The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms.
female Wagnerite—just as we find Wagner himself fifty paces ahead of
Brahms.—The female Wagnerite is a more definite, a more interesting, and
above all, a more attractive type. Brahms is touching so long as he dreams
or mourns over himself in private—in this respect he is modern;—he becomes
cold, we no longer feel at one with him when he poses as the child of the
classics.… People like to call Brahms Beethoven’s heir: I know of no more
cautious euphemism—All that which to-day makes a claim to being the grand
style in music is on precisely that account either false to us or false to
itself. This alternative is suspicious enough: in itself it contains a
casuistic question concerning the value of the two cases. The instinct of
the majority protests against the alternative; “false to us”—they do not
wish to be cheated;—and I myself would certainly always prefer this type
to the other (“False to itself”). This is _my_ taste.—Expressed more
clearly for the sake of the “poor in spirit” it amounts to this: Brahms
_or_ Wagner.… Brahms is _not_ an actor.—A very great part of other
musicians may be summed up in the concept Brahms—I do not wish to say
anything about the clever apes of Wagner, as for instance Goldmark: when
one has “The Queen of Sheba” to one’s name, one belongs to a
menagerie,—one ought to put oneself on show.—Nowadays all things that can
be done well and even with a master hand are small. In this department
alone is honesty still possible. Nothing, however, can cure music as a
whole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to be the expression of
general physiological contradiction,—which is, in fact, to be modern.
The best instruction, the most conscientious schooling, the most thorough
familiarity, yea, and even isolation, with the Old Masters,—all this only
acts as a palliative, or, more strictly speaking, has but an illusory
effect, because the first condition of the right thing is no longer in our
bodies; whether this first condition be the strong race of a Handel or the
overflowing animal spirits of a Rossini. Not everyone has the right to
every teacher: and this holds good of whole epochs.—In itself it is not
impossible that there are still remains of stronger natures, typical
unadapted men, somewhere in Europe: from this quarter the advent of a
somewhat belated form of beauty and perfection, even in music, might still
be hoped for. But the most that we can expect to see are exceptional
cases. From the rule, that corruption is paramount, that corruption is a
fatality,—not even a God can save music.
Epilogue
And now let us take breath and withdraw a moment from this narrow world
which necessarily must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries
relative to the value of _persons_. A philosopher feels that he wants to
wash his hands after he has concerned himself so long with the “Case of
Wagner”. I shall now give my notion of what is _modern_. According to the
measure of energy of every age, there is also a standard that determines
which virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden. The age either has the
virtues of _ascending_ life, in which case it resists the virtues of
degeneration with all its deepest instincts. Or it is in itself an age of
degeneration, in which case it requires the virtues of declining life,—in
which case it hates everything that justifies itself, solely as being the
outcome of a plenitude, or a superabundance of strength. Æsthetic is
inextricably bound up with these biological principles: there is decadent
æsthetic, and _classical_ æsthetic,—“beauty in itself” is just as much a
chimera as any other kind of idealism.—Within the narrow sphere of the
so-called moral values, no greater antithesis could be found than that of
_master-morality_ and the morality of _Christian_ valuations: the latter
having grown out of a thoroughly morbid soil. (—The gospels present us
with the same physiological types, as do the novels of Dostoiewsky), the
master-morality (“Roman,” “pagan,” “classical,” “Renaissance”), on the
other hand, being the symbolic speech of well-constitutedness, of
_ascending_ life, and of the Will to Power as a vital principle.
Master-morality _affirms_ just as instinctively as Christian morality
_denies_ (“God,” “Beyond,” “self-denial,”—all of them negations). The
first reflects its plenitude upon things,—it transfigures, it embellishes,
it _rationalises_ the world,—the latter impoverishes, bleaches, mars the
value of things; it _suppresses_ the world. “World” is a Christian term of
abuse. These antithetical forms in the optics of values, are _both_
necessary: they are different points of view which cannot be circumvented
either with arguments or counter-arguments. One cannot refute
Christianity: it is impossible to refute a diseased eyesight. That people
should have combated pessimism as if it had been a philosophy, was the
very acme of learned stupidity. The concepts “true” and “untrue” do not
seem to me to have any sense in optics.—That, alone, which has to be
guarded against is the falsity, the instinctive duplicity which _would
fain_ regard this antithesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner
did,—and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of no mean order. To
cast side-long glances at master-morality, at _noble_ morality (—Icelandic
saga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence of these values), and at
the same time to have the opposite teaching, the “gospel of the lowly,”
the doctrine of the _need_ of salvation, on one’s lips!… Incidentally, I
admire the modesty of Christians who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I
could _not_ endure to hear the sound of certain words on Wagner’s lips.
