Friedrich Nietzsche The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms 
 
 
 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE Pg 1 
 Nietzsche wrote the rough draft of “The Case of Wagner” in Turin, during 
 the month of May 1888; he completed it in Sils Maria towards the end of 
 June of the same year, and it was published in the following autumn. 
 “Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner” was written about the middle of December 1888; 
 but, although it was printed and corrected before the New Year, it was not 
 published until long afterwards owing to Nietzsche’s complete breakdown in 
 the first days of 1889. 
   
 In reading these two essays we are apt to be deceived, by their virulent 
 and forcible tone, into believing that the whole matter is a mere cover 
 for hidden fire,—a mere blind of æsthetic discussion concealing a deep and 
 implacable personal feud which demands and will have vengeance. In spite 
 of all that has been said to the contrary, many people still hold this 
 view of the two little works before us; and, as the actual facts are not 
 accessible to every one, and rumours are more easily believed than 
 verified, the error of supposing that these pamphlets were dictated by 
 personal animosity, and even by Nietzsche’s envy of Wagner in his glory, 
 seems to be a pretty common one. Another very general error is to suppose 
 that the point at issue here is not one concerning music at all, but 
 concerning religion. It is taken for granted that the aspirations, the 
 particular quality, the influence, and the method of an art like music, 
 are matters quite distinct from the values and the conditions prevailing 
 in the culture with which it is in harmony, and that however many 
 Christian elements may be discovered in Wagnerian texts, Nietzsche had no 
 right to raise æsthetic objections because he happened to entertain the 
 extraordinary view that these Christian elements had also found their way 
 into Wagnerian music. 
   
 To both of these views there is but one reply:—they are absolutely false. 
   
 In the “Ecce Homo,” Nietzsche’s autobiography,—a book which from cover to 
 cover and line for line is sincerity itself—we learn what Wagner actually 
 meant to Nietzsche. On pages 41, 44, 84, 122, 129, &c, we cannot doubt 
 that Nietzsche is speaking from his heart,—and what does he say?—In 
 impassioned tones he admits his profound indebtedness to the great 
 musician, his love for him, his gratitude to him,—how Wagner was the only 
 German who had ever been anything to him—how his friendship with Wagner 
 constituted the happiest and most valuable experience of his life,—how his 
 breach with Wagner almost killed him. 
 
 
 
 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE Pg 2 
 And, when we remember, too, that 
 Wagner on his part also declared that he was “alone” after he had lost 
 “that man” (Nietzsche), we begin to perceive that personal bitterness and 
 animosity are out of the question here. We feel we are on a higher plane, 
 and that we must not judge these two men as if they were a couple of 
 little business people who had had a suburban squabble. 
   
 Nietzsche declares (“Ecce Homo,” p. 24) that he never attacked persons as 
 persons. If he used a name at all, it was merely as a means to an end, 
 just as one might use a magnifying glass in order to make a general, but 
 elusive and intricate fact more clear and more apparent, and if he used 
 the name of David Strauss, without bitterness or spite (for he did not 
 even know the man), when he wished to personify Culture-Philistinism, so, 
 in the same spirit, did he use the name of Wagner, when he wished to 
 personify the general decadence of modern ideas, values, aspirations and 
 Art. 
   
 Nietzsche’s ambition, throughout his life, was to regenerate European 
 culture. In the first period of his relationship with Wagner, he thought 
 that he had found the man who was prepared to lead in this direction. For 
 a long while he regarded his master as the Saviour of Germany, as the 
 innovator and renovator who was going to arrest the decadent current of 
 his time and lead men to a greatness which had died with antiquity. And so 
 thoroughly did he understand his duties as a disciple, so wholly was he 
 devoted to this cause, that, in spite of all his unquestioned gifts and 
 the excellence of his original achievements, he was for a long while 
 regarded as a mere “literary lackey” in Wagner’s service, in all those 
 circles where the rising musician was most disliked. 
   
 Gradually, however, as the young Nietzsche developed and began to gain an 
 independent view of life and humanity, it seemed to him extremely doubtful 
 whether Wagner actually was pulling the same way with him. Whereas, 
 theretofore, he had identified Wagner’s ideals with his own, it now dawned 
 upon him slowly that the regeneration of German culture, of European 
 culture, and the transvaluation of values which would be necessary for 
 this regeneration, really lay off the track of Wagnerism. He saw that he 
 had endowed Wagner with a good deal that was more his own than Wagner’s. 
 In his love he had transfigured the friend, and the composer of “Parsifal” 
 and the man of his imagination were not one. The fact was realised step by 
 step; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation, 
 ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best instincts at first 
 opposed it, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong to be 
 scouted, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair. Had he 
 followed his own human inclinations, he would probably have remained 
 Wagner’s friend until the end. As it was, however, he remained loyal to 
 his cause, and this meant denouncing his former idol. 
   
 “Joyful Wisdom,” “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” “Beyond Good and Evil,” “The 
 Genealogy of Morals,” “The Twilight of the Idols,” “The Antichrist”—all 
 these books were but so many exhortations to mankind to step aside from 
 the general track now trodden by Europeans. And what happened? Wagner 
 began to write some hard things about Nietzsche; the world assumed that 
 Nietzsche and Wagner had engaged in a paltry personal quarrel in the 
 press, and the whole importance of the real issue was buried beneath the 
 human, all-too-human interpretations which were heaped upon it. 
   
 
 
 
 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE Pg 3 
 Nietzsche was a musician of no mean attainments. For a long while, in his 
 youth, his superiors had been doubtful whether he should not be educated 
 for a musical career, so great were his gifts in this art; and if his 
 mother had not been offered a six-years’ scholarship for her son at the 
 famous school of Pforta, Nietzsche, the scholar and philologist, would 
 probably have been an able composer. When he speaks about music, 
 therefore, he knows what he is talking about, and when he refers to 
 Wagner’s music in particular, the simple fact of his long intimacy with 
 Wagner during the years at Tribschen, is a sufficient guarantee of his 
 deep knowledge of the subject. Now Nietzsche was one of the first to 
 recognise that the principles of art are inextricably bound up with the 
 laws of life, that an æsthetic dogma may therefore promote or depress all 
 vital force, and that a picture, a symphony, a poem or a statue, is just 
 as capable of being pessimistic, anarchic, Christian or revolutionary, as 
 a philosophy or a science is. To speak of a certain class of music as 
 being compatible with the decline of culture, therefore, was to Nietzsche 
 a perfectly warrantable association of ideas, and that is why, throughout 
 his philosophy, so much stress is laid upon æsthetic considerations. 
   
 But if in England and America Nietzsche’s attack on Wagner’s art may still 
 seem a little incomprehensible, let it be remembered that the Continent 
 has long known that Nietzsche was actually in the right. Every year 
 thousands are now added to the large party abroad who have ceased from 
 believing in the great musical revolutionary of the seventies; that he was 
 one with the French Romanticists and rebels has long since been 
 acknowledged a fact in select circles, both in France and Germany, and if 
 we still have Wagner with us in England, if we still consider Nietzsche as 
 a heretic, when he declares that “Wagner was a musician for unmusical 
 people,” it is only because we are more removed than we imagine, from all 
 the great movements, intellectual and otherwise, which take place on the 
 Continent. 
   
 In Wagner’s music, in his doctrine, in his whole concept of art, Nietzsche 
 saw the confirmation, the promotion—aye, even the encouragement, of that 
 decadence and degeneration which is now rampant in Europe; and it is for 
 this reason, although to the end of his life he still loved Wagner, the 
 man and the friend, that we find him, on the very eve of his spiritual 
 death, exhorting us to abjure Wagner the musician and the artist. 
   
 Anthony M. Ludovici. 
   
 
 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Pg 4 
 In spite of the adverse criticism with which the above preface has met at 
 the hands of many reviewers since the summer of last year, I cannot say 
 that I should feel justified, even after mature consideration, in altering 
 a single word or sentence it contains. If I felt inclined to make any 
 changes at all, these would take the form of extensive additions, tending 
 to confirm rather than to modify the general argument it advances; but, 
 any omissions of which I may have been guilty in the first place, have 
 been so fully rectified since, thanks to the publication of the English 
 translations of Daniel Halévy’s and Henri Lichtenberger’s works, “The Life 
 of Friedrich Nietzsche,”(2) and “The Gospel of Superman,”(3) respectively, 
 that, were it not for the fact that the truth about this matter cannot be 
 repeated too often, I should have refrained altogether from including any 
 fresh remarks of my own in this Third Edition.  
 
 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Pg 5 
 In the works just referred to (pp. 129 _et seq._ in Halévy’s book, and pp. 
 78 _et seq._ in Lichtenberger’s book), the statement I made in my preface 
 to “Thoughts out of Season,” vol. i., and which I did not think it 
 necessary to repeat in my first preface to these pamphlets, will be found 
 to receive the fullest confirmation. 
   
 The statement in question was to the effect that many long years before 
 these pamphlets were even projected, Nietzsche’s apparent _volte-face_ in 
 regard to his hero Wagner had been not only foreshadowed but actually 
 stated in plain words, in two works written during his friendship with 
 Wagner,—the works referred to being “The Birth of Tragedy” (1872), and 
 “Wagner in Bayreuth” (1875) of which Houston Stuart Chamberlain declares 
 not only that it possesses “undying classical worth” but that “a perusal 
 of it is indispensable to all who wish to follow the question [of Wagner] 
 to its roots.”(4) 
   
 The idea that runs through the present work like a leitmotif—the idea that 
 Wagner was at bottom more of a mime than a musician—was so far an ever 
 present thought with Nietzsche that it is ever impossible to ascertain the 
 period when it was first formulated. 
   
 In Nietzsche’s wonderful autobiography (_Ecce Homo_, p. 88), in the 
 section dealing with the early works just mentioned, we find the following 
 passage—“In the second of the two essays [Wagner in Bayreuth] with a 
 profound certainty of instinct, I already characterised the elementary 
 factor in Wagner’s nature as a theatrical talent which, in all his means 
 and aspirations, draws its final conclusions.” And as early as 1874, 
 Nietzsche wrote in his diary—“Wagner is a born actor. Just as Goethe was 
 an abortive painter, and Schiller an abortive orator, so Wagner was an 
 abortive theatrical genius. His attitude to music is that of the actor; 
 for he knows how to sing and speak, as it were out of different souls and 
 from absolutely different worlds (_Tristan_ and the _Meistersinger_).” 
   
 There is, however, no need to multiply examples, seeing, as I have said, 
 that in the translations of Halévy’s and Lichtenberger’s books the reader 
 will find all the independent evidence he could possibly desire, 
 disproving the popular, and even the learned belief that, in the two 
 pamphlets before us we have a complete, apparently unaccountable, and 
 therefore “demented” _volte-face_ on Nietzsche’s part. Nevertheless, for 
 fear lest some doubt should still linger in certain minds concerning this 
 point, and with the view of adding interest to these essays, the Editor 
 considered it advisable, in the Second Edition, to add a number of 
 extracts from Nietzsche’s diary of the year 1878 (ten years before “The 
 Case of Wagner,” and “Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner” were written) in order to 
 show to what extent those learned critics who complain of Nietzsche’s 
 “morbid and uncontrollable recantations and revulsions of feeling,” have 
 overlooked even the plain facts of the case when forming their 
 all-too-hasty conclusions. These extracts will be found at the end of 
 “Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner.” While reading them, however, it should not be 
 forgotten that they were never intended for publication by Nietzsche 
 himself—a fact which accounts for their unpolished and sketchy form—and 
 that they were first published in vol. xi. of the first German Library 
 Edition (pp. 99-129) only when he was a helpless invalid, in 1897.  
 
 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Pg 6 
 Since 
 then, in 1901 and 1906 respectively, they have been reprinted, once in the 
 large German Library Edition (vol. xi. pp. 181-202), and once in the 
 German Pocket Edition, as an appendix to “Human-All-too-Human,” Part II. 
   
 An altogether special interest now attaches to these pamphlets; for, in 
 the first place we are at last in possession of Wagner’s own account of 
 his development, his art, his aspirations and his struggles, in the 
 amazing self-revelation entitled _My Life_;(5) and secondly, we now have 
 _Ecce Homo_, Nietzsche’s autobiography, in which we learn for the first 
 time from Nietzsche’s own pen to what extent his history was that of a 
 double devotion—to Wagner on the one hand, and to his own life task, the 
 Transvaluation of all Values, on the other. 
   
 Readers interested in the Nietzsche-Wagner controversy will naturally look 
 to these books for a final solution of all the difficulties which the 
 problem presents. But let them not be too sanguine. From first to last 
 this problem is not to be settled by “facts.” A good deal of instinctive 
 choice, instinctive aversion, and instinctive suspicion are necessary 
 here. A little more suspicion, for instance, ought to be applied to 
 Wagner’s _My Life_, especially in England, where critics are not half 
 suspicious enough about a continental artist’s self-revelations, and are 
 too prone, if they have suspicions at all, to apply them in the wrong 
 place. 
   
 An example of this want of _finesse_ in judging foreign writers is to be 
 found in Lord Morley’s work on Rousseau,—a book which ingenuously takes 
 for granted everything that a writer like Rousseau cares to say about 
 himself, without considering for an instant the possibility that Rousseau 
 might have practised some hypocrisy. In regard to Wagner’s life we might 
 easily fall into the same error—that is to say, we might take seriously 
 all he says concerning himself and his family affairs. 
   
 We should beware of this, and should not even believe Wagner when he 
 speaks badly about himself. No one speaks badly about himself without a 
 reason, and the question in this case is to find out the reason. Did 
 Wagner—in the belief that genius was always immoral—wish to pose as an 
 immoral Egotist, in order to make us believe in his genius, of which he 
 himself was none too sure in his innermost heart? Did Wagner wish to 
 appear “sincere” in his biography, in order to awaken in us a belief in 
 the sincerity of his music, which he likewise doubted, but wished to 
 impress upon the world as “true”? Or did he wish to be thought badly of in 
 connection with things that were not true, and that consequently did not 
 affect him, in order to lead us off the scent of true things, things he 
 was ashamed of and which he wished the world to ignore—just like Rousseau 
 (the similarity between the two is more than a superficial one) who 
 barbarously pretended to have sent his children to the foundling hospital, 
 in order not to be thought incapable of having had any children at all? In 
 short, where is the bluff in Wagner’s biography? Let us therefore be 
 careful about it, and all the more so because Wagner himself guarantees 
 the truth of it in the prefatory note. If we were to be credulous here, we 
 should moreover be acting in direct opposition to Nietzsche’s own counsel 
 as given in the following aphorisms (Nos. 19 and 20, p. 89):— 
   
 “It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner’s development,—no 
 trust must be placed in his own description of his soul’s experiences. He 
 writes party-pamphlets for his followers. 
   
