day; the leisure of a god on the banks of the Po.[2] On the same day, I wrote the Preface to _The Twilight of the Idols,_ the correction of the proofs of which provided me with recreation during the month of September. Never in my life have I experienced such an autumn; nor had I ever imagined that such things were possible on earth--a Claude Lorrain extended to infinity, each day equal to the last in its wild perfection. [Footnote 1: A witty reference to Goethe's well-known passage in the Prologue to _Faust_:-- "A good man, though in darkness and dismay, May still be conscious of the proper way." The words are spoken by the Lord.--TR. ] [Footnote 2: There is a wonderful promenade along the banks of the Po, for which Turin is famous, and of which Nietzsche was particularly fond.--TR.] "THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN'S PROBLEM" 1 In order to do justice to this essay a man ought to suffer from the fate of music as from an open wound.--From what do I suffer when I suffer from the fate of music? From the fact that music has lost its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character--that it is decadent music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Supposing, however, that the fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike bound up with it; then he will find this pamphlet comparatively mild and full of consideration. To be cheerful in such circumstances, and laugh good-naturedly with others at one's self,--_ridendodicere severum_[1] when the _verum dicere_ would justify every sort of hardness,--is humanity itself. Who doubts that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be able if I liked to point my _heavy_ guns at Wagner?--Everything decisive in this question I kept to myself--I have loved Wagner.--After all, an attack upon a more than usually subtle "unknown person" whom another would not have divined so easily, lies in the meaning and path of my life-task. Oh, I have still quite a number of other "unknown persons" to unmask besides a Cagliostro of Music! Above all, I have to direct an attack against the German people, who, in matters of the spirit, grow every day more indolent, poorer in instincts, and more _honest_ who, with an appetite for which they are to be envied, continue to diet themselves on contradictions, and gulp down "Faith" in company with science, Christian love together with anti-Semitism, and the will to power (to the "Empire"), dished up with the gospel of the humble, without showing the slightest signs of indigestion. Fancy this absence of party-feeling in the presence of opposites! Fancy this gastric neutrality and "disinterestedness"! Behold this sense of justice in the German palate, which can grant equal rights to all,--which finds everything tasteful! Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans are idealists. When I was last in Germany, I found German taste striving to grant Wagner and the _Trumpeter of Sakkingen_[2] equal rights; while I myself witnessed