Part 16

What a host of things can be accomplished by the state of intoxication which is called by the name of love, and which is something else besides love!--And yet everybody has his own experience of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into her presence: there are instruments with which this can be measured. In the case of a still closer relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing and in other amusements which society gatherings entail, this power increases to such an extent as to make real feats of strength possible: at last one no longer trusts either one's eyes, or one's watch! Here at all events we must reckon with the fact that dancing itself, like every form of rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral system. We must therefore reckon in this case with the collective effects of a double intoxication.--And how clever it is to be a little off your head at times! There are some realities which we cannot admit even to ourselves: especially when; we are women and have all sorts of feminine, _"pudeurs."..._Those young creatures dancing over there are obviously beyond all reality: they are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals: what is more, they even see ideals sitting around them, their mothers!... An opportunity for quoting _Faust._ They look incomparably fairer, do these pretty creatures, when they have lost their head a little; and how well they know it too, they are even more delightful _because_ they know it! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires them; their finery is their third little intoxication. They believe in their dressmaker as in their God: and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed is this faith! And self-admiration is healthy! Self-admiration can protect one even from cold! Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well-dressed, ever caught cold? Never yet on this earth! I even suppose a case in which she has scarcely a rag on her.

808.

If one should require the most astonishing proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand in the phenomenon of love; or what is called love in all the languages and silences of the world. Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality in this passion that in the consciousness of the lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and something else seems to take its place,--a vibration and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of Circe.... In this respect to be man or an animal makes no difference: and still less does spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute, one is befooled astutely; if one is thick-headed, one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love, even the love of God, saintly love, "the love that saves the soul," are at bottom all one; they are nothing but a fever which has reasons to transfigure itself--a state of intoxication which does well to lie about itself.... And, at any rate, when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect; he _is_ more perfect.... _Art_ here acts as an organic function: we find it present in the most angelic instinct "love"; we find it as the greatest stimulus of life--thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the fact that it lies.... But we should be wrong to halt at its power to lie: it does more than merely imagine; it actually transposes values. And it not only transposes the _feeling_ for values: the lover actually _has_ a greater value; he is stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to new weapons, colours, pigments, and forms, and above all to new movements, new rhythms, new love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the same. His whole economy is richer, mightier, and _more complete_ when he is in love than when he is not. The lover becomes a spendthrift; he is rich enough for it. He now dares; he becomes an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity and innocence; his belief in God and in virtue revives, because he believes in love. Moreover, such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new capacities, and even the door to art is opened to them.

If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is left to poetry and music? ... _L'art pour l'art_ perhaps; the professional cant of frogs shivering outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their swamp.... Everything else was created by love.

809.

All art works like a suggestion on the muscles and the senses which were originally active in the ingenuous artistic man; its voice is only heard by artists--it speaks to this kind of man, whose constitution is attuned to such subtlety in sensitiveness. The concept "layman" is a misnomer. The deaf man is not a subdivision of the class, whose ears are sound. All art works as a _tonic;_ it increases strength, it kindles desire _(i.e._ the feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle recollections of intoxication; there is actually a special kind of memory which underlies such states--a distant flitful world of sensations here returns to being.

Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that which art _excludes,_ the _negation_ of art: wherever decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, decomposition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely, the æsthetic man reacts with his _No._ Ugliness _depresses_: it is the sign of depression. It _robs_ strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down, ... Ugliness _suggests_ repulsive things. From one's states of health one can test how an indisposition may increase one's power of fancying ugly things. One's selection of things, interests, and questions becomes different. Logic provides a state which is next of kin to ugliness: heaviness, bluntness. In the presence of ugliness equilibrium is lacking in a mechanical sense: ugliness limps and stumbles--the direct opposite of the godly agility of the dancer.

The æsthetic state represents an overflow _of means of communication_ as well as a condition of extreme sensibility to stimuli and signs. It is the zenith of communion and transmission between living creatures; it is the source of languages. In it, languages, whether of signs, sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The richer phenomenon is always the beginning: our abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities. But even to-day we still listen with our muscles, we even read with our muscles.

Every mature art possesses a host of conventions as a basis: in so far as it is a language. Convention is a condition of great art, _not_ an obstacle to it.... Every elevation of life likewise elevates the power of communication, as also the understanding of man. _The power of living in other people's souls_ originally had nothing to do with morality, but with a physiological irritability of suggestion: "sympathy," or what is called "altruism," is merely a product of that psycho-motor relationship which is reckoned as spirituality (psycho-motor induction, says Charles Féré). People never communicate a thought to one another: they communicate a movement, an imitative sign which is then interpreted as a thought.

810.

_Compared with music,_ communication by means of words is a shameless mode of procedure; words reduce and stultify; words make impersonal; words make common that which is uncommon.

811.

It is exceptional states that determine the artist--such states as are all intimately related and entwined with morbid symptoms, so that it would seem almost impossible to be an artist without being ill.

The physiological conditions which in the artist become moulded into a "personality," and which, to a certain degree, may attach themselves to any man:--

(1) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power; the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of one's own fulness and perfection.

