Profound
suffer-
ing makes noble; it separates.
ing makes noble; it separates.
Nietzsche - v08 - The Case of Wagner
Of all the arts which succeed in growing on the
soil of a particular culture, music is the last plant
to appear; maybe because it is the one most
dependent upon our innermost feelings, and there-
fore the last to come to the surface—at a time
when the culture to which it belongs is in its
autumn season and beginning to fade. It was only
in the art of the Dutch masters that the spirit of
mediaeval Christianity found its expression—, its
architecture of sound is the youngest, but genuine
and legitimate, sister of the Gothic. It was only
in Händel's music that the best in Luther and
in those like him found its voice, the Judeo-heroic
trait which gave the Reformation a touch of great- |
!
## p. 64 (#100) #############################################
64 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
ness—the Old Testament, not the New, become
music. It was left to Mozart, to pour out the epoch
of Louis XIV. , and of the art of Racine and Claude
Lorrain, in ringing gold; only in Beethoven's and
Rossini's music did the Eighteenth Century sing
itself out—the century of enthusiasm, broken ideals,
and fleeting joy. All real and original music is a
swan song—Even our last form of music, despite
its prevalence and its will to prevail, has perhaps
only a short time to live: for it sprouted from a
soil which was in the throes of a rapid subsidence,
—of a culture which will soon be submerged. A
certain catholicism of feeling, and a predilection
for some ancient indigenous (so-called national)
ideals and eccentricities, was its first condition.
Wagner's appropriation of old sagas and songs,
in which scholarly prejudice taught us to see
something German par excellence—now we laugh
at it all, the resurrection of these Scandinavian
monsters with a thirst for ecstatic sensuality and
spiritualisation — the whole of this taking and
giving on Wagner's part, in the matter of subjects,
characters, passions, and nerves, would also give
unmistakable expression to the spirit of his music
provided that this music, like any other, did not
know how to speak about itself save ambiguously:
for musica is a woman. . . . We must not let our-
selves be misled concerning this state of things,
by the fact that at this very moment we are living
in a reaction, in the heart itself of a reaction. The
age of international wars, of ultramontane martyr-
dom, in fact, the whole interlude-character which
typifies the present condition of Europe, may
## p. 65 (#101) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 65
indeed help an art like Wagner's to sudden glory,
without, however, in the least ensuring its future
prosperity. The Germans themselves have no
future. . . .
WE ANTIPODES.
Perhaps a few people, or at least my friends, will
remember that I made my first plunge into life
armed with some errors and some exaggerations,
but that, in any case, I began with hope in my
heart. In the philosophical pessimism of the nine-
teenth century, I recognised—who knows by what
by-paths of personal experience—the symptom of
a higher power of thought, a more triumphant
plenitude of life, than had manifested itself hitherto
in the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegell—
I regarded tragic knowledge as the most beautiful
luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most
noble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but,
nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, as
a justifiable luxury. In the same way, I began by
interpreting Wagner's music as the expression of a
Dionysian powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I
heard the earthquake by means of which a primeval
life-force, which had been constrained for ages, was
seeking at last to burst its bonds, quite indifferent
to how much of that which nowadays calls itself
culture, would thereby be shaken to ruins. You
see how I misinterpreted, you see also, what I
bestowed upon Wagner and Schopenhauer—my-
self. . . . Every art and every philosophy may be
regarded either as a cure or as a stimulant to
->
5
## p. 66 (#102) #############################################
66 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
|
ascending or declining life: they always presuppose
suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds
of sufferers:–those that suffer from overflowing
vitality, who need Dionysian art and require a
tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook upon, the
phenomenon life, and there are those who suffer
from reduced vitality, and who crave for repose,
quietness, calm seas, or else the intoxication, the
spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy
provide. Revenge upon life itself—this is the most
voluptuous form of intoxication for such indigent
souls | . . . Now Wagner responds quite as well
as Schopenhauer to the twofold cravings of these
people, they both deny life, they both slander it
but precisely on this account they are my anti-
podes. —The richest creature, brimming over with
vitality, the Dionysian God and man, may not
only allow himself to gaze upon the horrible and
the questionable; but he can also lend his hand to
the terrible deed, and can indulge in all the luxury
of destruction, disaggregation, and negation,-in
him evil, purposelessness and ugliness, seem just as
allowable as they are in nature—because of his
bursting plenitude of creative and rejuvenating
powers, which are able to convert every desert into
a luxurious land of plenty. Conversely, it is the
greatest sufferer and pauper in vitality, who is most
in need of mildness, peace and goodness—that
which to-day is called humaneness—in thought as
well as in action, and possibly of a God whose
speciality is to be a God of the sick, a Saviour, and
also of logic or the abstract intelligibility of exist-
ence even for idiots (—the typical “free-spirits,”
## p. 67 (#103) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 67
like the idealists, and “beautiful souls,” are
decadents—); in short, of a warm, danger-tight, and
narrow confinement, between optimistic horizons
which would allow of stultification. . . . And thus
very gradually, I began to understand Epicurus,
the opposite of a Dionysian Greek; and also the
Christian who in fact is only a kind of Epicurean,
and who, with his belief that “faith saves,” carries |
the principle of Hedonism as far as possible—far
beyond all intellectual honesty. . . . If I am
ahead of all other psychologists in anything, it is -
in this fact that my eyes are more keen for tracing 9.
