We are witnessing the death agony of the last
Art : Bayreuth has convinced me of this.
Art : Bayreuth has convinced me of this.
Nietzsche - v08 - The Case of Wagner
On the other
hand, it must be obvious, that when Circe's unfor-
tunate animals are induced to worship chastity, all
they see and worship therein, is their opposite—
oh and with what tragic groaning and fervour,
may well be imagined—that same painful and
thoroughly superfluous opposition which, towards
the end of his life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly
wished to set to music and to put on the stage,
And to what purpose 2 we may reasonably ask.
3.
And yet this other question can certainly not be
circumvented: what business had he actually with
that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic simplicity,”
that poor devil and son of nature—Parsifal, whom
he ultimately makes a catholic by such insidious
means—what? — was Wagner in earnest with
Parsifal P For, that he was laughed at, I cannot
deny, any more than Gottfried Keller can. . . .
We should like to believe that “Parsifal” was meant
as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and
satyric drama, with which Wagner the tragedian
wished to take leave of us, of himself, and above
all of tragedy, in a way which befitted him and his
dignity, that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty
and most malicious parody of tragedy itself, of all
## p. 72 (#108) #############################################
72 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of this
world, of the most ridiculous form of the unnatural-
ness of the ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For
Parsifal is the subject par excellence for a comic
opera. . . . Is Wagner's “Parsifal "his secret laugh
of superiority at himself, the triumph of his last and
most exalted state of artistic freedom, of artistic
transcendence—is it Wagner able to laugh at him-
self? Once again we only wish it were so; for
what could Parsifal be if he were meant seriously?
Is it necessary in his case to say (as I have heard
people say) that “Parsifal” is “the product of the
mad hatred of knowledge, intellect, and sensu-
ality? ” a curse upon the senses and the mind in
one breath and in one fit of hatred P an act of
apostasy and a return to Christianly sick and
obscurantist ideals? And finally even a denial of
self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who
theretofore had worked with all the power of his
will in favour of the opposite cause, the spiritualisa-
tion and sensualisation of his art? And not only
of his art, but also of his life? Let us remember
how enthusiastically Wagner at one time walked
in the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach.
Feuerbach's words “healthy sensuality” struck
Wagner in the thirties and forties very much as
they struck many other Germans—they called
themselves the young Germans—that is to say, as
words of salvation. Did he ultimately change his
mind on this point? It would seem that he had
at least had the desire of changing his doctrine
towards the end. . . . Had the hatred of life become
dominant in him as in Flaubert? For “Parsifal. ”
## p. 73 (#109) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 73
is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most secret
concoction of poisons with which to make an end
of the first conditions of life; it is a bad work.
The preaching of chastity remains an incitement
to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not
regard “Parsifal' as an outrage upon morality. —
HOW I GOT RID OF WAGNER.
I.
X Already in the summer of 1876, when the first
festival at Bayreuth was at its height, I took leave
of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure anything
double-faced. Since Wagner had returned to
Germany, he had condescended step by step to
everything that I despise—even to anti-Semitism.
. . . As a matter of fact, it was then high time to
bid him farewell: but the proof of this came only
too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most
triumphant creature alive; as a matter of fact,
though, a cranky and desperate decadent, suddenly
fell helpless and broken on his knees before the
Christian cross. . . . Was there no German at that
time who had the eyes to see, and the sympathy in
his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this spectacle?
Was I the only one who suffered from it? —Enough,
the unexpected event, like a flash of lightning,
made me see only too clearly what kind of a place
it was that I had just left, and it also made me
shudder as a man shudders who unawares has just
escaped a great danger. As I continued my
journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I
## p. 74 (#110) #############################################
74 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
was ill, more than ill—I was tired;—tired of the
continual disappointments over everything which
remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic
about, of the energy, industry, hope, youth, and
love that are squandered everywhere; tired out of
loathing for the whole world of idealistic lying and
conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case
of Wagner, had scored a victory over a man who
was of the bravest; and last but not least, tired by
the sadness of a ruthless suspicion—that I was now
condemned to be ever more and more suspicious,
ever more and more contemptuous, ever more and
more deeply alone than I had been theretofore.
For I had no one save Richard Wagner. . . . I was
always condemned to the society of Germans. . . .
2.
Henceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of
myself, I then took up sides—not without anger—
against myself and for all that which hurt me and
fell hard upon me: and thus I found the road to
that courageous pessimism which is the opposite of
all idealistic falsehood, and which, as it seems to
me, is also the road to me—to my mission. . . .
That hidden and dominating thing, for which for
long ages we have had no name, until ultimately
it comes forth as our mission,-this tyrant in us
wreaks a terrible revenge upon us for every attempt
we make either to evade him or to escape him, for
every one of our experiments in the way of be-
friending people to whom we do not belong, for
every active occupation, however estimable, which
may make us diverge from our principal object:-
## p. 75 (#111) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 75
aye, and even for every virtue which would fain
protect us from the rigour of our most intimate
sense of responsibility. Illness is always the
answer, whenever we venture to doubt our right to
our mission, whenever we begin to make things too
easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the
same time ! It is for our relaxation that we have
to pay most dearly 1 And should we wish after
all to return to health, we then have no choice:
we are compelled to burden ourselves more heavily
than we had been burdened before. . .
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS.
I.
The oftener a psychologist—a born, an unavoid-
able psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his atten-
tion to the more select cases and individuals, the
greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by
sympathy: he needs greater hardness and cheerful-
ness than any other man. For the corruption, the
ruination of higher men, is in fact the rule: it is
terrible to have such a rule always before our eyes.
The manifold torments of the psychologist who
has discovered this ruination, who discovers once,
and then discovers almost repeatedly throughout
all history, this universal inner “hopelessness” of
higher men, this eternal “too late l" in every sense
—may perhaps one day be the cause of his “going
to the dogs" himself. In almost every psychologist
we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour of
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered
## p. 76 (#112) #############################################
76 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
men: and this betrays how constantly he requires
healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetful-
ness, away from what his insight and incisiveness—
from what his “business”—has laid upon his con-
science. A horror of his memory is typical of
him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of
others; he hears with unmoved countenance how
people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he
has opened his eyes and seen—or he even conceals
his silence by expressly agreeing with some obvious
opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation
becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has
learnt great sympathy, together with great contempt,
the educated have on their part learnt great
reverence. And who knows but in all great
instances, just this alone happened: that the multi-
tude worshipped a God, and that the “God” was
only a poor sacrificial animal | Success has always
been the greatest liar—and the “work” itself, the
deed, is a success too; the great statesman, the
conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their
creations until they can no longer be recognised;
the “work” of the artist, of the philosopher, only
invents him who has created it, who is reputed to
have created it; the “great men,” as they are
reverenced, are poor little fictions composed after-
wards; in the world of historical values counterfeit
coinage prevails.
2.
