Chapter 4

—“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._

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.…

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).

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