We bring honour on our-
selves by elevating him to the clouds.
selves by elevating him to the clouds.
Nietzsche - v08 - The Case of Wagner
Through-
out his life he rattled “resignation,” “loyalty,”
and “purity” about our ears, and he retired from
the corrupt world with a song of praise to chastity
—And we believed it all. . . .
—But you will not listen to me? You prefer
even the problem of Wagner to that of Bizet? But
neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The
problem of salvation is even a venerable problem.
Wagner pondered over nothing so deeply as over
salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation.
J-
## p. 6 (#42) ###############################################
6 THE CASE OF WAGNER
Someone always wants to be saved in his operas,
now it is a youth ; anon it is a maid, this is his
problem. —And how lavishly he varies his leitmotif/
What rare and melancholy modulations ! If it were
not for Wagner, who would teach us that innocence
has a preference for saving interesting sinners?
(the case in “Tannhäuser”). Or that even the eternal
Jew gets saved and settled down when he marries?
(the case in the “Flying Dutchman"). Or that
corrupted old females prefer to be saved by chaste
young men? (the case of Kundry). Or that young
hysterics like to be saved by their doctor? (the
case in “Lohengrin. ”). Or that beautiful girls most
love to be saved by a knight who also happens to
be a Wagnerite P (the case in the “Mastersingers”).
Or that even married women also like to be saved
by a knight? (the case of Isolde). Or that the
venerable Almighty, after having compromised
himself morally in all manner of ways, is at last
delivered by a free spirit and an immoralist? (the
case in the “Ring”). Admire, more especially this
last piece of wisdom Do you understand it?
I—take good care not to understand it. . . . That
it is possible to draw yet other lessons from the
works above mentioned,—I am much more ready
to prove than to dispute. That one may be driven
by a Wagnerian ballet to desperation—and to
virtue ! (once again the case in “Tannhäuser”).
That not going to bed at the right time may be
followed by the worst consequences (once again
the case of “Lohengrin"). -That one can never be
too sure of the spouse one actually marries (for the
third time, the case of “Lohengrin"). “Tristan and
## p. 7 (#43) ###############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 7
Isolde” glorifies the perfect husband who, in a
certain case, can ask only one question: “But why
have ye not told me this before? Nothing could L
be simpler than that l” Reply: -
“That I cannot tell thee.
And what thou askest,
. *
*
That wilt thou never learn. ” cº
f -
º, tº
“Lohengrin. ” contains a solemn ban upon all in- ". *-
vestigation and questioning. In this way Wagner t
stood for the Christian concept, “Thou must and , º
shalt believe. ” It is a crime against the highest
and the holiest to be scientific. . . . The “Flying
Dutchman” preaches the sublime doctrine that .
woman can moor the most erratic soul, or to put " '
it into Wagnerian terms “save" him. Here we -
venture to ask a question. Supposing that this
were actually true, would it therefore be desirable P-
What becomes of the “eternal Jew” whom a . . . * *
woman adores and enchains 2 He simply ceases -
from being eternal; he marries, that is to say, he at . .
concerns us no longer. —Transferred into the realm " . . . *
of reality, the danger for the artist and for the 4°
genius—and these are of course the “eternal Jews” ºr " t
—resides in woman: adoring women are their ruin. . . . ;
Scarcely any one has sufficient character not to be t", .
corrupted—“saved” when he finds himself treated . . .
as a God:—he then immediately condescends to . . .
woman. -Man is a coward in the face of all that is
eternally feminine: and this the girls know. —In
many cases of woman's love, and perhaps precisely . . . . .
in the most famous ones, the love is no more than * * *
a refined form of parasitism, a making one's nest in
## p. 8 (#44) ###############################################
8 THE CASE OF WAGNER
another's soul and sometimes even in another's
flesh—Ah! and how constantly at the cost of the
host
We know the fate of Goethe in old-maidish
moralin-corroded Germany. He was always offen-
sive to Germans, he found honest admirers only
among Jewesses. Schiller, “noble” Schiller, who
cried flowery words into their ears, he was a man
after their own heart. What did they reproach
Goethe with ? —with the Mount of Venus, and with
having composed certain Venetian epigrams. Even
Klopstock preached him a moral sermon; there
was a time when Herder was fond of using the
word “Priapus” when he spoke of Goethe. Even
“Wilhelm Meister” seemed to be only a symptom
of decline, of a moral “going to the dogs. ” The
“Menagerie of tame cattle,” the worthlessness of
the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally
bursts out in a plaint which Biterolf” might well
have sung: “nothing so easily makes a painful
impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its
wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly
inferior, while it renounces more lofty aims. ” But
the most indignant of all was the cultured woman:
all smaller courts in Germany, every kind of “Puri-
tanism” made the sign of the cross at the sight of
Goethe, at the thought of the “unclean spirit” in
Goethe. —This history was what Wagner set to
music. He saves Goethe, that goes without
saying; but he does so in such a clever way that
he also takes the side of the cultured woman.
* A character in “Tannhäuser. ”—Tr.
## p. 9 (#45) ###############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 9
Goethe gets saved: a prayer saves him, a cultured
woman draws him out of the mire.
—As to what Goethe would have thought of
Wagner? —Goethe once set himself the question,
“what danger hangs over all romanticists: the fate
of romanticists? ” His answer was: “To choke
over the rumination of moral and religious ab-
surdities. ” In short: Parsifal . . . The philosopher
writes thereto an epilogue. Holiness—the only
remaining higher value still seen by the mob or by
woman, the horizon of the ideal for all those who
are naturally short-sighted. To philosophers, how-
ever, this horizon, like every other, is a mere
misunderstanding, a sort of slamming of the door
in the face of the real beginning of their world,—
their danger, their ideal, their desideratum. . . . In
more polite language: La philosophie ne suffit pas au
grand nombre. Il lui faut la sainteté. . . .
