A Musicians’ Problem
1
IF one is to be fait to this writing one has to suffer from the destiny of music as from an open wound. – What is it I suffer from when I suffer from the destiny of music? From this: that music has been deprived of its world-transfiguring, affirmative character, that it is décadence music and no longer the flute of Dionysos… Supposing, however, that one in this way feels the cause of music to be one’s own cause, to be the history of one’s own suffering, one will find this writing full of consideration and mild beyond measure. In such cases to be cheerful and good-naturedly to mock at oneself as well – ridendo dicere severum where verum dicere would justify every kind of severity – is humaneness itself. Who really doubts that I, old artillerist that I am, have the ability to bring up my heavy guns against Wagner? – I kept to myself everything decisive in this matter – I have loved Wagner. – Ultimately this is an attack on a subtle ‘unknown’ who could not easily be detected by another, in the sense and direction of my task – oh, I have still got quite other ‘unknowns’ to reveal than a Cagliostro of music – even more, to be sure, an attack on the German nation growing ever more sluggish and poor in instinct in spiritual matters, ever more honourable, which with an enviable appetite continues to nourish itself with opposites and knows how to gulp down ‘faith’ as well as scientificality, ‘Christian love’ as well as anti-Semitism, will to power (to the ‘Reich’) as well as the évangile des bumbles; without having any trouble digesting them… This lack of party in choosing between opposites! This ventral neutrality and ‘selflessness’! This fairness of German taste, which accords everything equal rights – which finds everything tasty… Without any doubt the Germans are idealists… When I last visited Germany I found German taste occupied in trying to accord Wagner and the Trumpeter of Säckingen equal rights; I myself witnessed how in Leipzig, to the honour of one of the most genuine and German musicians in the old sense of the word German, no mere Reich German, Meister Heinrich Schütz, they founded a Liszt Society for the encouragement and propagation of cunning church music… Without any doubt the Germans are idealists…
2
But here nothing shall stop me from becoming rude and telling the Germans a couple of hard truths: who else will do it? – I speak of their indecency in historicis. German historians have not only altogether lost the grand view for the course, for the values of culture, and are one and all buffoons of politics (or of the church –): they have even outlawed this grand view. One has first of all to be ‘German’, to have ‘race’, then one can arbitrate over all values and disvalues in historicis – one determines them… ‘German’ is an argument, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’ a principle, the Germans represent the ‘moral world-order’ in history; in relation to the Imperium romanum the bearers of freedom, in relation to the eighteenth century the restorers of morality, of the ‘categorical imperative’… There is a reichsdeutsch historiography, there is, I am afraid, even an anti-Semitic one – there is a court historiography and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed… Recently an idiotic judgement in historicis, a proposition of the happily late Swabian aesthetician Vischer, went the rounds of the German newspapers as a ‘truth’ to which every German had to say Yes: ‘The Renaissance and the Reformation, both together constitute a whole – the aesthetic rebirth and the moral rebirth’. – In face of such propositions my patience runs out, and I sense a desire, I feel it even to be a duty, to tell the Germans for once what they already have on their conscience. Every great cultural crime of four centuries is what they have on their conscience!… And always from the same cause, from their most inherent cowardice in face of reality, which is also cowardice in face of truth, from the falseness which has become instinct with them, from ‘idealism’… The Germans deprived Europe of the seriousness, of the meaning of the last great age, the age of the Renaissance, at a moment when a higher order of values, when the noble, life-affirmative values which guarantee the future had achieved victory at the seat of the antithetical values, the values of decline – and even into the instincts of him who sat on it! Luther, that fatality of a monk, restored the church and, what is a thousand times worse, Christianity, at the moment of its defeat… Christianity, that denial of the will to life become religion!… Luther, who found it impossible to be a monk and who because of this ‘impossibility’ attacked the church and – consequently! – restored it… Catholics would have reason to celebrate Luther Festivals, compose Luther plays… Luther – and ‘moral rebirth’! To the devil with all psychology! – Without doubt the Germans are idealists. – Twice, at precisely the moment when with tremendous courage and self-overcoming an honest, an unambiguous, a completely scientific mode of thinking had been attained, the Germans have known how to discover secret paths to the old ‘ideal’, reconciliations between truth and ‘ideal’, at bottom formulas for a right to reject science, for a right to lie. Leibniz and Kant – those two greatest impediments to the intellectual integrity of Europe! – Finally, when on the bridge between two décadence centuries a force majeure of genius and will became visible, strong enough to forge Europe into a political and economic unity for the purpose of ruling the earth, the Germans with their ‘Wars of Liberation’ deprived Europe of the meaning, of the miracle of meaning of the existence of Napoleon – they thereby have on their conscience everything that followed, that exists today, this sickness and unreason the most inimical to culture there is, nationalism, that névrose nationale with which Europe is sick, that eternalizing of the petty-state situation of Europe, of petty politics: they have deprived Europe itself of its meaning, of its reason – they have led it into a blind alley. – Does anyone except me know a way out of this blind alley?… A task great enough once again to unite the peoples?…
3
