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 fortheir 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 acontradictio?—Yes.—Schopenhauer is in error when he makes certain works of art serve thepurpose 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 philosophyà laLittle 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.
Thirdly:The procedures of one art are transferred to the realm of another; the object of art is confounded with that of science, with that of the Church, or with that of the interests of the race (nationalism), or with that of philosophy—a man rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague suspicion that he is a god.
Fourthly:Artists flatter women, sufferers, and indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people, and of the readers of poetry and ancient history, is tickled.
825.
We must distinguish between the "public" and the "select"; to satisfy the public a man must be a charlatan to-day, to satisfy the select hewillbe a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar to our century overcame this distinction, they were great for both; the great charlatanry of Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is why greatness is lacking: these geniuses had a double outlook; first, they catered for the coarsest needs, and then for the most refined.
826.
False "accentuation": (1) In romanticism, this unremitting "expressivo" is not a sign of strength, but of a feeling of deficiency;
(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatickind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts and traits in realistic novels);
(3) "Passion" as a matter of nerves and exhausted souls; likewise the delight in high mountains, deserts, storms, orgies, and disgusting details,—in bulkiness and massiveness (historians, for instance); as a matter of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feelings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired just the opposite—a restraint of passion?);
(4) The preference for exciting materials (EroticaorSocialisticaorPathologica): all these things are the signs of the style of public that is being catered for to-day—that is to say, for overworked, absentminded, or enfeebled people.
Such people must be tyrannised over in order to be affected.
827.
Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse and salient definiteness in delineation; the motive simplified into a formula; formulæ tyrannise. Wild arabesques within the lines; overwhelming masses, before which the senses are confused; brutality in coloration, in subject-matter, in the desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner, and, in a more spiritualised degree, Taine. Hence logic, massiveness, and brutality.
828.
In regard to the painter:Tous ces modernes sont des poètes qui ont voulu être peintres, L'un acherché des drames dans l'histoire, l'autre des scènes de mœurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui là une philosophie.One imitates Raphael, another the early Italian masters. The landscapists employ trees and clouds in order to make odes and elegies. Not one is simply a painter; they are all archæologists, psychologists, and impresarios of one or another kind of event or theory. They enjoy our erudition and our philosophy. Like us, they are full, and too full, of general ideas. They like a form, not because it is what it is, but because of what it expresses. They are the scions of a learned, tormented, and reflecting generation, a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who never read, and only concerned themselves with feasting their eyes.
829.
At bottom, even Wagner's music, in so far as it stands for the whole of French romanticism, is literature: the charm of exoticism (strange times, customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy-corner people. The delight of entering into extremely distant and prehistoric lands to which books lead one, and by which means the whole horizon is painted with new colours and new possibilities.... Dreams of still more distant and unexploited worlds; disdain of the boulevards. ... For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves, is also only a form of exoticism.... Romantic musicians merely relate what exotic books have made of them: people would fain experience exotic sensations and passions according toFlorentine and Venetian taste; finally they are satisfied to look for them in an image.... The essential factor is the kind of novel desire, the desire to imitate, the desire to live as people have lived once before in the past, and the disguise and dissimulation of the soul.... Romantic art is only an emergency exit from defective "reality."
The attempt to perform new things: revolution, Napoleon. Napoleon represents the passion of new spiritual possibilities, of an extension of the soul's domain.
The greater the debility of the will, the greater the extravagances in the desire to feel, to represent, and to dream new things.—The result of the excesses which have been indulged in: an insatiable thirst for unrestrained feelings.... Foreign literatures afford the strongest spices.
830.
Winckelmann's and Goethe's Greeks, Victor Hugo's Orientals, Wagner's Edda characters, Walter Scott's Englishmen of the thirteenth century—some day the whole comedy will be exposed! All of it was disproportionately historical and false,but—modern.
831.
Concerning the characteristics of national genius in regard to the strange and to the borrowed—
English genius vulgarises and makes realistic everything it sees;
The French whittles down, simplifies, rationalises, embellishes;
The German muddles, compromises, involves, and infects everything with morality;
The Italian has made by far the freest and most subtle use of borrowed material, and has enriched it with a hundred times more beauty than it ever drew out of it: it is the richest genius, it had the most to bestow.
832.
The Jews, with Heinrich Heine and Offenbach, approached genius in the sphere of art. The latter was the most intellectual and most high-spirited satyr, who as a musician abided by great tradition, and who, for him who has something more than ears, is a real relief after the sentimental and, at bottom, degenerate musicians of German romanticism.
833.
Offenbach;trench music imbued with Voltaire's intellect, free, wanton, with a slight sardonic grin, but clear and intellectual almost to the point of banality (Offenbach never titivates), and free from themignardiseof morbid or blond-Viennese sensuality.
834.
