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Author : Jos Hermans
Contra with Carmen
While giving pointedly observed characterizations of Wagner's music, Nietzsche invariably casts them in an evil light. Stubbornly, he refuses to stress the innovative nature of Wagner's art. In the end, Nietzsche has a very petite, reactionary view of the development of music and of the modernity of Wagner's art. The taste of a dilettante. Would he have thought differently about Boris Godunov or even Pelléas et Mélisande ? One wonders how Nietzsche, this apologist of absolute music whose foot needed measure, march and dance, would have appreciated the excursions into atonality of the imminent expressionism in art !
Some unpleasant surprises await Nietzsche after the publication of Der Fall Wagner. He learns from Malwida von Meysenbug that the very Paul Bourget, his supplier of the term "décadence," is a convinced Wagnerian. And then there is Bizet.
He first hears Carmen in November 1881 and immediately loves it. Well, who doesn't? With Bizet he thinks he has found the man with whom he can take revenge on Wagner. Thus he writes in Der Fall Wagner: "I heard yesterday - will you believe me? - for the twentieth time Bizet's masterpiece (...) May I say that Bizet's orchestral sound is almost the only one I can still tolerate? That other orchestral sound currently in vogue, the Wagnerian, coarse, at once contrived and 'innocent' and therefore at once appealing to all three senses of the modern soul - how detrimental is this orchestral sound of Wagner to me! (...) This music [Bizet] seems perfect to me. She comes on lightly and smoothly, one and all courtesy. She is amiable, she does not sweat. (...) She is rich, she is precise. She begins to build, she organizes, and finishes: in this she is the opposite of the polyp in music, the 'infinite melody'".
Nietzsche is correct in demonstrating the differences between the aesthetic universe of Bizet and Wagner but, of course, that doesn't say anything about the quality of Wagner's music. In Opera as Drama Joseph Kerman writes : "Critics in the opposite camp are equally wrong to claim that Wagner’s continuity is altogether formless, amoebal, inarticulated. When Nietzsche complains of unending melody, one wonders whether his early love for Wagner was ever based on any properly musical understanding at all. A hundred years later there is little excuse for such deafness; Wagner’s mastery of musical shape in Tristan und Isolde is a matter of fact, not opinion. One understands Wagner no better with a weak musical ear than with a head predisposed to theories of organic perfection”
Thomas Mann called the Wagnerian orchestra "the kingdom of knowledge present in the subconscious, unknown to the world above." The effect of Wagner's music was later described in Freudian terms by Hans Keller and Bryan Magee, among others. Wagner's music would tap into layers in the human psyche, access the subconscious where other music does not have this access. This bold statement sets Wagner's music apart entirely but cannot be dismissed lightly. In itself, it represents no small threat, all the more so since it has an intoxicating influence and can affect the mind in a narcotic way, releasing an unsuspected energy.
To Carl Spitteler, Nietzsche writes : “That my 'conversion' is linked to Carmen is of course (...) one more act of malice on my part. I know the envy, the rage of Wagner against the success of Carmen" [November 19, 1888].
Indeed, in Cosima's diaries, there is mention of Wagners concerns of having to miss out on tantièmes due to competition from Carmen. Bizet, despite his unwagnerian music, was an ardent Wagnerian: "I cannot forget the immeasurable pleasures I owe to this revolutionary genius. The charm of his music is inexpressible. Here is voluptuousness, tenderness, love!" Incidentally, all the French esteem troops in the service of Euterpe adequately acknowledged Wagner's influence: Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Gounod, Franck, Chausson, Chabrier, Massenet....
Wagner, on the other hand, was sometimes irritated by the competition he faced from the popular Carmen but his appreciation for Bizet was equally high. Letters from Hans von Bülow confirm this. In Wahnfried he regularly has Josef Rubinstein play parts from Carmen on the piano and about some parts he declares to be "delighted". In Vienna, he even attended a performance of Carmen in November 1875. Richard Batka handed down perhaps Wagner's most telling Bizet commentary: “Finally someone again who comes up with something!”
When Nietzsche learns, from a review by Wagner's notorious opponent Hanslick, that Bizet has great appreciation for Wagner he completely weakens his thesis. To Carl Fuchs he then writes: “You must not take what I said about Bizet seriously; the way I am, Bizet is out of the question for me a thousand times over. But as an antithesis to Wagner it has a very strong effect" [27 december 1888]. Subsequently, he tries again to play off his friend Heinrich Köselitz as the new antagonist, obviously with much less success.
