He is
especially
the musician of a species of dis-
satisfied women.
satisfied women.
Nietzsche - v08 - The Case of Wagner
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.
What does Johannes Brahms matter? . . . It was
his good fortune to be misunderstood by Germany
he was taken to be an antagonist of Wagner—
people required an antagonist! —But he did not
write necessary music, above all he wrote too
much music l—When one is not rich one should
* This undoubtedly refers to Nietsche's only disciple and
friend, Peter Gast. —Tr.
## p. 45 (#81) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 45
r
at least have enough pride to be poor . . . The
sympathy which here and there was meted out to
Brahms, apart from party interests and party mis-
understandings, was for a long time a riddle to
me: until one day through an accident, almost, I
discovered that he affected a particular type of
man. He has the melancholy of impotence. His
creations are not the result of plenitude, he thirsts
after abundance. Apart from what he plagiarises,
from what he borrows from ancient or exotically
modern styles—he is a master in the art of copy-
ing, there remains as his most individual quality
a longing. . . . And this is what the dissatisfied
of all kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in
him. He is much too little of a personality, too
little of a central figure. . . . The “impersonal,”
those who are not self-centred, love him for this.
He is especially the musician of a species of dis-
satisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we
find the female Wagnerite—just as we find Wagner
himself fifty paces ahead of Brahms-The female
Wagnerite is a more definite, a more interesting,
and above all, a more attractive type. Brahms is
touching so long as he dreams or mourns over
himself in private—in this respect he is modern ;-
he becomes cold, we no longer feel at one with
him when he poses as the child of the classics.
. . . People like to call Brahms Beethoven's heir :
I know of no more cautious euphemism. —All
that which to-day makes a claim to being the
grand style in music is on precisely that account
either false to us or false to itself. This alterna-
tive is suspicious enough : in itself it contains a
## p. 46 (#82) ##############################################
46 THE CASE OF WAGNER
!
casuistic question concerning the value of the two
cases. The instinct of the majority protests
against the alternative; “false to us”—they do
not wish to be cheated;—and I myself would
certainly always prefer this type to the other
(“False to itself”). This is my taste. —Expressed
more clearly for the sake of the “poor in spirit”
it amounts to this: Brahms or Wagner. . . .
Brahms is not an actor. —A very great part of
other musicians may be summed up in the concept
Brahms-I do not wish to say anything about the
clever apes of Wagner, as for instance Goldmark:
when one has “The Queen of Sheba" to one's
name, one belongs to a menagerie, one ought
to put oneself on show. —Nowadays all things that
can be done well and even with a master hand
are small. In this department alone is honesty
still possible. Nothing, however, can cure music
as a whole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to
be the expression of general physiological contra-
diction,--which is, in fact, to be modern.
The best instruction, the most conscientious
schooling, the most thorough familiarity, yea, and
even isolation, with the Old Masters, all this only
acts as a palliative, or, more strictly speaking, has
but an illusory effect, because the first condition
of the right thing is no longer in our bodies ;
whether this first condition be the strong race of
a Händel or the overflowing animal spirits of a
Rossini. Not everyone has the right to every
teacher: and this holds good of whole epochs. -In
itself it is not impossible that there are still remains
of stronger natures, typical unadapted men, some-
4
## p. 47 (#83) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 47
where in Europe: from this quarter the advent of
a somewhat belated form of beauty and perfection,
even in music, might still be hoped for. But the
most that we can expect to see are exceptional
cases. From the rule, that corruption is paramount,
that corruption is a fatality, not even a God can
save music.
## p. 48 (#84) ##############################################
º
wº
w
2-
E PILOG UE
AND now let us take breath and withdraw a
moment from this narrow world which necessarily
must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries
relative to the value of persons. A philosopher
feels that he wants to wash his hands after he has
concerned himself so long with the “Case of
Wagner. ” I shall now give my notion of what is
modern. According to the measure of energy of
every age, there is also a standard that determines
which virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden.