 “It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about 
 himself.” 
   
 
 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Pg 7 
 While on p. 37 (the note), we read:—“He [Wagner] was not proud enough to 
 be able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride than he. 
 Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in his biography,—he 
 remained an actor.” 
   
 However, as a famous English judge has said—“Truth will come out, even in 
 the witness box,” and, as we may add in this case, even in an 
 autobiography. There is one statement in Wagner’s _My Life_ which sounds 
 true to my ears at least—a statement which, in my opinion, has some 
 importance, and to which Wagner himself seems to grant a mysterious 
 significance. I refer to the passage on p. 93 of vol i., in which Wagner 
 says:—“Owing to the exceptional vivacity and innate susceptibility of my 
 nature … I gradually became conscious of a certain power of transporting 
 or bewildering my more indolent companions.” 
   
 This seems innocent enough. When, however, it is read in conjunction with 
 Nietzsche’s trenchant criticism, particularly on pp. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 
 of this work, and also with a knowledge of Wagner’s music, it becomes one 
 of the most striking passages in Wagner’s autobiography, for it records 
 how soon he became conscious of his dominant instinct and faculty. 
   
 I know perfectly well that the Wagnerites will not be influenced by these 
 remarks. Their gratitude to Wagner is too great for this. He has supplied 
 the precious varnish wherewith to hide the dull ugliness of our 
 civilisation. He has given to souls despairing over the materialism of 
 this world, to souls despairing of themselves, and longing to be rid of 
 themselves, the indispensable hashish and morphia wherewith to deaden 
 their inner discords. These discords are everywhere apparent nowadays. 
 Wagner is therefore a common need, a common benefactor. As such he is 
 bound to be worshipped and adored in spite of all egotistical and 
 theatrical autobiographies. 
   
 Albeit, signs are not wanting—at least among his Anglo-Saxon worshippers 
 who stand even more in need of romanticism than their continental 
 brethren,—which show that, in order to uphold Wagner, people are now 
 beginning to draw distinctions between the man and the artist. They 
 dismiss the man as “human-all-too-human,” but they still maintain that 
 there are divine qualities in his music. However distasteful the task of 
 disillusioning these psychological tyros may be, they should be informed 
 that no such division of a man into two parts is permissible, save in 
 Christianity (the body and the soul), but that outside purely religious 
 spheres it is utterly unwarrantable. There can be no such strange divorce 
 between a bloom and the plant on which it blows, and has a black woman 
 ever been known to give birth to a white child? 
   
 Wagner, as Nietzsche tells us on p. 19, “was something complete, he was a 
 typical _decadent_ in whom every sign of ‘free will’ was lacking, in whom 
 every feature was necessary.” Wagner, allow me to add, was a typical 
 representative of the nineteenth century, which was the century of 
 contradictory values, of opposed instincts, and of every kind of inner 
 disharmony. The genuine, the classical artists of that period, such men as 
 Heine, Goethe, Stendhal, and Gobineau, overcame their inner strife, and 
 each succeeded in making a harmonious whole out of himself—not indeed 
 without a severe struggle; for everyone of them suffered from being the 
 child of his age, _i.e._, a decadent.  
 
 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Pg 8 
 The only difference between them and 
 the romanticists lies in the fact that they (the former) were conscious of 
 what was wrong with them, and possessed the will and the strength to 
 overcome their illness; whereas the romanticists chose the easier 
 alternative—namely, that of shutting their eyes on themselves. 
   
 “I am just as much a child of my age as Wagner—_i.e._, I am a _decadent_,” 
 says Nietzsche. “The only difference is that I recognised the fact, that I 
 struggled against it”(6) 
   
 What Wagner did was characteristic of all romanticists and contemporary 
 artists: he drowned and overshouted his inner discord by means of 
 exuberant pathos and wild exaltation. Far be it from me to value Wagner’s 
 music _in extenso_ here—this is scarcely a fitting opportunity to do 
 so;—but I think it might well be possible to show, on purely psychological 
 grounds, how impossible it was for a man like Wagner to produce real art. 
 For how can harmony, order, symmetry, mastery, proceed from uncontrolled 
 discord, disorder, disintegration, and chaos? The fact that an art which 
 springs from such a marshy soil may, like certain paludal plants, be 
 “wonderful,” “gorgeous,” and “overwhelming,” cannot be denied; but true 
 art it is not. It is so just as little as Gothic architecture is,—that 
 style which, in its efforts to escape beyond the tragic contradiction in 
 its mediæval heart, yelled its hysterical cry heavenwards and even melted 
 the stones of its structures into a quivering and fluid jet, in order to 
 give adequate expression to the painful and wretched conflict then raging 
 between the body and the soul. 
   
 That Wagner, too, was a great sufferer, there can be no doubt; not, 
 however, a sufferer from strength, like a true artist, but from 
 weakness—the weakness of his age, which he never overcame. It is for this 
 reason that he should be rather pitied than judged as he is now being 
 judged by his German and English critics, who, with thoroughly neurotic 
 suddenness, have acknowledged their revulsion of feeling a little too 
 harshly. 
   
 “I have carefully endeavoured not to deride, or deplore, or detest…” says 
 Spinoza, “but to understand”; and these words ought to be our guide, not 
 only in the case of Wagner, but in all things. 
   
 Inner discord is a terrible affliction, and nothing is so certain to 
 produce that nervous irritability which is so trying to the patient as 
 well as to the outer world, as this so-called spiritual disease. Nietzsche 
 was probably quite right when he said the only real and true music that 
 Wagner ever composed did not consist of his elaborate arias and overtures, 
 but of ten or fifteen bars which, dispersed here and there, gave 
 expression to the composer’s profound and genuine melancholy. But this 
 melancholy had to be overcome, and Wagner with the blood of a _cabotin_ in 
 his veins, resorted to the remedy that was nearest to hand—that is to say, 
 the art of bewildering others and himself. Thus he remained ignorant about 
 himself all his life; for there was, as Nietzsche rightly points out (p. 
 37, _note_), not sufficient pride in the man for him to desire to know or 
 to suffer gladly the truth concerning his real nature. As an actor his 
 ruling passion was vanity, but in his case it was correlated with a 
 semi-conscious knowledge of the fact that all was not right with him and 
 his art. It was this that caused him to suffer. His egomaniacal behaviour 
 and his almost Rousseauesque fear and suspicion of others were only the 
 external manifestations of his inner discrepancies.  
 
 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Pg 9 
 But, to repeat what I 
 have already said, these abnormal symptoms are not in the least 
 incompatible with Wagner’s music, they are rather its very cause, the root 
 from which it springs. 
   
 In reality, therefore, Wagner the man and Wagner the artist were 
 undoubtedly one, and constituted a splendid romanticist. His music as well 
 as his autobiography are proofs of his wonderful gifts in this direction. 
 His success in his time, as in ours, is due to the craving of the modern 
 world for actors, sorcerers, bewilderers and idealists who are able to 
 conceal the ill-health and the weakness that prevail, and who please by 
 intoxicating and exalting. But this being so, the world must not be 
 disappointed to find the hero of a preceding age explode in the next. It 
 must not be astonished to find a disparity between the hero’s private life 
 and his “elevating” art or romantic and idealistic gospel. As long as 
 people will admire heroic attitudes more than heroism, such 
 disillusionment is bound to be the price of their error. In a truly great 
 man, life-theory and life-practice, if seen from a sufficiently lofty 
 point of view, must and do always agree, in an actor, in a romanticist, in 
 an idealist, and in a Christian, there is always a yawning chasm between 
 the two, which, whatever well-meaning critics may do, cannot be bridged 
 posthumously by acrobatic feats _in psychologicis_. 
   
 Let anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche’s life and theory. Let 
 anyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in his 
 _Ecce Homo_, but as we find it related by all his biographers, friends and 
 foes alike, and what will be the result? Even if we ignore his works—the 
 blooms which blowed from time to time from his life—we absolutely cannot 
 deny the greatness of the man’s _private practice_, and if we fully 
 understand and appreciate the latter, we must be singularly deficient in 
 instinct and in _flair_ if we do not suspect that some of this greatness 
 is reflected in his life-task. 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_Preface Pg 10 
 I am writing this to relieve my mind. It is not malice alone which makes 
 me praise Bizet at the expense of Wagner in this essay. Amid a good deal 
 of jesting I wish to make one point clear which does not admit of levity. 
 To turn my back on Wagner was for me a piece of fate, to get to like 
 anything else whatever afterwards was for me a triumph. Nobody, perhaps, 
 had ever been more dangerously involved in Wagnerism, nobody had defended 
 himself more obstinately against it, nobody had ever been so overjoyed at 
 ridding himself of it. A long history!—Shall I give it a name?—If I were a 
 moralist, who knows what I might not call it! Perhaps a piece of 
 _self-mastery_.—But the philosopher does not like the moralist, neither 
 does he like high-falutin’ words.… 
   
 What is the first and last thing that a philosopher demands of himself? To 
 overcome his age in himself, to become “timeless.” With what then does the 
 philosopher have the greatest fight? With all that in him which makes him 
 the child of his time. Very well then! I am just as much a child of my age 
 as Wagner—_i.e._, I am a decadent. The only difference is that I 
 recognised the fact, that I struggled against it. The philosopher in me 
 struggled against it. 
   
 My greatest preoccupation hitherto has been the problem of _decadence_, 
 and I had reasons for this. “Good and evil” form only a playful 
 subdivision of this problem. If one has trained one’s eye to detect the 
 symptoms of decline, one also understands morality,—one understands what 
 lies concealed beneath its holiest names and tables of values: _e.g._, 
 _impoverished_ life, the will to nonentity, great exhaustion. Morality 
 _denies_ life.… In order to undertake such a mission I was obliged to 
 exercise self-discipline:—I had to side against all that was morbid in 
 myself including Wagner, including Schopenhauer, including the whole of 
 modern _humanity_.—A profound estrangement, coldness and soberness towards 
 all that belongs to my age, all that was contemporary: and as the highest 
 wish, Zarathustra’s eye, an eye which surveys the whole 
 phenomenon—mankind—from an enormous distance,—which looks down upon 
 it.—For such a goal—what sacrifice would not have been worth while? What 
 “self-mastery”! What “self-denial”! 
   
 The greatest event of my life took the form of a _recovery_. Wagner 
 belongs only to my diseases. 
   
 Not that I wish to appear ungrateful to this disease. If in this essay I 
 support the proposition that Wagner is _harmful_, I none the less wish to 
 point out unto whom, in spite of all, he is indispensable—to the 
 philosopher. Anyone else may perhaps be able to get on without Wagner: but 
 the philosopher is not free to pass him by. The philosopher must be the 
 evil conscience of his age,—but to this end he must be possessed of its 
 best knowledge. And what better guide, or more thoroughly efficient 
 revealer of the soul, could be found for the labyrinth of the modern 
 spirit than Wagner? Through Wagner modernity speaks her most intimate 
 language: it conceals neither its good nor its evil: it has thrown off all 
 shame. And, conversely, one has almost calculated the whole of the value 
 of modernity once one is clear concerning what is good and evil in Wagner. 
 I can perfectly well understand a musician of to-day who says: “I hate 
 Wagner but I can endure no other music.” But I should also understand a 
 philosopher who said, “Wagner is modernity in concentrated form.” There is 
 no help for it, we must first be Wagnerites.… 
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_1 
 Yesterday—would you believe it?—I heard _Bizet’s_ masterpiece for the 
 twentieth time. Once more I attended with the same gentle reverence; once 
 again I did not run away. This triumph over my impatience surprises me. 
 How such a work completes one! Through it one almost becomes a 
 “masterpiece” oneself—And, as a matter of fact, each time I heard _Carmen_ 
 it seemed to me that I was more of a philosopher, a better philosopher 
 than at other times: I became so forbearing, so happy, so Indian, so 
 _settled_.… To sit for five hours: the first step to holiness!—May I be 
 allowed to say that Bizet’s orchestration is the only one that I can 
 endure now? That other orchestration which is all the rage at present—the 
 Wagnerian—is brutal, artificial and “unsophisticated” withal, hence its 
 appeal to all the three senses of the modern soul at once. How terribly 
 Wagnerian orchestration affects me! I call it the _Sirocco_. A 
 disagreeable sweat breaks out all over me. All my fine weather vanishes. 
   
 Bizet’s music seems to me perfect. It comes forward lightly, gracefully, 
 stylishly. It is lovable, it does not sweat. “All that is good is easy, 
 everything divine runs with light feet”: this is the first principle of my 
 æsthetics. This music is wicked, refined, fatalistic, and withal remains 
 popular,—it possesses the refinement of a race, not of an individual. It 
 is rich. It is definite. It builds, organises, completes, and in this 
 sense it stands as a contrast to the polypus in music, to “endless 
 melody”. Have more painful, more tragic accents ever been heard on the 
 stage before? And how are they obtained? Without grimaces! Without 
 counterfeiting of any kind! Free from the _lie_ of the grand style!—In 
 short: this music assumes that the listener is intelligent even as a 
 musician,—thereby it is the opposite of Wagner, who, apart from everything 
 else, was in any case the most _ill-mannered_ genius on earth (Wagner 
 takes us as if … , he repeats a thing so often that we become 
 desperate,—that we ultimately believe it). 
   
 And once more: I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a 
 better musician, a better _listener_. Is it in any way possible to listen 
 better?—I even burrow behind this music with my ears. I hear its very 
 cause. I seem to assist at its birth. I tremble before the dangers which 
 this daring music runs, I am enraptured over those happy accidents for 
 which even Bizet himself may not be responsible.—And, strange to say, at 
 bottom I do not give it a thought, or am not aware how much thought I 
 really do give it. For quite other ideas are running through my head the 
 while.… Has any one ever observed that music _emancipates_ the spirit? 
 gives wings to thought? and that the more one becomes a musician the more 
 one is also a philosopher? The grey sky of abstraction seems thrilled by 
 flashes of lightning; the light is strong enough to reveal all the details 
 of things; to enable one to grapple with problems; and the world is 
 surveyed as if from a mountain top—With this I have defined philosophical 
 pathos—And unexpectedly _answers_ drop into my lap, a small hailstorm of 
 ice and wisdom, of problems _solved_. Where am I? Bizet makes me 
 productive. Everything that is good makes me productive. I have gratitude 
 for nothing else, nor have I any other touchstone for testing what is 
 good. 
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_2 
 Bizet’s work also saves; Wagner is not the only “Saviour.” With it one 
 bids farewell to the _damp_ north and to all the fog of the Wagnerian 
 ideal. Even the action in itself delivers us from these things. From 
 Merimée it has this logic even in passion, from him it has the direct 
 line, _inexorable_ necessity, but what it has above all else is that which 
 belongs to sub-tropical zones—that dryness of atmosphere, that 
 _limpidezza_ of the air. Here in every respect the climate is altered. 
 Here another kind of sensuality, another kind of sensitiveness and another 
 kind of cheerfulness make their appeal. This music is gay, but not in a 
 French or German way. Its gaiety is African; fate hangs over it, its 
 happiness is short, sudden, without reprieve. I envy Bizet for having had 
 the courage of this sensitiveness, which hitherto in the cultured music of 
 Europe has found no means of expression,—of this southern, tawny, sunburnt 
 sensitiveness.… What a joy the golden afternoon of its happiness is to us! 
 When we look out, with this music in our minds, we wonder whether we have 
 ever seen the sea so _calm_. And how soothing is this Moorish dancing! 
 How, for once, even our insatiability gets sated by its lascivious 
 melancholy!—And finally love, love translated back into _Nature_! Not the 
 love of a “cultured girl!”—no Senta-sentimentality.(7) But love as fate, 
 as a fatality, cynical, innocent, cruel,—and precisely in this way 
 _Nature_! The love whose means is war, whose very essence is the _mortal 
 hatred_ between the sexes!—I know no case in which the tragic irony, which 
 constitutes the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so 
 terrible a formula, as in the last cry of Don José with which the work 
 ends: 
   
 “Yes, it is I who have killed her, 
 I—my adored Carmen!” 
   