If by artistic genius we understand the most consummate freedom within the law, divine ease, and facility in overcoming the greatestdifficulties, then Offenbach has even more right to the title genius than Wagner has. Wagner is heavy and clumsy: nothing is more foreign to him than the moments of wanton perfection which this clown Offenbach achieves as many as five times, six times, in nearly every one of his buffooneries. But by genius we ought perhaps to understand something else.
835.
Concerning "music."—French, German, and Italian music. (Our most debased periods in a political sense are our most productive. The Slavs?)—The ballet, which is the outcome of excessive study of the history of strange civilisations, has become master of opera.—Stage music and musicians music.—It is an error to suppose that what Wagner composed wasa. form: it was rather formlessness. The possibilities of dramatic construction have yet to be discovered.—Rhythm. "Expression" at all costs. Harlotry in instrumentation.—All honour to Heinrich Schütz; all honour to Mendelssohn: in them we find an element of Goethe, but nowhere else! (We also find another element of Goethe coming to blossom in Rahel; a third element in Heinrich Heine.)
836.
Descriptive music leaves reality to work its effects alone.... All these kinds of art are easier, and more easy to imitate; poorly giftedpeople have recourse to them. The appeal to the instincts; suggestive art.
837.
Concerning our modern music.—The decay of melody, like the decay of "ideas," and of the freedom of intellectual activity, is a piece of clumsiness and obtuseness, which is developing itself into new feats of daring and even into principles;—in the end man has only the principles of his gifts, or of his lack of gifts.
"Dramatic music"—nonsense! It is simply bad music.... "Feeling" and "passion" are merely substitutes when lofty intellectuality and the joy of it (e.g.Voltaire's) can no longer be attained. Expressed technically, feeling and "passion" are easier; they presuppose a much poorer kind of artist. The recourse to drama betrays that an artist is much more a master in tricky means than in genuine ones. To-day we have both dramatic painting and dramatic poetry, etc.
838.
What we lack in music is an æsthetic which would impose laws upon musicians and give them a conscience; and as a result of this we lack a real contest concerning "principles."—For as musicians we laugh at Herbart's velleities in this department just as heartily as we laugh at Schopenhauer's. As a matter of fact, tremendous difficulties present themselves here. We nolonger know on what basis to found our concepts of what is exemplary, masterly, perfect. With the instincts of old loves and old admiration we grope about in a realm of values, and we almost believe, "that is good which pleases us".... I am always suspicious when I hear people everywhere speak innocently of Beethoven as a "classic"; what I would maintain, and with some seventy, is that, in other arts, a classic is the very reverse of Beethoven. But when the complete and glaring dissolution of style, Wagner's so-called dramatic style, is taught and honoured as exemplary, as masterly, as progressive, then my impatience exceeds all bounds. Dramatic style in music, as Wagner understood it, is simply renunciation of all style whatever; it is the assumption that something else, namely, drama, is a hundred times more important than music. Wagner can paint; he does not use music for the sake of music, with it he accentuates attitudes; he is a poet. Finally he made an appeal to beautiful feelings and heaving breasts, just as all other theatrical artists have done, and with it all he converted women and even those whose souls thirst for culture to him. But what do women and the uncultured care about music? All these people have no conscience for art: none of them suffer when the first and fundamental virtues of an art are scorned and trodden upon in favour of that which is merely secondary (asancilla dramaturgica). What good can come of all extension in the means of expression, when that which is expressed, art itself, has lost all its law and order? The picturesque pomp and powerof tones, the symbolism of sound, rhythm, the colour effects of harmony and discord, the suggestive significance of music, the whole sensuality of this art which Wagner made prevail—it is all this that Wagner derived, developed, and drew out of music. Victor Hugo did something very similar for language: but already people in France are asking themselves, in regard to the case of Victor Hugo, whether language was not corrupted by him, whether reason, intellectuality, and thorough conformity to law in language are not suppressed when the sensuality of expression is elevated to a high place? Is it not a sign of decadence that the poets in France have become plastic artists, and that the musicians of Germany have become actors and culturemongers?
839.
To-day there exists a sort of musical pessimism even among people who are not musicians. Who has not met and cursed the confounded youthlet who torments his piano until it shrieks with despair, and who single-handed heaves the slime of the most lugubrious and drabby harmonies before him? By so doing a man betrays himself as a pessimist.... It is open to question, though, whether he also proves himself a musician by this means. I for my part could never be made to believe it. Wagneritepur sangis unmusical, he submits to the elementary forces of music very much as a woman submits to the will of the man who hypnotises her—and in order to be able todo this he must not be made suspiciousin rebus musicis et musicantibusby a too severe or too delicate conscience. I said "very much as"—but in this respect I spoke perhaps more than a parable. Let any one consider the means which Wagner uses by preference, when he wishes to make an effect (means which for the greater part he first had to invent), they are appallingly similar to the means by which a hypnotist exercises his power (the choice of his movements, the general colour of his orchestration; the excruciating evasion of consistency, and fairness and squareness, in rhythm; the creepiness, the soothing touch, the mystery, the hysteria of his "unending melody"). And is the condition to which the overture toLohengrin,for instance, reduces the men, and still more the women, in the audience, so essentially different from the somnambulistic trance? On one occasion after the overture in question had been played, I heard an Italian lady say, with her eyes half closed, in a way in which female Wagnerites are adepts: "Come si dorme con questa musica!"[10]
[10]"How the music makes one sleep!"—Tr.