The age either has the virtues of ascending life, in
which case it resists the virtues of degeneration
with all its deepest instincts. Or it is in itself an
age of degeneration, in which case it requires the
virtues of declining life, in which case it hates
everything that justifies itself, solely as being the
outcome of a plenitude, or a superabundance of
strength. AEsthetic is inextricably bound up with
these biological principles: there is decadent
aesthetic, and classical aesthetic, - “beauty in
itself” is just as much a chimera as any other
kind of idealism. —Within the narrow sphere of
the so-called moral values, no greater antithesis
could be found than that of master-morality and
the morality of Christian valuations: the latter
having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil.
(—The gospels present us with the same physio-
logical types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky),
48
## p. 49 (#85) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 49
the master-morality (“Roman,” “pagan,”“classical,”
“Renaissance”), on the other hand, being the sym-
bolic speech of well-constitutedness, of ascending
life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle.
Master-morality affirms just as instinctively as
Christian morality demies (“God,” “Beyond,” “self-
denial,”—all of them negations). The first reflects
its plenitude upon things, it transfigures, it em-
bellishes, it rationalises the world,—the latter im-
poverishes, bleaches, mars the value of things; it
suppresses the world. “World” is a Christian term
of abuse. These antithetical forms in the optics
of values, are both necessary: they are different
points of view which cannot be circumvented either
with arguments or counter-arguments. One can-
not refute Christianity: it is impossible to refute
a diseased eyesight. That people should have
combated pessimism as if it had been a philo-
sophy, was the very acme of learned stupidity.
The concepts “true” and “untrue” do not seem to
me to have any sense in optics. -That, alone, which
has to be guarded against is the falsity, the instinc-
tive duplicity which would fain regard this anti-
thesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner did,
—and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of
no mean order. To cast side-long glances at
master-morality, at noble morality (–Icelandic
saga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence
of these values), and at the same time to have the
opposite teaching, the “gospel of the lowly,” the
doctrine of the need of salvation, on one's lips' . . .
Incidentally, I admire the modesty of Christians
who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I could not
4
## p. 50 (#86) ##############################################
50 THE CASE OF WAGNER
endure to hear the sound of certain words on
Wagner's lips. There are some concepts which
are too good for Bayreuth. . . . What? Christianity
adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps by female
Wagnerites—for, in his latter days Wagner was
thoroughly feminini generis—? Again I say, the
Christians of to-day are too modest for me. . . .
If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps
a Father of the Church —The need of salvation,
the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing
in common with such clowns: it is the most
straightforward expression of decadence, it is the
most convincing and most painful affirmation of
decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The
Christian wishes to be rid of himself. Le mot est
toujours haissable. Noble morality, master-morality,
on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant saying
of yea to one's self-it is the self-affirmation and
self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime
symbols and practices; but only “because its heart
is too full. ” The whole of beautiful art and of
great art belongs here: their common essence is
gratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive
repugnance to decadents, and a scorn and horror
of the latter's symbolism: such things almost prove
it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as
a fada superstitio: let me call to your minds the
feelings which the last German of noble taste—
Goethe–had in regard to the cross. It is idle
to look for more valuable, more necessary con-
trasts. ” . . .
* My “Genealogy of Morals” contains the best exposi-
tion of the antithesis “noble morality” and “Christian
## p. 51 (#87) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 51
But the kind of falsity which is characteristic
of the Bayreuthians is not exceptional to-day.
We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian
gentleman. This innocence in contradiction, this
“clean conscience” in falsehood, is rather modern
par excellence, with it modernity is almost defined.
Biologically, modern man represents a contradiction
of values, he sits between two stools, he says yea
and nay in one breath. No wonder that it is
precisely in our age that falseness itself became
flesh and blood, and even genius ! No wonder
Wagner dwelt amongst us! It was not without
reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of
modernity. . . . But all of us, though we do not
know it, involuntarily have values, words, formulae,
and morals in our bodies, which are quite anta-
gonistic in their origin—regarded from a physio-
logical standpoint, we are false. . . . How would
a diagnosis of the modern soul begin? With a deter-
mined incision into this agglomeration of contra-
dictory instincts, with the total suppression of its
antagonistic values, with vivisection applied to its
most instructive case. To philosophers the “Case
of Wagner” is a windfall — this essay, as you
observe, was inspired by gratitude.
morality”; a more decisive turning point in the history of
religious and moral science does not perhaps exist. This
book, which is a touchstone by which I can discover who are
my peers, rejoices in being accessible only to the most
elevated and most severe minds : the others have not the
ears to hear me. One must have one's passion in things,
wherein no one has passion nowadays.
