Let anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche’s life and theory. Let anyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in his _Ecce Homo_, but as we find it related by all his biographers, friends and foes alike, and what will be the result? Even if we ignore his works—the blooms which blowed from time to time from his life—we absolutely cannot deny the greatness of the man’s _private practice_, and if we fully understand and appreciate the latter, we must be singularly deficient in instinct and in _flair_ if we do not suspect that some of this greatness is reflected in his life-task. ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI London, _July 1911_. THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM A LETTER FROM TURIN, MAY 1888 “RIDENDO DICERE SEVERUM.…” Preface I am writing this to relieve my mind. It is not malice alone which makes me praise Bizet at the expense of Wagner in this essay. Amid a good deal of jesting I wish to make one point clear which does not admit of levity. To turn my back on Wagner was for me a piece of fate, to get to like anything else whatever afterwards was for me a triumph. Nobody, perhaps, had ever been more dangerously involved in Wagnerism, nobody had defended himself more obstinately against it, nobody had ever been so overjoyed at ridding himself of it. A long history!—Shall I give it a name?—If I were a moralist, who knows what I might not call it! Perhaps a piece of _self-mastery_.—But the philosopher does not like the moralist, neither does he like high-falutin’ words.… What is the first and last thing that a philosopher demands of himself? To overcome his age in himself, to become “timeless.” With what then does the philosopher have the greatest fight? With all that in him which makes him the child of his time. Very well then! I am just as much a child of my age as Wagner—_i.e._, I am a decadent. The only difference is that I recognised the fact, that I struggled against it. The philosopher in me struggled against it.