4.
I shall once more relate the history of the
“Ring. ” This is its proper place. It is also the
history of a salvation: except that in this case
it is Wagner himself who is saved. —Half his life-
time Wagner believed in the Revolution as only a
Frenchman could have believed in it. He sought
it in the runic inscriptions of myths, he thought he
had found a typical revolutionary in Siegfried. —
“Whence arises all the evil in this world? ”
Wagner asked himself. From “old contracts”:
he replied, as all revolutionary ideologists have
done. In plain English: from customs, laws,
## p. 10 (#46) ##############################################
IO THE CASE OF WAGNER
morals, institutions, from all those things upon
which the ancient world and ancient society rests.
“How can one get rid of the evil in this world P
How can one get rid of ancient society P” Only
by declaring war against “contracts” (traditions,
morality). This Siegfried does. He starts early
at the game, very early: his origin itself is already
a declaration of war against morality—he is the
result of adultery, of incest. . . . Not the saga,
but Wagner himself is the inventor of this radical
feature; in this matter he corrected the saga. .
Siegfried continues as he began : he follows only
his first impulse, he flings all tradition, all respect,
all fear to the winds. Whatever displeases him he
strikes down. He tilts irreverently at old god-
heads. His principal undertaking, however, is to
emancipate woman,—“to deliver Brunnhilda. ” .
Siegfried and Brunnhilda; the sacrament of free
love; the dawn of the golden age; the twilight of
the Gods of old morality—evil is got rid of . . .
For a long while Wagner's ship sailed happily
along this course. There can be no doubt that
along it Wagner sought his highest goal. —What
happened? A misfortune. The ship dashed on
to a reef; Wagner had run aground. The reef was
Schopenhauer's philosophy; Wagner had stuck
fast on a contrary view of the world. What had
he set to music? Optimism P Wagner was
ashamed. It was moreover an optimism for which
Schopenhauer had devised an evil expression,--
unscrupulous optimism. He was more than ever
ashamed. He reflected for some time; his position
seemed desperate. . . . At last a path of escape
## p. 11 (#47) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM II
seemed gradually to open before him : what if the
reef on which he had been wrecked could be
interpreted as a goal, as the ulterior motive, as the
actual purpose of his journey? To be wrecked
here, this was also a goal. Bene navigavi cum
naufragium feci . . . and he translated the “Ring”
into Schopenhauerian language. Everything goes
wrong, everything goes to wrack and ruin, the new
world is just as bad as the old one:—Nonentity,
the Indian Circe beckons. . . . Brunnhilda, who
according to the old plan had to retire with a song
in honour of free love, consoling the world with the
hope of a socialistic Utopia in which “all will be
well”; now gets something else to do. She must
first study Schopenhauer. She must first versify
the fourth book of “The World as Will and Idea. ”
Wagner was saved. . . . Joking apart, this was a
salvation. The service which Wagner owes to
Schopenhauer is incalculable. It was the philo-
sopher of decadence who allowed the artist of decad-
ence to find himself—
5.
The artist of decadence. That is the word. And
here I begin to be serious. I could not think of
looking on approvingly while this décadent spoils
our health—and music into the bargain. Is Wagner
a man at all? Is he not rather a disease ? Every-
thing he touches he contaminates. He has made
music sick.
A typical décadent who thinks himself necessary
with his corrupted taste, who arrogates to himself
f º -
\; - ºver
## p. 12 (#48) ##############################################
I2 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
U.
a higher taste, who tries to establish his depravity
as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment.
And no one guards against it. His powers of
seduction attain monstrous proportions, holy in-
cense hangs around him, the misunderstanding
concerning him is called the Gospel,-and he has
certainly not converted only the poor in spirit to
his cause !
I should like to open the window a little. Airl
More air –
The fact that people in Germany deceive them-
selves concerning Wagner does not surprise me.
The reverse would surprise me. The Germans
have modelled a Wagner for themselves, whom
they can honour: never yet have they been psy-
chologists; they are thankful that they misunder-
stand. But that people should also deceive them-
selves concerning Wagner in Paris | Where people
are scarcely anything else than psychologists. And
in Saint Petersburg . Where things are divined,
which even Paris has no idea of. How intimately
related must Wagner be to the entire decadence
of Europe for her not to have felt that he was
decadent! He belongs to it: he is its protagonist,
its greatest name. . . .
We bring honour on our-
selves by elevating him to the clouds. -For the
mere fact that no one guards against him is in
itself already a sign of decadence. Instinct is
weakened, what ought to be eschewed now attracts.
People actually kiss that which plunges them more
quickly into the abyss. -Is there any need for an
example? One has only to think of the régime
which anaemic, or gouty, or diabetic people pre-
## p. 13 (#49) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I3
scribe for themselves. The definition of a vege-
tarian: a creature who has need of a corroborating
diet. To recognise what is harmful as harmful, to
be able to deny oneself what is harmful, is a sign
of youth, of vitality. That which is harmful lures
the exhausted : cabbage lures the vegetarian.
Illness itself can be a stimulus to life: but one
must be healthy enough for such a stimulus ! —
Wagner increases exhaustion: therefore he attracts
the weak and exhausted to him. Oh, the rattle-
snake joy of the old Master precisely because he
always saw “the little children” coming unto
him
I place this point of view first and foremost:
Wagner's art is diseased. The problems he sets
on the stage are all concerned with hysteria; the
convulsiveness of his emotions, his over-excited
sensitiveness, his taste which demands ever sharper
condimentation, his erraticness which he togged
out to look like principles, and, last but not least,
his choice of heroes and heroines, considered as
physiological types (—a hospital ward —): the
whole represents a morbid picture; of this there
can be no doubt. Wagner est une névrose. Maybe,
that nothing is better known to-day, or in any case
the subject of greater study, than the Protean
character of degeneration which has disguised itself
here, both as an art and as an artist. In Wagner
our medical men and physiologists have a most
interesting case, or at least a very complete one.