Those great poets, for example, such as Byron,
Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not
dare to mention much greater names, but I imply
|-
## p. 77 (#113) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 77
them), as they now appear, and were perhaps
obliged to be: men of the moment, sensuous,
absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust
and to distrust; with souls in which usually some
flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge
with their works for an internal blemish, often
seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too
accurate memory, idealists out of proximity to the
mud —what a torment these great artists are and
the so-called higher men in general, to him who
has once found them out ! We are all special
pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It is con-
ceivable that it is just from woman—who is clair-
voyant in the world of suffering, and, alas ! also
unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent
far beyond her powers—that they have learnt so
readily those outbreaks of boundless sympathy
which the multitude, above all the reverent multi-
tude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying
interpretations. This sympathising invariably de-
ceives itself as to its power; woman would like to
believe that love can do everything—it is the
superstition peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows
the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious,
and blundering even the best and deepest love is— ;
how much more readily it destroys than saves. . . .
3.
The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of
every man who has suffered deeply—the extent
to which a man can suffer, almost determines the
order of rank—the chilling uncertainty with which
he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by
## p. 78 (#114) #############################################
78 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
virtue of his suffering he knows more than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has
been familiar with, and “at home” in many distant
terrible worlds of which “you know nothing ! ”—
this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of
the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the
almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise neces-
sary to protect itself from contact with gushing
and sympathising hands, and in general from all
that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffer-
ing makes noble; it separates. —One of the most
refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with
a certain ostentatious boldness of taste which takes
suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive
against all that is sorrowful and profound. There
are “cheerful men” who make use of good spirits,
because they are misunderstood on account of
them—they wish to be misunderstood. There are
“scientific minds” who make use of science, because
it gives a cheerful appearance, and because love of
science leads people to conclude that a person is
shallow—they wish to mislead to a false con-
clusion. There are free insolent spirits which
would fain conceal and deny that they are at
bottom broken, incurable hearts—this is Hamlet's
case: and then folly itself can be the mask of
an unfortunate and alas ! all too dead-certain
knowledge.
## p. 79 (#115) #############################################
EPILOGUE
I HAVE often asked myself whether I am not much
more deeply indebted to the hardest years of my
life than to any others. According to the voice
of my innermost nature, everything necessary,
seen from above and in the light of a superior
economy, is also useful in itself—not only should
one bear it, one should love it. . . . Amor fati :
this is the very core of my being. —And as to my
prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it
than I owe to my health P To it I owe a higher
kind of health, a sort of health which grows
stronger under everything that does not actually
kill it! —To it, I owe even my philosophy. . . . Only
great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of
spirit; for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness
which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and
proper. X, i. e. , the antepenultimate letter: Only
great suffering; that great suffering, under which
we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering
that takes its time—forces us philosophers to
descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go
of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-
down, all mildness, all mediocrity, on which
things we had formerly staked our humanity. I
doubt whether such suffering improves a man; but
I know that it makes him deeper. . . . Supposing
we learn to set our pride, our scorn, our strength
of will against it, and thus resemble the Indian
79
## p. 80 (#116) #############################################
8o NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
who, however cruelly he may be tortured, considers
himself revenged on his tormentor by the bitterness
of his own tongue. Supposing we withdraw from
pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid
sphere of self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-
effacement: one is another person when one leaves
these protracted and dangerous exercises in the
art of self-mastery; one has one note of interroga-
tion the more, and above all one has the will
henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder,
more wicked, and more silent questions, than any-
one has ever asked on earth before. . . . Trust in
life has vanished; life itself has become a problem.
—But let no one think that one has therefore
become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl I Even
love of life is still possible, but it is a different
kind of love. . . . It is the love for a woman whom
we doubt. . . .
2.
The rarest of all things is this: to have after all
another taste—a second taste. Out of such abysses,
out of the abyss of great suspicion as well, a man
returns as though born again, he has a new skin,
he is more susceptible, more full of wickedness;
he has a finer taste for joyfulness; he has a more
sensitive tongue for all good things; his senses are
more cheerful; he has acquired a second, more
dangerous, innocence in gladness; he is more
childish too, and a hundred times more cunning
than ever he had been before.
Oh, how much more repulsive pleasure now is to
him, that coarse, heavy, buff-coloured pleasure,
-
## p. 81 (#117) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 81
which is understood by our pleasure-seekers, our
“cultured people,” our wealthy folk and our rulers!
With how much more irony we now listen to the
hubbub as of a country fair, with which the
“cultured ” man and the man about town allow
themselves to be forced through art, literature,
music, and with the help of intoxicating liquor, to
“intellectual enjoyments. ” How the stage-cry of
passion now stings our ears; how strange to our
taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous bustle,
which the cultured mob are so fond of, together
with its aspirations to the sublime, to the exalted
and the distorted, have become. No: if we con-
valescents require an art at all, it is another art—
a mocking, nimble, volatile, divinely undisturbed,
divinely artificial art, which blazes up like pure
flame into a cloudless sky! But above all, an art
for artists, only for artists / We are, after all, more
conversant with that which is in the highest degree
necessary—cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness,
my friends ! . . . We men of knowledge, now know
something only too well: oh how well we have
learnt by this time, to forget, not to know, as
artists | . . . As to our future: we shall scarcely
be found on the track of those Egyptian youths
who break into temples at night, who embrace
statues, and would fain unveil, strip, and set in
broad daylight, everything which there are excellent
reasons to keep concealed. * No, we are disgusted
with this bad taste, this will to truth, this search
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: “Das verschleierte Bild
zu Sais. ”—Tr,
6
## p. 82 (#118) #############################################
82 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
after truth “at all costs”: this madness of adoles-
cence, “the love of truth”; we are now too
experienced, too serious, too joyful, too scorched,
too profound for that. . . . We no longer believe
that truth remains truth when it is unveiled—we
have lived enough to understand this. . . . To-day
it seems to us good form not to strip everything
naked, not to be present at all things, not to
desire to “know” all. Tout comprendre c'est tout
Amépriser. ” . . . . “Is it true,” a little girl once asked
her mother, “that the beloved Father is every-
"where? —I think it quite improper,”—a hint to
philosophers. . . . The shame with which Nature
has concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas
should be held in higher esteem. Perhaps truth
is a woman who has reasons for not revealing her
reasons? . . . Perhaps her name, to use a Greek
word is Baubo 2–Oh these Greeks, they understood
the art of living / For this it is needful to halt
bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to
worship appearance, and to believe in forms, tones,
words, and the whole Olympus of appearance /
These Greeks were superficial—from profundity.
. . . And are we not returning to precisely the
same thing, we dare-devils of intellect who have
scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles
of present thought, in order to look around us from
that height, in order to look down from that height?
Are we not precisely in this respect—Greeks 2
Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely
on that account—artists 2
## p. 83 (#119) #############################################
SELECT E D AP HORISMS
## p. 84 (#120) #############################################
## p. 85 (#121) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE'S
RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF
FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER.
