The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms.
theretofore. For I had no one save Richard Wagner.… I was always condemned
to the society of Germans.…
2.
Henceforward alone and cruelly distrustful of myself, I then took up
sides—not without anger—_against myself_ and _for_ all that which hurt me
and fell hard upon me; and thus I found the road to that courageous
pessimism which is the opposite of all idealistic falsehood, and which, as
it seems to me, is also the road to _me_—_to my mission_.… That hidden and
dominating thing, for which for long ages we have had no name, until
ultimately it comes forth as our mission,—this tyrant in us wreaks a
terrible revenge upon us for every attempt we make either to evade him or
to escape him, for every one of our experiments in the way of befriending
people to whom we do not belong, for every active occupation, however
estimable, which may make us diverge from our principal object:—aye, and
even for every virtue which would fain protect us from the rigour of our
most intimate sense of responsibility. Illness is always the answer,
whenever we venture to doubt our right to _our_ mission, whenever we begin
to make things too easy for ourselves. Curious and terrible at the same
time! It is for our relaxation that we have to pay most dearly! And should
we wish after all to return to health, we then have no choice: we are
compelled to burden ourselves _more_ heavily than we had been burdened
before.…
The Psychologist Speaks.
1.
The oftener a psychologist—a born, an unavoidable psychologist and
soul-diviner—turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals,
the greater becomes his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he needs
greater hardness and cheerfulness than any other man. For the corruption,
the ruination of higher men, is in fact the rule: it is terrible to have
such a rule always before our eyes. The manifold torments of the
psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and
then discovers almost repeatedly throughout all history, this universal
inner “hopelessness” of higher men, this eternal “too late!” in every
sense—may perhaps one day be the cause of his “going to the dogs” himself.
In almost every psychologist we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour
of intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men: and this betrays how
constantly he requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight and
forgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness—from what his
“business”—has laid upon his conscience. A horror of his memory is typical
of him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of others, he hears with
unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he
has opened his eyes and _seen_—or he even conceals his silence by
expressly agreeing with some obvious opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his
situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learnt _great
sympathy_, together with _great contempt_, the educated have on their part
learnt great reverence. And who knows but in all great instances, just
this alone happened: that the multitude worshipped a God, and that the
“God” was only a poor sacrificial animal! _Success_ has always been the
greatest liar—and the “work” itself, the _deed_, is a success too; the
great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their
creations until they can no longer be recognised, the “work” of the
artist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, who is
reputed to have created it, the “great men,” as they are reverenced, are
poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical
values counterfeit coinage _prevails_.
2.
Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi,
Kleist, Gogol (I do not dare to mention much greater names, but I imply
them), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the
moment, sensuous, absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust and
to distrust, with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed,
often taking revenge with their works for an internal blemish, often
seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too accurate memory,
idealists out of proximity to the mud:—what a _torment_ these great
artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once
found them out! We are all special pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It
is conceivable that it is just from woman—who is clairvoyant in the world
of suffering, and, alas! also unfortunately eager to help and save to an
extent far beyond her powers—that _they_ have learnt so readily those
outbreaks of boundless _sympathy_ which the multitude, above all the
reverent multitude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying
interpretations. This sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its
power; woman would like to believe that love can do _everything_—it is the
_superstition_ peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how
poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love
is—how much more readily it _destroys_ than saves.…
3.
The intellectual loathing and haughtiness of every man who has suffered
deeply—the extent to which a man can suffer, almost determines the order
of rank—the chilling uncertainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and
coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he _knows more_ than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and
“at home” in many distant terrible worlds of which “_you_ know
nothing!”—this silent intellectual haughtiness, this pride of the elect of
knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms
of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with gushing and
sympathising hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in
suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.—One of the most
refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious
boldness of taste which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the
defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. There are “cheerful
men” who make use of good spirits, because they are misunderstood on
account of them—they _wish_ to be misunderstood. There are “scientific
minds” who make use of science, because it gives a cheerful appearance,
and because love of science leads people to conclude that a person is
shallow—they _wish_ to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free
insolent spirits which would fain conceal and deny that they are at bottom
broken, incurable hearts—this is Hamlet’s case: and then folly itself can
be the mask of an unfortunate and alas! all too dead-certain knowledge.
