The Case of Wagner
Original German
Ein Musikanten-Problem.
1 Um dieser Schrift gerecht zu werden, muß man am Schicksal der Musik wie an einer offnen Wunde leiden. — Woran ich leide, wenn ich am Schicksal der Musik leide? Daran, daß die Musik um ihren weltverklärenden, jasagenden Charakter gebracht worden ist, — daß sie décadence-Musik und nicht mehr die Flöte des Dionysos ist... Gesetzt aber, daß man dergestalt die Sache der Musik wie seine eigene Sache, wie seine eigene Leidensgeschichte fühlt, so wird man diese Schrift voller Rücksichten und über die Maaßen mild finden. In solchen Fällen heiter sein und sich gutmüthig mit verspotten — ridendo dicere severum, wo das verum dicere jede Härte rechtfertigen würde — ist die Humanität selbst. Wer zweifelt eigentlich daran, daß ich, als der alte Artillerist, der ich bin, es in der Hand habe, gegen Wagner mein schweres Geschütz aufzufahren? — Ich hielt alles Entscheidende in dieser Sache bei mir zurück, — ich habe Wagner geliebt. — Zuletzt liegt ein Angriff auf einen feineren „Unbekannten“, den nicht leicht ein Anderer erräth, im Sinn und Wege meiner Aufgabe — oh ich habe noch ganz andre „Unbekannte“ aufzudecken, als einen Cagliostro der Musik — noch mehr freilich ein Angriff auf die in geistigen Dingen immer träger und instinktärmer, immer ehrlicher werdende deutsche Nation, die mit einem beneidenswerthen Appetit fortfährt, sich von Gegensätzen zu nähren und „den Glauben“ so gut wie die Wissenschaftlichkeit, die „christliche Liebe“ so gut wie den Antisemitismus, den Willen zur Macht (zum „Reich“) so gut wie das évangile des humbles ohne Verdauungsbeschwerden hinunterschluckt... Dieser Mangel an Partei zwischen Gegensätzen! Diese stomachische Neutralität und „Selbstlosigkeit“! Dieser gerechte Sinn des deutschen Gaumens, der Allem gleiche Rechte giebt, — der Alles schmackhaft findet... Ohne allen Zweifel, die Deutschen sind Idealisten... Als ich das letzte Mal Deutschland besuchte, fand ich den deutschen Geschmack bemüht, Wagnern und dem Trompeter von Säkkingen gleiche Rechte zuzugestehn; ich selber war Zeuge, wie man in Leipzig, zu Ehren eines der echtesten und deutschesten Musiker im alten Sinne des Wortes deutsch, keines bloßen Reichsdeutschen, des Meister Heinrich Schütz einen Liszt-Verein gründete, mit dem Zweck der Pflege und Verbreitung listiger Kirchenmusik... Ohne allen Zweifel, die Deutschen sind Idealisten...
2 Aber hier soll mich Nichts hindern, grob zu werden und den Deutschen ein paar harte Wahrheiten zu sagen: wer thut es sonst? — Ich rede von ihrer Unzucht in historicis. Nicht nur, daß den deutschen Historikern der große Blick für den Gang, für die Werthe der Cultur gänzlich abhanden gekommen ist, daß sie allesammt Hanswürste der Politik (oder der Kirche —) sind: dieser große Blick ist selbst von ihnen in Acht gethan. Man muß vorerst „deutsch“ sein, „Rasse“ sein, dann kann man über alle Werthe und Unwerthe in historicis entscheiden — man setzt sie fest... „Deutsch“ ist ein Argument, „Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles“ ein Princip, die Germanen sind die „sittliche Weltordnung“ in der Geschichte; im Verhältniß zum imperium romanum die Träger der Freiheit, im Verhältniß zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert die Wiederhersteller der Moral, des „kategorischen