(Summer 1878. )
I
My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with
an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to
experience the bitterest disappointment. The
preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and
strong pepper thoroughly repelled me.
2.
I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied
with the decorations, the scenery and the mechanical
contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much industry
and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining
the imagination to matters which did not belie
their epic origin. But as to the naturalism of
the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the
orchestra! ! What affected, artificial and depraved
tones, what a distortion of nature, were we made
to hear !
3.
We are witnessing the death agony of the last
Art : Bayreuth has convinced me of this.
85
## p. 86 (#122) #############################################
86 SELECTED APHORISMS
4.
My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed
him; I had depicted an ideal monster—one, how-
ever, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling
the enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner,
Bayreuth as it actually is, was only like a bad,
final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the
engraving which was my creation. My longing
to see real men and their motives, received an
extraordinary impetus from this humiliating
experience.
5.
This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good
deal even struck me with sudden fear. At last
I felt, however, that if only I could be strong
enough to take sides against myself and what I
most loved I would find the road to truth and
get solace and encouragement from it—and in this
way I became filled with a sensation of joy far
greater than that upon which I was now voluntarily
turning my back.
6.
I was in love with art, passionately in love, and
in the whole of existence saw nothing else than
art—and this at an age when, reasonably enough,
quite different passions usually possess the soul.
- 7.
Goethe said: “The yearning spirit within me,
which in earlier years I may perhaps have fostered
too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried my
utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the
## p. 87 (#123) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 87
man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to
more complete freedom. ” Conclusion? —I have
had to do the same.
8.
He who wakes us always wounds us.
9.
I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and
what is still worse, I have not even the vanity to
try to appear as if I did.
IO.
He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond
the vision and the experience of his acquaintances,
—provokes envy and hatred masked as pity,
prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease,
seduction. Long faces.
II.
* I frankly confess that I had hoped that by
means of art the Germans would become thoroughly
disgusted with decaying Christianity—I regarded
German mythology as a solvent, as a means of
accustoming people to polytheism.
What a fright I had over the Catholic revival
I 2.
It is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely
from life, nor to be so lifeless and emotionally weak,
as to have need of Wagner's art, as to require it as
a medium. This is the principal reason of one's
opposition to it, and not baser motives: something
## p. 88 (#124) #############################################
33 SELECTED APHORISMS
to which we are not driven by any personal need,
and which we do not require, we cannot esteem so
highly.
I3.
It is a question either of no longer requiring
Wagner's art, or of still requiring it.
Gigantic forces lie concealed in it: it drives one
beyond its own domain.
I4.
Goethe said: “Are not Byron's audacity, spright-
liness and grandeur all creative? We must beware
of always looking for this quality in that which is
perfectly pure and moral. All greatness is creative
the moment we realise it. ” This should be applied
to Wagner's art.
I5.
We shall always have to credit Wagner with
the fact that in the second half of the nineteenth
century he impressed art upon our memory as an
important and magnificent thing. True, he did
this in his own fashion, and this was not the
fashion of upright and far-seeing men.
I6.
Wagner versus the cautious, the cold and the
contented of the world—in this lies his greatness
—he is a stranger to his age—he combats the
frivolous and the super-smart. —But he also fights
the just, the moderate, those who delight in the
world (like Goethe); and the mild, the people of
charm, the scientific among men—this is the reverse
of the medal.
## p. 89 (#125) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 89
17.
Our youth was up in arms against the soberness
of the age. It plunged into the cult of excess, of
passion, of ecstasy, and of the blackest and most
austere conception of the world.
I8.
Wagner pursues one form of madness, the age
another form. Both carry on their chase at the
same speed, each is as blind and as unjust as the
other.
I9.
It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner's
inner development—no trust must be placed in
his own description of his soul's experiences. He
writes party-pamphlets for his followers.
2O.
It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able
to bear witness about himself.
2 I.
There are men who try in vain to make a
principle out of themselves. This was the case
with Wagner.
22.
Wagner's obscurity concerning final aims; his
non-antique fogginess.
23.
All Wagner's ideas straightway become manias;
he is tyrannised over by them. How can such a
man allow himself to be tyrannised over in this
## p. 90 (#126) #############################################
90 SELECTED APHORISMS
º
way / For instance by his hatred of Jews. He
kills his themes like his “ideas,” by means of his
violent love of repeating them. The problem of
excessive length and breadth; he bores us with
his raptures.
24.
“C'est la rage de vouloir penser et sentir au deld
desa force” (Doudan). The Wagnerites.
25.
Wagner whose ambition far exceeds his natural
gifts, has tried an incalculable number of times
to achieve what lay beyond his powers—but it
almost makes one shudder to see some one assail
with such persistence that which defies conquest—
the fate of his constitution.
26.
He is always thinking of the most extreme
expression,-in every word. But in the end
superlatives begin to pall.
27.
There is something which is in the highest
degree suspicious in Wagner, and that is Wagner's
suspicion. It is such a strong trait in him, that
on two occasions I doubted whether he were a
musician at all.
28.
The proposition: “in the face of perfection
there is no salvation save love,” “ is thoroughly
* What Schiller said of Goethe. —TR.
## p. 91 (#127) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 9I
Wagnerian. Profound jealousy of everything
great from which he can draw fresh ideas. Hatred
of all that which he cannot approach: the
Renaissance, French and Greek art in style.
29.
Wagner is jealous of all periods that have shown
restraint: he despises beauty and grace, and finds
only his own virtues in the “Germans,” and even
attributes all his failings to them.
3O.
Wagner has not the power to unlock and
liberate the soul of those he frequents: Wagner
is not sure of himself, but distrustful and arrogant.
His art has this effect upon artists, it is envious
of all rivals.
3I.
Plato's Envy. He would fain monopolise
Socrates. He saturates the latter with himself,
pretends to adorn him (kakos Xokpárms), and tries to
separate all Socratists from him in order himself
to appear as the only true apostle. But his
historical presentation of him is false, even to a
parlous degree : just as Wagner's presentation of
Beethoven and Shakespeare is false.
32.
When a dramatist speaks about himself he plays
a part: this is inevitable. When Wagner speaks
about Bach and Beethoven he speaks like one for
whom he would fain be taken. But he impresses
## p. 92 (#128) #############################################
92 - SELECTED APHORISMS
only those who are already convinced, for his
dissimulation and his genuine nature are far too
violently at variance.
33.
Wagner struggles against the “frivolity” in his
nature, which to him the ignoble (as opposed to
Goethe) constituted the joy of life.
34.
Wagner has the mind of the ordinary man who
prefers to trace things to one cause. The Jews
do the same : one aim, therefore one Saviour.
In this way he simplifies German and culture;
wrongly but strongly.
35.
