Let us therefore improve mankind l—in this
way we shall become good (in this way we shall even
become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”).
way we shall become good (in this way we shall even
become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”).
Nietzsche - v08 - The Case of Wagner
” 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 life-
time 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,
## p. 10 (#46) ##############################################
IO THE CASE OF WAGNER
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 P
How can one get rid of ancient society P” 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 P 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
## p. 11 (#47) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM II
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 philo-
sopher of decadence who allowed the artist of decad-
ence 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 ? Every-
thing he touches he contaminates. He has made
music sick.
A typical décadent who thinks himself necessary
with his corrupted taste, who arrogates to himself
f º -
\; - ºver
## p. 12 (#48) ##############################################
I2 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
U.
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 in-
cense 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. Airl
More air –
The fact that people in Germany deceive them-
selves 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 psy-
chologists; they are thankful that they misunder-
stand. But that people should also deceive them-
selves 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 our-
selves 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 anaemic, or gouty, or diabetic people pre-
## p. 13 (#49) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I3
scribe for themselves. The definition of a vege-
tarian: 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 rattle-
snake joy of the old Master precisely because he
always saw “the little children” coming unto
him
I place this point of view first and foremost:
Wagner's art is diseased. The problems he sets
on the stage are all concerned with hysteria; the
convulsiveness of his emotions, his over-excited
sensitiveness, his taste which demands ever sharper
condimentation, his erraticness which he togged
out to look like principles, and, last but not least,
his choice of heroes and heroines, considered as
physiological types (—a hospital ward —): the
whole represents a morbid picture; of this there
can be no doubt. Wagner est une névrose. Maybe,
that nothing is better known to-day, or in any case
the subject of greater study, than the Protean
character of degeneration which has disguised itself
here, both as an art and as an artist. In Wagner
our medical men and physiologists have a most
interesting case, or at least a very complete one.
Owing to the very fact that nothing is more
modern than this thorough morbidness, this dilatori-
ness and excessive irritability of the nervous
## p. 14 (#50) ##############################################
I4 THE CASE OF WAGNER
machinery, Wagner is the modern artist par
excellence, the Cagliostro of modernity. All that
the world most needs to-day, is combined in the
most seductive manner in his art, the three great
stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artift-
ciality and innocence (idiocy).
Wagner is a great corrupter of music. With it,
he found the means of stimulating tired nerves,
and in this way he made music ill. In the art of
spurring exhausted creatures back into activity,
and of recalling half-corpses to life, the inventive-
ness he shows is of no mean order. He is the
master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the
strongest like bullocks. Wagner's success—his
success with nerves, and therefore with women—
converted the whole world of ambitious musicians
into disciples of his secret art. And not only the
ambitious, but also the shrewd. . . . Only with
morbid music can money be made to-day; our big
theatres live on Wagner.
6.
—Once more I will venture to indulge in a little
levity. Let us suppose that Wagner's success could
become flesh and blood and assume a human form;
that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant,
it could move among budding artists. How do
you think it would then be likely to express
itself? —
My friends, it would say, let us exchange a word
or two in private. It is easier to compose bad music
than good music. But what, if apart from this it
## p. 15 (#51) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I5
were also more profitable, more effective, more
convincing, more exalting, more secure, more
Wagnerian 2 . . . Pulchrum est paucorum hominum.
Bad enough in all conscience We understand
Latin, and perhaps we also understand which side
our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks:
we know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why
not rather aim at size, at the sublime, the gigantic,
that which moves the masses 2–And to repeat: it
is easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we
know that. . . .
We know the masses, we know the theatre. The
best of those who assemble there, German youths,
horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require
the sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming.
This much still lies within our power. And as for
the others who assemble there, the cultured crètins,
the blasé pigmies, the eternally feminine, the
gastrically happy, in short the people—they also
require the sublime, the profound, the overwhelm-
ing. All these people argue in the same way.
“He who overthrows us is strong; he who elevates
us is godly; he who makes us wonder vaguely is
profound. ”—Let us make up our mind then, my
friends in music: we do want to overthrow them,
we do want to elevate them, we do want to make
them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within
our powers.
In regard to the process of making them wonder:
it is here that our notion of “style” finds its start-
ing-point. Above all, no thoughts | Nothing is
more compromising than a thought ! But the
state of mind which precedes thought, the labour
w
## p. 16 (#52) ##############################################
I6 THE CASE OF WAGNER
of the thought still unborn, the promise of future
thought, the world as it was before God created it
—a recrudescence of chaos. . . . Chaos makes
people wonder. . .
In the words of the master: infinity but without
melody.
In the second place, with regard to the over-
throwing-this belongs at least in part, to physio-
logy. Let us, in the first place, examine the in-
struments. A few of them would convince even
our intestines (—they throw open doors, as Händel
would say), others becharm our very marrow. The
colour of the melody is all-important here; the
melody itself is of no importance. Let us be
precise about this point. To what other purpose
should we spend our strength? Let us be char-
acteristic in tone even to the point of foolishness!
If by means of tones we allow plenty of scope for
guessing, this will be put to the credit of our
intellects. Let us irritate nerves, let us strike
them dead: let us handle thunder and lightning,
that is what overthrows. .
But what overthrows best, is passion. —We must
try and be clear concerning this question of passion.
