Art and nature. – The Greeks (or at least the Athenians) liked to hear good speech; indeed, they had a greedy craving for it which distinguishes them more than anything else from the non-Greeks. And so they demanded even of passion on stage that it speak well, and submitted with delight to the unnaturalness of dramatic verse – after all, in nature, passion is so taciturn! So mute and bashful! Or when it finds words, so confused and irrational and a shame to itself! Now thanks to the Greeks, we have all grown accustomed to this unnaturalness on stage, just as we endure and gladly endure that other unnaturalness, singing passion, thanks to the Italians. We have developed a need that we cannot satisfy in reality: to hear people in the most difficult situations speak well and at length; it delights us now when the tragic hero still finds words, reasons, eloquent gestures, and altogether a radiant spirit where life approaches the abyss and a real human being would usually lose his head and certainly his fine language. This kind of deviation from nature is perhaps the most pleasant meal for human pride; for its sake man loves art as the expression of a lofty, heroic unnaturalness and convention. We rightly reproach a dramatic poet if he does not transform everything into reason and words but always retains in his hand a residue of silence – just as one is dissatisfied with the musician at the opera who cannot find a melody for the highest affect but only a sentimental ‘natural’ stammering and screaming. For here nature is supposed to be contradicted! Here the vulgar charm of illusion is supposed to give way to a higher charm! The Greeks go far, far on this road – terrifyingly far! Just as they make the stage as narrow as possible and forbid themselves all effects through deep backgrounds; just as they make facial expressions and easy movement impossible for the actor and transform him into a solemn, stiff, masked puppet, so they also have deprived passion itself of any deep background and dictated to it a law of beautiful speech; yes, on the whole they have done everything to counteract the elemental effect of images that arouse fear and compassion – for fear and compassion were precisely what they did not want. With all due respect to Aristotle, he certainly didn’t hit the nail, let alone on the head, when he discussed the final purpose of Greek tragedy.11 Just consider the Greek tragic poets and what most stimulated their industriousness, their sensitivity, their competitiveness – certainly not the aim of overwhelming the spectator with emotions. The Athenian went to the theatre to hear pleasing speech! Pleasing speeches were what preoccupied Sophocles12 – pardon the heresy! It is quite different with serious opera. All of its masters try to keep the audience from understanding the characters. Occasionally catching a word might help the inattentive listener, but on the whole the situation must explain itself – the speeches don’t matter! This is how they all think and have pulled their pranks with words. Maybe they only lacked the courage to express fully their ultimate disregard for words: with just a little more impudence, Rossini13 would have had everyone sing nothing but la-la-la-la – and that would have made good sense. One shouldn’t believe the words of characters in opera, but rather their sound! That is the difference, that is the beautiful unnaturalness for the sake of which one goes to the opera. Even the recitativo secco14 is not really meant to be heard as word and text: this kind of half-music is rather supposed initially to give the musical ear a short rest (rest from the melody as the most sublime and therefore also the most challenging pleasure of this art) – but very soon also something else, namely, a growing impatience, a growing aversion, a new desire for whole music, for melody. How are things with Richard Wagner’s art,15 considered from this perspective? Is it the same, perhaps? Perhaps different? Often it has seemed to me as if one had to memorize the words and music of his creations before the performance, for otherwise – so it appeared to me – one would hear neither the words nor even the music.