Imperativs“... Es giebt eine reichsdeutsche Geschichtsschreibung, es giebt, fürchte ich, selbst eine antisemitische, — es giebt eine Hof-Geschichtsschreibung und Herr von Treitschke schämt sich nicht... Jüngst machte ein Idioten-Urtheil in historicis, ein Satz des zum Glück verblichenen ästhetischen Schwaben Vischer, die Runde durch die deutschen Zeitungen als eine „Wahrheit“, zu der jeder Deutsche Ja sagen müsse: „Die Renaissance und die Reformation, Beide zusammen machen erst ein Ganzes — die ästhetische Wiedergeburt und die sittliche Wiedergeburt.“ — Bei solchen Sätzen geht es mit meiner Geduld zu Ende, und ich spüre Lust, ich fühle es selbst als Pflicht, den Deutschen einmal zu sagen, was sie Alles schon auf dem Gewissen haben. Alle großen Cultur-Verbrechen von vier Jahrhunderten haben sie auf dem Gewissen!... Und immer aus dem gleichen Grunde, aus ihrer innerlichsten Feigheit vor der Realität, die auch die Feigheit vor der Wahrheit ist, aus ihrer bei ihnen Instinkt gewordenen Unwahrhaftigkeit, aus „Idealismus“... Die Deutschen haben Europa um die Ernte, um den Sinn der letzten großen Zeit, der Renaissance-Zeit, gebracht, in einem Augenblicke, wo eine höhere Ordnung der Werthe, wo die vornehmen, die zum Leben jasagenden, die Zukunft-verbürgenden Werthe am Sitz der entgegengesetzten, der Niedergangs-Werthe, zum Sieg gelangt waren — und bis in die Instinkte der dort Sitzenden hinein! Luther, dies Verhängniß von Mönch, hat die Kirche, und, was tausend Mal schlimmer ist, das Christenthum wiederhergestellt, im Augenblick, wo es unterlag... Das Christenthum, diese Religion gewordene Verneinung des Willens zum Leben... Luther, ein unmöglicher Mönch, der, aus Gründen seiner „Unmöglichkeit“, die Kirche angriff und sie — folglich! — wiederherstellte... Die Katholiken hätten Gründe, Lutherfeste zu feiern, Lutherspiele zu dichten... Luther — und die „sittliche Wiedergeburt“! Zum Teufel mit aller Psychologie! — Ohne Zweifel, die Deutschen sind Idealisten. — Die Deutschen haben zwei Mal, als eben mit ungeheurer Tapferkeit und Selbstüberwindung eine rechtschaffne, eine unzweideutige, eine vollkommen wissenschaftliche Denkweise erreicht war, Schleichwege zum alten „Ideal“, Versöhnungen zwischen Wahrheit und „Ideal“, im Grunde Formeln für ein Recht auf Ablehnung der Wissenschaft, für ein Recht auf Lüge zu finden gewußt. Leibniz und Kant — diese zwei größten Hemmschuhe der intellektuellen Rechtschaffenheit Europa’s! — Die Deutschen haben endlich, als auf der Brücke zwischen zwei décadence-Jahrhunderten eine force majeure von Genie und Wille sichtbar wurde, stark genug, aus Europa eine Einheit, eine politische und wirthschaftliche Einheit, zum Zweck der Erdregierung zu schaffen, mit ihren „Freiheits-Kriegen“ Europa um den Sinn, um das Wunder von Sinn in der Existenz Napoleon’s gebracht, — sie haben damit Alles, was kam, was heute da ist, auf dem Gewissen, diese culturwidrigste Krankheit und Unvernunft, die es giebt, den Nationalismus, diese névrose nationale, an der Europa krank ist, diese Verewigung der Kleinstaaterei Europa’s, der kleinen Politik: sie haben Europa selbst um seinen Sinn, um seine Vernunft — sie haben es in eine Sackgasse gebracht. — Weiß Jemand außer mir einen Weg aus dieser Sackgasse?... Eine Aufgabe, groß genug, die Völker wieder zu binden?...
