Just as we now feel justified in judging genius
as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the
same of artistic suggestive power, — and our
artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely
related to hysterical females !
as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the
same of artistic suggestive power, — and our
artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely
related to hysterical females !
Nietzsche - v15 - Will to Power - b
246 (#276) ############################################
246
THE WILL TO POWER.
In this way beauty and ugliness are recognised
as determined by our most fundamental self-
preservative values. Apart from this, it is nonsense
to postulate anything as beautiful or ugly. Ab-
solute beauty exists just as little as absolute good-
ness and truth. In a particular case it is a matter
of the self-preservative conditions of a certain type
of man: thus the gregarious man will have quite
a different feeling for beauty from the exceptional
or super-man.
It is the optics of things in the foreground
which only consider immediate consequences, from
which the value beauty (also goodness and truth)
arises.
All instinctive judgments are short-sighted in -
regard to the concatenation of consequences :
they merely advise what must be done forthwith.
Reason is essentially an obstructing apparatus
preventing the immediate response to instinctive
judgments: it halts, it calculates, it traces the
chain of consequences further.
Judgments concerning beauty and ugliness are
short-sighted (reason is always opposed to them):
but they are convincing in the highest degree;
they appeal to our instincts in that quarter where
the latter decide most quickly and say yes or no
with least hesitation, even before reason
interpose.
The most common affirmations of beauty
stimulate each other reciprocally; where the
æsthetic impulse once begins to work, a whole
host of other and foreign perfections crystallise
around the “particular form of beau'y. " It is
“
can
## p. 247 (#277) ############################################
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
247
.
impossible to remain objective, it is certainly
impossible to dispense with the interpreting,
bestowing, transfiguring, and poetising power (the
latter is a stringing together of affirmations con-
cerning beauty itself). The sight of a beautiful
woman.
Thus (1) judgment concerning beauty is short-
sighted; it sees only the immediate consequences.
(2) It smothers the object which gives rise to
it with a charm that is determined by the associa-
tion of various judgments concerning beauty,
which, however, are quite alien to the essence of
the particular object. To regard a thing as beauti-
ful is necessarily to regard it falsely (that is why
incidentally love marriages are from the social
point of view the most unreasonable form of
matrimony).
805
Concerning the genesis of Art. -That making
perfect and seeing perfect, which is peculiar to the
cerebral system overladen with sexual energy (a
lover alone with his sweetheart at eventide trans-
figures the smallest details: life is a chain of
sublime things, "the misfortune of an unhappy
love affair is more valuable than anything else");
on the other hand, everything perfect and beautiful
operates like an unconscious recollection of that
amorous condition and of the point of view
peculiar to it—all perfection, and the whole of
the beauty of things, through contiguity, revives
aphrodisiac bliss, (Physiologically it is the
creative instinct of the artist and the distribution
## p. 248 (#278) ############################################
248
THE WILL TO POWER.
of his semen in his blood. ) The desire for art
and beauty is an indirect longing for the ecstasy
of sexual desire, which gets communicated to the
brain. The world become perfect through “ love. "
806.
"
Sensuality in its various disguises. — (1) As
idealism (Plato), common to youth, constructing
a kind of concave-mirror in which the image of
the beloved is an incrustation, an exaggeration, a
transfiguration, an attribution of infinity to every-
thing. (2) In the religion of love, "a fine young
man," "a beautiful woman,” in some way divine;
a bridegroom, a bride of the soul. (3) In art, as
a decorating force, e. g. just as the man sees the
woman and makes her a present of everything
that can enhance her personal charm, so the
sensuality of the artist adorns an object with
everything else that he honours and esteems,
and by this means perfects it (or idealises it).
Woman, knowing what man feels in regard to
her, tries to meet_his idealising endeavours half-
way by decorating herself, by walking and dancing
well, by expressing delicate thoughts: in addition,
she may practise modesty, shyness, reserve-
prompted by her instinctive feeling that the ideal-
ising power of man increases with all this. (In
the extraordinary finesse of woman's instincts,
modesty must not by any means be considered as
conscious hypocrisy: she guesses that it is pre-
cisely artlessness and real shame which seduces
man most and urges him to an exaggerated
## p. 249 (#279) ############################################
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
249
esteem of her. On this account, woman is in-
genuous, owing to the subtlety of her instincts
which reveal to her the utility of a state of
innocence. A wilful closing of one's eyes
to one's self. . . . Wherever dissembling has a
stronger influence by being unconscious it actually
becomes unconscious. )
807.
What a host of things can be accomplished by
the state of intoxication which is called by the
name of love, and which is something else besides
love ! And yet everybody has his own experience
of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl
suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into
her presence: there are instruments with which
this can be measured. In the case of a still closer
relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing
and in other amusements which society gatherings
entail, this power increases to such an extent
as to make real feats of strength possible: at
last one no longer trusts either one's eyes, or one's
watch! Here at all events we must reckon with
the fact that dancing itself, like every form of
rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication
of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral
system. We must therefore reckon in this case
with the collective effects of a double intoxication.
-And how clever it is to be a little off your head
at times ! There are some realities which we
cannot admit even to ourselves: especially when
we are women and have all sorts of feminine
!
## p. 250 (#280) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
pudeurs. ” . . . Those young creatures dancing
over there are obviously beyond all reality: they
are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals :
what is more, they even see ideals sitting around
them, their mothers! . . . An opportunity for
quoting Faust. They look incomparably fairer,
do these pretty creatures, when they have lost
their head a little ; and how well they know it
too, they are even more delightful because they
know it! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires
them : their finery is their third little intoxication.
They believe in their dressmaker as in their God:
and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed
is this faith! And self-admiration is healthy!
Self-admiration can protect one even from cold !
Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well-
dressed, ever caught cold? Never yet on this
earth! I even suppose a case in which she has
scarcely a rag on her.
808.
If one should require the most astonishing
proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which
comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand
in the phenomenon of love; or what is called love
in all the languages and silences of the world.
Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality
in this passion that in the consciousness of the
lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and
something else seems to take its place,-a vibra-
tion and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of
Circe. In this respect, to be man
or
an
## p. 251 (#281) ############################################
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
251
.
animal makes no difference: and still less does
spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute,
one is befooled astutely; if one is thick-headed,
one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love,
even the love of God, saintly love, “the love that
saves the soul,” are at bottom all one; they are
nothing but a fever which has reasons to trans-
figure itself—a state of intoxication which does
well to lie about itself. . . . And, at any rate,
when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself
and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured,
stronger, richer, more perfect; he is more per-
fect. . . Art here acts as an organic function:
we find it present in the most angelic instinct
“ love”; we find it as the greatest stimulus of
life—thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the
fact that it lies. . . . But we should be wrong
to halt at its power to lie: it does more than
merely imagine; it actually transposes values.
And it not only transposes the feeling for values :
the lover actually has a greater value; he is
stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to
new weapons, colours, pigments, and forms, and
above all to new movements, new rhythms, new
love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the
same. His whole economy is richer, mightier,
and more complete when he is in love than when
he is not The lover becomes a spendthrift; he
is rich enough for it. He now dares; he becomes
an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity
and innocence; his belief in God and in virtue
revives, because he believes in love. Moreover,
such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new
.
## p. 252 (#282) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
capacities, and even the door to art is opened to
them.
If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal
fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is
left to poetry and music? . . . L'art
L'art pour l'art
perhaps; the professional cant of frogs shivering
outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their
swamp. Everything else was created by
love.
.
.
.
809.
All art works like a suggestion on the muscles
and the senses which were originally active in the
ingenuous artistic man; its voice is only heard
by artists—it speaks to this kind of man, whose
constitution is attuned to such subtlety in sensi-
tiveness. The concept "layman" is a misnomer.
The deaf man is not a subdivision of the class
whose ears are sound. All art works as a tonic;
it increases strength, it kindles desire (i. e. the
feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle
recollections of intoxication; there is actually a
special kind of memory which underlies such
states-a distant flitful world of sensations here
returns to being.
Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that
which art excludes, the negation of art: wherever
decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de-
composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely,
the æsthetic man reacts with his No. Ugliness
depresses: it is the sign of depression. It robs
strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down. . .
Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one's
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253
states of health one can test how an indisposition
may increase one's power of fancying ugly things.
One's selection of things, interests, and questions
becomes different. Logic provides a state which
is next of kin to ugliness: heaviness, bluntness.
In the presence of ugliness equilibrium is lacking
in a mechanical sense : ugliness limps and
stumbles the direct opposite of the godly agility
of the dancer.
The æsthetic state represents an overflow of
means of communication as well as a condition of
extreme sensibility to stimuli and signs. It is
the zenith of communion, and transmission
between living creatures; it is the source of
languages. In it, languages, whether of signs,
sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The
richer phenomenon is always the beginning: our
abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities.
But even to-day we still listen with our muscles,
we even read with our muscles.
Every mature art possesses a host of conventions
as a basis : in so far as it is a language. Con-
vention is a condition of great art, not an obstacle
to it. .
Every elevation of life likewise elevates
the power of communication, as also the under-
standing of man. The power of living in other
people's souls originally had nothing to do with
morality, but with a physiological irritability of
suggestion : "sympathy," or what is called
“altruism," is merely a product of that psycho-
motor relationship which is reckoned as spirituality
(psycho-motor induction, says Charles Féré).
People never communicate a thought to one
.
.
## p. 254 (#284) ############################################
254
THE WILL TO POWER.
a
v another: they communicate a movement, an
imitative sign which is then interpreted as a
thought.
810.
Compared with music, communication by means
of words is a shameless mode of procedure; words
reduce and stultify; words make impersonal ;
words make common that which is uncommon.
811.
.
It is exceptional states that determine the
artist-such states as are all intimately related
and entwined with morbid symptoms, so that it
would seem almost impossible to be an artist
· without being ill.
The physiological conditions which in the artist
become moulded into a "personality," and which,
to a certain degree, may attach themselves to any
man:-
(1) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power ;
the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of
one's own fulness and perfection.
(2) The extreme sharpness of certain senses,
so that they are capable of understanding a totally
different language of signs—and to create such a
language (this is a condition which manifests itself
in some nervous diseases); extreme susceptibility
out of which great powers of communion are
developed; the desire to speak on the part of
everything that is capable of making signs; a need
of being rid of one's self by means of gestures
## p. 255 (#285) ############################################
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
255
and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one's
self in a hundred different languages—in fact, a
state of explosion.
One must first imagine this condition as one in
which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of
ridding one's self of the ecstasy of a state of tension,
by all kinds of muscular work and movement;
also as an involuntary co-ordination of these move-
ments with inner processes (images, thoughts,
desires)--as a kind of automatism of the whole
muscular system under the compulsion of strong
stimuliacting from within; the inability to
resist reaction; the apparatus of resistance is
also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling,
thought, emotion) is accompanied by vascular
changes, and consequently by changes in colour,
temperature, and secretion.
The suggestive power
of music, its "suggestion mentale. "
(3) The compulsion to imitate: extreme irritabil.
ity, by means of which a certain example becomes
contagious—a condition is guessed and represented
merely by means of a few signs. A complete
picture is visualised by one's inner consciousness,
and its effect soon shows itself in the movement
of the limbs,—in a certain suspension of the will
(Schopenhauer ! ! ! ! ). A sort of blindness and
deafness towards the external world, the realm
of admitted stimuli is sharply defined.
This differentiates the artist from the layman
(from the spectator of art): the latter reaches the
height of his excitement in the mere act of appre-
hending: the former in giving—and in such a way
that the antagonism between these two gifts is not
.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
only natural but even desirable. Each of these states
has an opposite standpoint-to demand of the
artist that he should have the point of view of the
spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking
him to impoverish his creative power. . . . In this
respect the same difference holds good as that which
exists between the sexes : one should not ask the
artist who gives to become a woman—to “receive. "
Our æsthetics have hitherto been women's
æsthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated
the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point
of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of
philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking . . .
i. e. as we have already suggested, a necessary
fault: for the artist who would begin to under-
stand himself would therewith begin to mistake
himself-he must not look backwards, he must
not look at all; he must give. —It is an honour
for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can
criticise he is mediocre, he is modern.