[10]"How the music makes one sleep!"—Tr.
840.
Religion in music.—What a large amount of satisfaction all religious needs get out of Wagnerian music, though this is never acknowledged or even understood! How much prayer, virtue, unction, virginity, salvation, speaks through this music!... Oh what capital this cunningsaint, who leads and seduces us back to everything that was once believed in, makes out of the fact that he may dispense with words and concepts! ... Our intellectual conscience has no need to feel ashamed—it stands apart—if any old instinct puts its trembling lips to the rim of forbidden philtres.... This is shrewd and healthy, and, in so far as it betrays a certain shame in regard to the satisfaction of the religious instinct, it is even a good sign.... Cunning Christianity: the type of the music which came from the "last Wagner."
841.
I distinguish between courage before persons, courage before things, and courage on paper. The latter was the courage of David Strauss, for instance. I distinguish again between the courage before witnesses and the courage without witnesses: the courage of a Christian, or of believers in God in general, can never be the courage without witnesses—but on this score alone Christian courage stands condemned. Finally, I distinguish between the courage which is temperamental and the courage which is the fear of fear; a single instance of the latter kind is moral courage. To this list the courage of despair should be added.
This is the courage which Wagner possessed. His attitude in regard to music was at bottom a desperate one. He lacked two things which go to make up a good musician: nature and nurture, the predisposition for music and the discipline and schooling which music requires. He had courage: out of this deficiency he established a principle;he invented a kind of music for himself. The dramatic music which he invented was the music which he was able to compose,—its limitations are Wagner's limitations.
And he was misunderstood!—Was he really misunderstood?... Such is the case with five-sixths of the artists of to-day. Wagner is their Saviour: five-sixths, moreover, is the "lowest proportion." In any case where Nature has shown herself without reserve, and wherever culture is an accident, a mere attempt, a piece of dilettantism, the artist turns instinctively—what do I say?—I mean enthusiastically, to Wagner; as the poet says: "Half drew he him, and half sank he."[11]
[11]This is an adapted quotation from Goethe's poem, "The Fisherman." The translation is E. A. Bowring's.—Tr.
[11]This is an adapted quotation from Goethe's poem, "The Fisherman." The translation is E. A. Bowring's.—Tr.
842.
"Music" and the grand style. The greatness of an artist is not to be measured by the beautiful feelings which he evokes: let this belief be left to the girls. It should be measured according to the extent to which he approaches the grand style, according to the extent to which he is capable of the grand style. This style and great passion have this in common—that they scorn to please; that they forget to persuade; that they command: that they will.... To become master of the chaos which is in one; to compel one's inner chaos to assume form; to become consistent, simple, unequivocal, mathematical, law this is the great ambition here. By means of it one repels; nothingso much endears people to such powerful men as this,—a desert seems to lie around them, they impose silence upon all, and awe every one with the greatness Of their sacrilege.... All arts know this kind of aspirant to the grand style: why are they absent in music? Never yet has a musician built as that architect did who erected the Palazzo Pitti.... This is a problem. Does music perhaps belong to that culture in which the reign of powerful men of various types is already at an end? Is the concept "grand style" in fact a contradiction of the soul of music,—of "the Woman" in our music? ...
With this I touch upon the cardinal question: how should all our music be classified? The age of classical taste knows nothing that can be compared with it: it bloomed when the world of the Renaissance reached its evening, when "freedom" had already bidden farewell to both men and their customs—is it characteristic of music to be Counter-Renaissance? Is music, perchance, the sister of the baroque style, seeing that in any case they were contemporaries? Is not music, modern music, already decadence? ...
I have put my finger before on this question: whether music is not an example of Counter-Renaissance art? whether it is not the next of kin to the baroque style? whether it has not grown in Opposition to all classic taste, so that any aspiration to classicism is forbidden by the very nature of music?
The answer to this most important of all questions of values would not be a very doubtfulone, if people thoroughly understood the fact that music attains to its highest maturity and plenitude as romanticism—likewise as a reactionary movement against classicism.
Mozart, a delicate and lovable soul, but quite eighteenth century, even in his serious lapses ... Beethoven, the first great romanticist according to the French conception of romanticism, just as Wagner is the last great romanticist ... both of them are instinctive opponents of classical taste, of severe style—not to speak of "grand" in this regard.
843.
Romanticism: an ambiguous question, like all modern questions.
The æsthetic conditions are twofold:—
The abundant and generous, as opposed to the seeking and the desiring.
844.
A romanticist is an artist whose great dissatisfaction with himself makes him productive—; who looks away from himself and his fellows, and sometimes, therefore, looks backwards.