3 Und zuletzt, warum sollte ich meinem Verdacht nicht Worte geben? Die Deutschen werden auch in meinem Falle wieder Alles versuchen, um aus einem ungeheuren Schicksal eine Maus zu gebären. Sie haben sich bis jetzt an mir compromittirt, ich zweifle, daß sie es in der Zukunft besser machen. — Ah was es mich verlangt, hier ein schlechter Prophet zu sein!... Meine natürlichen Leser und Hörer sind jetzt schon Russen, Skandinavier und Franzosen, — werden sie es immer mehr sein? — Die Deutschen sind in die Geschichte der Erkenntniß mit lauter zweideutigen Namen eingeschrieben, sie haben immer nur „unbewußte“ Falschmünzer hervorgebracht (— Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher gebührt dies Wort so gut wie Kant und Leibniz; es sind alles bloße Schleiermacher —): sie sollen nie die Ehre haben, daß der erste rechtschaffne Geist in der Geschichte des Geistes, der Geist, in dem die Wahrheit zu Gericht kommt über die Falschmünzerei von vier Jahrtausenden, mit dem deutschen Geiste in Eins gerechnet wird. Der „deutsche Geist“ ist meine schlechte Luft: ich athme schwer in der Nähe dieser Instinkt-gewordnen Unsauberkeit in psychologicis, die jedes Wort, jede Miene eines Deutschen verräth. Sie haben nie ein siebzehntes Jahrhundert harter Selbstprüfung durchgemacht wie die Franzosen, — ein La Rochefoucauld, ein Descartes sind hundert Mal in Rechtschaffenheit den ersten Deutschen überlegen, — sie haben bis heute keinen Psychologen gehabt. Aber Psychologie ist beinahe der Maaßstab der Reinlichkeit oder Unreinlichkeit einer Rasse... Und wenn man nicht einmal reinlich ist, wie sollte man Tiefe haben? Man kommt beim Deutschen, beinahe wie beim Weibe, niemals auf den Grund, er hat keinen: das ist Alles. Aber damit ist man noch nicht einmal flach. — Das, was in Deutschland „tief“ heißt, ist genau diese Instinkt-Unsauberkeit gegen sich, von der ich eben rede: man will über sich nicht im Klaren sein. Dürfte ich das Wort „deutsch“ nicht als internationale Münze für diese psychologische Verkommenheit in Vorschlag bringen? — In diesem Augenblick zum Beispiel nennt es der deutsche Kaiser seine „christliche Pflicht“, die Sklaven in Afrika zu befreien: unter uns andern Europäern hieße das dann einfach „deutsch“... Haben die Deutschen auch nur Ein Buch hervorgebracht, das Tiefe hätte? Selbst der Begriff dafür, was tief an einem Buch ist, geht ihnen ab. Ich habe Gelehrte kennen gelernt, die Kant für tief hielten; am preußischen Hofe, fürchte ich, hält man Herrn von Treitschke für tief. Und wenn ich Stendhal gelegentlich als tiefen Psychologen rühme, ist es mir mit deutschen Universitätsprofessoren begegnet, daß sie mich den Namen buchstabiren ließen...
4 Und warum sollte ich nicht bis an’s Ende gehn? Ich liebe es, reinen Tisch zu machen. Es gehört selbst zu meinem Ehrgeiz, als Verächter der Deutschen par excellence zu gelten. Mein Mißtrauen gegen den deutschen Charakter habe ich schon mit sechsundzwanzig Jahren ausgedrückt (dritte Unzeitgemäße S. 71) — die Deutschen sind für mich unmöglich. Wenn ich mir eine Art Mensch ausdenke, die allen meinen Instinkten zuwiderläuft, so wird immer ein Deutscher daraus. Das Erste, worauf hin ich mir einen Menschen „nierenprüfe“, ist, ob er ein Gefühl für Distanz im Leibe hat, ob er überall Rang, Grad, Ordnung zwischen Mensch und Mensch sieht, ob er distinguirt: damit ist man gentilhomme; in jedem andren Fall gehört man rettungslos unter den weitherzigen, ach! so gutmüthigen Begriff der canaille. Aber die Deutschen sind canaille — ach! sie sind so gutmüthig... Man erniedrigt sich durch den Verkehr mit Deutschen: der Deutsche stellt gleich... Rechne ich meinen Verkehr mit einigen Künstlern, vor Allem mit Richard Wagner ab, so habe ich keine gute Stunde mit Deutschen verlebt... Gesetzt, daß der tiefste Geist aller Jahrtausende unter Deutschen erschiene, irgend eine Retterin des Capitols würde wähnen, ihre sehr unschöne Seele käme zum Mindesten ebenso in Betracht... Ich halte diese Rasse nicht aus, mit der man immer in schlechter Gesellschaft ist, die keine Finger für nuances hat — wehe mir! ich bin eine nuance —, die keinen esprit in den Füßen hat und nicht einmal gehen kann... Die Deutschen haben zuletzt gar keine Füße, sie haben bloß Beine... Den Deutschen geht jeder Begriff davon ab, wie gemein sie sind, aber das ist der Superlativ der Gemeinheit, — sie schämen sich nicht einmal, bloß Deutsche zu sein... Sie reden über Alles mit, sie halten sich selbst für entscheidend, ich fürchte, sie haben selbst über mich entschieden... Mein ganzes Leben ist der Beweis de rigueur für diese Sätze. Umsonst, daß ich in ihm nach einem Zeichen von Takt, von délicatesse gegen mich suche. Von Juden ja, noch nie von Deutschen. Meine Art will es, daß ich gegen Jedermann mild und wohlwollend bin — ich habe ein Recht dazu, keine Unterschiede zu machen —: dies hindert nicht, daß ich die Augen offen