812.
Here I lay down a series of psychological states
as signs of flourishing and complete life, which
to-day we are in the habit of regarding as morbid.
But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of
the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as
opposites: the question is one of degree, what
I maintain on this point is that what people call
healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that
which under favourable circumstances actually
would be healthy-that we are relatively sick. . . .
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
257
The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That
which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural
in him. But people object to this that it is pre-
cisely the impoverishment of the machine which
renders this extraordinary power of comprehending
every
kind of suggestion possible: e. g. our hysteri-
cal females.
An overflow of spunk and energy may quite as
well lead to symptoms of partial constraint, sense
hallucinations, peripheral sensitiveness, as a poor
vitality does—the stimuli are differently deter-
mined, the effect is the same, . . . What is not
'the same is above all the ultimate result; the
extreme torpidity of all morbid natures, after their
nervous eccentricities, has nothing in common with
the states of the artist, who need in no wise
repent his best moments. . .
He is rich enough
for it all: he can squander without becoming
poor.
Just as we now feel justified in judging genius
as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the
same of artistic suggestive power, — and our
artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely
related to hysterical females ! ! ! This, however,
is only an argument against the present day, and
not against artists in general.
The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection
suspension of the will . . . (Schopenhauer's scandal-
ous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as
a mere bridge to the denial of life). . . The in-
artistic states are: those which impoverish, which
subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers
the Christian.
R
VOL. II.
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258
THE WILL TO POWER.
813.
The modern artist who, in his physiology, is
next of kin to the hysteric, may also be classified
as a character belonging to this state of morbid-
ness. The hysteric is false,—he lies from the
love of lying, he is admirable in all the arts of
dissimulation,-unless his morbid vanity hood-
wink him. This vanity is like a perpetual fever
which is in need of stupefying drugs, and which
recoils from no self-deception and no farce that
promises it the most fleeting satisfaction. (The
incapacity for pride and the need of continual
revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempt,—this is
almost the definition of this man's vanity. )
The absurd irritability of his system, which
makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences,
and sees dramatic elements in the most insignifi-
cant occurrences of life, deprives him of all calm
reflection : he ceases from being a personality, at
most he is a rendezvous of personalities of which
first one and then the other asserts itself with
barefaced assurance. Precisely on this account he
is great as an actor : all these poor will-less people,
whom doctors study so profoundly, astound one
through their virtuosity in mimicking, in trans-
figuration, in their assumption of almost any
character required.
814.
Artists are not men of great passion, despite all
their assertions to the contrary both to themselves
and to others. And for the following two reasons :
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
259
they lack all shyness towards themselves (they
watch themselves live, they spy upon themselves,
they are much too inquisitive), and they also lack
shyness in the presence of passion (as artists they
exploit it). Secondly, however, that vampire,
their talent, generally forbids them such an ex-
penditure of energy as passion demands. --A man
who has a talent is sacrificed to that talent; he
lives under the vampirism of his talent.
A man does not get rid of his passion by re-
producing it, but rather he is rid of it if he is able
to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but
it seems as though he deliberately misunderstood
himself here from a sense of delicacy. )
815.
Concerning a reasonable mode of life. Relative
chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in
regard to erotica, even in thought, may be a reason-
able mode of life even in richly equipped and
perfect natures. But this principle applies more
particularly to artists; it belongs to the best
wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices
have already been raised in favour of this view,
e. g. Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist
is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man,
generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and
capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or
suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule
he is in the power of his work, of his will to
mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste
man. His dominating instinct will have him so:
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THE WILL TO POWER.
it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly.
It is one and the same form of strength which is
spent in artistic, conception and in the sexual
act: there is only one form of strength. The
artist who yields in this respect, and who spends
himself, is betrayed: by so doing he reveals his
lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It
may be a sign of decadence, -in any case it re-
duces the value of his art to an incalculable
degree.
>
.
816.
Compared with the artist, the scientific mari,
regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a
certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but
also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness,
and will-power). To what extent can falsity and
indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of
youth, of childishness, in the artist ? . . . Their
habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their
ignorance of themselves, their indifference to
"eternal values,” their seriousness in play, their
lack of dignity; clowns and gods in one; the
saint and the rabble. . . . Imitation as an imperi-
ous instinct. -Do not artists of ascending life and
artists of degeneration belong to all phases ? . . .
Yes!
817
Would any link be missing in the whole chain
of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were
excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
261
exception-it proves the rule—that woman is
capable of perfection in everything which does not
constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the
most intricate handiwork-in short, in everything
which is not a craft; and just precisely because in
the things mentioned woman perfects herself, be-
cause in them she obeys the only artistic impulse
in her nature, which is to captivate. . . . But
what has woman to do with the passionate indiffer-
ence of the genuine artist who sees more importance
in a breath, in a sound, in the merest trifle, than in
himself? --who with all his five fingers gropes for
his most secret and hidden treasures who attri-
butes no value to anything unless it knows how to
take shape (unless it surrenders itself, unless it
visualises itself in some way). Art as it is
practised by artists—do you not understand what
it is ? is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs? . . .
Only in this century has woman dared to try her
hand at literature (“ Vers la canaille plumière écriv-
assière,” to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now
writes, she now paints, she is losing her instincts.
And to what purpose, if one may put such a
question ?
818
“ form
A man is an artist to the extent to which he
regards everything that inartistic people call
as the actual substance, as the "prin-
cipal” thing. With such ideas a man certainly
belongs to a world upside down for hencefor-
ward substance seems to him something merely
formal,his own life included.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
819.
A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is
characteristic of modernity), in that which is not
general, runs counter to the instinct which finds
its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical:
like Greek taste in its best period. In this there
is an overcoming of the plenitude of life; restraint
dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is
slow to move and which feels a certain repug-
nance towards excessive activity is defeated. The
general rule, the law, is honoured and made
prominent: conversely, the exception is laid aside,
and shades are suppressed. All that which is firm,
mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful
basis, concealing its strength-this "pleases": i. e.
it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.
