The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms Part 3

The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms Part 3

THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST

Preface

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 _mesalliance_ with the "Empire."...

Friedrich Nietzsche.

Turin, _Christmas 1888_.

Wherein I Admire Wagner.

I believe that artists very often do not know what they are best able to do. 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. n.o.body 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 nonent.i.ty. He is happiest of all when creating from out the nethermost depths of human happiness, and, so to speak, from out man's empty b.u.mper, 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-

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 aesthetic formulae? aesthetic is indeed nothing more than applied physiology-The fact I bring forward, my "_pet.i.t 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 hoa.r.s.e unawares? ... in order to listen to Wagner I require Geraudel'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 p.r.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sant_ that if Wagner's theory was "drama is the object, music is only a means"-his practice was from beginning to end "the att.i.tude 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 att.i.tudes!-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 ma.s.s; 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 G.o.d 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 mult.i.tude, there the neighbour rules, there one _becomes_ a neighbour."

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 att.i.tudes-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 circ.u.mstances to attain to a _haut-relief_ which cannot be surpa.s.sed? 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 n.o.ble artist ought never to deign to act,-upon the mob, upon the immature! upon the blases! upon the diseased! upon idiots! upon _Wagnerites_!...

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 mediaeval 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, pa.s.sions, 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....

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 n.o.ble, 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with vitality,-the Dionysian G.o.d 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 G.o.d whose speciality is to be a G.o.d 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 _decadents_-); 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'uvre 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 nonent.i.ty in art as well as in morality.

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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed 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 _delicatesses_ 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'ame 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sages 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_....

Wagner As The Apostle Of Chast.i.ty.

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 chast.i.ty, 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-const.i.tuted and good-spirited mortals, who are not in the least inclined to reckon their unstable equilibrium between angel and _pet.i.te bete_, 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 chast.i.ty, 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.