habe. Ich nehme Niemanden aus, am wenigsten meine Freunde, — ich hoffe zuletzt, daß dies meiner Humanität gegen sie keinen Abbruch getan hat! Es giebt fünf, sechs Dinge, aus denen ich mir immer eine Ehrensache gemacht habe. — Trotzdem bleibt wahr, daß ich fast jeden Brief, der mich seit Jahren erreicht, als einen Cynismus empfinde: es liegt mehr Cynismus im Wohlwollen gegen mich als in irgend welchem Haß... Ich sage es jedem meiner Freunde in’s Gesicht, daß er es nie der Mühe für wert genug hielt, irgend eine meiner Schriften zu studiren: ich errathe aus den kleinsten Zeichen, daß sie nicht einmal wissen, was drin steht. Was gar meinen Zarathustra anbetrifft, wer von meinen Freunden hätte mehr darin gesehn als eine unerlaubte, zum Glück vollkommen gleichgültige Anmaaßung?... Zehn Jahre: und Niemand in Deutschland hat sich eine Gewissensschuld daraus gemacht, meinen Namen gegen das absurde Stillschweigen zu vertheidigen, unter dem er vergraben lag: ein Ausländer, ein Däne, war es, der zuerst dazu genug Feinheit des Instinkts und Muth hatte, der sich über meine angeblichen Freunde empörte... An welcher deutschen Universität wären heute Vorlesungen über meine Philosophie möglich, wie sie letztes Frühjahr der damit noch einmal mehr bewiesene Psycholog Dr. Georg Brandes in Kopenhagen gehalten hat? — Ich selber habe nie an Alledem gelitten; das Nothwendige verletzt mich nicht; amor fati ist meine innerste Natur. Dies schließt aber nicht aus, daß ich die Ironie liebe, sogar die welthistorische Ironie. Und so habe ich, zwei Jahre ungefähr vor dem zerschmetternden Blitzschlag der Umwerthung, der die Erde in Convulsionen versetzen wird, den „Fall Wagner“ in die Welt geschickt: die Deutschen sollten sich noch einmal unsterblich an mir vergreifen und verewigen! es ist gerade noch Zeit dazu! — Ist das erreicht? — Zum Entzücken, meine Herrn Germanen! Ich mache Ihnen mein Compliment...
Musean translation
A complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from the German of the 1908 Insel edition, including its concluding poem. This early edition's readings and omissions are retained, not replaced with later critical restorations.
A Musician's Problem.
1 To do this work justice, you must suffer from the fate of music as from an open wound.—What do I suffer from when I suffer from the fate of music? From music's having been robbed of its world-transfiguring, Yes-saying character—from its having become the music of decadence, no longer the flute of Dionysus… But if you feel the cause of music in this way as your own cause, as the history of your own suffering, you will find this work full of consideration and mild beyond measure. To be cheerful in such cases, and good-naturedly join in mocking yourself—to speak severely with a laugh, where speaking the truth sincerely would justify any harshness—is humanity itself. Who really doubts that, old artilleryman that I am, I have it in my power to bring up my heavy guns against Wagner?—I kept everything decisive in this matter to myself—I have loved Wagner.—Ultimately, an attack on a subtler “unknown,” whom another person would hardly guess, lies within the meaning and course of my task—oh, I have quite other “unknowns” to expose than a Cagliostro of music—but still more so an attack on the German nation, which in matters of the spirit grows ever more sluggish and poorer in instinct, ever more honest, and with an enviable appetite continues to feed on opposites, swallowing “faith” as readily as the scientific spirit, “Christian love” as readily as antisemitism, the will to power (to the “empire”) as readily as the gospel of the humble, without indigestion… This refusal to take sides between opposites! This neutrality and “selflessness” of the stomach! This fair-mindedness of the German palate, which grants equal rights to everything—which finds everything tasty… Beyond all doubt, the Germans are idealists… When I last visited Germany, I found German taste busy granting equal rights to Wagner and The Trumpeter of Säckingen; I myself witnessed the founding in Leipzig, in honor of one of the truest and most German musicians in the old sense of the word German, no mere imperial German, the master Heinrich Schütz, of a Liszt Society, for the cultivation and propagation of cunningly Lisztian church music… Beyond all doubt, the Germans are idealists…