Wagner admitted all this to himself often enough
when in private communion with his soul: I only
wish he had also admitted it publicly. For what
constitutes the greatness of a character if it is not
this, that he who possesses it is able to take sides
even against himself in favour of truth.
Wagner's Teutonism.
36.
That which is un-German in Wagner. He
lacks the German charm and grace of a Beethoven,
a Mozart, a Weber; he also lacks the flowing,
cheerful fire (Allegro con brio) of Beethoven and
Weber. He cannot be free and easy without
being grotesque. He lacks modesty, indulges in
## p. 93 (#129) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 93
big drums, and always tends to surcharge his
effect. He is not the good official that Bach was.
Neither has he that Goethean calm in regard
to his rivals.
37.
Wagner always reaches the high-water mark
of his vanity when he speaks of the German nature
(incidentally it is also the height of his imprudence);
for, if Frederick the Great's justice, Goethe's nobility
and freedom from envy, Beethoven's sublime
resignation, Bach's delicately transfigured spiritual
life, if steady work performed without any thought
of glory and success, and without envy, constitute
the true German qualities, would it not seem as if
Wagner almost wished to prove he is no German P
38.
Terrible wildness, abject sorrow, emptiness,
the shudder of joy, unexpectedness, in short all
the qualities peculiar to the Semitic racel I
believe that the Jews approach Wagner's art with
more understanding than the Aryans do.
39.
A passage concerning the Jews, taken from
Taine. —As it happens, I have misled the reader,
the passage does not concern Wagner at all. —But
can it be possible that Wagner is a Jew? In that
case we could readily understand his dislike of
Jews. ”
* See note on page 37.
## p. 94 (#130) #############################################
94 SELECTED APHORISMS
4O.
Wagner's art is absolutely the art of the age: an
aesthetic age would have rejected it. The more
subtle people amongst us actually do reject it even
now. The coarsifying of everything aesthetic. —
Compared with Goethe's ideal it is very far behind.
The moral contrast of these self-indulgent burningly
loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a spur, like an
irritant: and even this sensation is turned to account
in obtaining an effect.
4 I.
What is it in our age that Wagner's art expresses P
That brutality and most delicate weakness which
exist side by side, that running wild of natural
instincts, and nervous hyper-sensitiveness, that
thirst for emotion which arises from fatigue and
the love of fatigue. —All this is understood by the
Wagnerites.
42.
Stupefaction or intorication constitute all Wag-
nerian art. On the other hand I could mention
instances in which Wagner stands higher, in which
real joy flows from him.
43.
The reason why the figures in Wagner's art
behave so madly, is because he greatly feared lest
people would doubt that they were alive.
44.
* Wagner's art is an appeal to inartistic people; all
means are welcomed which help towards obtaining
## p. 95 (#131) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 95
an effect. It is calculated not to produce an
artistic effect but an effect upon the nerves in
general.
45.
Apparently in Wagner we have an art for every-
body, because coarse and subtle means seem to
be united in it. Albeit its pre-requisite may be
musico-aesthetic education, and particularly with
moral indifference.
46.
In Wagner we find the most ambitious combina-
tion of all means with the view of obtaining the
strongest effect: whereas genuine musicians quietly
develop individual genres.
47.
Dramatists are borrowers—their principal source
of wealth—artistic thoughts drawn from the epos.
Wagner borrowed from classical music besides.
Dramatists are constructive geniuses, they are not
inventive and original as the epic poets are. Drama
takes a lower rank than the epos: it presupposes
a coarser and more democratic public.
48.
Wagner does not altogether trust music. He
weaves kindred sensations into it in order to lend
it the character of greatness. He measures himself
on others; he first of all gives his listeners intoxi-
cating drinks in order to lead them into believing
that it was the music that intoxicated them.
## p. 96 (#132) #############################################
96 SELECTED APHORISMS
49.
The same amount of talent and industry which
makes the classic, when it appears some time too
Mate, also makes the baroque artist like Wagner.
5O.
Wagner's art is calculated to appeal to short-
sighted people—one has to get much too close
up to it (Miniature): it also appeals to long-sighted
people, but not to those with normal sight.
Contradictions in the Idea of Musical Drama.
5. I.
Just listen to the second act of the “Gotterdäm-
merung,” without the drama. It is chaotic music, as
wild as a bad dream, and it is as frightfully distinct
as if it desired to make itself clear even to deaf
people. This volubility with nothing to say is
alarming. Compared with it the drama is a genuine
relief–Is the fact that this music when heard
alone, is, as a whole intolerable (apart from a few
intentionally isolated parts) in its favour? Suffice
it to say that this music without its accompanying
drama, is a perpetual contradiction of all the highest
laws of style belonging to older music: he who
thoroughly accustoms himself to it, loses all feeling
for these laws. But has the drama been improved
thanks to this addition? A symbolic interpretation
has been affixed to it, a sort of philological com-
mentary, which sets fetters upon the inner and free
understanding of the imagination—it is tyrannical.
## p. 97 (#133) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 97
Music is the language of the commentator, who talks
the whole of the time and gives us no breathing
space. Moreover his is a difficult language which
also requires to be explained. He who step by
step has mastered, first the libretto (language 1),
then converted it into action in his mind's eye,
then sought out and understood, and became
familiar with the musical symbolism thereto: aye,
and has fallen in love with all three things: such
a man then experiences a great joy. But how
eracting / It is quite impossible to do this save
for a few short moments, such tenfold attention
on the part of one's eyes, ears, understanding, and
feeling, such acute activity in apprehending without
any productive reaction, is far too exhausting ! —
Only the very fewest behave in this way: how is
it then that so many are affected? Because most
people are only intermittingly attentive, and are
inattentive for sometimes whole passages at a
stretch; because they bestow their undivided
attention now upon the music, later upon the
drama, and anon upon the scenery—that is to say
they take the work to pieces. —But in this way the
kind of work we are discussing is condemned: not
the drama but a moment of it is the result, an
arbitrary selection. The creator of a new genre
should consider this The arts should not always
be dished up together, but we should imitate the
moderation of the ancients which is truer to human
nature.
52.
Wagner reminds one of lava which blocks its
own course by congealing, and suddenly finds
7
## p. 98 (#134) #############################################
98 SELECTED APHORISMS
itself checked by dams which it has itself built.
There is no Allegro con fuoco for him.
53.
I compare Wagner's music, which would fain
have the same effect as speech, with that kind of
sculptural relief which would have the same effect
as painting. The highest laws of style are violated,
and that which is most sublime can no longer be
achieved.
54.
The general heaving, undulating and rolling of
Wagner's art.
- 55.
In regard to Wagner's rejection of form, we
are reminded of Goethe's remark in conversation
with Eckermann: “there is no great art in being
brilliant if one respects nothing. ”
56.
Once one theme is over, Wagner is always
embarrassed as to how to continue. Hence the
long preparation, the suspense. His peculiar
craftiness consisted in transvaluing his weakness
into virtues. —
57.