## p. 52 (#88) ##############################################
## p. 53 (#89) ##############################################
NIETZSC HE
CONTRA
WAGNER
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
## p. 54 (#90) ##############################################
## p. 55 (#91) ##############################################
PR E FA C E
THE following chapters have been selected from
past works of mine, and not without care. Some
of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there,
of course, they will be found to have been made a
little more intelligible, but above all, more brief.
Read consecutively, they can leave no one in any
doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning
Wagner: we are antipodes. The reader will come
to other conclusions, too, in his perusal of these
pages: for instance, that this is an essay for
psychologists and not for Germans. . . . I have
my readers everywhere, in Vienna, St Petersburg,
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and New York—
but I have none in Europe's Flat-land–Germany.
. . . And I might even have something to say to
Italians whom I love just as much as I .
Quousque tandem, Crispi . . . Triple alliance: a
people can only conclude a mésalliance with the
“Empire. ” . . .
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
TURIN, Christmas 1888.
## p. 56 (#92) ##############################################
## p. 57 (#93) ##############################################
NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
-—
WHEREIN I ADMIRE WAGNER.
I BELIEVE that artists very often do not know
what they are best able to do. They are much
too vain. Their minds are directed to something
prouder than merely to appear like little plants,
which, with freshness, rareness, and beauty, know
how to sprout from their soil with real perfection.
The ultimate goodness of their own garden and
vineyard is superciliously under-estimated by
them, and their love and their insight are not
of the same quality. Here is a musician who is
a greater master than anyone else in the dis-
covering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed,
and tormented souls, who can endow even dumb
misery with speech. Nobody can approach him
in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably
touching joy of a last, a very last, and all too short
gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses
those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul,
when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder,
and at every moment something may spring out
of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating
from out the nethermost depths of human happi-
57
## p. 58 (#94) ##############################################
58 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
ness, and, so to speak, from out man's empty
bumper, in which the bitterest and most repulsive
drops have mingled with the sweetest for good or
evil at last. He knows that weary shuffling along
of the soul which is no longer able either to spring
or to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk; he
has the modest glance of concealed suffering, of
understanding without comfort, of leave-taking
without word or sign; verily as the Orpheus of
all secret misery he is greater than anyone, and
many a thing was introduced into art for the first
time by him, which hitherto had not been given
expression, had not even been thought worthy of
art—the cynical revolts, for instance, of which only
the greatest sufferer is capable, also many a small
and quite microscopical feature of the soul, as it
were the scales of its amphibious nature—yes
indeed, he is the master of everything very small.
But this he refuses to be His tastes are much
more in love with vast walls and with daring
frescoes' . . . He does not see that his spirit
has another desire and bent—a totally different
outlook—that it prefers to squat peacefully in the
corners of broken-down houses: concealed in this
way, and hidden even from himself, he paints his
really great masterpieces, all of which are very
short, often only one bar in length—there, only,
does he become quite good, great and perfect,
perhaps there alone. —Wagner is one who has
suffered much—and this elevates him above other
musicians. —I admire Wagner wherever he sets
himself to music. —
## p. 59 (#95) ##############################################
WHEREIN I RAISE OBJECTIONS.
With all this I do not wish to imply that I
regard this music as healthy, and least of all in
those places where it speaks of Wagner himself.
My objections to Wagner's music are physiological
objections. Why should I therefore begin by
clothing them in aesthetic formulae P AEsthetic is
indeed nothing more than applied physiology. —
The fact I bring forward, my “petit fait vrai,” is
that I can no longer breathe with ease when this
music begins to have its effect upon me; that my
foot immediately begins to feel indignant at it and
rebels: for what it needs is time, dance, march :
even the young German Kaiser could not march to
Wagner's Imperial March,--what my foot demands
in the first place from music is that ecstasy which
lies in good walking, stepping and dancing. But
do not my stomach, my heart, my circulation also
protest? Are not my intestines also troubled P And
do I not become hoarse unawares? . . . in order to
listen to Wagner I require Géraudel's Pastilles. . . .
