Thoughts out of Season, part 1 | Page 9

light of
our understanding upon the main theme-- then the Strauss paper is seen
to be one of such enormous power, and its aim appears to us so lofty,
that, whatever our views may be concerning the nature of the person
assailed, we are forced to conclude that, to Nietzsche at least, he was
but the incarnation and concrete example of the evil and danger then
threatening to overtake his country, which it was the object of this
essay to expose.
When we read that at the time of Strauss's death (February 7th, 1874)
Nietzsche was greatly tormented by the fear that the old scholar might
have been hastened to his end by the use that had been made of his
personality in the first Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung; when we remember
that in the midst of this torment he ejaculated, "I was indeed not made
to hate and have enemies!"--we are then in a better position to judge of
the motives which, throughout his life, led him to engage such
formidable opponents and to undertake such relentless attacks. It was
merely his ruling principle that, all is true and good that tends to elevate
man; everything is bad and false that keeps man stationary or sends him
backwards.
Those who may think that his attacks were often unwarrantable and
ill-judged will do well, therefore, to bear this in mind, that whatever his
value or merits may have been as an iconoclast, at least the aim he had
was sufficiently lofty and honourable, and that he never shirked the
duties which he rightly or wrongly imagined would help him to
Wagner paper (1875-1876) we are faced by a somewhat different
problem. Most readers who will have heard of Nietzsche's subsequent

denunciation of Wagner's music will probably stand aghast before this
panegyric of him; those who, like Professor Saintsbury, will fail to
discover the internal evidence in this essay which points so infallibly to
Nietzsche's real but still subconscious opinion of his hero, may even be
content to regard his later attitude as the result of a complete volte-face,
and at any rate a flat contradiction of the one revealed in this paper. Let
us, however, examine the internal evidence we speak of, and let us also
discuss the purpose and spirit of the essay.
We have said that Nietzsche was a man with a very fixed and powerful
ideal, and we have heard what this ideal was. Can we picture him,
then,--a young and enthusiastic scholar with a cultured love of music,
and particularly of Wagner's music, eagerly scanning all his circle, the
whole city and country in which he lived--yea, even the whole
continent on which he lived--for something or some one that would set
his doubts at rest concerning the feasibility of his ideal? Can we now
picture this young man coming face to face with probably one of the
greatest geniuses of his age--with a man whose very presence must
have been electric, whose every word or movement must have imparted
some power to his surroundings--with Richard Wagner?
If we can conceive of what the mere attention, even, of a man like
Wagner must have meant to Nietzsche in his twenties, if we can form
any idea of the intoxicating effect produced upon him when this
attention developed into friendship, we almost refuse to believe that
Nietzsche could have been critical at all at first. In Wagner, as was but
natural, he soon began to see the ideal, or at least the means to the ideal,
which was his one obsession. All his hope for the future of Germany
and Europe cleaved, as it were, to this highest manifestation of their
people's life, and gradually he began to invest his already great friend
with all the extra greatness which he himself drew from the depths of
his own soul.
The friendship which grew between them was of that rare order in
which neither can tell who influences the other more. Wagner would
often declare that the beautiful music in the third act of Siegfried was to
be ascribed to Nietzsche's influence over him; he also adopted the
young man's terminology in art matters, and the concepts implied by
the words "Dionysian" and "Apollonian" were borrowed by him from
his friend's discourses. How much Nietzsche owed to Wagner may

perhaps never be definitely known; to those who are sufficiently
interested to undertake the investigation of this matter, we would
recommend Hans Belart's book, Nietzsche's Ethik; in it references will
be found which give some clue as to the probable sources from which
the necessary information may be derived. In any case, however, the
reciprocal effects of their conversations will never be exactly known;
and although it would be ridiculous to assume that Nietzsche was
essentially the same when he left as when