Chapter 8 8. Wagner and Modern Culture

Nietzsche had a very intimate relationship with the German musician Wagner, who was thirty-one years his senior, but it didn't last long.Although Nietzsche missed this page of his career infinitely later, it should be said that he broke with Wagner on his own initiative.There are deep ideological reasons for the rupture.Since then, he has criticized Wagner in almost every book, and on the eve of his insanity, he published two pamphlets specifically criticizing Wagner—and Nietzsche Against Wagner.Wagner became the target of his critique of modern culture.In Nietzsche's own words, Wagner is his "rare case" for dissecting modern patients.

In the novel, Nietzsche has already begun his critique of modern culture, pointing out: Due to the decline of the tragic spirit, modern people have been far away from the fundamentals of life.At that time, he pinned his hope of saving the times on the revival of tragedy culture, and pinned his hope of tragedy revival on Wagner's music. In Wagner at Bayreuth, Nietzsche takes his critique of modern culture further.The key is still the inner poverty and exhaustion, so there are two characteristics of modern culture.On the one hand, modern people cover up their own poverty and exhaustion with colorful fragments of past culture, resulting in false prosperity. Nietzsche vividly compared it to "a tattered colorful coat on a frozen naked body", and pointed out: "Modern man's The image has become a complete illusion... He is rather hidden in the role he is playing now", and modern culture has become "the art of concealing oneself".On the other hand, modern people seek stimulation because of exhaustion and numbness, and art has become a means of creating artificial excitement. Artists "lead the mighty passion, like leading a pack of barking dogs, and let go of them according to the requirements of modern people, so that They rush at modern man." It is worth noting that although this article is a tribute to Wagner, it already contains a substantive criticism of Wagner.It is precisely two of the traits of modern culture that Nietzsche hated most that Wagner shared: drama and passion.Nietzsche repeatedly talked about: Wagner's life was full of "dramatic factors" and "comedy colors", and the dominant idea in his life was the primacy of theatrical effects; conscious passion dominated Wagner and included his entire nature.Nietzsche concluded that Wagner was not the prophet of the future, but the interpreter of the past.Obviously, he no longer pinned his hopes of cultural revival on Wagner.

As Nietzsche's critique of modern culture deepened, his critique of Wagner became clearer and louder.He believes that the crux of modern culture lies in the exhaustion of life instinct, which he calls "decadence".Decadence is a "modern debilitating disease".In the modern business world, people live in such a hurry that they are exhausted, their nerves numb, and their inner emptiness.The exhausted need a triple gratification from modern culture: nerve stimulation (or numbness), self-deception, and religious relief.These three main characteristics of modern culture are concentrated in Romantic art, especially Wagner's plays.Nietzsche himself is a person with a strong romantic temperament, but it is romanticism that he attacks most fiercely, first of all, the "romantic pessimism" of Schopenhauer and Wagner.As he said, he himself is a child of this era, a "decadent", and his criticism of Wagner is a kind of "self-overcoming".

Nietzsche's critique of Wagner and Romanticism unfolds from the following aspects: First, the basic sign of Romanticism is that inner scarcity, not excess, creates.Inherently deficient, it tends to be a "false intensification," a predilection for passion, a preference for provocative subjects, a love of novelty, a pursuit of exoticism, a "tyranny" of the nerves, and the predominance of narcotics and opium in art.This is a sick art.Wagner's musicals in particular reveal this pathology: he has convulsive passions, hyperactive sensibility, a taste that demands more and more exciting condiments; his heroes are hysterical; Hypnotism is no different.Wagner is "a typical decadent", "a neurotic", he epitomizes the disease of the times.

Second, the passions of Romanticism are disguises and falsehoods of the soul, exaggerations and bluffs.This affected actor's style reached its culmination in Wagner.Wagner was "the most ardent actor who ever lived," "the greatest actor," and "an incomparable actor," who turned music into a means of intensifying gestures, a "servant of the drama."Nietzsche despised drama and theater extremely. He believed that theater is the inferior art, something made for the masses. In the theater, people are no longer individuals, but become masses and herds, losing their good personal taste.The modern "theater superstition" just shows the spiritual emptiness and lack of personality of modern people.

Thirdly, art should be a "divine art" with gratitude and love as its source, and it should be an affirmation of life.Romantic pessimism art, however, expresses the "sadistic will of the heavy sufferer," oppressing, confining, and searing all things with the image of his own torment, "revenge on all things."Romantic art is "the product of dissatisfaction with reality", and because of dissatisfaction, it casts its sights on the past and the other shore.The Romantic artist was part priest, part psychiatrist, catering to the dual needs of modern man seeking anesthesia and relief.The theme of Wagner's play is "Salvation," proving that he, too, had converted to Christianity.

Fourth, the tranquility, simplicity, conciseness, and condensedness of the classical style are the expression of a high sense of power, good at dominating the seemingly opposing talents and desires, and giving them form.On the contrary, Wagner's music is a "formless thing", pursuing the gorgeousness and intensity of the tone, the symbolic and suggestive meaning of the tone, so that the senses occupy a dominant position in the music.His flamboyant style is a disintegration of style, and his dramatic music distorts music with drama and abandons style at all.