those most difficult and most captious of all deduc-
tions, in which the largest number of mistakes have
been made,-the deduction which makes one infer .
something concerning the author from his work,
something concerning the doer from his deed,
something concerning the idealist from the need
which produced this ideal, and something concern-
ing the imperious craving which stands at the
back of all thinking and valuing. —In regard to all
artists of what kind soever, I shall now avail
myself of this radical distinction : does the creative .
power in this case arise from a loathing of life, or
from an excessive plenitude of life? In Goethe,
for instance, an overflow of vitality was creative, in
Flaubert—hate: Flaubert, a new edition of Pascal,
but as an artist with this instinctive belief at heart:
“Flaubert est toujours haissable, l'homme n'est riem,
l'aeuvre est tout. ” . . . He tortured himself when
he wrote, just as Pascal tortured himself when he
thought — the feelings of both were inclined to
be “non-egoistic. ” . . . “Disinterestedness”—
## p. 68 (#104) #############################################
68 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
\
principle of decadence, the will to nonentity in art
as well as in morality.
WHERE WAGNER IS AT HOME.
Even at the present day, France is still the refuge
of the most intellectual and refined culture in
Europe, it remains the high school of taste: but
one must know where to find this France of taste.
The North-German Gazette, for instance, or who-
ever expresses his sentiments in that paper, thinks
that the French are “barbarians,”—as for me, if I
had to find the blackest spot on earth, where slaves
still required to be liberated, I should turn in the
direction of Northern Germany. . . . But those
who form part of that select France take very
good care to conceal themselves: they are a small
body of men, and there may be some among them
who do not stand on very firm legs—a few may be
fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids; others may be
enervated, and artificial,—such are those who would
fain be artistic, but all the loftiness and delicacy
which still remains to this world, is in their posses-
sion. In this France of intellect, which is also the
France of pessimism, Schopenhauer is already much
more at home than he ever was in Germany; his
principal work has already been translated twice,
and the second time so excellently that now I
prefer to read Schopenhauer in French (–he was
an accident among Germans, just as I am—the
Germans have no fingers wherewith to grasp us;
they haven't any fingers at all,—but only claws).
And I do not mention Heine—l'adorable Heine, as
## p. 69 (#105) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 69
they say in Paris—who long since has passed into
the flesh and blood of the more profound and more
soulful of French lyricists. How could the horned
cattle of Germany know how to deal with the
délicatesses of such a nature! —And as to Richard
Wagner, it is obvious, it is even glaringly obvious,
that Paris is the very soil for him : the more French
music adapts itself to the needs of l'éme moderne,
the more Wagnerian it will become, it is far
enough advanced in this direction already. —In
this respect one should not allow one's self to be
misled by Wagner himself—it was simply dis-
graceful on Wagner's part to scoff at Paris, as he
did, in its agony in 1871. . . . In spite of it all, in
Germany Wagner is only a misapprehension: who
could be more incapable of understanding anything
about Wagner than the Kaiser, for instance? —To
everybody familiar with the movement of European
culture, this fact, however, is certain, that French
romanticism and Richard Wagner are most inti-
mately related. All dominated by literature, up to
their very eyes and ears—the first European artists
with a universal literary culture, most of them
writers, poets, mediators and minglers of the senses
and the arts, all fanatics in expression, great
discoverers in the realm of the sublime as also of
the ugly and the gruesome, and still greater dis-
coverers in passion, in working for effect, in the art
of dressing their windows, all possessing talent
far above their genius, virtuosos to their backbone,
knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures,
constrains or overthrows; born enemies of logic
and of straight lines, thirsting after the exotic, the
## p. 70 (#106) #############################################
7o NIETZSCHE COM 7TRA WAGNER
strange and the monstrous, and all opiates for the
senses and the understanding. On the whole, a
daring dare-devil, magnificently violent, soaring
and high-springing crew of artists, who first had to
teach their own century—it is the century of the
mob-what the concept “artist” meant. But they
were ill. . . .
