Thoughts out of Season, Part I: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Thoughts out of Season, Part I: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Strauss, David Friedrich, 1808-1874; Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883
is his gratitude. It is, in short, the recognition of the fact that
the two sides of his nature remained faithful to each other, that out
of free and unselfish love, the creative, ingenuous, and brilliant
side kept loyally abreast of the dark, the intractable, and the
tyrannical side.
III.
The relation of the two constituent forces to each other, and the
yielding of the one to the other, was the great requisite by which
alone he could remain wholly and truly himself. At the same time, this
was the only thing he could not control, and over which he could only
keep a watch, while the temptations to infidelity and its threatening
dangers beset him more and more. The uncertainty derived therefrom is
an overflowing source of suffering for those in process of
development. Each of his instincts made constant efforts to attain to
unmeasured heights, and each of the capacities he possessed for
enjoying life seemed to long to tear itself away from its companions
in order to seek satisfaction alone; the greater their exuberance the
more terrific was the tumult, and the more bitter the competition
between them. In addition, accident and life fired the desire for
power and splendour in him; but he was more often tormented by the
cruel necessity of having to live at all, while all around him lay
obstacles and snares. How is it possible for any one to remain
faithful here, to be completely steadfast? This doubt often depressed
him, and he expresses it, as an artist expressed his doubt, in
artistic forms. Elizabeth, for instance, can only suffer, pray, and
die; she saves the fickle and intemperate man by her loyalty, though
not for this life. In the path of every true artist, whose lot is cast
in these modern days, despair and danger are strewn. He has many means
whereby he can attain to honour and might; peace and plenty
persistently offer themselves to him, but only in that form recognised
by the modern man, which to the straightforward artist is no better
than choke-damp. In this temptation, and in the act of resisting it,
lie the dangers that threaten him--dangers arising from his disgust at
the means modernity offers him of acquiring pleasure and esteem, and
from the indignation provoked by the selfish ease of modern society.
Imagine Wagner's filling an official position, as for instance that of
bandmaster at public and court theatres, both of which positions he
has held: think how he, a serious artist, must have struggled in order
to enforce seriousness in those very places which, to meet the demands
of modern conventions, are designed with almost systematic frivolity
to appeal only to the frivolous. Think how he must have partially
succeeded, though only to fail on the whole. How constantly disgust
must have been at his heels despite his repeated attempts to flee it,
how he failed to find the haven to which he might have repaired, and
how he had ever to return to the Bohemians and outlaws of our society,
as one of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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