The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
800.
The feeling of intoxication is, as a matter of fact, equivalent to a sensation of _surplus power_: it is strongest in seasons of rut: new organs, new accomplishments, new colours, new forms. Embellishment is an outcome of _increased power._ Embellishment is merely an expression of a triumphant will, of an increased state of co-ordination, of a harmony of all the strong desires, of an infallible and perpendicular equilibrium. Logical and geometrical simplification is the result of an increase of power: conversely, the mere aspect of such a simplification increases the sense of power in the beholder.... The zenith of development: the grand style. Ugliness signifies _the decadence of a type_: contradiction and faulty co-ordination among the inmost desires--this means a decline in the _organising_ power, or, psychologically speaking, in the will. The condition of pleasure which is called intoxication is really an exalted feeling of power. ... Sensations of space and time are altered; inordinate distances are traversed by the eye, and only then become visible; the extension of the vision over greater masses and expanses; the refinement of the organ which apprehends the smallest and most elusive things; divination, the power of understanding at the slightest hint, at the smallest suggestion; intelligent sensitiveness; _strength_ as a feeling of dominion in the muscles, as agility and love of movement, as dance, as levity and quick time; strength as the love of proving strength, as bravado, adventurousness, fearlessness, indifference in regard to life and death.... All these elated moments of life stimulate each other; the world of images and of imagination of the one suffices as a suggestion for the other: in this way states finally merge into each other, which might do better to keep apart, _e.g._ the feeling of religious intoxication and sexual irritability (two very profound feelings, always wonderfully co-ordinated. What is it that pleases almost all pious women, old or young? Answer: a saint with beautiful legs, still young, still innocent). Cruelty in tragedy and pity (likewise normally correlated). Spring-time, dancing, music, --all these things are but the display of one sex before the other,--as also that "infinite yearning of the heart" peculiar to Faust.
Artists when they are worth anything at all are men of strong propensities (even physically), with surplus energy, powerful animals, sensual; without a certain overheating of the sexual system a man like Raphael is unthinkable.... To produce music is also in a sense to produce children; chastity is merely the economy of the artist, and in all creative artists productiveness certainly ceases with sexual potency.... Artists should not see things as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of perpetual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.