And then I ask myself, what is it that my whole
body must have from music in general? for there
is no such thing as a soul. . . . I believe it must
have relief: as if all animal functions were accele-
rated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant
rhythms; as if brazen and leaden life could lose its
weight by means of delicate and smooth melodies.
My melancholy would fain rest its head in the
haunts and abysses of perfection: for this reason
I need music. But Wagner makes one ill—What
do I care about the theatre P What do I care
59
## p. 60 (#96) ##############################################
6O NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
about the spasms of its moral ecstasies in which
the mob—and who is not the mob to-day P-
rejoices? What do I care about the whole panto-
mimic hocus-pocus of the actor? You are beginning
to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart.
For the stage, this mob art par excellence, my soul
has that deepest scorn felt by every artist to-day.
With a stage success a man sinks to such an extent
in my esteem as to drop out of sight; failure in
this quarter makes me prick my ears, makes me
begin to pay attention. But this was not so with
Wagner; next to the Wagner who created the
most unique music that has ever existed there was
the Wagner who was essentially a man of the stage,
an actor, the most enthusiastic mimomaniac that
has perhaps existed on earth, even as a musician.
And let it be said en passant that if Wagner's
theory was “drama is the object, music is only a
means”—his practice was from beginning to end,
“the attitude is the end, drama and even music can
never be anything else than means. ” Music as
the manner of accentuating, of strengthening, and
deepening dramatic poses and all things which
please the senses of the actor; and Wagnerian
drama only an opportunity for a host of interesting
attitudes l—Alongside of all other instincts he had
the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in everything:
and, as I have already said, as a musician also. -On
one occasion, and not without trouble, I made this
clear to a Wagnerite pur sang, clearness and a
Wagnerite I won't say another word. There
were reasons for adding; “For heaven's sake, be a
little more true unto yourself! We are not in
## p. 61 (#97) ##############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 61
Bayreuth now. In Bayreuth people are only
upright in the mass; the individual lies, he even
lies to himself. One leaves oneself at home when
one goes to Bayreuth, one gives up all right to
one's own tongue and choice, to one's own taste and
even to one's own courage, one knows these things
no longer as one is wont to have them and practise
them before God and the world and between one's
own four walls. In the theatre no one brings the
finest senses of his art with him, and least of all
the artist who works for the theatre, for here
loneliness is lacking; everything perfect does not
suffer a witness. . . . In the theatre one becomes
mob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron,
idiot—Wagnerite: there, the most personal con-
science is bound to submit to the levelling charm
of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules,
there one becomes a neighbour. ”
WAGNER AS A DANGER.
I.
The aim after which more modern music is
striving, which is now given the strong but obscure
name of “unending melody,” can be clearly under-
stood by comparing it to one's feelings on entering
the sea. Gradually one loses one's footing and one
ultimately abandons oneself to the mercy or fury
of the elements: one has to swim. In the solemn,
or fiery, swinging movement, first slow and then
quick, of old music—one had to do something quite
different; one had to dance. The measure which
was required for this and the control of certain
## p. 62 (#98) ##############################################
62 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
balanced degrees of time and energy, forced the
soul of the listener to continual sobriety of thought.
—Upon the counterplay of the cooler currents of
air which came from this sobriety, and from the
warmer breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all
good music rested — Richard Wagner wanted
another kind of movement, he overthrew the
physiological first principle of all music before his
time. It was no longer a matter of walking or
dancing, we must swim, we must hover. . . . This
perhaps decides the whole matter. “Unending
melody” really wants to break all the symmetry
of time and strength; it actually scorns these
things—Its wealth of invention resides precisely in
what to an older ear sounds like rhythmic paradox
and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence
of such a taste there would arise a danger for
music—so great that we can imagine none greater
—the complete degeneration of the feeling for
rhythm, chaos in the place of rhythm. . . . The
danger reaches its climax when such music cleaves
ever more closely to naturalistic play-acting and
pantomime, which governed by no laws of form,
aim at effect and nothing more. .