2 But nothing here shall stop me from being blunt and telling the Germans a few hard truths: who else will?—I am speaking of their indecency in matters of history. Not only have German historians entirely lost the grand perspective on the course and values of culture, not only are they all buffoons of politics (or of the church—): they have actually outlawed this grand perspective. First you must be “German,” must belong to the “race,” and then you can decide on every value and disvalue in history—you lay them down… “German” is an argument, “Germany, Germany above all” a principle; the Germanic peoples are the “moral world order” in history; in relation to the Roman Empire, the bearers of freedom; in relation to the eighteenth century, the restorers of morality, of the “categorical imperative”… There is an imperial-German historiography; there is, I fear, even an antisemitic one—there is a court historiography, and Mr. von Treitschke is not ashamed… Recently an idiot's judgment on history, a statement by the Swabian aesthete Vischer, fortunately now deceased, made the rounds of the German newspapers as a “truth” to which every German must say Yes: “The Renaissance and the Reformation, only the two together make a whole—the aesthetic rebirth and the moral rebirth.”—Statements like this exhaust my patience, and I feel the desire, indeed I feel it as a duty, to tell the Germans for once just what they already have on their conscience. They have all the great crimes against culture of four centuries on their conscience!… And always for the same reason: their innermost cowardice before reality, which is also cowardice before truth; their dishonesty, which has become instinct in them; their “idealism”… The Germans robbed Europe of the harvest, of the meaning of its last great age, the age of the Renaissance, at a moment when a higher order of values, when the noble, life-affirming values that guarantee a future, had triumphed at the very seat of the opposing values, the values of decline—even in the instincts of those who sat there! Luther, that disastrous monk, restored the church and, what is a thousand times worse, Christianity, at the moment when it was going under… Christianity, that denial of the will to life become religion… Luther, an impossible monk who, because of his “impossibility,” attacked the church and—consequently!—restored it… Catholics would have reason to hold Luther festivals, to write Luther plays… Luther—and the “moral rebirth”! To the devil with all psychology!—Beyond doubt, the Germans are idealists.—Twice, just when an honest, unambiguous, thoroughly scientific way of thinking had been achieved through immense courage and self-overcoming, the Germans contrived to find secret paths back to the old “ideal,” reconciliations between truth and the “ideal,” at bottom formulas for a right to reject science, for a right to lie. Leibniz and Kant—these two greatest obstacles to Europe's intellectual integrity!—Finally, when on the bridge between two centuries of decadence an overwhelming force of genius and will appeared, strong enough to make Europe a unity, a political and economic unity, for the purpose of governing the earth, the Germans, with their “wars of liberation,” robbed Europe of the meaning, the miracle of meaning, in Napoleon's existence. They thereby have on their conscience everything that followed, everything that exists today: nationalism, that most culture-hostile disease and unreason there is, that national neurosis from which Europe suffers, that perpetuation of Europe's fragmentation into petty states, of petty politics: they robbed Europe itself of its meaning, of its reason—they drove it into a dead end.—Does anyone but me know a way out of this dead end?… A task great enough to bind the nations together again?…
3 And finally, why should I not put my suspicion into words? In my case too, the Germans will once again try everything to bring forth a mouse from a monstrous destiny. So far they have discredited themselves over me; I doubt they will do better in the future.—Ah, how I long to be a bad prophet here!… My natural readers and listeners are already Russians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen—will they be so more and more?—The Germans are inscribed in the history of knowledge with nothing but dubious names; they have never produced anything but “unconscious” counterfeiters (—Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher deserve this word as much as Kant and Leibniz; they are all mere Schleiermachers, makers of veils—): they shall never have the honor of seeing the first honest spirit in the history of the spirit, the spirit in which truth sits in judgment on four millennia of counterfeiting, counted as one with the German spirit. The “German spirit” is my bad air: I find it hard to breathe near this uncleanliness in psychological matters, become instinct, which every word, every expression of a German betrays. They have never undergone a seventeenth century of harsh self-examination as the French did—a La Rochefoucauld, a Descartes are a hundred times superior in integrity to the foremost Germans—to this day they have had no psychologist. But psychology is almost the measure of a race's cleanliness or uncleanliness… And if you are not even clean, how could you have depth? With a German, almost as with a woman, you never get to the bottom: he has none. That is all. But that does not even make him shallow.