820.
In the main I am much more in favour of
artists than any philosopher that has appeared
hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose sight of the
great course which life pursues; they loved the
things “of this world,”—they loved their senses.
To strive after “spirituality," in cases where this
is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to
me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a
cure, I wish myself, and all those who live with-
out the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and
who are able to live in this way, an ever greater
spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses.
Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
263
their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that
account offer them the best we have in the
way
of
spirit. What do we care about priestly and meta-
physical anathemas upon the senses?
We no
longer require to treat them in this way: it is
a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like
Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness
to the "things of this world”-in this way he
holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind,
which is that man becomes the glorifying power
of existence when he learns to glorify himself.
821.
Pessimism in art ? - The artist gradually learns
to like for their own sake, those means which
bring about the condition of asthetic elation;
extreme delicacy and glory of colour, definite
delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in
normal conditions distinctness is absent. All
distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall
extreme degrees of power which give rise to
intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by
association ;-the effect of works of art is the
excitation of the state which creates art, of asthetic
intoxication.
The essential feature in art is its power of
perfecting existence, its production of perfection
and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation,
the blessing, and the deification of existence. . .
What does a pessimistic art signify ? Is it not a
contradictio ? — Yes. — Schopenhauer is in error
when he makes certain works of art serve the
## p. 264 (#294) ############################################
264
THE WILL TO POWER.
as
purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach
“resignation. ” . . . To represent terrible and
questionable things is, in itself, the sign of an
instinct of power and magnificence in the artist;
he doesn't fear them. . . . There is no such thing
a pessimistic art. . . . Art affirms. Job
affirms. But Zola ? and the Goncourts ? -the
things they show us are ugly; their reason, however,
for showing them to us is their love of ugliness. . .
I don't care what you say! You simply deceive
yourselves if you think otherwise. —What a relief
Dostoievsky is !
822.
If I have sufficiently initiated my readers into
the doctrine that even "goodness," in the whole
comedy of existence, represents a form of exhaus-
tion, they will now credit Christianity with con-
sistency for having conceived the good to be the
ugly. In this respect Christianity was right.
It is absoiutely unworthy of a philosopher to
say that "the good and the beautiful are one”; if
he should add "and also the true,” he deserves to
be thrashed. Truth is ugly.
Art is with us in order that we may not perish
through truth.
823.
Moralising tendencies may be combated with
art. Art is freedom from moral bigotry and
philosophy à la Little Jack Horner: or it may be
the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature,
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
265
where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The
concept of the great man.
-Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are dis-
concerted by a mere breath of wind, "beautiful
souls. ”
-Ancient ideals, in their inexorable hardness and
brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest
of monsters that they are.
-We should feel a boisterous delight in the
psychological perception of how all moralised
artists become worms and actors without know-
ing it.
-The falsity of art, its immorality, must be
brought into the light of day.
-The “fundamental idealising powers" (sensu-
ality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be
brought to light.
-
824.
Modern counterfeit practices in the arts : regarded
as necessary—that is to say, as fully in keeping
with the needs most proper to the modern soul.
The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the
education, antecedents, and schooling of modern
artists, are now filled up in this
way :
First : A less artistic public is sought which is
capable of unlimited love (and is capable of
falling on its knees before a personality). The
superstition of our century, the belief in "genius,”
assists this process.
Secondly : Artists harangue the dark instincts of
the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers
of a democratic age: the importance of poses.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
Thirdly : The procedures of one art are trans-
ferred to the realm of another; the object of art is
confounded with that of science, with that of the
Church, or with that of the interests of the race
(nationalism), or with that of philosophy—a man
rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague
suspicion that he is a god.
Fourthly : Artists flatter women, sufferers, and
indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to
preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people,
and of the readers of poetry and ancient history,
is tickled.
825.
We must distinguish between the "public" and
the "select"; to satisfy the public a man must be
a charlatan to-day, to satisfy the select he will be
a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar
to our century overcame this distinction, they
were great for both; the great charlatanry of
Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled
with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied
the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is
why greatness is lacking: these geniuses had a
double outlook; first, they catered for the coarsest
needs, and then for the most refined.
826.
False “accentuation”: (1) In romanticism;
this unremitting "expressivo" is not a sign of
strength, but of a feeling of deficiency;
(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic
a
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
267
kind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal
scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts
and traits in realistic novels);
(3)“Passion" as a matter of nerves and exhausted
souls; likewise the delightin high mountains, deserts,
storms, orgies, and disgusting details,-in bulkiness
and massiveness(historians, forinstance); as a matter
of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feel-
ings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired
just the opposite—a restraint of passion ? );
(4) The preference for exciting materials (Erotica
or Socialistica or Pathologica): all these things are
the signs of the style of public that is being
catered for to-day-that is to say, for overworked,
absentminded, or enfeebled people.
Such people must be tyrannised over in order
to be affected.
827.
Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse
and salient definiteness in delineation; the motive
simplified into a formula; formulæ tyrannise.
Wild arabesques within the lines ; overwhelming
masses, before which the senses are confused;
brutality in coloration, in subject matter, in the
desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner, and, in a
more spiritualised degree, Taine.
Hence logic,
massiveness, and brutality,
i
828.
In regard to the painter : Tous ces modernes sont
des poètes qui ont voulu étre peintres. L'un a
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THE WILL TO POWER.
cherché des drames dans l'histoire, l'autre des scènes
de moeurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui là une
philosophie. One imitates Raphael, another the
early Italian masters. The landscapists employ
trees and clouds in order to make odes and
elegies. Not one is simply a painter ; they are
all archæologists, psychologists, and impresarios
of one or another kind of event or theory. . They
enjoy our erudition and our philosophy. Like us,
they are full, and too full, of general ideas. They
like a form, not because it is what it is, but
because of what it expresses. They are the scions
of a learned, tormented, and reflecting generation,
a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who
never read, and only concerned themselves with
feasting their eyes.
829.