Nothing is cheaper than passion 1 All the virtues
of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no
need to have learnt anything, but passion is
always within our reach Beauty is difficult: let
us beware of beauty . . . And also of melody /
However much in earnest we may otherwise be
about the ideal, let us slander, my friends, let us
slander-let us slander melody Nothing is more
dangerous than a beautiful melody Nothing is
## p. 17 (#53) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 17
more certain to ruin tastel My friends, if people
again set about loving beautiful melodies, we are
lost ! . . . -* T-
First principle: melody is immoral. Proof:
“Palestrina. ” Application: “Parsifal. ” The absence
of melody is in itself sanctifying. . . .
And this is the definition of passion. Passion—
or the acrobatic feats of ugliness on the tight-rope
of enharmonic. —My friends, let us dare to be ugly
Wagner dared it! Let us heave the mud of the
most repulsive harmonies undauntedly before us.
We must not even spare our hands ! Only thus,
shall we become natural. . . .
And now a last word of advice. Perhaps it
covers everything. —Let us be idealists /–If not the
cleverest, it is at least the wisest thing we can do.
In order to elevate men we ourselves must be
exalted. Let us wander in the clouds, let us
harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great
symbols all around us! Sursum. / Bumbum. /—
there is no better advice. The “heaving breast”
shall be our argument, “beautiful feelings” our
advocates. Virtue still carries its point against
counterpoint. “How could he who improves us,
help being better than we ? ” man has ever thought
thus.
Let us therefore improve mankind l—in this
way we shall become good (in this way we shall even
become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”).
The straining after the base excitement of the
senses, after so-called beauty, shattered the nerves
of the Italians: let us remain German | Even
Mozart's relation to music—Wagner spoke this
word of comfort to us—was at bottom frivolous. . . .
Y
2
## p. 18 (#54) ##############################################
18 THE CASE OF WAGNER
Never let us acknowledge that music “may be a
recreation,” that it may “enliven,” that it may
“give pleasure. ” Wever let us give pleasure /—we
shall be lost if people once again think of music
hedonistically. . . . That belongs to the bad
Heighteenth century. . . . On the other hand,
nothing would be more advisable (between our-
selves) than a dose of cant, sit venia verbo. This
imparts dignity. —And let us take care to select
the precise moment when it would be fitting to
have black looks, to sigh openly, to sigh devoutly,
to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their
eyes. “Man is corrupt: who will save him P what
will save him 2" Do not let us reply. We must
be on our guard. We must control our ambition,
which would bid us found new religions. But no
one must doubt that it is we who save him, that in
our music alone salvation is to be found. . . .
(See Wagner's essay, “Religion and Art. ”)
7.
Enough ! Enough ! I fear that, beneath all my
merry jests, you are beginning to recognise the
sinister truth only too clearly—the picture of the
decline of art, of the decline of the artist. The
latter, which is a decline of character, might perhaps
be defined provisionally in the following manner:
the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is
developing ever more and more into a talent for
telling lies. In a certain chapter of my principal
work which bears the title “Concerning the Phy-
## p. 19 (#55) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 19
siology of Art,” “ I shall have an opportunity of
showing more thoroughly how this transformation
of art as a whole into histrionics is just as much
a sign of physiological degeneration (or more
precisely a form of hysteria), as any other indi-
vidual corruption, and infirmity peculiar to the
art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the
restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary
to change one's attitude to it every second. They
understand nothing of Wagner who see in him
but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter
of accidents. He was not the “defective,” “ill-
fated,” “contradictory” genius that people have
declared him to be, Wagner was something com-
plete, he was a typical décadent, in whom every sign
of “free will” was lacking, in whom every feature
was necessary. If there is anything at all of
interest in Wagner, it is the consistency with
which a critical physiological condition may con-
vert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion,
into a method, a form of procedure, a reform of
all principles, a crisis in taste.
At this point I shall only stop to consider the
question of style. How is decadence in literature
characterised? By the fact that in it life no longer
animates the whole. Words become predominan
and leap right out of the sentence to which the
belong, the sentences themselves trespass beyond
their bounds, and obscure the sense of the whole
page, and the page in its turn gains in vigour at
* See “The Will to Power,” vol. ii. , authorised English
edition. —Tr. --- *
## p. 20 (#56) ##############################################
2O THE CASE OF WAGNER
the cost of the whole—the whole is no longer a
whole. But this is the formula for every decadent
style: there is always anarchy among the atoms,
disaggregation of the will,—in moral terms: “free-
dom of the individual,”—extended into a political
theory: “equal rights for all. ” Life, equal vitality,
all the vibration and exuberance of life, driven
back into the smallest structure, and the remainder
left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, dis-
tress, and numbness, or hostility and chaos: both
striking one with ever increasing force the higher
the forms of organisation are into which one
ascends. The whole no longer lives at all : it
is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a fictitious
thing.
In Wagner's case the first thing we notice is an
hallucination, not of tones, but of attitudes. Only
after he has the latter does he begin to seek the
semiotics of tone for them. If we wish to
admire him, we should observe him at work
here: how he separates and distinguishes, how he
arrives at small unities, and how he galvanises
them, accentuates them, and brings them into pre-
eminence. But in this way he exhausts his strength:
the rest is worthless. How paltry, awkward, and
amateurish is his manner of “developing,” his
attempt at combining incompatible parts. His
manner in this respect reminds one of two people
who even in other ways are not unlike him in style
—the brothers Goncourt; one almost feels com-
passion for so much impotence. That Wagner
disguised his inability to create organic forms, under
the cloak of a principle, that he should have con-
## p. 21 (#57) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 2I
structed a “dramatic style” out of what we should
call the total inability to create any style whatso-
ever, is quite in keeping with that daring habit,
which stuck to him throughout his life, of setting
up a principle wherever capacity failed him.
