The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV
Nietzsche · en
The act of immortalising can, on the other hand, be the outcome
of gratitude and love: an art which has this origin is always an
apotheosis art; dithyrambic, as perhaps with Rubens, happy, as perhaps
with Hafiz; bright and gracious, and shedding a ray of glory over all
things, as in Goethe. But it may also, however, be the outcome of the
tyrannical will of the great sufferer who would make the most personal,
individual, and narrow trait about him, the actual idiosyncrasy of his
pain--in fact, into a binding law and imposition, and who thus wreaks
his revenge upon all things by stamping, branding, and violating them
with the image of his torment. The latter case is romantic pessimism
in its highest form, whether this be Schopenhauerian voluntarism or
Wagnerian music.
847.
It is a question whether the antithesis, classic and romantic, does not
conceal that other antithesis, the active and the reactive.
848.
In order to be a classic, one must be possessed of all the strong and
apparently contradictory gifts and passions: but in such a way that
they run in harness together, and culminate simultaneously in elevating
a certain species of literature or art or politics to its height and
zenith (they must not do this after that elevation has taken place
...). They must reflect the complete state (either of a people or of
a culture), and express its most profound and most secret nature,
at a time when it is still stable and not yet discoloured by the
imitation of foreign things (or when it is still dependent ...); not
a reactive but a deliberate and progressive spirit, saying Yea in all
circumstances, even in its hate.
"And does not the highest personal value belong thereto?" It is worth
considering whether moral prejudices do not perhaps exercise their
influence here, and whether great moral loftiness is not perhaps a
contradiction of the classical? ... Whether the moral monsters must
not necessarily be romantic in word and deed? Any such preponderance
of one virtue over others (as in the case of the moral monster) is
precisely what with most hostility counteracts the classical power in
equilibrium, supposing a people manifested this moral loftiness and
were classical notwithstanding, we should have to conclude boldly that
they were also on the same high level in immorality! this was perhaps
the case with Shakespeare (provided that he was really Lord Bacon).
849.