(2) The extreme sharpness of certain senses, so that they are capable of understanding a totally different language of signs--and to create such a language (this is a condition which manifests itself in some nervous diseases); extreme susceptibility out of which great powers of communion are developed; the desire to speak on the part of everything that is capable of making-signs; a need of being rid of one's self by means of gestures and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one's self in a hundred different languages--in fact, a state of _explosion._

One must first imagine this condition as one in which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of ridding one's self of the ecstasy of a state of tension, by all kinds of muscular work and movement; also as an involuntary _co-ordination_ of these movements with inner processes (images, thoughts, desires)--as a kind of automatism of the whole muscular system under the compulsion of strong stimuli acting from within; the inability to resist reaction; the apparatus of resistance is also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling, thought, emotion) is accompanied by _vascular changes,_ and consequently by changes in colour, temperature, and secretion. The suggestive power of music, its "_suggestion mentale._"

(3) _The compulsion to imitate:_ extreme irritability, by means of which a certain example becomes contagious--a condition is guessed and represented merely by means of a few signs.... A complete picture is visualised by one's inner consciousness, and its effect soon shows itself in the movement of the limbs,--in a certain suspension of the _will_ (Schopenhauer!!!!). A sort of blindness and deafness towards the external world,--the realm of admitted stimuli is sharply defined.

This differentiates the artist from the layman (from the spectator of art): the latter reaches the height of his excitement in the mere act of apprehending: the former in giving--and in such a way that the antagonism between these two gifts is not only natural but even desirable. Each of these states has an opposite standpoint--to demand of the artist that he should have the point of view of the spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking him to impoverish his creative power.... In this respect the same difference holds good as that which exists between the sexes: one should not ask the artist who gives to become a woman--to _"receive."_

Our æsthetics have hitherto been women's æsthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking ... _i.e._ as we have already suggested, a necessary fault: for the artist who would begin to understand himself would therewith begin to mistake himself--he must not look backwards, he must not look at all; he must give.--It is an honour for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can criticise he is mediocre, he is modern.

812.

Here I lay down a series of psychological states as signs of flourishing and complete life, which to-day we are in the habit of regarding as morbid. But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as opposites: the question is one of degree, what I maintain on this point is that what people call healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that which under favourable circumstances actually would be healthy--that we are relatively sick....

The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural in him. But people object to this that it is precisely the impoverishment of the machine which renders this extraordinary power of comprehending every kind of suggestion possible: _e.g._ our hysterical females.

An overflow of spunk and energy may quite as well lead to symptoms of partial constraint, sense hallucinations, peripheral sensitiveness, as a poor vitality does--the stimuli are differently determined, the effect is the same.... What is not the same is above all the ultimate result; the extreme torpidity of all morbid natures, after their nervous eccentricities, has nothing in common with the states of the artist, who need in no wise repent his best moments.... He is rich enough for it all: he can squander without becoming poor.

Just as we now feel justified in judging genius as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the same of artistic suggestive power,--and our artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely related to hysterical females!!! This, however, is only an argument against the present day, and not against artists in general.

The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection suspension of the will ... (Schopenhauer's scandalous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as a mere bridge to the denial of life)... The inartistic states are: those which impoverish, which subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers--the Christian.

813.

The modern artist who, in his physiology, is next of kin to the hysteric, may also be classified as a character belonging to this state of morbidness. The hysteric is false,--he lies from the love of lying, he is admirable in all the arts of dissimulation,--unless his morbid vanity hood-wink him. This vanity is like a perpetual fever which is in need of stupefying drugs, and which recoils from no self-deception and no farce that promises it the most fleeting satisfaction. (The incapacity for pride and the need of continual revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempt, this is almost the definition of this man's vanity.)

The absurd irritability of his system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences, and sees dramatic elements in the most insignificant occurrences of life, deprives him of all calm reflection; he ceases from being a personality, at most he is a rendezvous of personalities of which first one and then the other asserts itself with barefaced assurance. Precisely on this account he is great as an actor _i_ all these poor will-less people, whom doctors study so profoundly, astound one through their virtuosity in mimicking, in transfiguration, in their assumption of almost any character required.

814.

Artists are not men of great passion, despite all their assertions to the contrary both to themselves and to others. And for the following two reasons: they lack all shyness towards themselves (they watch themselves live, they spy upon themselves, they are much too inquisitive), and they also lack shyness in the presence of passion (as artists they exploit it). Secondly, however, that vampire, their talent, generally forbids them such an expenditure of energy as passion demands.--A man, who has a talent is sacrificed to that talent; he lives under the vampirism of his talent.

A man does not get rid of his passion by reproducing it, but rather he is rid of it if he is able to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but it seems as though he deliberately misunderstood himself here--from a sense of delicacy.)

815.

_Concerning a reasonable mode of life._--.Relative, chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in regard to _erotica,_ even in thought, may be a reasonable mode of life even in richly equipped and perfect natures. But this principle applies more particularly to artists; it belongs to the best wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices have already been raised in favour of this view, _e.g._ Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man, generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule he is in the power of his work, of his will to mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste man. His dominating instinct will have him so: it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly. It is one and the same form of strength which is spent in artistic conception and in the sexual act: there is only one form of strength. The artist who yields in this respect, and who spends himself, is betrayed: by so doing he reveals his lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It may be a sign of decadence,--in any case it reduces the value of his art to an incalculable degree.

