The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"): Complete Works, Volume TenNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"): Complete Works, Volume Ten
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Philosophy
85.
_The Good and the Beautiful._--Artists, glorify continually--they do
nothing else,--and indeed they glorify all those conditions and things
that have a reputation, so that man may feel himself good or great, or
intoxicated, or merry, or pleased and wise by it. Those _select_ things
and conditions whose value for human _happiness_ is regarded as secure
and determined, are the objects of artists: they are ever lying in wait
to discover such things, to transfer them into the domain of art. I
mean to say that they are not themselves the valuers of happiness and
of the happy ones, but they always press close to these valuers with
the greatest curiosity and longing, in order immediately to use their
valuations advantageously. As besides their impatience, they have also
the big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, they are generally
always among the first to glorify the _new_ excellency, and often
_seem_ to be the first who have called it good and valued it as good.
This, however, as we have said, is an error; they are only faster and
louder than the actual valuers:--And who then are these?--They are the
rich and the leisurely.
86.
_The Theatre.--_This day has given me once more strong and elevated
sentiments, and if I could have music and art in the evening, I know
well what music and art I should _not_ like to have; namely, none of
that which would fain intoxicate its hearers and _excite_ them to a
crisis of strong and high feeling,--those men with commonplace souls,
who in the evening are not like victors on triumphal cars, but like
tired mules to whom life has rather too often applied the whip. What
would those men at all know of "higher moods," unless there were
expedients for causing ecstasy and idealistic strokes of the whip!--and
thus they have their inspirers as they have their wines. But what is
their drink and their drunkenness to _me!_ Does the inspired one need
wine? He rather looks with a kind of disgust at the agency and the
agent which are here intended to produce an effect without sufficient
reason,--an imitation of the high tide of the soul! What? One gives
the mole wings and proud fancies--before going to sleep, before he
creeps into his hole? One sends him into the theatre and puts great
magnifying-glasses to his blind and tired eyes? Men, whose life is
not "action" but business, sit in front of the stage and look at
strange beings to whom life is more than business? "This is proper,"
you say, "this is entertaining, this is what culture wants!"--Well
then! culture is too often lacking in me, for this sight is too often
disgusting to me. He who has enough of tragedy and comedy in himself
surely prefers to remain away from the theatre; or as an exception,
the whole procedure--theatre and public and poet included--becomes for
him a truly tragic and comic play, so that the performed piece counts
for little in comparison. He who is something like Faust and Manfred,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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