The lack of melody and the poverty of melody
in Wagner. Melody is a whole consisting of many
beautiful proportions, it is the reflection of a well-
ordered soul.
hand, it must be obvious, that when Circe's unfor-
tunate animals are induced to worship chastity, all
they see and worship therein, is their opposite—
oh and with what tragic groaning and fervour,
may well be imagined—that same painful and
thoroughly superfluous opposition which, towards
the end of his life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly
wished to set to music and to put on the stage,
And to what purpose 2 we may reasonably ask.
3.
And yet this other question can certainly not be
circumvented: what business had he actually with
that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic simplicity,”
that poor devil and son of nature—Parsifal, whom
he ultimately makes a catholic by such insidious
means—what? — was Wagner in earnest with
Parsifal P For, that he was laughed at, I cannot
deny, any more than Gottfried Keller can. . . .
We should like to believe that “Parsifal” was meant
as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and
satyric drama, with which Wagner the tragedian
wished to take leave of us, of himself, and above
all of tragedy, in a way which befitted him and his
dignity, that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty
and most malicious parody of tragedy itself, of all
## p. 72 (#108) #############################################
72 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of this
world, of the most ridiculous form of the unnatural-
ness of the ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For
Parsifal is the subject par excellence for a comic
opera. . . . Is Wagner's “Parsifal "his secret laugh
of superiority at himself, the triumph of his last and
most exalted state of artistic freedom, of artistic
transcendence—is it Wagner able to laugh at him-
self? Once again we only wish it were so; for
what could Parsifal be if he were meant seriously?
Is it necessary in his case to say (as I have heard
people say) that “Parsifal” is “the product of the
mad hatred of knowledge, intellect, and sensu-
ality? ” a curse upon the senses and the mind in
one breath and in one fit of hatred P an act of
apostasy and a return to Christianly sick and
obscurantist ideals? And finally even a denial of
self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who
theretofore had worked with all the power of his
will in favour of the opposite cause, the spiritualisa-
tion and sensualisation of his art? And not only
of his art, but also of his life? Let us remember
how enthusiastically Wagner at one time walked
in the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach.
Feuerbach's words “healthy sensuality” struck
Wagner in the thirties and forties very much as
they struck many other Germans—they called
themselves the young Germans—that is to say, as
words of salvation. Did he ultimately change his
mind on this point? It would seem that he had
at least had the desire of changing his doctrine
towards the end. . . . Had the hatred of life become
dominant in him as in Flaubert? For “Parsifal. ”
## p. 73 (#109) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 73
is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most secret
concoction of poisons with which to make an end
of the first conditions of life; it is a bad work.
The preaching of chastity remains an incitement
to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not
regard “Parsifal' as an outrage upon morality. —
HOW I GOT RID OF WAGNER.
I.
X Already in the summer of 1876, when the first
festival at Bayreuth was at its height, I took leave
of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure anything
double-faced. Since Wagner had returned to
Germany, he had condescended step by step to
everything that I despise—even to anti-Semitism.
. . . As a matter of fact, it was then high time to
bid him farewell: but the proof of this came only
too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most
triumphant creature alive; as a matter of fact,
though, a cranky and desperate decadent, suddenly
fell helpless and broken on his knees before the
Christian cross. . . . Was there no German at that
time who had the eyes to see, and the sympathy in
his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this spectacle?
Was I the only one who suffered from it? —Enough,
the unexpected event, like a flash of lightning,
made me see only too clearly what kind of a place
it was that I had just left, and it also made me
shudder as a man shudders who unawares has just
escaped a great danger. As I continued my
journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I
## p. 74 (#110) #############################################
74 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
was ill, more than ill—I was tired;—tired of the
continual disappointments over everything which
remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic
about, of the energy, industry, hope, youth, and
love that are squandered everywhere; tired out of
loathing for the whole world of idealistic lying and
conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case
of Wagner, had scored a victory over a man who
was of the bravest; and last but not least, tired by
the sadness of a ruthless suspicion—that I was now
condemned to be ever more and more suspicious,
ever more and more contemptuous, ever more and
more deeply alone than I had been theretofore.
For I had no one save Richard Wagner. . . . I was
always condemned to the society of Germans. . . .
2.
Henceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of
myself, I then took up sides—not without anger—
against myself and for all that which hurt me and
fell hard upon me: and thus I found the road to
that courageous pessimism which is the opposite of
all idealistic falsehood, and which, as it seems to
me, is also the road to me—to my mission. . . .
That hidden and dominating thing, for which for
long ages we have had no name, until ultimately
it comes forth as our mission,-this tyrant in us
wreaks a terrible revenge upon us for every attempt
we make either to evade him or to escape him, for
every one of our experiments in the way of be-
friending people to whom we do not belong, for
every active occupation, however estimable, which
may make us diverge from our principal object:-
## p. 75 (#111) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 75
aye, and even for every virtue which would fain
protect us from the rigour of our most intimate
sense of responsibility. Illness is always the
answer, whenever we venture to doubt our right to
our mission, whenever we begin to make things too
easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the
same time ! It is for our relaxation that we have
to pay most dearly 1 And should we wish after
all to return to health, we then have no choice:
we are compelled to burden ourselves more heavily
than we had been burdened before. . .
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS.
I.
The oftener a psychologist—a born, an unavoid-
able psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his atten-
tion to the more select cases and individuals, the
greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by
sympathy: he needs greater hardness and cheerful-
ness than any other man. For the corruption, the
ruination of higher men, is in fact the rule: it is
terrible to have such a rule always before our eyes.
The manifold torments of the psychologist who
has discovered this ruination, who discovers once,
and then discovers almost repeatedly throughout
all history, this universal inner “hopelessness” of
higher men, this eternal “too late l" in every sense
—may perhaps one day be the cause of his “going
to the dogs" himself. In almost every psychologist
we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour of
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered
## p. 76 (#112) #############################################
76 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
men: and this betrays how constantly he requires
healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetful-
ness, away from what his insight and incisiveness—
from what his “business”—has laid upon his con-
science. A horror of his memory is typical of
him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of
others; he hears with unmoved countenance how
people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he
has opened his eyes and seen—or he even conceals
his silence by expressly agreeing with some obvious
opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation
becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has
learnt great sympathy, together with great contempt,
the educated have on their part learnt great
reverence. And who knows but in all great
instances, just this alone happened: that the multi-
tude worshipped a God, and that the “God” was
only a poor sacrificial animal | Success has always
been the greatest liar—and the “work” itself, the
deed, is a success too; the great statesman, the
conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their
creations until they can no longer be recognised;
the “work” of the artist, of the philosopher, only
invents him who has created it, who is reputed to
have created it; the “great men,” as they are
reverenced, are poor little fictions composed after-
wards; in the world of historical values counterfeit
coinage prevails.
2.
