The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Chapter 64
Chapter 32 of 33 · 2 min read
Wagner’s Style.—The habit he acquired, from his earliest days, of having his say in the most important matters without a sufficient knowledge of them, has rendered him the obscure and incomprehensible writer that he is. In addition to this he aspired to imitating the witty newspaper article, and finally acquired that presumption which readily joins hands with carelessness “and, behold, it was very good.”
65.
I am alarmed at the thought of how much pleasure I could find in Wagner’s style, which is so careless as to be unworthy of such an artist.
66.
In Wagner, as in Brahms, there is a blind denial of the healthy, in his followers this denial is deliberate and conscious.
67.
Wagner’s art is for those who are conscious of an essential blunder in the conduct of their lives. They feel either that they have checked a great nature by a base occupation, or squandered it through idle pursuits, a conventional marriage, &c. &c.
In this quarter the condemnation of the world is the outcome of the condemnation of the ego.
68.
Wagnerites do not wish to alter themselves in any way, they live discontentedly in insipid, conventional and brutal circumstances—only at intervals does art have to raise them as by magic above these things. Weakness of will.
69.
Wagner’s art is for scholars who do not dare to become philosophers: they feel discontented with themselves and are generally in a state of obtuse stupefaction—from time to time they take a bath in the opposite conditions.
70.
I feel as if I had recovered from an illness: with a feeling of unutterable joy I think of Mozart’s Requiem. I can once more enjoy simple fare.
71.
I understand Sophocles’ development through and through—it was the repugnance to pomp and pageantry.
72.
I gained an insight into the injustice of idealism, by noticing that I avenged myself on Wagner for the disappointed hopes I had cherished of him.
73.
I leave my loftiest duty to the end, and that is to thank Wagner and Schopenhauer publicly, and to make them as it were take sides against themselves.
74.
I counsel everybody not to fight shy of such paths (Wagner and Schopenhauer). The wholly unphilosophic feeling of remorse, has become quite strange to me.
Wagner’s Effects.
75.
We must strive to oppose the false after-effects of Wagner’s art. If he, in order to create Parsifal, is forced to pump fresh strength from religious sources, this is not an example but a danger.