—What is called “deep” in Germany is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness toward oneself of which I have just been speaking: one wants to remain unclear about oneself. Might I propose the word “German” as international currency for this psychological depravity?—At this moment, for example, the German emperor calls freeing the slaves in Africa his “Christian duty”: among us other Europeans that would simply be called “German”… Have the Germans produced even one book with depth? They lack even a concept of what is deep in a book. I have met scholars who thought Kant deep; at the Prussian court, I fear, they think Mr. von Treitschke deep. And when I occasionally praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have had German university professors ask me to spell the name…
4 And why should I not go to the very end? I like to make a clean sweep. It is even part of my ambition to be regarded as the foremost despiser of the Germans. I expressed my distrust of the German character at the age of twenty-six (dritte Unzeitgemäße S. 71)—the Germans are impossible for me. Whenever I imagine a kind of person contrary to all my instincts, he always turns out to be a German. The first thing I look for when I “probe a person's kidneys” is whether he has a feeling for distance in his body, whether he sees rank, degree, order everywhere between one person and another, whether he distinguishes: that makes a gentleman; in every other case he belongs irretrievably under that broad-hearted, ah! so good-natured concept of the rabble. But the Germans are rabble—ah! they are so good-natured… You lower yourself by associating with Germans: the German levels everyone… Except for my dealings with a few artists, above all Richard Wagner, I have not spent one good hour with Germans… Suppose the deepest spirit of all millennia appeared among Germans: some goose who saved the Capitol would imagine that her very unattractive soul counted for at least as much… I cannot endure this race, with whom one is always in bad company, who have no fingers for nuances—woe is me! I am a nuance—who have no wit in their feet and cannot even walk… Ultimately the Germans have no feet at all, only legs… The Germans have no conception of how vulgar they are, but that is the very summit of vulgarity—they are not even ashamed of being merely German… They have their say about everything, they consider themselves the deciding authority; I fear they have even passed judgment on me… My whole life is the requisite proof of these propositions. In vain do I search it for a sign of tact, of delicacy toward me. From Jews, yes; never yet from Germans. My nature is to be mild and well-disposed toward everyone—I have a right to make no distinctions—: that does not stop me from keeping my eyes open. I make no exceptions, least of all for my friends—I hope, in the end, that this has not diminished my humanity toward them! There are five or six things I have always made a point of honor.—Nonetheless, it remains true that for years I have felt almost every letter that reaches me to be a piece of cynicism: there is more cynicism in goodwill toward me than in any hatred… I tell every one of my friends to his face that he has never thought it sufficiently worth the trouble to study any of my writings: from the smallest signs I can tell they do not even know what is in them. And as for my Zarathustra, which of my friends has seen more in it than an illicit and fortunately quite inconsequential piece of presumption?… Ten years: and no one in Germany has made it a matter of conscience to defend my name against the absurd silence beneath which it lay buried. A foreigner, a Dane, was the first to have sufficient delicacy of instinct and courage for this, the first to feel indignant at my supposed friends… At what German university would lectures on my philosophy be possible today, such as those given last spring in Copenhagen by Dr. Georg Brandes, who thereby proved himself a psychologist once again?—I myself have never suffered from all this; the necessary does not wound me; love of fate is my innermost nature. But this does not prevent me from loving irony, even world-historical irony. And so, about two years before the crushing lightning bolt of the revaluation, which will send the earth into convulsions, I sent The Case of Wagner out into the world: the Germans were to have one more chance to wrong me for all eternity and immortalize themselves! There is just enough time left!—Has that been achieved?—To my delight, my Germanic gentlemen! My compliments…
Plain English translation
A complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the same German edition, including its concluding poem. This is the 1908 text, not a modern critical edition.
A Musician's Problem.