(In this respect he was very different from old
Kant, who rejoiced in another form of daring, i. e. :
whenever a principle failed him, he endowed man
with a “capacity” which took its place. . . . ) Once
more let it be said that Wagner is really only ,
worthy of admiration and love by virtue of his in-
ventiveness in small things, in his elaboration of .
details, here one is quite justified in proclaiming
him a master of the first rank, as our greatest
musical miniaturist, who compresses an infinity of
meaning and sweetness into the smallest space.
His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery
of a dying light, so pampers our senses that after-
wards almost every other musician strikes us as
being too robust. If people would believe me.
they would not form the highest idea of Wagner
from that which pleases them in him to-day. All
that was only devised for convincing the masses,
and people like ourselves recoil from it just as one
would recoil from too garish a fresco. What concern
have we with the irritating brutality of the over-
ture to the “Tannhäuser”? Or with the Wal-
kyrie Circus P Whatever has become popular in
Wagner's art, including that which has become
so outside the theatre, is in bad taste and spoils
taste. The “Tannhäuser” March seems to me to
savour of the Philistine; the overture to the
“Flying Dutchman” is much ado about nothing;
z
º
## p. 22 (#58) ##############################################
22 THE CASE OF WAGNER
the prelude to “Lohengrin. ” was the first, only too
insidious, only too successful example of how one
|can hypnotise with music (–I dislike all music
which aspires to nothing higher than to convince
the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who
paints frescoes and practises magnetism, there is
yet another Wagner who hoards small treasures:
our greatest melancholic in music, full of side
glances, loving speeches, and words of comfort, in
which no one ever forestalled him, the tone-
master of melancholy and drowsy happiness. . .
A lexicon of Wagner's most intimate phrases—a
host of short fragments of from five to fifteen bars
each, of music which nobody knows. . . . Wagner
had the virtue of décadents, pity. . . .
8.
—“Very good | But how can this decadent spoil
one's taste if perchance one is not a musician, if
perchance one is not oneself a décadent P”—Con-
versely . How can one help it! Just you try it!
—You know not what Wagner is: quite a great
actor! Does a more profound, a more ponderous
influence exist on the stage? Just look at these
youthlets, all benumbed, pale, breathless They
are Wagnerites: they know nothing about music,
—and yet Wagner gets the mastery of them.
Wagner's art presses with the weight of a hundred
atmospheres: do but submit, there is nothing
else to do. . . . Wagner the actor is a tyrant, his
pathos flings all taste, all resistance, to the winds,
## p. 23 (#59) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 23
—Who else has this persuasive power in his atti-
tudes, who else sees attitudes so clearly before any-
thing else! This holding-of-its-breath in Wagnerian
pathos, this disinclination to have done with an
intense feeling, this terrifying habit of dwelling
on a situation in which every instant almost
chokes one. — —
Was Wagner a musician at all? In any case he
was something else to a much greater degree—that
is to say, an incomparable histrio, the greatest
mime, the most astounding theatrical genius that
the Germans have ever had, our scenic artist par
excellence. He belongs to some other sphere than
the history of music, with whose really great and
genuine figure he must not be confounded. Wagner
and Beethoven—this is blasphemy—and above all
it does not do justice even to Wagner. . . . As a
musician he was no more than what he was as a
man: he became a musician, he became a poet,
because the tyrant in him, his actor's genius, drove
him to be both. Nothing is known concerning
Wagner, so long as his dominating instinct has
not been divined.
Wagner was not instinctively a musician. And
this he proved by the way in which he abandoned
all laws and rules, or, in more precise terms, all
style in music, in order to make what he wanted
with it, i. e. , a rhetorical medium for the stage, a
medium of expression, a means of accentuating an
attitude, a vehicle of suggestion and of the pyscho-
logically picturesque. In this department Wagner
may well stand as an inventor and an innovator
of the first order—he increased the powers of speech
## p. 24 (#60) ##############################################
24 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
of music to an incalculable degree—: he is the Victor
Hugo of music as language, provided always we
allow that under certain circumstances music may
be something which is not music, but speech
—instrument—ancilla dramaturgica. Wagner's
music, not in the tender care of theatrical taste,
which is very tolerant, is simply bad music, perhaps
the worst that has ever been composed. When a
musician can no longer count up to three, he
becomes “dramatic,” he becomes “Wagnerian. ” . . .
Wagner almost discovered the magic which can
be wrought even now by means of music which is
both incoherent and elementary. His consciousness
of this attains to huge proportions, as does also his
instinct to dispense entirely with higher law and
style. The elementary factors—sound, movement,
colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music—
suffice. Wagner never calculates as a musician
with a musician's conscience: all he strains after is
effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows
what he has to make an effect upon l—In this he
is as unhesitating as Schiller was, as any theatrical
man must be; he has also the latter's contempt for
the world which he brings to its knees before him.
A man is an actor when he is ahead of mankind in
his possession of this one view, that everything
which has to strike people as true, must not be
true. This rule was formulated by Talma : it
contains the whole psychology of the actor, it also
contains—and this we need not doubt—all his
morality. Wagner's music is never true.
