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.
Nietzsche - Works - v15 - Will to Power - b
g.
the feeling of religious intoxication and sexual irritability (two very profound feelings, always wonderfully co-ordinated.
What is it that pleases almost all pious women, old or young?
Answer :, a saint with beautiful legs, still young, still in?
nocent). Cruelty in tragedy and pity (likewise " normally correlated). Spring-time, dancing, music, ---all these things are but the display of one sex before the other,--as also that " infinite yearning
of the heart" peculiar to Faust.
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
243
? ' ' __
Artists when they are worth anything at all are men of strong propensities (even physically), with surplus energy, powerful animals, sensual without
certain overheating of the sexual system a man like Raphael unthinkable. . . To produce music also in sense to produce children;
chastity merely the economy of the artist, and in all creative artists productiveness certainly ceases. with sexual potency. . Artists should not see things as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, kind of youthfulness, of vernality, sort of per petual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.
80x.
The states in which we transfigure things and make them fuller, and rhapsodise about them, until they reflect our own fulness and love of life back upon us: sexuality, intoxication, post-prandial states, spring, triumph over our enemies, scorn, bravado, cruelty, the ecstasy of religious feeling. But three elements above all are active: sexuality, intoxication, cruelty; all these belong to the oldest
festaljoys of mankind, they also preponderate in budding artists.
Conversely: there are things with which we meet which already show us this transfiguration
and fulness, and the animal world's
thereto state of excitement in the spheres Where these states Of happiness originate. A blending of these very delicate shades of animal well-being and desires the aesthetic state. The
response
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is a
is is
_-_->_~_?
a
a
. .
.
is a
a
;
? 244
THE WILL TO POWER.
latter only manifests itself in those natures which are capable of that spendthrift and overflowing fulness of bodily vigour; the latter is always the primum mobile. The sober-minded man, the tired man, the exhausted and dried-up man (e. g. the scholar), can have no feeling for art, because he does not possess the primitive force of art, which is the tyranny of inner riches: he who
cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
"Perfection. "--In these states (more particularly in the case of sexual love) there is an ingenuous betrayal of what the profoundest instinct regards as the highest, the most desirable, the most valuable, the ascending movement of its type; also of the condition towards which it is actually striving. Perfection: the extraordinary expansion
Of this instinct's feeling of power, its riches, its necessary overflowing of all banks.
802.
Art reminds us Of states of physical vigour: it may be the overflow and bursting forth of bloom ing life in the world of pictures and desires; on the other hand, it may be an excitation of the physical functions by means of pictures and desires
of exalted life--an enhancement of the feeling of life, the latter's stimulant.
To what extent can ugliness exercise this
? In so far as it may communicate some thing of the triumphant energy of the artist who has become master of the ugly and the repulsive;
power?
? ? ? (in
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
245
or in so far as gently excites our lust of cruelty
some circumstances even the lust of doing harm to ourselves, self-violence, and therewith the feeling of power over ourselves).
803.
"Beauty" therefore to the artist, something which above all order of rank, because in beauty contrasts are overcome, the highest sign of power thus manifesting itself in the conquest of opposites; and achieved without feeling of tension: violence being no longer necessary, everything submitting and obeying so easily, and doing so with good grace; this what delights the powerful will of the artist.
804.
The biological value of beauty and ugliness. That which we feel instinctively opposed to us aesthetically according to the longest experience of mankind, felt to be harmful, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion: the sudden utterance of the
instinct, eg. in the case of loathing, im plies an act of judgment. To this extent beauty lies within the general category of the biological values, useful, beneficent, and life-promoting: thus, host of stimuli which for ages have been associated with, and remind us of, useful things and conditions, give us the feeling of beauty, i. e. the increase of the feeling of power (not only things, therefore, but the sensations which are associated with such things or their symbols).
'
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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 can
interpose.
The most common affirmations of beauty
stimulate each other reciprocally; where the aesthetic impulse once begins to work, a whole host of other and foreign perfections crystallise around the "particular form of beauty. " It is
? ? ? ? impossible impossible
sighted;
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
247
to remain objective, certainly to dispense with the interpreting, bestowing, transfiguring, and poetising power (the
latter stringing together of aflirmations con cerning beauty itself). The sight of beautiful woman. .
Thus (I) judgment concerning beauty short
sees only the immediate consequences. It smothers the object which gives rise to
(2)
with charm that determined by the associa
tion of various judgments concerning beauty,
which, however, are quite alien to the essence
the particular object. To regard thing as beauti ful necessarily to regard falsely (that 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 peculiar to the cerebral system overladen with sexual energy lover alone with his sweetheart at eventide trans figures the smallest details: life chain of sublime things, " the misfortune of an unhappy love affair 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 the creative instinct of the artist and the distribution
of
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? 248
THE WILL T0 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. --(I) As idealism (Plato), common to youth, constructing a kind of concave-mirror in which the imageof 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 meetghis 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.
