerite? (the
case in the “Mastersingers”). Or that even married women also like to be
saved by a knight? (the case of Isolde). Or that the venerable Almighty,
after having compromised himself morally in all manner of ways, is at last
delivered by a free spirit and an immoralist? (the case in the “Ring”).
Admire, more especially this last piece of wisdom! Do you understand it?
I—take good care not to understand it.… That it is possible to draw yet
other lessons from the works above mentioned,—I am much more ready to
prove than to dispute. That one may be driven by a Wagnerian ballet to
desperation—_and_ to virtue! (once again the case in “Tannhauser”). That
not going to bed at the right time may be followed by the worst
consequences (once again the case of “Lohengrin”).—That one can never be
too sure of the spouse one actually marries (for the third time, the case
of “Lohengrin”). “Tristan and Isolde” glorifies the perfect husband who,
in a certain case, can ask only one question: “But why have ye not told me
this before? Nothing could be simpler than that!” Reply:
“That I cannot tell thee.
And what thou askest,
That wilt thou never learn.”
“Lohengrin” contains a solemn ban upon all investigation and questioning.
In this way Wagner stood for the Christian concept, “Thou must and shalt
_believe_”. It is a crime against the highest and the holiest to be
scientific.… The “Flying Dutchman” preaches the sublime doctrine that
woman can moor the most erratic soul, or to put it into Wagnerian terms
“save” him. Here we venture to ask a question. Supposing that this were
actually true, would it therefore be desirable?—What becomes of the
“eternal Jew” whom a woman adores and _enchains_? He simply ceases from
being eternal, he marries,—that is to say, he concerns us no
longer.—Transferred into the realm of reality, the danger for the artist
and for the genius—and these are of course the “eternal Jews”—resides in
woman: _adoring_ women are their ruin. Scarcely any one has sufficient
character not to be corrupted—“saved” when he finds himself treated as a
God—he then immediately condescends to woman.—Man is a coward in the face
of all that is eternally feminine, and this the girls know.—In many cases
of woman’s love, and perhaps precisely in the most famous ones, the love
is no more than a refined form of _parasitism_, a making one’s nest in
another’s soul and sometimes even in another’s flesh—Ah! and how
constantly at the cost of the host!
We know the fate of Goethe in old-maidish moralin-corroded Germany. He was
always offensive to Germans, he found honest admirers only among Jewesses.
Schiller, “noble” Schiller, who cried flowery words into their ears,—he
was a man after their own heart. What did they reproach Goethe with?—with
the Mount of Venus, and with having composed certain Venetian epigrams.
Even Klopstock preached him a moral sermon; there was a time when Herder
was fond of using the word “Priapus” when he spoke of Goethe. Even
“Wilhelm Meister” seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral
“going to the dogs”. The “Menagerie of tame cattle,” the worthlessness of
the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a
plaint which _Biterolf_(8) might well have sung: “nothing so easily makes
a painful impression as _when a great mind despoils itself of its wings
and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while it
renounces more lofty aims_.” But the most indignant of all was the
cultured woman—all smaller courts in Germany, every kind of “Puritanism”
made the sign of the cross at the sight of Goethe, at the thought of the
“unclean spirit” in Goethe.—This history was what Wagner set to music. He
_saves_ Goethe, that goes without saying; but he does so in such a clever
way that he also takes the side of the cultured woman. Goethe gets saved:
a prayer saves him, a cultured woman _draws him out of the mire_.
—As to what Goethe would have thought of Wagner?—Goethe once set himself
the question, “what danger hangs over all romanticists—the fate of
romanticists?”—His answer was: “To choke over the rumination of moral and
religious absurdities.” In short: _Parsifal_.… The philosopher writes
thereto an epilogue: _Holiness_—the only remaining higher value still seen
by the mob or by woman, the horizon of the ideal for all those who are
naturally short-sighted. To philosophers, however, this horizon, like
every other, is a mere misunderstanding, a sort of slamming of the door in
the face of the real beginning of their world,—their danger, their ideal,
their desideratum.… In more polite language: _La philosophie ne suffit pas
au grand nombre. Il lui faut la sainteté.…_
4.
I shall once more relate the history of the “Ring”. This is its proper
place. It is also the history of a salvation except that in this case it
is Wagner himself who is saved—Half his lifetime Wagner believed in the
_Revolution_ as only a Frenchman could have believed in it. He sought it
in the runic inscriptions of myths, he thought he had found a typical
revolutionary in Siegfried.—“Whence arises all the evil in this world?”
