Page 26 of 79
"Later, men will have to raise the tables of a new culture ... then destruction of the gymnasia, destruction[Pg 124] of the University ... an areopagus, for the justice of the mind.
"The culture of the future: its ideal of social problems. The imperative world of the beautiful and the sublime ... the only safeguard against Socialism ..."
Finally these three interrogatory words, which sum up his doubts, his desires, and perhaps his whole work: "Ist Veredlung mglich?" (Is ennoblement possible?)
Friedrich Nietzsche courageously renounced his hope and was silent. He had lost his country: Prussia would not be the invincible framework of a lyrical race; the German Empire would not realise the "imperative world of the beautiful and the sublime." On April 30th the new University of Strassburg was inaugurated. "I hear from here the patriotic rejoicings," he wrote to Erwin Rohde. In January he had refused an offer of employment which would have withdrawn him from Basle. In April he spoke of leaving Basle and of going to Italy for two or three years. "The first review of my book has at last appeared," he wrote, "and I find it very good. But where has it appeared? In an Italian publication, La Rivista Europea! That is pleasant and symbolical!"
He had a second reason for melancholy: Richard Wagner was leaving to make his home at Bayreuth. A letter of Cosima Wagner announced the departure: "Yes, Bayreuth!... Adieu to dear Triebschen, where the Origin of Tragedy was conceived, and so many other things which perhaps will never begin again!"
Three years before, in this spring season, Nietzsche had hazarded his first visit to Triebschen; he wished to return again. He did return, and found the house desolate. A few pieces of furniture, covered over with horse-cloths[Pg 125] and dispersed from room to room, seemed like flotsam and jetsam from another time. Every small object, all the family knick-knacks, had disappeared. The light entered, hard and crude, through the curtainless windows. Wagner and his wife were completing then-last packages, throwing the last of the books into the last of the baskets. They welcomed the faithful Nietzsche, asked his aid; he gave it at once. He wrapped up in packets the letters, the precious manuscripts; then more books and scores. Suddenly his heart failed him. So it was all over, Triebschen was done with! Three years of his life, and what years they had been! How unexpected, how moving, how delicious, and they were to escape in a day! Now he must renounce the past, and follow the master without regret. Now he must forget Triebschen and, for the future, think only of Bayreuth. No sooner was this magical name pronounced than it fascinated Nietzsche and troubled him. His hours at Triebschen had been so fine, hours of repose and meditation, hours of work and silence. A man, a woman of genius; a nest of children; an infinity of happy conversations, of beauty—Triebschen had given all that. What would Bayreuth give? The crowd would come there, and what would it bring with it? Friedrich Nietzsche left the books which he was engaged in packing. The grand piano had remained in the middle of the salon. He opened it, preluded, then improvised. Richard and Cosima Wagner, leaving aside all their affairs, listened. A harrowing, unforgettable rhapsody resounded through the empty salon. It was the adieu.
In November, 1888, Friedrich Nietzsche, already stricken with madness, set himself to recount his history. "Since I am here recalling the consolations of my life, I ought to express in a word my gratitude for what was by far my most profound and best-loved joy—my intimacy with Richard Wagner. I wish to be[Pg 126] just with regard to the rest of my human relationships; but I absolutely cannot efface from my life the days at Triebschen, days of confidence, of gaiety, of sublime flashes—days of profound perceptions. I do not know what Wagner was for others: our sky was never darkened by a cloud."
Bayreuth has had a strange destiny. This little German town, so long obscure, scintillates in the eighteenth century, shines with a somewhat flickering brilliance, but becomes celebrated at last throughout all Europe. An intelligent Margravine—Frederick's sister, the friend of Voltaire and of French elegance—lives there, beautifies it, enlivens the barren country with castles, and lavishes on its faades the singular volutes of the "rococo" style. The Margravine dies and Bayreuth is again forgotten. A century passes and suddenly its fame returns; the little town that the Margrave adorned becomes the Jerusalem of a new art and a new religion. A strange destiny, but a factitious one. It is a poet who has regulated the antitheses. The history of Bayreuth ought to be included among Wagner's works.
He wished to set up his theatre in a quiet and secluded town. It suited him, not to go to his audience, but rather to force his audience to come to him. He chose, from many others, this town; the two Germanys would be thus confronted, the one, that of the past, a slave to French customs, mean and shabby; the other, that of the future, his own, an emancipating and innovating Germany. The work was started without delay. The master decided that the foundation-stone of his theatre[Pg 128] should be laid with pomp on the 22nd of May, 1872, the anniversary of his birth.
"So we shall see one another again," wrote Nietzsche to his friend Rohde. "Our meetings are ever becoming more grandiose, more historical, are they not?"
They were present together at the ceremony, one of them coming from Basle, the other from Hamburg. Two thousand people were assembled in the little town. The weather was appalling. But the unceasing rain, the threatening sky, made the ceremony still more imposing. Wagnerian art is a serious thing and has no need of smiling heavens. The faithful disciples, standing in the open air at the mercy of the winds, saw the stone laid. In the hollow block Wagner deposited a piece of poetry written by himself, and then threw the first spadeful of plaster. In the evening he invited his friends to hear an execution of the "Symphony" with chorus, the orchestration of which he had in parts slightly strengthened. He personally conducted. Young Germany, assembled in the Margrave's theatre, listened piously to this work in which the nineteenth century declared its need, and when the final chorus struck up—"Millions of men embrace each other"—it really seemed, said a spectator, as if the sublime wish was about to be realised.
"Ah! my friend," wrote Nietzsche, "through what days we have lived! No one can rob us of these grave and sacred memories. We ought to go forth into life inspired to battle on their behalf. Above all, we ought to force ourselves to regulate all our acts, with as much gravity and force as is possible, so as to prove that we are worthy of the unique events at which we have assisted."
Nietzsche wanted to fight for Wagner, for he loved[Pg 129] Wagner and he loved battle. "To arms, to arms!" he writes to Rohde; "war is necessary to me, ich brauche den Krieg." But he had already proved many a time, what he now began sadly to understand, that his nature did not lend itself to reticence and to the prudence necessary in such a contest, in which public opinion was the stake. There was no instant but a word, an attitude ran foul of his radical idealism. He felt the instinctive constraint that he had already known at Triebschen. Wagner disturbed him. He hardly recognised the grave and pure hero whom he had loved so much. He saw another man, a powerful workman, brutal, vindictive, jealous. Nietzsche had thought of making a tour in Italy, with a relation of Mendelssohn's; he was obliged to give up this idea in order to humour the master, who detested the race, even to the very name of Mendelssohn.
