Moralising
tendencies
may be combated with art.
Nietzsche - Works - v15 - Will to Power - b
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
? ? ? is
a a
a
a
a is
is
it
a
it if
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it
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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.
? And to what purpose, question
818
A man an artist to the extent to which he regards everything that inartistic people call "form" as the actual substance, as the "prin cipal" thing. With such ideas man certainly belongs to world upside down: for hencefor ward substance seems to him something merely formal,----his own life included.
one may put such
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? 262 THE WILL TO POWER.
819.
A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is characteristic of modernity), in that which is not general, runs counter to the instinct which finds its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical: like Greek taste in its best period. In this there is an overcoming of the plenitude of life ; restraint dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is slow to move and which feels a certain repug nance towards excessive activity is defeated. The general rule, the law, is honoured and made
prominent: conversely, the exception is laid aside, and shades are suppressed. All that which is 'firm, mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful basis, concealing its strength--this " pleases ": i. e. it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.
820.
In the main I am much more in favour of artists than any philosopher that has appeared hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose "sight of the great course which life pursues; they loved the things "of this world,"--they loved their senses. To strive after "spirituality," in cases where this is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a
cure. I wish myself, and all those who live with out the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and who are able to live in this way, an ever greater spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses. Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for
? ? ? ? spirit. physical
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
263
their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that account Offer them the best we have in the way of
What do we care about priestly and meta anathemas upon the senses? We no longer require to treat them in this way: it is a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like
Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness to the " things of this world "--in this way he holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind, which is that man becomes the glorifying power
of existence when he learns to glorify himself.
821.
Pessimism in art ? --The artist gradually learns to like for their own sake, those means which bring about the condition of msthetic elation; extreme delicacy and glory of colour, definite delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in normal conditions distinctness is absent. All distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall extreme degrees of power which give rise to intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by association ;----the effect of works of art is the excitation of the state which creates art, of aesthetic intoxication.
The essential feature in art is its power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence. . . . What does a pessimistic art signify? Is it not a contradictio? ----Yes. ----Schopenhauer is in error when he makes certain works of art serve the
? ? ? ? 264
THE WILL TO POWER.
purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach "resignation. " . . . To represent terrible and questionable things in itself, the sign of an instinct of power and magnificence in the artist; he doesn't fear them. There no such thing as a pessimistic art. . . Art affirms. affirms. But Zola? and the Goncourts? ---the things they show us are ugly their reason, however, for showing them to us their love of ugliness. .
don't care what you say! You simply deceive yourselves you think otherwise--What relief Dostoievsky is!
822.
If have sufficiently initiated my readers into the doctrine that even "goodness," in the whole comedy of existence, represents form of exhaus tion, they will now credit Christianity with con sistency for having conceived the good to be the ugly. In this respect Christianity was right.
absolutely unworthy of a philosopher to say that "the good and the beautiful are one"; he should add " and also the true," he deserves to be thrashed. Truth ugly.
Art with us in order that we may not perish through truth.
823.
Moralising tendencies may be combated with art. Art freedom from moral bigotry and philosophy la Little Jack Horner: or may be the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature,
Job
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? THE WILL TO POWER_IN ART.
where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The concept of the great man.
--Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are dis concerted by mere breath of wind, " beautiful souls. "
--Ancient ideals, in their inexorable hardness and brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest of monsters that they are.
--We should feel boisterous delight in the
of how all moralised artists become worms and actors without know--
265
? -
ing it.
-The falsity of art, its immorality, must be
brought into the light of day.
--The " fundamental idealising powers " (sensu
ality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be brought to light.
824.
Modern counterfeit practicesin the arts: regarded as necessary--that to say, as fully in keeping with the needs most proper to the modern soul.
The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the education, antecedents, and schooling of modern artists, are now filled up in this way :--
First: A less artistic public sought which capable of unlimited love (and capable of falling on its knees before personality). The superstition of our century, the belief in " genius," assists this process. .
Secondly Artists harangue the dark instincts of the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers of democratic age: the importance of poses.
psychological perception '
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? 266 THE WILL TO POWER.