Owing to the very fact that nothing is more
modern than this thorough morbidness, this dilatori-
ness and excessive irritability of the nervous
## p. 14 (#50) ##############################################
I4 THE CASE OF WAGNER
machinery, Wagner is the modern artist par
excellence, the Cagliostro of modernity. All that
the world most needs to-day, is combined in the
most seductive manner in his art, the three great
stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artift-
ciality and innocence (idiocy).
Wagner is a great corrupter of music. With it,
he found the means of stimulating tired nerves,
and in this way he made music ill. In the art of
spurring exhausted creatures back into activity,
and of recalling half-corpses to life, the inventive-
ness he shows is of no mean order. He is the
master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the
strongest like bullocks. Wagner's success—his
success with nerves, and therefore with women—
converted the whole world of ambitious musicians
into disciples of his secret art. And not only the
ambitious, but also the shrewd. . . . Only with
morbid music can money be made to-day; our big
theatres live on Wagner.
6.
—Once more I will venture to indulge in a little
levity. Let us suppose that Wagner's success could
become flesh and blood and assume a human form;
that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant,
it could move among budding artists. How do
you think it would then be likely to express
itself? —
My friends, it would say, let us exchange a word
or two in private. It is easier to compose bad music
than good music. But what, if apart from this it
## p. 15 (#51) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I5
were also more profitable, more effective, more
convincing, more exalting, more secure, more
Wagnerian 2 . . . Pulchrum est paucorum hominum.
Bad enough in all conscience We understand
Latin, and perhaps we also understand which side
our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks:
we know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why
not rather aim at size, at the sublime, the gigantic,
that which moves the masses 2–And to repeat: it
is easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we
know that. . . .
We know the masses, we know the theatre. The
best of those who assemble there, German youths,
horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require
the sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming.
This much still lies within our power. And as for
the others who assemble there, the cultured crètins,
the blasé pigmies, the eternally feminine, the
gastrically happy, in short the people—they also
require the sublime, the profound, the overwhelm-
ing. All these people argue in the same way.
“He who overthrows us is strong; he who elevates
us is godly; he who makes us wonder vaguely is
profound. ”—Let us make up our mind then, my
friends in music: we do want to overthrow them,
we do want to elevate them, we do want to make
them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within
our powers.
In regard to the process of making them wonder:
it is here that our notion of “style” finds its start-
ing-point. Above all, no thoughts | Nothing is
more compromising than a thought ! But the
state of mind which precedes thought, the labour
w
## p. 16 (#52) ##############################################
I6 THE CASE OF WAGNER
of the thought still unborn, the promise of future
thought, the world as it was before God created it
—a recrudescence of chaos. . . . Chaos makes
people wonder. . .
In the words of the master: infinity but without
melody.
In the second place, with regard to the over-
throwing-this belongs at least in part, to physio-
logy. Let us, in the first place, examine the in-
struments. A few of them would convince even
our intestines (—they throw open doors, as Händel
would say), others becharm our very marrow. The
colour of the melody is all-important here; the
melody itself is of no importance. Let us be
precise about this point. To what other purpose
should we spend our strength? Let us be char-
acteristic in tone even to the point of foolishness!
If by means of tones we allow plenty of scope for
guessing, this will be put to the credit of our
intellects. Let us irritate nerves, let us strike
them dead: let us handle thunder and lightning,
that is what overthrows. .
But what overthrows best, is passion. —We must
try and be clear concerning this question of passion.
Nothing is cheaper than passion 1 All the virtues
of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no
need to have learnt anything, but passion is
always within our reach Beauty is difficult: let
us beware of beauty . . . And also of melody /
However much in earnest we may otherwise be
about the ideal, let us slander, my friends, let us
slander-let us slander melody Nothing is more
dangerous than a beautiful melody Nothing is
## p. 17 (#53) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 17
more certain to ruin tastel My friends, if people
again set about loving beautiful melodies, we are
lost ! . . . -* T-
First principle: melody is immoral. Proof:
“Palestrina. ” Application: “Parsifal. ” The absence
of melody is in itself sanctifying. . . .
And this is the definition of passion. Passion—
or the acrobatic feats of ugliness on the tight-rope
of enharmonic. —My friends, let us dare to be ugly
Wagner dared it! Let us heave the mud of the
most repulsive harmonies undauntedly before us.
We must not even spare our hands ! Only thus,
shall we become natural. . . .
And now a last word of advice. Perhaps it
covers everything. —Let us be idealists /–If not the
cleverest, it is at least the wisest thing we can do.
In order to elevate men we ourselves must be
exalted. Let us wander in the clouds, let us
harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great
symbols all around us! Sursum. / Bumbum. /—
there is no better advice. The “heaving breast”
shall be our argument, “beautiful feelings” our
advocates. Virtue still carries its point against
counterpoint. “How could he who improves us,
help being better than we ? ” man has ever thought
thus. Let us therefore improve mankind l—in this
way we shall become good (in this way we shall even
become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”).
The straining after the base excitement of the
senses, after so-called beauty, shattered the nerves
of the Italians: let us remain German | Even
Mozart's relation to music—Wagner spoke this
word of comfort to us—was at bottom frivolous. . . .
