which necessarily must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries
relative to the value of _persons_. A philosopher feels that he wants to
wash his hands after he has concerned himself so long with the “Case of
Wagner”. I shall now give my notion of what is _modern_. According to the
measure of energy of every age, there is also a standard that determines
which virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden. The age either has the
virtues of _ascending_ life, in which case it resists the virtues of
degeneration with all its deepest instincts. Or it is in itself an age of
degeneration, in which case it requires the virtues of declining life,—in
which case it hates everything that justifies itself, solely as being the
outcome of a plenitude, or a superabundance of strength. Æsthetic is
inextricably bound up with these biological principles: there is decadent
æsthetic, and _classical_ æsthetic,—“beauty in itself” is just as much a
chimera as any other kind of idealism.—Within the narrow sphere of the
so-called moral values, no greater antithesis could be found than that of
_master-morality_ and the morality of _Christian_ valuations: the latter
having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (—The gospels present us
with the same physiological types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky), the
master-morality (“Roman,” “pagan,” “classical,” “Renaissance”), on the
other hand, being the symbolic speech of well-constitutedness, of
_ascending_ life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle.
Master-morality _affirms_ just as instinctively as Christian morality
_denies_ (“God,” “Beyond,” “self-denial,”—all of them negations). The
first reflects its plenitude upon things,—it transfigures, it embellishes,
it _rationalises_ the world,—the latter impoverishes, bleaches, mars the
value of things; it _suppresses_ the world. “World” is a Christian term of
abuse. These antithetical forms in the optics of values, are _both_
necessary: they are different points of view which cannot be circumvented
either with arguments or counter-arguments. One cannot refute
Christianity: it is impossible to refute a diseased eyesight. That people
should have combated pessimism as if it had been a philosophy, was the
very acme of learned stupidity. The concepts “true” and “untrue” do not
seem to me to have any sense in optics.—That, alone, which has to be
guarded against is the falsity, the instinctive duplicity which _would
fain_ regard this antithesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner
did,—and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of no mean order. To
cast side-long glances at master-morality, at _noble_ morality (—Icelandic
saga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence of these values), and at
the same time to have the opposite teaching, the “gospel of the lowly,”
the doctrine of the _need_ of salvation, on one’s lips!… Incidentally, I
admire the modesty of Christians who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I
could _not_ endure to hear the sound of certain words on Wagner’s lips.
There are some concepts which are too good for Bayreuth … What?
Christianity adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps _by_ female
Wagnerites—for, in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly _feminini
generis_—? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.…
If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the
Church!—The need of _salvation_, the quintessence of all Christian needs,
has nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward
expression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful
affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian
wishes _to be rid_ of himself. _Le moi est toujours haissable._ Noble
morality, master-morality, on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant
saying of yea to _one’s self_,—it is the self-affirmation and
self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime symbols and
practices; but only “because its heart is too full.” The whole of
beautiful art and of great art belongs here; their common essence is
gratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive repugnance _to
décadents_, and a scorn and horror of the latter’s symbolism: such things
almost prove it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as a _fœda
superstitio_: let me call to your minds the feelings which the last German
of noble taste—Goethe—had in regard to the cross. It is idle to look for
more valuable, more _necessary_ contrasts.(14)
But the kind of falsity which is characteristic of the Bayreuthians is not
exceptional to-day. We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian
gentleman. This _innocence_ in contradiction, this “clean conscience” in
falsehood, is rather modern _par excellence_, with it modernity is almost
defined. Biologically, modern man represents a _contradiction of values_,
he sits between two stools, he says yea and nay in one breath. No wonder
that it is precisely in our age that falseness itself became flesh and
blood, and even genius! No wonder _Wagner_ dwelt amongst us! It was not
without reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of modernity.… But all
of us, though we do not know it, involuntarily have values, words,
formulæ, and morals in our bodies, which are quite _antagonistic_ in their
origin—regarded from a physiological standpoint, we are _false_.… How
would a _diagnosis of the modern soul_ begin? With a determined incision
into this agglomeration of contradictory instincts, with the total
suppression of its antagonistic values, with vivisection applied to its
most _instructive_ case. To philosophers the “Case of Wagner” is a
_windfall_—this essay, as you observe, was inspired by gratitude.
NIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
Preface
The following chapters have been selected from past works of mine, and not
without care. Some of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there, of
course, they will be found to have been made a little more intelligible,
but above all, more brief. Read consecutively, they can leave no one in
any doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning Wagner: we are
antipodes. The reader will come to other conclusions, too, in his perusal
of these pages: for instance, that this is an essay for psychologists and
_not_ for Germans.… I have my readers everywhere, in Vienna, St
Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and New York—but _I have none_
in Europe’s Flat-land—Germany.… And I might even have something to say to
Italians whom I love just as much as I … _Quousque tandem, Crispi_ …
Triple alliance: a people can only conclude a _mésalliance_ with the
“Empire.”…
Friedrich Nietzsche.
Turin, _Christmas 1888_.
Wherein I Admire Wagner.
I believe that artists very often do not know what they are best able to
do. They are much too vain. Their minds are directed to something prouder
than merely to appear like little plants, which, with freshness, rareness,
and beauty, know how to sprout from their soil with real perfection. The
ultimate goodness of their own garden and vineyard is superciliously
under-estimated by them, and their love and their insight are not of the
same quality. Here is a musician who is a greater master than anyone else
in the discovering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed, and
tormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can
approach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching
joy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a
chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul,
when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment
something may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating
from out the nethermost depths of human happiness, and, so to speak, from
out man’s empty bumper, in which the bitterest and most repulsive drops
have mingled with the sweetest for good or evil at last. He knows that
weary shuffling along of the soul which is no longer able either to spring
or to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk, he has the modest glance
of concealed suffering, of understanding without comfort, of leave-taking
without word or sign; verily as the Orpheus of all secret misery he is
greater than anyone, and many a thing was introduced into art for the
first time by him, which hitherto had not been given expression, had not
even been thought worthy of art—the cynical revolts, for instance, of
which only the greatest sufferer is capable, also many a small and quite
microscopical feature of the soul, as it were the scales of its amphibious
nature—yes indeed, he is the master of everything very small. But this he
refuses to be! His tastes are much more in love with vast walls and with
daring frescoes!… He does not see that his spirit has another desire and
bent—a totally different outlook—that it prefers to squat peacefully in
the corners of broken-down houses: concealed in this way, and hidden even
from himself, he paints his really great 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 alone.—Wagner is one who has
suffered much—and this elevates him above other musicians.—I admire Wagner
wherever he sets _himself_ to music—
Wherein I Raise Objections.
With all this I do not wish to imply that I regard this music as healthy,
and least of all in those places where it speaks of Wagner himself. My
objections to Wagner’s music are physiological objections. Why should I
therefore begin by clothing them in æsthetic formulæ? Æsthetic is indeed
nothing more than applied physiology—The fact I bring forward, my “_petit
fait vrai_,” is that I can no longer breathe with ease when this music
begins to have its effect upon me; that my foot immediately begins to feel
indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance, march; even
the young German Kaiser could not march to Wagner’s Imperial March,—what
my foot demands in the first place from music is that ecstasy which lies
in good walking, stepping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my
circulation also protest? Are not my intestines also troubled? And do I
not become hoarse unawares? … in order to listen to Wagner I require
Géraudel’s Pastilles.… And then I ask myself, what is it that my whole
body must have from music in general? for there is no such thing as a
soul.… I believe it must have relief: as if all animal functions were
accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant rhythms, as
if brazen and leaden life could lose its weight by means of delicate and
smooth melodies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the haunts and
abysses of perfection; for this reason I need music. But Wagner makes one
ill—What do I care about the theatre? What do I care about the spasms of
its moral ecstasies in which the mob—and who is not the mob
to-day?—rejoices? What do I care about the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of
the actor? You are beginning to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical
at heart. For the stage, this mob art _par excellence_, my soul has that
deepest scorn felt by every artist to-day. With a stage success a man
sinks to such an extent in my esteem as to drop out of sight; failure in
this quarter makes me prick my ears, makes me begin to pay attention. But
this was not so with Wagner, next to the Wagner who created the most
unique music that has ever existed there was the Wagner who was
essentially a man of the stage, an actor, the most enthusiastic mimomaniac
that has perhaps existed on earth, even as a musician. And let it be said
_en passant_ that if Wagner’s theory was “drama is the object, music is
only a means”—his practice was from beginning to end “the attitude is the
end, drama and even music can never be anything else than means.” Music as
the manner of accentuating, of strengthening, and deepening dramatic poses
and all things which please the senses of the actor; and Wagnerian drama
only an opportunity for a host of interesting attitudes!—Alongside of all
other instincts he had the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in
everything and, as I have already said, as a musician also.—On one
occasion, and not without trouble, I made this clear to a Wagnerite _pur
sang_,—clearness and a Wagnerite! I won’t say another word. There were
reasons for adding; “For heaven’s sake, be a little more true unto
yourself! We are not in Bayreuth now. In Bayreuth people are only upright
in the mass; the individual lies, he even lies to himself. One leaves
oneself at home when one goes to Bayreuth, one gives up all right to one’s
own tongue and choice, to one’s own taste and even to one’s own courage,
one knows these things no longer as one is wont to have them and practise
them before God and the world and between one’s own four walls. In the
theatre no one brings the finest senses of his art with him, and least of
all the artist who works for the theatre,—for here loneliness is lacking;
everything perfect does not suffer a witness.… In the theatre one becomes
mob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron, idiot—Wagnerite:
there, the most personal conscience is bound to submit to the levelling
charm of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules, there one
_becomes_ a neighbour.”