– And why should I not in the end give expression to my suspicions? In my case too the Germans will again try every-thing to bring forth a mouse out of a tremendous destiny. Up to now they have compromised themselves with me, I doubt if they will do better in the future. – Ah, how I would like to be a false prophet in this instance!… The readers and auditors most natural to me are still Russians, Scandinavians and French – will they always be so? – In the history of knowledge the Germans are represented by nothing but ambiguous names, they have ever produced only ‘unconscious’ false-coiners (– Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher deserve this description as well as Kant and Leibniz; they are all mere Schleiermacber, mere veilmakers–): they ought never to have the honour of harbouring the first honest spirit in the history of the spirit, the spirit in whom truth comes to judgement on the false-coinage of four millennia. The ‘German spirit’ is my bad air: I find it hard to breathe in the proximity of this uncleanliness in psychologicis become instinct which every word, every gesture of a German betrays. They never went through a seventeenth century of hard self-examination as the French did – a La Rochefoucauld, a Descartes is a hundred times superior in integrity to the leading Germans – to this day they have had no psychologists. But psychology is almost the measure of the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race… And if one is not even clean how should one possess depth? With the German, almost as with the woman, one never gets to the bottom, he has none: that is all. But in that event one is not even shallow. – That which is in Germany called ‘deep’ is precisely this uncleanliness of instinct towards oneself of which I speak: one does not wantto be clear about oneself. Might I not suggest the word ‘German’ as an international counter for this psychological depravity? – At this moment, for example, the German Kaiser calls it his ‘Christian duty’ to free the slaves in Africa: among us other Europeans let that be called simply ‘German’… Have the Germans produced even one book that possessed profundity? They even lack any idea of what constitutes profundity in a book. I have known scholars who considered Kant profound; at the Prussian court, I fear, they consider Herr von Treitschke profound. And when I have occasionally praised Stendhal as a profound psychologist, it has happened to me that German university professors have asked me to spell his name…
4
– And why should I not go on to the end? I like to make a clean sweep. It is even part of my ambition to count as the despiser of the German par excellence. I expressed my mistrust of the German character already at the age of twenty-six (third untimely essay) – the Germans are impossible for me. Whenever I picture to myself a type of man that goes against all my instincts it always turns into a German. The first thing in which I ‘test the reins’ of a person is whether he has in him a feeling for distance, whether he sees everywhere rank, degree, order between man and man, whether he distinguishes: one is thereby a gentleman; in any other event one belongs irretrievably to the wide-hearted, alas! so good-hearted concept of the canaille. But the Germans are canaille – alas! they are so good-natured… One lowers oneself by commerce with Germans: the German posits as equal… If I subtract my commerce with a few artists, above all with Richard Wagner, I have experienced not a single good hour with Germans… Supposing the profoundest spirit of all the millennia appeared among the Germans, some goose of the Capitol would opine that its very unbeautiful soul came at least equally into consideration… I cannot endure this race, with which one is always in bad company, which has no finger fot nuances – woe is me! I am a nuance – which has no esprit in its feet and cannot even walk… In the end the Germans have no idea whatever how common they are; but that is the superlative of commonness they are not even ashamed of being mere Germans… They feel free to discuss everything, they even consider themselves decisive, I fear they have even decided about me… My whole life is the proof de rigueur of these propositions. I seek in it in vain for a single sign of tact, of délicatesse towards me. From Jews yes, never yet from Germans. My nature directs that I am mild and benevolent towards everyone – I have a right not to make distinctions –: this does not prevent me from keeping my eyes open. I except no one, least of all my friends – I hope in the end that this has not diminished my humanity towards them! There are five or six things which have always been a point of honour with me. – It remains none the less true that almost every letter which has reached me for years past strikes me as a piece of cynicism: there is more cynicism in benevolence towards me than in any kind of hatred… I tell each of my friends to his face that he never thinks it worth the trouble to study any of my writings: I divine from the smallest of signs that they do not even know what is in them. As for my Zarathustra, who of my friends would have seen more in it than an impermissible piece of presumption but one that was fortunately a matter of complete indifference?… Ten years: and no one in Germany has made it a question of conscience to defend my name against the absurd silence under which it has lain buried: it was a foreigner, a Dane, who was the first to possess sufficient refinement of instinct and courage for that, who inveighed against my supposed friends… At which German university today would lectures on my philosophy be possible such as were given last spring by Dr Georg Brandes in Copenhagen – who therewith once more proved himself a psychologist? – I myself have never suffered from any of this; I am not injured by what is necessary; amor fati is my innermost nature. This does not mean, however, that I do not enjoy the irony, even the world-historic irony. And so, about two years before the shattering thunder-clap of the Revaluation which will set the earth into convulsions, I sent the ‘Wagner Case’ into the world: my notion was that the Germans should once more blunder immortally about me and so eternalize themselves I there was just about enough time left! – Was that achieved? – Charrningly, my Herr– Teutons! I compliment you…