Y
2
## p. 18 (#54) ##############################################
18 THE CASE OF WAGNER
Never let us acknowledge that music “may be a
recreation,” that it may “enliven,” that it may
“give pleasure. ” Wever let us give pleasure /—we
shall be lost if people once again think of music
hedonistically. . . . That belongs to the bad
Heighteenth century. . . . On the other hand,
nothing would be more advisable (between our-
selves) than a dose of cant, sit venia verbo. This
imparts dignity. —And let us take care to select
the precise moment when it would be fitting to
have black looks, to sigh openly, to sigh devoutly,
to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their
eyes. “Man is corrupt: who will save him P what
will save him 2" Do not let us reply. We must
be on our guard. We must control our ambition,
which would bid us found new religions. But no
one must doubt that it is we who save him, that in
our music alone salvation is to be found. . . .
(See Wagner's essay, “Religion and Art. ”)
7.
Enough ! Enough ! I fear that, beneath all my
merry jests, you are beginning to recognise the
sinister truth only too clearly—the picture of the
decline of art, of the decline of the artist. The
latter, which is a decline of character, might perhaps
be defined provisionally in the following manner:
the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is
developing ever more and more into a talent for
telling lies. In a certain chapter of my principal
work which bears the title “Concerning the Phy-
## p. 19 (#55) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 19
siology of Art,” “ I shall have an opportunity of
showing more thoroughly how this transformation
of art as a whole into histrionics is just as much
a sign of physiological degeneration (or more
precisely a form of hysteria), as any other indi-
vidual corruption, and infirmity peculiar to the
art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the
restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary
to change one's attitude to it every second. They
understand nothing of Wagner who see in him
but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter
of accidents. He was not the “defective,” “ill-
fated,” “contradictory” genius that people have
declared him to be, Wagner was something com-
plete, he was a typical décadent, in whom every sign
of “free will” was lacking, in whom every feature
was necessary. If there is anything at all of
interest in Wagner, it is the consistency with
which a critical physiological condition may con-
vert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion,
into a method, a form of procedure, a reform of
all principles, a crisis in taste.
At this point I shall only stop to consider the
question of style. How is decadence in literature
characterised? By the fact that in it life no longer
animates the whole. Words become predominan
and leap right out of the sentence to which the
belong, the sentences themselves trespass beyond
their bounds, and obscure the sense of the whole
page, and the page in its turn gains in vigour at
* See “The Will to Power,” vol. ii. , authorised English
edition. —Tr. --- *
## p. 20 (#56) ##############################################
2O THE CASE OF WAGNER
the cost of the whole—the whole is no longer a
whole. But this is the formula for every decadent
style: there is always anarchy among the atoms,
disaggregation of the will,—in moral terms: “free-
dom of the individual,”—extended into a political
theory: “equal rights for all. ” Life, equal vitality,
all the vibration and exuberance of life, driven
back into the smallest structure, and the remainder
left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, dis-
tress, and numbness, or hostility and chaos: both
striking one with ever increasing force the higher
the forms of organisation are into which one
ascends. The whole no longer lives at all : it
is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a fictitious
thing.
In Wagner's case the first thing we notice is an
hallucination, not of tones, but of attitudes. Only
after he has the latter does he begin to seek the
semiotics of tone for them. If we wish to
admire him, we should observe him at work
here: how he separates and distinguishes, how he
arrives at small unities, and how he galvanises
them, accentuates them, and brings them into pre-
eminence. But in this way he exhausts his strength:
the rest is worthless. How paltry, awkward, and
amateurish is his manner of “developing,” his
attempt at combining incompatible parts. His
manner in this respect reminds one of two people
who even in other ways are not unlike him in style
—the brothers Goncourt; one almost feels com-
passion for so much impotence. That Wagner
disguised his inability to create organic forms, under
the cloak of a principle, that he should have con-
## p. 21 (#57) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 2I
structed a “dramatic style” out of what we should
call the total inability to create any style whatso-
ever, is quite in keeping with that daring habit,
which stuck to him throughout his life, of setting
up a principle wherever capacity failed him.
(In this respect he was very different from old
Kant, who rejoiced in another form of daring, i. e. :
whenever a principle failed him, he endowed man
with a “capacity” which took its place. . . . ) Once
more let it be said that Wagner is really only ,
worthy of admiration and love by virtue of his in-
ventiveness in small things, in his elaboration of .
details, here one is quite justified in proclaiming
him a master of the first rank, as our greatest
musical miniaturist, who compresses an infinity of
meaning and sweetness into the smallest space.
His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery
of a dying light, so pampers our senses that after-
wards almost every other musician strikes us as
being too robust. If people would believe me.
they would not form the highest idea of Wagner
from that which pleases them in him to-day. All
that was only devised for convincing the masses,
and people like ourselves recoil from it just as one
would recoil from too garish a fresco. What concern
have we with the irritating brutality of the over-
ture to the “Tannhäuser”? Or with the Wal-
kyrie Circus P Whatever has become popular in
Wagner's art, including that which has become
so outside the theatre, is in bad taste and spoils
taste. The “Tannhäuser” March seems to me to
savour of the Philistine; the overture to the
“Flying Dutchman” is much ado about nothing;
z
º
## p. 22 (#58) ##############################################
22 THE CASE OF WAGNER
the prelude to “Lohengrin. ” was the first, only too
insidious, only too successful example of how one
|can hypnotise with music (–I dislike all music
which aspires to nothing higher than to convince
the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who
paints frescoes and practises magnetism, there is
yet another Wagner who hoards small treasures:
our greatest melancholic in music, full of side
glances, loving speeches, and words of comfort, in
which no one ever forestalled him, the tone-
master of melancholy and drowsy happiness. . .
A lexicon of Wagner's most intimate phrases—a
host of short fragments of from five to fifteen bars
each, of music which nobody knows. . . . Wagner
had the virtue of décadents, pity. . . .