845.
Is art the result of dissatisfaction with reality? or is it the expression of gratitude for happiness experienced? In the first case, it is romanticism; in the second, it is glorification and dithyramb (in short, apotheosis art): even Raphael belongs to this, except for the fact that he was guilty of theduplicity of having defied the appearance of the Christian view of the world. He was thankful for life precisely where it was not exactly Christian.
With a moral interpretation the world is insufferable; Christianity was the attempt to overcome the world with morality:i.e.to deny it.In praxisuch a mad experiment—an imbecile elevation of man above the world—could only end in the beglooming, the dwarfing, and the impoverishment of mankind: the only kind of man who gained anything by it, who was promoted by it, was the most mediocre, the most harmless and gregarious type.
Homer as an apotheosis artist; Rubens also. Music has not yet had such an artist.
The idealisation of the great criminal (the feeling for his greatness) is Greek; the depreciation, the slander, the contempt of the sinner, is Judæo-Christian.
846.
Romanticism and its opposite. In regard to all æsthetic values I now avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every individual case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been creative here? At first another distinction might perhaps seem preferable, it is far more obvious,—e.g.the distinction which decides whether a desire for stability, for eternity, for Being, or whether a desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, has been the cause of creation. But both kinds of desire, when examined more closely, prove to be ambiguous, and really susceptible ofinterpretation only according to that scheme already mentioned and which I think is rightly preferred.
The desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, may be the expression of an overflowing power pregnant with promises for the future (my term for this, as is well known, is Dionysian); it may, however, also be the hate of the ill-constituted, of the needy and of the physiologically botched, that destroys, and must destroy, because such creatures are indignant at, and annoyed by everything lasting and stable.
The act of immortalising can, on the other hand, be the outcome of gratitude and love: an art which has this origin is always an apotheosis art; dithyrambic, as perhaps with Rubens, happy, as perhaps with Hafiz; bright and gracious, and shedding a ray of glory over all things, as in Goethe. But it may also, however, be the outcome of the tyrannical will of the great sufferer who would make the most personal, individual, and narrow trait about him, the actual idiosyncrasy of his pain—in fact, into a binding law and imposition, and who thus wreaks his revenge upon all things by stamping, branding, and violating them with the image of his torment. The latter case is romantic pessimism in its highest form, whether this be Schopenhauerian voluntarism or Wagnerian music.
847.
It is a question whether the antithesis, classic and romantic, does not conceal that other antithesis, the active and the reactive.
848.
In order to be a classic, one must be possessed of all the strong and apparently contradictory gifts and passions: but in such a way that they run in harness together, and culminate simultaneously in elevating a certain species of literature or art or politics to its height and zenith (they must not do this after that elevation has taken place ...). They must reflect the complete state (either of a people or of a culture), and express its most profound and most secret nature, at a time when it is still stable and not yet discoloured by the imitation of foreign things (or when it is still dependent ...); not a reactive but a deliberate and progressive spirit, saying Yea in all circumstances, even in its hate.
"And does not the highest personal value belong thereto?" It is worth considering whether moral prejudices do not perhaps exercise their influence here, and whether great moral loftiness is not perhaps a contradiction of the classical? ... Whether the moral monsters must not necessarily be romantic in word and deed? Any such preponderance of one virtue over others (as in the case of the moral monster) is precisely what with most hostility counteracts the classical power in equilibrium, supposing a people manifested this moral loftiness and were classical notwithstanding, we should have to conclude boldly that they were also on the same high level in immorality! this was perhaps the case with Shakespeare (provided that he was really Lord Bacon).
849.
Concerning the future. Against the romanticism of great passion.—We must understand how a certain modicum of coldness, lucidity, and hardness is inseparable from all classical taste: above all consistency, happy intellectuality, "the three unities," concentration, hatred of all feeling, of all sentimentality, of allesprit,hatred of all multiformity, of all uncertainty, evasiveness, and of all nebulosity, as also of all brevity, finicking, prettiness and good nature. Artistic formulæ must not be played with: life must be remodelled so that it should be forced to formulate itself accordingly.
It is really an exhilarating spectacle which we have only learned to laugh at quite recently, because we have only seen through it quite recently: this spectacle of Herder's, Winckelmann's, Goethe's, and Hegel's contemporaries claiming that they had rediscovered the classical ideal ... and at the same time, Shakespeare! And this same crew of men had scurvily repudiated all relationship with the classical school of France! As if the essential principle could not have been learnt as well here as elsewhere! ... But what people wanted was "nature," and "naturalness": Oh, the stupidity of it! It was thought that classicism was a kind of naturalness!
Without either prejudice or indulgence we should try and investigate upon what soil a classical taste can be evolved. The hardening, the simplification, the strengthening, and the bedevilling of man are inseparable from classical taste. Logical andpsychological simplification. A contempt of detail, of complexity, of obscurity.