At bottom, even Wagner's music, in so far as it
stands for the whole of French romanticism, is
literature: the charm of exoticism (strange times,
customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy-
corner people. The delight of entering into ex-
tremely distant and prehistoric lands to which
books lead one, and by which means the whole
horizon is painted with new colours and new
possibilities. . . . Dreams of still more distant
and unexploited worlds ; disdain of the boulevards.
For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves,
is also only a form of exoticism. . .
246
THE WILL TO POWER.
In this way beauty and ugliness are recognised
as determined by our most fundamental self-
preservative values. Apart from this, it is nonsense
to postulate anything as beautiful or ugly. Ab-
solute beauty exists just as little as absolute good-
ness and truth. In a particular case it is a matter
of the self-preservative conditions of a certain type
of man: thus the gregarious man will have quite
a different feeling for beauty from the exceptional
or super-man.
It is the optics of things in the foreground
which only consider immediate consequences, from
which the value beauty (also goodness and truth)
arises.
All instinctive judgments are short-sighted in -
regard to the concatenation of consequences :
they merely advise what must be done forthwith.
Reason is essentially an obstructing apparatus
preventing the immediate response to instinctive
judgments: it halts, it calculates, it traces the
chain of consequences further.
Judgments concerning beauty and ugliness are
short-sighted (reason is always opposed to them):
but they are convincing in the highest degree;
they appeal to our instincts in that quarter where
the latter decide most quickly and say yes or no
with least hesitation, even before reason
interpose.
The most common affirmations of beauty
stimulate each other reciprocally; where the
æsthetic impulse once begins to work, a whole
host of other and foreign perfections crystallise
around the “particular form of beau'y. " It is
“
can
## p. 247 (#277) ############################################
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
247
.
impossible to remain objective, it is certainly
impossible to dispense with the interpreting,
bestowing, transfiguring, and poetising power (the
latter is a stringing together of affirmations con-
cerning beauty itself). The sight of a beautiful
woman.
Thus (1) judgment concerning beauty is short-
sighted; it sees only the immediate consequences.
(2) It smothers the object which gives rise to
it with a charm that is determined by the associa-
tion of various judgments concerning beauty,
which, however, are quite alien to the essence of
the particular object. To regard a thing as beauti-
ful is necessarily to regard it falsely (that is why
incidentally love marriages are from the social
point of view the most unreasonable form of
matrimony).
805
Concerning the genesis of Art. -That making
perfect and seeing perfect, which is peculiar to the
cerebral system overladen with sexual energy (a
lover alone with his sweetheart at eventide trans-
figures the smallest details: life is a chain of
sublime things, "the misfortune of an unhappy
love affair is more valuable than anything else");
on the other hand, everything perfect and beautiful
operates like an unconscious recollection of that
amorous condition and of the point of view
peculiar to it—all perfection, and the whole of
the beauty of things, through contiguity, revives
aphrodisiac bliss, (Physiologically it is the
creative instinct of the artist and the distribution
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248
THE WILL TO POWER.
of his semen in his blood. ) The desire for art
and beauty is an indirect longing for the ecstasy
of sexual desire, which gets communicated to the
brain. The world become perfect through “ love. "
806.
"
Sensuality in its various disguises. — (1) As
idealism (Plato), common to youth, constructing
a kind of concave-mirror in which the image of
the beloved is an incrustation, an exaggeration, a
transfiguration, an attribution of infinity to every-
thing. (2) In the religion of love, "a fine young
man," "a beautiful woman,” in some way divine;
a bridegroom, a bride of the soul. (3) In art, as
a decorating force, e. g. just as the man sees the
woman and makes her a present of everything
that can enhance her personal charm, so the
sensuality of the artist adorns an object with
everything else that he honours and esteems,
and by this means perfects it (or idealises it).
Woman, knowing what man feels in regard to
her, tries to meet_his idealising endeavours half-
way by decorating herself, by walking and dancing
well, by expressing delicate thoughts: in addition,
she may practise modesty, shyness, reserve-
prompted by her instinctive feeling that the ideal-
ising power of man increases with all this. (In
the extraordinary finesse of woman's instincts,
modesty must not by any means be considered as
conscious hypocrisy: she guesses that it is pre-
cisely artlessness and real shame which seduces
man most and urges him to an exaggerated
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
249
esteem of her. On this account, woman is in-
genuous, owing to the subtlety of her instincts
which reveal to her the utility of a state of
innocence. A wilful closing of one's eyes
to one's self. . . . Wherever dissembling has a
stronger influence by being unconscious it actually
becomes unconscious. )
807.
What a host of things can be accomplished by
the state of intoxication which is called by the
name of love, and which is something else besides
love ! And yet everybody has his own experience
of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl
suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into
her presence: there are instruments with which
this can be measured. In the case of a still closer
relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing
and in other amusements which society gatherings
entail, this power increases to such an extent
as to make real feats of strength possible: at
last one no longer trusts either one's eyes, or one's
watch! Here at all events we must reckon with
the fact that dancing itself, like every form of
rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication
of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral
system. We must therefore reckon in this case
with the collective effects of a double intoxication.
-And how clever it is to be a little off your head
at times ! There are some realities which we
cannot admit even to ourselves: especially when
we are women and have all sorts of feminine
!
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THE WILL TO POWER.
pudeurs. ” . . . Those young creatures dancing
over there are obviously beyond all reality: they
are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals :
what is more, they even see ideals sitting around
them, their mothers! . . . An opportunity for
quoting Faust. They look incomparably fairer,
do these pretty creatures, when they have lost
their head a little ; and how well they know it
too, they are even more delightful because they
know it! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires
them : their finery is their third little intoxication.
They believe in their dressmaker as in their God:
and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed
is this faith! And self-admiration is healthy!
Self-admiration can protect one even from cold !
Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well-
dressed, ever caught cold? Never yet on this
earth! I even suppose a case in which she has
scarcely a rag on her.
808.
If one should require the most astonishing
proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which
comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand
in the phenomenon of love; or what is called love
in all the languages and silences of the world.
Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality
in this passion that in the consciousness of the
lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and
something else seems to take its place,-a vibra-
tion and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of
Circe. In this respect, to be man
or
an
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
251
.
animal makes no difference: and still less does
spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute,
one is befooled astutely; if one is thick-headed,
one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love,
even the love of God, saintly love, “the love that
saves the soul,” are at bottom all one; they are
nothing but a fever which has reasons to trans-
figure itself—a state of intoxication which does
well to lie about itself. . . . And, at any rate,
when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself
and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured,
stronger, richer, more perfect; he is more per-
fect. . . Art here acts as an organic function:
we find it present in the most angelic instinct
“ love”; we find it as the greatest stimulus of
life—thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the
fact that it lies. . . . But we should be wrong
to halt at its power to lie: it does more than
merely imagine; it actually transposes values.
And it not only transposes the feeling for values :
the lover actually has a greater value; he is
stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to
new weapons, colours, pigments, and forms, and
above all to new movements, new rhythms, new
love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the
same. His whole economy is richer, mightier,
and more complete when he is in love than when
he is not The lover becomes a spendthrift; he
is rich enough for it. He now dares; he becomes
an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity
and innocence; his belief in God and in virtue
revives, because he believes in love. Moreover,
such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new
.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
capacities, and even the door to art is opened to
them.
If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal
fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is
left to poetry and music? . . . L'art
L'art pour l'art
perhaps; the professional cant of frogs shivering
outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their
swamp. Everything else was created by
love.
.
.
.
809.
All art works like a suggestion on the muscles
and the senses which were originally active in the
ingenuous artistic man; its voice is only heard
by artists—it speaks to this kind of man, whose
constitution is attuned to such subtlety in sensi-
tiveness. The concept "layman" is a misnomer.
The deaf man is not a subdivision of the class
whose ears are sound. All art works as a tonic;
it increases strength, it kindles desire (i. e. the
feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle
recollections of intoxication; there is actually a
special kind of memory which underlies such
states-a distant flitful world of sensations here
returns to being.
Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that
which art excludes, the negation of art: wherever
decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de-
composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely,
the æsthetic man reacts with his No. Ugliness
depresses: it is the sign of depression. It robs
strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down. . .
Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one's
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253
states of health one can test how an indisposition
may increase one's power of fancying ugly things.
One's selection of things, interests, and questions
becomes different. Logic provides a state which
is next of kin to ugliness: heaviness, bluntness.
In the presence of ugliness equilibrium is lacking
in a mechanical sense : ugliness limps and
stumbles the direct opposite of the godly agility
of the dancer.
The æsthetic state represents an overflow of
means of communication as well as a condition of
extreme sensibility to stimuli and signs. It is
the zenith of communion, and transmission
between living creatures; it is the source of
languages. In it, languages, whether of signs,
sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The
richer phenomenon is always the beginning: our
abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities.
But even to-day we still listen with our muscles,
we even read with our muscles.
Every mature art possesses a host of conventions
as a basis : in so far as it is a language. Con-
vention is a condition of great art, not an obstacle
to it. .
Every elevation of life likewise elevates
the power of communication, as also the under-
standing of man. The power of living in other
people's souls originally had nothing to do with
morality, but with a physiological irritability of
suggestion : "sympathy," or what is called
“altruism," is merely a product of that psycho-
motor relationship which is reckoned as spirituality
(psycho-motor induction, says Charles Féré).
People never communicate a thought to one
.
.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
a
v another: they communicate a movement, an
imitative sign which is then interpreted as a
thought.
810.
Compared with music, communication by means
of words is a shameless mode of procedure; words
reduce and stultify; words make impersonal ;
words make common that which is uncommon.
811.
.
It is exceptional states that determine the
artist-such states as are all intimately related
and entwined with morbid symptoms, so that it
would seem almost impossible to be an artist
· without being ill.
The physiological conditions which in the artist
become moulded into a "personality," and which,
to a certain degree, may attach themselves to any
man:-
(1) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power ;
the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of
one's own fulness and perfection.
(2) The extreme sharpness of certain senses,
so that they are capable of understanding a totally
different language of signs—and to create such a
language (this is a condition which manifests itself
in some nervous diseases); extreme susceptibility
out of which great powers of communion are
developed; the desire to speak on the part of
everything that is capable of making signs; a need
of being rid of one's self by means of gestures
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
255
and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one's
self in a hundred different languages—in fact, a
state of explosion.
One must first imagine this condition as one in
which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of
ridding one's self of the ecstasy of a state of tension,
by all kinds of muscular work and movement;
also as an involuntary co-ordination of these move-
ments with inner processes (images, thoughts,
desires)--as a kind of automatism of the whole
muscular system under the compulsion of strong
stimuliacting from within; the inability to
resist reaction; the apparatus of resistance is
also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling,
thought, emotion) is accompanied by vascular
changes, and consequently by changes in colour,
temperature, and secretion.
The suggestive power
of music, its "suggestion mentale. "
(3) The compulsion to imitate: extreme irritabil.
ity, by means of which a certain example becomes
contagious—a condition is guessed and represented
merely by means of a few signs. A complete
picture is visualised by one's inner consciousness,
and its effect soon shows itself in the movement
of the limbs,—in a certain suspension of the will
(Schopenhauer ! ! ! ! ). A sort of blindness and
deafness towards the external world, the realm
of admitted stimuli is sharply defined.
This differentiates the artist from the layman
(from the spectator of art): the latter reaches the
height of his excitement in the mere act of appre-
hending: the former in giving—and in such a way
that the antagonism between these two gifts is not
.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
only natural but even desirable. Each of these states
has an opposite standpoint-to demand of the
artist that he should have the point of view of the
spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking
him to impoverish his creative power. . . . In this
respect the same difference holds good as that which
exists between the sexes : one should not ask the
artist who gives to become a woman—to “receive. "
Our æsthetics have hitherto been women's
æsthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated
the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point
of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of
philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking . . .
i. e. as we have already suggested, a necessary
fault: for the artist who would begin to under-
stand himself would therewith begin to mistake
himself-he must not look backwards, he must
not look at all; he must give. —It is an honour
for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can
criticise he is mediocre, he is modern.
812.
Here I lay down a series of psychological states
as signs of flourishing and complete life, which
to-day we are in the habit of regarding as morbid.