 —Such a conception of love (the only one worthy of a philosopher) is rare: 
 it distinguishes one work of art from among a thousand others. For, as a 
 rule, artists are no better than the rest of the world, they are even 
 worse—they _misunderstand_ love. Even Wagner misunderstood it. They 
 imagine that they are selfless in it because they appear to be seeking the 
 advantage of another creature often to their own disadvantage. But in 
 return they want to _possess_ the other creature.… Even God is no 
 exception to this rule, he is very far from thinking “What does it matter 
 to thee whether I love thee or not?”—He becomes terrible if he is not 
 loved in return “_L’amour_—and with this principle one carries one’s point 
 against Gods and men—_est de tous les sentiments le plus égoiste, et par 
 conséquent, lorsqu’il est blessé, le moins généreux_” (B. Constant). 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_3 
 Perhaps you are beginning to perceive how very much this music _improves_ 
 me?—_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._ and I have my reasons for this 
 principle (“Beyond Good and Evil,” pp. 216 _et seq._) The return to 
 Nature, health, good spirits, youth, _virtue_!—And yet I was one of the 
 most corrupted Wagnerites.… I was able to take Wagner seriously. Oh, this 
 old magician! what tricks has he not played upon us! The first thing his 
 art places in our hands is a magnifying glass: we look through it, and we 
 no longer trust our own eyes—Everything grows bigger, _even Wagner grows 
 bigger_.… What a clever rattlesnake. Throughout his life he rattled 
 “resignation,” “loyalty,” and “purity” about our ears, and he retired from 
 the _corrupt_ world with a song of praise to chastity!—And we believed it 
 all.… 
   
 —But you will not listen to me? You _prefer_ even the _problem_ of Wagner 
 to that of Bizet? But neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The 
 problem of salvation is even a venerable problem. Wagner pondered over 
 nothing so deeply as over salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation. 
 Someone always wants to be saved in his operas,—now it is a youth; anon it 
 is a maid,—this is _his problem_—And how lavishly he varies his 
 _leitmotif_! What rare and melancholy modulations! If it were not for 
 Wagner, who would teach us that innocence has a preference for saving 
 interesting sinners? (the case in “Tannhauser”). Or that even the eternal 
 Jew gets saved and _settled down_ when he marries? (the case in the 
 “Flying Dutchman”). Or that corrupted old females prefer to be saved by 
 chaste young men? (the case of Kundry). Or that young hysterics like to be 
 saved by their doctor? (the case in “Lohengrin”). Or that beautiful girls 
 most love to be saved by a knight who also happens to be a Wagnerite? (the 
 case in the “Mastersingers”). Or that even married women also like to be 
 saved by a knight? (the case of Isolde). Or that the venerable Almighty, 
 after having compromised himself morally in all manner of ways, is at last 
 delivered by a free spirit and an immoralist? (the case in the “Ring”). 
 Admire, more especially this last piece of wisdom! Do you understand it? 
 I—take good care not to understand it.… That it is possible to draw yet 
 other lessons from the works above mentioned,—I am much more ready to 
 prove than to dispute. That one may be driven by a Wagnerian ballet to 
 desperation—_and_ to virtue! (once again the case in “Tannhauser”). That 
 not going to bed at the right time may be followed by the worst 
 consequences (once again the case of “Lohengrin”).—That one can never be 
 too sure of the spouse one actually marries (for the third time, the case 
 of “Lohengrin”). “Tristan and Isolde” glorifies the perfect husband who, 
 in a certain case, can ask only one question: “But why have ye not told me 
 this before? Nothing could be simpler than that!” Reply: 
   
 “That I cannot tell thee. 
 And what thou askest, 
 That wilt thou never learn.” 
   
 “Lohengrin” contains a solemn ban upon all investigation and questioning. 
 In this way Wagner stood for the Christian concept, “Thou must and shalt 
 _believe_”. It is a crime against the highest and the holiest to be 
 scientific.… The “Flying Dutchman” preaches the sublime doctrine that 
 woman can moor the most erratic soul, or to put it into Wagnerian terms 
 “save” him. Here we venture to ask a question. Supposing that this were 
 actually true, would it therefore be desirable?—What becomes of the 
 “eternal Jew” whom a woman adores and _enchains_? He simply ceases from 
 being eternal, he marries,—that is to say, he concerns us no 
 longer.—Transferred into the realm of reality, the danger for the artist 
 and for the genius—and these are of course the “eternal Jews”—resides in 
 woman: _adoring_ women are their ruin. Scarcely any one has sufficient 
 character not to be corrupted—“saved” when he finds himself treated as a 
 God—he then immediately condescends to woman.—Man is a coward in the face 
 of all that is eternally feminine, and this the girls know.—In many cases 
 of woman’s love, and perhaps precisely in the most famous ones, the love 
 is no more than a refined form of _parasitism_, a making one’s nest in 
 another’s soul and sometimes even in another’s flesh—Ah! and how 
 constantly at the cost of the host! 
   
 We know the fate of Goethe in old-maidish moralin-corroded Germany. He was 
 always offensive to Germans, he found honest admirers only among Jewesses. 
 Schiller, “noble” Schiller, who cried flowery words into their ears,—he 
 was a man after their own heart. What did they reproach Goethe with?—with 
 the Mount of Venus, and with having composed certain Venetian epigrams. 
 Even Klopstock preached him a moral sermon; there was a time when Herder 
 was fond of using the word “Priapus” when he spoke of Goethe. Even 
 “Wilhelm Meister” seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral 
 “going to the dogs”. The “Menagerie of tame cattle,” the worthlessness of 
 the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a 
 plaint which _Biterolf_(8) might well have sung: “nothing so easily makes 
 a painful impression as _when a great mind despoils itself of its wings 
 and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while it 
 renounces more lofty aims_.” But the most indignant of all was the 
 cultured woman—all smaller courts in Germany, every kind of “Puritanism” 
 made the sign of the cross at the sight of Goethe, at the thought of the 
 “unclean spirit” in Goethe.—This history was what Wagner set to music. He 
 _saves_ Goethe, that goes without saying; but he does so in such a clever 
 way that he also takes the side of the cultured woman. Goethe gets saved: 
 a prayer saves him, a cultured woman _draws him out of the mire_. 
   
 —As to what Goethe would have thought of Wagner?—Goethe once set himself 
 the question, “what danger hangs over all romanticists—the fate of 
 romanticists?”—His answer was: “To choke over the rumination of moral and 
 religious absurdities.” In short: _Parsifal_.… The philosopher writes 
 thereto an epilogue: _Holiness_—the only remaining higher value still seen 
 by the mob or by woman, the horizon of the ideal for all those who are 
 naturally short-sighted. To philosophers, however, this horizon, like 
 every other, is a mere misunderstanding, a sort of slamming of the door in 
 the face of the real beginning of their world,—their danger, their ideal, 
 their desideratum.… In more polite language: _La philosophie ne suffit pas 
 au grand nombre. Il lui faut la sainteté.…_  
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_4 
 I shall once more relate the history of the “Ring”. This is its proper 
 place. It is also the history of a salvation except that in this case it 
 is Wagner himself who is saved—Half his lifetime Wagner believed in the 
 _Revolution_ as only a Frenchman could have believed in it. He sought it 
 in the runic inscriptions of myths, he thought he had found a typical 
 revolutionary in Siegfried.—“Whence arises all the evil in this world?” 
 Wagner asked himself. From “old contracts”: he replied, as all 
 revolutionary ideologists have done. In plain English: from customs, laws, 
 morals, institutions, from all those things upon which the ancient world 
 and ancient society rests. “How can one get rid of the evil in this world? 
 How can one get rid of ancient society?” Only by declaring war against 
 “contracts” (traditions, morality). _This Siegfried does._ He starts early 
 at the game, very early—his origin itself is already a declaration of war 
 against morality—he is the result of adultery, of incest.… Not the saga, 
 but Wagner himself is the inventor of this radical feature, in this matter 
 he _corrected_ the saga.… Siegfried continues as he began: he follows only 
 his first impulse, he flings all tradition, all respect, all _fear_ to the 
 winds. Whatever displeases him he strikes down. He tilts irreverently at 
 old god-heads. His principal undertaking, however, is to emancipate 
 woman,—“to deliver Brunnhilda.”… Siegfried and Brunnhilda, the sacrament 
 of free love, the dawn of the golden age, the twilight of the Gods of old 
 morality—_evil is got rid of_.… For a long while Wagner’s ship sailed 
 happily along this course. There can be no doubt that along it Wagner 
 sought his highest goal.—What happened? A misfortune. The ship dashed on 
 to a reef; Wagner had run aground. The reef was Schopenhauer’s philosophy; 
 Wagner had stuck fast on a _contrary_ view of the world. What had he set 
 to music? Optimism? Wagner was ashamed. It was moreover an optimism for 
 which Schopenhauer had devised an evil expression,—_unscrupulous_ 
 optimism. He was more than ever ashamed. He reflected for some time; his 
 position seemed desperate.… At last a path of escape seemed gradually to 
 open before him—what if the reef on which he had been wrecked could be 
 interpreted as a goal, as the ulterior motive, as the actual purpose of 
 his journey? To be wrecked here, this was also a goal:—_Bene navigavi cum 
 naufragium feci_ … and he translated the “Ring” into Schopenhauerian 
 language. Everything goes wrong, everything goes to wrack and ruin, the 
 new world is just as bad as the old one:—Nonentity, the Indian Circe 
 beckons … Brunnhilda, who according to the old plan had to retire with a 
 song in honour of free love, consoling the world with the hope of a 
 socialistic Utopia in which “all will be well”; now gets something else to 
 She must first study Schopenhauer. She must first versify the fourth 
 
 book of “The World as Will and Idea.” _Wagner was saved.…_ Joking apart, 
 this _was_ a salvation. The service which Wagner owes to Schopenhauer is 
 incalculable. It was the _philosopher of decadence_ who allowed the 
 _artist of decadence_ to find himself.— 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_5 
 The artist of decadence._ That is the word. And here I begin to be 
 serious. I could not think of looking on approvingly while this _décadent_ 
 spoils our health—and music into the bargain. Is Wagner a man at all? Is 
 he not rather a disease? Everything he touches he contaminates. _He has 
 made music sick._ 
   
 A typical _décadent_ who thinks himself necessary with his corrupted 
 taste, who arrogates to himself a higher taste, who tries to establish his 
 depravity as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment. 
   
 And no one guards against it. His powers of seduction attain monstrous 
 proportions, holy incense hangs around him, the misunderstanding 
 concerning him is called the Gospel,—and he has certainly not converted 
 only the _poor in spirit_ to his cause! 
   
 I should like to open the window a little:—Air! More air!— 
   
 The fact that people in Germany deceive themselves concerning Wagner does 
 not surprise me. The reverse would surprise me. The Germans have modelled 
 a Wagner for themselves, whom they can honour: never yet have they been 
 psychologists; they are thankful that they misunderstand. But that people 
 should also deceive themselves concerning Wagner in Paris! Where people 
 are scarcely anything else than psychologists. And in Saint Petersburg! 
 Where things are divined, which even Paris has no idea of. How intimately 
 related must Wagner be to the entire decadence of Europe for her not to 
 have felt that he was decadent! He belongs to it, he is its protagonist, 
 its greatest name.… We bring honour on ourselves by elevating him to the 
 clouds—For the mere fact that no one guards against him is in itself 
 already a sign of decadence. Instinct is weakened, what ought to be 
 eschewed now attracts. People actually kiss that which plunges them more 
 quickly into the abyss.—Is there any need for an example? One has only to 
 think of the régime which anæmic, or gouty, or diabetic people prescribe 
 for themselves. The definition of a vegetarian: a creature who has need of 
 a corroborating diet. To recognise what is harmful as harmful, to be able 
 to deny oneself what is harmful, is a sign of youth, of vitality. That 
 which is harmful lures the exhausted: cabbage lures the vegetarian. 
 Illness itself can be a stimulus to life but one must be healthy enough 
 for such a stimulus!—Wagner increases exhaustion—_therefore_ he attracts 
 the weak and exhausted to him. Oh, the rattlesnake joy of the old Master 
 precisely because he always saw “the little children” coming unto him! 
   
 I place this point of view first and foremost: Wagner’s art is diseased. 
 The problems he sets on the stage are all concerned with hysteria; the 
 convulsiveness of his emotions, his over-excited sensitiveness, his taste 
 which demands ever sharper condimentation, his erraticness which he togged 
 out to look like principles, and, last but not least, his choice of heroes 
 and heroines, considered as physiological types (—a hospital ward!—): the 
 whole represents a morbid picture; of this there can be no doubt. _Wagner 
 est une névrose_. Maybe, that nothing is better known to-day, or in any 
 case the subject of greater study, than the Protean character of 
 degeneration which has disguised itself here, both as an art and as an 
 artist. In Wagner our medical men and physiologists have a most 
 interesting case, or at least a very complete one. Owing to the very fact 
 that nothing is more modern than this thorough morbidness, this 
 dilatoriness and excessive irritability of the nervous machinery, Wagner 
 is the _modern artist par excellence_, the Cagliostro of modernity. All 
 that the world most needs to-day, is combined in the most seductive manner 
 in his art,—the three great stimulants of exhausted people: _brutality_, 
 _artificiality_ and _innocence_ (idiocy). 
   