Third/y : The procedures of one art are trans ferred to the realm of another; the object of art is confounded with that of science, with that of the Church, or with that of the interests of the race (nationalism), or with that of philosophy--4 man rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague suspicion that he is a god.
Fourth/y: Artists flatter women, sufferers, and indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people, and of the readers of poetry and ancient history, is tickled.
825.
We must distinguish between the " public " and the " select "; to satisfy the public a man must be a charlatan to-day, to satisfy the select he will be a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar to our century overcame this distinction, they
were great for both; the great charlatanry of Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is why greatness is lacking: these geniuses had a double outlook; first, they catered for the coarsest needs, and then for the most refined.
826.
False "accentuation": (1) In romanticism; this unremitting "eayressz'vo" is not a sign of strength, but of a feeling of deficiency;
(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
kind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts and traits in realistic novels);
( 3) "Passion " as amatter of nerves and exhausted souls ; likewisethedelightin high mountains, deserts, storms, orgies, and disgusting details,--in bulkiness and massiveness (historians,forinstance) ; as a matter of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feel ings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired
just the opposite--a restraint of passion P);
(4) The preference for exciting materials (Erotica
or Socialistica or Pathologica): all these things are the signs of the style of public that is being catered for to-day--that is to say, for overworked, absentminded, or enfeebled
to be affected.
827.
Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse and salient definiteness in delineation; the motive simplified into a formula; formula tyrannise. Wild arabesques within the lines; overwhelming masses, before which the senses are confused; brutality in coloration, in subject~matter, in the desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner, and, in a more spiritualised degree, Taine. Hence logic, massiveness, and brutality.
828.
In regard to the painter: Tous ces modernes sont des pae'tes qui ont voulu e? tre peintres. L'un a
267
? people.
Such people must be tyrannised over in order
? ? ? 268 THE WILL To POWER.
cherche' des drames dans l'histoire, l'autre des scenes de moeurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui la une
One imitates Raphael, another the early Italian masters. The landscapists employ trees and clouds in order to make odes and
elegies. Not one is simply a painter; they are all archaeologists, psychologists, and impresarios of one or another kind of event or theory. . They
philosophie.
enjoy our erudition and our philosophy.
they are full, and too full, of general ideas.
like a form, not because it is what it
because of what expresses. They are the scions of learned, tormented, and reflecting generation, a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who never read, and only concerned themselves with feasting their eyes.
829.
Like us, They but
? At bottom, even Wagner's music, in so far as stands for the whole of French romanticism, literature: the charm of exoticism (strange times, customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy corner people. The delight of entering into ex tremely distant and prehistoric lands to which books lead one, and by which means the whole horizon painted with new colours and new possibilities. . Dreams of still more distant and unexploited worlds; disdain of the boulevards.
For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves, also only form of exoticism. . . Romantic
musicians merely relate what exotic books have
made of them: people would fain
exotic sensations and passions according to
experience
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.
.
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
Florentine and Venetian taste; finally they are satisfied to look for them in an image. . The essential factor the kind of novel desire, the desire to imitate, the desire to live as people have lived once before in the past, and the disguise and dissimulation of the soul. . Romantic art only an emergency exit from defective " reality. "
The attempt to perform new things: revolution, Napoleon. Napoleon represents the passion of new spiritual possibilities, of an extension of the soul's domain.
The greater the debility of the will, the greater the extravagances in the desire to feel, to repre sent, and to dream new things--The result of the excesses which have been indulged in: an insatiable thirst for unrestrained feelings. Foreign literatures afford the strongest spices.
3o.
Winckelmann's and Goethe's Greeks, Victor
Orientals, Wagner's Edda characters, Walter Scott's" Englishmen of the thirteenth century--some day the whole comedy will be exposed! All of was disproportionately historical and false, but--modern.
831.
Concerning the characteristics of national
Hugo's
in regard to the strange and to the borrowed--
English genius vulgarises and makes realistic everything sees;
genius
269
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The French whittles down, simplifies, rational
ises, embellishes ;
The German muddles, compromises, involves,
and infects everything with morality ;
The Italian has made by far the freest and
most subtle use of borrowed material, and has enriched it with a hundred times more beauty than it ever drew out of it: it is the richest genius, it had the most to bestow.
