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The first days of January came, and Friedrich Nietzsche applied himself to work once more. Since the strange misadventure at Bayreuth (no doubt the irritation of an author, whose aid has been rejected, accounts for these unforeseen changes), he has been tormented by anxieties and by doubts; he wished to clear them up. In two lines, which are like an introduction to his thoughts of the time, he brings the Wagnerian art into history. "Every thought that is great," he writes, "is dangerous, and dangerous, above all, in its newness. The impression is that of an isolated phenomenon which justifies itself by itself." Then, having posited this general principle, he approached the definitive questions: "What kind of man is Wagner? What does his art signify?"
It was a catastrophe in fairyland. The modern schylus, the modern Pindar vanished; the beautiful metaphysical and religious decorations fell in, and the art of Wagner appeared as it really was—an art, the late, magnificent, and often sickly flower of a humanity fifteen centuries old.
"Let us really ask ourselves," wrote Nietzsche in his notes, of which his friends did not know—"Let us really ask ourselves what is the value of the time which adopts the art of Wagner as its art? It is radically anarchical, a breathless thing, impious, greedy, shapeless, uncertain of its groundwork, quick to despair—it has no simplicity, it is self-conscious to the marrow, it lacks nobility, it is violent, cowardly. This art unites pell mell in one mass all that still attracts our modern German souls; aspects, ways of feeling, all comes pell mell. A monstrous attempt of art to affirm and dominate itself in an anti-artistic period. It is a poison against a poison."
The demi-god was gone, and in his place was a[Pg 157] stage-player. Nietzsche recognised despairingly that he had allowed himself to be captured by the gambols of a giant. He had loved with simplicity and with the ardour of his youth, and had been deceived. There was jealousy in his anger, and a little of that hatred which is never far from love. His heart, his thought, of which he was so proud, he had given to a man: this man had trifled with these sacred gifts.
We may pass over these personal sorrows; others, even more profound, humiliated Friedrich Nietzsche. He was humiliated because he had betrayed Truth. He had desired to live for her; he now perceived that for four years he had lived for Wagner. He had dared to repeat after Voltaire, "It is necessary to tell the truth and sacrifice oneself;" he now saw that he had neglected her, that perhaps he had shunned her, in seeking consolation from the beauties of Wagner's art. "If you seek for ease, believe," he had written some years before to his young sister: "if you desire the truth, search "; and the duty which he had indicated to this child he had himself failed to observe. He had suffered himself to be seduced by images, by harmonies, by the magic of words; he had fed on lies.
His fault was graver yet, for he had consented to this abasement. The universe is evil, he had written in The Origin of Tragedy—cruel like a dissonance of notes, and the soul of man, dissonant like the universe, suffering from itself, would detach itself from life if it did not invent some illusion, some myth which deceives but appeases it and procures it a refuge of beauty. In truth, if we thus draw back, if we create our consolations for ourselves, whither will we not let ourselves be led? One hearkens to one's weakness; there is no cowardice that is not thus authorised. To accept is to deliver oneself over to the illusionist. Is it a noble or a vile illusion? How can we know if we are deceived, if we ask to be[Pg 158] deceived? Nietzsche felt his memories degraded, and his hopes discouraged by the bitterness of remorse.
The Use and Abuse of History appeared in February. It is a pamphlet directed against that science, history, the invention and pride of the moderns; it is a criticism of the faculty, recently acquired by men, by which they reanimate within themselves the sentiments of past centuries, at the risk of lessening the integrity of their instincts and perplexing their rectitude. A brief indication gives the spirit of the book.
"The man of the future: eccentric, energetic, hot-blooded, indefatigable, an artist, and an enemy of books. I should desire to hunt from my ideal State the self-styled 'cultivated' men, as Plato did the poets: it would be my terrorism."
Thus Nietzsche affronted the ten thousand "Herr Professors" to whom history is their daily bread and who guide the public. He was punished by their hatred and their silence. No one spoke of his book. His friends tried to find him some readers. Overbeck wrote to his student friend, Treischke, the political writer, the Prussian historiographer. "I am sure," he said to him, "that you will discern in these contemplations of Nietzsche's the most profound, the most serious, the most instinctive devotion to German greatness." Treischke refused his assent; Overbeck wrote again. "It is Nietzsche, my suffering friend, of whom I will and above all must talk to you." Treischke showed temper in his reply and the dispute became bitter. "Your Basle," he wrote, "is a boudoir, from which German culture is insulted!" "If you saw the three of us, Nietzsche, Romundt, and myself," said Overbeck, "you would see three good companions. Our difference strikes[Pg 159] me as a painful symbol. It is so frequent an accident, so unfortunate a feature in our German history, this misunderstanding between political men and men of culture." "How unlucky for you," retorted Treischke, "that you met this Nietzsche, this madman, who tells us so much about his inactual thoughts, and who has nevertheless been bitten to the marrow by the most actual of all vices, the folie des grandeurs."
Overbeck, Gersdorff and Rohde wretchedly watched the failure of this book which they admired. "It is another thunderbolt," wrote Rohde; "it will have no more effect than fireworks in a cellar. But one day people will recognise it and will admire the courage and precision with which he has put his finger on our worst wound. How strong he is, our friend." And Overbeck: "The sensation of isolation that our friend experiences is growing in a painful manner. Ever and ever to sap the branch of the tree on which one supports oneself cannot be done without grievous consequences." And Gersdorff: "The best thing for our friend would be for him to imitate the Pythagoreans: five years without reading or writing. When I am free, which will be in two or three years, I shall return to my property: that asylum will be at his disposal."
These men, with their touching solicitude concerning their friend's lot, did not suspect either the true cause or the intensity of his distress. They pitied his solitude, they did not know how profound it was, or how lonely he was even with them. What mattered to him the failure of a book from which he was separated by a revolution of thought? "As to my book," he wrote to Rohde, "I can hardly think that I wrote it." He had discovered his error and his fault. Hence his sorrow, hence the agony which he dared not confess. "At the present moment," he announced to Gersdorff, "many things ferment within me, many extreme and daring things. I do not know[Pg 160] in what measure I may communicate them to my best friends, but in any case I cannot write them." One evening, however, passion carried him away. He was alone with Overbeck; the conversation happened to turn on Lohengrin, and, with a sudden fury, Nietzsche pulled to pieces this false and romantic work. Overbeck listened to him in amazement. Nietzsche became silent, and from that moment was more careful to practise the pretence which shamed him and disgusted him with himself.
