” Neither taste,
voices, nor gifts; Wagner's stage requires but one
thing: Germans / .
voices, nor gifts; Wagner's stage requires but one
thing: Germans / .
Nietzsche - v08 - The Case of Wagner
Wagner
and Beethoven—this is blasphemy—and above all
it does not do justice even to Wagner. . . . As a
musician he was no more than what he was as a
man: he became a musician, he became a poet,
because the tyrant in him, his actor's genius, drove
him to be both. Nothing is known concerning
Wagner, so long as his dominating instinct has
not been divined.
Wagner was not instinctively a musician. And
this he proved by the way in which he abandoned
all laws and rules, or, in more precise terms, all
style in music, in order to make what he wanted
with it, i. e. , a rhetorical medium for the stage, a
medium of expression, a means of accentuating an
attitude, a vehicle of suggestion and of the pyscho-
logically picturesque. In this department Wagner
may well stand as an inventor and an innovator
of the first order—he increased the powers of speech
## p. 24 (#60) ##############################################
24 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
of music to an incalculable degree—: he is the Victor
Hugo of music as language, provided always we
allow that under certain circumstances music may
be something which is not music, but speech
—instrument—ancilla dramaturgica. Wagner's
music, not in the tender care of theatrical taste,
which is very tolerant, is simply bad music, perhaps
the worst that has ever been composed. When a
musician can no longer count up to three, he
becomes “dramatic,” he becomes “Wagnerian. ” . . .
Wagner almost discovered the magic which can
be wrought even now by means of music which is
both incoherent and elementary. His consciousness
of this attains to huge proportions, as does also his
instinct to dispense entirely with higher law and
style. The elementary factors—sound, movement,
colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music—
suffice. Wagner never calculates as a musician
with a musician's conscience: all he strains after is
effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows
what he has to make an effect upon l—In this he
is as unhesitating as Schiller was, as any theatrical
man must be; he has also the latter's contempt for
the world which he brings to its knees before him.
A man is an actor when he is ahead of mankind in
his possession of this one view, that everything
which has to strike people as true, must not be
true. This rule was formulated by Talma : it
contains the whole psychology of the actor, it also
contains—and this we need not doubt—all his
morality. Wagner's music is never true.
—But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything
is as it should be. As long as we are young, and
## p. 25 (#61) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 25
º
Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as
rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as
a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire
him in very much the same way as young French-
men admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his
“royal liberality. ” Later on we admire the one as
well as the other for the opposite reason: as masters
and paragons in economy, as prudent amphitryons.
Nobody can equal them in the art of providing a
princely board with such a modest outlay. —The
Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even
sated with the fare which his master conjures up
before him. But we others who, in books as in
music, desire above all to find substance, and who
are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation
of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English,
Wagner does not give us enough to masticate.
His recitative—very little meat, more bones, and
plenty of broth—I christened “alla genovese”: I
had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this
remark, but rather the older recitativo, the recitativo
secco. And as to Wagnerian leitmotif, I fear I lack
the necessary culinary understanding for it. If hard
pressed, I might say that I regard it perhaps as an
ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one's
self of what remains of one's meal. Wagner's
“arias” are still left over. But now I shall hold
my tongue. -
º
9.
Even in his general sketch of the action, Wagner
is above all an actor. The first thing that occurs
to him is a scene which is certain to produce a
## p. 26 (#62) ##############################################
26 THE CASE OF WAGNER
strong effect, a real actio,” with a basso-relievo of
attitudes; an overwhelming scene, this he now
proceeds to elaborate more deeply, and out of it
he draws his characters. The whole of what remains
to be done follows of itself, fully in keeping with a
technical economy which has no reason to be subtle.
It is not Corneille's public that Wagner has to con-
sider, it is merely the nineteenth century. Con-
cerning the “actual requirements of the stage”
Wagner would have about the same opinion as any
other actor of to-day: a series of powerful scenes,
each stronger than the one that preceded it, and,
in between, all kinds of clever nonsense. His first
concern is to guarantee the effect of his work; he
begins with the third act, he approves his work
according to the quality of its final effect. Guided
by this sort of understanding of the stage, there is
not much danger of one's creating a drama unawares.
Drama demands inexorable logic: but what did
Wagner care about logic? Again I say, it was not
Corneille's public that he had to consider; but
* Wote. —It was a real disaster for aesthetics when the
word drama got to be translated by “action. ” Wagner is
not the only culprit here ; the whole world does the same ;-
even the philologists who ought to know better. What
ancient drama had in view was grand fathetic scenes, it
even excluded action (or placed it before the piece or behind
the scenes). The word drama is of Doric origin, and
according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant
“event,” “history,”—both words in a hieratic sense. The
oldest drama represented local legends, “sacred history,”
upon which the foundation of the cult rested (–thus it was
not “action,” but fatality: 3pāv in Doric has nothing to do
with action).
## p. 27 (#63) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 27
merely Germans ! Everybody knows the technical
difficulties before which the dramatist often has to
summon all his strength and frequently to sweat
his blood: the difficulty of making the plot seem
necessary and the unravelment as well, so that both
are conceivable only in a certain way, and so that
each may give the impression of freedom (the
principle of the smallest expenditure of energy).
Now the very last thing that Wagner does is to
sweat blood over the plot; and on this and the
unravelment he certainly spends the smallest
possible amount of energy. Let anybody put one
of Wagner’s “plots” under the microscope, and I
wager that he will be forced to laugh. Nothing is
more enlivening than the dilemma in “Tristan,”
unless it be that in the “Mastersingers. ” Wagner
is no dramatist; let nobody be deceived on this
point. All he did was to love the word “drama”
—he always loved fine words. Nevertheless, in his
writings the word “drama” is merely a misunder-
standing (–and a piece of shrewdness: Wagner
always affected superiority in regard to the word
“opera”—); just as the word “spirit” is a mis-
understanding in the New Testament. —He was
not enough of a psychologist for drama; he in-
stinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how P
—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place . . .
Very modern—eh? Very Parisian very decadent!
. . . Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows
how to unravel with the help of dramatic inven-
tions, are of quite another kind. For example, let
us suppose that Wagner requires a female voice.
A whole act without a woman's voice would be
## p. 28 (#64) ##############################################
28 THE CASE OF WAGNER
impossible ! But in this particular instance not
one of the heroines happens to be free. What
does Wagner do? He emancipates the oldest
woman on earth, Erda: “Step up, aged grand-
mamma! You have got to sing ! ” And Erda
sings. Wagner's end has been achieved. There-
upon he immediately dismisses the old lady: “Why
on earth did you come 2 Off with you! Kindly go
to sleep again! ” In short, a scene full of mytho-
logical awe, before which the Wagnerite wonders
all kinds of things. . .
