Part 56

The idealisation of the great criminal (the feeling for his greatness) is Greek; the depreciation, the slander, the contempt of the sinner, is Judæo-Christian.

846.

Romanticism and its opposite. In regard to all æsthetic values I now avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every individual case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been creative here? At first another distinction might perhaps seem preferable, it is far more obvious,--e.g. the distinction which decides whether a desire for stability, for eternity, for Being, or whether a desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, has been the cause of creation. But both kinds of desire, when examined more closely, prove to be ambiguous, and really susceptible of interpretation only according to that scheme already mentioned and which I think is rightly preferred.

The desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, may be the expression of an overflowing power pregnant with promises for the future (my term for this, as is well known, is Dionysian); it may, however, also be the hate of the ill-constituted, of the needy and of the physiologically botched, that destroys, and must destroy, because such creatures are indignant at, and annoyed by everything lasting and stable.

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.

Concerning the future. Against the romanticism of great passion.--We must understand how a certain modicum of coldness, lucidity, and hardness is inseparable from all classical taste: above all consistency, happy intellectuality, "the three unities," concentration, hatred of all feeling, of all sentimentality, of all esprit, hatred of all multiformity, of all uncertainty, evasiveness, and of all nebulosity, as also of all brevity, finicking, prettiness and good nature. Artistic formulæ must not be played with: life must be remodelled so that it should be forced to formulate itself accordingly.

It is really an exhilarating spectacle which we have only learned to laugh at quite recently, because we have only seen through it quite recently: this spectacle of Herder's, Winckelmann's, Goethe's, and Hegel's contemporaries claiming that they had rediscovered the classical ideal ... and at the same time, Shakespeare! And this same crew of men had scurvily repudiated all relationship with the classical school of France! As if the essential principle could not have been learnt as well here as elsewhere! ... But what people wanted was "nature," and "naturalness": Oh, the stupidity of it! It was thought that classicism was a kind of naturalness!

Without either prejudice or indulgence we should try and investigate upon what soil a classical taste can be evolved. The hardening, the simplification, the strengthening, and the bedevilling of man are inseparable from classical taste. Logical and psychological simplification. A contempt of detail, of complexity, of obscurity.

The romanticists of Germany do not protest against classicism, but against reason, against illumination, against taste, against the eighteenth century.

The essence of romantico-Wagnerian music is the opposite of the classical spirit.

The will to unity (because unity tyrannises. e.g. the listener and the spectator), but the artist's inability to tyrannise over himself where it is most needed--that is to say, in regard to the work itself (in regard to knowing what to leave out, what to shorten, what to clarify, what to simplify). The overwhelming by means of masses (Wagner, Victor Hugo, Zola, Taine).

850.

The Nihilism of artists.--Nature is cruel in her cheerfulness; cynical in her sunrises. We are hostile to emotions. We flee thither where Nature moves our senses and our imagination, where we have nothing to love, where we are not reminded of the moral semblances and delicacies of this northern nature; and the same applies to the arts. We prefer that which no longer reminds us of good and evil. Our moral sensibility and tenderness seem to be relieved in the heart of terrible and happy Nature, in the fatalism of the senses and forces. Life without goodness.

Great well-being arises from contemplating Nature's indifference to good and evil.

No justice in history, no goodness in Nature. That is why the pessimist when he is an artist prefers those historical subjects where the absence of justice reveals itself with magnificent simplicity, where perfection actually comes to expression--and likewise he prefers that in Nature, where her callous evil character is not hypocritically concealed, where that character is seen in perfection.... The Nihilistic artist betrays himself in willing and preferring cynical history and cynical Nature.

851.

What is tragic?--Again and again I have pointed to the great misunderstanding of Aristotle in maintaining that the tragic emotions were the two depressing emotions--fear and pity. Had he been right, tragedy would be an art unfriendly to life: it would have been necessary to caution people against it as against something generally harmful and suspicious. Art, otherwise the great stimulus of life, the great intoxicant of life, the great will to life, here became a tool of decadence, the hand-maiden of pessimism and ill-health (for to suppose, as Aristotle supposed, that by exciting these emotions we thereby purged people of them, is simply an error). Something which habitually excites fear or pity, disorganises, weakens, and discourages: and supposing Schopenhauer were right in thinking that tragedy taught resignation (i.e. a meek renunciation of happiness, hope, and of the will to live), this would presuppose an art in which art itself was denied. Tragedy would then constitute a process of dissolution; the instinct of life would destroy itself in the instinct of art. Christianity, Nihilism, tragic art, physiological decadence; these things would then be linked, they would then preponderate together and assist each other onwards--downwards.... Tragedy would thus be a symptom of decline.

This theory may be refuted in the most cold-blooded way, namely, by measuring the effect of a tragic emotion by means of a dynamometer The result would be a fact which only the bottomless falsity of a doctrinaire could misunderstand: that tragedy is a tonic. If Schopenhauer refuses to see the truth here, if he regards general depression as a tragic condition, if he would have informed the Greeks (who to his disgust were not "resigned") that they did not firmly possess the highest principles of life: it is only owing to his parti pris, to the need of consistency in his system, to the dishonesty of the doctrinaire--that dreadful dishonesty which step for step corrupted the whole psychology of Schopenhauer (he who had arbitrarily and almost violently misunderstood genius, art itself, morality, pagan religion, beauty, knowledge, and almost everything).

852.

The tragic artist.--Whether, and in regard to what, the judgment "beautiful" is established is a question of an individual's or of a people's strength The feeling of plenitude, of overflowing strength (which gaily and courageously meets many an obstacle before which the weakling shudders)--the feeling of power utters the judgment "beautiful" concerning things and conditions which the instinct of impotence can only value as hateful and ugly. The flair which enables us to decide whether the objects we encounter are dangerous, problematic, or alluring, likewise determines our æsthetic Yea. ("This is beautiful," is an affirmation).

From this we see that, generally speaking, a preference for questionable and terrible things is a symptom of strength; whereas the taste for pretty and charming trifles is characteristic of the weak and the delicate. The love of tragedy is typical of strong ages and characters: its non plus ultra is perhaps the Divina Commedia. It is the heroic spirits which in tragic cruelty say Yea unto themselves: they are hard enough to feel pain as a pleasure.

On the other hand, supposing weaklings desire to get pleasure from an art which was not designed for them, what interpretation must we suppose they would like to give tragedy in order to make it suit their taste? They would interpret their own feeling of value into it: e.g. the "triumph of the moral order of things," or the teaching of the "uselessness of existence," or the incitement to "resignation" (or also half-medicinal and half-moral outpourings, à la Aristotle). Finally, the art of terrible natures, in so far as it may excite the nerves, may be regarded by the weak and exhausted as a stimulus: this is now taking place, for instance, in the case of the admiration meted out to Wagner's art. A test of man's well-being and consciousness of power is the extent to which he can acknowledge the terrible and questionable character of things, and whether he is in any need of a faith at the end.