816.

Compared with the artist, the scientific man, regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness, and will-power). To what extent can falsity and indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of youth, of childishness, in the artist? ... Their habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their ignorance of themselves, their indifference to "eternal values," their seriousness in play, their lack of dignity; clowns and gods in one; the saint and the rabble.... Imitation as an imperious instinct.--Do not artists of ascending life and artists of degeneration belong to all phases? ... Yes!

817.

Would any link be missing in the whole chain of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the exception--it proves the rule--that woman is capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork--in short, in everything which is not a craft; and just precisely because in the things mentioned woman perfects herself, because in them she obeys the only artistic impulse in her nature,--which is to captivate.... But what has woman to do with the passionate indifference of the genuine artist who sees more importance in a breath, in a sound, in the merest trifle, than in himself?--who with all his five fingers gropes for his most secret and hidden treasures?--who attributes no value to anything unless it knows how to take shape (unless it surrenders itself, unless it visualises itself in some way). Art as it is practised by artists--do you not understand what it is? is it not an outrage on all _our pudeurs? ..._ Only in this century has woman dared to try her hand at literature ("_Vers la canaille plumière écrivassière,"_ to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now writes, she now paints, she is losing her instincts. And to what purpose, if one may put such a question?

818.

A man is an artist to the extent to which he regards everything that inartistic people call "form" as the actual substance, as the "principal" thing. With such ideas a man certainly belongs to a world upside down: for henceforward substance seems to him something merely formal,--his own life included.

819.

A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is characteristic of modernity), in that which is not general, runs counter to the instinct which finds its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical: like Greek taste in its best period. In this there is an overcoming of the plenitude of life; restraint dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is slow to move and which feels a certain repugnance towards excessive activity is defeated. The general rule, the law, is honoured and made prominent, conversely, the exception is laid aside, and shades are suppressed. All that which is firm, mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful basis, concealing its strength this pleases: _i.e._ it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.

820.

In the main I am much more in favour of artists than any philosopher that has appeared hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose sight of the great course which life pursues; they loved the things "of this world,"--they loved their senses. To strive after "spirituality," in cases where this is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a cure, I wish myself, and all those who live without the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and who are able to live in this way, an ever greater spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses. Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that account offer them the best we have in the way of spirit. What do we care about priestly and metaphysical anathemas upon the senses? We no longer require to treat them in this way: it is a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness to the "things of this world"--in this way he holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind, which is that man becomes the glorifying power of existence when he learns to glorify himself.

821.

_Pessimism in art?_--The artist gradually learns to like for their own sake, those means which bring about the condition of æsthetic elation; extreme delicacy and glory of colour, definite delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in normal conditions distinctness is absent. All distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall extreme degrees of power which give rise to intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by association;--the effect of works of art is the excitation of the state which creates art, of æsthetic intoxication.

The essential feature in art is its power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.... What does a pessimistic art signify? Is it not a _contradictio_?--Yes.--Schopenhauer is in error when he makes certain works of art serve the purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach "resignation." ... To represent terrible and questionable things is, in itself, the sign of an instinct of power and magnificence in the artist; he doesn't fear them.... There is no such thing as a pessimistic, art.... Art affirms. Job affirms. But Zola? and the Goncourts?--the things they show us are ugly, their reason, however, for showing them to us is their love of ugliness ... I don't care what you say! You simply deceive yourselves if you think otherwise.--What a relief Dostoievsky is!

822.

If I have sufficiently initiated my readers into the doctrine that even "goodness," in the whole comedy of existence, represents a form of exhaustion, they will now credit Christianity with consistency for having conceived the good to be the ugly. In this respect Christianity was right.

It is absolutely unworthy of a philosopher to say that "the good and the beautiful are one"; if he should add "and also the true," he deserves to be thrashed. Truth is ugly.

Art is with us in order that we may not perish through truth.

823.

Moralising tendencies may be combated with art. Art is freedom from moral bigotry and philosophy _à la_ Little Jack Horner: or it may be the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature, where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The concept of the great man.

--Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are disconcerted by a mere breath of wind, "beautiful souls."

--Ancient ideals, in their inexorable hardness and brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest of monsters that they are.

--We should feel a boisterous delight in the psychological perception of how all moralised artists become worms and actors without knowing it.

--The falsity of art, its immorality, must be brought into the light of day.

--The "fundamental idealising powers" (sensuality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be brought to light.

824.

Modern counterfeit practices in the arts: regarded as necessary--that is to say, as fully in keeping with the needs most proper to the modern soul.

The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the education, antecedents, and schooling of modern artists, are now filled up in this way:--

_First:_ A less artistic public is sought which is capable of unlimited love (and is capable of falling on its knees before a personality). The superstition of our century, the belief in "genius," assists this process.

_Secondly;_ Artists harangue the dark instincts of the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers of a democratic age: the importance of poses.