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.
What does Johannes Brahms matter? . . . It was
his good fortune to be misunderstood by Germany
he was taken to be an antagonist of Wagner—
people required an antagonist! —But he did not
write necessary music, above all he wrote too
much music l—When one is not rich one should
* This undoubtedly refers to Nietsche's only disciple and
friend, Peter Gast. —Tr.
## p. 45 (#81) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 45
r
at least have enough pride to be poor . . . The
sympathy which here and there was meted out to
Brahms, apart from party interests and party mis-
understandings, was for a long time a riddle to
me: until one day through an accident, almost, I
discovered that he affected a particular type of
man. He has the melancholy of impotence. His
creations are not the result of plenitude, he thirsts
after abundance. Apart from what he plagiarises,
from what he borrows from ancient or exotically
modern styles—he is a master in the art of copy-
ing, there remains as his most individual quality
a longing. . . . And this is what the dissatisfied
of all kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in
him. He is much too little of a personality, too
little of a central figure. . . . The “impersonal,”
those who are not self-centred, love him for this.
He is especially the musician of a species of dis-
satisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we
find the female Wagnerite—just as we find Wagner
himself fifty paces ahead of Brahms-The female
Wagnerite is a more definite, a more interesting,
and above all, a more attractive type. Brahms is
touching so long as he dreams or mourns over
himself in private—in this respect he is modern ;-
he becomes cold, we no longer feel at one with
him when he poses as the child of the classics.
. . . People like to call Brahms Beethoven's heir :
I know of no more cautious euphemism. —All
that which to-day makes a claim to being the
grand style in music is on precisely that account
either false to us or false to itself. This alterna-
tive is suspicious enough : in itself it contains a
## p. 46 (#82) ##############################################
46 THE CASE OF WAGNER
!
casuistic question concerning the value of the two
cases. The instinct of the majority protests
against the alternative; “false to us”—they do
not wish to be cheated;—and I myself would
certainly always prefer this type to the other
(“False to itself”). This is my taste. —Expressed
more clearly for the sake of the “poor in spirit”
it amounts to this: Brahms or Wagner. . . .
Brahms is not an actor. —A very great part of
other musicians may be summed up in the concept
Brahms-I do not wish to say anything about the
clever apes of Wagner, as for instance Goldmark:
when one has “The Queen of Sheba" to one's
name, one belongs to a menagerie, one ought
to put oneself on show. —Nowadays all things that
can be done well and even with a master hand
are small. In this department alone is honesty
still possible. Nothing, however, can cure music
as a whole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to
be the expression of general physiological contra-
diction,--which is, in fact, to be modern.
The best instruction, the most conscientious
schooling, the most thorough familiarity, yea, and
even isolation, with the Old Masters, all this only
acts as a palliative, or, more strictly speaking, has
but an illusory effect, because the first condition
of the right thing is no longer in our bodies ;
whether this first condition be the strong race of
a Händel or the overflowing animal spirits of a
Rossini. Not everyone has the right to every
teacher: and this holds good of whole epochs. -In
itself it is not impossible that there are still remains
of stronger natures, typical unadapted men, some-
4
## p. 47 (#83) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 47
where in Europe: from this quarter the advent of
a somewhat belated form of beauty and perfection,
even in music, might still be hoped for. But the
most that we can expect to see are exceptional
cases. From the rule, that corruption is paramount,
that corruption is a fatality, not even a God can
save music.
## p. 48 (#84) ##############################################
º
wº
w
2-
E PILOG UE
AND now let us take breath and withdraw a
moment from this narrow world which necessarily
must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries
relative to the value of persons. A philosopher
feels that he wants to wash his hands after he has
concerned himself so long with the “Case of
Wagner. ” I shall now give my notion of what is
modern. According to the measure of energy of
every age, there is also a standard that determines
which virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden.
