The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. · 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 lifetime 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.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.