1 To do this book justice, you must feel the fate of music like an open wound.—What hurts me when I suffer over the fate of music? That music has been robbed of its yes-saying power to make the world shine—that it has become music of decline instead of the flute of Dionysus… But suppose you feel the cause of music as your own cause, as the story of your own suffering. Then you will find this book full of consideration and extraordinarily mild. To stay cheerful in such cases, to include yourself in the good-natured mockery—to say something severe with a laugh, when telling the truth sincerely would justify any harshness—is humanity itself. Does anyone really doubt that, as the old artilleryman I am, I could bring my heavy guns to bear on Wagner?—I held back everything decisive in this matter—I loved Wagner.—Ultimately, an attack on a subtler “unknown,” one few others could guess, fits the meaning and course of my task. Oh, I have quite other “unknowns” to expose than a Cagliostro of music. Still more does an attack on the German nation fit my task. In intellectual matters it grows ever lazier, poorer in instinct, and more honest. With an enviable appetite, it keeps feeding on opposites. It swallows “faith” as readily as the scientific approach, “Christian love” as readily as antisemitism, the will to power (to the “empire”) as readily as the gospel of the humble, without indigestion… This refusal to take sides between opposites! This neutrality and “selflessness” of the stomach! This fair-mindedness of the German palate, which grants everything equal rights—which finds everything tasty… Without a doubt, the Germans are idealists… The last time I visited Germany, I found German taste working to grant equal rights to Wagner and The Trumpeter of Säckingen. I myself saw a Liszt Society founded in Leipzig to honor the master Heinrich Schütz, one of the most genuine and German musicians in the old sense of the word German, not a mere citizen of the Empire. Its purpose was to cultivate and spread tricky, Liszt-style church music… Without a doubt, the Germans are idealists…
2 But nothing here will stop me from being rude and telling the Germans a few hard truths: who else does it?—I mean their indecency in historical matters. German historians have not just completely lost the broad view of the course of culture and its values, becoming every last one of them the buffoons of politics (or the church—). They have actually outlawed that broad view. First you must be “German,” belong to the “race”; then you can decide what does and doesn't have value in history—you lay down the values… “German” is an argument; “Germany, Germany above everything” is a principle. The Germanic peoples are the “moral world order” in history: compared with the Roman Empire, the champions of freedom; compared with the eighteenth century, the restorers of morality, of the “categorical imperative”… There is an imperial-German way of writing history. I fear there is even an antisemitic one. There is history written for the court, and Mr. von Treitschke feels no shame… Recently an idiotic judgment about history made the rounds of the German newspapers as a “truth” that every German must agree with. It came from Vischer, the Swabian writer on aesthetics, who is fortunately dead: “The Renaissance and the Reformation: only together do they make a whole—aesthetic rebirth and moral rebirth.”—With statements like that, my patience runs out. I feel the urge, even the duty, to tell the Germans for once just what they already have on their conscience. They have all the great crimes against culture of four centuries on their conscience!… And always for the same reason: their deepest cowardice in the face of reality, which is also cowardice in the face of truth; the dishonesty that has become instinctive in them; their “idealism”… The Germans robbed Europe of the harvest, of the meaning of the last great age, the Renaissance. This happened just when a higher order of values had won out in the very seat of the opposite values, the values of decline: noble values that said yes to life and guaranteed a future—even reaching into the instincts of the people seated there! Luther, that disastrous monk, restored the church and, a thousand times worse, Christianity, at the very moment it was going under… Christianity, that denial of the will to live turned into a religion… Luther, an impossible monk who attacked the church because of his own “impossibility,” and so—of course!—restored it… Catholics would have good reason to celebrate Luther festivals and write Luther plays… Luther—and “moral rebirth”! To hell with all psychology!—Without a doubt, the Germans are idealists.—Twice, just when enormous courage and self-overcoming had achieved an honest, clear, thoroughly scientific way of thinking, the Germans managed to find back roads to the old “ideal,” compromises between truth and the “ideal.” At bottom, these were formulas for a right to reject science, a right to lie. Leibniz and Kant—Europe's two greatest obstacles to intellectual honesty!—Finally, on the bridge between two centuries of decline, an overwhelming power of genius and will appeared. It was strong enough to make Europe a unity, a political and economic unity, for the purpose of governing the earth. With their “Wars of Liberation,” the Germans robbed Europe of the meaning, the miracle of meaning, in Napoleon's existence. That puts everything that followed, everything we have today, on their conscience: nationalism, the disease and irrationality most hostile to culture that exists, this national neurosis that makes Europe sick; this perpetuation of Europe's division into little states, of petty politics. They robbed Europe itself of its meaning, of its reason—they drove it into a dead end.—Does anyone besides me know a way out of this dead end?… A task great enough to bind the peoples together again?…