But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of
the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as
opposites: the question is one of degree, what
I maintain on this point is that what people call
healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that
which under favourable circumstances actually
would be healthy-that we are relatively sick. . . .
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
257
The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That
which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural
in him. But people object to this that it is pre-
cisely the impoverishment of the machine which
renders this extraordinary power of comprehending
every
kind of suggestion possible: e. g. our hysteri-
cal females.
An overflow of spunk and energy may quite as
well lead to symptoms of partial constraint, sense
hallucinations, peripheral sensitiveness, as a poor
vitality does—the stimuli are differently deter-
mined, the effect is the same, . . . What is not
'the same is above all the ultimate result; the
extreme torpidity of all morbid natures, after their
nervous eccentricities, has nothing in common with
the states of the artist, who need in no wise
repent his best moments. . .
He is rich enough
for it all: he can squander without becoming
poor.
Just as we now feel justified in judging genius
as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the
same of artistic suggestive power, — and our
artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely
related to hysterical females ! ! ! This, however,
is only an argument against the present day, and
not against artists in general.
The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection
suspension of the will . . . (Schopenhauer's scandal-
ous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as
a mere bridge to the denial of life). . . The in-
artistic states are: those which impoverish, which
subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers
the Christian.
R
VOL. II.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
813.
The modern artist who, in his physiology, is
next of kin to the hysteric, may also be classified
as a character belonging to this state of morbid-
ness. The hysteric is false,—he lies from the
love of lying, he is admirable in all the arts of
dissimulation,-unless his morbid vanity hood-
wink him. This vanity is like a perpetual fever
which is in need of stupefying drugs, and which
recoils from no self-deception and no farce that
promises it the most fleeting satisfaction. (The
incapacity for pride and the need of continual
revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempt,—this is
almost the definition of this man's vanity. )
The absurd irritability of his system, which
makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences,
and sees dramatic elements in the most insignifi-
cant occurrences of life, deprives him of all calm
reflection : he ceases from being a personality, at
most he is a rendezvous of personalities of which
first one and then the other asserts itself with
barefaced assurance. Precisely on this account he
is great as an actor : all these poor will-less people,
whom doctors study so profoundly, astound one
through their virtuosity in mimicking, in trans-
figuration, in their assumption of almost any
character required.
814.
Artists are not men of great passion, despite all
their assertions to the contrary both to themselves
and to others. And for the following two reasons :
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259
they lack all shyness towards themselves (they
watch themselves live, they spy upon themselves,
they are much too inquisitive), and they also lack
shyness in the presence of passion (as artists they
exploit it). Secondly, however, that vampire,
their talent, generally forbids them such an ex-
penditure of energy as passion demands. --A man
who has a talent is sacrificed to that talent; he
lives under the vampirism of his talent.
A man does not get rid of his passion by re-
producing it, but rather he is rid of it if he is able
to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but
it seems as though he deliberately misunderstood
himself here from a sense of delicacy. )
815.
Concerning a reasonable mode of life. Relative
chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in
regard to erotica, even in thought, may be a reason-
able mode of life even in richly equipped and
perfect natures. But this principle applies more
particularly to artists; it belongs to the best
wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices
have already been raised in favour of this view,
e. g. Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist
is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man,
generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and
capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or
suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule
he is in the power of his work, of his will to
mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste
man. His dominating instinct will have him so:
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THE WILL TO POWER.
it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly.
It is one and the same form of strength which is
spent in artistic, conception and in the sexual
act: there is only one form of strength. The
artist who yields in this respect, and who spends
himself, is betrayed: by so doing he reveals his
lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It
may be a sign of decadence, -in any case it re-
duces the value of his art to an incalculable
degree.
>
.
816.
Compared with the artist, the scientific mari,
regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a
certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but
also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness,
and will-power). To what extent can falsity and
indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of
youth, of childishness, in the artist ? . . . Their
habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their
ignorance of themselves, their indifference to
"eternal values,” their seriousness in play, their
lack of dignity; clowns and gods in one; the
saint and the rabble. . . . Imitation as an imperi-
ous instinct. -Do not artists of ascending life and
artists of degeneration belong to all phases ? . . .
Yes!
817
Would any link be missing in the whole chain
of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were
excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
261
exception-it proves the rule—that woman is
capable of perfection in everything which does not
constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the
most intricate handiwork-in short, in everything
which is not a craft; and just precisely because in
the things mentioned woman perfects herself, be-
cause in them she obeys the only artistic impulse
in her nature, which is to captivate. . . . But
what has woman to do with the passionate indiffer-
ence of the genuine artist who sees more importance
in a breath, in a sound, in the merest trifle, than in
himself? --who with all his five fingers gropes for
his most secret and hidden treasures who attri-
butes no value to anything unless it knows how to
take shape (unless it surrenders itself, unless it
visualises itself in some way). Art as it is
practised by artists—do you not understand what
it is ? is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs? . . .
Only in this century has woman dared to try her
hand at literature (“ Vers la canaille plumière écriv-
assière,” to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now
writes, she now paints, she is losing her instincts.
And to what purpose, if one may put such a
question ?
818
“ form
A man is an artist to the extent to which he
regards everything that inartistic people call
as the actual substance, as the "prin-
cipal” thing. With such ideas a man certainly
belongs to a world upside down for hencefor-
ward substance seems to him something merely
formal,his own life included.
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819.
A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is
characteristic of modernity), in that which is not
general, runs counter to the instinct which finds
its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical:
like Greek taste in its best period. In this there
is an overcoming of the plenitude of life; restraint
dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is
slow to move and which feels a certain repug-
nance towards excessive activity is defeated. The
general rule, the law, is honoured and made
prominent: conversely, the exception is laid aside,
and shades are suppressed. All that which is firm,
mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful
basis, concealing its strength-this "pleases": i. e.
it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.
820.
In the main I am much more in favour of
artists than any philosopher that has appeared
hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose sight of the
great course which life pursues; they loved the
things “of this world,”—they loved their senses.
