Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely on that account—_artists_? SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE’S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH WAGNER. (_Summer 1878._) 1. My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thoroughly repelled me. 2. I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied with the decorations, the scenery and the mechanical contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much industry and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining the imagination to matters which did not belie their _epic_ origin. But as to the naturalism of the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the orchestra!! What affected, artificial and depraved tones, what a distortion of nature, were we made to hear! 3. We are witnessing the death agony of the _last Art_: Bayreuth has convinced me of this. 4. My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed him; I had depicted an _ideal monster_—one, however, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling the enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was only like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving which was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives, received an extraordinary impetus from this humiliating experience. 5. This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good deal even struck me with sudden fear. At last I felt, however, that if only I could be strong enough to take sides against myself and what I most loved I would find the road to truth and get solace and encouragement from it—and in this way I became filled with a sensation of joy far greater than that upon which I was now voluntarily turning my back. 6. I was in love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of existence saw nothing else than art—and this at an age when, reasonably enough, quite different passions usually possess the soul. 7. _Goethe_ said: “The yearning spirit within me, which in earlier years I may perhaps have fostered too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried my utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to more complete freedom.” Conclusion?—I have had to do the same. 8. He who wakes us always wounds us. 9. I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and what is still worse, I have not even the vanity to try to appear as if I did. 10. He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond the vision and the experience of his acquaintances,—provokes envy and hatred masked as pity,—prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease, seduction. Long faces. 11. I frankly confess that I had hoped that by means of art the Germans would become thoroughly disgusted with _decaying Christianity_—I regarded German mythology as a solvent, as a means of accustoming people to polytheism.