intellectual and refined culture in Europe, it remains the high school of
taste: but one must know where to find this France of taste. The
_North-German Gazette_, for instance, or whoever expresses his sentiments
in that paper, thinks that the French are “barbarians,”—as for me, if I
had to find the _blackest_ spot on earth, where slaves still required to
be liberated, I should turn in the direction of Northern Germany.… But
those who form part of _that select_ France take very good care to
_conceal themselves_; they are a small body of men, and there may be some
among them who do not stand on very firm legs—a few may be fatalists,
hypochondriacs, invalids; others may be enervated, and artificial,—such
are those who would fain be artistic,—but all the loftiness and delicacy
which still remains to this world, is in their possession. In this France
of intellect, which is also the France of pessimism, Schopenhauer is
already much more at home than he ever was in Germany, his principal work
has already been translated twice, and the second time so excellently that
now I prefer to read Schopenhauer in French (—he was an _accident_ among
Germans, just as I am—the Germans have no fingers wherewith to grasp us;
they haven’t any fingers at all,—but only claws). And I do not mention
Heine—_l’adorable Heine_, as they say in Paris—who long since has passed
into the flesh and blood of the more profound and more soulful of French
lyricists. How could the horned cattle of Germany know how to deal with
the _délicatesses_ of such a nature!—And as to Richard Wagner, it is
obvious, it is even glaringly obvious, that Paris is the very _soil_ for
him, the more French music adapts itself to the needs of _l’âme moderne_,
the more Wagnerian it will become,—it is far enough advanced in this
direction already.—In this respect one should not allow one’s self to be
misled by Wagner himself—it was simply disgraceful on Wagner’s part to
scoff at Paris, as he did, in its agony in 1871.… In spite of it all, in
Germany Wagner is only a misapprehension.—who could be more incapable of
understanding anything about Wagner than the Kaiser, for instance?—To
everybody familiar with the movement of European culture, this fact,
however, is certain, that French romanticism and Richard Wagner are most
intimately related. All dominated by literature, up to their very eyes and
ears—the first European artists with a _universal literary_ culture,—most
of them writers, poets, mediators and minglers of the senses and the arts,
all fanatics in _expression_, great discoverers in the realm of the
sublime as also of the ugly and the gruesome, and still greater
discoverers in passion, in working for effect, in the art of dressing
their windows,—all possessing talent far above their genius,—virtuosos to
their backbone, knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures,
constrains or overthrows; born enemies of logic and of straight lines,
thirsting after the exotic, the strange and the monstrous, and all opiates
for the senses and the understanding. On the whole, a daring dare-devil,
magnificently violent, soaring and high-springing crew of artists, who
first had to teach their own century—it is the century of the mob—what the
concept “artist” meant. But they were _ill_.…
Wagner As The Apostle Of Chastity.
1.
Is this the German way?
Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts?
Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves,
Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness,
Exalt their feelings with the censer’s fumes,
And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee,
And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer?
Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell,
And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven?
Is this the German way?
Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords.
What yonder lures is Rome, Rome’s faith sung without words.
2.
There is no necessary contrast between sensuality and chastity, every good
marriage, every genuine love affair is above this contrast; but in those
cases where the contrast exists, it is very far from being necessarily a
tragic one. This, at least, ought to hold good of all well-constituted and
good-spirited mortals, who are not in the least inclined to reckon their
unstable equilibrium between angel and _petite bête_, without further ado,
among the objections to existence, the more refined and more intelligent
like Hafis and Goethe, even regarded it as an additional attraction. It is
precisely contradictions of this kind which lure us to life.… On the other
hand, it must be obvious, that when Circe’s unfortunate animals are
induced to worship chastity, all they see and _worship_ therein, is their
opposite—oh! and with what tragic groaning and fervour, may well be
imagined—that same painful and thoroughly superfluous opposition which,
towards the end of his life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly wished to set to
music and to put on the stage, _And to what purpose?_ we may reasonably
ask.
3.
