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Course of Study: Extract Title: Title Author: Publication year, Volume, Issue: Pages to/From: Source Title: ISBN/ISSN: than Wagner he can find is the unspeakable Bernhard Forster, Nietzsche's brother­ Nietzsche's critique of Wagner in-law.3 Hostility would not be so bad, however, were it not so frequently combined Introduction with breathtaking ignorance. Kaufmann mentions Wagner because he cannot avoid doing so, but he clearly has no sympathy for, or even interest in, the composer. And It is not only for Nietzschethatthere has beena Wagner" case": WilhelmFurtwangler, sweeping statements such as "evidently" Nietzsche's mind was "basically of the hardly an anti-Wagnerian, wrote an essay in 1941 entitled "Der Fall Wagner, frei utmost simplicity where music was concerned" are typical of much of the "literature" nach Nietzsche".1 And for anyone who cares to think about such matters, there is concerning Wagner and Nietzsche.4 There do exist honourable exceptions, notably, something of a "case" to answer, whether of rabid devotion, even dependence, or Thomas Mann.5 But the trinity of "cases" confronting us does perhaps justify some of virulent hatred. It is a "case" that existed before Nietzsche had put pen to paper further enq1Jiry into the content of Nietzsche's critique of Wagner and further on the subject: the 1850s witnessed a great polarisation between Wagner's most attempts at explanation. Separation of the two areas is, admittedly, somewhat devoted disciples, the so-called Zukunftsmusiker, and his aesthetic - and often arbitrary and is unsustainable in any strict sense, but will at least be attempted for personal - enemies, immortalised by his caricature of Eduard Hanslick, the the sake of analysis. Viennese music critic, as Beckrnesser in Die Meistersinger. That said, it does seem to be to Nietzsche that one must - or at least can - turn for most of the serious reservations to be expressed about Wagner's work. Wagner's erstwhile disciple Part One: The Case of Wagner must surely be accounted his most dangerous opponent. The problem is, however, that there are at least two other"cases" to consider Knowing where to start is never easy in any exegesis, nowhere more so than with when examining Nietzsche's critique of Wagner. First, there is that very conversion so "unsystematic" a thinker as Nietzsche. None the less, there seem to be few more to which we have just alluded. It could plausibly be argued that, as in so much of his suitable candidates than what he saw - and, probably, most of us still do - as work, Nietzsche is really addressing the "Case of Nietzsche". Certainly, as will be Wagner's Romanticism. The sacralisation of art lay at the heart of the Romantic seen, Wagner's position was much more constant than that of his antagonist. This movement; art became a supplement to, even a substitute for, religion, with the might easily lead one to suspect that the" Case of Wagner", or at leas tits Nie tzschean creative artist as its high priest. And in Nietzsche's first true offensive against variety, has as much to do with Nietzsche's undeniably changing circumstances and Wagner, Human, All Too Human, it is the"artist", anonymous but clearly identifiable, opinions as with any constructive-or even destructive-critique of Wagner. Such who comes in for some of his most savage criticism. Whereas in the fourth (and a conclusion would, however, be misguided. It is hoped that this essay will perhaps worst) of his Untimely Meditation s, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, he had demonstrate that the existence of the Case of Nietzsche does not invalidate his own written of the evolution "at last [of] the greatest sorcerer and benefactor of mortals, Case of Wagner. And even if it did, it ought surely to be of interest to the Nietzsche the dithyrambic dramatist [Wagner]",6 Nietzsche now saw Wagner's art not as scholar. Dionysian but as quintessentially Romantic. The 1886 Preface to Human , All Too The second, rather more serious, problem is what we might call the "Case of Human spells this out quite clearly. By this time he is far less loath to utter the name Wagner-and-Nietzsche". A commentator on one figure can hardly avoid mentioning he had previously not dared speak, and writes: "I deceived myself over Richard 7 the other-though some give it a pretty good shot. Most writers do, however, tend Wagner's incurable romanticism." to be violently partisan on the subject. Take, for example, Ernest Newman in his This expresses itself in a number of ways, first of all in the musical qualities of four-volume biography of Wagner (this passage was, admittedly, written during Wagner's art. Wagner, like so many artists, does not know what he can do best. So the Second World War): whilst "his character prefers large walls and audacious frescoes" (just like so many Romantics), his "real masterpieces" are those of the moment, "very short, often only As for the relative values of a system of "virile" German real-politics and an art that helps us to tum our back for a few hours on disgusting reality, the spectacle of the world during the last few years is perhaps sufficient comment on that matter. Even some Germans[!] may 3. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th edn (Princeton possibly be reflecting by now that they might have been happier under a Wagnerian 1974), 41. philosophy of "world-redeeming love" than under one of "power". Could fifty Wagners 4. Newman, Life of Wagner (note 2), IV,539. have led the nation into worse disasters than one Nietzsche has done?2 5. See Thomas Mann, Wagn er und unsere Zeit: Aufsiitze, Betrachtungen, Briefe, ed. Erika Mann (Frankfurt am Main 1963), 63-121; trans. by Allan Blunden as "The Sorrows and Grandeur of To this, Walter Kaufmann retorts, "Hitler, of course, knew fifty ti.mes as much Richard Wagner", Thom as Mann: Pro and Co ntra Wagner (London 1985), 91-148. about Wagner as he did about Nietzsche," and the only more "typical proto-Nazi" 6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Siimtlicl1e Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einze/biinden, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich and Berlin 1988), 1,472; trans. by RJ Hollingdale 1. Wilhelm Furtwangler, Ton und Wort: Aufsiitze und Vortriige 1918 bis 1954 (Wiesbaden as Untimely Meditations (Cambridge 1983), 226 (IV:7). 1966), 121-70. 7. Nietzsche, Siimtliche Werke, Il,14; trans. by R J Hollingdale as Human, All Too Human 2. Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (Cambridge 1976), IV,529-30. (Cambridge 1996), 6 (I Preface 1). -~R- one beat long" - rather like Webern, one might say.8 In a passage presaging so furnish enjoyment! We are lost, if people again think of art as hedonistic. That belongs many misunderstandings ofleitmotif technique, Nietzsche condemns" our greatest to the bad eighteenth century!" Spoken like a true members of Les Six, one mightsay. miniaturist in music" for his pathetic, confused attempts at developing his "little And his celebrated opposition of Carmen to such Romantic morbidity leads him to unities". The gargantuan Romantic in Wagner compels the composer to put proclaim, "11 faut mediterraniser la musique."15 Aesthetics as physiology attacks together things which do not grow out of one another.9 Wagner's endless melody (again echoes of Hanslick), endless melody which leads If there remains some equivocation here, matters take a turn for the worse one down to the sea - presumably not to the Mediterranean - and renders one's when it comes to the "profundity" of Wagner's music. The Greeks "were superficial footing so insecure that one must surrender to the elements without reservation: -out of profundity," whereas Wagner's brand of profundity is to have Wotan saved "one must swim", no longer dance. 16 by a free spirit and immoralist, a "profundity" Nietzsche claims to take great care We have already mentioned the role of the genius as high priest of Romantic not to understand.10 In other words, it is the "profundity" of ideas; the music is culture.