—“But the substance of Wagner's texts their
mythical substance, their eternal substance:”—
Question: how is this substance, this eternal
substance tested 2 The chemical analyst replies:
Translate Wagner into the real, into the modern,--
let us be even more cruel, and say: into the
bourgeois And what will then become of him P-
Between ourselves, I have tried the experiment.
Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more worthy
of being recommended to a picnic-party, than to
discuss Wagner dressed in a more modern garb:
for instance Parsifal, as a candidate in divinity,
with a public-school education (–the latter, quite
indispensable for pure foolishness). What surprises
await one ! Would you believe it, that Wagner's
heroines one and all, once they have been divested
of the heroic husks, are almost indistinguishable
from Mdme. Bovary ! —just as one can conceive
conversely, of Flaubert's being well able to transform
all his heroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian
women, and then to offer them to Wagner in this
mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally
## p. 29 (#65) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 29
speaking, Wagner does not seem to have become
interested in any other problems than those which
engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day.
Always five paces away from the hospital All
very modern problems, all problems which are at
home in big cities / do not doubt it ! . . . Ilave
you noticed (it is in keeping with this association
of ideas) that Wagner's heroines never have any
children? —They cannot have them. . . . The despair
with which Wagner tackled the problem of arrang-
ing in some way for Siegfried's birth, betrays how
modern his feelings on this point actually were. —
Siegfried “emancipated woman”—but not with
any hope of offspring. —And now here is a fact
which leaves us speechless: Parsifal is Lohengrin's
father How ever did he do it? —Ought one at
this juncture to remember that “chastity works
miracles”? . . .
Wagnerus dirit princeps in castitate auctoritas.
IO.
And now just a word en passant concerning
Wagner's writings: they are among other things
a school of shrewdness. The system of procedures
of which Wagner disposes, might be applied to a
hundred other cases, he that hath ears to hear
let him hear. Perhaps I may lay claim to some
public acknowledgment, if I put three on the most
valuable of these procedures into a precise form.
Everything that Wagner cannot do is bad.
Wagner could do much more than he does;
but his strong principles prevent him.
Everything that Wagner can do, no one will
## p. 30 (#66) ##############################################
3O THE CASE OF WAGNER
ever be able to do after him, no one has ever
done before him, and no one must ever do after
him : Wagner is godly. . . .
These three propositions are the quintessence
of Wagner's writings;– the rest is merely—
“literature. ” \
—Not every kind of music hitherto has been in
need of literature; and it were well, to try and
discover the actual reason of this. Is it perhaps
that Wagner's music is too difficult to understand?
Or did he fear precisely the reverse. —that it was
too easy, that people might not understand it with
sufficient difficulty 2—As a matter of fact, his whole
life long, he did nothing but repeat one pro-
position: that his music did not mean music alone!
But something more | Something immeasurably
more . . . “Mot music alone—no musician would
speak in this way. I repeat, Wagner could not
create things as a whole; he had no choice, he
was obliged to create things in bits; with “motives,”
attitudes, formulae, duplications, and hundreds of
repetitions, he remained a rhetorician in music,+
and that is why he was at bottom forced to press
“this means” into the foreground. “Music can–
never be anything else than, a means”: this was
his theory; but above all it was the only practice
that lay open to him. No musician however thinks
in this way. —Wagner was in need of literature, in
order to persuade the whole world to take his
music seriously, profoundly, “because it meant an
infinity of things”; all his life he was the com-
mentator of the “Idea. ”—What does Elsa stand
for P But without a doubt, Elsa is “the unconscious
## p. 31 (#67) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 3I
~
mind of the people” (–" when I realised this, I
naturally became a thorough revolutionist”—).
Do not let us forget that, when Hegel and
Schelling were misleading the minds of Germany,
Wagner was still young: that he guessed, or rather
fully grasped, that the only thing which Germans
take seriously is—“the idea,”—that is to say, some-
thing obscure, uncertain, wonderful; that among
Germans lucidity is an objection, logic a refutation.
Schopenhauer rigorously pointed out the dishonesty
of Hegel's and Schelling's age, rigorously, but also
unjustly; for he himself, the pessimistic old counter-
feiter, was in no way more “honest” than his more
famous contemporaries. But let us leave morality
out of the question, Hegel is a matter of taste. .
And not only of German but of European taste!
. . A taste which Wagner understood —which
he felt equal to which he has immortalised –
All he did was to apply it to music—he invented a
style for himself, which might mean an “infinity
of things,”—he was Hegel's heir. . . . Music as
“Idea. ”—
And how well Wagner was understood —The
same kind of man who used to gush over Hegel,
now gushes over Wagner; in his school they even
write Hegelian. ” But he who understood Wagner
best, was the German youthlet. The two words
“infinity” and “meaning ” were sufficient for this:
at their sound the youthlet immediately began to
feel exceptionally happy. Wagner did not conquer
these boys with music, but with the “idea”:—it is
* Hegel and his school wrote notoriously obscure German.
–7? .
## p. 32 (#68) ##############################################
32 THE CASE OF WAGNER
the enigmatical vagueness of his art, its game of
hide-and-seek amid a hundred symbols, its poly-
chromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads.
It is Wagner's genius for forming clouds, his
sweeps and swoops through the air, his ubiquity and
nullibiety—precisely the same qualities with which
Hegel led and lured in his time ! —Moreover in
the presence of Wagner's multifariousness, pleni-
tude and arbitrariness, they seem to themselves
justified—“saved. ” Tremulously they listen while
the great symbols in his art seem to make them-
selves heard from out the misty distance, with a
gentle roll of thunder, and they are not at all dis-
pleased if at times it gets a little grey, gruesome
and cold. Are they not one and all, like Wagner
himself, on quite intimate terms with bad weather,
with German weather | Wotan is their God : but
Wotan is the God of bad weather. . . . They are
right, how could these German youths—in their
present condition,-miss what we others, we
halcyonians, miss in Wagner? i. e. : la gaya scienza;
light feet, wit, fire, grave, grand logic, stellar danc-
ing, wanton intellectuality, the vibrating light of
the South, the calm sea—perfection. . . .
II.
—I have mentioned the sphere to which Wagner
belongs—certainly not to the history of music.
What, however, does he mean historically? —The
rise of the actor in music: a momentous event
which not only leads me to think but also to fear.
In a word: “Wagner and Liszt. ” Never yet
## p. 33 (#69) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 33
ſ
have the “uprightness” and “genuineness” of Tl
musicians been put to such a dangerous test. It is
glaringly obvious: great success, mob success is
no longer the achievement of the genuine,—in order
to get it a man must be an actor —Victor Hugo
and Richard Wagner—they both prove one and
the same thing: that in declining civilisations,
wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuine-
ness becomes superfluous, prejudicial, unfavourable.