There are some concepts which are too good for Bayreuth … What?
Christianity adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps _by_ female
Wagnerites—for, in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly _feminini
generis_—? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.…
If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the
Church!—The need of _salvation_, the quintessence of all Christian needs,
has nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward
expression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful
affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian
wishes _to be rid_ of himself. _Le moi est toujours haissable._ Noble
morality, master-morality, on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant
saying of yea to _one’s self_,—it is the self-affirmation and
self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime symbols and
practices; but only “because its heart is too full.” The whole of
beautiful art and of great art belongs here; their common essence is
gratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive repugnance _to
décadents_, and a scorn and horror of the latter’s symbolism: such things
almost prove it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as a _fœda
superstitio_: let me call to your minds the feelings which the last German
of noble taste—Goethe—had in regard to the cross. It is idle to look for
more valuable, more _necessary_ contrasts.(14)
But the kind of falsity which is characteristic of the Bayreuthians is not
exceptional to-day. We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian
gentleman. This _innocence_ in contradiction, this “clean conscience” in
falsehood, is rather modern _par excellence_, with it modernity is almost
defined. Biologically, modern man represents a _contradiction of values_,
he sits between two stools, he says yea and nay in one breath. No wonder
that it is precisely in our age that falseness itself became flesh and
blood, and even genius! No wonder _Wagner_ dwelt amongst us! It was not
without reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of modernity.… But all
of us, though we do not know it, involuntarily have values, words,
formulæ, and morals in our bodies, which are quite _antagonistic_ in their
origin—regarded from a physiological standpoint, we are _false_.… How
would a _diagnosis of the modern soul_ begin? With a determined incision
into this agglomeration of contradictory instincts, with the total
suppression of its antagonistic values, with vivisection applied to its
most _instructive_ case. To philosophers the “Case of Wagner” is a
_windfall_—this essay, as you observe, was inspired by gratitude.
NIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER
THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
Preface
The following chapters have been selected from past works of mine, and not
without care. Some of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there, of
course, they will be found to have been made a little more intelligible,
but above all, more brief. Read consecutively, they can leave no one in
any doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning Wagner: we are
antipodes. The reader will come to other conclusions, too, in his perusal
of these pages: for instance, that this is an essay for psychologists and
_not_ for Germans.… I have my readers everywhere, in Vienna, St
Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and New York—but _I have none_
in Europe’s Flat-land—Germany.… And I might even have something to say to
Italians whom I love just as much as I … _Quousque tandem, Crispi_ …
Triple alliance: a people can only conclude a _mésalliance_ with the
“Empire.”…
Friedrich Nietzsche.
Turin, _Christmas 1888_.
Wherein I Admire Wagner.
I believe that artists very often do not know what they are best able to
do. They are much too vain. Their minds are directed to something prouder
than merely to appear like little plants, which, with freshness, rareness,
and beauty, know how to sprout from their soil with real perfection. The
ultimate goodness of their own garden and vineyard is superciliously
under-estimated by them, and their love and their insight are not of the
same quality. Here is a musician who is a greater master than anyone else
in the discovering of tones, peculiar to suffering, oppressed, and
tormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can
approach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching
joy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a
chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul,
when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment
something may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating
from out the nethermost depths of human happiness, and, so to speak, from
out man’s empty bumper, in which the bitterest and most repulsive drops
have mingled with the sweetest for good or evil at last. He knows that
weary shuffling along of the soul which is no longer able either to spring
or to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk, he has the modest glance
of concealed suffering, of understanding without comfort, of leave-taking
without word or sign; verily as the Orpheus of all secret misery he is
greater than anyone, and many a thing was introduced into art for the
first time by him, which hitherto had not been given expression, had not
even been thought worthy of art—the cynical revolts, for instance, of
which only the greatest sufferer is capable, also many a small and quite
microscopical feature of the soul, as it were the scales of its amphibious
nature—yes indeed, he is the master of everything very small. But this he
refuses to be! His tastes are much more in love with vast walls and with
daring frescoes!… He does not see that his spirit has another desire and
bent—a totally different outlook—that it prefers to squat peacefully in
the corners of broken-down houses: concealed in this way, and hidden even
from himself, he paints his really great masterpieces, all of which are
very short, often only one bar in length—there, only, does he become quite
good, great and perfect, perhaps there alone.—Wagner is one who has