—But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything
is as it should be. As long as we are young, and
## p. 25 (#61) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 25
º
Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as
rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as
a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire
him in very much the same way as young French-
men admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his
“royal liberality. ” Later on we admire the one as
well as the other for the opposite reason: as masters
and paragons in economy, as prudent amphitryons.
Nobody can equal them in the art of providing a
princely board with such a modest outlay. —The
Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even
sated with the fare which his master conjures up
before him. But we others who, in books as in
music, desire above all to find substance, and who
are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation
of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English,
Wagner does not give us enough to masticate.
His recitative—very little meat, more bones, and
plenty of broth—I christened “alla genovese”: I
had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this
remark, but rather the older recitativo, the recitativo
secco. And as to Wagnerian leitmotif, I fear I lack
the necessary culinary understanding for it. If hard
pressed, I might say that I regard it perhaps as an
ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one's
self of what remains of one's meal. Wagner's
“arias” are still left over. But now I shall hold
my tongue. -
º
9.
Even in his general sketch of the action, Wagner
is above all an actor. The first thing that occurs
to him is a scene which is certain to produce a
## p. 26 (#62) ##############################################
26 THE CASE OF WAGNER
strong effect, a real actio,” with a basso-relievo of
attitudes; an overwhelming scene, this he now
proceeds to elaborate more deeply, and out of it
he draws his characters. The whole of what remains
to be done follows of itself, fully in keeping with a
technical economy which has no reason to be subtle.
It is not Corneille's public that Wagner has to con-
sider, it is merely the nineteenth century. Con-
cerning the “actual requirements of the stage”
Wagner would have about the same opinion as any
other actor of to-day: a series of powerful scenes,
each stronger than the one that preceded it, and,
in between, all kinds of clever nonsense. His first
concern is to guarantee the effect of his work; he
begins with the third act, he approves his work
according to the quality of its final effect. Guided
by this sort of understanding of the stage, there is
not much danger of one's creating a drama unawares.
Drama demands inexorable logic: but what did
Wagner care about logic? Again I say, it was not
Corneille's public that he had to consider; but
* Wote. —It was a real disaster for aesthetics when the
word drama got to be translated by “action. ” Wagner is
not the only culprit here ; the whole world does the same ;-
even the philologists who ought to know better. What
ancient drama had in view was grand fathetic scenes, it
even excluded action (or placed it before the piece or behind
the scenes). The word drama is of Doric origin, and
according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant
“event,” “history,”—both words in a hieratic sense. The
oldest drama represented local legends, “sacred history,”
upon which the foundation of the cult rested (–thus it was
not “action,” but fatality: 3pāv in Doric has nothing to do
with action).
## p. 27 (#63) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 27
merely Germans ! Everybody knows the technical
difficulties before which the dramatist often has to
summon all his strength and frequently to sweat
his blood: the difficulty of making the plot seem
necessary and the unravelment as well, so that both
are conceivable only in a certain way, and so that
each may give the impression of freedom (the
principle of the smallest expenditure of energy).
Now the very last thing that Wagner does is to
sweat blood over the plot; and on this and the
unravelment he certainly spends the smallest
possible amount of energy. Let anybody put one
of Wagner’s “plots” under the microscope, and I
wager that he will be forced to laugh. Nothing is
more enlivening than the dilemma in “Tristan,”
unless it be that in the “Mastersingers. ” Wagner
is no dramatist; let nobody be deceived on this
point. All he did was to love the word “drama”
—he always loved fine words. Nevertheless, in his
writings the word “drama” is merely a misunder-
standing (–and a piece of shrewdness: Wagner
always affected superiority in regard to the word
“opera”—); just as the word “spirit” is a mis-
understanding in the New Testament. —He was
not enough of a psychologist for drama; he in-
stinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how P
—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place . . .
Very modern—eh? Very Parisian very decadent!
. . . Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows
how to unravel with the help of dramatic inven-
tions, are of quite another kind. For example, let
us suppose that Wagner requires a female voice.
A whole act without a woman's voice would be
## p. 28 (#64) ##############################################
28 THE CASE OF WAGNER
impossible ! But in this particular instance not
one of the heroines happens to be free. What
does Wagner do? He emancipates the oldest
woman on earth, Erda: “Step up, aged grand-
mamma! You have got to sing ! ” And Erda
sings. Wagner's end has been achieved. There-
upon he immediately dismisses the old lady: “Why
on earth did you come 2 Off with you! Kindly go
to sleep again! ” In short, a scene full of mytho-
logical awe, before which the Wagnerite wonders
all kinds of things. . .
—“But the substance of Wagner's texts their
mythical substance, their eternal substance:”—
Question: how is this substance, this eternal
substance tested 2 The chemical analyst replies:
Translate Wagner into the real, into the modern,--
let us be even more cruel, and say: into the
bourgeois And what will then become of him P-
Between ourselves, I have tried the experiment.
Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more worthy
of being recommended to a picnic-party, than to
discuss Wagner dressed in a more modern garb:
for instance Parsifal, as a candidate in divinity,
with a public-school education (–the latter, quite
indispensable for pure foolishness). What surprises
await one ! Would you believe it, that Wagner's
heroines one and all, once they have been divested
of the heroic husks, are almost indistinguishable
from Mdme. Bovary ! —just as one can conceive
conversely, of Flaubert's being well able to transform
all his heroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian
women, and then to offer them to Wagner in this
mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally
## p. 29 (#65) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 29
speaking, Wagner does not seem to have become
interested in any other problems than those which
engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day.