To strive after “spirituality," in cases where this
is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to
me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a
cure, I wish myself, and all those who live with-
out the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and
who are able to live in this way, an ever greater
spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses.
Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
263
their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that
account offer them the best we have in the
way
of
spirit. What do we care about priestly and meta-
physical anathemas upon the senses?
We no
longer require to treat them in this way: it is
a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like
Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness
to the "things of this world”-in this way he
holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind,
which is that man becomes the glorifying power
of existence when he learns to glorify himself.
821.
Pessimism in art ? - The artist gradually learns
to like for their own sake, those means which
bring about the condition of asthetic elation;
extreme delicacy and glory of colour, definite
delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in
normal conditions distinctness is absent. All
distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall
extreme degrees of power which give rise to
intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by
association ;-the effect of works of art is the
excitation of the state which creates art, of asthetic
intoxication.
The essential feature in art is its power of
perfecting existence, its production of perfection
and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation,
the blessing, and the deification of existence. . .
What does a pessimistic art signify ? Is it not a
contradictio ? — Yes. — Schopenhauer is in error
when he makes certain works of art serve the
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as
purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach
“resignation. ” . . . To represent terrible and
questionable things is, in itself, the sign of an
instinct of power and magnificence in the artist;
he doesn't fear them. . . . There is no such thing
a pessimistic art. . . . Art affirms. Job
affirms. But Zola ? and the Goncourts ? -the
things they show us are ugly; their reason, however,
for showing them to us is their love of ugliness. . .
I don't care what you say! You simply deceive
yourselves if you think otherwise. —What a relief
Dostoievsky is !
822.
If I have sufficiently initiated my readers into
the doctrine that even "goodness," in the whole
comedy of existence, represents a form of exhaus-
tion, they will now credit Christianity with con-
sistency for having conceived the good to be the
ugly. In this respect Christianity was right.
It is absoiutely unworthy of a philosopher to
say that "the good and the beautiful are one”; if
he should add "and also the true,” he deserves to
be thrashed. Truth is ugly.
Art is with us in order that we may not perish
through truth.
823.
Moralising tendencies may be combated with
art. Art is freedom from moral bigotry and
philosophy à la Little Jack Horner: or it may be
the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature,
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
265
where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The
concept of the great man.
-Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are dis-
concerted by a mere breath of wind, "beautiful
souls. ”
-Ancient ideals, in their inexorable hardness and
brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest
of monsters that they are.
-We should feel a boisterous delight in the
psychological perception of how all moralised
artists become worms and actors without know-
ing it.
-The falsity of art, its immorality, must be
brought into the light of day.
-The “fundamental idealising powers" (sensu-
ality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be
brought to light.
-
824.
Modern counterfeit practices in the arts : regarded
as necessary—that is to say, as fully in keeping
with the needs most proper to the modern soul.
The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the
education, antecedents, and schooling of modern
artists, are now filled up in this
way :
First : A less artistic public is sought which is
capable of unlimited love (and is capable of
falling on its knees before a personality). The
superstition of our century, the belief in "genius,”
assists this process.
Secondly : Artists harangue the dark instincts of
the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers
of a democratic age: the importance of poses.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
Thirdly : The procedures of one art are trans-
ferred to the realm of another; the object of art is
confounded with that of science, with that of the
Church, or with that of the interests of the race
(nationalism), or with that of philosophy—a man
rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague
suspicion that he is a god.
Fourthly : Artists flatter women, sufferers, and
indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to
preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people,
and of the readers of poetry and ancient history,
is tickled.
825.
We must distinguish between the "public" and
the "select"; to satisfy the public a man must be
a charlatan to-day, to satisfy the select he will be
a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar
to our century overcame this distinction, they
were great for both; the great charlatanry of
Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled
with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied
the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is
why greatness is lacking: these geniuses had a
double outlook; first, they catered for the coarsest
needs, and then for the most refined.
826.
False “accentuation”: (1) In romanticism;
this unremitting "expressivo" is not a sign of
strength, but of a feeling of deficiency;
(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic
a
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
267
kind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal
scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts
and traits in realistic novels);
(3)“Passion" as a matter of nerves and exhausted
souls; likewise the delightin high mountains, deserts,
storms, orgies, and disgusting details,-in bulkiness
and massiveness(historians, forinstance); as a matter
of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feel-
ings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired
just the opposite—a restraint of passion ? );
(4) The preference for exciting materials (Erotica
or Socialistica or Pathologica): all these things are
the signs of the style of public that is being
catered for to-day-that is to say, for overworked,
absentminded, or enfeebled people.
Such people must be tyrannised over in order
to be affected.
827.
Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse
and salient definiteness in delineation; the motive
simplified into a formula; formulæ tyrannise.
Wild arabesques within the lines ; overwhelming
masses, before which the senses are confused;
brutality in coloration, in subject matter, in the
desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner, and, in a
more spiritualised degree, Taine.
Hence logic,
massiveness, and brutality,
i
828.
In regard to the painter : Tous ces modernes sont
des poètes qui ont voulu étre peintres. L'un a
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THE WILL TO POWER.
cherché des drames dans l'histoire, l'autre des scènes
de moeurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui là une
philosophie. One imitates Raphael, another the
early Italian masters. The landscapists employ
trees and clouds in order to make odes and
elegies. Not one is simply a painter ; they are
all archæologists, psychologists, and impresarios
of one or another kind of event or theory. . They
enjoy our erudition and our philosophy. Like us,
they are full, and too full, of general ideas. They
like a form, not because it is what it is, but
because of what it expresses. They are the scions
of a learned, tormented, and reflecting generation,
a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who
never read, and only concerned themselves with
feasting their eyes.
829.
At bottom, even Wagner's music, in so far as it
stands for the whole of French romanticism, is
literature: the charm of exoticism (strange times,
customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy-
corner people. The delight of entering into ex-
tremely distant and prehistoric lands to which
books lead one, and by which means the whole
horizon is painted with new colours and new
possibilities. . . . Dreams of still more distant
and unexploited worlds ; disdain of the boulevards.
For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves,
is also only a form of exoticism. . .