 Wagner is a great corrupter of music. With it, he found the means of 
 stimulating tired nerves,—and in this way he made music ill. In the art of 
 spurring exhausted creatures back into activity, and of recalling 
 half-corpses to life, the inventiveness he shows is of no mean order. He 
 is the master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the strongest like 
 bullocks. Wagner’s _success_—his success with nerves, and therefore with 
 women—converted the whole world of ambitious musicians into disciples of 
 his secret art. And not only the ambitious, but also the _shrewd_.… Only 
 with morbid music can money be made to-day; our big theatres live on 
 Wagner. 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_6 
 Once more I will venture to indulge in a little levity. Let us suppose 
 that Wagner’s _success_ could become flesh and blood and assume a human 
 form; that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant, it could move 
 among budding artists. How do you think it would then be likely to express 
 itself?— 
   
 My friends, it would say, let us exchange a word or two in private. It is 
 easier to compose bad music than good music. But what, if apart from this 
 it were also more profitable, more effective, more convincing, more 
 exalting, more secure, more _Wagnerian_?… _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum._ 
 Bad enough in all conscience! We understand Latin, and perhaps we also 
 understand which side our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks: we 
 know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why not rather aim at size, at the 
 sublime, the gigantic, that which moves the _masses_?—And to repeat, it is 
 easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we know that.… 
   
 We know the masses, we know the theatre. The best of those who assemble 
 there,—German youths, horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require the 
 sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming. This much still lies within 
 our power. And as for the others who assemble there,—the cultured 
 _crétins_, the _blasé_ pigmies, the eternally feminine, the gastrically 
 happy, in short the people—they also require the sublime, the profound, 
 the overwhelming. All these people argue in the same way. “He who 
 overthrows us is strong; he who elevates us is godly; he who makes us 
 wonder vaguely is profound.”—Let us make up our mind then, my friends in 
 music: we do want to overthrow them, we do want to elevate them, we do 
 want to make them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within our powers. 
   
 In regard to the process of making them wonder: it is here that our notion 
 of “style” finds its starting-point. Above all, no thoughts! Nothing is 
 more compromising than a thought! But the state of mind which _precedes_ 
 thought, the labour of the thought still unborn, the promise of future 
 thought, the world as it was before God created it—a recrudescence of 
 chaos.… Chaos makes people wonder.… 
   
 In the words of the master: infinity but without melody. 
   
 In the second place, with regard to the overthrowing,—this belongs at 
 least in part, to physiology. Let us, in the first place, examine the 
 instruments. A few of them would convince even our intestines (—they 
 _throw open_ doors, as Handel would say), others becharm our very marrow. 
 The _colour of the melody is_ all-important here, _the melody itself_ is 
 of no importance. Let us be precise about _this_ point. To what other 
 purpose should we spend our strength? Let us be characteristic in tone 
 even to the point of foolishness! If by means of tones we allow plenty of 
 scope for guessing, this will be put to the credit of our intellects. Let 
 us irritate nerves, let us strike them dead: let us handle thunder and 
 lightning,—that is what overthrows.… 
   
 But what overthrows best, is _passion_.—We must try and be clear 
 concerning this question of passion. Nothing is cheaper than passion! All 
 the virtues of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no need to 
 have learnt anything,—but passion is always within our reach! Beauty is 
 difficult: let us beware of beauty!… And also of _melody!_ However much in 
 earnest we may otherwise be about the ideal, let us slander, my friends, 
 let us slander,—let us slander melody! Nothing is more dangerous than a 
 beautiful melody! Nothing is more certain to ruin taste! My friends, if 
 people again set about loving beautiful melodies, we are lost!… 
   
 _First principle_: melody is immoral. _Proof_: “Palestrina”. 
 _Application_: “Parsifal.” The absence of melody is in itself 
 sanctifying.… 
   
 And this is the definition of passion. Passion—or the acrobatic feats of 
 ugliness on the tight-rope of enharmonic—My friends, let us dare to be 
 ugly! Wagner dared it! Let us heave the mud of the most repulsive 
 harmonies undauntedly before us. We must not even spare our hands! Only 
 thus, shall we become _natural_.… 
   
 And now a last word of advice. Perhaps it covers everything—_Let us be 
 idealists!_—If not the cleverest, it is at least the wisest thing we can 
 In order to elevate men we ourselves must be exalted. Let us wander in 
 
 the clouds, let us harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great 
 symbols all around us! _Sursum! Bumbum!_—there is no better advice. The 
 “heaving breast” shall be our argument, “beautiful feelings” our 
 advocates. Virtue still carries its point against counterpoint. “How could 
 he who improves us, help being better than we?” man has ever thought thus. 
 Let us therefore improve mankind!—in this way we shall become good (in 
 this way we shall even become “classics”—Schiller became a “classic”). The 
 straining after the base excitement of the senses, after so-called beauty, 
 shattered the nerves of the Italians: let us remain German! Even Mozart’s 
 relation to music—Wagner spoke this word of comfort to us—was at bottom 
 frivolous.… 
   
 Never let us acknowledge that music “may be a recreation,” that it may 
 “enliven,” that it may “give pleasure.” _Never let us give pleasure!_—we 
 shall be lost if people once again think of music hedonistically.… That 
 belongs to the bad eighteenth century.… On the other hand, nothing would 
 be more advisable (between ourselves) than a dose of—_cant, sit venia 
 verbo_. This imparts dignity.—And let us take care to select the precise 
 moment when it would be fitting to have black looks, to sigh openly, to 
 sigh devoutly, to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their eyes. “Man 
 is corrupt who will save him? _what will save him?_” Do not let us reply. 
 We must be on our guard. We must control our ambition, which would bid us 
 found new religions. But no one must doubt that it is _we_ who save him, 
 that in _our_ music alone salvation is to be found.… (See Wagner’s essay, 
 “Religion and Art.”) 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_7 
 Enough! Enough! I fear that, beneath all my merry jests, you are beginning 
 to recognise the sinister truth only too clearly—the picture of the 
 decline of art, of the decline of the artist. The latter, which is a 
 decline of character, might perhaps be defined provisionally in the 
 following manner: the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is 
 developing ever more and more into a talent for _telling lies_. In a 
 certain chapter of my principal work which bears the title “Concerning the 
 Physiology of Art,”(9) I shall have an opportunity of showing more 
 thoroughly how this transformation of art as a whole into histrionics is 
 just as much a sign of physiological degeneration (or more precisely a 
 form of hysteria), as any other individual corruption, and infirmity 
 peculiar to the art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the 
 restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary to change one’s 
 attitude to it every second. They understand nothing of Wagner who see in 
 him but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter of accidents. He 
 was not the “defective,” “ill-fated,” “contradictory” genius that people 
 have declared him to be. Wagner was something _complete_, he was a typical 
 _décadent_, in whom every sign of “free will” was lacking, in whom every 
 feature was necessary. If there is anything at all of interest in Wagner, 
 it is the consistency with which a critical physiological condition may 
 convert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion, into a method, 
 a form of procedure, a reform of all principles, a crisis in taste. 
   
 At this point I shall only stop to consider the question of _style_. How 
 is _decadence_ in _literature_ characterised? By the fact that in it life 
 no longer animates the whole. Words become predominant and leap right out 
 of the sentence to which they belong, the sentences themselves trespass 
 beyond their bounds, and obscure the sense of the whole page, and the page 
 in its turn gains in vigour at the cost of the whole,—the whole is no 
 longer a whole. But this is the formula for every decadent style: there is 
 always anarchy among the atoms, disaggregation of the will,—in moral 
 terms: “freedom of the individual,”—extended into a political theory 
 “_equal_ rights for all.” Life, equal vitality, all the vibration and 
 exuberance of life, driven back into the smallest structure, and the 
 remainder left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, distress, and 
 numbness, or hostility and chaos both striking one with ever increasing 
 force the higher the forms of organisation are into which one ascends. The 
 whole no longer lives at all: it is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a 
 fictitious thing. 
   
 In Wagner’s case the first thing we notice is an hallucination, not of 
 tones, but of attitudes. Only after he has the latter does he begin to 
 seek the semiotics of tone for them. If we wish to admire him, we should 
 observe him at work here: how he separates and distinguishes, how he 
 arrives at small unities, and how he galvanises them, accentuates them, 
 and brings them into pre-eminence. But in this way he exhausts his 
 strength the rest is worthless. How paltry, awkward, and amateurish is his 
 manner of “developing,” his attempt at combining incompatible parts. His 
 manner in this respect reminds one of two people who even in other ways 
 are not unlike him in style—the brothers Goncourt; one almost feels 
 compassion for so much impotence. That Wagner disguised his inability to 
 create organic forms, under the cloak of a principle, that he should have 
 constructed a “dramatic style” out of what we should call the total 
 inability to create any style whatsoever, is quite in keeping with that 
 daring habit, which stuck to him throughout his life, of setting up a 
 principle wherever capacity failed him. (In this respect he was very 
 different from old Kant, who rejoiced in another form of daring, _i.e._: 
 whenever a principle failed him, he endowed man with a “capacity” which 
 took its place…) Once more let it be said that Wagner is really only 
 worthy of admiration and love by virtue of his inventiveness in small 
 things, in his elaboration of details,—here one is quite justified in 
 proclaiming him a master of the first rank, as our greatest musical 
 _miniaturist_ who compresses an infinity of meaning and sweetness into the 
 smallest space. His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery of a 
 dying light, so pampers our senses that afterwards almost every other 
 musician strikes us as being too robust. If people would believe me, they 
 would not form the highest idea of Wagner from that which pleases them in 
 him to-day. All that was only devised for convincing the masses, and 
 people like ourselves recoil from it just as one would recoil from too 
 garish a fresco. What concern have we with the irritating brutality of the 
 overture to the “Tannhauser”? Or with the Walkyrie Circus? Whatever has 
 become popular in Wagner’s art, including that which has become so outside 
 the theatre, is in bad taste and spoils taste. The “Tannhauser” March 
 seems to me to savour of the Philistine; the overture to the “Flying 
 Dutchman” is much ado about nothing; the prelude to “Lohengrin” was the 
 first, only too insidious, only too successful example of how one can 
 hypnotise with music (—I dislike all music which aspires to nothing higher 
 than to convince the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who paints 
 frescoes and practises magnetism, there is yet another Wagner who hoards 
 small treasures: our greatest melancholic in music, full of side glances, 
 loving speeches, and words of comfort, in which no one ever forestalled 
 him,—the tone-master of melancholy and drowsy happiness.… A lexicon of 
 Wagner’s most intimate phrases—a host of short fragments of from five to 
 fifteen bars each, of music which _nobody knows_.… Wagner had the virtue 
 of _décadents_,—pity.… 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_8 
 —“Very good! But how can this _décadent_ spoil one’s taste if perchance 
 one is not a musician, if perchance one is not oneself a 
 _décadent_?”—Conversely! How can one _help_ it! _Just_ you try it!—You 
 know not what Wagner is: quite a great actor! Does a more profound, a more 
 _ponderous_ influence exist on the stage? Just look at these 
 youthlets,—all benumbed, pale, breathless! They are Wagnerites: they know 
 nothing about music,—and yet Wagner gets the mastery of them. Wagner’s art 
 presses with the weight of a hundred atmospheres: do but submit, there is 
 nothing else to do.… Wagner the actor is a tyrant, his pathos flings all 
 taste, all resistance, to the winds. 
   
 —Who else has this persuasive power in his attitudes, who else sees 
 attitudes so clearly before anything else! This holding-of-its-breath in 
 Wagnerian pathos, this disinclination to have done with an intense 
 feeling, this terrifying habit of dwelling on a situation in which every 
 instant almost chokes one.—— 
   
 Was Wagner a musician at all? In any case he was something else to _a much 
 greater degree_—that is to say, an incomparable _histrio_, the greatest 
 mime, the most astounding theatrical genius that the Germans have ever 
 had, our _scenic artist par excellence_. He belongs to some other sphere 
 than the history of music, with whose really great and genuine figure he 
 must not be confounded. Wagner _and_ Beethoven—this is blasphemy—and above 
 all it does not do justice even to Wagner.… As a musician he was no more 
 than what he was as a man, he _became_ a musician, he _became_ a poet, 
 because the tyrant in him, his actor’s genius, drove him to be both. 
 Nothing is known concerning Wagner, so long as his dominating instinct has 
 not been divined. 
   
 Wagner was _not_ instinctively a musician. And this he proved by the way 
 in which he abandoned all laws and rules, or, in more precise terms, all 
 style in music, in order to make what he wanted with it, _i.e._, a 
 rhetorical medium for the stage, a medium of expression, a means of 
 accentuating an attitude, a vehicle of suggestion and of the 
 psychologically picturesque. In this department Wagner may well stand as 
 an inventor and an innovator of the first order—_he increased the powers 
 of speech __ of music to an incalculable degree_—he is the Victor Hugo of 
 music as language, provided always we allow that under certain 
 circumstances music may be something which is not music, but 
 speech—instrument—_ancilla dramaturgica_. Wagner’s music, _not_ in the 
 tender care of theatrical taste, which is very tolerant, is simply bad 
 music, perhaps the worst that has ever been composed. When a musician can 
 no longer count up to three, he becomes “dramatic,” he becomes 
 “Wagnerian”.… 
   
 Wagner almost discovered the magic which can be wrought even now by means 
 of music which is both incoherent and _elementary_. His consciousness of 
 this attains to huge proportions, as does also his instinct to dispense 
 entirely with higher law and _style_. The elementary factors—sound, 
 movement, colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music—suffice. 
 Wagner never calculates as a musician with a musician’s conscience, all he 
 strains after is effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows what he 
 has to make an effect upon!—In this he is as unhesitating as Schiller was, 
 as any theatrical man must be; he has also the latter’s contempt for the 
 world which he brings to its knees before him. A man is an actor when he 
 is ahead of mankind in his possession of this one view, that everything 
 which has to strike people as true, must not be true. This rule was 
 formulated by Talma: it contains the whole psychology of the actor, it 
 also contains—and this we need not doubt—all his morality. Wagner’s music 
 is never true. 
   