WAGNER AS THE APOSTLE OF
CHASTITY.
I.
Is this the German way?
Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts?
Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves,
Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness,
Exalt their feelings with the censer's fumes,
And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee,
And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer?
Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell,
And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven?
Is this the German way?
Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords.
What yonder lures is Rome, Rome's faith sung
without words.
2.
There is no necessary contrast between sensuality
and chastity; every good marriage, every genuine
love affair is above this contrast; but in those cases
where the contrast exists, it is very far from being
necessarily a tragic one. This, at least, ought to
hold good of all well-constituted and good-spirited
## p. 71 (#107) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 71
mortals, who are not in the least inclined to reckon
their unstable equilibrium between angel and petite
béte, without further ado, among the objections to
existence, the more refined and more intelligent
like Hafis and Goethe, even regarded it as an
additional attraction. It is precisely contradictions
of this kind which lure us to life. . . . On the other
hand, it must be obvious, that when Circe's unfor-
tunate animals are induced to worship chastity, all
they see and worship therein, is their opposite—
oh and with what tragic groaning and fervour,
may well be imagined—that same painful and
thoroughly superfluous opposition which, towards
the end of his life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly
wished to set to music and to put on the stage,
And to what purpose 2 we may reasonably ask.
3.
And yet this other question can certainly not be
circumvented: what business had he actually with
that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic simplicity,”
that poor devil and son of nature—Parsifal, whom
he ultimately makes a catholic by such insidious
means—what? — was Wagner in earnest with
Parsifal P For, that he was laughed at, I cannot
deny, any more than Gottfried Keller can. . . .
We should like to believe that “Parsifal” was meant
as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and
satyric drama, with which Wagner the tragedian
wished to take leave of us, of himself, and above
all of tragedy, in a way which befitted him and his
dignity, that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty
and most malicious parody of tragedy itself, of all
## p. 72 (#108) #############################################
72 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of this
world, of the most ridiculous form of the unnatural-
ness of the ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For
Parsifal is the subject par excellence for a comic
opera. . . . Is Wagner's “Parsifal "his secret laugh
of superiority at himself, the triumph of his last and
most exalted state of artistic freedom, of artistic
transcendence—is it Wagner able to laugh at him-
self? Once again we only wish it were so; for
what could Parsifal be if he were meant seriously?
Is it necessary in his case to say (as I have heard
people say) that “Parsifal” is “the product of the
mad hatred of knowledge, intellect, and sensu-
ality? ” a curse upon the senses and the mind in
one breath and in one fit of hatred P an act of
apostasy and a return to Christianly sick and
obscurantist ideals? And finally even a denial of
self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who
theretofore had worked with all the power of his
will in favour of the opposite cause, the spiritualisa-
tion and sensualisation of his art? And not only
of his art, but also of his life? Let us remember
how enthusiastically Wagner at one time walked
in the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach.
Feuerbach's words “healthy sensuality” struck
Wagner in the thirties and forties very much as
they struck many other Germans—they called
themselves the young Germans—that is to say, as
words of salvation. Did he ultimately change his
mind on this point? It would seem that he had
at least had the desire of changing his doctrine
towards the end. . . . Had the hatred of life become
dominant in him as in Flaubert? For “Parsifal. ”
## p. 73 (#109) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 73
is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most secret
concoction of poisons with which to make an end
of the first conditions of life; it is a bad work.
The preaching of chastity remains an incitement
to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not
regard “Parsifal' as an outrage upon morality. —
HOW I GOT RID OF WAGNER.
I.
X Already in the summer of 1876, when the first
festival at Bayreuth was at its height, I took leave
of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure anything
double-faced. Since Wagner had returned to
Germany, he had condescended step by step to
everything that I despise—even to anti-Semitism.