8.
out his life he rattled “resignation,” “loyalty,”
and “purity” about our ears, and he retired from
the corrupt world with a song of praise to chastity
—And we believed it all. . . .
—But you will not listen to me? You prefer
even the problem of Wagner to that of Bizet? But
neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The
problem of salvation is even a venerable problem.
Wagner pondered over nothing so deeply as over
salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation.
J-
## p. 6 (#42) ###############################################
6 THE CASE OF WAGNER
Someone always wants to be saved in his operas,
now it is a youth ; anon it is a maid, this is his
problem. —And how lavishly he varies his leitmotif/
What rare and melancholy modulations ! If it were
not for Wagner, who would teach us that innocence
has a preference for saving interesting sinners?
(the case in “Tannhäuser”). Or that even the eternal
Jew gets saved and settled down when he marries?
(the case in the “Flying Dutchman"). Or that
corrupted old females prefer to be saved by chaste
young men? (the case of Kundry). Or that young
hysterics like to be saved by their doctor? (the
case in “Lohengrin. ”). Or that beautiful girls most
love to be saved by a knight who also happens to
be a Wagnerite P (the case in the “Mastersingers”).
Or that even married women also like to be saved
by a knight? (the case of Isolde). Or that the
venerable Almighty, after having compromised
himself morally in all manner of ways, is at last
delivered by a free spirit and an immoralist? (the
case in the “Ring”). Admire, more especially this
last piece of wisdom Do you understand it?
I—take good care not to understand it. . . . That
it is possible to draw yet other lessons from the
works above mentioned,—I am much more ready
to prove than to dispute. That one may be driven
by a Wagnerian ballet to desperation—and to
virtue ! (once again the case in “Tannhäuser”).
That not going to bed at the right time may be
followed by the worst consequences (once again
the case of “Lohengrin"). -That one can never be
too sure of the spouse one actually marries (for the
third time, the case of “Lohengrin"). “Tristan and
## p. 7 (#43) ###############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 7
Isolde” glorifies the perfect husband who, in a
certain case, can ask only one question: “But why
have ye not told me this before? Nothing could L
be simpler than that l” Reply: -
“That I cannot tell thee.
And what thou askest,
. *
*
That wilt thou never learn. ” cº
f -
º, tº
“Lohengrin. ” contains a solemn ban upon all in- ". *-
vestigation and questioning. In this way Wagner t
stood for the Christian concept, “Thou must and , º
shalt believe. ” It is a crime against the highest
and the holiest to be scientific. . . . The “Flying
Dutchman” preaches the sublime doctrine that .
woman can moor the most erratic soul, or to put " '
it into Wagnerian terms “save" him. Here we -
venture to ask a question. Supposing that this
were actually true, would it therefore be desirable P-
What becomes of the “eternal Jew” whom a . . . * *
woman adores and enchains 2 He simply ceases -
from being eternal; he marries, that is to say, he at . .
concerns us no longer. —Transferred into the realm " . . . *
of reality, the danger for the artist and for the 4°
genius—and these are of course the “eternal Jews” ºr " t
—resides in woman: adoring women are their ruin. . . . ;
Scarcely any one has sufficient character not to be t", .
corrupted—“saved” when he finds himself treated . . .
as a God:—he then immediately condescends to . . .
woman. -Man is a coward in the face of all that is
eternally feminine: and this the girls know. —In
many cases of woman's love, and perhaps precisely . . . . .
in the most famous ones, the love is no more than * * *
a refined form of parasitism, a making one's nest in
## p. 8 (#44) ###############################################
8 THE CASE OF WAGNER
another's soul and sometimes even in another's
flesh—Ah! and how constantly at the cost of the
host
We know the fate of Goethe in old-maidish
moralin-corroded Germany. He was always offen-
sive to Germans, he found honest admirers only
among Jewesses. Schiller, “noble” Schiller, who
cried flowery words into their ears, he was a man
after their own heart. What did they reproach
Goethe with ? —with the Mount of Venus, and with
having composed certain Venetian epigrams. Even
Klopstock preached him a moral sermon; there
was a time when Herder was fond of using the
word “Priapus” when he spoke of Goethe. Even
“Wilhelm Meister” seemed to be only a symptom
of decline, of a moral “going to the dogs. ” The
“Menagerie of tame cattle,” the worthlessness of
the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally
bursts out in a plaint which Biterolf” might well
have sung: “nothing so easily makes a painful
impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its
wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly
inferior, while it renounces more lofty aims. ” But
the most indignant of all was the cultured woman:
all smaller courts in Germany, every kind of “Puri-
tanism” made the sign of the cross at the sight of
Goethe, at the thought of the “unclean spirit” in
Goethe. —This history was what Wagner set to
music. He saves Goethe, that goes without
saying; but he does so in such a clever way that
he also takes the side of the cultured woman.
* A character in “Tannhäuser. ”—Tr.
## p. 9 (#45) ###############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 9
Goethe gets saved: a prayer saves him, a cultured
woman draws him out of the mire.
—As to what Goethe would have thought of
Wagner? —Goethe once set himself the question,
“what danger hangs over all romanticists: the fate
of romanticists? ” His answer was: “To choke
over the rumination of moral and religious ab-
surdities. ” In short: Parsifal . . . The philosopher
writes thereto an epilogue. Holiness—the only
remaining higher value still seen by the mob or by
woman, the horizon of the ideal for all those who
are naturally short-sighted. To philosophers, how-
ever, this horizon, like every other, is a mere
misunderstanding, a sort of slamming of the door
in the face of the real beginning of their world,—
their danger, their ideal, their desideratum. . . . In
more polite language: La philosophie ne suffit pas au
grand nombre. Il lui faut la sainteté. . . .
