The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms Part 1

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

by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Preface

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. n.o.body, perhaps, had ever been more dangerously involved in Wagnerism, n.o.body had defended himself more obstinately against it, n.o.body 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 nonent.i.ty, 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 pa.s.s 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....

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 aesthetics. 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 a.s.sumes 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 a.s.sist 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 _emanc.i.p.ates_ 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 grat.i.tude for nothing else, nor have I any other touchstone for testing what is good.

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 Merimee it has this logic even in pa.s.sion, 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 s.e.xes!-I know no case in which the tragic irony, which const.i.tutes the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so terrible a formula, as in the last cry of Don Jose 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds and men-_est de tous les sentiments le plus egoiste, et par consequent, lorsqu'il est blesse, le moins genereux_" (B. Constant).

3.

Perhaps you are beginning to perceive how very much this music _improves_ me?-_Il faut mediterraniser 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 gla.s.s: 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 chast.i.ty!-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 G.o.d-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, "n.o.ble" 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 saintete...._

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, inst.i.tutions, 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 G.o.d-heads. His princ.i.p.al undertaking, however, is to emanc.i.p.ate woman,-"to deliver Brunnhilda."... Siegfried and Brunnhilda, the sacrament of free love, the dawn of the golden age, the twilight of the G.o.ds 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 c.u.m 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:-Nonent.i.ty, 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 do. 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.-

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 _decadent_ 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 _decadent_ 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!