The romanticists of Germany do not protest against classicism, but against reason, against illumination, against taste, against the eighteenth century.
The essence of romantico-Wagnerian music is the opposite of the classical spirit.
The will to unity (because unity tyrannises.e.g.the listener and the spectator), but the artist's inability to tyrannise over himself where it is most needed—that is to say, in regard to the work itself (in regard to knowing what to leave out, what to shorten, what to clarify, what to simplify). The overwhelming by means of masses (Wagner, Victor Hugo, Zola, Taine).
850.
The Nihilism of artists.—Nature is cruel in her cheerfulness; cynical in her sunrises. We are hostile to emotions. We flee thither where Nature moves our senses and our imagination, where we have nothing to love, where we are not reminded of the moral semblances and delicacies of this northern nature; and the same applies to the arts. We prefer that which no longer reminds us of good and evil. Our moral sensibility and tenderness seem to be relieved in the heart of terrible and happy Nature, in the fatalism of the senses and forces. Life without goodness.
Great well-being arises from contemplating Nature's indifference to good and evil.
No justice in history, no goodness in Nature.That is why the pessimist when he is an artist prefers those historical subjects where the absence of justice reveals itself with magnificent simplicity, where perfection actually comes to expression—and likewise he prefers that in Nature, where her callous evil character is not hypocritically concealed, where that character is seen in perfection.... The Nihilistic artist betrays himself in willing and preferring cynical history and cynical Nature.
851.
What is tragic?—Again and again I have pointed to the great misunderstanding of Aristotle in maintaining that the tragic emotions were the two depressing emotions—fear and pity. Had he been right, tragedy would be an art unfriendly to life: it would have been necessary to caution people against it as against something generally harmful and suspicious. Art, otherwise the great stimulus of life, the great intoxicant of life, the great will to life, here became a tool of decadence, the hand-maiden of pessimism and ill-health (for to suppose, as Aristotle supposed, that by exciting these emotions we thereby purged people of them, is simply an error). Something which habitually excites fear or pity, disorganises, weakens, and discourages: and supposing Schopenhauer were right in thinking that tragedy taught resignation (i.e.a meek renunciation of happiness, hope, and of the will to live), this would presuppose an art in which art itself was denied. Tragedy would then constitute a process of dissolution; the instinct of life would destroy itself in the instinct ofart. Christianity, Nihilism, tragic art, physiological decadence; these things would then be linked, they would then preponderate together and assist each other onwards—downwards.... Tragedy would thus be a symptom of decline.
This theory may be refuted in the most cold-blooded way, namely, by measuring the effect of a tragic emotion by means of a dynamometer The result would be a fact which only the bottomless falsity of a doctrinaire could misunderstand: that tragedy is a tonic. If Schopenhauer refuses to see the truth here, if he regards general depression as a tragic condition, if he would have informed the Greeks (who to his disgust were not "resigned") that they did not firmly possess the highest principles of life: it is only owing to hisparti pris,to the need of consistency in his system, to the dishonesty of the doctrinaire—that dreadful dishonesty which step for step corrupted the whole psychology of Schopenhauer (he who had arbitrarily and almost violently misunderstood genius, art itself, morality, pagan religion, beauty, knowledge, and almost everything).
852.
The tragic artist.—Whether, and in regard to what, the judgment "beautiful" is established is a question of an individual's or of a people's strength The feeling of plenitude, of overflowing strength (which gaily and courageously meets many an obstacle before which the weakling shudders)—the feeling of power utters the judgment "beautiful" concerning things and conditions which the instinct of impotence can only value as hateful andugly. Theflairwhich enables us to decide whether the objects we encounter are dangerous, problematic, or alluring, likewise determines our æsthetic Yea. ("This is beautiful," is an affirmation).
From this we see that, generally speaking, a preference for questionable and terrible things is a symptom of strength; whereas the taste for pretty and charming trifles is characteristic of the weak and the delicate. The love of tragedy is typical of strong ages and characters: itsnon plus ultrais perhaps theDivina Commedia.It is the heroic spirits which in tragic cruelty say Yea unto themselves: they are hard enough to feel pain as a pleasure.
On the other hand, supposing weaklings desire to get pleasure from an art which was not designed for them, what interpretation must we suppose they would like to give tragedy in order to make it suit their taste? They would interpret their own feeling of value into it:e.g.the "triumph of the moral order of things," or the teaching of the "uselessness of existence," or the incitement to "resignation" (or also half-medicinal and half-moral outpourings,à laAristotle). Finally, the art of terrible natures, in so far as it may excite the nerves, may be regarded by the weak and exhausted as a stimulus: this is now taking place, for instance, in the case of the admiration meted out to Wagner's art. A test of man's well-being and consciousness of power is the extent to which he can acknowledge the terrible and questionable character of things, and whether he is in any need of a faith at the end.