Wagner As A Danger.
1.
The aim after which more modern music is striving, which is now given the
strong but obscure name of “unending melody,” can be clearly understood by
comparing it to one’s feelings on entering the sea. Gradually one loses
one’s footing and one ultimately abandons oneself to the mercy or fury of
the elements: one has to swim. In the solemn, or fiery, swinging movement,
first slow and then quick, of old music—one had to do something quite
different; one had to dance. The measure which was required for this and
the control of certain balanced degrees of time and energy, forced the
soul of the listener to continual sobriety of thought.—Upon the
counterplay of the cooler currents of air which came from this sobriety,
and from the warmer breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all good music
rested—Richard Wagner wanted another kind of movement,—he overthrew the
physiological first principle of all music before his time. It was no
longer a matter of walking or dancing,—we must swim, we must hover.… This
perhaps decides the whole matter. “Unending melody” really wants to break
all the symmetry of time and strength; it actually scorns these things—Its
wealth of invention resides precisely in what to an older ear sounds like
rhythmic paradox and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence of such a
taste there would arise a danger for music—so great that we can imagine
none greater—the complete degeneration of the feeling for rhythm, _chaos_
in the place of rhythm.… The danger reaches its climax when such music
cleaves ever more closely to naturalistic play-acting and pantomime, which
governed by no laws of form, aim at effect and nothing more.…
Expressiveness at all costs and music a servant, a slave to attitudes—this
is the end.…
2.
What? would it really be the first virtue of a performance (as performing
musical artists now seem to believe), under all circumstances to attain to
a _haut-relief_ which cannot be surpassed? If this were applied to Mozart,
for instance, would it not be a real sin against Mozart’s spirit,—Mozart’s
cheerful, enthusiastic, delightful and loving spirit? He who fortunately
was no German, and whose seriousness is a charming and golden seriousness
and not by any means that of a German clodhopper.… Not to speak of the
earnestness of the “marble statue”.… But you seem to think that all music
is the music of the “marble statue”?—that all music should, so to speak,
spring out of the wall and shake the listener to his very bowels?… Only
thus could music have any effect! But on whom would the effect be made?
Upon something on which a noble artist ought never to deign to act,—upon
the mob, upon the immature! upon the blasés! upon the diseased! upon
idiots! upon _Wagnerites_!…
A Music Without A Future.
Of all the arts which succeed in growing on the soil of a particular
culture, music is the last plant to appear; maybe because it is the one
most dependent upon our innermost feelings, and therefore the last to come
to the surface—at a time when the culture to which it belongs is in its
autumn season and beginning to fade. It was only in the art of the Dutch
masters that the spirit of mediæval Christianity found its expression—,
its architecture of sound is the youngest, but genuine and legitimate,
sister of the Gothic. It was only in Handel’s music that the best in
Luther and in those like him found its voice, the Judeo-heroic trait which
gave the Reformation a touch of greatness-the Old Testament, _not_ the
New, become music. It was left to Mozart, to pour out the epoch of Louis
XIV., and of the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain, in _ringing_ gold; only
in Beethoven’s and Rossini’s music did the Eighteenth Century sing itself
out—the century of enthusiasm, broken ideals, and _fleeting joy_. All real
and original music is a swan song—Even our last form of music, despite its
prevalence and its will to prevail, has perhaps only a short time to live,
for it sprouted from a soil which was in the throes of a rapid
subsidence,—of a culture which will soon be _submerged_. A certain
catholicism of feeling, and a predilection for some ancient indigenous
(so-called national) ideals and eccentricities, was its first condition.