Der Fall Wagner is full of invective on the infinite melody but just a few weeks after its publication Nietzsche manages to praise this compositional technique to the skies by means of Tristan und Isolde. In Ecce Homo he suddenly finds immortal metaphors for this work. Why? Again, the answer lies with Georg Brandes. On October 6, he thanks Nietzsche for sending him a copy of Der Fall Wagner. He claims to have just seen a very beautiful performance of Carmen but adds, however: "However, at the risk of angering you, I admit that Wagner's Tristan and Isolde made an indelible impression on me. I once heard the opera in Berlin in a desperate, completely torn state of mind, and felt with every note. I don't know if the impression was so deep because I was so ill."
In short, Brandes courteously but firmly rejects a conspiracy against Wagner. Just a moment ago, in the fall of 1888, Nietzsche had noted with a sniff, that he put on gloves when he read the Tristan score. A new letter from Copenhagen completely chills Nietzsche. This time Brandes writes: "It is strange to me that the polemical streak is still so strong in you. In my early youth I was passionately polemical; now I can only represent; I only fight by silence" [23 november 1888].
In the following weeks, we see how Nietzsche begins to rewrite the texts of Ecce Homo. Among these is the chapter :"Why I am so wise." Thus disappears the passage "Nothing is more unhealthy - crede experto! - than the Wagnerian abuse of music; it is the worst kind of 'idealism' among all possible idealistic mumbo-jumbo. I resent few things as much as I resent the instinctual wrongness of having fallen prey to this vice of Wagner at a young age." to be replaced by : “Now that I am speaking of the relaxations in my life, I need to say a word to express my gratitude for what has been by far my most profound and cordial relaxation. Without a shadow of doubt this was my intimate association with Richard Wagner. It would cost me little to forsake the rest of my human relationships, but not at any price would I part with the Tribschen days from my life, days of trust, of cheerfulness, of sublime coincidences - of profound moments… I do not know what experiences others have had with Wagner: never a cloud passed across our skies.”
He also adds a hymn to praise Tristan to the skies: “All things considered, I could not have endured my youth without Wagner’s music. (..) From the moment there was a piano score of Tristan—my compliments, Herr von Bülow! —I was a Wagnerian. (..) But even today I am searching for a work that is as dangerously fascinating, as terribly and sweetly infinite as Tristan—in all the arts I search in vain. All the strangenesses of Leonardo da Vinci lose their mystique when the first note of Tristan is sounded. This work is unquestionably Wagner’s non plus ultra; he recovered from it with the Mastersingers and the Ring. Getting healthier—with a nature like Wagner that is a retrograde step…I consider it a first-rate stroke of luck to have lived at the right time and to have lived precisely among Germans, in order to be ripe for this work: so pronounced is the psychologist’s curiosity in me. The world is poor for anyone who has never been sick enough for this ‘hellish ecstasy’: it is permitted, it is almost imperative to use a mystical formulation here. —I think I know better than anyone else the immensity of what Wagner can achieve, the fifty worlds of strange delights which no one but he had the wings to reach; and the way I am—strong enough to turn even the most dubious and dangerous things to my advantage and thus grow stronger—I call Wagner the greatest benefactor of my life. What makes us related, the fact that we have suffered more profoundly—from each other, too—than people of this century could possibly suffer, will for ever reconcile our names; and just as surely as Wagner is a mere misunderstanding among Germans, so am I and always will be.”
The hymn-like passages in Ecce Homo about Tristan are a vivid example of Nietzsche's agility, of the unhesitating agility with which he can switch from one point of view to the other. And while performing these Wagner-friendly revisions, he is also preparing aggressive texts for "Nietzsche contra Wagner."
End station operetta
What Nietzsche wants from music he finds exclusively with composers who, except for Bizet, are today totally forgotten, and he finds it especially in the operetta! Managing to steal his heart: a certain Rossaro (?), Goldmark's Sakuntala overture, Mascotte, an operetta by Edmond Audran (?), La gran Vie, an operetta by Federico Chuega (?). In the Viennese operetta, on the other hand, he finds mere "Swinishness." No wonder: Johan Strauss is a Wagnerian. On his beloved French and Spanish operettas he hardly tolerates criticism. Annoyed, he writes to Köselitz: "As long as you understand by the term operetta some condescence, some vulgarism of taste, you are -pardon the strong expression- only a German" [18 november 1888].