. . . As a matter of fact, it was then high time to
bid him farewell: but the proof of this came only
too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most
triumphant creature alive; as a matter of fact,
though, a cranky and desperate decadent, suddenly
fell helpless and broken on his knees before the
Christian cross. . . . Was there no German at that
time who had the eyes to see, and the sympathy in
his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this spectacle?
Was I the only one who suffered from it? —Enough,
the unexpected event, like a flash of lightning,
made me see only too clearly what kind of a place
it was that I had just left, and it also made me
shudder as a man shudders who unawares has just
escaped a great danger. As I continued my
journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I
## p. 74 (#110) #############################################
74 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
was ill, more than ill—I was tired;—tired of the
continual disappointments over everything which
remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic
about, of the energy, industry, hope, youth, and
love that are squandered everywhere; tired out of
loathing for the whole world of idealistic lying and
conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case
of Wagner, had scored a victory over a man who
was of the bravest; and last but not least, tired by
the sadness of a ruthless suspicion—that I was now
condemned to be ever more and more suspicious,
ever more and more contemptuous, ever more and
more deeply alone than I had been theretofore.
For I had no one save Richard Wagner. . . . I was
always condemned to the society of Germans. . . .
2.
Henceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of
myself, I then took up sides—not without anger—
against myself and for all that which hurt me and
fell hard upon me: and thus I found the road to
that courageous pessimism which is the opposite of
all idealistic falsehood, and which, as it seems to
me, is also the road to me—to my mission. . . .
That hidden and dominating thing, for which for
long ages we have had no name, until ultimately
it comes forth as our mission,-this tyrant in us
wreaks a terrible revenge upon us for every attempt
we make either to evade him or to escape him, for
every one of our experiments in the way of be-
friending people to whom we do not belong, for
every active occupation, however estimable, which
may make us diverge from our principal object:-
## p. 75 (#111) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 75
aye, and even for every virtue which would fain
protect us from the rigour of our most intimate
sense of responsibility. Illness is always the
answer, whenever we venture to doubt our right to
our mission, whenever we begin to make things too
easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the
same time ! It is for our relaxation that we have
to pay most dearly 1 And should we wish after
all to return to health, we then have no choice:
we are compelled to burden ourselves more heavily
than we had been burdened before. . .
THE PSYCHOLOGIST SPEAKS.
I.
The oftener a psychologist—a born, an unavoid-
able psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his atten-
tion to the more select cases and individuals, the
greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by
sympathy: he needs greater hardness and cheerful-
ness than any other man. For the corruption, the
ruination of higher men, is in fact the rule: it is
terrible to have such a rule always before our eyes.
The manifold torments of the psychologist who
has discovered this ruination, who discovers once,
and then discovers almost repeatedly throughout
all history, this universal inner “hopelessness” of
higher men, this eternal “too late l" in every sense
—may perhaps one day be the cause of his “going
to the dogs" himself. In almost every psychologist
we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour of
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered
## p. 76 (#112) #############################################
76 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
men: and this betrays how constantly he requires
healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetful-
ness, away from what his insight and incisiveness—
from what his “business”—has laid upon his con-
science. A horror of his memory is typical of
him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of
others; he hears with unmoved countenance how
people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he
has opened his eyes and seen—or he even conceals
his silence by expressly agreeing with some obvious
opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation
becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has
learnt great sympathy, together with great contempt,
the educated have on their part learnt great
reverence. And who knows but in all great
instances, just this alone happened: that the multi-
tude worshipped a God, and that the “God” was
only a poor sacrificial animal | Success has always
been the greatest liar—and the “work” itself, the
deed, is a success too; the great statesman, the
conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their
creations until they can no longer be recognised;
the “work” of the artist, of the philosopher, only
invents him who has created it, who is reputed to
have created it; the “great men,” as they are
reverenced, are poor little fictions composed after-
wards; in the world of historical values counterfeit
coinage prevails.
2.