This kind of artistic pessimism is precisely the reverse of that religio-moral pessimism which suffers from the corruption of man and the enigmatic character of existence: the latter insists upon deliverance, or at least upon the hope of deliverance. Those who suffer, doubt, and distrust themselves,—the sick, in other words,—have in all ages required the transporting influence of visions in order to be able to exist at all (the notion "blessedness" arose in this way). A similar case would be that of the artists of decadence, who at bottom maintain a Nihilistic attitude to life, and take refuge in the beauty of form,—in those select cases in which Nature is perfect, in which she is indifferently great and indifferently beautiful. (The "love of the beautiful" may thus be something very different from the ability to see or create the beautiful: it may be the expression of impotence in this respect.) The most convincing artists are those who make harmony ring out of every discord, and who benefit all things by the gift of their power and inner harmony: in every work of art they merely reveal the symbol of their inmost experiences—their creation is gratitude for life.
The depth of the tragic artist consists in the fact that his æsthetic instinct surveys the more remote results, that he does not halt shortsightedly at the thing that is nearest, that he says Yea to the whole cosmic economy, which justifies the terrible, the evil, and the questionable; which more than justifies it.
853.
Art in the "Birth of Tragedy."
I.
The conception of the work which lies right in the background of this book, is extraordinarily gloomy and unpleasant: among all the types of pessimism which have ever been known hitherto, none seems to have attained to this degree of malice. The contrast of a true and of an apparent world is entirely absent here: there is but one world, and it is false, cruel, contradictory, seductive, and without sense. A world, thus constituted is the true world. We are in need of lies in order to rise superior to this reality, to this truth—that is to say, in order to live.... That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.
Metaphysics, morality, religion, science, in this book, all these things are regarded merely as different forms of falsehood: by means of them we are led to believe in life. "Life, must inspire confidence"; the task which this imposes upon us is enormous. In order to solve, this problem man must already be a liar in his heart, but he must above all else be an artist. And he is that. Metaphysics, religion, morality, science, all these things are but the offshoot of his will to art, to falsehood, to a flight from "truth," to a denial of "truth." This ability, this artistic capacitypar excellenceof man—thanks to which he overcomes reality with lies,—is a quality which he has incommon with all other forms of existence. He himself is indeed a piece of reality, of truth, of nature: how could he help being also a piece of genius in prevarication!
The fact that the character of existence is misunderstood, is the profoundest and the highest secret motive behind everything relating to virtue, science, piety, and art. To be blind to many things, to see many things falsely, to fancy many things: Oh, how clever man has been in those circumstances in which he believed he was anything but clever! Love, enthusiasm, "God"—are but subtle forms of ultimate Self-deception; they are but seductions to life and to the belief in life! In those moments when man was deceived, when he had befooled himself and when he believed in life: Oh, how his spirit swelled within him! Oh, what ecstasies he had! What power he felt! And what artistic triumphs in the feeling of power! ... Man had once more become master of "matter,"—master of truth! ... And whenever man rejoices it is always in the same way: he rejoices as an artist, his power is his joy, he enjoys falsehood as his power....
II.
Art and nothing else! Art is the great means of making life possible, the great seducer to life, the great stimulus of life.
Art is the only superior counter-agent to all will to the denial of life; it ispar excellencethe anti-Christian, the anti-Buddhistic, the anti-Nihilistic force.
Art is the alleviation of the seeker after knowledge,—of him who recognises the terrible and questionable character Of existence, and who will recognise it,—of the tragic seeker after knowledge.
Art is the alleviation of the man of action,—of him who not only sees the terrible and questionable character of existence, but also lives it, will live it,—of the tragic and warlike man, the hero. Art is the alleviation of the sufferer,—as the way to states in which pain is willed, is transfigured, is deified, where suffering is a form of great ecstasy.
III.
It is clear that in this book pessimism, or, better still, Nihilism, stands for "truth." But truth is not postulated as the highest measure of value, and still less as the highest power. The will to appearance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming, and to change (to objective deception), is here regarded as more profound, as more primeval, as more metaphysical than the will to truth, to reality, to appearance: the latter is merely a form of the will to illusion. Happiness is likewise conceived as more primeval than pain: and pain is considered as conditioned, as a consequence Of the will to happiness (of the will to Becoming, to growth, to forming, i.e. to creating; in creating, however, destruction is included). The highest state of Yea-saying to existence is conceived as one from which the greatest pain may not be excluded: the tragico-Dionysian state.
IV.
In this way this book is even anti-pessimistic, namely, in the sense that it teaches something which is stronger than pessimism and which is more "divine" than truth: Art. Nobody, it would seem, would be more ready seriously to utter a radical denial of life, an actual denial of action even more than a denial of life, than the author of this book. Except that he knows—for he has experienced it, and perhaps experienced little else!—that art is of more value than truth.
Even in the preface, in which Richard Wagner is, as it were, invited to join with him in conversation, the author expresses this article of faith, this gospel for artists; "Art is the only task of life, art is the metaphysical activity of life...."
1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank.