And yet this other question can certainly not be circumvented: what
business had he actually with that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic
simplicity,” that poor devil and son of nature—Parsifal, whom he
ultimately makes a catholic by such insidious means—what?—was Wagner in
earnest with Parsifal? For, that he was laughed at, I cannot deny, any
more than Gottfried Keller can.… We should like to believe that “Parsifal”
was meant as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and satyric drama,
with which Wagner the tragedian wished to take leave of us, of himself,
and above all _of tragedy_, in a way which befitted him and his dignity,
that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty and most malicious parody of
tragedy itself, of all the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of
this world, of the most _ridiculous_ form of the unnaturalness of the
ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For Parsifal is the subject _par
excellence_ for a comic opera.… Is Wagner’s “Parsifal” his secret laugh of
superiority at himself, the triumph of his last and most exalted state of
artistic freedom, of artistic transcendence—is it Wagner able to _laugh_
at himself? Once again we only wish it were so; for what could Parsifal be
if he were _meant seriously_? Is it necessary in his case to say (as I
have heard people say) that “Parsifal” is “the product of the mad hatred
of knowledge, intellect, and sensuality?” a curse upon the senses and the
mind in one breath and in one fit of hatred? an act of apostasy and a
return to Christianly sick and obscurantist ideals? And finally even a
denial of self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who
theretofore had worked with all the power of his will in favour of the
opposite cause, the spiritualisation and sensualisation of his art? And
not only of his art, but also of his life? Let us remember how
enthusiastically Wagner at one time walked in the footsteps of the
philosopher Feuerbach. Feuerbach’s words “healthy sensuality” struck
Wagner in the thirties and forties very much as they struck many other
Germans—they called themselves the young Germans—that is to say, as words
of salvation. Did he ultimately _change his mind_ on this point? It would
seem that he had at least had the desire of _changing_ his doctrine
towards the end.… Had the _hatred of life_ become dominant in him as in
Flaubert? For “Parsifal” is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most
secret concoction of poisons with which to make an end of the first
conditions of life, _it is a bad work_. The preaching of chastity remains
an incitement to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not regard
“Parsifal” as an outrage upon morality.—
How I Got Rid Of Wagner.
1.
Already in the summer of 1876, when the first festival at Bayreuth was at
its height, I took leave of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure anything
double-faced. Since Wagner had returned to Germany, he had condescended
step by step to everything that I despise—even to anti-Semitism.… As a
matter of fact, it was then high time to bid him farewell: but the proof
of this came only too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most triumphant
creature alive; as a matter of fact, though, a cranky and desperate
_décadent_, suddenly fell helpless and broken on his knees before the
Christian cross.… Was there no German at that time who had the eyes to
see, and the sympathy in his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this
spectacle? Was I the only one who _suffered_ from it?—Enough, the
unexpected event, like a flash of lightning, made me see only too clearly
what kind of a place it was that I had just left,—and it also made me
shudder as a man shudders who unawares has just escaped a great danger. As
I continued my journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I was ill,
more than ill—I was _tired_;—tired of the continual disappointments over
everything which remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic about, of
the energy, industry, hope, youth, and love that are _squandered
everywhere_; tired out of loathing for the whole world of idealistic lying
and conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case of Wagner, had
scored a victory over a man who was of the bravest; and last but not
least, tired by the sadness of a ruthless suspicion—that I was now
condemned to be ever more and more suspicious, ever more and more
contemptuous, ever more and more _deeply_ alone than I had been
theretofore. For I had no one save Richard Wagner.… I was always condemned
to the society of Germans.…
2.
Henceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of myself, I then took up
sides—not without anger—_against myself_ and _for_ all that which hurt me
and fell hard upon me; and thus I found the road to that courageous
pessimism which is the opposite of all idealistic falsehood, and which, as
it seems to me, is also the road to _me_—_to my mission_.… That hidden and
dominating thing, for which for long ages we have had no name, until
ultimately it comes forth as our mission,—this tyrant in us wreaks a
terrible revenge upon us for every attempt we make either to evade him or
to escape him, for every one of our experiments in the way of befriending
people to whom we do not belong, for every active occupation, however
estimable, which may make us diverge from our principal object:—aye, and
even for every virtue which would fain protect us from the rigour of our
most intimate sense of responsibility. Illness is always the answer,
whenever we venture to doubt our right to _our_ mission, whenever we begin
to make things too easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the same
time! It is for our relaxation that we have to pay most dearly! And should
we wish after all to return to health, we then have no choice: we are
compelled to burden ourselves _more_ heavily than we had been burdened
before.…
The Psychologist Speaks.
1.
The oftener a psychologist—a born, an unavoidable psychologist and
soul-diviner—turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals,
the greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he needs
greater hardness and cheerfulness than any other man. For the corruption,
the ruination of higher men, is in fact the rule: it is terrible to have
such a rule always before our eyes. The manifold torments of the
psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and
then discovers almost repeatedly throughout all history, this universal
inner “hopelessness” of higher men, this eternal “too late!” in every
sense—may perhaps one day be the cause of his “going to the dogs” himself.
