The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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When we bring the Greeks to the knowledge of our young students, we are treating the latter as if they were well-informed and matured men. What, indeed, is there about the Greeks and their ways which is suitable for the young? In the end we shall find that we can do nothing for them beyond giving them isolated details. Are these observations for young people? What we actually do, however, is to introduce our young scholars to the collective wisdom of antiquity. Or do we not? The reading of the ancients is emphasised in this way. My belief is that we are forced to concern ourselves with antiquity at a wrong period of our lives. At the end of the twenties its meaning begins to dawn on one. There is something disrespectful about the way in which we make our young students known to the ancients: what is worse, it is unpedagogical; for what can result from a mere acquaintance with things which a youth cannot consciously esteem! Perhaps he must learn to "_believe,_" and this is why I object to it. There are matters regarding which antiquity instructs us, and about which I should hardly care to express myself publicly. All the difficulties of historical study to be elucidated by great examples. Why our young students are not suited to the Greeks.
The consequences of philology: Arrogant expectation. Culture-philistinism. Superficiality. Too high an esteem for reading and writing. Estrangement from the nation and its needs. The philologists themselves, the historians, philosophers, and jurists all end in smoke. Our young students should be brought into contact with real sciences. Likewise with real art. In consequence, when they grew older, a desire for _real_ history would be shown. Inhumanity: even in the "Antigone," even in Goethe's "Iphigenia." The want of "rationalism" in the Greeks. Young people cannot understand the political affairs of antiquity. The poetic element: a bad expectation. Do the philologists know the present time? Their judgments on it as Periclean; their mistaken judgments when they speak of Freytag's[8] genius as resembling that of Homer, and so on; their following in the lead of the litterateurs; their abandonment of the pagan sense, which was exactly the classical element that Goethe discovered in Winckelmann. The condition of the philologists may be seen by their indifference at the appearance of Wagner. They should have learnt even more through him than through Goethe, and they did not even glance in his direction. That shows that they are not actuated by any strong need, or else they would have an instinct to tell them where their food was to be found. Wagner prizes his art too highly to go and sit in a corner with it, like Schumann. He either surrenders himself to the public ("Rienzi") or he makes the public surrender itself to him. He educates it up to his music. Minor artists, too, want their public, but they try to get it by inartistic means, such as through the Press, Hanslick,[9] &c. Wagner perfected the inner fancy of man: later generations will see a renaissance in sculpture. Poetry must precede the plastic art. I observe in philologists: 1. Want of respect for antiquity. 2. Tenderness and flowery oratory; even an apologetic tone. 3. Simplicity in their historical comments. 4. Self-conceit. 5. Under-estimation of the talented philologists.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.