The actor, alone, can still kindle great enthusiasm. —
And thus it is his golden age which is now dawning,
—his and that of all those who are in any way
related to him. With drums and fifes, Wagner
marches at the head of all artists in declamation,
in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing_
the conductors of orchestras, the scene-shifters and
stage-singers, not to forget the orchestra:-he
“delivered” them from monotony. . . . The move-
ment that Wagner created has spread even to the
land of knowledge: whole sciences pertaining to
music are rising slowly, out of centuries of
scholasticism. As an example of what I mean,
let me point more particularly to Riemann's
services to rhythmics; he was the first who called
attention to the leading idea in punctuation—even
for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad
word; he called it “phrasing”)—All these people,
and I say it with gratitude, are the best, the most
respectable among Wagner's admirers—they have
a perfect right to honour Wagner. The same
instinct unites them with one another; in him
they recognise their highest type, and since he
has inflamed them with his own ardour they feel
3
## p. 34 (#70) ##############################################
34 THE CASE OF WAGNER
themselves transformed into power, even into great
power. In this quarter, if anywhere, Wagner's
influence has really been beneficent. Never before
has there been so much thinking, willing, and
industry in this sphere. Wagner endowed all
these artists with a new conscience: what they
now exact and obtain from themselves, they had
never exacted before Wagner's time—before then
they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails
on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most
difficult things are expected, blame is severe, praise
very scarce,—the good and the excellent have
become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary,
nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only
with ruined voices: this has a more “dramatic”
effect. Even talent is out of the question. Ex-
pressiveness at all costs, which is what the
Wagnerian ideal—the ideal of decadence—de-
mands, is hardly compatible with talent. All
that is required for this is virtue—that is to say,
training, automatism, “self-denial.
” Neither taste,
voices, nor gifts; Wagner's stage requires but one
thing: Germans / . . . The definition of a German:
an obedient man with long legs. . . . There is a
deep significance in the fact that the rise of
Wagner should have coincided with the rise of the
“Empire”: both phenomena are a proof of one
and the same thing—obedience and long legs. -
Never have people been more obedient, never have
they been so well ordered about. The conductors
of Wagnerian orchestras, more particularly, are
worthy of an age, which posterity will one day
call, with timid awe, the classical age of war.
## p. 35 (#71) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 35
Wagner understood how to command; in this
respect, too, he was a great teacher. He com-
manded as a man who had exercised an inexorable
will over himself—as one who had practised lifelong
discipline: Wagner was, perhaps, the greatest º
ample of self-violence in the whole of the histo
of art (–even Alfieri, who in other respects is his
next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a
Torinese).
I2.
This view, that our actors have become more
worthy of respect than heretofore, does not imply
that I believe them to have become less danger-
ous. . . . But who is in any doubt as to what I
want, as to what the three requisitions are con-
cerning which my wrath and my care and love
of art, have made me open my mouth on this
occasion?
That the stage should not become master of the arts.
That the actor should not become the corrupter of
the genuine.
That music should not become an art of lying.
*
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
|
t
s
i
i
## p. 36 (#72) ##############################################
POSTSCRIPT
THE gravity of these last words allows me at
this point to introduce a few sentences out of an
unprinted essay which will at least leave no doubt
as to my earnestness in regard to this question.
The title of this essay is: “What Wagner has cost
us. ” -
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. Even to-day a vague feeling that this
is so, still prevails. Even Wagner's success, his
triumph, did not uproot this feeling thoroughly.
But formerly it was strong, it was terrible; it was
a gloomy hate throughout almost three-quarters
of Wagner's life. The resistance which he met
with among us Germans cannot be too highly
valued or too highly honoured. People guarded
themselves against him as against an illness, not
with arguments—it is impossible to refute an ill-
ness—, but with obstruction, with mistrust, with
repugnance, with loathing, with sombre earnestness,
as though he were a great rampant danger. The
aesthetes gave themselves away when out of three
schools of German philosophy they waged an
absurd war against Wagner's principles with “ifs”
and “fors”—what did he care about principles,
even his own l—The Germans themselves had
enough instinctive good sense to dispense with
every “if” and “for” in this matter. An instinct
is weakened when it becomes conscious: for by
36
## p. 37 (#73) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 37
becoming conscious it makes itself feeble. If there
were any signs that in spite of the universal
character of European decadence there was still a
modicum of health, still an instinctive premonition
of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the
German soul, then it would be precisely this blunt
resistance to Wagner which I should least like to
see underrated. It does us honour, it gives us some
reason to hope : France no longer has such an
amount of health at her disposal. The Germans,
these lotterers par excellence, as history shows, are
to-day the most backward among the civilised
nations of Europe: this has its advantages, for
they are thus relatively the youngest.
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. It is only quite recently that the Germans
have overcome a sort of dread of him, the desire
to be rid of him occurred to them again and again. ”
Does anybody remember a very curious occurrence
in which, quite unexpectedly towards the end, this
* Was Wagner a German at all? There are reasons
enough for putting this question. It is difficult to find a
single German trait in his character. Great learner that
he was, he naturally imitated a great deal that was German
—but that is all. His very soul contradicts everything which
hitherto has been regarded as German; not to mention
German musicians ! —His father was an actor of the name
of Geyer. . . . That which has been popularised hitherto
as “Wagner's life” is fable convenue if not something worse.
I confess my doubts on any point which is vouched for by
Wagner alone. He was not proud enough to be able to
suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride than
he. Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even
in his biography, -he remained an actor. -
## p. 38 (#74) ##############################################
38 THE CASE OF WAGNER
old feeling once more manifested itself? It
happened at Wagner's funeral. The first Wagner
Society, the one in Munich, laid a wreath on his grave
with this inscription, which immediately became
famous: “Salvation to the Saviour ! ” Everybody
admired the lofty inspiration which had dictated
this inscription, as also the taste which seemed to
be the privilege of the followers of Wagner. Many
also, however (it was singular enough), made this
slight alteration in it: “Salvation from the Saviour. ”
—People began to breathe again. -
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. Let us try to estimate the influence
of this worship upon culture. Whom did this
movement press to the front? What did it make
ever more and more pre-eminent? —In the first
place the layman's arrogance, the arrogance of the
art-maniac. Now these people are organising
societies, they wish to make their taste prevail, they
even wish to pose as judges in rebus musicis et
musicantibus. Secondly: an ever increasing in-
difference towards severe, noble and conscientious
schooling in the service of art; and in its place
the belief in genius, or in plain English, cheeky
dilettantism (–the formula for this is to be found
in the Mastersingers). Thirdly, and this is the
worst of all: Theatrocracy—, the craziness of a
belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the
right of the theatre to rule supreme over the arts,
over Art in general. . . . But this should be
shouted into the face of Wagnerites a hundred
times over: that the theatre is something lower than
art, something secondary, something coarsened,
## p. 39 (#75) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 39
above all something suitably distorted and falsified
for the mob. In this respect Wagner altered
nothing: Bayreuth is grand Opera—and not even
good opera. . . . The stage is a form of Demolatry
in the realm of taste, the stage is an insurrection
of the mob, a plebiscite against good taste. . . .