The age either has the virtues of ascending life, in
which case it resists the virtues of degeneration
with all its deepest instincts. Or it is in itself an
age of degeneration, in which case it requires the
virtues of declining life, in which case it hates
everything that justifies itself, solely as being the
outcome of a plenitude, or a superabundance of
strength. AEsthetic is inextricably bound up with
these biological principles: there is decadent
aesthetic, and classical aesthetic, - “beauty in
itself” is just as much a chimera as any other
kind of idealism. —Within the narrow sphere of
the so-called moral values, no greater antithesis
could be found than that of master-morality and
the morality of Christian valuations: the latter
having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil.
(—The gospels present us with the same physio-
logical types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky),
48
## p. 49 (#85) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 49
the master-morality (“Roman,” “pagan,”“classical,”
“Renaissance”), on the other hand, being the sym-
bolic speech of well-constitutedness, of ascending
life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle.
Master-morality affirms just as instinctively as
Christian morality demies (“God,” “Beyond,” “self-
denial,”—all of them negations). The first reflects
its plenitude upon things, it transfigures, it em-
bellishes, it rationalises the world,—the latter im-
poverishes, bleaches, mars the value of things; it
suppresses the world. “World” is a Christian term
of abuse. These antithetical forms in the optics
of values, are both necessary: they are different
points of view which cannot be circumvented either
with arguments or counter-arguments. One can-
not refute Christianity: it is impossible to refute
a diseased eyesight. That people should have
combated pessimism as if it had been a philo-
sophy, was the very acme of learned stupidity.
The concepts “true” and “untrue” do not seem to
me to have any sense in optics. -That, alone, which
has to be guarded against is the falsity, the instinc-
tive duplicity which would fain regard this anti-
thesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner did,
—and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of
no mean order. To cast side-long glances at
master-morality, at noble morality (–Icelandic
saga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence
of these values), and at the same time to have the
opposite teaching, the “gospel of the lowly,” the
doctrine of the need of salvation, on one's lips' . . .
Incidentally, I admire the modesty of Christians
who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I could not
4
## p. 50 (#86) ##############################################
50 THE CASE OF WAGNER
endure to hear the sound of certain words on
Wagner's lips. There are some concepts which
are too good for Bayreuth. . . . What? Christianity
adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps by female
Wagnerites—for, in his latter days Wagner was
thoroughly feminini generis—? Again I say, the
Christians of to-day are too modest for me. . . .
If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps
a Father of the Church —The need of salvation,
the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing
in common with such clowns: it is the most
straightforward expression of decadence, it is the
most convincing and most painful affirmation of
decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The
Christian wishes to be rid of himself. Le mot est
toujours haissable. Noble morality, master-morality,
on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant saying
of yea to one's self-it is the self-affirmation and
self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime
symbols and practices; but only “because its heart
is too full. ” The whole of beautiful art and of
great art belongs here: their common essence is
gratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive
repugnance to decadents, and a scorn and horror
of the latter's symbolism: such things almost prove
it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as
a fada superstitio: let me call to your minds the
feelings which the last German of noble taste—
Goethe–had in regard to the cross. It is idle
to look for more valuable, more necessary con-
trasts. ” . . .
* My “Genealogy of Morals” contains the best exposi-
tion of the antithesis “noble morality” and “Christian
## p. 51 (#87) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 51
But the kind of falsity which is characteristic
of the Bayreuthians is not exceptional to-day.
We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian
gentleman. This innocence in contradiction, this
“clean conscience” in falsehood, is rather modern
par excellence, with it modernity is almost defined.
Biologically, modern man represents a contradiction
of values, he sits between two stools, he says yea
and nay in one breath. No wonder that it is
precisely in our age that falseness itself became
flesh and blood, and even genius ! No wonder
Wagner dwelt amongst us! It was not without
reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of
modernity. . . . But all of us, though we do not
know it, involuntarily have values, words, formulae,
and morals in our bodies, which are quite anta-
gonistic in their origin—regarded from a physio-
logical standpoint, we are false. . . . How would
a diagnosis of the modern soul begin? With a deter-
mined incision into this agglomeration of contra-
dictory instincts, with the total suppression of its
antagonistic values, with vivisection applied to its
most instructive case. To philosophers the “Case
of Wagner” is a windfall — this essay, as you
observe, was inspired by gratitude.
morality”; a more decisive turning point in the history of
religious and moral science does not perhaps exist. This
book, which is a touchstone by which I can discover who are
my peers, rejoices in being accessible only to the most
elevated and most severe minds : the others have not the
ears to hear me. One must have one's passion in things,
wherein no one has passion nowadays.