Those great poets, for example, such as Byron,
Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not
dare to mention much greater names, but I imply
|-
## p. 77 (#113) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 77
them), as they now appear, and were perhaps
obliged to be: men of the moment, sensuous,
absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust
and to distrust; with souls in which usually some
flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge
with their works for an internal blemish, often
seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too
accurate memory, idealists out of proximity to the
mud —what a torment these great artists are and
the so-called higher men in general, to him who
has once found them out ! We are all special
pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It is con-
ceivable that it is just from woman—who is clair-
voyant in the world of suffering, and, alas ! also
unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent
far beyond her powers—that they have learnt so
readily those outbreaks of boundless sympathy
which the multitude, above all the reverent multi-
tude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying
interpretations. This sympathising invariably de-
ceives itself as to its power; woman would like to
believe that love can do everything—it is the
superstition peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows
the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious,
and blundering even the best and deepest love is— ;
how much more readily it destroys than saves. . . .
3.
The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of
every man who has suffered deeply—the extent
to which a man can suffer, almost determines the
order of rank—the chilling uncertainty with which
he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by
## p. 78 (#114) #############################################
78 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
virtue of his suffering he knows more than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has
been familiar with, and “at home” in many distant
terrible worlds of which “you know nothing ! ”—
this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of
the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the
almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise neces-
sary to protect itself from contact with gushing
and sympathising hands, and in general from all
that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffer-
ing makes noble; it separates. —One of the most
refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with
a certain ostentatious boldness of taste which takes
suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive
against all that is sorrowful and profound. There
are “cheerful men” who make use of good spirits,
because they are misunderstood on account of
them—they wish to be misunderstood. There are
“scientific minds” who make use of science, because
it gives a cheerful appearance, and because love of
science leads people to conclude that a person is
shallow—they wish to mislead to a false con-
clusion. There are free insolent spirits which
would fain conceal and deny that they are at
bottom broken, incurable hearts—this is Hamlet's
case: and then folly itself can be the mask of
an unfortunate and alas ! all too dead-certain
knowledge.
## p. 79 (#115) #############################################
EPILOGUE
I HAVE often asked myself whether I am not much
more deeply indebted to the hardest years of my
life than to any others. According to the voice
of my innermost nature, everything necessary,
seen from above and in the light of a superior
economy, is also useful in itself—not only should
one bear it, one should love it. . . . Amor fati :
this is the very core of my being. —And as to my
prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it
than I owe to my health P To it I owe a higher
kind of health, a sort of health which grows
stronger under everything that does not actually
kill it! —To it, I owe even my philosophy. . . . Only
great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of
spirit; for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness
which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and
proper. X, i. e. , the antepenultimate letter: Only
great suffering; that great suffering, under which
we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering
that takes its time—forces us philosophers to
descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go
of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-
down, all mildness, all mediocrity, on which
things we had formerly staked our humanity. I
doubt whether such suffering improves a man; but
I know that it makes him deeper. . . . Supposing
we learn to set our pride, our scorn, our strength
of will against it, and thus resemble the Indian
79
## p. 80 (#116) #############################################
8o NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
who, however cruelly he may be tortured, considers
himself revenged on his tormentor by the bitterness
of his own tongue. Supposing we withdraw from
pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid
sphere of self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-
effacement: one is another person when one leaves
these protracted and dangerous exercises in the
art of self-mastery; one has one note of interroga-
tion the more, and above all one has the will
henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder,
more wicked, and more silent questions, than any-
one has ever asked on earth before. . . . Trust in
life has vanished; life itself has become a problem.
—But let no one think that one has therefore
become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl I Even
love of life is still possible, but it is a different
kind of love. . . . It is the love for a woman whom
we doubt. . . .
2.
The rarest of all things is this: to have after all
another taste—a second taste. Out of such abysses,
out of the abyss of great suspicion as well, a man
returns as though born again, he has a new skin,
he is more susceptible, more full of wickedness;
he has a finer taste for joyfulness; he has a more
sensitive tongue for all good things; his senses are
more cheerful; he has acquired a second, more
dangerous, innocence in gladness; he is more
childish too, and a hundred times more cunning
than ever he had been before.
Oh, how much more repulsive pleasure now is to
him, that coarse, heavy, buff-coloured pleasure,
-
## p. 81 (#117) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 81
which is understood by our pleasure-seekers, our
“cultured people,” our wealthy folk and our rulers!
With how much more irony we now listen to the
hubbub as of a country fair, with which the
“cultured ” man and the man about town allow
themselves to be forced through art, literature,
music, and with the help of intoxicating liquor, to
“intellectual enjoyments. ” How the stage-cry of
passion now stings our ears; how strange to our
taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous bustle,
which the cultured mob are so fond of, together
with its aspirations to the sublime, to the exalted
and the distorted, have become. No: if we con-
valescents require an art at all, it is another art—
a mocking, nimble, volatile, divinely undisturbed,
divinely artificial art, which blazes up like pure
flame into a cloudless sky! But above all, an art
for artists, only for artists / We are, after all, more
conversant with that which is in the highest degree
necessary—cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness,
my friends ! . . . We men of knowledge, now know
something only too well: oh how well we have
learnt by this time, to forget, not to know, as
artists | . . . As to our future: we shall scarcely
be found on the track of those Egyptian youths
who break into temples at night, who embrace
statues, and would fain unveil, strip, and set in
broad daylight, everything which there are excellent
reasons to keep concealed. * No, we are disgusted
with this bad taste, this will to truth, this search
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: “Das verschleierte Bild
zu Sais. ”—Tr,
6
## p. 82 (#118) #############################################
82 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
after truth “at all costs”: this madness of adoles-
cence, “the love of truth”; we are now too
experienced, too serious, too joyful, too scorched,
too profound for that. . . . We no longer believe
that truth remains truth when it is unveiled—we
have lived enough to understand this. . . . To-day
it seems to us good form not to strip everything
naked, not to be present at all things, not to
desire to “know” all. Tout comprendre c'est tout
Amépriser. ” . . . . “Is it true,” a little girl once asked
her mother, “that the beloved Father is every-
"where? —I think it quite improper,”—a hint to
philosophers. . . . The shame with which Nature
has concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas
should be held in higher esteem. Perhaps truth
is a woman who has reasons for not revealing her
reasons? . . . Perhaps her name, to use a Greek
word is Baubo 2–Oh these Greeks, they understood
the art of living / For this it is needful to halt
bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to
worship appearance, and to believe in forms, tones,
words, and the whole Olympus of appearance /
These Greeks were superficial—from profundity.
. . . And are we not returning to precisely the
same thing, we dare-devils of intellect who have
scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles
of present thought, in order to look around us from
that height, in order to look down from that height?
Are we not precisely in this respect—Greeks 2
Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely
on that account—artists 2
## p. 83 (#119) #############################################
SELECT E D AP HORISMS
## p. 84 (#120) #############################################
## p. 85 (#121) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE'S
RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF
FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER.