The case of Wagner proves this fact: he captivated
the masses—he depraved taste, he even perverted
our taste for opera ! —
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. What has Wagner-worship made out
of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit? To
him belong that ambiguity and equivocation and
all other qualities which can convince the uncertain
without making them conscious of why they have
been convinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer
on a grand scale. There is nothing exhausted,
nothing effete, nothing dangerous to life, nothing
that slanders the world in the realm of spirit, which
has not secretly found shelter in his art; he con-
ceals the blackest obscurantism in the luminous
orbs of the ideal. He flatters every nihilistic
(Buddhistic) instinct and togs it out in music; he
flatters every form of Christianity, every religious
expression of decadence. He that hath ears to
hear let him hear: everything that has ever grown
out of the soil of impoverished life, the whole
counterfeit coinage of the transcendental and of
a Beyond found its most sublime advocate in
Wagner's art, not in formulae (Wagner is too
clever to use formulae), but in the persuasion of the
senses which in their turn makes the spirit weary
and morbid. Music in the form of Circe . . . in
## p. 40 (#76) ##############################################
4O THE CASE OF WAGNER
this respect his last work is his greatest master-
piece. In the art of seduction “Parsifal” will for
ever maintain its rank as a stroke of genius. . . . I
admire this work. I would fain have composed it
myself. Wagner was never better inspired than
towards the end. The subtlety with which beauty
and disease are united here, reaches such a height,
that it casts so to speak a shadow upon all
Wagner's earlier achievements: it seems too bright,
too healthy. Do ye understand this? Health and
brightness acting like a shadow P Almost like an
objection? . . . To this extent are we already pure
fools. . . . Never was their a greater Master in
heavy hieratic perfumes-Never on earth has there
been such a connoisseur of paltry infinities, of all
that thrills, of extravagant excesses, of all the
feminism from out the vocabulary of happiness!
My friends, do but drink the philtres of this art
Nowhere will ye find a more pleasant method of
enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manli-
ness in the shade of a rosebush. . . . Ah, this old
magician, mightiest of Klingsors; how he wages
war against us with his art, against us free spirits!
How he appeals to every form of cowardice of the
modern soul with his charming girlish notes
There never was such a mortal hatred of know-
ledge | One must be a very cynic in order to resist
seduction here. One must be able to bite in order
to resist worshipping at this shrine. Very well, old
seducer! The cynic cautions you—cave canem. . . .
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. I contemplate the youthlets who have
long been exposed to his infection. The first
## p. 41 (#77) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 41
relatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of
their taste. Wagner acts like chronic recourse to
the bottle. He stultifies, he befouls the stomach.
His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling for
rhythm. What the Wagnerite calls rhythmical is
what I call, to use a Greek metaphor, “stirring
a swamp. ” Much more dangerous than all this,
however, is the corruption of ideas. The youthlet
becomes a moon-calf, an “idealist. ” He stands
above science, and in this respect he has reached
the master's heights. On the other hand, he
assumes the airs of a philosopher; he writes for
the Bayreuth Journal; he solves all problems in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Master. But the most ghastly thing of all is the
deterioration of the nerves. Let any one wander
through a large city at night, in all directions he
will hear people doing violence to instruments
with solemn rage and fury, a wild uproar breaks
out at intervals. What is happening? It is the
disciples of Wagner in the act of worshipping
him. . . . Bayreuth is another word for a Hydro.
A typical telegram from Bayreuth would read
bereits bereut (I already repent). Wagner is bad
for young men; he is fatal for women. What
medically speaking is a female Wagnerite? It
seems to me that a doctor could not be too serious
in putting this alternative of conscience to young
women: either one thing or the other. But they
have already made their choice. You cannot
serve two Masters when one of these is Wagner.
Wagner redeemed woman; and in return woman
built Bayreuth for him. Every sacrifice, every
## p. 42 (#78) ##############################################
42 THE CASE OF WAGNER
surrender: there was nothing that they were not
prepared to give him. Woman impoverishes her-
self in favour of the Master, she becomes quite
touching, she stands naked before him. The
female Wagnerite, the most attractive equivocality
that exists to-day: she is the incarnation of
Wagner's cause: his cause triumphs with her as
its symbol. . . . Ah, this old robber! He robs our
young men: he even robs our women as well, and
drags them to his cell. . . . Ah, this old Minotaur !
What has he not already cost us? Every year
processions of the finest young men and maidens
are led into his labyrinth that he may swallow
them up, every year the whole of Europe cries out
“Away to Cretel Away to Cretel" . . .
## p. 43 (#79) ##############################################
SECOND POSTSCRIPT
It seems to me that my letter is open to some
misunderstanding. On certain faces I see the
expression of gratitude; I even hear modest but
merry laughter. I prefer to be understood here
as in other things. But since a certain animal,
the worm of Empire, the famous Rhinoxera, has
become lodged in the vineyards of the German
spirit, nobody any longer understands a word I
say. The Kreuz-Zeitung has brought this home
to me, not to speak of the Litterarisches Central-
blatt. I have given the Germans the deepest
books that they have ever possessed—a sufficient
reason for their not having understood a word of
them. . . . If in this essay I declare war against
Wagner—and incidentally against a certain form
of German taste, if I seem to use strong language
about the cretinism of Bayreuth, it must not be
supposed that I am in the least anxious to glorify
any other musician. Other musicians are not to
be considered by the side of Wagner. Things are
generally bad. Decay is universal. Disease lies
at the very root of things. If Wagner's name
represents the ruin of music, just as Bernini's
stands for the ruin of sculpture, he is not on that
account its cause. All he did was to accelerate
the fall,—though we are quite prepared to admit
that he did it in a way which makes one recoil
with horror from this almost instantaneous decline
43
## p. 44 (#80) ##############################################
44 THE CASE OF WAGNER
and fall to the depths. He possessed the ingenu-
ousness of decadence: this constituted his superi-
ority. He believed in it. He did not halt before
any of its logical consequences. The others hesi-
tated—that is their distinction. They have no
other. What is common to both Wagner and
“the others” consists in this : the decline of all
organising power; the abuse of traditional means,
without the capacity or the aim that would justify
this. The counterfeit imitation of grand forms,
for which nobody nowadays is strong, proud, self-
reliant and healthy enough ; excessive vitality in
small details; passion at all costs; refinement as
an expression of impoverished life, ever more nerves
in the place of muscle. I know only one musician
who to-day would be able to compose an overture
as an organic whole: and nobody else knows him. *
. . He who is famous now, does not write better
music than Wagner, but only less characteristic, less
definite music:-less definite, because half measures,
even in decadence, cannot stand by the side of com-
pleteness. But Wagner was complete; Wagner re-
presented thorough corruption; Wagner has had the
courage, the will, and the conviction for corruption.
and Beethoven—this is blasphemy—and above all
it does not do justice even to Wagner. . . . As a
musician he was no more than what he was as a
man: he became a musician, he became a poet,
because the tyrant in him, his actor's genius, drove
him to be both. Nothing is known concerning
Wagner, so long as his dominating instinct has
not been divined.