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
? (In
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
249
? f I
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
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
system.
? ? ? 250
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 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.
A 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/t0 be man or an
? healthy!
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
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 lzas a greater value; he is
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 complele 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
25!
? stgmger.
? ? ? 252
THE WILL TO POWER.
capacities, and even the door to art isIopened to them.
If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal
the lyric of tones and words, what is left to poetry and music? . . . 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
'
which art excludes, the negation of art: wherever decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely, the aesthetic man reacts with his N0. Ugliness
feverfrom
? returns to being.
Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that
it is the sign of depression. It robs strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down. . . . Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one's
dey>resses:
? ? ? THE WILL 'ro POWER IN ART.
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 diflerent. 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 aesthetic 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 languages, whether of signs, sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The richer phenomenon always the beginning: our abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities. But'even to-day we still listen with our muscles,
'
as basis: in so far as language. Con vention 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
souls originally had nothing to do with morality,-but with a physiological irritability of suggestion: "sympathy," or what called "altruism," merely product of that psycho motor relationship which reckoned as spirituality (psycho-motor induction, says Charles
People never communicate thought to one
people's
Fe? re? ).
253
? we even read with our muscles.
Every mature art possesses host of conventions
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is a a
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it, is
is
. is a
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THE WILL TO POWER.
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.
8II.
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 :--
(I) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power ; the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of one's own fulness and perfection.
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
? (2)
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 255
and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one's
self in hundred different languages--in fact,
state of explosion.
One must first imagine this condition as one in
which there pressing and compulsory desire of
ridding one's self of the costasy of 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 kind of automatism of the whole muscular system under the compulsion of strong
from within; the inability to reaction; the apparatus of resistance
stimuli acting
resist
also suspended.
Every inner movement (feeling, accompanied by vascular
? thought, emotion)
changes, and consequently by changes in colour,
and secretion. The suggestive power of music, its "suggestion mentale. "
temperature,
The compulsion to imitate: extreme irritabil ity, by means of which certain example becomes
(3)
condition guessed and represented merely by means of few signs. A complete
contagious--a
visualised by one's inner consciousness, and its effect soon shows itself in the movement of the 1imbs,--in certain suspension of the will
picture Mg
A sort of blindness and deafness towards the external world,--the realm
of admitted stimuli 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
(Schopenhauer!
the former in giving--and in such way that the antagonism between these two gifts not
hending:
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a is
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g . ,_
is
a
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is a
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a
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? 256
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 aesthetics have hitherto been women's aesthetics, 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 . . . Le. 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. . . .
? ? ? ? i
The artist belongs to much Strofiger race. That which in us would be harmful and sickly, natural in him. But people object to this that pre cisely the impoverishment of the machine which renders this extraordinary power of comprehending every kind of suggestion possible: eg. 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 poor vitality does--the stimuli are differently deter mined, the effect the same. What not.
i 'the same 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 rich enough for all: he can squander without becoming poor.
"Just as we now feel justified in judging genius as form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the same of artistic suggestive power,-- and our artists are, as matter of fact, only too closely related to hysterical females This, however,
only an argument against the present day, and not against artists in general.
The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
257
? of the will . (Schopenhauer's scandal ous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as
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. VOL. II.
suspension
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THE WILL 'ro 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. incapacity for pride and the need of continual revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempL--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
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 :
insignifi
(The
? ? ? ? '
.
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
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 but rather he rid of he able to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but
seems as though he deliberately misunderstood h'imself here--from sense of delicacy. )
815.
Concerning a reasonable mode of life--Relative chastity, fundamental and shrewd caution in regard to erotica, even _in thought, may be reason able mode of life even in richly equipped and
perhaps
natures. But this principle applies more
perfect
particularly
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
in his way necessarily sensual man, generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or suggestion of stimulus. Nevertheless, as rule he in the power of his work, of his will to mastership, really sober and Often even chaste man. His dominating instinct will have him so:
to artists; belongs to the best
259
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a a
a
a
a is
is
it
a
it if
'I
it
a
is
a
it,
? 260 THE WILL TO POWER.
it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly. It is one and the same form of strength which is
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 ma'i,
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
spent
regarded
'
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 261
exception--it proves the rule--that woman capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork--in short, in everything which not 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 to captivate. . . But what has woman to do with the passionate indiffer ence of the genuine artist who sees more importance in breath, in sound, in the merest trifle, than in himself ? ---who with all his five fingers gropes for his most secret and hidden treasures P--who attri butes no value to anything unless knows how to take shape (unless surrenders itself, unless visualises itself in some way). Art as practised by artists--do you not understand what
is? not an outrage on all our pudeursP . Only in this century has woman dared to try her hand at literature (" Vers la canai/leplumz'e? re e'crz'v assz'e? re," to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now writes, she now paints, she losing her instincts.