832.
270
The jews, with Heinrich Heine and Offenbach, approached genius in the sphere of art. The latter was the most intellectual and most high spirited satyr, who as a musician abided by great tradition, and who, for him who has
c
? something more than cars, is a real relief after the senti
mental and, at bottom, degenerate musicians of German romanticism.
833.
Ofenbach: French music imbued with Voltaire's intellect, free, wanton, with a slight sardonic grin, but clear and intellectual almost to the point of banality (Offenbach never titivates), and free from the ngnardise of morbid or blond-Viennese
sensuality.
834.
If by artistic genius we understand the most consummate freedom within the law, divine ease, and facility in overcoming the greatest
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
27!
difficulties, then Offenbach has even more right to the title genius than Wagner has. Wagner
heavy and clumsy: nothing more foreign to
him than the moments of wanton
which this clown Offenbach achieves as many as five times, six times, in nearly every one of his buffooneries. But by genius we ought perhaps to understand something else.
835.
" musie. "--French, German, and Italian music. (Our most debased periods in
Concerning
perfection
? sense are our most productive, The Slavs P)--The ballet, which the outcome of
excessive study of the history of strange civilisa tions, has become master of opera--Stage music and musicians' music--It an error to suppose that what Wagner composed was a farm: was rather formlessness. The possibilities of dramatic construction have yet to be discovered--Rhythm. " Expression " at all costs. Harlotry in instru mentation. ---All honour to Heinrich Schiitz; all
honour to Mendelssohn: in them we find an
political
element of Goethe, but nowhere else!
find another element of Goethe coming to blossom in Rahel third element in Heinrich Heine. )
836.
Descriptive music leaves reality to work its effects alone. . All these kinds of art are easier, and more easy to imitate; poorly gifted
(We also_
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' 272
people have recourse to them. The appeal to the instincts; suggestive art.
837.
Concerning our modern music--The decay of melody, like the decay of "ideas," and of the freedom of intellectual activity, is a piece of clumsiness and obtuseness, which is developing itself into new feats of daring and even into principles ;--in the end man has only the prin-' ciples of his gifts, or of his lack of gifts.
" Dramatic music "----nonsensel It is simply bad music. . . . "Feeling" and "passion" are merely substitutes when lofty intellectuality and the joy of it (e. g. Voltaire's) can no longer be attained. Expressed technically, " feeling " and " passion " are easier; they presuppose a much poorer kind of artist. The recourse to drama be trays that an artist is much more a master in tricky means than in genuine ones. To-day we have both dramatic painting and dramatic poetry, etc.
838.
What we lack in music is an aesthetic'which would impose laws upon musicians and give them a conscience; and as a result of this we lack a real contest concerning "principles. "---For as musicians we laugh at Herbart's velleities in this department just as heartily as we laugh at
? As a matter of fact, tremendous difliculties present themselves here. We no
Schopenhauer's.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
273
longer know on what basis to found our concepts of what " exemplary," "masterly," " perfect. " With the instincts of old loves and old admiration~ we grope about in realm of values, and we almost believe, " that good which pleases us. " . . am always suspicious when hear
people every where speak innocently of Beethoven as "classic":
what would maintain, and with some severity, that, in other arts, classic the very reverse of Beethoven. But when the complete and glaring dissolution of style, Wagner's so-called dramatic style, taught and honoured as exemplary, as masterly, as progressive, then my impatience exceeds all bounds. Dramatic style in music, as
? understood simply renunciation of all style whatever; the assumption that something else, namely, drama, hundred times more important than music. Wagner can paint; he does not use music for the sake of music, with
he accentuates attitudes; he poet. Finally he made an appeal to beautiful feelings and heaving breasts, just as all other theatrical artists
have done, and with all he converted women and even those whose souls thirst for culture to him. But what do women and the uncultured care about: music? All these people have no conscience for art: none Of them suffer when the first and fundamental virtues of an art are scorned and trodden upon in favour of that which merely secondary (as ancilla dramaturgica). What good can come of all extension in the means of expression, when that which expressed, art itself, has lost all its law and order? The picturesque pomp and power
Wagner
vOL. II.