Wagner was not instinctively a musician. And
this he proved by the way in which he abandoned
all laws and rules, or, in more precise terms, all
style in music, in order to make what he wanted
with it, i. e. , a rhetorical medium for the stage, a
medium of expression, a means of accentuating an
attitude, a vehicle of suggestion and of the pyscho-
logically picturesque. In this department Wagner
may well stand as an inventor and an innovator
of the first order—he increased the powers of speech
## p. 24 (#60) ##############################################
24 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
of music to an incalculable degree—: he is the Victor
Hugo of music as language, provided always we
allow that under certain circumstances music may
be something which is not music, but speech
—instrument—ancilla dramaturgica. Wagner's
music, not in the tender care of theatrical taste,
which is very tolerant, is simply bad music, perhaps
the worst that has ever been composed. When a
musician can no longer count up to three, he
becomes “dramatic,” he becomes “Wagnerian. ” . . .
Wagner almost discovered the magic which can
be wrought even now by means of music which is
both incoherent and elementary. His consciousness
of this attains to huge proportions, as does also his
instinct to dispense entirely with higher law and
style. The elementary factors—sound, movement,
colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music—
suffice. Wagner never calculates as a musician
with a musician's conscience: all he strains after is
effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows
what he has to make an effect upon l—In this he
is as unhesitating as Schiller was, as any theatrical
man must be; he has also the latter's contempt for
the world which he brings to its knees before him.
A man is an actor when he is ahead of mankind in
his possession of this one view, that everything
which has to strike people as true, must not be
true. This rule was formulated by Talma : it
contains the whole psychology of the actor, it also
contains—and this we need not doubt—all his
morality. Wagner's music is never true.
—But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything
is as it should be. As long as we are young, and
## p. 25 (#61) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 25
º
Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as
rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as
a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire
him in very much the same way as young French-
men admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his
“royal liberality. ” Later on we admire the one as
well as the other for the opposite reason: as masters
and paragons in economy, as prudent amphitryons.
Nobody can equal them in the art of providing a
princely board with such a modest outlay. —The
Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even
sated with the fare which his master conjures up
before him. But we others who, in books as in
music, desire above all to find substance, and who
are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation
of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English,
Wagner does not give us enough to masticate.
His recitative—very little meat, more bones, and
plenty of broth—I christened “alla genovese”: I
had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this
remark, but rather the older recitativo, the recitativo
secco. And as to Wagnerian leitmotif, I fear I lack
the necessary culinary understanding for it. If hard
pressed, I might say that I regard it perhaps as an
ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one's
self of what remains of one's meal. Wagner's
“arias” are still left over. But now I shall hold
my tongue. -
º
9.
Even in his general sketch of the action, Wagner
is above all an actor. The first thing that occurs
to him is a scene which is certain to produce a
## p. 26 (#62) ##############################################
26 THE CASE OF WAGNER
strong effect, a real actio,” with a basso-relievo of
attitudes; an overwhelming scene, this he now
proceeds to elaborate more deeply, and out of it
he draws his characters. The whole of what remains
to be done follows of itself, fully in keeping with a
technical economy which has no reason to be subtle.
It is not Corneille's public that Wagner has to con-
sider, it is merely the nineteenth century. Con-
cerning the “actual requirements of the stage”
Wagner would have about the same opinion as any
other actor of to-day: a series of powerful scenes,
each stronger than the one that preceded it, and,
in between, all kinds of clever nonsense. His first
concern is to guarantee the effect of his work; he
begins with the third act, he approves his work
according to the quality of its final effect. Guided
by this sort of understanding of the stage, there is
not much danger of one's creating a drama unawares.
Drama demands inexorable logic: but what did
Wagner care about logic? Again I say, it was not
Corneille's public that he had to consider; but
* Wote. —It was a real disaster for aesthetics when the
word drama got to be translated by “action. ” Wagner is
not the only culprit here ; the whole world does the same ;-
even the philologists who ought to know better. What
ancient drama had in view was grand fathetic scenes, it
even excluded action (or placed it before the piece or behind
the scenes). The word drama is of Doric origin, and
according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant
“event,” “history,”—both words in a hieratic sense. The
oldest drama represented local legends, “sacred history,”
upon which the foundation of the cult rested (–thus it was
not “action,” but fatality: 3pāv in Doric has nothing to do
with action).
## p. 27 (#63) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 27
merely Germans ! Everybody knows the technical
difficulties before which the dramatist often has to
summon all his strength and frequently to sweat
his blood: the difficulty of making the plot seem
necessary and the unravelment as well, so that both
are conceivable only in a certain way, and so that
each may give the impression of freedom (the
principle of the smallest expenditure of energy).
Now the very last thing that Wagner does is to
sweat blood over the plot; and on this and the
unravelment he certainly spends the smallest
possible amount of energy. Let anybody put one
of Wagner’s “plots” under the microscope, and I
wager that he will be forced to laugh. Nothing is
more enlivening than the dilemma in “Tristan,”
unless it be that in the “Mastersingers. ” Wagner
is no dramatist; let nobody be deceived on this
point. All he did was to love the word “drama”
—he always loved fine words. Nevertheless, in his
writings the word “drama” is merely a misunder-
standing (–and a piece of shrewdness: Wagner
always affected superiority in regard to the word
“opera”—); just as the word “spirit” is a mis-
understanding in the New Testament. —He was
not enough of a psychologist for drama; he in-
stinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how P
—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place . . .
Very modern—eh? Very Parisian very decadent!
. . . Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows
how to unravel with the help of dramatic inven-
tions, are of quite another kind. For example, let
us suppose that Wagner requires a female voice.
A whole act without a woman's voice would be
## p. 28 (#64) ##############################################
28 THE CASE OF WAGNER
impossible ! But in this particular instance not
one of the heroines happens to be free. What
does Wagner do? He emancipates the oldest
woman on earth, Erda: “Step up, aged grand-
mamma! You have got to sing ! ” And Erda
sings. Wagner's end has been achieved. There-
upon he immediately dismisses the old lady: “Why
on earth did you come 2 Off with you! Kindly go
to sleep again! ” In short, a scene full of mytho-
logical awe, before which the Wagnerite wonders
all kinds of things. . .
—“But the substance of Wagner's texts their
mythical substance, their eternal substance:”—
Question: how is this substance, this eternal
substance tested 2 The chemical analyst replies:
Translate Wagner into the real, into the modern,--
let us be even more cruel, and say: into the
bourgeois And what will then become of him P-
Between ourselves, I have tried the experiment.
Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more worthy
of being recommended to a picnic-party, than to
discuss Wagner dressed in a more modern garb:
for instance Parsifal, as a candidate in divinity,
with a public-school education (–the latter, quite
indispensable for pure foolishness). What surprises
await one ! Would you believe it, that Wagner's
heroines one and all, once they have been divested
of the heroic husks, are almost indistinguishable
from Mdme. Bovary ! —just as one can conceive
conversely, of Flaubert's being well able to transform
all his heroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian
women, and then to offer them to Wagner in this
mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally
## p. 29 (#65) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 29
speaking, Wagner does not seem to have become
interested in any other problems than those which
engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day.
Always five paces away from the hospital All
very modern problems, all problems which are at
home in big cities / do not doubt it ! . . . Ilave
you noticed (it is in keeping with this association
of ideas) that Wagner's heroines never have any
children? —They cannot have them. . . . The despair
with which Wagner tackled the problem of arrang-
ing in some way for Siegfried's birth, betrays how
modern his feelings on this point actually were. —
Siegfried “emancipated woman”—but not with
any hope of offspring. —And now here is a fact
which leaves us speechless: Parsifal is Lohengrin's
father How ever did he do it? —Ought one at
this juncture to remember that “chastity works
miracles”? . . .
Wagnerus dirit princeps in castitate auctoritas.
IO.
And now just a word en passant concerning
Wagner's writings: they are among other things
a school of shrewdness. The system of procedures
of which Wagner disposes, might be applied to a
hundred other cases, he that hath ears to hear
let him hear. Perhaps I may lay claim to some
public acknowledgment, if I put three on the most
valuable of these procedures into a precise form.
Everything that Wagner cannot do is bad.
Wagner could do much more than he does;
but his strong principles prevent him.
Everything that Wagner can do, no one will
## p. 30 (#66) ##############################################
3O THE CASE OF WAGNER
ever be able to do after him, no one has ever
done before him, and no one must ever do after
him : Wagner is godly. . . .
These three propositions are the quintessence
of Wagner's writings;– the rest is merely—
“literature. ” \
—Not every kind of music hitherto has been in
need of literature; and it were well, to try and
discover the actual reason of this. Is it perhaps
that Wagner's music is too difficult to understand?
Or did he fear precisely the reverse. —that it was
too easy, that people might not understand it with
sufficient difficulty 2—As a matter of fact, his whole
life long, he did nothing but repeat one pro-
position: that his music did not mean music alone!
But something more | Something immeasurably
more . . . “Mot music alone—no musician would
speak in this way. I repeat, Wagner could not
create things as a whole; he had no choice, he
was obliged to create things in bits; with “motives,”
attitudes, formulae, duplications, and hundreds of
repetitions, he remained a rhetorician in music,+
and that is why he was at bottom forced to press
“this means” into the foreground. “Music can–
never be anything else than, a means”: this was
his theory; but above all it was the only practice
that lay open to him. No musician however thinks
in this way. —Wagner was in need of literature, in
order to persuade the whole world to take his
music seriously, profoundly, “because it meant an
infinity of things”; all his life he was the com-
mentator of the “Idea. ”—What does Elsa stand
for P But without a doubt, Elsa is “the unconscious
## p. 31 (#67) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 3I
~
mind of the people” (–" when I realised this, I
naturally became a thorough revolutionist”—).
Do not let us forget that, when Hegel and
Schelling were misleading the minds of Germany,
Wagner was still young: that he guessed, or rather
fully grasped, that the only thing which Germans
take seriously is—“the idea,”—that is to say, some-
thing obscure, uncertain, wonderful; that among
Germans lucidity is an objection, logic a refutation.
Schopenhauer rigorously pointed out the dishonesty
of Hegel's and Schelling's age, rigorously, but also
unjustly; for he himself, the pessimistic old counter-
feiter, was in no way more “honest” than his more
famous contemporaries. But let us leave morality
out of the question, Hegel is a matter of taste. .
And not only of German but of European taste!
. . A taste which Wagner understood —which
he felt equal to which he has immortalised –
All he did was to apply it to music—he invented a
style for himself, which might mean an “infinity
of things,”—he was Hegel's heir. . . . Music as
“Idea. ”—
And how well Wagner was understood —The
same kind of man who used to gush over Hegel,
now gushes over Wagner; in his school they even
write Hegelian. ” But he who understood Wagner
best, was the German youthlet. The two words
“infinity” and “meaning ” were sufficient for this:
at their sound the youthlet immediately began to
feel exceptionally happy. Wagner did not conquer
these boys with music, but with the “idea”:—it is
* Hegel and his school wrote notoriously obscure German.
–7? .
## p. 32 (#68) ##############################################
32 THE CASE OF WAGNER
the enigmatical vagueness of his art, its game of
hide-and-seek amid a hundred symbols, its poly-
chromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads.
It is Wagner's genius for forming clouds, his
sweeps and swoops through the air, his ubiquity and
nullibiety—precisely the same qualities with which
Hegel led and lured in his time ! —Moreover in
the presence of Wagner's multifariousness, pleni-
tude and arbitrariness, they seem to themselves
justified—“saved. ” Tremulously they listen while
the great symbols in his art seem to make them-
selves heard from out the misty distance, with a
gentle roll of thunder, and they are not at all dis-
pleased if at times it gets a little grey, gruesome
and cold. Are they not one and all, like Wagner
himself, on quite intimate terms with bad weather,
with German weather | Wotan is their God : but
Wotan is the God of bad weather. . . . They are
right, how could these German youths—in their
present condition,-miss what we others, we
halcyonians, miss in Wagner? i. e. : la gaya scienza;
light feet, wit, fire, grave, grand logic, stellar danc-
ing, wanton intellectuality, the vibrating light of
the South, the calm sea—perfection. . . .
II.
—I have mentioned the sphere to which Wagner
belongs—certainly not to the history of music.
What, however, does he mean historically? —The
rise of the actor in music: a momentous event
which not only leads me to think but also to fear.
In a word: “Wagner and Liszt. ” Never yet
## p. 33 (#69) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 33
ſ
have the “uprightness” and “genuineness” of Tl
musicians been put to such a dangerous test. It is
glaringly obvious: great success, mob success is
no longer the achievement of the genuine,—in order
to get it a man must be an actor —Victor Hugo
and Richard Wagner—they both prove one and
the same thing: that in declining civilisations,
wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuine-
ness becomes superfluous, prejudicial, unfavourable.