Always five paces away from the hospital All
very modern problems, all problems which are at
home in big cities / do not doubt it ! . . .
history of a salvation: except that in this case
it is Wagner himself who is saved. —Half his life-
time 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,
## p. 10 (#46) ##############################################
IO THE CASE OF WAGNER
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 P
How can one get rid of ancient society P” 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 P 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
## p. 11 (#47) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM II
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 philo-
sopher of decadence who allowed the artist of decad-
ence 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 ? Every-
thing he touches he contaminates. He has made
music sick.
A typical décadent who thinks himself necessary
with his corrupted taste, who arrogates to himself
f º -
\; - ºver
## p. 12 (#48) ##############################################
I2 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
U.
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 in-
cense 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. Airl
More air –
The fact that people in Germany deceive them-
selves 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 psy-
chologists; they are thankful that they misunder-
stand. But that people should also deceive them-
selves 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 our-
selves 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 anaemic, or gouty, or diabetic people pre-
## p. 13 (#49) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I3
scribe for themselves. The definition of a vege-
tarian: 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 rattle-
snake joy of the old Master precisely because he
always saw “the little children” coming unto
him
I place this point of view first and foremost:
Wagner's art is diseased. The problems he sets
on the stage are all concerned with hysteria; the
convulsiveness of his emotions, his over-excited
sensitiveness, his taste which demands ever sharper
condimentation, his erraticness which he togged
out to look like principles, and, last but not least,
his choice of heroes and heroines, considered as
physiological types (—a hospital ward —): the
whole represents a morbid picture; of this there
can be no doubt. Wagner est une névrose. Maybe,
that nothing is better known to-day, or in any case
the subject of greater study, than the Protean
character of degeneration which has disguised itself
here, both as an art and as an artist. In Wagner
our medical men and physiologists have a most
interesting case, or at least a very complete one.
Owing to the very fact that nothing is more
modern than this thorough morbidness, this dilatori-
ness and excessive irritability of the nervous
## p. 14 (#50) ##############################################
I4 THE CASE OF WAGNER
machinery, Wagner is the modern artist par
excellence, the Cagliostro of modernity. All that
the world most needs to-day, is combined in the
most seductive manner in his art, the three great
stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artift-
ciality and innocence (idiocy).
Wagner is a great corrupter of music. With it,
he found the means of stimulating tired nerves,
and in this way he made music ill. In the art of
spurring exhausted creatures back into activity,
and of recalling half-corpses to life, the inventive-
ness he shows is of no mean order. He is the
master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the
strongest like bullocks. Wagner's success—his
success with nerves, and therefore with women—
converted the whole world of ambitious musicians
into disciples of his secret art. And not only the
ambitious, but also the shrewd. . . . Only with
morbid music can money be made to-day; our big
theatres live on Wagner.
6.
—Once more I will venture to indulge in a little
levity. Let us suppose that Wagner's success could
become flesh and blood and assume a human form;
that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant,
it could move among budding artists. How do
you think it would then be likely to express
itself? —
My friends, it would say, let us exchange a word
or two in private. It is easier to compose bad music
than good music. But what, if apart from this it
## p. 15 (#51) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I5
were also more profitable, more effective, more
convincing, more exalting, more secure, more
Wagnerian 2 . . . Pulchrum est paucorum hominum.
Bad enough in all conscience We understand
Latin, and perhaps we also understand which side
our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks:
we know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why
not rather aim at size, at the sublime, the gigantic,
that which moves the masses 2–And to repeat: it
is easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we
know that. . . .
We know the masses, we know the theatre. The
best of those who assemble there, German youths,
horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require
the sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming.
This much still lies within our power. And as for
the others who assemble there, the cultured crètins,
the blasé pigmies, the eternally feminine, the
gastrically happy, in short the people—they also
require the sublime, the profound, the overwhelm-
ing. All these people argue in the same way.
“He who overthrows us is strong; he who elevates
us is godly; he who makes us wonder vaguely is
profound. ”—Let us make up our mind then, my
friends in music: we do want to overthrow them,
we do want to elevate them, we do want to make
them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within
our powers.
In regard to the process of making them wonder:
it is here that our notion of “style” finds its start-
ing-point. Above all, no thoughts | Nothing is
more compromising than a thought ! But the
state of mind which precedes thought, the labour
w
## p. 16 (#52) ##############################################
I6 THE CASE OF WAGNER
of the thought still unborn, the promise of future
thought, the world as it was before God created it
—a recrudescence of chaos. . . . Chaos makes
people wonder. . .
In the words of the master: infinity but without
melody.
In the second place, with regard to the over-
throwing-this belongs at least in part, to physio-
logy. Let us, in the first place, examine the in-
struments. A few of them would convince even
our intestines (—they throw open doors, as Händel
would say), others becharm our very marrow. The
colour of the melody is all-important here; the
melody itself is of no importance. Let us be
precise about this point. To what other purpose
should we spend our strength? Let us be char-
acteristic in tone even to the point of foolishness!
If by means of tones we allow plenty of scope for
guessing, this will be put to the credit of our
intellects. Let us irritate nerves, let us strike
them dead: let us handle thunder and lightning,
that is what overthrows. .
But what overthrows best, is passion. —We must
try and be clear concerning this question of passion.