 —But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything is as it should be. As 
 long as we are young, and Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as 
 rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as a great landlord in 
 the realm of sound. We admire him in very much the same way as young 
 Frenchmen admire Victor Hugo—that is to say, for his “royal liberality.” 
 Later on we admire the one as well as the other for the opposite reason: 
 as masters and paragons in economy, as _prudent_ amphitryons. Nobody can 
 equal them in the art of providing a princely board with such a modest 
 outlay.—The Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even sated with the 
 fare which his master conjures up before him. But we others who, in books 
 as in music, desire above all to find _substance_, and who are scarcely 
 satisfied with the mere representation of a banquet, are much worse off. 
 In plain English, Wagner does not give us enough to masticate. His 
 recitative—very little meat, more bones, and plenty of broth—I christened 
 “_alla genovese_”: I had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this 
 remark, but rather the _older recitativo_, the _recitativo secco_. And as 
 to Wagnerian _leitmotif_, I fear I lack the necessary culinary 
 understanding for it. If hard pressed, I might say that I regard it 
 perhaps as an ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one’s self of 
 what remains of one’s meal. Wagner’s “arias” are still left over. But now 
 I shall hold my tongue.  
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_9 
 Even in his general sketch of the action, Wagner is above all an actor. 
 The first thing that occurs to him is a scene which is certain to produce 
 a strong effect, a real _actio_,(10) with a basso-relievo of attitudes; an 
 _overwhelming_ scene, this he now proceeds to elaborate more deeply, and 
 out of it he draws his characters. The whole of what remains to be done 
 follows of itself, fully in keeping with a technical economy which has no 
 reason to be subtle. It is not Corneille’s public that Wagner has to 
 consider, it is merely the nineteenth century. Concerning the “actual 
 requirements of the stage” Wagner would have about the same opinion as any 
 other actor of to-day, a series of powerful scenes, each stronger than the 
 one that preceded it,—and, in between, all kinds of _clever_ nonsense. His 
 first concern is to guarantee the effect of his work; he begins with the 
 third act, he _approves_ his work according to the quality of its final 
 effect. Guided by this sort of understanding of the stage, there is not 
 much danger of one’s creating a drama unawares. Drama demands _inexorable_ 
 logic: but what did Wagner care about logic? Again I say, it was not 
 Corneille’s public that he had to consider; but merely Germans! Everybody 
 knows the technical difficulties before which the dramatist often has to 
 summon all his strength and frequently to sweat his blood: the difficulty 
 of making the _plot_ seem necessary and the unravelment as well, so that 
 both are conceivable only in a certain way, and so that each may give the 
 impression of freedom (the principle of the smallest expenditure of 
 energy). Now the very last thing that Wagner does is to sweat blood over 
 the plot; and on this and the unravelment he certainly spends the smallest 
 possible amount of energy. Let anybody put one of Wagner’s “plots” under 
 the microscope, and I wager that he will be forced to laugh. Nothing is 
 more enlivening than the dilemma in “Tristan,” unless it be that in the 
 “Mastersingers.” Wagner is _no_ dramatist; let nobody be deceived on this 
 point. All he did was to love the word “drama”—he always loved fine words. 
 Nevertheless, in his writings the word “drama” is merely a 
 misunderstanding (—_and_ a piece of shrewdness: Wagner always affected 
 superiority in regard to the word “opera”—), just as the word “spirit” is 
 a misunderstanding in the New Testament.—He was not enough of a 
 psychologist for drama; he instinctively avoided a psychological plot—but 
 how?—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place.… Very modern—eh? Very 
 Parisian! very decadent!… Incidentally, the _plots_ that Wagner knows how 
 to unravel with the help of dramatic inventions, are of quite another 
 kind. For example, let us suppose that Wagner requires a female voice. A 
 whole act without a woman’s voice would be impossible! But in this 
 particular instance not one of the heroines happens to be free. What does 
 Wagner do? He emancipates the oldest woman on earth, Erda. “Step up, aged 
 grandmamma! You have got to sing!” And Erda sings. Wagner’s end has been 
 achieved. Thereupon he immediately dismisses the old lady. “Why on earth 
 did you come? Off with you! Kindly go to sleep again!” In short, a scene 
 full of mythological awe, before which the Wagnerite _wonders_ all kinds 
 of things.… 
   
 —“But the substance of Wagner’s texts! their mythical substance, their 
 eternal substance”—Question: how is this substance, this eternal substance 
 tested? The chemical analyst replies: Translate Wagner into the real, into 
 the modern,—let us be even more cruel, and say into the bourgeois! And 
 what will then become of him?—Between ourselves, I have tried the 
 experiment. Nothing is more entertaining, nothing more worthy of being 
 recommended to a picnic-party, than to discuss Wagner dressed in a more 
 modern garb: for instance Parsifal, as a candidate in divinity, with a 
 public-school education (—the latter, quite indispensable _for pure_ 
 foolishness). What _surprises_ await one! Would you believe it, that 
 Wagner’s heroines one and all, once they have been divested of the heroic 
 husks, are almost indistinguishable from Mdme. Bovary!—just as one can 
 conceive conversely, of Flaubert’s being _well able_ to transform all his 
 heroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian women, and then to offer them 
 to Wagner in this mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally 
 speaking, Wagner does not seem to have become interested in any other 
 problems than those which engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day. 
 Always five paces away from the hospital! All very modern problems, all 
 problems which are at home _in big cities!_ do not doubt it!… Have you 
 noticed (it is in keeping with this association of ideas) that Wagner’s 
 heroines never have any children?—They _cannot_ have them.… The despair 
 with which Wagner tackled the problem of arranging in some way for 
 Siegfried’s birth, betrays how modern his feelings on this point actually 
 were.—Siegfried “emancipated woman”—but not with any hope of 
 offspring.—And now here is a fact which leaves us speechless: Parsifal is 
 Lohengrin’s father! How ever did he do it?—Ought one at this juncture to 
 remember that “chastity works miracles”?… 
   
 _Wagnerus dixit princeps in castitate auctoritas._ 
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_10 
 And now just a word _en passant_ concerning Wagner’s writings: they are 
 among other things a school of _shrewdness_. The system of procedures of 
 which Wagner disposes, might be applied to a hundred other cases,—he that 
 hath ears to hear let him hear. Perhaps I may lay claim to some public 
 acknowledgment, if I put three of the most valuable of these procedures 
 into a precise form. 
   
 Everything that Wagner _cannot_ do is bad. 
   
 Wagner could do much more than he does; but his strong principles prevent 
 him. 
   
 Everything that Wagner _can_ do, no one will ever be able to do after him, 
 no one has ever done before him, and no one must ever do after him. Wagner 
 is godly. 
   
 These three propositions are the quintessence of Wagner’s writings;—the 
 rest is merely—“literature”. 
   
 —Not every kind of music hitherto has been in need of literature; and it 
 were well, to try and discover the actual reason of this. Is it perhaps 
 that Wagner’s music is too difficult to understand? Or did he fear 
 precisely the reverse—that it was too easy,—that people might _not 
 understand it with sufficient difficulty_?—As a matter of fact, his whole 
 life long, he did nothing but repeat one proposition: that his music did 
 not mean music alone! But something more! Something immeasurably more!… 
 “_Not music alone_”—_no_ musician would speak in this way. I repeat, 
 Wagner could not create things as a whole; he had no choice, he was 
 obliged to create things in bits, with “motives,” attitudes, formulæ, 
 duplications, and hundreds of repetitions, he remained a rhetorician in 
 music,—and that is why he was at bottom _forced_ to press “this means” 
 into the foreground. “Music can never be anything else than a means”: this 
 was his theory, but above all it was the only _practice_ that lay open to 
 him. No musician however thinks in this way.—Wagner was in need of 
 literature, in order to persuade the whole world to take his music 
 seriously, profoundly, “because it _meant_ an infinity of things”, all his 
 life he was the commentator of the “Idea.”—What does Elsa stand for? But 
 without a doubt, Elsa is “the unconscious _mind of the people_” (—“when I 
 realised this, I naturally became a thorough revolutionist”—). 
   
 Do not let us forget that, when Hegel and Schelling were misleading the 
 minds of Germany, Wagner was still young: that he guessed, or rather fully 
 grasped, that the only thing which Germans take seriously is—“the 
 idea,”—that is to say, something obscure, uncertain, wonderful; that among 
 Germans lucidity is an objection, logic a refutation. Schopenhauer 
 rigorously pointed out the dishonesty of Hegel’s and Schelling’s 
 age,—rigorously, but also unjustly, for he himself, the pessimistic old 
 counterfeiter, was in no way more “honest” than his more famous 
 contemporaries. But let us leave morality out of the question, Hegel is a 
 _matter of taste_.… And not only of German but of European taste!… A taste 
 which Wagner understood!—which he felt equal to! which he has 
 immortalised!—All he did was to apply it to music—he invented a style for 
 himself, which might mean an “infinity of things,”—he was _Hegel’s_ heir.… 
 Music as “Idea.”— 
   
 And how well Wagner was understood!—The same kind of man who used to gush 
 over Hegel, now gushes over Wagner, in his school they even _write_ 
 Hegelian.(11) But he who understood Wagner best, was the German youthlet. 
 The two words “infinity” and “meaning” were sufficient for this: at their 
 sound the youthlet immediately began to feel exceptionally happy. Wagner 
 did _not_ conquer these boys with music, but with the “idea”:—it is the 
 enigmatical vagueness of his art, its game of hide-and-seek amid a hundred 
 symbols, its polychromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads. It is 
 Wagner’s genius for forming clouds, his sweeps and swoops through the air, 
 his ubiquity and nullibiety—precisely the same qualities with which Hegel 
 led and lured in his time!—Moreover in the presence of Wagner’s 
 multifariousness, plenitude and arbitrariness, they seem to themselves 
 justified—“saved”. Tremulously they listen while the _great symbols_ in 
 his art seem to make themselves heard from out the misty distance, with a 
 gentle roll of thunder, and they are not at all displeased if at times it 
 gets a little grey, gruesome and cold. Are they not one and all, like 
 Wagner himself, on _quite intimate terms_ with bad weather, with German 
 weather! Wotan is their God, but Wotan is the God of bad weather.… They 
 are right, how could these German youths—in their present condition,—miss 
 what we others, we _halcyonians_, miss in Wagner? _i.e._: _la gaya 
 scienza_; light feet, wit, fire, grave, grand logic, stellar dancing, 
 wanton intellectuality, the vibrating light of the South, the calm 
 sea—perfection.… 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_11 
 —I have mentioned the sphere to which Wagner belongs—certainly not to the 
 history of music. What, however, does he mean historically?—_The rise of 
 the actor in music_: a momentous event which not only leads me to think 
 but also to fear. 
   
 In a word: “Wagner and Liszt.” Never yet have the “uprightness” and 
 “genuineness” of musicians been put to such a dangerous test. It is 
 glaringly obvious: great success, mob success is no longer the achievement 
 of the genuine,—in order to get it a man must be an actor!—Victor Hugo and 
 Richard Wagner—they both prove one and the same thing: that in declining 
 civilisations, wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes 
 superfluous, prejudicial, unfavourable. The actor, alone, can still kindle 
 _great_ enthusiasm.—And thus it is his _golden age_ which is now 
 dawning,—his and that of all those who are in any way related to him. With 
 drums and fifes, Wagner marches at the head of all artists in declamation, 
 in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing the conductors of 
 orchestras, the scene-shifters and stage-singers, not to forget the 
 orchestra:—he “delivered” them from monotony.… The movement that Wagner 
 created has spread even to the land of knowledge: whole sciences 
 pertaining to music are rising slowly, out of centuries of scholasticism. 
 As an example of what I mean, let me point more particularly to 
 _Riemann’s_ services to rhythmics; he was the first who called attention 
 to the leading idea in punctuation—even for music (unfortunately he did so 
 with a bad word; he called it “phrasing”).—All these people, and I say it 
 with gratitude, are the best, the most respectable among Wagner’s 
 admirers—they have a perfect right to honour Wagner. The same instinct 
 unites them with one another; in him they recognise their highest type, 
 and since he has inflamed them with his own ardour they feel themselves 
 transformed into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if 
 anywhere, Wagner’s influence has really been _beneficent_. Never before 
 has there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere. 
 Wagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now 
 exact and _obtain_ from themselves, they had never exacted before Wagner’s 
 time—before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the 
 stage since Wagner rules there the most difficult things are expected, 
 blame is severe, praise very scarce,—the good and the excellent have 
 become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice. 
 Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more “dramatic” effect. 
 Even talent is out of the question. Expressiveness at all costs, which is 
 what the Wagnerian ideal—the ideal of decadence—demands, is hardly 
 compatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue—that is to 
 say, training, automatism, “self-denial”. Neither taste, voices, nor 
 gifts, Wagner’s stage requires but one thing: _Germans!_… The definition 
 of a German: an obedient man with long legs.… There is a deep significance 
 in the fact that the rise of Wagner should have coincided with the rise of 
 the “Empire”: both phenomena are a proof of one and the same 
 thing—obedience and long legs.—Never have people been more obedient, never 
 have they been so well ordered about. The conductors of Wagnerian 
 orchestras, more particularly, are worthy of an age, which posterity will 
 one day call, with timid awe, the _classical age of war_. 
   
 Wagner understood how to command; in this respect, too, he was a great 
 teacher. He commanded as a man who had exercised an inexorable will over 
 himself—as one who had practised lifelong discipline: Wagner was, perhaps, 
 the greatest example of self-violence in the whole of the history of art 
 (—even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by 
 him. The note of a Torinese). 
   
 
 
 
 THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM_12 
 This view, that our actors have become more worthy of respect than 
 heretofore, does not imply that I believe them to have become less 
 dangerous.… But who is in any doubt as to what I want,—as to what the 
 _three requisitions_ are concerning which my wrath and my care and love of 
 art, have made me open my mouth on this occasion? 
   
 _That the stage should not become master of the arts._ 
   
 _That the actor should not become the corrupter of the genuine._ 
   
 _That music should not become an art of lying._ 
   
 _Friedrich Nietzsche._ 
   
 
 
 
 Postscript 
 The gravity of these last words allows me at this point to introduce a few 
 sentences out of an unprinted essay which will at least leave no doubt as 
 to my earnestness in regard to this question. The title of this essay is: 
 “What Wagner has cost us.” 
   
 One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Even to-day a vague 
 feeling that this is so, still prevails. Even Wagner’s success, his 
 triumph, did not uproot this feeling thoroughly. But formerly it was 
 strong, it was terrible, it was a gloomy hate throughout almost 
 three-quarters of Wagner’s life. The resistance which he met with among us 
 Germans cannot be too highly valued or too highly honoured. People guarded 
 themselves against him as against an illness,—not with arguments—it is 
 impossible to refute an illness,—but with obstruction, with mistrust, with 
 repugnance, with loathing, with sombre earnestness, as though he were a 
 great rampant danger. The æsthetes gave themselves away when out of three 
 schools of German philosophy they waged an absurd war against Wagner’s 
 principles with “ifs” and “fors”—what did he care about principles, even 
 his own!—The Germans themselves had enough instinctive good sense to 
 dispense with every “if” and “for” in this matter. An instinct is weakened 
 when it becomes conscious: for by becoming conscious it makes itself 
 feeble. If there were any signs that in spite of the universal character 
 of European decadence there was still a modicum of health, still an 
 instinctive premonition of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the 
 German soul, then it would be precisely this blunt resistance to Wagner 
 which I should least like to see underrated. It does us honour, it gives 
 us some reason to hope: France no longer has such an amount of health at 
 her disposal. The Germans, these _loiterers par excellence_, as history 
 shows, are to-day the most backward among the civilised nations of Europe; 
 this has its advantages,—for they are thus relatively the youngest. 
   