The actor, alone, can still kindle great enthusiasm. —
And thus it is his golden age which is now dawning,
—his and that of all those who are in any way
related to him. With drums and fifes, Wagner
marches at the head of all artists in declamation,
in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing_
the conductors of orchestras, the scene-shifters and
stage-singers, not to forget the orchestra:-he
“delivered” them from monotony. . . . The move-
ment that Wagner created has spread even to the
land of knowledge: whole sciences pertaining to
music are rising slowly, out of centuries of
scholasticism. As an example of what I mean,
let me point more particularly to Riemann's
services to rhythmics; he was the first who called
attention to the leading idea in punctuation—even
for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad
word; he called it “phrasing”)—All these people,
and I say it with gratitude, are the best, the most
respectable among Wagner's admirers—they have
a perfect right to honour Wagner. The same
instinct unites them with one another; in him
they recognise their highest type, and since he
has inflamed them with his own ardour they feel
3
## p. 34 (#70) ##############################################
34 THE CASE OF WAGNER
themselves transformed into power, even into great
power. In this quarter, if anywhere, Wagner's
influence has really been beneficent. Never before
has there been so much thinking, willing, and
industry in this sphere. Wagner endowed all
these artists with a new conscience: what they
now exact and obtain from themselves, they had
never exacted before Wagner's time—before then
they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails
on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most
difficult things are expected, blame is severe, praise
very scarce,—the good and the excellent have
become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary,
nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only
with ruined voices: this has a more “dramatic”
effect. Even talent is out of the question. Ex-
pressiveness at all costs, which is what the
Wagnerian ideal—the ideal of decadence—de-
mands, is hardly compatible with talent. All
that is required for this is virtue—that is to say,
training, automatism, “self-denial.
” Neither taste,
voices, nor gifts; Wagner's stage requires but one
thing: Germans / . . . The definition of a German:
an obedient man with long legs. . . . There is a
deep significance in the fact that the rise of
Wagner should have coincided with the rise of the
“Empire”: both phenomena are a proof of one
and the same thing—obedience and long legs. -
Never have people been more obedient, never have
they been so well ordered about. The conductors
of Wagnerian orchestras, more particularly, are
worthy of an age, which posterity will one day
call, with timid awe, the classical age of war.
## p. 35 (#71) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 35
Wagner understood how to command; in this
respect, too, he was a great teacher. He com-
manded as a man who had exercised an inexorable
will over himself—as one who had practised lifelong
discipline: Wagner was, perhaps, the greatest º
ample of self-violence in the whole of the histo
of art (–even Alfieri, who in other respects is his
next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a
Torinese).
I2.
This view, that our actors have become more
worthy of respect than heretofore, does not imply
that I believe them to have become less danger-
ous. . . . But who is in any doubt as to what I
want, as to what the three requisitions are con-
cerning which my wrath and my care and love
of art, have made me open my mouth on this
occasion?
That the stage should not become master of the arts.
That the actor should not become the corrupter of
the genuine.
That music should not become an art of lying.
*
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
|
t
s
i
i
## p. 36 (#72) ##############################################
POSTSCRIPT
THE gravity of these last words allows me at
this point to introduce a few sentences out of an
unprinted essay which will at least leave no doubt
as to my earnestness in regard to this question.
The title of this essay is: “What Wagner has cost
us. ” -
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. Even to-day a vague feeling that this
is so, still prevails. Even Wagner's success, his
triumph, did not uproot this feeling thoroughly.
But formerly it was strong, it was terrible; it was
a gloomy hate throughout almost three-quarters
of Wagner's life. The resistance which he met
with among us Germans cannot be too highly
valued or too highly honoured. People guarded
themselves against him as against an illness, not
with arguments—it is impossible to refute an ill-
ness—, but with obstruction, with mistrust, with
repugnance, with loathing, with sombre earnestness,
as though he were a great rampant danger. The
aesthetes gave themselves away when out of three
schools of German philosophy they waged an
absurd war against Wagner's principles with “ifs”
and “fors”—what did he care about principles,
even his own l—The Germans themselves had
enough instinctive good sense to dispense with
every “if” and “for” in this matter. An instinct
is weakened when it becomes conscious: for by
36
## p. 37 (#73) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 37
becoming conscious it makes itself feeble. If there
were any signs that in spite of the universal
character of European decadence there was still a
modicum of health, still an instinctive premonition
of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the
German soul, then it would be precisely this blunt
resistance to Wagner which I should least like to
see underrated. It does us honour, it gives us some
reason to hope : France no longer has such an
amount of health at her disposal. The Germans,
these lotterers par excellence, as history shows, are
to-day the most backward among the civilised
nations of Europe: this has its advantages, for
they are thus relatively the youngest.
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. It is only quite recently that the Germans
have overcome a sort of dread of him, the desire
to be rid of him occurred to them again and again. ”
Does anybody remember a very curious occurrence
in which, quite unexpectedly towards the end, this
* Was Wagner a German at all? There are reasons
enough for putting this question. It is difficult to find a
single German trait in his character. Great learner that
he was, he naturally imitated a great deal that was German
—but that is all. His very soul contradicts everything which
hitherto has been regarded as German; not to mention
German musicians ! —His father was an actor of the name
of Geyer. . . . That which has been popularised hitherto
as “Wagner's life” is fable convenue if not something worse.
I confess my doubts on any point which is vouched for by
Wagner alone. He was not proud enough to be able to
suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride than
he. Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even
in his biography, -he remained an actor. -
## p. 38 (#74) ##############################################
38 THE CASE OF WAGNER
old feeling once more manifested itself? It
happened at Wagner's funeral. The first Wagner
Society, the one in Munich, laid a wreath on his grave
with this inscription, which immediately became
famous: “Salvation to the Saviour ! ” Everybody
admired the lofty inspiration which had dictated
this inscription, as also the taste which seemed to
be the privilege of the followers of Wagner. Many
also, however (it was singular enough), made this
slight alteration in it: “Salvation from the Saviour. ”
—People began to breathe again. -
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. Let us try to estimate the influence
of this worship upon culture. Whom did this
movement press to the front? What did it make
ever more and more pre-eminent? —In the first
place the layman's arrogance, the arrogance of the
art-maniac. Now these people are organising
societies, they wish to make their taste prevail, they
even wish to pose as judges in rebus musicis et
musicantibus. Secondly: an ever increasing in-
difference towards severe, noble and conscientious
schooling in the service of art; and in its place
the belief in genius, or in plain English, cheeky
dilettantism (–the formula for this is to be found
in the Mastersingers). Thirdly, and this is the
worst of all: Theatrocracy—, the craziness of a
belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the
right of the theatre to rule supreme over the arts,
over Art in general. . . . But this should be
shouted into the face of Wagnerites a hundred
times over: that the theatre is something lower than
art, something secondary, something coarsened,
## p. 39 (#75) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 39
above all something suitably distorted and falsified
for the mob. In this respect Wagner altered
nothing: Bayreuth is grand Opera—and not even
good opera. . . . The stage is a form of Demolatry
in the realm of taste, the stage is an insurrection
of the mob, a plebiscite against good taste. . . .