Josef Hofmiller aptly notes: "He who wrote The birth of Tragedy from the spirit of Music, demands in The case of Wagner the rebirth of opera from the spirit of operetta". Marcel Proust also makes fun of Nietzsche's infatuation with operetta: "In my admiration for the Bayreuth master, I felt none of the misgivings of those who, like Nietzsche (...), tear themselves away from Tristan just as they deny Parsifal, and who, on the basis of a certain spiritual asceticism, from one self-killing to another, finally arrive on the bloodiest of all crossroads at the purest knowledge and perfect adoration of the Postillon of Lonjumeau ".
It is not difficult to see who is meant when he writes in "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches": "The terrible revenge: If one wants to take revenge on an opponent, one should wait until one has a whole handful of truths and rightnesses which one can use against him, with composure: so that taking revenge coincides with taking rightness. It is the most terrible kind of revenge, because it has no authority above it, to which one could still appeal".
Genius of the lie
Unsurpassed was Nietzsche in his incantations of his love of truth and reasonableness. In a letter to Malwida von Meysenbug, he taunts Wagner as "a genius of lies." And, he adds, "I myself have the honor of being something reversed - a genius of truth." [20.10.1888]
Wagner's potential mendacity, all things considered, is not too bad. He can be blamed for minimizing his role in the Dresden Revolution in Munich. In the extraordinary situation and dependence on King Ludwig, this was understandable. Wagner's heaviest lie relates to the situation in which he concealed from the unsuspecting king his extramarital relationship with Cosima and forced from him a written declaration of honor, although they both already had a child (Isolde). Such a word from the king was the only way to stop the hate campaign in the press: a very questionable lie but one motivated by the necessity of the situation. It is probably this lie that he is referring to when, in the summer of 1881, he complained that he had behaved truthfully in all respects but that “with this lie he would go to his grave; he cried hard” [Cosimas diary, july 20, 1881].
After all, Wagner was notorious for his unflinching openness and honesty with which he discharged himself spontaneously and with all his emotions, where wrath or ridicule could degenerate into hurtful uncontrollability. Ludwig Schemann attributes these outbursts of Wagner to the "demon of his truthfulness." "He is comfortable only in absolute truth", Cosima writes on april 20, 1873. Thomas Mann shatters Nietzsche's cliché when, in Leiden und Gröβe Richard Wagners, he writes of his “gloomy, suffering, at the same time truth-bitter, truth-fanatic grandeur”. None of this can be equated with the image of a genius of lies.
As all the foregoing has sufficiently demonstrated: for lies, you have to be with Nietzsche most of all. And with his sister. The Nietzscheans follow in their footsteps. Many an author proves himself a virtuoso in the art of ignoring or interpreting away Nietzsche's lies. Borchmeyer reverently celebrates Nietzsche's falsehoods as "distortions of facts with a stylizing tendency”. Well, well. Ernest Newman surely knew better in his Wagner biography (volume IV): "Nietzsche deliberately falsified facts and repeated the stories, which he wanted others to believe, so often until he believed them himself."
Even Colli and Montinari cannot avoid it in the end when they affirm: "As soon as it is about art, it is Nietzsche himself who urges us to distrust (...) And it is good that the reader knows everything there, because he must learn to receive from Nietzsche, but also to resist him". And when it comes to art, it's always about Wagner, too.
Even Heinrich Köselitz, propagated by Nietzsche with high hymns of praise as the new Mozart, has reason to complain about an unattractive side of his master. Köselitz sacrifices himself for Nietzsche for years: for the printing house, he neatly transcribes Nietzsche's barely legible manuscripts. During his stays in Venice, he gets to run errands like a maid. Often Nietzsche rouses him from his sleep early in the morning to let himself play Chopin. All this does not prevent Nietzsche from making fun of him, behind his back. For example, he writes about Köselitz's hopeless condition to his sister : "He is already too old to be advised to wait; at his age, an artist must be famous or infamous (as Wagner was, for example) (...) But a musician whose music no one likes, and who stays in his corner, is a ridiculous figure, like a dancer with whom no one wants to dance, no matter how beautifully she has preened herself".
At the same time, he takes this opportunity to attack his most loyal friend: "Overbeck: dried up, sour, subservient to his wife, hands me, like Mime, the poisoned drink of doubt and mistrust against myself - but shows benevolent concern for me and calls himself my 'indulgent friend'. - Look at yourselves - these are (...) German types! Canailles!"