854.
In this age of universal suffrage, in which everybody is allowed to sit in judgment upon everything and everybody, I feel compelled to re-establish the order of rank.
855.
Quanta of power alone determine rank and distinguish rank: nothing else does.
856.
The will to power.—How must those men be constituted who would undertake this transvaluation? The order of rank as the order of power: war and danger are the prerequisites which allow of a rank maintaining its conditions. The prodigious example: man in Nature—the weakest and shrewdest creature making himself master, and putting a yoke upon all less intelligent forces.
857.
I distinguish between the type which represents ascending life and that which represents decay, decomposition and weakness. Ought one to suppose that the question of rank between these two types can be at all doubtful?
858.
The modicum of power which you represent decides your rank; all the rest is cowardice.
859.
The advantages of standing detached from one's age.—Detached from the two movements, that of individualism and that of collectivist morality; for even the first does not recognise the order of rank, and would give one individual the same freedom as another. My thoughts are not concerned with the degree of freedom which should be granted to the one or to the other or to all, but with the degree of power which the one or the other should exercise over his neighbour or over all; and more especially with the question to what extent a sacrifice of freedom, or even enslavement, may afford the basis for the cultivation, of asuperiortype. In plain words:how could one sacrifice the development of mankindin order to assist a higher species than man to come into being.
860.
Concerning rank.—The terrible consequences of "equality"—in the end everybody thinks he has the right to every problem. All order of rank has vanished.
861.
It is necessary forhighermen to declare war upon the masses! In all directions mediocre people are joining hands in order to make themselves masters. Everything that pampers, that softens, and that brings the "people" or "woman" to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage,—that is to say, the dominion ofinferiormen. But we must make reprisals, and draw the whole state of affairs (which commenced in Europe with Christianity) to the light of day and to judgment.
862.
A teaching is needed which is strong enough to work in adisciplinarymanner; it should operate in such a way as to strengthen the strong and to paralyse and smash up the world-weary.
The annihilation of declining races. The decay of Europe. The annihilation of slave-tainted valuations. The dominion of the world as a means to the rearing of a higher type. The annihilation of the humbug which is called morality (Christianity as a hysterical kind of honesty in this regard: Augustine, Bunyan.)The annihilation of universal suffrage—that is to say, that system by means of which the lowest natures prescribe themselves as a law for higher natures. The annihilation of mediocrity and its prevalence. (The one-sided, the individuals—peoples; constitutional plenitude should be aimed at by means of the coupling of opposites; to this end race-combinations should be tried.) The new kind of courage—noa prioritruths (those who were accustomed to believe in something sought such truths!), butfreesubmission to a ruling thought, which has its time; for instance, time conceived as the quality of space, etc.
2. The Strong and the Weak.
863.
The notion, "strong and weak man"resolves itself into this, that in the first place much strength is inherited—the man is a total sum; in the other,not yet enough(inadequate inheritance, subdivision of the inherited qualities). Weakness may be astartingphenomenon:not yet enough; or a final phenomenon: "no more."
The determining point is there where great strength is present, or where a great amount of strength can be discharged. The mass, as the sum-total of theweak,reactsslowly;it defends itself against much for which it is too weak,—against that for which it has no use; itnevercreates, itnevertakes a step forward. This isopposed to the theory which denies the strong individual and would maintain that the "masses do everything." The difference is similar to that which obtains between separated generations: four or even five generations may lie between the masses and him who is the moving spirit—it is achronologicaldifference.
Thevalues of the weakare in the van, because the strong have adopted them in order toleadwith them.
864.
Why the weak triumph.—On the whole, the sick and the weak have moresympathyand are more "humane"; the sick and the weak have more intellect, and are more changeable more variegated, more entertaining—more malicious; the sick alone inventedmalice.(A morbid precocity is often to be observed among rickety, scrofulitic, and tuberculous people.)Esprit:the property of older races; Jews, Frenchmen, Chinese. (The anti-Semites do not forgive the Jews for having both intellect—and money. Anti-Semites—another name for "bungled and botched.")
The sick and the weak have always hadfascinationon their side; they are moreinterestingthan the healthy: the fool and the saint—the two most interesting kinds of men.... Closely related thereto is the "genius." The "great adventurers and criminals" and all great men, the most healthy in particular, have always beensickat certain periods of their lives—great disturbances of theemotions, the passion for power, love, revenge, are all accompanied by very profound perturbations. And, as for decadence, every man who does not die prematurely manifests it in almost every respect—he therefore knows from experience the instincts which belong to it: forhalf his lifenearly every man is decadent.
And finally, woman!One-half of mankind is weak,chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman requires strength in order to cleave to it; she also requires a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love, and modesty as divine: or, better still, she makes the strong weak—sheruleswhen she succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with decadent types,—the priests, for instance, against the mighty, against the "strong," againstmen.Women avail themselves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and love:—themotherstands as the symbol ofconvincingaltruism.