 One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. It is only quite 
 recently that the Germans have overcome a sort of dread of him,—the desire 
 to be rid of him occurred to them again and again.(12) Does anybody 
 remember a very curious occurrence in which, quite unexpectedly towards 
 the end, this old feeling once more manifested itself? It happened at 
 Wagner’s funeral. The first Wagner Society, the one in Munich, laid a 
 wreath on his grave with this inscription, which immediately became 
 famous: “Salvation to the Saviour!” Everybody admired the lofty 
 inspiration which had dictated this inscription, as also the taste which 
 seemed to be the privilege of the followers of Wagner. Many also, however 
 (it was singular enough), made this slight alteration in it: “Salvation 
 _from_ the Saviour”—People began to breathe again— 
   
 One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Let us try to 
 estimate the influence of this worship upon culture. Whom did this 
 movement press to the front? What did it make ever more and more 
 pre-eminent?—In the first place the layman’s arrogance, the arrogance of 
 the art-maniac. Now these people are organising societies, they wish to 
 make their taste prevail, they even wish to pose as judges _in rebus 
 musicis et musicantibus_. Secondly: an ever increasing indifference 
 towards severe, noble and conscientious schooling in the service of art, 
 and in its place the belief in genius, or in plain English, cheeky 
 dilettantism (—the formula for this is to be found in the 
 _Mastersingers_). Thirdly, and this is the worst of all: _Theatrocracy_—, 
 the craziness of a belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the right 
 of the theatre to rule supreme over the arts, over Art in general.… But 
 this should be shouted into the face of Wagnerites a hundred times over: 
 that the theatre is something lower than art, something secondary, 
 something coarsened, above all something suitably distorted and falsified 
 for the mob. In this respect Wagner altered nothing: Bayreuth is grand 
 Opera—and not even good opera.… The stage is a form of Demolatry in the 
 realm of taste, the stage is an insurrection of the mob, a _plébiscite_ 
 against good taste.… The case of Wagner proves this fact: he captivated 
 the masses—he depraved taste, he even perverted our taste for opera!— 
   
 One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. What has 
 Wagner-worship made out of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit? To him 
 belong that ambiguity and equivocation and all other qualities which can 
 convince the uncertain without making them conscious of why they have been 
 convinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer on a grand scale. There is 
 nothing exhausted, nothing effete, nothing dangerous to life, nothing that 
 slanders the world in the realm of spirit, which has not secretly found 
 shelter in his art, he conceals the blackest obscurantism in the luminous 
 orbs of the ideal. He flatters every nihilistic (Buddhistic) instinct and 
 togs it out in music; he flatters every form of Christianity, every 
 religious expression of decadence. He that hath ears to hear let him hear: 
 everything that has ever grown out of the soil of impoverished life, the 
 whole counterfeit coinage of the transcendental and of a Beyond found its 
 most sublime advocate in Wagner’s art, not in formulæ (Wagner is too 
 clever to use formulæ), but in the persuasion of the senses which in their 
 turn makes the spirit weary and morbid. Music in the form of Circe … in 
 this respect his last work is his greatest masterpiece. In the art of 
 seduction “Parsifal” will for ever maintain its rank as a stroke of 
 genius.… I admire this work. I would fain have composed it myself. Wagner 
 was never better inspired than towards the end. The subtlety with which 
 beauty and disease are united here, reaches such a height, that it casts 
 so to speak a shadow upon all Wagner’s earlier achievements: it seems too 
 bright, too healthy. Do ye understand this? Health and brightness acting 
 like a shadow? Almost like an objection?… To this extent are we already 
 pure fools.… Never was there a greater Master in heavy hieratic 
 perfumes—Never on earth has there been such a connoisseur of paltry 
 infinities, of all that thrills, of extravagant excesses, of all the 
 feminism from out the vocabulary of happiness! My friends, do but drink 
 the philtres of this art! Nowhere will ye find a more pleasant method of 
 enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manliness in the shade of a 
 rosebush.… Ah, this old magician, mightiest of Klingsors; how he wages war 
 against us with his art, against us free spirits! How he appeals to every 
 form of cowardice of the modern soul with his charming girlish notes! 
 There never was such a _mortal hatred_ of knowledge! One must be a very 
 cynic in order to resist seduction here. One must be able to bite in order 
 to resist worshipping at this shrine. Very well, old seducer! The cynic 
 cautions you—_cave canem_.… 
   
 One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. I contemplate the 
 youthlets who have long been exposed to his infection. The first 
 relatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of their taste. Wagner 
 acts like chronic recourse to the bottle. He stultifies, he befouls the 
 stomach. His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling for rhythm. What 
 the Wagnerite calls rhythmical is what I call, to use a Greek metaphor, 
 “stirring a swamp.” Much more dangerous than all this, however, is the 
 corruption of ideas. The youthlet becomes a moon-calf, an “idealist”. He 
 stands above science, and in this respect he has reached the master’s 
 heights. On the other hand, he assumes the airs of a philosopher, he 
 writes for the _Bayreuth Journal_; he solves all problems in the name of 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Master. But the most ghastly thing of 
 all is the deterioration of the nerves. Let any one wander through a large 
 city at night, in all directions he will hear people doing violence to 
 instruments with solemn rage and fury, a wild uproar breaks out at 
 intervals. What is happening? It is the disciples of Wagner in the act of 
 worshipping him.… Bayreuth is another word for a Hydro. A typical telegram 
 from Bayreuth would read _bereits bereut_ (I already repent). Wagner is 
 bad for young men; he is fatal for women. What medically speaking is a 
 female Wagnerite? It seems to me that a doctor could not be too serious in 
 putting this alternative of conscience to young women; either one thing or 
 the other. But they have already made their choice. You cannot serve two 
 Masters when one of these is Wagner. Wagner redeemed woman; and in return 
 woman built Bayreuth for him. Every sacrifice, every surrender: there was 
 nothing that they were not prepared to give him. Woman impoverishes 
 herself in favour of the Master, she becomes quite touching, she stands 
 naked before him. The female Wagnerite, the most attractive equivocality 
 that exists to-day: she is the incarnation of Wagner’s cause: his cause 
 triumphs with her as its symbol.… Ah, this old robber! He robs our young 
 men: he even robs our women as well, and drags them to his cell.… Ah, this 
 old Minotaur! What has he not already cost us? Every year processions of 
 the finest young men and maidens are led into his labyrinth that he may 
 swallow them up, every year the whole of Europe cries out “Away to Crete! 
 Away to Crete!”.… 
   
 
 
 
 Second Postscript 
 It seems to me that my letter is open to some misunderstanding. On certain 
 faces I see the expression of gratitude; I even hear modest but merry 
 laughter. I prefer to be understood here as in other things. But since a 
 certain animal, _the worm_ of Empire, the famous _Rhinoxera_, has become 
 lodged in the vineyards of the German spirit, nobody any longer 
 understands a word I say. The _Kreus-Zeitung_ has brought this home to me, 
 not to speak of the _Litterarisches Centralblatt_. I have given the 
 Germans the deepest books that they have ever possessed—a sufficient 
 reason for their not having understood a word of them.… If in this essay I 
 declare war against Wagner—and incidentally against a certain form of 
 German taste, if I seem to use strong language about the cretinism of 
 Bayreuth, it must not be supposed that I am in the least anxious to 
 glorify any other musician. Other musicians are not to be considered by 
 the side of Wagner. Things are generally bad. Decay is universal. Disease 
 lies at the very root of things. If Wagner’s name represents the ruin of 
 music, just as Bernini’s stands for the ruin of sculpture, he is not on 
 that account its cause. All he did was to accelerate the fall,—though we 
 are quite prepared to admit that he did it in a way which makes one recoil 
 with horror from this almost instantaneous decline and fall to the depths. 
 He possessed the ingenuousness of decadence: this constituted his 
 superiority. He believed in it. He did not halt before any of its logical 
 consequences. The others hesitated—that is their distinction. They have no 
 other. What is common to both Wagner and “the others” consists in this: 
 the decline of all organising power, the abuse of traditional means, 
 without the capacity or the aim that would justify this. The counterfeit 
 imitation of grand forms, for which nobody nowadays is strong, proud, 
 self-reliant and healthy enough, excessive vitality in small details; 
 passion at all costs; refinement as an expression of impoverished life, 
 ever more nerves in the place of muscle. I know only one musician who 
 to-day would be able to compose an overture as an organic whole: and 
 nobody else knows him.(13) He who is famous now, does not write better 
 music than Wagner, but only less characteristic, less definite music:—less 
 definite, because half measures, even in decadence, cannot stand by the 
 side of completeness. But Wagner was complete, Wagner represented thorough 
 corruption, Wagner has had the courage, the will, and the conviction for 
 corruption. What does Johannes Brahms matter?… It was his good fortune to 
 be misunderstood by Germany; he was taken to be an antagonist of 
 Wagner—people required an antagonist!—But he did not write necessary 
 music, above all he wrote too much music!—When one is not rich one should 
 at least have enough pride to be poor!… The sympathy which here and there 
 was meted out to Brahms, apart from party interests and party 
 misunderstandings, was for a long time a riddle to me, until one day 
 through an accident, almost, I discovered that he affected a particular 
 type of man. He has the melancholy of impotence. His creations are not the 
 result of plenitude, he thirsts after abundance. Apart from what he 
 plagiarises, from what he borrows from ancient or exotically modern 
 styles—he is a master in the art of copying,—there remains as his most 
 individual quality a _longing_.… And this is what the dissatisfied of all 
 kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little of a 
 personality, too little of a central figure.… The “impersonal,” those who 
 are not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the musician of 
 a species of dissatisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we find the 
 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_Preface Pg 11 
 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_. 
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_Wherein I Admire Wagner 
 I believe that artists very often do not know what they are best able to 
 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 
 suffered much—and this elevates him above other musicians.—I admire Wagner 
 wherever he sets _himself_ to music— 
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_Wherein I Raise Objections 
 With all this I do not wish to imply that I regard this music as healthy, 
 and least of all in those places where it speaks of Wagner himself. My 
 objections to Wagner’s music are physiological objections. Why should I 
 therefore begin by clothing them in æsthetic formulæ? Æsthetic is indeed 
 nothing more than applied physiology—The fact I bring forward, my “_petit 
 fait vrai_,” is that I can no longer breathe with ease when this music 
 begins to have its effect upon me; that my foot immediately begins to feel 
 indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance, march; even 
 the young German Kaiser could not march to Wagner’s Imperial March,—what 
 my foot demands in the first place from music is that ecstasy which lies 
 in good walking, stepping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my 
 circulation also protest? Are not my intestines also troubled? And do I 
 not become hoarse unawares? … in order to listen to Wagner I require 
 Géraudel’s Pastilles.… And then I ask myself, what is it that my whole 
 body must have from music in general? for there is no such thing as a 
 soul.… I believe it must have relief: as if all animal functions were 
 accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant rhythms, as 
 if brazen and leaden life could lose its weight by means of delicate and 
 smooth melodies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the haunts and 
 abysses of perfection; for this reason I need music. But Wagner makes one 
 ill—What do I care about the theatre? What do I care about the spasms of 
 its moral ecstasies in which the mob—and who is not the mob 
 to-day?—rejoices? What do I care about the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of 
 the actor? You are beginning to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical 
 at heart. For the stage, this mob art _par excellence_, my soul has that 
 deepest scorn felt by every artist to-day. With a stage success a man 
 sinks to such an extent in my esteem as to drop out of sight; failure in 
 this quarter makes me prick my ears, makes me begin to pay attention. But 
 this was not so with Wagner, next to the Wagner who created the most 
 unique music that has ever existed there was the Wagner who was 
 essentially a man of the stage, an actor, the most enthusiastic mimomaniac 
 that has perhaps existed on earth, even as a musician. And let it be said 
 _en passant_ that if Wagner’s theory was “drama is the object, music is 
 only a means”—his practice was from beginning to end “the attitude is the 
 end, drama and even music can never be anything else than means.” Music as 
 the manner of accentuating, of strengthening, and deepening dramatic poses 
 and all things which please the senses of the actor; and Wagnerian drama 
 only an opportunity for a host of interesting attitudes!—Alongside of all 
 other instincts he had the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in 
 everything and, as I have already said, as a musician also.—On one 
 occasion, and not without trouble, I made this clear to a Wagnerite _pur 
 sang_,—clearness and a Wagnerite! I won’t say another word. There were 
 reasons for adding; “For heaven’s sake, be a little more true unto 
 yourself! We are not in Bayreuth now. In Bayreuth people are only upright 
 in the mass; the individual lies, he even lies to himself. One leaves 
 oneself at home when one goes to Bayreuth, one gives up all right to one’s 
 own tongue and choice, to one’s own taste and even to one’s own courage, 
 one knows these things no longer as one is wont to have them and practise 
 them before God and the world and between one’s own four walls. In the 
 theatre no one brings the finest senses of his art with him, and least of 
 all the artist who works for the theatre,—for here loneliness is lacking; 
 everything perfect does not suffer a witness.… In the theatre one becomes 
 mob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron, idiot—Wagnerite: 
 there, the most personal conscience is bound to submit to the levelling 
 charm of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules, there one 
 _becomes_ a neighbour.” 
   
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_Wagner As A Danger 
 1. 
   
   
 The aim after which more modern music is striving, which is now given the 
 strong but obscure name of “unending melody,” can be clearly understood by 
 comparing it to one’s feelings on entering the sea. Gradually one loses 
 one’s footing and one ultimately abandons oneself to the mercy or fury of 
 the elements: one has to swim. In the solemn, or fiery, swinging movement, 
 first slow and then quick, of old music—one had to do something quite 
 different; one had to dance. The measure which was required for this and 
 the control of certain balanced degrees of time and energy, forced the 
 soul of the listener to continual sobriety of thought.—Upon the 
 counterplay of the cooler currents of air which came from this sobriety, 
 and from the warmer breath of enthusiasm, the charm of all good music 
 rested—Richard Wagner wanted another kind of movement,—he overthrew the 
 physiological first principle of all music before his time. It was no 
 longer a matter of walking or dancing,—we must swim, we must hover.… This 
 perhaps decides the whole matter. “Unending melody” really wants to break 
 all the symmetry of time and strength; it actually scorns these things—Its 
 wealth of invention resides precisely in what to an older ear sounds like 
 rhythmic paradox and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence of such a 
 taste there would arise a danger for music—so great that we can imagine 
 none greater—the complete degeneration of the feeling for rhythm, _chaos_ 
 in the place of rhythm.… The danger reaches its climax when such music 
 cleaves ever more closely to naturalistic play-acting and pantomime, which 
 governed by no laws of form, aim at effect and nothing more.… 
 Expressiveness at all costs and music a servant, a slave to attitudes—this 
 is the end.… 
   
   
   
 2. 
   