## p. 52 (#88) ##############################################
## p. 53 (#89) ##############################################
NIETZSC HE
CONTRA
WAGNER
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
## p. 54 (#90) ##############################################
## p. 55 (#91) ##############################################
PR E FA C E
THE following chapters have been selected from
past works of mine, and not without care. Some
of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there,
of course, they will be found to have been made a
little more intelligible, but above all, more brief.
Read consecutively, they can leave no one in any
doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning
Wagner: we are antipodes. The reader will come
to other conclusions, too, in his perusal of these
pages: for instance, that this is an essay for
psychologists and not for Germans. . . . I have
my readers everywhere, in Vienna, St Petersburg,
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and New York—
but I have none in Europe's Flat-land–Germany.
. . . And I might even have something to say to
Italians whom I love just as much as I .
Quousque tandem, Crispi . . . Triple alliance: a
people can only conclude a mésalliance with the
“Empire. ” . . .
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
TURIN, Christmas 1888.
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## p. 57 (#93) ##############################################
NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
-—
WHEREIN I ADMIRE WAGNER.
I BELIEVE that artists very often do not know
what they are best able to do. They are much
too vain. Their minds are directed to something
prouder than merely to appear like little plants,
which, with freshness, rareness, and beauty, know
how to sprout from their soil with real perfection.
The ultimate goodness of their own garden and
vineyard is superciliously under-estimated by
them, and their love and their insight are not
of the same quality. Here is a musician who is
a greater master than anyone else in the dis-
covering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed,
and tormented souls, who can endow even dumb
misery with speech. Nobody can approach him
in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably
touching joy of a last, a very last, and all too short
gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses
those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul,
when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder,
and at every moment something may spring out
of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating
from out the nethermost depths of human happi-
57
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58 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
ness, and, so to speak, from out man's empty
bumper, in which the bitterest and most repulsive
drops have mingled with the sweetest for good or
evil at last. He knows that weary shuffling along
of the soul which is no longer able either to spring
or to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk; he
has the modest glance of concealed suffering, of
understanding without comfort, of leave-taking
without word or sign; verily as the Orpheus of
all secret misery he is greater than anyone, and
many a thing was introduced into art for the first
time by him, which hitherto had not been given
expression, had not even been thought worthy of
art—the cynical revolts, for instance, of which only
the greatest sufferer is capable, also many a small
and quite microscopical feature of the soul, as it
were the scales of its amphibious nature—yes
indeed, he is the master of everything very small.
But this he refuses to be His tastes are much
more in love with vast walls and with daring
frescoes' . . . He does not see that his spirit
has another desire and bent—a totally different
outlook—that it prefers to squat peacefully in the
corners of broken-down houses: concealed in this
way, and hidden even from himself, he paints his
really great masterpieces, all of which are very
short, often only one bar in length—there, only,
does he become quite good, great and perfect,
perhaps there alone. —Wagner is one who has
suffered much—and this elevates him above other
musicians. —I admire Wagner wherever he sets
himself to music. —
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WHEREIN I RAISE OBJECTIONS.
With all this I do not wish to imply that I
regard this music as healthy, and least of all in
those places where it speaks of Wagner himself.
My objections to Wagner's music are physiological
objections. Why should I therefore begin by
clothing them in aesthetic formulae P AEsthetic is
indeed nothing more than applied physiology. —
The fact I bring forward, my “petit fait vrai,” is
that I can no longer breathe with ease when this
music begins to have its effect upon me; that my
foot immediately begins to feel indignant at it and
rebels: for what it needs is time, dance, march :
even the young German Kaiser could not march to
Wagner's Imperial March,--what my foot demands
in the first place from music is that ecstasy which
lies in good walking, stepping and dancing. But
do not my stomach, my heart, my circulation also
protest? Are not my intestines also troubled P And
do I not become hoarse unawares? . . . in order to
listen to Wagner I require Géraudel's Pastilles. . . .