(Summer 1878. )
I
My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with
an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to
experience the bitterest disappointment. The
preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and
strong pepper thoroughly repelled me.
2.
I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied
with the decorations, the scenery and the mechanical
contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much industry
and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining
the imagination to matters which did not belie
their epic origin. But as to the naturalism of
the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the
orchestra! ! What affected, artificial and depraved
tones, what a distortion of nature, were we made
to hear !
3.
We are witnessing the death agony of the last
Art : Bayreuth has convinced me of this.
85
## p. 86 (#122) #############################################
86 SELECTED APHORISMS
4.
My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed
him; I had depicted an ideal monster—one, how-
ever, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling
the enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner,
Bayreuth as it actually is, was only like a bad,
final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the
engraving which was my creation. My longing
to see real men and their motives, received an
extraordinary impetus from this humiliating
experience.
5.
This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good
deal even struck me with sudden fear. At last
I felt, however, that if only I could be strong
enough to take sides against myself and what I
most loved I would find the road to truth and
get solace and encouragement from it—and in this
way I became filled with a sensation of joy far
greater than that upon which I was now voluntarily
turning my back.
6.
I was in love with art, passionately in love, and
in the whole of existence saw nothing else than
art—and this at an age when, reasonably enough,
quite different passions usually possess the soul.
- 7.
Goethe said: “The yearning spirit within me,
which in earlier years I may perhaps have fostered
too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried my
utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the
## p. 87 (#123) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 87
man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to
more complete freedom. ” Conclusion? —I have
had to do the same.
8.
He who wakes us always wounds us.
9.
I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and
what is still worse, I have not even the vanity to
try to appear as if I did.
IO.
He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond
the vision and the experience of his acquaintances,
—provokes envy and hatred masked as pity,
prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease,
seduction. Long faces.
II.
* I frankly confess that I had hoped that by
means of art the Germans would become thoroughly
disgusted with decaying Christianity—I regarded
German mythology as a solvent, as a means of
accustoming people to polytheism.
What a fright I had over the Catholic revival
I 2.
It is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely
from life, nor to be so lifeless and emotionally weak,
as to have need of Wagner's art, as to require it as
a medium. This is the principal reason of one's
opposition to it, and not baser motives: something
## p. 88 (#124) #############################################
33 SELECTED APHORISMS
to which we are not driven by any personal need,
and which we do not require, we cannot esteem so
highly.
I3.
It is a question either of no longer requiring
Wagner's art, or of still requiring it.
Gigantic forces lie concealed in it: it drives one
beyond its own domain.
I4.
Goethe said: “Are not Byron's audacity, spright-
liness and grandeur all creative? We must beware
of always looking for this quality in that which is
perfectly pure and moral. All greatness is creative
the moment we realise it. ” This should be applied
to Wagner's art.
I5.
We shall always have to credit Wagner with
the fact that in the second half of the nineteenth
century he impressed art upon our memory as an
important and magnificent thing. True, he did
this in his own fashion, and this was not the
fashion of upright and far-seeing men.
I6.
Wagner versus the cautious, the cold and the
contented of the world—in this lies his greatness
—he is a stranger to his age—he combats the
frivolous and the super-smart. —But he also fights
the just, the moderate, those who delight in the
world (like Goethe); and the mild, the people of
charm, the scientific among men—this is the reverse
of the medal.
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SELECTED APHORISMS 89
17.
Our youth was up in arms against the soberness
of the age. It plunged into the cult of excess, of
passion, of ecstasy, and of the blackest and most
austere conception of the world.
I8.
Wagner pursues one form of madness, the age
another form. Both carry on their chase at the
same speed, each is as blind and as unjust as the
other.
I9.
It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner's
inner development—no trust must be placed in
his own description of his soul's experiences. He
writes party-pamphlets for his followers.
2O.
It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able
to bear witness about himself.
2 I.
There are men who try in vain to make a
principle out of themselves. This was the case
with Wagner.
22.
Wagner's obscurity concerning final aims; his
non-antique fogginess.
23.
All Wagner's ideas straightway become manias;
he is tyrannised over by them. How can such a
man allow himself to be tyrannised over in this
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90 SELECTED APHORISMS
º
way / For instance by his hatred of Jews. He
kills his themes like his “ideas,” by means of his
violent love of repeating them. The problem of
excessive length and breadth; he bores us with
his raptures.
24.
“C'est la rage de vouloir penser et sentir au deld
desa force” (Doudan). The Wagnerites.
25.
Wagner whose ambition far exceeds his natural
gifts, has tried an incalculable number of times
to achieve what lay beyond his powers—but it
almost makes one shudder to see some one assail
with such persistence that which defies conquest—
the fate of his constitution.
26.
He is always thinking of the most extreme
expression,-in every word. But in the end
superlatives begin to pall.
27.
There is something which is in the highest
degree suspicious in Wagner, and that is Wagner's
suspicion. It is such a strong trait in him, that
on two occasions I doubted whether he were a
musician at all.
28.
The proposition: “in the face of perfection
there is no salvation save love,” “ is thoroughly
* What Schiller said of Goethe. —TR.
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SELECTED APHORISMS 9I
Wagnerian. Profound jealousy of everything
great from which he can draw fresh ideas. Hatred
of all that which he cannot approach: the
Renaissance, French and Greek art in style.
29.
Wagner is jealous of all periods that have shown
restraint: he despises beauty and grace, and finds
only his own virtues in the “Germans,” and even
attributes all his failings to them.
3O.
Wagner has not the power to unlock and
liberate the soul of those he frequents: Wagner
is not sure of himself, but distrustful and arrogant.
His art has this effect upon artists, it is envious
of all rivals.
3I.
Plato's Envy. He would fain monopolise
Socrates. He saturates the latter with himself,
pretends to adorn him (kakos Xokpárms), and tries to
separate all Socratists from him in order himself
to appear as the only true apostle. But his
historical presentation of him is false, even to a
parlous degree : just as Wagner's presentation of
Beethoven and Shakespeare is false.
32.
When a dramatist speaks about himself he plays
a part: this is inevitable. When Wagner speaks
about Bach and Beethoven he speaks like one for
whom he would fain be taken. But he impresses
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92 - SELECTED APHORISMS
only those who are already convinced, for his
dissimulation and his genuine nature are far too
violently at variance.
33.
Wagner struggles against the “frivolity” in his
nature, which to him the ignoble (as opposed to
Goethe) constituted the joy of life.
34.
Wagner has the mind of the ordinary man who
prefers to trace things to one cause. The Jews
do the same : one aim, therefore one Saviour.
In this way he simplifies German and culture;
wrongly but strongly.
35.