3 And finally, why shouldn't I put my suspicion into words? In my case too, the Germans will try everything again to make an enormous destiny give birth to a mouse. So far, their behavior toward me has disgraced them. I doubt they will do better in the future.—Ah, how I long to be a bad prophet here!… My natural readers and listeners are already Russians, Scandinavians, and French people—will they become increasingly so?—The Germans have entered the history of knowledge with nothing but dubious names. They have only ever produced “unconscious” counterfeiters (Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher deserve that word just as much as Kant and Leibniz—they are all just makers of veils—Schleiermachers). They must never have the honor of seeing the first honest mind in the history of thought counted as one with the German mind—the mind in which truth passes judgment on four thousand years of counterfeiting. The “German spirit” is my bad air. I struggle to breathe near this instinctive filthiness in psychological matters, which every word and every expression of a German betrays. They never went through a seventeenth century of harsh self-examination like the French. A La Rochefoucauld or a Descartes is a hundred times more honest than the foremost Germans. To this day, they have not had a psychologist. But psychology is almost the measure of a race's cleanliness or uncleanliness… And if you aren't even clean, how can you have depth? With a German, almost as with a woman, you never get to the bottom: he has none. That's all. But that doesn't even make him shallow.—What Germany calls “deep” is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness toward oneself that I am talking about: people don't want to be clear about themselves. May I suggest the word “German” as an international coin for this psychological depravity?—At this very moment, for example, the German emperor calls it his “Christian duty” to free the slaves in Africa. Among us other Europeans, that would simply be called “German”… Have the Germans produced even one book with depth? They lack even the idea of what makes a book deep. I have met scholars who thought Kant was deep. At the Prussian court, I fear they think Mr. von Treitschke is deep. And when I occasionally praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, German university professors have asked me to spell his name…
4 And why shouldn't I go all the way? I like to settle things once and for all. It is even my ambition to be known as the foremost despiser of Germans. I expressed my distrust of the German character back when I was twenty-six (dritte Unzeitgemäße S. 71). The Germans are impossible for me. If I imagine a type of person who goes against all my instincts, a German always emerges. The first thing I check when I test someone to the core—“probe his kidneys”—is whether he has a sense of distance in his body: does he see rank, degree, and order between people everywhere? Does he make distinctions? That makes a gentleman. In every other case, he belongs beyond rescue under the broad-hearted and, alas, so good-natured heading of the rabble. But the Germans are rabble—alas, they are so good-natured… You lower yourself by mixing with Germans: a German puts everyone on the same level… Apart from my dealings with a few artists, above all Richard Wagner, I have not spent one good hour with Germans… Suppose the deepest mind of all the millennia appeared among Germans. Some goose who rescued the Capitol would imagine that her very ugly soul counted for at least as much… I can't stand this race, with whom you are always in bad company. They have no fingertips for nuances—poor me! I am a nuance—and no wit in their feet; they can't even walk… In the end, the Germans have no feet at all, only legs… The Germans have no idea how vulgar they are. But that is the height of vulgarity: they aren't even ashamed of being nothing but German… They join in on every subject. They think their own judgment is decisive. I fear they have even passed judgment on me… My whole life supplies the necessary proof of these statements. I search it in vain for a sign of tact, of sensitivity toward me. From Jews, yes; from Germans, never. My nature makes me mild and well-disposed toward everyone—I have a right to make no distinctions. But that doesn't keep my eyes from being open. I make no exceptions, least of all for my friends. I hope, in the end, that this has not lessened my humanity toward them! There are five or six things I have always made a point of honor.—Even so, it remains true that for years I have felt almost every letter I receive as an act of cynicism. There is more cynicism in goodwill toward me than in any hatred… I tell every one of my friends to his face that he has never thought it worth the trouble to study any of my writings. From the smallest signs, I can tell that they don't even know what's in them. As for my Zarathustra, which of my friends has seen anything more in it than an outrageous piece of arrogance, fortunately of no consequence at all?… Ten years—and no one in Germany felt bound by conscience to defend my name against the absurd silence in which it lay buried. A foreigner, a Dane, was the first to have enough delicacy of instinct and courage to do so, and to be outraged at my supposed friends… At which German university would lectures on my philosophy be possible today, like those Dr. Georg Brandes gave in Copenhagen last spring, once again proving himself a psychologist?—I myself have never suffered from any of this. What is necessary doesn't hurt me. Love of fate is my innermost nature. But that doesn't stop me from loving irony, even world-historical irony. And so, about two years before the crushing lightning strike of the revaluation that will throw the earth into convulsions, I sent “The Case of Wagner” into the world. The Germans were to do me an immortal wrong one more time, and immortalize themselves! There is still just time for it!—Has that been achieved?—To my delight, my Germanic gentlemen! My compliments…
About this section
The Case of Wagner is part of Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 15 of 17 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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