Wagner asked himself. From “old contracts”: he replied, as all
revolutionary ideologists have done. In plain English: from customs, laws,
morals, institutions, from all those things upon which the ancient world
and ancient society rests. “How can one get rid of the evil in this world?
How can one get rid of ancient society?” Only by declaring war against
“contracts” (traditions, morality). _This Siegfried does._ He starts early
at the game, very early—his origin itself is already a declaration of war
against morality—he is the result of adultery, of incest.… Not the saga,
but Wagner himself is the inventor of this radical feature, in this matter
he _corrected_ the saga.… Siegfried continues as he began: he follows only
his first impulse, he flings all tradition, all respect, all _fear_ to the
winds. Whatever displeases him he strikes down. He tilts irreverently at
old god-heads. His principal undertaking, however, is to emancipate
woman,—“to deliver Brunnhilda.”… Siegfried and Brunnhilda, the sacrament
of free love, the dawn of the golden age, the twilight of the Gods of old
morality—_evil is got rid of_.… For a long while Wagner’s ship sailed
happily along this course. There can be no doubt that along it Wagner
sought his highest goal.—What happened? A misfortune. The ship dashed on
to a reef; Wagner had run aground. The reef was Schopenhauer’s philosophy;
Wagner had stuck fast on a _contrary_ view of the world. What had he set
to music? Optimism? Wagner was ashamed. It was moreover an optimism for
which Schopenhauer had devised an evil expression,—_unscrupulous_
optimism. He was more than ever ashamed. He reflected for some time; his
position seemed desperate.… At last a path of escape seemed gradually to
open before him—what if the reef on which he had been wrecked could be
interpreted as a goal, as the ulterior motive, as the actual purpose of
his journey? To be wrecked here, this was also a goal:—_Bene navigavi cum
naufragium feci_ … and he translated the “Ring” into Schopenhauerian
language. Everything goes wrong, everything goes to wrack and ruin, the
new world is just as bad as the old one:—Nonentity, the Indian Circe
beckons … Brunnhilda, who according to the old plan had to retire with a
song in honour of free love, consoling the world with the hope of a
socialistic Utopia in which “all will be well”; now gets something else to
do. She must first study Schopenhauer. She must first versify the fourth
book of “The World as Will and Idea.” _Wagner was saved.…_ Joking apart,
this _was_ a salvation. The service which Wagner owes to Schopenhauer is
incalculable. It was the _philosopher of decadence_ who allowed the
_artist of decadence_ to find himself.—
5.
_The artist of decadence._ That is the word. And here I begin to be
serious. I could not think of looking on approvingly while this _décadent_
spoils our health—and music into the bargain. Is Wagner a man at all? Is
he not rather a disease? Everything he touches he contaminates. _He has
made music sick._
A typical _décadent_ who thinks himself necessary with his corrupted
taste, who arrogates to himself a higher taste, who tries to establish his
depravity as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment.
And no one guards against it. His powers of seduction attain monstrous
proportions, holy incense hangs around him, the misunderstanding
concerning him is called the Gospel,—and he has certainly not converted
only the _poor in spirit_ to his cause!
I should like to open the window a little:—Air! More air!—
The fact that people in Germany deceive themselves concerning Wagner does
not surprise me. The reverse would surprise me. The Germans have modelled
a Wagner for themselves, whom they can honour: never yet have they been
psychologists; they are thankful that they misunderstand. But that people
should also deceive themselves concerning Wagner in Paris! Where people
are scarcely anything else than psychologists. And in Saint Petersburg!
Where things are divined, which even Paris has no idea of. How intimately
related must Wagner be to the entire decadence of Europe for her not to
have felt that he was decadent! He belongs to it, he is its protagonist,
its greatest name.… We bring honour on ourselves by elevating him to the
clouds—For the mere fact that no one guards against him is in itself
already a sign of decadence. Instinct is weakened, what ought to be
eschewed now attracts. People actually kiss that which plunges them more
quickly into the abyss.—Is there any need for an example? One has only to
think of the régime which anæmic, or gouty, or diabetic people prescribe
for themselves. The definition of a vegetarian: a creature who has need of
a corroborating diet. To recognise what is harmful as harmful, to be able
to deny oneself what is harmful, is a sign of youth, of vitality. That
which is harmful lures the exhausted: cabbage lures the vegetarian.
Illness itself can be a stimulus to life but one must be healthy enough
for such a stimulus!—Wagner increases exhaustion—_therefore_ he attracts
the weak and exhausted to him. Oh, the rattlesnake joy of the old Master
precisely because he always saw “the little children” coming unto him!