Wagner’s appropriation of old sagas and songs, in which scholarly
prejudice taught us to see something German _par excellence_—now we laugh
at it all, the resurrection of these Scandinavian monsters with a thirst
for ecstatic sensuality and spiritualisation—the whole of this taking and
giving on Wagner’s part, in the matter of subjects, characters, passions,
and nerves, would also give unmistakable expression to the _spirit of his
music_ provided that this music, like any other, did not know how to speak
about itself save ambiguously: for _musica is a woman_.… We must not let
ourselves be misled concerning this state of things, by the fact that at
this very moment we are living in a reaction, _in the heart itself_ of a
reaction. The age of international wars, of ultramontane martyrdom, in
fact, the whole interlude-character which typifies the present condition
of Europe, may indeed help an art like Wagner’s to sudden glory, without,
however, in the least ensuring its _future prosperity_. The Germans
themselves have no future.…
We Antipodes.
Perhaps a few people, or at least my friends, will remember that I made my
first plunge into life armed with some errors and some exaggerations, but
that, in any case, I began with _hope_ in my heart. In the philosophical
pessimism of the nineteenth century, I recognised—who knows by what
by-paths of personal experience—the symptom of a higher power of thought,
a more triumphant plenitude of life, than had manifested itself hitherto
in the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegel!—I regarded _tragic_ knowledge
as the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most
noble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of
its overflowing wealth, as a justifiable _luxury_. In the same way, I
began by interpreting Wagner’s music as the expression of a Dionysian
powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means of
which a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ages, was
seeking at last to burst its bonds, quite indifferent to how much of that
which nowadays calls itself culture, would thereby be shaken to ruins. You
see how I misinterpreted, you see also, what I _bestowed_ upon Wagner and
Schopenhauer—myself.… Every art and every philosophy may be regarded
either as a cure or as a stimulant to ascending or declining life: they
always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of
sufferers:—those that suffer from _overflowing vitality_, who need
Dionysian art and require a tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook
upon, the phenomenon life,—and there are those who suffer from _reduced_
vitality, and who crave for repose, quietness, calm seas, or else the
intoxication, the spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy
provide. Revenge upon life itself—this is the most voluptuous form of
intoxication for such indigent souls!… Now Wagner responds quite as well
as Schopenhauer to the twofold cravings of these people,—they both deny
life, they both slander it but precisely on this account they are my
antipodes.—The richest creature, brimming over with vitality,—the
Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself to gaze upon the
horrible and the questionable; but he can also lend his hand to the
terrible deed, and can indulge in all the luxury of destruction,
disaggregation, and negation,—in him evil, purposelessness and ugliness,
seem just as allowable as they are in nature—because of his bursting
plenitude of creative and rejuvenating powers, which are able to convert
every desert into a luxurious land of plenty. Conversely, it is the
greatest sufferer and pauper in vitality, who is most in need of mildness,
peace and goodness—that which to-day is called humaneness—in thought as
well as in action, and possibly of a God whose speciality is to be a God
of the sick, a Saviour, and also of logic or the abstract intelligibility
of existence even for idiots (—the typical “free-spirits,” like the
idealists, and “beautiful souls,” are _décadents_—); in short, of a warm,
danger-tight, and narrow confinement, between optimistic horizons which
would allow of stultification.… And thus very gradually, I began to
understand Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian Greek, and also the
Christian who in fact is only a kind of Epicurean, and who, with his
belief that “faith saves,” carries the principle of Hedonism _as far as
possible_—far beyond all intellectual honesty.… If I am ahead of all other
psychologists in anything, it is in this fact that my eyes are more keen
for tracing those most difficult and most captious of all deductions, in
which the largest number of mistakes have been made,—the deduction which
makes one infer something concerning the author from his work, something
concerning the doer from his deed, something concerning the idealist from
the need which produced this ideal, and something concerning the imperious
_craving_ which stands at the back of all thinking and valuing—In regard
to all artists of what kind soever, I shall now avail myself of this
radical distinction: does the creative power in this case arise from a
loathing of life, or from an excessive _plenitude_ of life? In Goethe, for
instance, an overflow of vitality was creative, in Flaubert—hate:
Flaubert, a new edition of Pascal, but as an artist with this instinctive
belief at heart: “_Flaubert est toujours haissable, l’homme n’est rien,
l’œuvre est tout_”.… He tortured himself when he wrote, just as Pascal
tortured himself when he thought—the feelings of both were inclined to be
“non-egoistic.” … “Disinterestedness”—principle of decadence, the will to
nonentity in art as well as in morality.
Where Wagner Is At Home.