0
? ?
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
? ? R
. .
a
is
a
. .
a
a
is
is
l1l . is
. . .
it
is
a
it is is
MMW~_
~_. . _ .
<-\_ . _ . '_,_>
.
? 258
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
? ? ? is
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
'
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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.
? And to what purpose, question
818
A man an artist to the extent to which he regards everything that inartistic people call "form" as the actual substance, as the "prin cipal" thing. With such ideas man certainly belongs to world upside down: for hencefor ward substance seems to him something merely formal,----his own life included.
one may put such
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819.
A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is characteristic of modernity), in that which is not general, runs counter to the instinct which finds its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical: like Greek taste in its best period. In this there is an overcoming of the plenitude of life ; restraint dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is slow to move and which feels a certain repug nance towards excessive activity is defeated. The general rule, the law, is honoured and made
prominent: conversely, the exception is laid aside, and shades are suppressed. All that which is 'firm, mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful basis, concealing its strength--this " pleases ": i. e. it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.
820.
In the main I am much more in favour of artists than any philosopher that has appeared hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose "sight of the great course which life pursues; they loved the things "of this world,"--they loved their senses. To strive after "spirituality," in cases where this is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a
cure. I wish myself, and all those who live with out the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and who are able to live in this way, an ever greater spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses. Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
263
their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that account Offer them the best we have in the way of
What do we care about priestly and meta anathemas upon the senses? We no longer require to treat them in this way: it is a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like
Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness to the " things of this world "--in this way he holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind, which is that man becomes the glorifying power
of existence when he learns to glorify himself.
821.
Pessimism in art ? --The artist gradually learns to like for their own sake, those means which bring about the condition of msthetic elation; extreme delicacy and glory of colour, definite delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in normal conditions distinctness is absent. All distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall extreme degrees of power which give rise to intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by association ;----the effect of works of art is the excitation of the state which creates art, of aesthetic intoxication.
The essential feature in art is its power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence. . . . What does a pessimistic art signify? Is it not a contradictio? ----Yes. ----Schopenhauer is in error when he makes certain works of art serve the
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THE WILL TO POWER.
purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach "resignation. " . . . To represent terrible and questionable things in itself, the sign of an instinct of power and magnificence in the artist; he doesn't fear them. There no such thing as a pessimistic art. . . Art affirms. affirms. But Zola? and the Goncourts? ---the things they show us are ugly their reason, however, for showing them to us their love of ugliness. .
don't care what you say! You simply deceive yourselves you think otherwise--What relief Dostoievsky is!
822.
If have sufficiently initiated my readers into the doctrine that even "goodness," in the whole comedy of existence, represents form of exhaus tion, they will now credit Christianity with con sistency for having conceived the good to be the ugly. In this respect Christianity was right.
absolutely unworthy of a philosopher to say that "the good and the beautiful are one"; he should add " and also the true," he deserves to be thrashed. Truth ugly.
Art with us in order that we may not perish through truth.
823.
Moralising tendencies may be combated with art. Art freedom from moral bigotry and philosophy la Little Jack Horner: or may be the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature,
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where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The concept of the great man.
--Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are dis concerted by mere breath of wind, " beautiful souls. "
--Ancient ideals, in their inexorable hardness and brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest of monsters that they are.
--We should feel boisterous delight in the
of how all moralised artists become worms and actors without know--
265
? -
ing it.
-The falsity of art, its immorality, must be
brought into the light of day.
--The " fundamental idealising powers " (sensu
ality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be brought to light.
824.
Modern counterfeit practicesin the arts: regarded as necessary--that to say, as fully in keeping with the needs most proper to the modern soul.
The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the education, antecedents, and schooling of modern artists, are now filled up in this way :--
First: A less artistic public sought which capable of unlimited love (and capable of falling on its knees before personality). The superstition of our century, the belief in " genius," assists this process. .