Nothing is cheaper than passion 1 All the virtues
of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no
need to have learnt anything, but passion is
always within our reach Beauty is difficult: let
us beware of beauty . . . And also of melody /
However much in earnest we may otherwise be
about the ideal, let us slander, my friends, let us
slander-let us slander melody Nothing is more
dangerous than a beautiful melody Nothing is
## p. 17 (#53) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 17
more certain to ruin tastel My friends, if people
again set about loving beautiful melodies, we are
lost ! . . . -* T-
First principle: melody is immoral. Proof:
“Palestrina. ” Application: “Parsifal. ” The absence
of melody is in itself sanctifying. . . .
And this is the definition of passion. Passion—
or the acrobatic feats of ugliness on the tight-rope
of enharmonic. —My friends, let us dare to be ugly
Wagner dared it! Let us heave the mud of the
most repulsive harmonies undauntedly before us.
We must not even spare our hands ! Only thus,
shall we become natural. . . .
And now a last word of advice. Perhaps it
covers everything. —Let us be idealists /–If not the
cleverest, it is at least the wisest thing we can do.
In order to elevate men we ourselves must be
exalted. Let us wander in the clouds, let us
harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great
symbols all around us! Sursum. / Bumbum. /—
there is no better advice. The “heaving breast”
shall be our argument, “beautiful feelings” our
advocates. Virtue still carries its point against
counterpoint. “How could he who improves us,
help being better than we ? ” man has ever thought
thus.
Let us therefore improve mankind l—in this
way we shall become good (in this way we shall even
become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”).
The straining after the base excitement of the
senses, after so-called beauty, shattered the nerves
of the Italians: let us remain German | Even
Mozart's relation to music—Wagner spoke this
word of comfort to us—was at bottom frivolous. . . .
Y
2
## p. 18 (#54) ##############################################
18 THE CASE OF WAGNER
Never let us acknowledge that music “may be a
recreation,” that it may “enliven,” that it may
“give pleasure. ” Wever let us give pleasure /—we
shall be lost if people once again think of music
hedonistically. . . . That belongs to the bad
Heighteenth century. . . . On the other hand,
nothing would be more advisable (between our-
selves) than a dose of cant, sit venia verbo. This
imparts dignity. —And let us take care to select
the precise moment when it would be fitting to
have black looks, to sigh openly, to sigh devoutly,
to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their
eyes. “Man is corrupt: who will save him P what
will save him 2" Do not let us reply. We must
be on our guard. We must control our ambition,
which would bid us found new religions. But no
one must doubt that it is we who save him, that in
our music alone salvation is to be found. . . .
(See Wagner's essay, “Religion and Art. ”)
7.
Enough ! Enough ! I fear that, beneath all my
merry jests, you are beginning to recognise the
sinister truth only too clearly—the picture of the
decline of art, of the decline of the artist. The
latter, which is a decline of character, might perhaps
be defined provisionally in the following manner:
the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is
developing ever more and more into a talent for
telling lies. In a certain chapter of my principal
work which bears the title “Concerning the Phy-
## p. 19 (#55) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 19
siology of Art,” “ I shall have an opportunity of
showing more thoroughly how this transformation
of art as a whole into histrionics is just as much
a sign of physiological degeneration (or more
precisely a form of hysteria), as any other indi-
vidual corruption, and infirmity peculiar to the
art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the
restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary
to change one's attitude to it every second. They
understand nothing of Wagner who see in him
but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter
of accidents. He was not the “defective,” “ill-
fated,” “contradictory” genius that people have
declared him to be, Wagner was something com-
plete, he was a typical décadent, in whom every sign
of “free will” was lacking, in whom every feature
was necessary. If there is anything at all of
interest in Wagner, it is the consistency with
which a critical physiological condition may con-
vert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion,
into a method, a form of procedure, a reform of
all principles, a crisis in taste.
At this point I shall only stop to consider the
question of style. How is decadence in literature
characterised? By the fact that in it life no longer
animates the whole. Words become predominan
and leap right out of the sentence to which the
belong, the sentences themselves trespass beyond
their bounds, and obscure the sense of the whole
page, and the page in its turn gains in vigour at
* See “The Will to Power,” vol. ii. , authorised English
edition. —Tr. --- *
## p. 20 (#56) ##############################################
2O THE CASE OF WAGNER
the cost of the whole—the whole is no longer a
whole. But this is the formula for every decadent
style: there is always anarchy among the atoms,
disaggregation of the will,—in moral terms: “free-
dom of the individual,”—extended into a political
theory: “equal rights for all. ” Life, equal vitality,
all the vibration and exuberance of life, driven
back into the smallest structure, and the remainder
left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, dis-
tress, and numbness, or hostility and chaos: both
striking one with ever increasing force the higher
the forms of organisation are into which one
ascends. The whole no longer lives at all : it
is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a fictitious
thing.
In Wagner's case the first thing we notice is an
hallucination, not of tones, but of attitudes. Only
after he has the latter does he begin to seek the
semiotics of tone for them. If we wish to
admire him, we should observe him at work
here: how he separates and distinguishes, how he
arrives at small unities, and how he galvanises
them, accentuates them, and brings them into pre-
eminence. But in this way he exhausts his strength:
the rest is worthless. How paltry, awkward, and
amateurish is his manner of “developing,” his
attempt at combining incompatible parts. His
manner in this respect reminds one of two people
who even in other ways are not unlike him in style
—the brothers Goncourt; one almost feels com-
passion for so much impotence. That Wagner
disguised his inability to create organic forms, under
the cloak of a principle, that he should have con-
## p. 21 (#57) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 2I
structed a “dramatic style” out of what we should
call the total inability to create any style whatso-
ever, is quite in keeping with that daring habit,
which stuck to him throughout his life, of setting
up a principle wherever capacity failed him.