And then I ask myself, what is it that my whole
body must have from music in general? for there
is no such thing as a soul. . . . I believe it must
have relief: as if all animal functions were accele-
rated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant
rhythms; as if brazen and leaden life could lose its
weight by means of delicate and smooth melodies.
My melancholy would fain rest its head in the
haunts and abysses of perfection: for this reason
I need music. But Wagner makes one ill—What
do I care about the theatre P What do I care
59
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6O NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
about the spasms of its moral ecstasies in which
the mob—and who is not the mob to-day P-
rejoices? What do I care about the whole panto-
mimic hocus-pocus of the actor? You are beginning
to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart.
For the stage, this mob art par excellence, my soul
has that deepest scorn felt by every artist to-day.
With a stage success a man sinks to such an extent
in my esteem as to drop out of sight; failure in
this quarter makes me prick my ears, makes me
begin to pay attention. But this was not so with
Wagner; next to the Wagner who created the
most unique music that has ever existed there was
the Wagner who was essentially a man of the stage,
an actor, the most enthusiastic mimomaniac that
has perhaps existed on earth, even as a musician.
And let it be said en passant that if Wagner's
theory was “drama is the object, music is only a
means”—his practice was from beginning to end,
“the attitude is the end, drama and even music can
never be anything else than means. ” Music as
the manner of accentuating, of strengthening, and
deepening dramatic poses and all things which
please the senses of the actor; and Wagnerian
drama only an opportunity for a host of interesting
attitudes l—Alongside of all other instincts he had
the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in everything:
and, as I have already said, as a musician also. -On
one occasion, and not without trouble, I made this
clear to a Wagnerite pur sang, clearness and a
Wagnerite I won't say another word. There
were reasons for adding; “For heaven's sake, be a
little more true unto yourself! We are not in
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THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 61
Bayreuth now. In Bayreuth people are only
upright in the mass; the individual lies, he even
lies to himself. One leaves oneself at home when
one goes to Bayreuth, one gives up all right to
one's own tongue and choice, to one's own taste and
even to one's own courage, one knows these things
no longer as one is wont to have them and practise
them before God and the world and between one's
own four walls. In the theatre no one brings the
finest senses of his art with him, and least of all
the artist who works for the theatre, for here
loneliness is lacking; everything perfect does not
suffer a witness. . . . In the theatre one becomes
mob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron,
idiot—Wagnerite: there, the most personal con-
science is bound to submit to the levelling charm
of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules,
there one becomes a neighbour. ”
WAGNER AS A DANGER.
I.
The aim after which more modern music is
striving, which is now given the strong but obscure
name of “unending melody,” can be clearly under-
stood by comparing it to one's feelings on entering
the sea. Gradually one loses one's footing and one
ultimately abandons oneself to the mercy or fury
of the elements: one has to swim. In the solemn,
or fiery, swinging movement, first slow and then
quick, of old music—one had to do something quite
different; one had to dance. The measure which
was required for this and the control of certain
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62 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
balanced degrees of time and energy, forced the
soul of the listener to continual sobriety of thought.
—Upon the counterplay of the cooler currents of
air which came from this sobriety, and from the
warmer breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all
good music rested — Richard Wagner wanted
another kind of movement, he overthrew the
physiological first principle of all music before his
time. It was no longer a matter of walking or
dancing, we must swim, we must hover. . . . This
perhaps decides the whole matter. “Unending
melody” really wants to break all the symmetry
of time and strength; it actually scorns these
things—Its wealth of invention resides precisely in
what to an older ear sounds like rhythmic paradox
and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence
of such a taste there would arise a danger for
music—so great that we can imagine none greater
—the complete degeneration of the feeling for
rhythm, chaos in the place of rhythm. . . . The
danger reaches its climax when such music cleaves
ever more closely to naturalistic play-acting and
pantomime, which governed by no laws of form,
aim at effect and nothing more. .