Finally, the increase of civilisation with its necessary correlatives, the increase of morbid elements, of theneuroticandpsychiatricand of thecriminal.A sort ofintermediary speciesarises, the artist. He is distinct from those who are criminals as the result of weak wills and of the fear of society, although they may not yet be ripe for the asylum; but he has antennas which grope inquisitively into both spheres, this specific plant of culture, the modern artist, painter, musician, and, above all, novelist, who designates his particular kind of attitude with the very indefinite word "naturalism."... Lunatics, criminals, andrealists[1]are on the increase: this is the sign of a growing culture plunging forward at headlong speed—that is to say, its excrement, its refuse, the rubbish that is shot from it every day, is beginning to acquire more importance, the retrogressive movementkeeps pacewith the advance.
Finally,the social mishmash,which is the result of revolution, of the establishment of equal rights, and of the superstition, the "equality of men." Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction, of anarchy and Nihilism), as also the instincts of slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality, which are inherent among those classes of society which have long been suppressed, are beginning to get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or three generations later, the race can no longer be recognised—everything has becomemob.And thus there results a collective instinct againstselection,against every kind ofprivilege, and this instinct operates with such power, certainty, hardness, and cruelty that, as a matter of fact, in the end, even the privileged classes have to submit: all those who still wish to hold on to power flatter the mob, work with the mob, and must have the mob on their side—the "geniuses"above all.The latter become theheraldsof those feelings with which the mob can be inspired,—the expression of pity, of honour, even for all that suffers, all that is low and despised, and has livedunder persecution, becomes predominant (types: Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner).—The rise of the mob signifies once more the rise of old values.
In the case of such an extreme movement, both in tempo and in means, as characterises our civilisation, man's ballast is shifted. Those men whose worth is greatest, and whose mission, as it were, is to compensate for the very great danger of such a morbid movement,—such men become dawdlerspar excellence; they are slow to accept anything, and are tenacious; they are creatures that are relatively lasting in the midst of this vast mingling and changing of elements. In such circumstances power is necessarily relegated to themediocre: mediocrity,as the trustee and bearer of the future, consolidates itself against the rule of the mob and of eccentricities (both of which are, in most cases, united). In this way a new antagonist is evolved for exceptional men—or in certain cases a new temptation. Provided that they do not adapt themselves to the mob, and stand up for what satisfies the instincts of the disinherited, they will find it necessary to be "mediocre" and sound. They know:mediocritasis alsoaurea,—it alone has command of money andgold(of all that glitters ...).... And, once more, old virtue and the whole superannuated world of ideals in general secures a gifted host of special-pleaders.... Result: mediocrity acquires intellect, wit, and genius, it becomes entertaining, and even seductive.
***
Result.—A high culture can only stand upon a broad basis, upon a strongly and soundly consolidatedmediocrity. In its service and assisted by it,scienceand even art do their work. Science could not wish for a better state of affairs: in its essence it belongs to a middle-class type of man,—among exceptions it is out of place,—there is not anything aristocratic and still less anything anarchic in its instincts.—The power of the middle classes is then upheld by means of commerce, but, above all, by means of money-dealing: the instinct of great financiers is opposed to everything extreme—on this account the Jews are, for the present, the mostconservativepower in the threatening and insecure conditions of modern Europe. They can have no use either for revolutions, for socialism, or for militarism: if they would have power, and if they should need it, even over the revolutionary party, this is only the result of what I have already said, and it in no way contradicts it. Against other extreme movements they may occasionally require to excite terror by showing how much power is in their hands. But their instinct itself is inveterately conservative and "mediocre, ... Wherever power exists, they know how to become mighty; but the application of their power always takes the same direction. The polite term formediocre,as is well known, is the word"Liberal."
Reflection.—It is all nonsense to suppose that this generalconquest of valuesis anti-biological. In order to explain it, we ought to try and show that it is the result of a certain interest of life to maintain the type "man," even by means of thismethod which leads to the prevalence of the weak and the physiologically botched—if things were otherwise, might man not cease to exist? Problem ...
Theenhancementof the type may prove fatal to themaintenance of the species.Why?—The experience of history shows that strong racesdecimateeach othermutually,by means of war, lust for power, and venturousness; the strong emotions; wastefulness (strength is no longer capitalised, disturbed mental systems arise from excessive tension); their existence is a costly affair in short, they persistently give rise to frictionbetween themselves;periods ofprofound slacknessand torpidity intervene: all great ages have to bepaid for....The strong are, after all, weaker, less wilful, and more absurd than the average weak ones.
They aresquanderingraces. "Permanence," in itself, can have no value: that which ought to be preferred thereto would be a shorter life for the species, but a lifericherin creations. It would remain to be proved that, even as things are, a richer sum of creations is attained than in the case of the shorter existence;i.e.that man, as a storehouse of power, attains to a much higher degree of dominion over things under the conditions which have existed hitherto.... We are here face to face with a problem ofeconomics.