The case of Wagner proves this fact: he captivated
the masses—he depraved taste, he even perverted
our taste for opera ! —
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. What has Wagner-worship made out
of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit? To
him belong that ambiguity and equivocation and
all other qualities which can convince the uncertain
without making them conscious of why they have
been convinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer
on a grand scale. There is nothing exhausted,
nothing effete, nothing dangerous to life, nothing
that slanders the world in the realm of spirit, which
has not secretly found shelter in his art; he con-
ceals the blackest obscurantism in the luminous
orbs of the ideal. He flatters every nihilistic
(Buddhistic) instinct and togs it out in music; he
flatters every form of Christianity, every religious
expression of decadence. He that hath ears to
hear let him hear: everything that has ever grown
out of the soil of impoverished life, the whole
counterfeit coinage of the transcendental and of
a Beyond found its most sublime advocate in
Wagner's art, not in formulae (Wagner is too
clever to use formulae), but in the persuasion of the
senses which in their turn makes the spirit weary
and morbid. Music in the form of Circe . . . in
## p. 40 (#76) ##############################################
4O THE CASE OF WAGNER
this respect his last work is his greatest master-
piece. In the art of seduction “Parsifal” will for
ever maintain its rank as a stroke of genius. . . . I
admire this work. I would fain have composed it
myself. Wagner was never better inspired than
towards the end. The subtlety with which beauty
and disease are united here, reaches such a height,
that it casts so to speak a shadow upon all
Wagner's earlier achievements: it seems too bright,
too healthy. Do ye understand this? Health and
brightness acting like a shadow P Almost like an
objection? . . . To this extent are we already pure
fools. . . . Never was their a greater Master in
heavy hieratic perfumes-Never on earth has there
been such a connoisseur of paltry infinities, of all
that thrills, of extravagant excesses, of all the
feminism from out the vocabulary of happiness!
My friends, do but drink the philtres of this art
Nowhere will ye find a more pleasant method of
enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manli-
ness in the shade of a rosebush. . . . Ah, this old
magician, mightiest of Klingsors; how he wages
war against us with his art, against us free spirits!
How he appeals to every form of cowardice of the
modern soul with his charming girlish notes
There never was such a mortal hatred of know-
ledge | One must be a very cynic in order to resist
seduction here. One must be able to bite in order
to resist worshipping at this shrine. Very well, old
seducer! The cynic cautions you—cave canem. . . .
One pays dearly for having been a follower of
Wagner. I contemplate the youthlets who have
long been exposed to his infection. The first
## p. 41 (#77) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 41
relatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of
their taste. Wagner acts like chronic recourse to
the bottle. He stultifies, he befouls the stomach.
His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling for
rhythm. What the Wagnerite calls rhythmical is
what I call, to use a Greek metaphor, “stirring
a swamp. ” Much more dangerous than all this,
however, is the corruption of ideas. The youthlet
becomes a moon-calf, an “idealist. ” He stands
above science, and in this respect he has reached
the master's heights. On the other hand, he
assumes the airs of a philosopher; he writes for
the Bayreuth Journal; he solves all problems in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Master. But the most ghastly thing of all is the
deterioration of the nerves. Let any one wander
through a large city at night, in all directions he
will hear people doing violence to instruments
with solemn rage and fury, a wild uproar breaks
out at intervals. What is happening? It is the
disciples of Wagner in the act of worshipping
him. . . . Bayreuth is another word for a Hydro.
A typical telegram from Bayreuth would read
bereits bereut (I already repent). Wagner is bad
for young men; he is fatal for women. What
medically speaking is a female Wagnerite? It
seems to me that a doctor could not be too serious
in putting this alternative of conscience to young
women: either one thing or the other. But they
have already made their choice. You cannot
serve two Masters when one of these is Wagner.
Wagner redeemed woman; and in return woman
built Bayreuth for him. Every sacrifice, every
## p. 42 (#78) ##############################################
42 THE CASE OF WAGNER
surrender: there was nothing that they were not
prepared to give him. Woman impoverishes her-
self in favour of the Master, she becomes quite
touching, she stands naked before him. The
female Wagnerite, the most attractive equivocality
that exists to-day: she is the incarnation of
Wagner's cause: his cause triumphs with her as
its symbol. . . . Ah, this old robber! He robs our
young men: he even robs our women as well, and
drags them to his cell. . . . Ah, this old Minotaur !
What has he not already cost us? Every year
processions of the finest young men and maidens
are led into his labyrinth that he may swallow
them up, every year the whole of Europe cries out
“Away to Cretel Away to Cretel" . . .
## p. 43 (#79) ##############################################
SECOND POSTSCRIPT
It seems to me that my letter is open to some
misunderstanding. On certain faces I see the
expression of gratitude; I even hear modest but
merry laughter. I prefer to be understood here
as in other things. But since a certain animal,
the worm of Empire, the famous Rhinoxera, has
become lodged in the vineyards of the German
spirit, nobody any longer understands a word I
say. The Kreuz-Zeitung has brought this home
to me, not to speak of the Litterarisches Central-
blatt. I have given the Germans the deepest
books that they have ever possessed—a sufficient
reason for their not having understood a word of
them. . . . If in this essay I declare war against
Wagner—and incidentally against a certain form
of German taste, if I seem to use strong language
about the cretinism of Bayreuth, it must not be
supposed that I am in the least anxious to glorify
any other musician. Other musicians are not to
be considered by the side of Wagner. Things are
generally bad. Decay is universal. Disease lies
at the very root of things. If Wagner's name
represents the ruin of music, just as Bernini's
stands for the ruin of sculpture, he is not on that
account its cause. All he did was to accelerate
the fall,—though we are quite prepared to admit
that he did it in a way which makes one recoil
with horror from this almost instantaneous decline
43
## p. 44 (#80) ##############################################
44 THE CASE OF WAGNER
and fall to the depths. He possessed the ingenu-
ousness of decadence: this constituted his superi-
ority. He believed in it. He did not halt before
any of its logical consequences. The others hesi-
tated—that is their distinction. They have no
other. What is common to both Wagner and
“the others” consists in this : the decline of all
organising power; the abuse of traditional means,
without the capacity or the aim that would justify
this. The counterfeit imitation of grand forms,
for which nobody nowadays is strong, proud, self-
reliant and healthy enough ; excessive vitality in
small details; passion at all costs; refinement as
an expression of impoverished life, ever more nerves
in the place of muscle. I know only one musician
who to-day would be able to compose an overture
as an organic whole: and nobody else knows him. *
. . He who is famous now, does not write better
music than Wagner, but only less characteristic, less
definite music:-less definite, because half measures,
even in decadence, cannot stand by the side of com-
pleteness. But Wagner was complete; Wagner re-
presented thorough corruption; Wagner has had the
courage, the will, and the conviction for corruption.