Wagner admitted all this to himself often enough
when in private communion with his soul: I only
wish he had also admitted it publicly. For what
constitutes the greatness of a character if it is not
this, that he who possesses it is able to take sides
even against himself in favour of truth.
Wagner's Teutonism.
36.
That which is un-German in Wagner. He
lacks the German charm and grace of a Beethoven,
a Mozart, a Weber; he also lacks the flowing,
cheerful fire (Allegro con brio) of Beethoven and
Weber. He cannot be free and easy without
being grotesque. He lacks modesty, indulges in
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SELECTED APHORISMS 93
big drums, and always tends to surcharge his
effect. He is not the good official that Bach was.
Neither has he that Goethean calm in regard
to his rivals.
37.
Wagner always reaches the high-water mark
of his vanity when he speaks of the German nature
(incidentally it is also the height of his imprudence);
for, if Frederick the Great's justice, Goethe's nobility
and freedom from envy, Beethoven's sublime
resignation, Bach's delicately transfigured spiritual
life, if steady work performed without any thought
of glory and success, and without envy, constitute
the true German qualities, would it not seem as if
Wagner almost wished to prove he is no German P
38.
Terrible wildness, abject sorrow, emptiness,
the shudder of joy, unexpectedness, in short all
the qualities peculiar to the Semitic racel I
believe that the Jews approach Wagner's art with
more understanding than the Aryans do.
39.
A passage concerning the Jews, taken from
Taine. —As it happens, I have misled the reader,
the passage does not concern Wagner at all. —But
can it be possible that Wagner is a Jew? In that
case we could readily understand his dislike of
Jews. ”
* See note on page 37.
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94 SELECTED APHORISMS
4O.
Wagner's art is absolutely the art of the age: an
aesthetic age would have rejected it. The more
subtle people amongst us actually do reject it even
now. The coarsifying of everything aesthetic. —
Compared with Goethe's ideal it is very far behind.
The moral contrast of these self-indulgent burningly
loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a spur, like an
irritant: and even this sensation is turned to account
in obtaining an effect.
4 I.
What is it in our age that Wagner's art expresses P
That brutality and most delicate weakness which
exist side by side, that running wild of natural
instincts, and nervous hyper-sensitiveness, that
thirst for emotion which arises from fatigue and
the love of fatigue. —All this is understood by the
Wagnerites.
42.
Stupefaction or intorication constitute all Wag-
nerian art. On the other hand I could mention
instances in which Wagner stands higher, in which
real joy flows from him.
43.
The reason why the figures in Wagner's art
behave so madly, is because he greatly feared lest
people would doubt that they were alive.
44.
* Wagner's art is an appeal to inartistic people; all
means are welcomed which help towards obtaining
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SELECTED APHORISMS 95
an effect. It is calculated not to produce an
artistic effect but an effect upon the nerves in
general.
45.
Apparently in Wagner we have an art for every-
body, because coarse and subtle means seem to
be united in it. Albeit its pre-requisite may be
musico-aesthetic education, and particularly with
moral indifference.
46.
In Wagner we find the most ambitious combina-
tion of all means with the view of obtaining the
strongest effect: whereas genuine musicians quietly
develop individual genres.
47.
Dramatists are borrowers—their principal source
of wealth—artistic thoughts drawn from the epos.
Wagner borrowed from classical music besides.
Dramatists are constructive geniuses, they are not
inventive and original as the epic poets are. Drama
takes a lower rank than the epos: it presupposes
a coarser and more democratic public.
48.
Wagner does not altogether trust music. He
weaves kindred sensations into it in order to lend
it the character of greatness. He measures himself
on others; he first of all gives his listeners intoxi-
cating drinks in order to lead them into believing
that it was the music that intoxicated them.
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49.
The same amount of talent and industry which
makes the classic, when it appears some time too
Mate, also makes the baroque artist like Wagner.
5O.
Wagner's art is calculated to appeal to short-
sighted people—one has to get much too close
up to it (Miniature): it also appeals to long-sighted
people, but not to those with normal sight.
Contradictions in the Idea of Musical Drama.
5. I.
Just listen to the second act of the “Gotterdäm-
merung,” without the drama. It is chaotic music, as
wild as a bad dream, and it is as frightfully distinct
as if it desired to make itself clear even to deaf
people. This volubility with nothing to say is
alarming. Compared with it the drama is a genuine
relief–Is the fact that this music when heard
alone, is, as a whole intolerable (apart from a few
intentionally isolated parts) in its favour? Suffice
it to say that this music without its accompanying
drama, is a perpetual contradiction of all the highest
laws of style belonging to older music: he who
thoroughly accustoms himself to it, loses all feeling
for these laws. But has the drama been improved
thanks to this addition? A symbolic interpretation
has been affixed to it, a sort of philological com-
mentary, which sets fetters upon the inner and free
understanding of the imagination—it is tyrannical.
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SELECTED APHORISMS 97
Music is the language of the commentator, who talks
the whole of the time and gives us no breathing
space. Moreover his is a difficult language which
also requires to be explained. He who step by
step has mastered, first the libretto (language 1),
then converted it into action in his mind's eye,
then sought out and understood, and became
familiar with the musical symbolism thereto: aye,
and has fallen in love with all three things: such
a man then experiences a great joy. But how
eracting / It is quite impossible to do this save
for a few short moments, such tenfold attention
on the part of one's eyes, ears, understanding, and
feeling, such acute activity in apprehending without
any productive reaction, is far too exhausting ! —
Only the very fewest behave in this way: how is
it then that so many are affected? Because most
people are only intermittingly attentive, and are
inattentive for sometimes whole passages at a
stretch; because they bestow their undivided
attention now upon the music, later upon the
drama, and anon upon the scenery—that is to say
they take the work to pieces. —But in this way the
kind of work we are discussing is condemned: not
the drama but a moment of it is the result, an
arbitrary selection. The creator of a new genre
should consider this The arts should not always
be dished up together, but we should imitate the
moderation of the ancients which is truer to human
nature.
52.
Wagner reminds one of lava which blocks its
own course by congealing, and suddenly finds
7
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98 SELECTED APHORISMS
itself checked by dams which it has itself built.
There is no Allegro con fuoco for him.
53.
I compare Wagner's music, which would fain
have the same effect as speech, with that kind of
sculptural relief which would have the same effect
as painting. The highest laws of style are violated,
and that which is most sublime can no longer be
achieved.
54.
The general heaving, undulating and rolling of
Wagner's art.
- 55.
In regard to Wagner's rejection of form, we
are reminded of Goethe's remark in conversation
with Eckermann: “there is no great art in being
brilliant if one respects nothing. ”
56.
Once one theme is over, Wagner is always
embarrassed as to how to continue. Hence the
long preparation, the suspense. His peculiar
craftiness consisted in transvaluing his weakness
into virtues. —
57.
The lack of melody and the poverty of melody
in Wagner. Melody is a whole consisting of many
beautiful proportions, it is the reflection of a well-
ordered soul.
