Part 52

One must first imagine this condition as one in which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of ridding one's self of the ecstasy of a state of tension, by all kinds of muscular work and movement; also as an involuntary co-ordination of these movements with inner processes (images, thoughts, desires)--as a kind of automatism of the whole muscular system under the compulsion of strong stimuli acting from within; the inability to resist reaction; the apparatus of resistance is also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling, thought, emotion) is accompanied by vascular changes, and consequently by changes in colour, temperature, and secretion. The suggestive power of music, its "suggestion mentale."

(3) The compulsion to imitate: extreme irritability, by means of which a certain example becomes contagious--a condition is guessed and represented merely by means of a few signs.... A complete picture is visualised by one's inner consciousness, and its effect soon shows itself in the movement of the limbs,--in a certain suspension of the will (Schopenhauer!!!!). A sort of blindness and deafness towards the external world,--the realm of admitted stimuli is sharply defined.

This differentiates the artist from the layman (from the spectator of art): the latter reaches the height of his excitement in the mere act of apprehending: the former in giving--and in such a way that the antagonism between these two gifts is not only natural but even desirable. Each of these states has an opposite standpoint--to demand of the artist that he should have the point of view of the spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking him to impoverish his creative power.... In this respect the same difference holds good as that which exists between the sexes: one should not ask the artist who gives to become a woman--to "receive."

Our æsthetics have hitherto been women's æsthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking ... i.e. as we have already suggested, a necessary fault: for the artist who would begin to understand himself would therewith begin to mistake himself--he must not look backwards, he must not look at all; he must give.--It is an honour for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can criticise he is mediocre, he is modern.

812.

Here I lay down a series of psychological states as signs of flourishing and complete life, which to-day we are in the habit of regarding as morbid. But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as opposites: the question is one of degree, what I maintain on this point is that what people call healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that which under favourable circumstances actually would be healthy--that we are relatively sick....

The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural in him. But people object to this that it is precisely the impoverishment of the machine which renders this extraordinary power of comprehending every kind of suggestion possible: e.g. our hysterical females.

An overflow of spunk and energy may quite as well lead to symptoms of partial constraint, sense hallucinations, peripheral sensitiveness, as a poor vitality does--the stimuli are differently determined, the effect is the same.... What is not the same is above all the ultimate result; the extreme torpidity of all morbid natures, after their nervous eccentricities, has nothing in common with the states of the artist, who need in no wise repent his best moments.... He is rich enough for it all: he can squander without becoming poor.

Just as we now feel justified in judging genius as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the same of artistic suggestive power,--and our artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely related to hysterical females!!! This, however, is only an argument against the present day, and not against artists in general.

The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection suspension of the will ... (Schopenhauer's scandalous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as a mere bridge to the denial of life)... The inartistic states are: those which impoverish, which subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers--the Christian.

813.

The modern artist who, in his physiology, is next of kin to the hysteric, may also be classified as a character belonging to this state of morbidness. The hysteric is false,--he lies from the love of lying, he is admirable in all the arts of dissimulation,--unless his morbid vanity hood-wink him. This vanity is like a perpetual fever which is in need of stupefying drugs, and which recoils from no self-deception and no farce that promises it the most fleeting satisfaction. (The incapacity for pride and the need of continual revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempt, this is almost the definition of this man's vanity.)

The absurd irritability of his system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences, and sees dramatic elements in the most insignificant occurrences of life, deprives him of all calm reflection; he ceases from being a personality, at most he is a rendezvous of personalities of which first one and then the other asserts itself with barefaced assurance. Precisely on this account he is great as an actor i all these poor will-less people, whom doctors study so profoundly, astound one through their virtuosity in mimicking, in transfiguration, in their assumption of almost any character required.

814.

Artists are not men of great passion, despite all their assertions to the contrary both to themselves and to others. And for the following two reasons: they lack all shyness towards themselves (they watch themselves live, they spy upon themselves, they are much too inquisitive), and they also lack shyness in the presence of passion (as artists they exploit it). Secondly, however, that vampire, their talent, generally forbids them such an expenditure of energy as passion demands.--A man, who has a talent is sacrificed to that talent; he lives under the vampirism of his talent.

A man does not get rid of his passion by reproducing it, but rather he is rid of it if he is able to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but it seems as though he deliberately misunderstood himself here--from a sense of delicacy.)

815.

Concerning a reasonable mode of life.--.Relative, chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in regard to erotica, even in thought, may be a reasonable mode of life even in richly equipped and perfect natures. But this principle applies more particularly to artists; it belongs to the best wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices have already been raised in favour of this view, e.g. Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man, generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule he is in the power of his work, of his will to mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste man. His dominating instinct will have him so: it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly. It is one and the same form of strength which is spent in artistic conception and in the sexual act: there is only one form of strength. The artist who yields in this respect, and who spends himself, is betrayed: by so doing he reveals his lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It may be a sign of decadence,--in any case it reduces the value of his art to an incalculable degree.

816.

Compared with the artist, the scientific man, regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness, and will-power). To what extent can falsity and indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of youth, of childishness, in the artist? ... Their habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their ignorance of themselves, their indifference to "eternal values," their seriousness in play, their lack of dignity; clowns and gods in one; the saint and the rabble.... Imitation as an imperious instinct.--Do not artists of ascending life and artists of degeneration belong to all phases? ... Yes!

817.

Would any link be missing in the whole chain of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the exception--it proves the rule--that woman is capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork--in short, in everything which is not a craft; and just precisely because in the things mentioned woman perfects herself, because in them she obeys the only artistic impulse in her nature,--which is to captivate.... But what has woman to do with the passionate indifference of the genuine artist who sees more importance in a breath, in a sound, in the merest trifle, than in himself?--who with all his five fingers gropes for his most secret and hidden treasures?--who attributes no value to anything unless it knows how to take shape (unless it surrenders itself, unless it visualises itself in some way). Art as it is practised by artists--do you not understand what it is? is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs? ... Only in this century has woman dared to try her hand at literature ("Vers la canaille plumière écrivassière," to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now writes, she now paints, she is losing her instincts. And to what purpose, if one may put such a question?

818.

A man is an artist to the extent to which he regards everything that inartistic people call "form" as the actual substance, as the "principal" thing. With such ideas a man certainly belongs to a world upside down: for henceforward substance seems to him something merely formal,--his own life included.

819.

A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is characteristic of modernity), in that which is not general, runs counter to the instinct which finds its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical: like Greek taste in its best period. In this there is an overcoming of the plenitude of life; restraint dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is slow to move and which feels a certain repugnance towards excessive activity is defeated. The general rule, the law, is honoured and made prominent, conversely, the exception is laid aside, and shades are suppressed. All that which is firm, mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful basis, concealing its strength this pleases: i.e. it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.

820.

In the main I am much more in favour of artists than any philosopher that has appeared hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose sight of the great course which life pursues; they loved the things "of this world,"--they loved their senses. To strive after "spirituality," in cases where this is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a cure, I wish myself, and all those who live without the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and who are able to live in this way, an ever greater spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses. Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that account offer them the best we have in the way of spirit. What do we care about priestly and metaphysical anathemas upon the senses? We no longer require to treat them in this way: it is a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness to the "things of this world"--in this way he holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind, which is that man becomes the glorifying power of existence when he learns to glorify himself.