In almost every psychologist we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour
of intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men: and this betrays how
constantly he requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight and
forgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness—from what his
“business”—has laid upon his conscience. A horror of his memory is typical
of him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of others, he hears with
unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he
has opened his eyes and _seen_—or he even conceals his silence by
expressly agreeing with some obvious opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his
situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learnt _great
sympathy_, together with _great contempt_, the educated have on their part
learnt great reverence. And who knows but in all great instances, just
this alone happened: that the multitude worshipped a God, and that the
“God” was only a poor sacrificial animal! _Success_ has always been the
greatest liar—and the “work” itself, the _deed_, is a success too; the
great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their
creations until they can no longer be recognised, the “work” of the
artist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, who is
reputed to have created it, the “great men,” as they are reverenced, are
poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical
values counterfeit coinage _prevails_.
2.
Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,
Kleist, Gogol (I do not dare to mention much greater names, but I imply
them), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the
moment, sensuous, absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust and
to distrust, with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed,
often taking revenge with their works for an internal blemish, often
seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too accurate memory,
idealists out of proximity to the mud:—what a _torment_ these great
artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once
found them out! We are all special pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It
is conceivable that it is just from woman—who is clairvoyant in the world
of suffering, and, alas! also unfortunately eager to help and save to an
extent far beyond her powers—that _they_ have learnt so readily those
outbreaks of boundless _sympathy_ which the multitude, above all the
reverent multitude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying
interpretations. This sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its
power; woman would like to believe that love can do _everything_—it is the
_superstition_ peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how
poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love
is—how much more readily it _destroys_ than saves.…
3.
The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of every man who has suffered
deeply—the extent to which a man can suffer, almost determines the order
of rank—the chilling uncertainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and
coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he _knows more_ than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and
“at home” in many distant terrible worlds of which “_you_ know
nothing!”—this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of the elect of
knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms
of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with gushing and
sympathising hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in
suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.—One of the most
refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious
boldness of taste which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the
defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. There are “cheerful
men” who make use of good spirits, because they are misunderstood on
account of them—they _wish_ to be misunderstood. There are “scientific
minds” who make use of science, because it gives a cheerful appearance,
and because love of science leads people to conclude that a person is
shallow—they _wish_ to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free
insolent spirits which would fain conceal and deny that they are at bottom
broken, incurable hearts—this is Hamlet’s case: and then folly itself can
be the mask of an unfortunate and alas! all too dead-certain knowledge.
Epilogue.
1.
I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted to
the hardest years of my life than to any others. According to the voice of
my innermost nature, everything necessary, seen from above and in the
light of a _superior_ economy, is also useful in itself—not only should
one bear it, one should _love_ it.… _Amor fati_: this is the very core of
my being—And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than
I owe to my health? To it I owe a _higher_ kind of health, a sort of
health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill
it!—_To it, I owe even my philosophy_.… Only great suffering is the
ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that _vast
suspiciousness_ which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X,
_i.e._, the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great
suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the
suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our
nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all
whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,—on which things we had
formerly staked our humanity. I doubt whether such suffering improves a
man; but I know that it makes him _deeper_.… Supposing we learn to set our
pride, our scorn, our strength of will against it, and thus resemble the
Indian who, however cruelly he may be tortured, considers himself revenged
on his tormentor by the bitterness of his own tongue. Supposing we
withdraw from pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid sphere
of self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-effacement: one is another
person when one leaves these protracted and dangerous exercises in the art
of self-mastery, one has one note of interrogation the more, and above all
one has the will henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder, more
wicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever asked on earth
before.… Trust in life has vanished; life itself has become a
_problem_.—But let no one think that one has therefore become a spirit of
gloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still possible,—but it is a
_different kind_ of love.… It is the love for a woman whom we doubt.…
2.
The rarest of all things is this: to have after all another taste—a
_second_ taste. Out of such abysses, out of the abyss of _great suspicion_
as well, a man returns as though born again, he has a new skin, he is more
susceptible, more full of wickedness; he has a finer taste for joyfulness;
he has a more sensitive tongue for all good things; his senses are more
cheerful; he has acquired a second, more dangerous, innocence in gladness;
he is more childish too, and a hundred times more cunning than ever he had
been before.