(In this respect he was very different from old
Kant, who rejoiced in another form of daring, i. e. :
whenever a principle failed him, he endowed man
with a “capacity” which took its place. . . . ) Once
more let it be said that Wagner is really only ,
worthy of admiration and love by virtue of his in-
ventiveness in small things, in his elaboration of .
details, here one is quite justified in proclaiming
him a master of the first rank, as our greatest
musical miniaturist, who compresses an infinity of
meaning and sweetness into the smallest space.
His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery
of a dying light, so pampers our senses that after-
wards almost every other musician strikes us as
being too robust. If people would believe me.
they would not form the highest idea of Wagner
from that which pleases them in him to-day. All
that was only devised for convincing the masses,
and people like ourselves recoil from it just as one
would recoil from too garish a fresco. What concern
have we with the irritating brutality of the over-
ture to the “Tannhäuser”? Or with the Wal-
kyrie Circus P Whatever has become popular in
Wagner's art, including that which has become
so outside the theatre, is in bad taste and spoils
taste. The “Tannhäuser” March seems to me to
savour of the Philistine; the overture to the
“Flying Dutchman” is much ado about nothing;
z
º
## p. 22 (#58) ##############################################
22 THE CASE OF WAGNER
the prelude to “Lohengrin. ” was the first, only too
insidious, only too successful example of how one
|can hypnotise with music (–I dislike all music
which aspires to nothing higher than to convince
the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who
paints frescoes and practises magnetism, there is
yet another Wagner who hoards small treasures:
our greatest melancholic in music, full of side
glances, loving speeches, and words of comfort, in
which no one ever forestalled him, the tone-
master of melancholy and drowsy happiness. . .
A lexicon of Wagner's most intimate phrases—a
host of short fragments of from five to fifteen bars
each, of music which nobody knows. . . . Wagner
had the virtue of décadents, pity. . . .
8.
—“Very good | But how can this decadent spoil
one's taste if perchance one is not a musician, if
perchance one is not oneself a décadent P”—Con-
versely . How can one help it! Just you try it!
—You know not what Wagner is: quite a great
actor! Does a more profound, a more ponderous
influence exist on the stage? Just look at these
youthlets, all benumbed, pale, breathless They
are Wagnerites: they know nothing about music,
—and yet Wagner gets the mastery of them.
Wagner's art presses with the weight of a hundred
atmospheres: do but submit, there is nothing
else to do. . . . Wagner the actor is a tyrant, his
pathos flings all taste, all resistance, to the winds,
## p. 23 (#59) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 23
—Who else has this persuasive power in his atti-
tudes, who else sees attitudes so clearly before any-
thing else! This holding-of-its-breath in Wagnerian
pathos, this disinclination to have done with an
intense feeling, this terrifying habit of dwelling
on a situation in which every instant almost
chokes one. — —
Was Wagner a musician at all? In any case he
was something else to a much greater degree—that
is to say, an incomparable histrio, the greatest
mime, the most astounding theatrical genius that
the Germans have ever had, our scenic artist par
excellence. He belongs to some other sphere than
the history of music, with whose really great and
genuine figure he must not be confounded. Wagner
and Beethoven—this is blasphemy—and above all
it does not do justice even to Wagner. . . . As a
musician he was no more than what he was as a
man: he became a musician, he became a poet,
because the tyrant in him, his actor's genius, drove
him to be both. Nothing is known concerning
Wagner, so long as his dominating instinct has
not been divined.
Wagner was not instinctively a musician. And
this he proved by the way in which he abandoned
all laws and rules, or, in more precise terms, all
style in music, in order to make what he wanted
with it, i. e. , a rhetorical medium for the stage, a
medium of expression, a means of accentuating an
attitude, a vehicle of suggestion and of the pyscho-
logically picturesque. In this department Wagner
may well stand as an inventor and an innovator
of the first order—he increased the powers of speech
## p. 24 (#60) ##############################################
24 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
of music to an incalculable degree—: he is the Victor
Hugo of music as language, provided always we
allow that under certain circumstances music may
be something which is not music, but speech
—instrument—ancilla dramaturgica. Wagner's
music, not in the tender care of theatrical taste,
which is very tolerant, is simply bad music, perhaps
the worst that has ever been composed. When a
musician can no longer count up to three, he
becomes “dramatic,” he becomes “Wagnerian. ” . . .
Wagner almost discovered the magic which can
be wrought even now by means of music which is
both incoherent and elementary. His consciousness
of this attains to huge proportions, as does also his
instinct to dispense entirely with higher law and
style. The elementary factors—sound, movement,
colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music—
suffice. Wagner never calculates as a musician
with a musician's conscience: all he strains after is
effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows
what he has to make an effect upon l—In this he
is as unhesitating as Schiller was, as any theatrical
man must be; he has also the latter's contempt for
the world which he brings to its knees before him.
A man is an actor when he is ahead of mankind in
his possession of this one view, that everything
which has to strike people as true, must not be
true. This rule was formulated by Talma : it
contains the whole psychology of the actor, it also
contains—and this we need not doubt—all his
morality. Wagner's music is never true.
—But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything
is as it should be. As long as we are young, and
## p. 25 (#61) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 25
º
Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as
rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as
a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire
him in very much the same way as young French-
men admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his
“royal liberality. ” Later on we admire the one as
well as the other for the opposite reason: as masters
and paragons in economy, as prudent amphitryons.
