The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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, 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? How can one get rid of ancient society?" 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? 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 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 _philosopher of decadence_ who allowed the _artist of decadence_ to find himself.--
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.