Those great poets, for example, such as Byron,
Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not
dare to mention much greater names, but I imply
|-
## p. 77 (#113) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 77
them), as they now appear, and were perhaps
obliged to be: men of the moment, sensuous,
absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust
and to distrust; with souls in which usually some
flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge
with their works for an internal blemish, often
seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too
accurate memory, idealists out of proximity to the
mud —what a torment these great artists are and
the so-called higher men in general, to him who
has once found them out ! We are all special
pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It is con-
ceivable that it is just from woman—who is clair-
voyant in the world of suffering, and, alas ! also
unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent
far beyond her powers—that they have learnt so
readily those outbreaks of boundless sympathy
which the multitude, above all the reverent multi-
tude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying
interpretations. This sympathising invariably de-
ceives itself as to its power; woman would like to
believe that love can do everything—it is the
superstition peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows
the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious,
and blundering even the best and deepest love is— ;
how much more readily it destroys than saves. . . .
3.
The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of
every man who has suffered deeply—the extent
to which a man can suffer, almost determines the
order of rank—the chilling uncertainty with which
he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by
## p. 78 (#114) #############################################
78 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
virtue of his suffering he knows more than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has
been familiar with, and “at home” in many distant
terrible worlds of which “you know nothing ! ”—
this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of
the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the
almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise neces-
sary to protect itself from contact with gushing
and sympathising hands, and in general from all
that is not its equal in suffering.
Profound suffer-
ing makes noble; it separates. —One of the most
refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with
a certain ostentatious boldness of taste which takes
suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive
against all that is sorrowful and profound. There
are “cheerful men” who make use of good spirits,
because they are misunderstood on account of
them—they wish to be misunderstood. There are
“scientific minds” who make use of science, because
it gives a cheerful appearance, and because love of
science leads people to conclude that a person is
shallow—they wish to mislead to a false con-
clusion. There are free insolent spirits which
would fain conceal and deny that they are at
bottom broken, incurable hearts—this is Hamlet's
case: and then folly itself can be the mask of
an unfortunate and alas ! all too dead-certain
knowledge.
## p. 79 (#115) #############################################
EPILOGUE
I HAVE often asked myself whether I am not much
more deeply indebted to the hardest years of my
life than to any others. According to the voice
of my innermost nature, everything necessary,
seen from above and in the light of a superior
economy, is also useful in itself—not only should
one bear it, one should love it. . . . Amor fati :
this is the very core of my being. —And as to my
prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it
than I owe to my health P To it I owe a higher
kind of health, a sort of health which grows
stronger under everything that does not actually
kill it! —To it, I owe even my philosophy. . . . Only
great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of
spirit; for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness
which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and
proper. X, i. e. , the antepenultimate letter: Only
great suffering; that great suffering, under which
we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering
that takes its time—forces us philosophers to
descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go
of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-
down, all mildness, all mediocrity, on which
things we had formerly staked our humanity. I
doubt whether such suffering improves a man; but
I know that it makes him deeper. . . . Supposing
we learn to set our pride, our scorn, our strength
of will against it, and thus resemble the Indian
79
## p. 80 (#116) #############################################
8o NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
who, however cruelly he may be tortured, considers
himself revenged on his tormentor by the bitterness
of his own tongue. Supposing we withdraw from
pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid
sphere of self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-
effacement: one is another person when one leaves
these protracted and dangerous exercises in the
art of self-mastery; one has one note of interroga-
tion the more, and above all one has the will
henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder,
more wicked, and more silent questions, than any-
one has ever asked on earth before. . . . Trust in
life has vanished; life itself has become a problem.
—But let no one think that one has therefore
become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl I Even
love of life is still possible, but it is a different
kind of love. . . . It is the love for a woman whom
we doubt. . . .
2.
The rarest of all things is this: to have after all
another taste—a second taste. Out of such abysses,
out of the abyss of great suspicion as well, a man
returns as though born again, he has a new skin,
he is more susceptible, more full of wickedness;
he has a finer taste for joyfulness; he has a more
sensitive tongue for all good things; his senses are
more cheerful; he has acquired a second, more
dangerous, innocence in gladness; he is more
childish too, and a hundred times more cunning
than ever he had been before.
Oh, how much more repulsive pleasure now is to
him, that coarse, heavy, buff-coloured pleasure,
-
## p. 81 (#117) #############################################
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 81
which is understood by our pleasure-seekers, our
“cultured people,” our wealthy folk and our rulers!