4.
I shall once more relate the history of the
“Ring. ” This is its proper place. It is also the
history of a salvation: except that in this case
it is Wagner himself who is saved. —Half his life-
time Wagner believed in the Revolution as only a
Frenchman could have believed in it. He sought
it in the runic inscriptions of myths, he thought he
had found a typical revolutionary in Siegfried. —
“Whence arises all the evil in this world? ”
Wagner asked himself. From “old contracts”:
he replied, as all revolutionary ideologists have
done. In plain English: from customs, laws,
## p. 10 (#46) ##############################################
IO THE CASE OF WAGNER
morals, institutions, from all those things upon
which the ancient world and ancient society rests.
“How can one get rid of the evil in this world P
How can one get rid of ancient society P” Only
by declaring war against “contracts” (traditions,
morality). This Siegfried does. He starts early
at the game, very early: his origin itself is already
a declaration of war against morality—he is the
result of adultery, of incest. . . . Not the saga,
but Wagner himself is the inventor of this radical
feature; in this matter he corrected the saga. .
Siegfried continues as he began : he follows only
his first impulse, he flings all tradition, all respect,
all fear to the winds. Whatever displeases him he
strikes down. He tilts irreverently at old god-
heads. His principal undertaking, however, is to
emancipate woman,—“to deliver Brunnhilda. ” .
Siegfried and Brunnhilda; the sacrament of free
love; the dawn of the golden age; the twilight of
the Gods of old morality—evil is got rid of . . .
For a long while Wagner's ship sailed happily
along this course. There can be no doubt that
along it Wagner sought his highest goal. —What
happened? A misfortune. The ship dashed on
to a reef; Wagner had run aground. The reef was
Schopenhauer's philosophy; Wagner had stuck
fast on a contrary view of the world. What had
he set to music? Optimism P Wagner was
ashamed. It was moreover an optimism for which
Schopenhauer had devised an evil expression,--
unscrupulous optimism. He was more than ever
ashamed. He reflected for some time; his position
seemed desperate. . . . At last a path of escape
## p. 11 (#47) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM II
seemed gradually to open before him : what if the
reef on which he had been wrecked could be
interpreted as a goal, as the ulterior motive, as the
actual purpose of his journey? To be wrecked
here, this was also a goal. Bene navigavi cum
naufragium feci . . . and he translated the “Ring”
into Schopenhauerian language. Everything goes
wrong, everything goes to wrack and ruin, the new
world is just as bad as the old one:—Nonentity,
the Indian Circe beckons. . . . Brunnhilda, who
according to the old plan had to retire with a song
in honour of free love, consoling the world with the
hope of a socialistic Utopia in which “all will be
well”; now gets something else to do. She must
first study Schopenhauer. She must first versify
the fourth book of “The World as Will and Idea. ”
Wagner was saved. . . . Joking apart, this was a
salvation. The service which Wagner owes to
Schopenhauer is incalculable. It was the philo-
sopher of decadence who allowed the artist of decad-
ence to find himself—
5.
The artist of decadence. That is the word. And
here I begin to be serious. I could not think of
looking on approvingly while this décadent spoils
our health—and music into the bargain. Is Wagner
a man at all? Is he not rather a disease ? Every-
thing he touches he contaminates. He has made
music sick.
A typical décadent who thinks himself necessary
with his corrupted taste, who arrogates to himself
f º -
\; - ºver
## p. 12 (#48) ##############################################
I2 THE CASE OF WAGNER
|
U.
a higher taste, who tries to establish his depravity
as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment.
And no one guards against it. His powers of
seduction attain monstrous proportions, holy in-
cense hangs around him, the misunderstanding
concerning him is called the Gospel,-and he has
certainly not converted only the poor in spirit to
his cause !
I should like to open the window a little. Airl
More air –
The fact that people in Germany deceive them-
selves concerning Wagner does not surprise me.
The reverse would surprise me. The Germans
have modelled a Wagner for themselves, whom
they can honour: never yet have they been psy-
chologists; they are thankful that they misunder-
stand. But that people should also deceive them-
selves concerning Wagner in Paris | Where people
are scarcely anything else than psychologists. And
in Saint Petersburg . Where things are divined,
which even Paris has no idea of. How intimately
related must Wagner be to the entire decadence
of Europe for her not to have felt that he was
decadent! He belongs to it: he is its protagonist,
its greatest name. . . .
We bring honour on our-
selves by elevating him to the clouds. -For the
mere fact that no one guards against him is in
itself already a sign of decadence. Instinct is
weakened, what ought to be eschewed now attracts.
People actually kiss that which plunges them more
quickly into the abyss. -Is there any need for an
example? One has only to think of the régime
which anaemic, or gouty, or diabetic people pre-
## p. 13 (#49) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I3
scribe for themselves. The definition of a vege-
tarian: a creature who has need of a corroborating
diet. To recognise what is harmful as harmful, to
be able to deny oneself what is harmful, is a sign
of youth, of vitality. That which is harmful lures
the exhausted : cabbage lures the vegetarian.
Illness itself can be a stimulus to life: but one
must be healthy enough for such a stimulus ! —
Wagner increases exhaustion: therefore he attracts
the weak and exhausted to him. Oh, the rattle-
snake joy of the old Master precisely because he
always saw “the little children” coming unto
him
I place this point of view first and foremost:
Wagner's art is diseased. The problems he sets
on the stage are all concerned with hysteria; the
convulsiveness of his emotions, his over-excited
sensitiveness, his taste which demands ever sharper
condimentation, his erraticness which he togged
out to look like principles, and, last but not least,
his choice of heroes and heroines, considered as
physiological types (—a hospital ward —): the
whole represents a morbid picture; of this there
can be no doubt. Wagner est une névrose. Maybe,
that nothing is better known to-day, or in any case
the subject of greater study, than the Protean
character of degeneration which has disguised itself
here, both as an art and as an artist. In Wagner
our medical men and physiologists have a most
interesting case, or at least a very complete one.