Oh, how much more repulsive pleasure now is to him, that coarse, heavy,
buff-coloured pleasure, which is understood by our pleasure-seekers, our
“cultured people,” our wealthy folk and our rulers! With how much more
irony we now listen to the hubbub as of a country fair, with which the
“cultured” man and the man about town allow themselves to be forced
through art, literature, music, and with the help of intoxicating liquor,
to “intellectual enjoyments.” How the stage-cry of passion now stings our
ears; how strange to our taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous
bustle, which the cultured mob are so fond of, together with its
aspirations to the sublime, to the exalted and the distorted, have become.
No: if we convalescents require an art at all, it is _another_ art—-a
mocking, nimble, volatile, divinely undisturbed, divinely artificial art,
which blazes up like pure flame into a cloudless sky! But above all, an
art for artists, _only for artists_! We are, after all, more conversant
with that which is in the highest degree necessary—cheerfulness, _every
kind_ of cheerfulness, my friends!… We men of knowledge, now know
something only too well: oh how well we have learnt by this time, to
forget, _not_ to know, as artists!… As to our future: we shall scarcely be
found on the track of those Egyptian youths who break into temples at
night, who embrace statues, and would fain unveil, strip, and set in broad
daylight, everything which there are excellent reasons to keep
concealed.(15) No, we are disgusted with this bad taste, this will to
truth, this search after truth “at all costs;” this madness of
adolescence, “the love of truth;” we are now too experienced, too serious,
too joyful, too scorched, _too profound_ for that.… We no longer believe
that truth remains truth when it is _unveiled_,—we have lived enough to
understand this.… To-day it seems to us good form not to strip everything
naked, not to be present at all things, not to desire to “know” all.
“_Tout comprendre c’est tout mépriser._”… “Is it true,” a little girl once
asked her mother, “that the beloved Father is everywhere?—I think it quite
improper,”—a hint to philosophers.… The shame with which Nature has
concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas should be held in higher
esteem. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for _not revealing her
reasons?_… Perhaps her name, to use a Greek word is _Baubo_?—Oh these
Greeks, they understood the art of _living!_ For this it is needful to
halt bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to worship
appearance, and to believe in forms, tones, words, and the whole _Olympus
of appearance_! These Greeks were superficial—from _profundity_.… And are
we not returning to precisely the same thing, we dare-devils of intellect
who have scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles of present
thought, in order to look around us from that height, in order to _look
down_ from that height? Are we not precisely in this respect—_Greeks_?
Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely on that
account—_artists_?
SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP
WITH WAGNER.
(_Summer 1878._)
1.
My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast,
and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The
preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thoroughly
repelled me.
2.
I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied with the decorations,
the scenery and the mechanical contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much
industry and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining the imagination
to matters which did not belie their _epic_ origin. But as to the
naturalism of the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the orchestra!!
What affected, artificial and depraved tones, what a distortion of nature,
were we made to hear!
3.
We are witnessing the death agony of the _last Art_: Bayreuth has
convinced me of this.
4.
My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed him; I had depicted an _ideal
monster_—one, however, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling the
enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was
only like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving
which was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives,
received an extraordinary impetus from this humiliating experience.
5.
This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good deal even struck me with
sudden fear. At last I felt, however, that if only I could be strong
enough to take sides against myself and what I most loved I would find the
road to truth and get solace and encouragement from it—and in this way I
became filled with a sensation of joy far greater than that upon which I
was now voluntarily turning my back.
6.
I was in love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of
existence saw nothing else than art—and this at an age when, reasonably
enough, quite different passions usually possess the soul.
7.
_Goethe_ said: “The yearning spirit within me, which in earlier years I
may perhaps have fostered too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried
my utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the man, and I therefore had
to strive to attain to more complete freedom.” Conclusion?—I have had to
do the same.
8.
He who wakes us always wounds us.
9.
I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and what is still worse, I
have not even the vanity to try to appear as if I did.
10.
He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond the vision and the
experience of his acquaintances,—provokes envy and hatred masked as
pity,—prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease, seduction. Long
faces.
11.
I frankly confess that I had hoped that by means of art the Germans would
become thoroughly disgusted with _decaying Christianity_—I regarded German
mythology as a solvent, as a means of accustoming people to polytheism.
What a fright I had over the Catholic revival!!
12.
It is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely from life, nor to be
so lifeless and emotionally weak, as to have _need_ of Wagner’s art, as to
require it as a medium. This is the principal reason of one’s _opposition_
to it, and not baser motives; something to which we are not driven by any
personal need, and which we do not _require_, we cannot esteem so highly.
13.
It is a question either of no longer _requiring_ Wagner’s art, or of still
requiring it.