The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms.

About the book

The two principal texts in this volume present Nietzsche's break with Wagner through compressed judgments, provocative contrasts, and retrospective self-examination. Music becomes a way of asking what an artwork does to its audience and what needs its power satisfies. Nietzsche's attacks on theatrical effect and decadence are inseparable from his effort to distinguish an earlier enthusiasm from the values he now claims. The accompanying aphorisms extend that reconsideration across the history of the friendship. Anthony M. Ludovici's translation includes prefatory discussion that supplies its own interpretation of the dispute. Readers should expect polemic rather than a neutral survey of musical achievement. The interest lies in following how aesthetic preferences become diagnoses of culture, and how personal involvement sharpens those diagnoses without settling them.

• Art and persuasion
• Cultural criticism
• Admiration and rupture

Why read it

For a forceful example of criticism in which judgments about artistic form become arguments about the kind of life an audience wants.

English translation by Anthony M. Ludovici