With how much more irony we now listen to the
hubbub as of a country fair, with which the
“cultured ” man and the man about town allow
themselves to be forced through art, literature,
music, and with the help of intoxicating liquor, to
“intellectual enjoyments. ” How the stage-cry of
passion now stings our ears; how strange to our
taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous bustle,
which the cultured mob are so fond of, together
with its aspirations to the sublime, to the exalted
and the distorted, have become. No: if we con-
valescents require an art at all, it is another art—
a mocking, nimble, volatile, divinely undisturbed,
divinely artificial art, which blazes up like pure
flame into a cloudless sky! But above all, an art
for artists, only for artists / We are, after all, more
conversant with that which is in the highest degree
necessary—cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness,
my friends ! . . . We men of knowledge, now know
something only too well: oh how well we have
learnt by this time, to forget, not to know, as
artists | . . . As to our future: we shall scarcely
be found on the track of those Egyptian youths
who break into temples at night, who embrace
statues, and would fain unveil, strip, and set in
broad daylight, everything which there are excellent
reasons to keep concealed. * No, we are disgusted
with this bad taste, this will to truth, this search
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: “Das verschleierte Bild
zu Sais. ”—Tr,
6
## p. 82 (#118) #############################################
82 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER
after truth “at all costs”: this madness of adoles-
cence, “the love of truth”; we are now too
experienced, too serious, too joyful, too scorched,
too profound for that. . . . We no longer believe
that truth remains truth when it is unveiled—we
have lived enough to understand this. . . . To-day
it seems to us good form not to strip everything
naked, not to be present at all things, not to
desire to “know” all. Tout comprendre c'est tout
Amépriser. ” . . . . “Is it true,” a little girl once asked
her mother, “that the beloved Father is every-
"where? —I think it quite improper,”—a hint to
philosophers. . . . The shame with which Nature
has concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas
should be held in higher esteem. Perhaps truth
is a woman who has reasons for not revealing her
reasons? . . . Perhaps her name, to use a Greek
word is Baubo 2–Oh these Greeks, they understood
the art of living / For this it is needful to halt
bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to
worship appearance, and to believe in forms, tones,
words, and the whole Olympus of appearance /
These Greeks were superficial—from profundity.
. . . And are we not returning to precisely the
same thing, we dare-devils of intellect who have
scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles
of present thought, in order to look around us from
that height, in order to look down from that height?
Are we not precisely in this respect—Greeks 2
Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely
on that account—artists 2
## p. 83 (#119) #############################################
SELECT E D AP HORISMS
## p. 84 (#120) #############################################
## p. 85 (#121) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE'S
RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF
FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER.
(Summer 1878. )
I
My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with
an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to
experience the bitterest disappointment. The
preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and
strong pepper thoroughly repelled me.
2.
I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied
with the decorations, the scenery and the mechanical
contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much industry
and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining
the imagination to matters which did not belie
their epic origin. But as to the naturalism of
the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the
orchestra! ! What affected, artificial and depraved
tones, what a distortion of nature, were we made
to hear !
3.
We are witnessing the death agony of the last
Art : Bayreuth has convinced me of this.
85
## p. 86 (#122) #############################################
86 SELECTED APHORISMS
4.
My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed
him; I had depicted an ideal monster—one, how-
ever, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling
the enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner,
Bayreuth as it actually is, was only like a bad,
final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the
engraving which was my creation. My longing
to see real men and their motives, received an
extraordinary impetus from this humiliating
experience.
5.
This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good
deal even struck me with sudden fear. At last
I felt, however, that if only I could be strong
enough to take sides against myself and what I
most loved I would find the road to truth and
get solace and encouragement from it—and in this
way I became filled with a sensation of joy far
greater than that upon which I was now voluntarily
turning my back.
6.
I was in love with art, passionately in love, and
in the whole of existence saw nothing else than
art—and this at an age when, reasonably enough,
quite different passions usually possess the soul.
- 7.
Goethe said: “The yearning spirit within me,
which in earlier years I may perhaps have fostered
too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried my
utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the
## p. 87 (#123) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 87
man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to
more complete freedom. ” Conclusion? —I have
had to do the same.
8.
He who wakes us always wounds us.
9.
I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and
what is still worse, I have not even the vanity to
try to appear as if I did.
IO.
He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond
the vision and the experience of his acquaintances,
—provokes envy and hatred masked as pity,
prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease,
seduction. Long faces.
II.
* I frankly confess that I had hoped that by
means of art the Germans would become thoroughly
disgusted with decaying Christianity—I regarded
German mythology as a solvent, as a means of
accustoming people to polytheism.