Secondly Artists harangue the dark instincts of the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers of democratic age: the importance of poses.
psychological perception '
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Third/y : The procedures of one art are trans ferred to the realm of another; the object of art is confounded with that of science, with that of the Church, or with that of the interests of the race (nationalism), or with that of philosophy--4 man rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague suspicion that he is a god.
Fourth/y: Artists flatter women, sufferers, and indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people, and of the readers of poetry and ancient history, is tickled.
825.
We must distinguish between the " public " and the " select "; to satisfy the public a man must be a charlatan to-day, to satisfy the select he will be a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar to our century overcame this distinction, they
were great for both; the great charlatanry of Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is why greatness is lacking: these geniuses had a double outlook; first, they catered for the coarsest needs, and then for the most refined.
826.
False "accentuation": (1) In romanticism; this unremitting "eayressz'vo" is not a sign of strength, but of a feeling of deficiency;
(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic
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kind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts and traits in realistic novels);
( 3) "Passion " as amatter of nerves and exhausted souls ; likewisethedelightin high mountains, deserts, storms, orgies, and disgusting details,--in bulkiness and massiveness (historians,forinstance) ; as a matter of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feel ings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired
just the opposite--a restraint of passion P);
(4) The preference for exciting materials (Erotica
or Socialistica or Pathologica): all these things are the signs of the style of public that is being catered for to-day--that is to say, for overworked, absentminded, or enfeebled
to be affected.
827.
Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse and salient definiteness in delineation; the motive simplified into a formula; formula tyrannise. Wild arabesques within the lines; overwhelming masses, before which the senses are confused; brutality in coloration, in subject~matter, in the desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner, and, in a more spiritualised degree, Taine. Hence logic, massiveness, and brutality.
828.
In regard to the painter: Tous ces modernes sont des pae'tes qui ont voulu e? tre peintres. L'un a
267
? people.
Such people must be tyrannised over in order
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cherche' des drames dans l'histoire, l'autre des scenes de moeurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui la une
One imitates Raphael, another the early Italian masters. The landscapists employ trees and clouds in order to make odes and
elegies. Not one is simply a painter; they are all archaeologists, psychologists, and impresarios of one or another kind of event or theory. . They
philosophie.
enjoy our erudition and our philosophy.
they are full, and too full, of general ideas.
like a form, not because it is what it
because of what expresses. They are the scions of learned, tormented, and reflecting generation, a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who never read, and only concerned themselves with feasting their eyes.
829.
Like us, They but
? At bottom, even Wagner's music, in so far as stands for the whole of French romanticism, literature: the charm of exoticism (strange times, customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy corner people. The delight of entering into ex tremely distant and prehistoric lands to which books lead one, and by which means the whole horizon painted with new colours and new possibilities. . Dreams of still more distant and unexploited worlds; disdain of the boulevards.
For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves, also only form of exoticism. . . Romantic
musicians merely relate what exotic books have
made of them: people would fain
exotic sensations and passions according to
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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
Florentine and Venetian taste; finally they are satisfied to look for them in an image. . The essential factor the kind of novel desire, the desire to imitate, the desire to live as people have lived once before in the past, and the disguise and dissimulation of the soul. . Romantic art only an emergency exit from defective " reality. "
The attempt to perform new things: revolution, Napoleon. Napoleon represents the passion of new spiritual possibilities, of an extension of the soul's domain.
The greater the debility of the will, the greater the extravagances in the desire to feel, to repre sent, and to dream new things--The result of the excesses which have been indulged in: an insatiable thirst for unrestrained feelings. Foreign literatures afford the strongest spices.
3o.
Winckelmann's and Goethe's Greeks, Victor
Orientals, Wagner's Edda characters, Walter Scott's" Englishmen of the thirteenth century--some day the whole comedy will be exposed! All of was disproportionately historical and false, but--modern.
831.
Concerning the characteristics of national
Hugo's
in regard to the strange and to the borrowed--
English genius vulgarises and makes realistic everything sees;
genius
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The French whittles down, simplifies, rational
ises, embellishes ;
The German muddles, compromises, involves,
and infects everything with morality ;
The Italian has made by far the freest and
most subtle use of borrowed material, and has enriched it with a hundred times more beauty than it ever drew out of it: it is the richest genius, it had the most to bestow.
