The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms.
seem just as allowable as they are in nature—because of his bursting
plenitude of creative and rejuvenating powers, which are able to convert
every desert into a luxurious land of plenty. Conversely, it is the
greatest sufferer and pauper in vitality, who is most in need of mildness,
peace and goodness—that which to-day is called humaneness—in thought as
well as in action, and possibly of a God whose speciality is to be a God
of the sick, a Saviour, and also of logic or the abstract intelligibility
of existence even for idiots (—the typical “free-spirits,” like the
idealists, and “beautiful souls,” are _décadents_—); in short, of a warm,
danger-tight, and narrow confinement, between optimistic horizons which
would allow of stultification.… And thus very gradually, I began to
understand Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian Greek, and also the
Christian who in fact is only a kind of Epicurean, and who, with his
belief that “faith saves,” carries the principle of Hedonism _as far as
possible_—far beyond all intellectual honesty.… If I am ahead of all other
psychologists in anything, it is in this fact that my eyes are more keen
for tracing those most difficult and most captious of all deductions, in
which the largest number of mistakes have been made,—the deduction which
makes one infer something concerning the author from his work, something
concerning the doer from his deed, something concerning the idealist from
the need which produced this ideal, and something concerning the imperious
_craving_ which stands at the back of all thinking and valuing—In regard
to all artists of what kind soever, I shall now avail myself of this
radical distinction: does the creative power in this case arise from a
loathing of life, or from an excessive _plenitude_ of life? In Goethe, for
instance, an overflow of vitality was creative, in Flaubert—hate:
Flaubert, a new edition of Pascal, but as an artist with this instinctive
belief at heart: “_Flaubert est toujours haissable, l’homme n’est rien,
l’œuvre est tout_”.… He tortured himself when he wrote, just as Pascal
tortured himself when he thought—the feelings of both were inclined to be
“non-egoistic.” … “Disinterestedness”—principle of decadence, the will to
nonentity in art as well as in morality.
Where Wagner Is At Home.
Even at the present day, France is still the refuge of the most
intellectual and refined culture in Europe, it remains the high school of
taste: but one must know where to find this France of taste. The
_North-German Gazette_, for instance, or whoever expresses his sentiments
in that paper, thinks that the French are “barbarians,”—as for me, if I
had to find the _blackest_ spot on earth, where slaves still required to
be liberated, I should turn in the direction of Northern Germany.… But
those who form part of _that select_ France take very good care to
_conceal themselves_; they are a small body of men, and there may be some
among them who do not stand on very firm legs—a few may be fatalists,
hypochondriacs, invalids; others may be enervated, and artificial,—such
are those who would fain be artistic,—but all the loftiness and delicacy
which still remains to this world, is in their possession. In this France
of intellect, which is also the France of pessimism, Schopenhauer is
already much more at home than he ever was in Germany, his principal work
has already been translated twice, and the second time so excellently that
now I prefer to read Schopenhauer in French (—he was an _accident_ among
Germans, just as I am—the Germans have no fingers wherewith to grasp us;
they haven’t any fingers at all,—but only claws). And I do not mention
Heine—_l’adorable Heine_, as they say in Paris—who long since has passed
into the flesh and blood of the more profound and more soulful of French
lyricists. How could the horned cattle of Germany know how to deal with
the _délicatesses_ of such a nature!—And as to Richard Wagner, it is
obvious, it is even glaringly obvious, that Paris is the very _soil_ for
him, the more French music adapts itself to the needs of _l’âme moderne_,
the more Wagnerian it will become,—it is far enough advanced in this
direction already.—In this respect one should not allow one’s self to be
misled by Wagner himself—it was simply disgraceful on Wagner’s part to
scoff at Paris, as he did, in its agony in 1871.… In spite of it all, in
Germany Wagner is only a misapprehension.—who could be more incapable of
understanding anything about Wagner than the Kaiser, for instance?—To
everybody familiar with the movement of European culture, this fact,
however, is certain, that French romanticism and Richard Wagner are most
intimately related. All dominated by literature, up to their very eyes and
ears—the first European artists with a _universal literary_ culture,—most
of them writers, poets, mediators and minglers of the senses and the arts,
all fanatics in _expression_, great discoverers in the realm of the
sublime as also of the ugly and the gruesome, and still greater
discoverers in passion, in working for effect, in the art of dressing
their windows,—all possessing talent far above their genius,—virtuosos to
their backbone, knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures,
constrains or overthrows; born enemies of logic and of straight lines,
thirsting after the exotic, the strange and the monstrous, and all opiates
for the senses and the understanding. On the whole, a daring dare-devil,
magnificently violent, soaring and high-springing crew of artists, who
first had to teach their own century—it is the century of the mob—what the
concept “artist” meant. But they were _ill_.…
Wagner As The Apostle Of Chastity.
1.
Is this the German way?
Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts?
Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves,
Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness,
Exalt their feelings with the censer’s fumes,
And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee,
And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer?
Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell,
And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven?
Is this the German way?
Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords.
What yonder lures is Rome, Rome’s faith sung without words.
2.
There is no necessary contrast between sensuality and chastity, every good
marriage, every genuine love affair is above this contrast; but in those
cases where the contrast exists, it is very far from being necessarily a
tragic one. This, at least, ought to hold good of all well-constituted and
good-spirited mortals, who are not in the least inclined to reckon their
unstable equilibrium between angel and _petite bête_, without further ado,
among the objections to existence, the more refined and more intelligent
like Hafis and Goethe, even regarded it as an additional attraction. It is
precisely contradictions of this kind which lure us to life.… On the other
hand, it must be obvious, that when Circe’s unfortunate animals are
induced to worship chastity, all they see and _worship_ therein, is their
opposite—oh! and with what tragic groaning and fervour, may well be
imagined—that same painful and thoroughly superfluous opposition which,
towards the end of his life, Richard Wagner undoubtedly wished to set to
music and to put on the stage, _And to what purpose?_ we may reasonably
ask.
3.
And yet this other question can certainly not be circumvented: what
business had he actually with that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic
simplicity,” that poor devil and son of nature—Parsifal, whom he
ultimately makes a catholic by such insidious means—what?—was Wagner in
earnest with Parsifal? For, that he was laughed at, I cannot deny, any
more than Gottfried Keller can.… We should like to believe that “Parsifal”
was meant as a piece of idle gaiety, as the closing act and satyric drama,
with which Wagner the tragedian wished to take leave of us, of himself,
and above all _of tragedy_, in a way which befitted him and his dignity,
that is to say, with an extravagant, lofty and most malicious parody of
tragedy itself, of all the past and terrible earnestness and sorrow of
this world, of the most _ridiculous_ form of the unnaturalness of the
ascetic ideal, at last overcome. For Parsifal is the subject _par
excellence_ for a comic opera.… Is Wagner’s “Parsifal” his secret laugh of
superiority at himself, the triumph of his last and most exalted state of
artistic freedom, of artistic transcendence—is it Wagner able to _laugh_
at himself? Once again we only wish it were so; for what could Parsifal be
if he were _meant seriously_? Is it necessary in his case to say (as I
have heard people say) that “Parsifal” is “the product of the mad hatred
of knowledge, intellect, and sensuality?” a curse upon the senses and the
mind in one breath and in one fit of hatred? an act of apostasy and a
return to Christianly sick and obscurantist ideals? And finally even a
denial of self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who
theretofore had worked with all the power of his will in favour of the
opposite cause, the spiritualisation and sensualisation of his art? And
not only of his art, but also of his life? Let us remember how
enthusiastically Wagner at one time walked in the footsteps of the
philosopher Feuerbach. Feuerbach’s words “healthy sensuality” struck
Wagner in the thirties and forties very much as they struck many other
Germans—they called themselves the young Germans—that is to say, as words
of salvation. Did he ultimately _change his mind_ on this point? It would
seem that he had at least had the desire of _changing_ his doctrine
towards the end.… Had the _hatred of life_ become dominant in him as in
Flaubert? For “Parsifal” is a work of rancour, of revenge, of the most
secret concoction of poisons with which to make an end of the first
conditions of life, _it is a bad work_. The preaching of chastity remains
an incitement to unnaturalness: I despise anybody who does not regard
“Parsifal” as an outrage upon morality.—
How I Got Rid Of Wagner.
1.
Already in the summer of 1876, when the first festival at Bayreuth was at
its height, I took leave of Wagner in my soul. I cannot endure anything
double-faced. Since Wagner had returned to Germany, he had condescended
step by step to everything that I despise—even to anti-Semitism.… As a
matter of fact, it was then high time to bid him farewell: but the proof
of this came only too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most triumphant
creature alive; as a matter of fact, though, a cranky and desperate
_décadent_, suddenly fell helpless and broken on his knees before the
Christian cross.… Was there no German at that time who had the eyes to
see, and the sympathy in his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this
spectacle? Was I the only one who _suffered_ from it?—Enough, the
unexpected event, like a flash of lightning, made me see only too clearly
what kind of a place it was that I had just left,—and it also made me
shudder as a man shudders who unawares has just escaped a great danger. As
I continued my journey alone, I trembled. Not long after this I was ill,
more than ill—I was _tired_;—tired of the continual disappointments over
everything which remained for us modern men to be enthusiastic about, of
the energy, industry, hope, youth, and love that are _squandered
everywhere_; tired out of loathing for the whole world of idealistic lying
and conscience-softening, which, once again, in the case of Wagner, had
scored a victory over a man who was of the bravest; and last but not
least, tired by the sadness of a ruthless suspicion—that I was now
condemned to be ever more and more suspicious, ever more and more
contemptuous, ever more and more _deeply_ alone than I had been