?
nocent). Cruelty in tragedy and pity (likewise " normally correlated). Spring-time, dancing, music, ---all these things are but the display of one sex before the other,--as also that " infinite yearning
of the heart" peculiar to Faust.
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
243
? ' ' __
Artists when they are worth anything at all are men of strong propensities (even physically), with surplus energy, powerful animals, sensual without
certain overheating of the sexual system a man like Raphael unthinkable. . . To produce music also in sense to produce children;
chastity merely the economy of the artist, and in all creative artists productiveness certainly ceases. with sexual potency. . Artists should not see things as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, kind of youthfulness, of vernality, sort of per petual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.
80x.
The states in which we transfigure things and make them fuller, and rhapsodise about them, until they reflect our own fulness and love of life back upon us: sexuality, intoxication, post-prandial states, spring, triumph over our enemies, scorn, bravado, cruelty, the ecstasy of religious feeling. But three elements above all are active: sexuality, intoxication, cruelty; all these belong to the oldest
festaljoys of mankind, they also preponderate in budding artists.
Conversely: there are things with which we meet which already show us this transfiguration
and fulness, and the animal world's
thereto state of excitement in the spheres Where these states Of happiness originate. A blending of these very delicate shades of animal well-being and desires the aesthetic state. The
response
? ? is
is a
is is
_-_->_~_?
a
a
. .
.
is a
a
;
? 244
THE WILL TO POWER.
latter only manifests itself in those natures which are capable of that spendthrift and overflowing fulness of bodily vigour; the latter is always the primum mobile. The sober-minded man, the tired man, the exhausted and dried-up man (e. g. the scholar), can have no feeling for art, because he does not possess the primitive force of art, which is the tyranny of inner riches: he who
cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
"Perfection. "--In these states (more particularly in the case of sexual love) there is an ingenuous betrayal of what the profoundest instinct regards as the highest, the most desirable, the most valuable, the ascending movement of its type; also of the condition towards which it is actually striving. Perfection: the extraordinary expansion
Of this instinct's feeling of power, its riches, its necessary overflowing of all banks.
802.
Art reminds us Of states of physical vigour: it may be the overflow and bursting forth of bloom ing life in the world of pictures and desires; on the other hand, it may be an excitation of the physical functions by means of pictures and desires
of exalted life--an enhancement of the feeling of life, the latter's stimulant.
To what extent can ugliness exercise this
? In so far as it may communicate some thing of the triumphant energy of the artist who has become master of the ugly and the repulsive;
power?
? ? ? (in
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
245
or in so far as gently excites our lust of cruelty
some circumstances even the lust of doing harm to ourselves, self-violence, and therewith the feeling of power over ourselves).
803.
"Beauty" therefore to the artist, something which above all order of rank, because in beauty contrasts are overcome, the highest sign of power thus manifesting itself in the conquest of opposites; and achieved without feeling of tension: violence being no longer necessary, everything submitting and obeying so easily, and doing so with good grace; this what delights the powerful will of the artist.
804.
The biological value of beauty and ugliness. That which we feel instinctively opposed to us aesthetically according to the longest experience of mankind, felt to be harmful, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion: the sudden utterance of the
instinct, eg. in the case of loathing, im plies an act of judgment. To this extent beauty lies within the general category of the biological values, useful, beneficent, and life-promoting: thus, host of stimuli which for ages have been associated with, and remind us of, useful things and conditions, give us the feeling of beauty, i. e. the increase of the feeling of power (not only things, therefore, but the sensations which are associated with such things or their symbols).
'
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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 can
interpose.
The most common affirmations of beauty
stimulate each other reciprocally; where the aesthetic impulse once begins to work, a whole host of other and foreign perfections crystallise around the "particular form of beauty. " It is
? ? ? ? impossible impossible
sighted;
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
247
to remain objective, certainly to dispense with the interpreting, bestowing, transfiguring, and poetising power (the
latter stringing together of aflirmations con cerning beauty itself). The sight of beautiful woman. .
Thus (I) judgment concerning beauty short
sees only the immediate consequences. It smothers the object which gives rise to
(2)
with charm that determined by the associa
tion of various judgments concerning beauty,
which, however, are quite alien to the essence
the particular object. To regard thing as beauti ful necessarily to regard falsely (that 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 peculiar to the cerebral system overladen with sexual energy lover alone with his sweetheart at eventide trans figures the smallest details: life chain of sublime things, " the misfortune of an unhappy love affair 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 the creative instinct of the artist and the distribution
of
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THE WILL T0 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. --(I) As idealism (Plato), common to youth, constructing a kind of concave-mirror in which the imageof 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 meetghis 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.