Owing to the very fact that nothing is more
modern than this thorough morbidness, this dilatori-
ness and excessive irritability of the nervous
## p. 14 (#50) ##############################################
I4 THE CASE OF WAGNER
machinery, Wagner is the modern artist par
excellence, the Cagliostro of modernity. All that
the world most needs to-day, is combined in the
most seductive manner in his art, the three great
stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artift-
ciality and innocence (idiocy).
Wagner is a great corrupter of music. With it,
he found the means of stimulating tired nerves,
and in this way he made music ill. In the art of
spurring exhausted creatures back into activity,
and of recalling half-corpses to life, the inventive-
ness he shows is of no mean order. He is the
master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the
strongest like bullocks. Wagner's success—his
success with nerves, and therefore with women—
converted the whole world of ambitious musicians
into disciples of his secret art. And not only the
ambitious, but also the shrewd. . . . Only with
morbid music can money be made to-day; our big
theatres live on Wagner.
6.
—Once more I will venture to indulge in a little
levity. Let us suppose that Wagner's success could
become flesh and blood and assume a human form;
that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant,
it could move among budding artists. How do
you think it would then be likely to express
itself? —
My friends, it would say, let us exchange a word
or two in private. It is easier to compose bad music
than good music. But what, if apart from this it
## p. 15 (#51) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM I5
were also more profitable, more effective, more
convincing, more exalting, more secure, more
Wagnerian 2 . . . Pulchrum est paucorum hominum.
Bad enough in all conscience We understand
Latin, and perhaps we also understand which side
our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks:
we know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why
not rather aim at size, at the sublime, the gigantic,
that which moves the masses 2–And to repeat: it
is easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we
know that. . . .
We know the masses, we know the theatre. The
best of those who assemble there, German youths,
horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require
the sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming.
This much still lies within our power. And as for
the others who assemble there, the cultured crètins,
the blasé pigmies, the eternally feminine, the
gastrically happy, in short the people—they also
require the sublime, the profound, the overwhelm-
ing. All these people argue in the same way.
“He who overthrows us is strong; he who elevates
us is godly; he who makes us wonder vaguely is
profound. ”—Let us make up our mind then, my
friends in music: we do want to overthrow them,
we do want to elevate them, we do want to make
them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within
our powers.
In regard to the process of making them wonder:
it is here that our notion of “style” finds its start-
ing-point. Above all, no thoughts | Nothing is
more compromising than a thought ! But the
state of mind which precedes thought, the labour
w
## p. 16 (#52) ##############################################
I6 THE CASE OF WAGNER
of the thought still unborn, the promise of future
thought, the world as it was before God created it
—a recrudescence of chaos. . . . Chaos makes
people wonder. . .
In the words of the master: infinity but without
melody.
In the second place, with regard to the over-
throwing-this belongs at least in part, to physio-
logy. Let us, in the first place, examine the in-
struments. A few of them would convince even
our intestines (—they throw open doors, as Händel
would say), others becharm our very marrow. The
colour of the melody is all-important here; the
melody itself is of no importance. Let us be
precise about this point. To what other purpose
should we spend our strength? Let us be char-
acteristic in tone even to the point of foolishness!
If by means of tones we allow plenty of scope for
guessing, this will be put to the credit of our
intellects. Let us irritate nerves, let us strike
them dead: let us handle thunder and lightning,
that is what overthrows. .
But what overthrows best, is passion. —We must
try and be clear concerning this question of passion.
Nothing is cheaper than passion 1 All the virtues
of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no
need to have learnt anything, but passion is
always within our reach Beauty is difficult: let
us beware of beauty . . . And also of melody /
However much in earnest we may otherwise be
about the ideal, let us slander, my friends, let us
slander-let us slander melody Nothing is more
dangerous than a beautiful melody Nothing is
## p. 17 (#53) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 17
more certain to ruin tastel My friends, if people
again set about loving beautiful melodies, we are
lost ! . . . -* T-
First principle: melody is immoral. Proof:
“Palestrina. ” Application: “Parsifal. ” The absence
of melody is in itself sanctifying. . . .
And this is the definition of passion. Passion—
or the acrobatic feats of ugliness on the tight-rope
of enharmonic. —My friends, let us dare to be ugly
Wagner dared it! Let us heave the mud of the
most repulsive harmonies undauntedly before us.
We must not even spare our hands ! Only thus,
shall we become natural. . . .
And now a last word of advice. Perhaps it
covers everything. —Let us be idealists /–If not the
cleverest, it is at least the wisest thing we can do.
In order to elevate men we ourselves must be
exalted. Let us wander in the clouds, let us
harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great
symbols all around us! Sursum. / Bumbum. /—
there is no better advice. The “heaving breast”
shall be our argument, “beautiful feelings” our
advocates. Virtue still carries its point against
counterpoint. “How could he who improves us,
help being better than we ? ” man has ever thought
thus. Let us therefore improve mankind l—in this
way we shall become good (in this way we shall even
become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”).
The straining after the base excitement of the
senses, after so-called beauty, shattered the nerves
of the Italians: let us remain German | Even
Mozart's relation to music—Wagner spoke this
word of comfort to us—was at bottom frivolous. . . .
