The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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, 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 convalescents 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.[1] No, we are disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, this search after truth "at all costs": this madness of adolescence, "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 mépriser._" ... "Is it true," a little girl once asked her mother, "that the beloved Father is everywhere?--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?_--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?_ Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely on that account--_artists?_
SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE'S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER. (_Summer_ 1878.) 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. 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! We are witnessing the death agony of the _last Art:_ Bayreuth has convinced me of this. My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed him; I had depicted an _ideal monster_--one, however, 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. 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.
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. _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 man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to more complete freedom." Conclusion?--I have had to do the same. He who wakes us always wounds us. 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. 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. 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!! 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 to which we are not driven by any personal need, and which we do not _require,_ we cannot esteem so highly.
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._ _Goethe_ said: "Are not Byron's audacity, sprightliness 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about himself. There are men who try in vain to make a principle out of _themselves._ This was the case with Wagner. Wagner's obscurity concerning final aims; his non-antique fogginess. 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 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. _"C'est la rage de vouloir penser et sentir au delà de sa force"_ (Doudan). The Wagnerites. 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. He is always thinking of the most _extreme_ expression,--in every word. But in the end superlatives begin to pall. 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.
The proposition: "in the face of perfection there is no salvation save love,"[1] is thoroughly 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. 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. 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. _Plato's Envy._ He would fain monopolise Socrates. He saturates the latter with himself, pretends to adorn him καλὸς Σωκράτης, 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. 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 only those who are already convinced, for his dissimulation and his genuine nature are far too violently at variance.
Wagner struggles against the "frivolity" in his nature, which to him the ignoble (as opposed to Goethe) constituted the joy of life. Wagner has the mind of the ordinary man who prefers to trace things to _one_ cause. The Jews do the same: one _aim,_ therefore one Saviour. In this way he simplifies German and culture; wrongly but strongly. Wagner admitted all this to himself often enough when in private communion with his soul: I only wish he had also admitted it publicly. For what constitutes the greatness of a character if it is not this, that he who possesses it is able to take sides even against himself in favour of truth. _Wagner's Teutonism._ That which is un-German in Wagner. He lacks the German charm and grace of a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Weber; he also lacks the flowing, cheerful fire (_Allegro con brio_) of Beethoven and Weber. He cannot be free and easy without being grotesque. He lacks modesty, indulges in big drums, and always tends to surcharge his effect. He is not the good official that Bach was. Neither has he that Goethean calm in regard to his rivals. Wagner always reaches the high-water mark of his vanity when he speaks of the German nature (incidentally it is also the height of his imprudence); for, if Frederick the Great's justice, Goethe's nobility and freedom from envy, Beethoven's sublime resignation, Bach's delicately transfigured spiritual life,--if steady work performed without any thought of glory and success, and without envy, constitute the true _German_ qualities, would it not seem as if Wagner almost wished to prove he is no German?
Terrible wildness, abject sorrow, emptiness, the shudder of joy, unexpectedness,--in short all the qualities peculiar to the Semitic race! I believe that the Jews approach Wagner's art with more understanding than the Aryans do. A passage concerning the Jews, taken from Taine.--As it happens, I have misled the reader, the passage does not concern Wagner at all.--But can it be possible that Wagner is a Jew? In that case we could readily understand his dislike of Jews.[2] Wagner's art is absolutely the _art of the age;_ an æsthetic age would have rejected it. The more subtle people amongst us actually do reject it even now. The _coarsifying_ of everything Æsthetic.--Compared with Goethe's ideal it is very far behind. The moral contrast of these self-indulgent burningly loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a _spur,_ like an irritant: and even this sensation is turned to account in obtaining an _effect_. What is it in our age that Wagner's art expresses? That brutality and most delicate weakness which exist side by side, that running wild of natural instincts, and nervous hyper-sensitiveness, that thirst for emotion which arises from fatigue and the love of fatigue.--All this is understood by the Wagnerites. _Stupefaction or intoxication_ constitute all Wagnerian art. On the other hand I could mention instances in which Wagner stands _higher,_ in which real joy flows from him.
The reason why the figures in Wagner's art behave so madly, is because he greatly feared lest people would doubt that they were alive. Wagner's art is an appeal to inartistic people; all means are welcomed which help towards obtaining an effect. It is calculated not to produce an _artistic effect_ but an effect upon the _nerves in general_. Apparently in Wagner we have an art _for everybody,_ because coarse and subtle means seem to be united in it. Albeit its pre-requisite may be musico-æsthetic education, and _particularly_ with _moral_ indifference. In Wagner we find the most ambitious _combination_ of all means with the view of obtaining the strongest effect: whereas genuine musicians quietly develop individual _genres_. Dramatists are _borrowers_--their principal source of wealth--artistic thoughts drawn from the epos. Wagner borrowed from classical music besides. Dramatists are constructive geniuses, they are not inventive and original as the epic poets are. Drama takes a lower rank than the epos: it presupposes a coarser and more democratic public. Wagner does not altogether trust _music._ He weaves kindred sensations into it in order to lend it the character of greatness. He measures himself on others; he first of all gives his listeners intoxicating drinks in order to lead them into believing that it _was the music that intoxicated them._ The same amount of talent and industry which makes the classic, when it appears some time _too late,_ also makes the baroque artist like Wagner. Wagner's art is calculated to appeal to short-sighted people--one has to get much too close up to it (Miniature): it also appeals to long-sighted people, but not to those with normal sight. _Contradictions in the Idea of Musical Drama._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.