What a fright I had over the Catholic revival
I 2.
It is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely
from life, nor to be so lifeless and emotionally weak,
as to have need of Wagner's art, as to require it as
a medium. This is the principal reason of one's
opposition to it, and not baser motives: something
## p. 88 (#124) #############################################
33 SELECTED APHORISMS
to which we are not driven by any personal need,
and which we do not require, we cannot esteem so
highly.
I3.
It is a question either of no longer requiring
Wagner's art, or of still requiring it.
Gigantic forces lie concealed in it: it drives one
beyond its own domain.
I4.
Goethe said: “Are not Byron's audacity, spright-
liness and grandeur all creative? We must beware
of always looking for this quality in that which is
perfectly pure and moral. All greatness is creative
the moment we realise it. ” This should be applied
to Wagner's art.
I5.
We shall always have to credit Wagner with
the fact that in the second half of the nineteenth
century he impressed art upon our memory as an
important and magnificent thing. True, he did
this in his own fashion, and this was not the
fashion of upright and far-seeing men.
I6.
Wagner versus the cautious, the cold and the
contented of the world—in this lies his greatness
—he is a stranger to his age—he combats the
frivolous and the super-smart. —But he also fights
the just, the moderate, those who delight in the
world (like Goethe); and the mild, the people of
charm, the scientific among men—this is the reverse
of the medal.
## p. 89 (#125) #############################################
SELECTED APHORISMS 89
17.
Our youth was up in arms against the soberness
of the age. It plunged into the cult of excess, of
passion, of ecstasy, and of the blackest and most
austere conception of the world.
I8.
Wagner pursues one form of madness, the age
another form. Both carry on their chase at the
same speed, each is as blind and as unjust as the
other.
I9.
It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner's
inner development—no trust must be placed in
his own description of his soul's experiences. He
writes party-pamphlets for his followers.
2O.
It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able
to bear witness about himself.
2 I.
There are men who try in vain to make a
principle out of themselves. This was the case
with Wagner.
22.
Wagner's obscurity concerning final aims; his
non-antique fogginess.
23.
All Wagner's ideas straightway become manias;
he is tyrannised over by them. How can such a
man allow himself to be tyrannised over in this
## p. 90 (#126) #############################################
90 SELECTED APHORISMS
º
way / For instance by his hatred of Jews. He
kills his themes like his “ideas,” by means of his
violent love of repeating them. The problem of
excessive length and breadth; he bores us with
his raptures.
24.
“C'est la rage de vouloir penser et sentir au deld
desa force” (Doudan). The Wagnerites.
25.
Wagner whose ambition far exceeds his natural
gifts, has tried an incalculable number of times
to achieve what lay beyond his powers—but it
almost makes one shudder to see some one assail
with such persistence that which defies conquest—
the fate of his constitution.
26.
He is always thinking of the most extreme
expression,-in every word. But in the end
superlatives begin to pall.
27.
There is something which is in the highest
degree suspicious in Wagner, and that is Wagner's
suspicion. It is such a strong trait in him, that
on two occasions I doubted whether he were a
musician at all.
28.
The proposition: “in the face of perfection
there is no salvation save love,” “ is thoroughly
* What Schiller said of Goethe. —TR.
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SELECTED APHORISMS 9I
Wagnerian. Profound jealousy of everything
great from which he can draw fresh ideas. Hatred
of all that which he cannot approach: the
Renaissance, French and Greek art in style.
29.
Wagner is jealous of all periods that have shown
restraint: he despises beauty and grace, and finds
only his own virtues in the “Germans,” and even
attributes all his failings to them.
3O.
Wagner has not the power to unlock and
liberate the soul of those he frequents: Wagner
is not sure of himself, but distrustful and arrogant.
His art has this effect upon artists, it is envious
of all rivals.
3I.
Plato's Envy. He would fain monopolise
Socrates. He saturates the latter with himself,
pretends to adorn him (kakos Xokpárms), and tries to
separate all Socratists from him in order himself
to appear as the only true apostle. But his
historical presentation of him is false, even to a
parlous degree : just as Wagner's presentation of
Beethoven and Shakespeare is false.
32.
When a dramatist speaks about himself he plays
a part: this is inevitable. When Wagner speaks
about Bach and Beethoven he speaks like one for
whom he would fain be taken. But he impresses
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