The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
368.
_The Cynic Speaks._—My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections. Why should I therefore begin by disguising them under æsthetic formulæ? My "point" is that I can no longer breathe freely when this music begins to operate on me; my _foot_ immediately becomes indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance and march; it demands first of all from music the ecstasies which are in _good_ walking, striding, leaping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my blood and my bowels also protest? Do I not become hoarse unawares under its influence? And then I ask myself what it is really that my body _wants_ from music generally. I believe it wants to have _relief_: so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the hiding-places and abysses of _perfection_: for this reason I need music. What do I care for the drama! What do I care for the spasms of its moral ecstasies, in which the "people" have their satisfaction! What do I care for the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor!...
It will now be divined that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart,—but Wagner on the contrary, was essentially a man of the stage and an actor, the most enthusiastic mummer-worshipper that has ever existed, even among musicians!... And let it be said in passing that if Wagner's theory was that "drama is the object, and music is only the means to it,"—his _practice_ on the contrary from beginning to end has been to the effect that "attitude is the object, drama and even music can never be anything else but means to _that_." Music as a means of elucidating, strengthening and intensifying dramatic poses and the actor's appeal to the senses, and Wagnerian drama only an opportunity for a number of dramatic attitudes! Wagner possessed, along with all other instincts, the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in all and everything, and as has been said, also as a musician.—I once made this clear with some trouble to a thorough-going Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:—"Do be a little more honest with yourself: we are not now in the theatre. In the theatre we are only honest in the mass; as individuals we lie, we belie even ourselves.
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