Y
2
## p. 18 (#54) ##############################################
18 THE CASE OF WAGNER
Never let us acknowledge that music “may be a
recreation,” that it may “enliven,” that it may
“give pleasure. ” Wever let us give pleasure /—we
shall be lost if people once again think of music
hedonistically. . . . That belongs to the bad
Heighteenth century. . . . On the other hand,
nothing would be more advisable (between our-
selves) than a dose of cant, sit venia verbo. This
imparts dignity. —And let us take care to select
the precise moment when it would be fitting to
have black looks, to sigh openly, to sigh devoutly,
to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their
eyes. “Man is corrupt: who will save him P what
will save him 2" Do not let us reply. We must
be on our guard. We must control our ambition,
which would bid us found new religions. But no
one must doubt that it is we who save him, that in
our music alone salvation is to be found. . . .
(See Wagner's essay, “Religion and Art. ”)
7.
Enough ! Enough ! I fear that, beneath all my
merry jests, you are beginning to recognise the
sinister truth only too clearly—the picture of the
decline of art, of the decline of the artist. The
latter, which is a decline of character, might perhaps
be defined provisionally in the following manner:
the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is
developing ever more and more into a talent for
telling lies. In a certain chapter of my principal
work which bears the title “Concerning the Phy-
## p. 19 (#55) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 19
siology of Art,” “ I shall have an opportunity of
showing more thoroughly how this transformation
of art as a whole into histrionics is just as much
a sign of physiological degeneration (or more
precisely a form of hysteria), as any other indi-
vidual corruption, and infirmity peculiar to the
art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the
restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary
to change one's attitude to it every second. They
understand nothing of Wagner who see in him
but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter
of accidents. He was not the “defective,” “ill-
fated,” “contradictory” genius that people have
declared him to be, Wagner was something com-
plete, he was a typical décadent, in whom every sign
of “free will” was lacking, in whom every feature
was necessary. If there is anything at all of
interest in Wagner, it is the consistency with
which a critical physiological condition may con-
vert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion,
into a method, a form of procedure, a reform of
all principles, a crisis in taste.
At this point I shall only stop to consider the
question of style. How is decadence in literature
characterised? By the fact that in it life no longer
animates the whole. Words become predominan
and leap right out of the sentence to which the
belong, the sentences themselves trespass beyond
their bounds, and obscure the sense of the whole
page, and the page in its turn gains in vigour at
* See “The Will to Power,” vol. ii. , authorised English
edition. —Tr. --- *
## p. 20 (#56) ##############################################
2O THE CASE OF WAGNER
the cost of the whole—the whole is no longer a
whole. But this is the formula for every decadent
style: there is always anarchy among the atoms,
disaggregation of the will,—in moral terms: “free-
dom of the individual,”—extended into a political
theory: “equal rights for all. ” Life, equal vitality,
all the vibration and exuberance of life, driven
back into the smallest structure, and the remainder
left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, dis-
tress, and numbness, or hostility and chaos: both
striking one with ever increasing force the higher
the forms of organisation are into which one
ascends. The whole no longer lives at all : it
is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a fictitious
thing.
In Wagner's case the first thing we notice is an
hallucination, not of tones, but of attitudes. Only
after he has the latter does he begin to seek the
semiotics of tone for them. If we wish to
admire him, we should observe him at work
here: how he separates and distinguishes, how he
arrives at small unities, and how he galvanises
them, accentuates them, and brings them into pre-
eminence. But in this way he exhausts his strength:
the rest is worthless. How paltry, awkward, and
amateurish is his manner of “developing,” his
attempt at combining incompatible parts. His
manner in this respect reminds one of two people
who even in other ways are not unlike him in style
—the brothers Goncourt; one almost feels com-
passion for so much impotence. That Wagner
disguised his inability to create organic forms, under
the cloak of a principle, that he should have con-
## p. 21 (#57) ##############################################
A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM 2I
structed a “dramatic style” out of what we should
call the total inability to create any style whatso-
ever, is quite in keeping with that daring habit,
which stuck to him throughout his life, of setting
up a principle wherever capacity failed him.
(In this respect he was very different from old
Kant, who rejoiced in another form of daring, i. e. :
whenever a principle failed him, he endowed man
with a “capacity” which took its place. . . . ) Once
more let it be said that Wagner is really only ,
worthy of admiration and love by virtue of his in-
ventiveness in small things, in his elaboration of .
details, here one is quite justified in proclaiming
him a master of the first rank, as our greatest
musical miniaturist, who compresses an infinity of
meaning and sweetness into the smallest space.
His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery
of a dying light, so pampers our senses that after-
wards almost every other musician strikes us as
being too robust. If people would believe me.
they would not form the highest idea of Wagner
from that which pleases them in him to-day. All
that was only devised for convincing the masses,
and people like ourselves recoil from it just as one
would recoil from too garish a fresco. What concern
have we with the irritating brutality of the over-
ture to the “Tannhäuser”? Or with the Wal-
kyrie Circus P Whatever has become popular in
Wagner's art, including that which has become
so outside the theatre, is in bad taste and spoils
taste. The “Tannhäuser” March seems to me to
savour of the Philistine; the overture to the
“Flying Dutchman” is much ado about nothing;
z
º
## p. 22 (#58) ##############################################
22 THE CASE OF WAGNER
the prelude to “Lohengrin. ” was the first, only too
insidious, only too successful example of how one
|can hypnotise with music (–I dislike all music
which aspires to nothing higher than to convince
the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who
paints frescoes and practises magnetism, there is
yet another Wagner who hoards small treasures:
our greatest melancholic in music, full of side
glances, loving speeches, and words of comfort, in
which no one ever forestalled him, the tone-
master of melancholy and drowsy happiness. . .
A lexicon of Wagner's most intimate phrases—a
host of short fragments of from five to fifteen bars
each, of music which nobody knows. . . . Wagner
had the virtue of décadents, pity. . . .
8.