832.
270
The jews, with Heinrich Heine and Offenbach, approached genius in the sphere of art. The latter was the most intellectual and most high spirited satyr, who as a musician abided by great tradition, and who, for him who has
c
? something more than cars, is a real relief after the senti
mental and, at bottom, degenerate musicians of German romanticism.
833.
Ofenbach: French music imbued with Voltaire's intellect, free, wanton, with a slight sardonic grin, but clear and intellectual almost to the point of banality (Offenbach never titivates), and free from the ngnardise of morbid or blond-Viennese
sensuality.
834.
If by artistic genius we understand the most consummate freedom within the law, divine ease, and facility in overcoming the greatest
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
27!
difficulties, then Offenbach has even more right to the title genius than Wagner has. Wagner
heavy and clumsy: nothing more foreign to
him than the moments of wanton
which this clown Offenbach achieves as many as five times, six times, in nearly every one of his buffooneries. But by genius we ought perhaps to understand something else.
835.
" musie. "--French, German, and Italian music. (Our most debased periods in
Concerning
perfection
? sense are our most productive, The Slavs P)--The ballet, which the outcome of
excessive study of the history of strange civilisa tions, has become master of opera--Stage music and musicians' music--It an error to suppose that what Wagner composed was a farm: was rather formlessness. The possibilities of dramatic construction have yet to be discovered--Rhythm. " Expression " at all costs. Harlotry in instru mentation. ---All honour to Heinrich Schiitz; all
honour to Mendelssohn: in them we find an
political
element of Goethe, but nowhere else!
find another element of Goethe coming to blossom in Rahel third element in Heinrich Heine. )
836.
Descriptive music leaves reality to work its effects alone. . All these kinds of art are easier, and more easy to imitate; poorly gifted
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people have recourse to them. The appeal to the instincts; suggestive art.
837.
Concerning our modern music--The decay of melody, like the decay of "ideas," and of the freedom of intellectual activity, is a piece of clumsiness and obtuseness, which is developing itself into new feats of daring and even into principles ;--in the end man has only the prin-' ciples of his gifts, or of his lack of gifts.
" Dramatic music "----nonsensel It is simply bad music. . . . "Feeling" and "passion" are merely substitutes when lofty intellectuality and the joy of it (e. g. Voltaire's) can no longer be attained. Expressed technically, " feeling " and " passion " are easier; they presuppose a much poorer kind of artist. The recourse to drama be trays that an artist is much more a master in tricky means than in genuine ones. To-day we have both dramatic painting and dramatic poetry, etc.
838.
What we lack in music is an aesthetic'which would impose laws upon musicians and give them a conscience; and as a result of this we lack a real contest concerning "principles. "---For as musicians we laugh at Herbart's velleities in this department just as heartily as we laugh at
? As a matter of fact, tremendous difliculties present themselves here. We no
Schopenhauer's.
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273
longer know on what basis to found our concepts of what " exemplary," "masterly," " perfect. " With the instincts of old loves and old admiration~ we grope about in realm of values, and we almost believe, " that good which pleases us. " . . am always suspicious when hear
people every where speak innocently of Beethoven as "classic":
what would maintain, and with some severity, that, in other arts, classic the very reverse of Beethoven. But when the complete and glaring dissolution of style, Wagner's so-called dramatic style, taught and honoured as exemplary, as masterly, as progressive, then my impatience exceeds all bounds. Dramatic style in music, as
? understood simply renunciation of all style whatever; the assumption that something else, namely, drama, hundred times more important than music. Wagner can paint; he does not use music for the sake of music, with
he accentuates attitudes; he poet. Finally he made an appeal to beautiful feelings and heaving breasts, just as all other theatrical artists
have done, and with all he converted women and even those whose souls thirst for culture to him. But what do women and the uncultured care about: music? All these people have no conscience for art: none Of them suffer when the first and fundamental virtues of an art are scorned and trodden upon in favour of that which merely secondary (as ancilla dramaturgica). What good can come of all extension in the means of expression, when that which expressed, art itself, has lost all its law and order? The picturesque pomp and power
Wagner
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