Epilogue.
1.
I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted to
the hardest years of my life than to any others. According to the voice of
my innermost nature, everything necessary, seen from above and in the
light of a _superior_ economy, is also useful in itself—not only should
one bear it, one should _love_ it.… _Amor fati_: this is the very core of
my being—And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than
I owe to my health? To it I owe a _higher_ kind of health, a sort of
health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill
it!—_To it, I owe even my philosophy_.… Only great suffering is the
ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that _vast
suspiciousness_ which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X,
_i.e._, the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great
suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the
suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our
nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all
whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,—on which things we had
formerly staked our humanity. I doubt whether such suffering improves a
man; but I know that it makes him _deeper_.… Supposing we learn to set our
pride, our scorn, our strength of will against it, and thus resemble the
Indian who, however cruelly he may be tortured, considers himself revenged
on his tormentor by the bitterness of his own tongue. Supposing we
withdraw from pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid sphere
of self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, self-effacement: one is another
person when one leaves these protracted and dangerous exercises in the art
of self-mastery, one has one note of interrogation the more, and above all
one has the will henceforward to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder, more
wicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever asked on earth
before.… Trust in life has vanished; life itself has become a
_problem_.—But let no one think that one has therefore become a spirit of
gloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still possible,—but it is a
_different kind_ of love.… It is the love for a woman whom we doubt.…
2.
The rarest of all things is this: to have after all another taste—a
_second_ taste. Out of such abysses, out of the abyss of _great suspicion_
as well, a man returns as though born again, he has a new skin, he is more
susceptible, more full of wickedness; he has a finer taste for joyfulness;
he has a more sensitive tongue for all good things; his senses are more
cheerful; he has acquired a second, more dangerous, innocence in gladness;
he is more childish too, and a hundred times more cunning than ever he had
been before.
Oh, how much more repulsive pleasure now is to him, that coarse, heavy,
buff-coloured pleasure, which is understood by our pleasure-seekers, our
“cultured people,” our wealthy folk and our rulers! With how much more
irony we now listen to the hubbub as of a country fair, with which the
“cultured” man and the man about town allow themselves to be forced
through art, literature, music, and with the help of intoxicating liquor,
to “intellectual enjoyments.” How the stage-cry of passion now stings our
ears; how strange to our taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous
bustle, which the cultured mob are so fond of, together with its
aspirations to the sublime, to the exalted and the distorted, have become.
No: if we convalescents require an art at all, it is _another_ art—-a
mocking, nimble, volatile, divinely undisturbed, divinely artificial art,
which blazes up like pure flame into a cloudless sky! But above all, an
art for artists, _only for artists_! We are, after all, more conversant
with that which is in the highest degree necessary—cheerfulness, _every
kind_ of cheerfulness, my friends!… We men of knowledge, now know
something only too well: oh how well we have learnt by this time, to
forget, _not_ to know, as artists!… As to our future: we shall scarcely be
found on the track of those Egyptian youths who break into temples at
night, who embrace statues, and would fain unveil, strip, and set in broad
daylight, everything which there are excellent reasons to keep
concealed.(15) No, we are disgusted with this bad taste, this will to
truth, this search after truth “at all costs;” this madness of
adolescence, “the love of truth;” we are now too experienced, too serious,
too joyful, too scorched, _too profound_ for that.… We no longer believe
that truth remains truth when it is _unveiled_,—we have lived enough to
understand this.… To-day it seems to us good form not to strip everything
naked, not to be present at all things, not to desire to “know” all.
“_Tout comprendre c’est tout mépriser._”… “Is it true,” a little girl once
asked her mother, “that the beloved Father is everywhere?—I think it quite
improper,”—a hint to philosophers.… The shame with which Nature has
concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas should be held in higher
esteem. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for _not revealing her