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
? (In
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
249
? f I
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
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
system.
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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 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.
A 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/t0 be man or an
? healthy!
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
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 lzas a greater value; he is
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 complele 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
25!
? stgmger.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
capacities, and even the door to art isIopened to them.
If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal
the lyric of tones and words, what is left to poetry and music? . . . 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
'
which art excludes, the negation of art: wherever decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely, the aesthetic man reacts with his N0. Ugliness
feverfrom
? returns to being.
Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that
it is the sign of depression. It robs strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down. . . . Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one's
dey>resses:
? ? ? THE WILL 'ro POWER IN ART.
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 diflerent. 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 aesthetic 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 languages, whether of signs, sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The richer phenomenon always the beginning: our abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities. But'even to-day we still listen with our muscles,
'
as basis: in so far as language. Con vention 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
souls originally had nothing to do with morality,-but with a physiological irritability of suggestion: "sympathy," or what called "altruism," merely product of that psycho motor relationship which reckoned as spirituality (psycho-motor induction, says Charles
People never communicate thought to one
people's
Fe? re? ).
253
? we even read with our muscles.
Every mature art possesses host of conventions
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THE WILL TO POWER.
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.
8II.
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 :--
(I) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power ; the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of one's own fulness and perfection.
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
? (2)
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 255
and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one's
self in hundred different languages--in fact,
state of explosion.
One must first imagine this condition as one in
which there pressing and compulsory desire of
ridding one's self of the costasy of 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 kind of automatism of the whole muscular system under the compulsion of strong
from within; the inability to reaction; the apparatus of resistance
stimuli acting
resist
also suspended.
Every inner movement (feeling, accompanied by vascular
? thought, emotion)
changes, and consequently by changes in colour,
and secretion. The suggestive power of music, its "suggestion mentale. "
temperature,
The compulsion to imitate: extreme irritabil ity, by means of which certain example becomes
(3)
condition guessed and represented merely by means of few signs. A complete
contagious--a
visualised by one's inner consciousness, and its effect soon shows itself in the movement of the 1imbs,--in certain suspension of the will
picture Mg
A sort of blindness and deafness towards the external world,--the realm
of admitted stimuli 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
(Schopenhauer!
the former in giving--and in such way that the antagonism between these two gifts not
hending:
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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 aesthetics have hitherto been women's aesthetics, 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 . . . Le. 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. . . .
? ? ? ? i
The artist belongs to much Strofiger race. That which in us would be harmful and sickly, natural in him. But people object to this that pre cisely the impoverishment of the machine which renders this extraordinary power of comprehending every kind of suggestion possible: eg. 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 poor vitality does--the stimuli are differently deter mined, the effect the same. What not.
i 'the same 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 rich enough for all: he can squander without becoming poor.
"Just as we now feel justified in judging genius as form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the same of artistic suggestive power,-- and our artists are, as matter of fact, only too closely related to hysterical females This, however,
only an argument against the present day, and not against artists in general.
The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
257
? of the will . (Schopenhauer's scandal ous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as
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. VOL. II.
suspension
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THE WILL 'ro 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. incapacity for pride and the need of continual revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempL--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
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 :
insignifi
(The
? ? ? ? '
.
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
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 but rather he rid of he able to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but
seems as though he deliberately misunderstood h'imself here--from sense of delicacy. )
815.
Concerning a reasonable mode of life--Relative chastity, fundamental and shrewd caution in regard to erotica, even _in thought, may be reason able mode of life even in richly equipped and
perhaps
natures. But this principle applies more
perfect
particularly
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
in his way necessarily sensual man, generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or suggestion of stimulus. Nevertheless, as rule he in the power of his work, of his will to mastership, really sober and Often even chaste man. His dominating instinct will have him so:
to artists; belongs to the best
259
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? 260 THE WILL TO POWER.
it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly. It is one and the same form of strength which is
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 ma'i,
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
spent
regarded
'
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 261
exception--it proves the rule--that woman capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork--in short, in everything which not 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 to captivate. . . But what has woman to do with the passionate indiffer ence of the genuine artist who sees more importance in breath, in sound, in the merest trifle, than in himself ? ---who with all his five fingers gropes for his most secret and hidden treasures P--who attri butes no value to anything unless knows how to take shape (unless surrenders itself, unless visualises itself in some way). Art as practised by artists--do you not understand what
is? not an outrage on all our pudeursP . Only in this century has woman dared to try her hand at literature (" Vers la canai/leplumz'e? re e'crz'v assz'e? re," to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now writes, she now paints, she losing her instincts.
?