   
 What? would it really be the first virtue of a performance (as performing 
 musical artists now seem to believe), under all circumstances to attain to 
 a _haut-relief_ which cannot be surpassed? If this were applied to Mozart, 
 for instance, would it not be a real sin against Mozart’s spirit,—Mozart’s 
 cheerful, enthusiastic, delightful and loving spirit? He who fortunately 
 was no German, and whose seriousness is a charming and golden seriousness 
 and not by any means that of a German clodhopper.… Not to speak of the 
 earnestness of the “marble statue”.… But you seem to think that all music 
 is the music of the “marble statue”?—that all music should, so to speak, 
 spring out of the wall and shake the listener to his very bowels?… Only 
 thus could music have any effect! But on whom would the effect be made? 
 Upon something on which a noble artist ought never to deign to act,—upon 
 the mob, upon the immature! upon the blasés! upon the diseased! upon 
 idiots! upon _Wagnerites_!…  
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_A Music Without A Future 
 Of all the arts which succeed in growing on the soil of a particular 
 culture, music is the last plant to appear; maybe because it is the one 
 most dependent upon our innermost feelings, and therefore the last to come 
 to the surface—at a time when the culture to which it belongs is in its 
 autumn season and beginning to fade. It was only in the art of the Dutch 
 masters that the spirit of mediæval Christianity found its expression—, 
 its architecture of sound is the youngest, but genuine and legitimate, 
 sister of the Gothic. It was only in Handel’s music that the best in 
 Luther and in those like him found its voice, the Judeo-heroic trait which 
 gave the Reformation a touch of greatness-the Old Testament, _not_ the 
 New, become music. It was left to Mozart, to pour out the epoch of Louis 
 XIV., and of the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain, in _ringing_ gold; only 
 in Beethoven’s and Rossini’s music did the Eighteenth Century sing itself 
 out—the century of enthusiasm, broken ideals, and _fleeting joy_. All real 
 and original music is a swan song—Even our last form of music, despite its 
 prevalence and its will to prevail, has perhaps only a short time to live, 
 for it sprouted from a soil which was in the throes of a rapid 
 subsidence,—of a culture which will soon be _submerged_. A certain 
 catholicism of feeling, and a predilection for some ancient indigenous 
 (so-called national) ideals and eccentricities, was its first condition. 
 Wagner’s appropriation of old sagas and songs, in which scholarly 
 prejudice taught us to see something German _par excellence_—now we laugh 
 at it all, the resurrection of these Scandinavian monsters with a thirst 
 for ecstatic sensuality and spiritualisation—the whole of this taking and 
 giving on Wagner’s part, in the matter of subjects, characters, passions, 
 and nerves, would also give unmistakable expression to the _spirit of his 
 music_ provided that this music, like any other, did not know how to speak 
 about itself save ambiguously: for _musica is a woman_.… We must not let 
 ourselves be misled concerning this state of things, by the fact that at 
 this very moment we are living in a reaction, _in the heart itself_ of a 
 reaction. The age of international wars, of ultramontane martyrdom, in 
 fact, the whole interlude-character which typifies the present condition 
 of Europe, may indeed help an art like Wagner’s to sudden glory, without, 
 however, in the least ensuring its _future prosperity_. The Germans 
 themselves have no future.… 
   
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_We Antipodes 
 Perhaps a few people, or at least my friends, will remember that I made my 
 first plunge into life armed with some errors and some exaggerations, but 
 that, in any case, I began with _hope_ in my heart. In the philosophical 
 pessimism of the nineteenth century, I recognised—who knows by what 
 by-paths of personal experience—the symptom of a higher power of thought, 
 a more triumphant plenitude of life, than had manifested itself hitherto 
 in the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegel!—I regarded _tragic_ knowledge 
 as the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most 
 noble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of 
 its overflowing wealth, as a justifiable _luxury_. In the same way, I 
 began by interpreting Wagner’s music as the expression of a Dionysian 
 powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means of 
 which a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ages, was 
 seeking at last to burst its bonds, quite indifferent to how much of that 
 which nowadays calls itself culture, would thereby be shaken to ruins. You 
 see how I misinterpreted, you see also, what I _bestowed_ upon Wagner and 
 Schopenhauer—myself.… Every art and every philosophy may be regarded 
 either as a cure or as a stimulant to ascending or declining life: they 
 always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of 
 sufferers:—those that suffer from _overflowing vitality_, who need 
 Dionysian art and require a tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook 
 upon, the phenomenon life,—and there are those who suffer from _reduced_ 
 vitality, and who crave for repose, quietness, calm seas, or else the 
 intoxication, the spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy 
 provide. Revenge upon life itself—this is the most voluptuous form of 
 intoxication for such indigent souls!… Now Wagner responds quite as well 
 as Schopenhauer to the twofold cravings of these people,—they both deny 
 life, they both slander it but precisely on this account they are my 
 antipodes.—The richest creature, brimming over with vitality,—the 
 Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself to gaze upon the 
 horrible and the questionable; but he can also lend his hand to the 
 terrible deed, and can indulge in all the luxury of destruction, 
 disaggregation, and negation,—in him evil, purposelessness and ugliness, 
 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. 
   
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_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_.… 
   
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_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.— 
   
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_How I Got Rid Of Wagner 
 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 
 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.… 
   
 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER_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 
 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 
 reasons?_… Perhaps her name, to use a Greek word is _Baubo_?—Oh these 
 Greeks, they understood the art of _living!_ For this it is needful to 
 halt bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to worship 
 appearance, and to believe in forms, tones, words, and the whole _Olympus 
 of appearance_! These Greeks were superficial—from _profundity_.… And are 
 we not returning to precisely the same thing, we dare-devils of intellect 
 who have scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles of present 
 thought, in order to look around us from that height, in order to _look 
 down_ from that height? Are we not precisely in this respect—_Greeks_? 
 Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely on that 
 account—_artists_? 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 12 
 1. 
   
   
 My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, 
 and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The 
 preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thoroughly 
 repelled me. 
   
   
   
 2. 
   
   
 I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied with the decorations, 
 the scenery and the mechanical contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much 
 industry and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining the imagination 
 to matters which did not belie their _epic_ origin. But as to the 
 naturalism of the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the orchestra!! 
 What affected, artificial and depraved tones, what a distortion of nature, 
 were we made to hear! 
   
   
   
 3. 
   
   
 We are witnessing the death agony of the _last Art_: Bayreuth has 
 convinced me of this. 
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 13 
 4. 
   
   
 My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed him; I had depicted an _ideal 
 monster_—one, however, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling the 
 enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was 
 only like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving 
 which was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives, 
 received an extraordinary impetus from this humiliating experience. 
   
   
   
 5. 
   
   
 This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good deal even struck me with 
 sudden fear. At last I felt, however, that if only I could be strong 
 enough to take sides against myself and what I most loved I would find the 
 road to truth and get solace and encouragement from it—and in this way I 
 became filled with a sensation of joy far greater than that upon which I 
 was now voluntarily turning my back. 
   
   
   
 6. 
   
   
 I was in love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of 
 existence saw nothing else than art—and this at an age when, reasonably 
 enough, quite different passions usually possess the soul. 
   
   
   
 7. 
   
   
 _Goethe_ said: “The yearning spirit within me, which in earlier years I 
 may perhaps have fostered too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried 
 my utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the man, and I therefore had 
 to strive to attain to more complete freedom.” Conclusion?—I have had to 
 do the same. 
   
   
   
 8. 
   
   
 He who wakes us always wounds us. 
   
   
   
 9. 
   
   
 I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and what is still worse, I 
 have not even the vanity to try to appear as if I did. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 14 
 10. 
   
   
 He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond the vision and the 
 experience of his acquaintances,—provokes envy and hatred masked as 
 pity,—prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease, seduction. Long 
 faces. 
   
   
   
 11. 
   
   
 I frankly confess that I had hoped that by means of art the Germans would 
 become thoroughly disgusted with _decaying Christianity_—I regarded German 
 mythology as a solvent, as a means of accustoming people to polytheism. 
   
 What a fright I had over the Catholic revival!! 
   
   
   
 12. 
   
   
 It is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely from life, nor to be 
 so lifeless and emotionally weak, as to have _need_ of Wagner’s art, as to 
 require it as a medium. This is the principal reason of one’s _opposition_ 
 to it, and not baser motives; something to which we are not driven by any 
 personal need, and which we do not _require_, we cannot esteem so highly. 
   
   
   
 13. 
   
   
 It is a question either of no longer _requiring_ Wagner’s art, or of still 
 requiring it. 
   
 Gigantic forces lie concealed in it: _it drives one beyond its own 
 domain_. 
   
   
   
 14. 
   
   
 _Goethe_ said: “Are not Byron’s audacity, sprightliness and grandeur all 
 creative? We must beware of always looking for this quality in that which 
 is perfectly pure and moral. All _greatness_ is creative the moment we 
 realise it.” This should be applied to Wagner’s art. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 15 
 15. 
   
   
 We shall always have to credit Wagner with the fact that in the second 
 half of the nineteenth century he impressed art upon our memory as an 
 important and magnificent thing. True, he did this in his own fashion, and 
 this was not the fashion of upright and far-seeing men. 
   
   
   
 16. 
   
   
 Wagner _versus_ the cautious, the cold and the contented of the world—in 
 this lies his greatness—he is a stranger to his age—he combats the 
 frivolous and the super-smart—But he also fights the just, the moderate, 
 those who delight in the world (like Goethe), and the mild, the people of 
 charm, the scientific among men—this is the reverse of the medal. 
   
   
   
 17. 
   
   
 Our youth was up in arms against the _soberness_ of the age. It plunged 
 into the cult of excess, of passion, of ecstasy, and of the blackest and 
 most austere conception of the world. 
   
   
   
 18. 
   
   
 Wagner pursues one form of madness, the age another form. Both carry on 
 their chase at the same speed, each is as blind and as unjust as the 
 other. 
   
   
   
 19. 
   
   
 It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner’s inner development—no 
 trust must be placed in his own description of his soul’s experiences. He 
 writes party-pamphlets for his followers. 
   
   
   
 20. 
   
   
 It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about 
 himself. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 16 
 21. 
   
   
 There are men who try in vain to make a principle out of _themselves_. 
 This was the case with Wagner. 
   
   
   
 22. 
   
   
 Wagner’s obscurity concerning final aims; his non-antique fogginess. 
   
   
   
 23. 
   
   
 All Wagner’s ideas straightway become manias; he is _tyrannised_ over by 
 them. How can _such a man allow himself to be tyrannised over in this __ 
 way_! For instance by his hatred of Jews. He _kills_ his themes like his 
 “ideas,” by means of his violent love of repeating them. The problem of 
 excessive length and breadth; he bores us with his raptures. 
   
   
   
 24. 
   
   
 “_C’est la rage de voulour penser et sentir au delà de sa force_” 
 (Doudan). The Wagnerites. 
   
   
   
 25. 
   
   
 Wagner whose ambition far exceeds his natural gifts, has tried an 
 incalculable number of times to achieve what lay beyond his powers—but it 
 almost makes one shudder to see some one assail with such persistence that 
 which defies conquest—the fate of his constitution. 
   
   
   
 26. 
   
   
 He is always thinking of the most _extreme_ expression,—in every word. But 
 in the end superlatives begin to pall. 
   
   
   
 27. 
   
   
 There is something which is in the highest degree suspicious in Wagner, 
 and that is Wagner’s suspicion. It is such a strong trait in him, that on 
 two occasions I doubted whether he were a musician at all. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 17 
 28. 
   
   
 The proposition: “in the face of perfection there is no salvation save 
 love,”(16) is thoroughly Wagnerian. Profound jealousy of everything great 
 from which he can draw _fresh_ ideas. Hatred of all that which he cannot 
 approach, the Renaissance, French and Greek art in style. 
   
   
   
 29. 
   
   
 Wagner is jealous of all periods that have shown _restraint_: he despises 
 beauty and grace, and finds only his own _virtues_ in the “Germans,” and 
 even attributes all his failings to them. 
   
   
   
 30. 
   
   
 Wagner has not the power to unlock and liberate the soul of those he 
 frequents. Wagner is not sure of himself, but distrustful and arrogant. 
 His _art_ has this effect upon artists, it is envious of all rivals. 
   
   
   
 31. 
   
   
 _Plato’s Envy._ He would fain monopolise Socrates. He saturates the latter 
 with himself, pretends to adorn him (καλὸς Σωκράτης), and tries to 
 separate all Socratists from him in order himself to appear as the only 
 true apostle. But his historical presentation of him is false, even to a 
 parlous degree: just as Wagner’s presentation of Beethoven and Shakespeare 
 is false. 
   
   
   
 32. 
   
   
 When a dramatist speaks about himself he plays a part: this is inevitable. 
 When Wagner speaks about Bach and Beethoven he speaks like one for whom he 
 would fain be taken. But he impresses only those who are already 
 convinced, for his dissimulation and his genuine nature are far too 
 violently at variance. 
   
   
   
 33. 
   
   
 Wagner struggles against the “frivolity” in his nature, which to him the 
 ignoble (as opposed to Goethe) constituted the joy of life. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 18 
 34. 
   
   
 Wagner has the mind of the ordinary man who prefers to trace things to 
 _one_ cause. The Jews do the same: one _aim_, therefore one Saviour. In 
 this way he simplifies German and culture; wrongly but strongly. 
   
   
   
 35. 
   
   
 Wagner admitted all this to himself often enough when in private communion 
 with his soul. I only wish he had also admitted it publicly. For what 
 constitutes the greatness of a character if it is not this, that he who 
 possesses it is able to take sides even against himself in favour of 
 truth. 
   
   
   
   
 _Wagner’s Teutonism._ 
   
   
   
 36. 
   
   
 That which is un-German in Wagner. He lacks the German charm and grace of 
 a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Weber; he also lacks the flowing, cheerful fire 
 (_Allegro con brio_) of Beethoven and Weber. He cannot be free and easy 
 without being grotesque. He lacks modesty, indulges in big drums, and 
 always tends to surcharge his effect. He is not the good official that 
 Bach was. Neither has he that Goethean calm in regard to his rivals. 
   