Nobody can equal them in the art of providing a
princely board with such a modest outlay. —The
Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even
sated with the fare which his master conjures up
before him. But we others who, in books as in
music, desire above all to find substance, and who
are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation
of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English,
Wagner does not give us enough to masticate.
His recitative—very little meat, more bones, and
plenty of broth—I christened “alla genovese”: I
had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this
remark, but rather the older recitativo, the recitativo
secco. And as to Wagnerian leitmotif, I fear I lack
the necessary culinary understanding for it. If hard
pressed, I might say that I regard it perhaps as an
ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one's
self of what remains of one's meal. Wagner's
“arias” are still left over. But now I shall hold
my tongue. -
º
9.
Even in his general sketch of the action, Wagner
is above all an actor. The first thing that occurs
to him is a scene which is certain to produce a
## p. 26 (#62) ##############################################
26 THE CASE OF WAGNER
strong effect, a real actio,” with a basso-relievo of
attitudes; an overwhelming scene, this he now
proceeds to elaborate more deeply, and out of it
he draws his characters. The whole of what remains
to be done follows of itself, fully in keeping with a
technical economy which has no reason to be subtle.
It is not Corneille's public that Wagner has to con-
sider, it is merely the nineteenth century. Con-
cerning the “actual requirements of the stage”
Wagner would have about the same opinion as any
other actor of to-day: a series of powerful scenes,
each stronger than the one that preceded it, and,
in between, all kinds of clever nonsense. His first
concern is to guarantee the effect of his work; he
begins with the third act, he approves his work
according to the quality of its final effect. Guided
by this sort of understanding of the stage, there is
not much danger of one's creating a drama unawares.
Drama demands inexorable logic: but what did
Wagner care about logic? Again I say, it was not
Corneille's public that he had to consider; but
* Wote. —It was a real disaster for aesthetics when the
word drama got to be translated by “action. ” Wagner is
not the only culprit here ; the whole world does the same ;-
even the philologists who ought to know better. What
ancient drama had in view was grand fathetic scenes, it
even excluded action (or placed it before the piece or behind
the scenes). The word drama is of Doric origin, and
according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant
“event,” “history,”—both words in a hieratic sense. The
oldest drama represented local legends, “sacred history,”
upon which the foundation of the cult rested (–thus it was
not “action,” but fatality: 3pāv in Doric has nothing to do
with action).
## p. 27 (#63) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 27
merely Germans ! Everybody knows the technical
difficulties before which the dramatist often has to
summon all his strength and frequently to sweat
his blood: the difficulty of making the plot seem
necessary and the unravelment as well, so that both
are conceivable only in a certain way, and so that
each may give the impression of freedom (the
principle of the smallest expenditure of energy).
Now the very last thing that Wagner does is to
sweat blood over the plot; and on this and the
unravelment he certainly spends the smallest
possible amount of energy. Let anybody put one
of Wagner’s “plots” under the microscope, and I
wager that he will be forced to laugh. Nothing is
more enlivening than the dilemma in “Tristan,”
unless it be that in the “Mastersingers. ” Wagner
is no dramatist; let nobody be deceived on this
point. All he did was to love the word “drama”
—he always loved fine words. Nevertheless, in his
writings the word “drama” is merely a misunder-
standing (–and a piece of shrewdness: Wagner
always affected superiority in regard to the word
“opera”—); just as the word “spirit” is a mis-
understanding in the New Testament. —He was
not enough of a psychologist for drama; he in-
stinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how P
—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place . . .
Very modern—eh? Very Parisian very decadent!
. . . Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows
how to unravel with the help of dramatic inven-
tions, are of quite another kind. For example, let
us suppose that Wagner requires a female voice.
A whole act without a woman's voice would be
## p. 28 (#64) ##############################################
28 THE CASE OF WAGNER
impossible ! But in this particular instance not
one of the heroines happens to be free. What
does Wagner do? He emancipates the oldest
woman on earth, Erda: “Step up, aged grand-
mamma! You have got to sing ! ” And Erda
sings. Wagner's end has been achieved. There-
upon he immediately dismisses the old lady: “Why
on earth did you come 2 Off with you! Kindly go
to sleep again! ” In short, a scene full of mytho-
logical awe, before which the Wagnerite wonders
all kinds of things. . .
—“But the substance of Wagner's texts their
mythical substance, their eternal substance:”—
Question: how is this substance, this eternal
substance tested 2 The chemical analyst replies:
Translate Wagner into the real, into the modern,--
let us be even more cruel, and say: into the
bourgeois And what will then become of him P-
Between ourselves, I have tried the experiment.
Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more worthy
of being recommended to a picnic-party, than to
discuss Wagner dressed in a more modern garb:
for instance Parsifal, as a candidate in divinity,
with a public-school education (–the latter, quite
indispensable for pure foolishness). What surprises
await one ! Would you believe it, that Wagner's
heroines one and all, once they have been divested
of the heroic husks, are almost indistinguishable
from Mdme. Bovary ! —just as one can conceive
conversely, of Flaubert's being well able to transform
all his heroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian
women, and then to offer them to Wagner in this
mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally
## p. 29 (#65) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 29
speaking, Wagner does not seem to have become
interested in any other problems than those which
engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day.
Always five paces away from the hospital All
very modern problems, all problems which are at
home in big cities / do not doubt it ! . . .