   
   
 37. 
   
   
 Wagner always reaches the high-water mark of his vanity when he speaks of 
 the German nature (incidentally it is also the height of his imprudence); 
 for, if Frederick the Great’s justice, Goethe’s nobility and freedom from 
 envy, Beethoven’s sublime resignation, Bach’s delicately transfigured 
 spiritual life,—if steady work performed without any thought of glory and 
 success, and without envy, constitute the true _German_ qualities, would 
 it not seem as if Wagner almost wished to prove he is no German? 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 19 
 38. 
   
   
 Terrible wildness, abject sorrow, emptiness, the shudder of joy, 
 unexpectedness,—in short all the qualities peculiar to the Semitic race! I 
 believe that the Jews approach Wagner’s art with more understanding than 
 the Aryans do. 
   
   
   
 39. 
   
   
 A passage concerning the Jews, taken from Taine.—As it happens, I have 
 misled the reader, the passage does not concern Wagner at all.—But can it 
 be possible that Wagner is a Jew? In that case we could readily understand 
 his dislike of Jews.(17) 
   
   
   
 40. 
   
   
 Wagner’s art is absolutely the _art of the age_: an æsthetic age would 
 have rejected it. The more subtle people amongst us actually do reject it 
 even now. The _coarsifying_ of everything æsthetic.—Compared with Goethe’s 
 ideal it is very far behind. The moral contrast of these self-indulgent 
 burningly loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a _spur_, like an irritant 
 and even this sensation is turned to account in obtaining an _effect_. 
   
   
   
 41. 
   
   
 What is it in our age that Wagner’s art expresses? That brutality and most 
 delicate weakness which exist side by side, that running wild of natural 
 instincts, and nervous hyper-sensitiveness, that thirst for emotion which 
 arises from fatigue and the love of fatigue.—All this is understood by the 
 Wagnerites. 
   
   
   
 42. 
   
   
 _Stupefaction or intoxication_ constitute all Wagnerian art. On the other 
 hand I could mention instances in which Wagner stands _higher_, in which 
 real joy flows from him. 
   
   
   
 43. 
   
   
 The reason why the figures in Wagner’s art behave so madly, is because he 
 greatly feared lest people would doubt that they were alive. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 20 
 44. 
   
   
 Wagner’s art is an appeal to inartistic people; all means are welcomed 
 which help towards obtaining an effect. It is calculated not to produce an 
 _artistic effect_ but an effect upon the _nerves in general_. 
   
   
   
 45. 
   
   
 Apparently in Wagner we have an art _for everybody_, because coarse and 
 subtle means seem to be united in it. Albeit its pre-requisite may be 
 musico-æsthetic education, and _particularly_ with _moral_ indifference. 
   
   
   
 46. 
   
   
 In Wagner we find the most ambitious _combination_ of all means with the 
 view of obtaining the strongest effect whereas genuine musicians quietly 
 develop individual _genres_. 
   
   
   
 47. 
   
   
 Dramatists are _borrowers_—their principal source of wealth—artistic 
 thoughts drawn from the epos. Wagner borrowed from classical music 
 besides. Dramatists are constructive geniuses, they are not inventive and 
 original as the epic poets are. Drama takes a lower rank than the epos: it 
 presupposes a coarser and more democratic public. 
   
   
   
 48. 
   
   
 Wagner does not altogether trust _music_. He weaves kindred sensations 
 into it in order to lend it the character of greatness. He measures 
 himself on others; he first of all gives his listeners intoxicating drinks 
 in order to lead them into believing that it _was the music that 
 intoxicated them_. 
   
   
   
 49. 
   
   
 The same amount of talent and industry which makes the classic, when it 
 appears some time _too late_, also makes the baroque artist like Wagner. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 21 
 50. 
   
   
 Wagner’s art is calculated to appeal to short-sighted people—one has to 
 get much too close up to it (Miniature): it also appeals to long-sighted 
 people, but not to those with normal sight. 
   
   
   
   
 _Contradictions in the Idea of Musical Drama._ 
   
   
   
 51. 
   
   
 Just listen to the second act of the “Götterdämmerung,” without the drama. 
 It is chaotic music, as wild as a bad dream, and it is as frightfully 
 distinct as if it desired to make itself clear even to deaf people. This 
 volubility _with nothing to say_ is alarming. Compared with it the drama 
 is a genuine relief.—Is the fact that this music when heard alone, is, as 
 a whole intolerable (apart from a few intentionally isolated parts) in its 
 _favour_? Suffice it to say that this music without its accompanying 
 drama, is a perpetual contradiction of all the highest laws of style 
 belonging to older music: he who thoroughly accustoms himself to it, loses 
 all feeling for these laws. But has the drama _been improved_ thanks to 
 this addition? A _symbolic interpretation_ has been affixed to it, a sort 
 of philological commentary, which sets fetters upon the inner and free 
 understanding of the imagination—it is tyrannical. Music is the language 
 of the commentator, who talks the whole of the time and gives us no 
 breathing space. Moreover his is a difficult language which also requires 
 to be explained. He who step by step has mastered, first the libretto 
 (language!), then converted it into action in his mind’s eye, then sought 
 out and understood, and became familiar with the musical symbolism 
 thereto: aye, and has fallen in love with all three things: such a man 
 then experiences a great joy. But how _exacting_! It is quite impossible 
 to do this save for a few short moments,—such tenfold attention on the 
 part of one’s eyes, ears, understanding, and feeling, such acute activity 
 in apprehending without any productive reaction, is far too 
 exhausting!—Only the very fewest behave in this way: how is it then that 
 so many are affected? Because most people are only intermittingly 
 attentive, and are inattentive for sometimes whole passages at a stretch; 
 because they bestow their undivided attention now upon the music, later 
 upon the drama, and anon upon the scenery—that is to say they _take the 
 work to pieces_.—But in this way the kind of work we are discussing is 
 condemned: not the drama but a moment of it is the result, an arbitrary 
 selection. The creator of a new _genre_ should consider this! The arts 
 should not always be dished up together,—but we should imitate the 
 moderation of the ancients which is truer to human nature. 
   
   
   
 52. 
   
   
 Wagner reminds one of lava which blocks its own course by congealing, and 
 suddenly finds itself checked by dams which it has itself built. There is 
 no _Allegro con fuoco_ for him. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 22 
 53. 
   
   
 I compare Wagner’s music, which would fain have the same effect as speech, 
 with that kind of sculptural relief which would have the same effect as 
 painting. The highest laws of style are violated, and that which is most 
 sublime can no longer be achieved. 
   
   
   
 54. 
   
   
 The general heaving, undulating and rolling of Wagner’s art. 
   
   
   
 55. 
   
   
 In regard to Wagner’s rejection of form, we are reminded of Goethe’s 
 remark in conversation with Eckermann: “there is no great art in being 
 brilliant if one respects nothing.” 
   
   
   
 56. 
   
   
 Once one theme is over, Wagner is always embarrassed as to how to 
 continue. Hence the long preparation, the suspense. His peculiar 
 craftiness consisted in transvaluing his weakness into virtues.— 
   
   
   
 57. 
   
   
 The _lack_ of melody and the poverty of melody in Wagner. Melody is a 
 whole consisting of many beautiful proportions, it is the reflection of a 
 well-ordered soul. He strives after melody; but if he finds one, he almost 
 suffocates it in his embrace. 
   
   
   
 58. 
   
   
 The natural nobility of a Bach and a Beethoven, the beautiful soul (even 
 of a Mendelssohn) are wanting in Wagner. He is one degree lower. 
   
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 23 
 59. 
   
   
 Wagner imitates himself again and again—mannerisms. That is why he was the 
 quickest among musicians to be imitated. It is so easy. 
   
   
   
 60. 
   
   
 Mendelssohn who lacked the power of radically staggering one (incidentally 
 this was the talent of the Jews in the Old Testament), makes up for this 
 by the things which were his own, that is to say: freedom within the law, 
 and noble emotions kept within the limits of beauty. 
   
   
   
 61. 
   
   
 _Liszt_, the first _representative_ of all musicians, but _no musician_. 
 He was the prince, not the statesman. The conglomerate of a hundred 
 musicians’ souls, but not enough of a personality to cast his own shadow 
 upon them. 
   
   
   
 62. 
   
   
 The most wholesome phenomenon is _Brahms_, in whose music there is more 
 German blood than in that of Wagner’s. With these words I would say 
 something complimentary, but by no means wholly so. 
   
   
   
 63. 
   
   
 In Wagner’s writings there is no greatness or peace, but presumption. Why? 
   
   
   
 64. 
   
   
 _Wagner’s Style._—The habit he acquired, from his earliest days, of having 
 his say in the most important matters without a sufficient knowledge of 
 them, has rendered him the obscure and incomprehensible writer that he is. 
 In addition to this he aspired to imitating the witty newspaper article, 
 and finally acquired that presumption which readily joins hands with 
 carelessness “and, behold, it was very good.” 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 24 
 65. 
   
   
 I am alarmed at the thought of how much pleasure I could find in Wagner’s 
 style, which is so careless as to be unworthy of such an artist. 
   
   
   
 66. 
   
   
 In Wagner, as in Brahms, there is a blind denial of the healthy, in his 
 followers this denial is deliberate and conscious. 
   
   
   
 67. 
   
   
 Wagner’s art is for those who are conscious of an essential blunder in the 
 conduct of their lives. They feel either that they have checked a great 
 nature by a base occupation, or squandered it through idle pursuits, a 
 conventional marriage, &c. &c. 
   
 In this quarter the condemnation of the world is the outcome of the 
 condemnation of the ego. 
   
   
   
 68. 
   
   
 Wagnerites do not wish to alter themselves in any way, they live 
 discontentedly in insipid, conventional and brutal circumstances—only at 
 intervals does art have to raise them as by magic above these things. 
 Weakness of will. 
   
   
   
 69. 
   
   
 Wagner’s art is for scholars who do not dare to become philosophers: they 
 feel discontented with themselves and are generally in a state of obtuse 
 stupefaction—from time to time they take a bath in the _opposite 
 conditions_. 
   
   
   
 70. 
   
   
 I feel as if I had recovered from an illness: with a feeling of 
 unutterable joy I think of Mozart’s _Requiem_. I can once more enjoy 
 simple fare. 
   
 
 
 
 SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER Pg 25 
 71. 
   
   
 I understand Sophocles’ development through and through—it was the 
 repugnance to pomp and pageantry. 
   
   
   
 72. 
   
   
 I gained an insight into the injustice of _idealism_, by noticing that I 
 avenged myself on Wagner for the disappointed hopes I had cherished of 
 him. 
   
   
   
 73. 
   
   
 I leave my loftiest duty to the end, and that is to thank Wagner and 
 Schopenhauer publicly, and to make them as it were take sides against 
 themselves. 
   
   
   
 74. 
   
   
 I counsel everybody not to fight shy of such paths (Wagner and 
 Schopenhauer). The wholly _unphilosophic_ feeling of remorse, has become 
 quite strange to me. 
   
   
   
 _Wagner’s Effects._ 
   
   
 75. 
   
   
 We must strive to oppose the false after-effects of Wagner’s art. If he, 
 in order to create Parsifal, is forced to pump fresh strength from 
 religious sources, this is not an example but a danger. 
   
   
 76. 
   
   
 I entertain the fear that the effects of Wagner’s art will ultimately pour 
 into that torrent which takes its rise on the other side of the mountains, 
 and which knows how to flow even over mountains.(18) 
   
 
 
 
 FOOTNOTES Pg 26 
    1 It should be noted that the first and second editions of these 
      essays on Wagner appeared in pamphlet form, for which the above 
      first preface was written. 
   
    2 Fisher Unwin, 1911. 
   
    3 T. N. Foulis, 1910. 
   
    4 See _Richard Wagner_, by Houston Stuart Chamberlain (translated by 
 A. Hight), pp. 15, 16. 
 
   
    5 Constable & Co., 1911. 
   
    6 See Author’s Preface to “The Case of Wagner” in this volume. 
   
    7 Senta is the heroine in the “Flying Dutchman”—_Tr._ 
   
    8 A character in “Tannhauser.”—_Tr_. 
   
    9 See “The Will to Power,” vol. ii., authorised English edition.—_Tr._ 
   
 _   10 Note._—It was a real disaster for æsthetics when the word drama got 
      to be translated by “action.” Wagner is not the only culprit here, 
      the whole world does the same,—even the philologists who ought to 
      know better. What ancient drama had in view was _grand pathetic 
      scenes_,—it even excluded action (or placed it _before_ the piece or 
      _behind_ the scenes). The word drama is of Doric origin, and 
      according to the usage of the Dorian language it meant “event,” 
      “history,”—both words in a hieratic sense. The oldest drama 
      represented local legends, “sacred history,” upon which the 
      foundation of the cult rested (—thus it was not “action,” but 
      fatality. δρᾶν in Doric has nothing to do with action). 
   
    11 Hegel and his school wrote notoriously obscure German.—_Tr._ 
   
    12 Was Wagner a German at all? There are reasons enough for putting 
      this question. It is difficult to find a single German trait in his 
      character. Great learner that he was, he naturally imitated a great 
      deal that was German—but that is all. His very soul contradicts 
      everything which hitherto has been regarded as German, not to 
      mention German musicians!—His father was an actor of the name of 
      Geyer.… That which has been popularised hitherto as “Wagner’s life” 
      is _fable convenue_ if not something worse. I confess my doubts on 
      any point which is vouched for by Wagner alone. He was not proud 
      enough to be able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less 
      pride than he. Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in 
      his biography,—he remained an actor. 
   
    13 This undoubtedly refers to Nietzsche’s only disciple and friend, 
      Peter Gast—_Tr._ 
   
 
 
 
 FOOTNOTES Pg 27 
 14 My “Genealogy of Morals” contains the best exposition of the 
      antithesis “_noble morality_” and “_Christian morality_”; a more 
      decisive turning point in the history of religious and moral science 
      does not perhaps exist. This book, which is a touchstone by which I 
      can discover who are my peers, rejoices in being accessible only to 
      the most elevated and most severe minds: the others have not the 
      ears to hear me. One must have one’s passion in things, _wherein_ no 
      one has passion nowadays. 
   
    15 An allusion to Schiller’s poem: “Das verschleierte Bild zu 
      Sais.”—_Tr._ 
   
    16 What Schiller said of Goethe.—_Tr._ 
   
    17 See note on page 37. 
   
    18 It should be noted that the German Catholic party is called the 
      Ultramontane Party. The river which can thus flow over mountains is 
      Catholicism, towards which Nietzsche thought Wagner’s art to be 
      tending.—_Tr._ 
   
 
 
 Publication Date: February 17th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-mk496e398f1e345