failure. As Nietzsche notes, ‘Answering to the wish of the listener to understand the words being sung the singer speaks rather than sings and increases the expressive pathos of the words with this half-singing: through this increase in the pathos he facilitates the comprehension of the words and overcomes that remaining half, the music’ (KSA 1 p. 121).
Hence opera presents itself as a paradoxical musical form, one whose goal :$
is to reduce to a minimum the musical element for the sake of clarity. Yet the significance of such an artistic form is not that it merely gives priority to the intelligibility of the text at the expense of the music. The preference for the text signifies for Nietzsche an exclusion of the aesthetic per se, not just a mistaken aesthetic praxis. For ‘Opera is the progeny of theoretical Man, of the critical
layperson, not of the artist: one of the most alienating facts in the history of all the ;
arts. It was the demand of truly unmusical listeners to understand the word above all’ (KSA 1 p. 123).
Nietzsche’s account of opera and of its concomitant displacement of the aesthetic drive becomes extended in other works to encompass a general theory of the alienation and marginalisation of art in Modernity. Amongst his earlier works perhaps one of the most striking analyses appears in section § 170 of ‘The
Wanderer and his Shadow’ in Human All-too human , entitled ‘Art in the Time of
Work’. Here Nietzsche observes how ‘We have the conscience of an industrious epoch: this does not permit us to give our best times and mornings over to art, even if this art were itself the greatest and most worthy. It counts for us as a matter of leisure, of relaxation: we dedicate the remainder of our time, our energies, to it’ (KSA 2 p. 623). This trivialisation of the function of art has in turn led to a trivialisation of the content of art, for ‘even the artists of great art promise relaxation, diversion, they too address themselves to the exhausted, they too ask him for the hours in the evening of the working day’ (ibid. p. 624).
Set against this disenfranchisement of art the motive behind Nietzsche’s polemic against formalist aesthetics becomes all the clearer. Quite simply, in attempting to free art from the trivial moralising to which it was subjected, they have merely confirmed the prevailing ideology of modern society, which has relegated art to the status of entertainment. Rather than supporting Nietzsche’s insight that art ‘is the great facilitator of life, the great seductress towards life, the great stimulus to life’ (KSA 13: 11 [415] p. 194), they have rather managed to concur with Hegel’s judgement that art has been superseded as a serious concern by other cultural formations. It is a criticism of formalism which in many respects parallels the early Marxist critique of formalist ideologies, though without sharing their commitment to class struggle or any form of liberating utopianism.
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A further difference between Nietzsche and Marxist critiques of such a trivialising of art lies in the fact that overshadowing all of Nietzsche’s critique of Modernity is the advent of Nihilism. Less concerned with social justice than with cultural well-being, Nietzsche’s main concern in his critique of Modernity is with the manner in which Western culture since Socrates has projected itself on a trajectory which can only have one result, namely a descent into Nihilism. In addition, whereas Marxist critiques would accord a secondary function to art, i.e. less effecting than being affected by a transformation of social relations, for Nietzsche it is art itself, or rather particular kinds of art, which will effect that cultural change which will then transform all political structures.
Returning to Nihilism we recall that, as Nietzsche says, it is a consequence of the fact that ‘the highest values devalue themselves’ (KSA 12: 9 [35] p. 350). More specifically it is a result of the loss of certainty set against the expectation of certainty promoted by the interpretative horizon of metaphysics, Christianity and science, in short, the whole complex of Western culture. Loss of faith in the ‘true’ transcendent world leads to a refusal to accept the legitimation of any values, a refusal to accept the tradition which has sustained such beliefs, and as Nietzsche
notes in the opening of The Antichrist, modern man is plunged into a state of
neurosis: ‘ “I know neither my way in nor out; I am everything that knows neither in nor out” laments the modern human’ (KSA 6 p. 169). Modernity is characterised for Nietzsche by a sense of loss and confusion, a feeling which threatens to plunge into the abyss of Nihilism. Yet Nihilism is ‘ambiguous’ (KSA 12: 9 [35] p. 350), and the responses to the crisis of Modernity are various.
I have already commented in previous chapters on the distinction made by Nietzsche and subsequent commentators between active and reactive Nihilism. Reactive Nihilism is that sense of pessimism generated by the weak, in other words
those who still cling to the ideal of some transcendent, unchanging truth, while at
the same time confronted by the loss of legitimacy of any of those values cherished hitherto. The sense of mourning at the loss of such certain truths is accompanied by the conviction of the worthlessness of all existence, since it cannot be justified by some higher authority. Reactive Nihilism gives birth to the desire for revenge, for destruction, and with this we are reminded of Nietzsche’s typological classification
of the Romantic [die Romantik] in The Gay Science , as a destructive condition
characterised by precisely that feeling of lack: ‘The longing for destruction, change. Becoming can be the expression of a superabundant power pregnant with the future (my term for that, as is known, is “Dionysian”); but it can also be the hate of the ill- constituted, the disinherited, the underprivileged, who destroys, has to destroy, be cause that which is permanent, indeed all permanence, all Being itself, provokes it and arouses indignation’ (KSA 3 p. 621).
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178 One notes here that although superficially such reactive Nihilism seems to
have turned against the order and hierarchy of tradition, it is in fact still bound
closely to it, and to metaphysics in general, by the spirit of ressentiment, by the
desire to wreak revenge. It is merely a modern form of the same spirit of
ressentiment which Nietzsche discerns motivating Christianity in On the Genealogy
of Morals when he quotes the obvious relish Thomas Aquinas takes in imagining
the future sufferings of those non-believers: ‘ “Beati in regno coelesti” he says, meek as a lamb, “videbunt poenas damnatorum, ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat” [the blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned in order that their bliss will be more delightful for them]’ (KSA 5 p. 284). In the case of metaphysics the mark is the constant rancour of philosophers against change and sensuality, and I outlined the ways in which Nietzsche employs temporal and physiological rhetoric to counter such tendencies. In the case of the reactive Nihilists (and Nietzsche regards the growing anarchist movement of his own time as an example of this [KSA 3 p. 622] ), energies are turned against the permanent instead. This spirit of revenge which unites the two marks them out as two partners of a self-consuming dialectic. As an analysis of social conditions, Nietzsche’s interpretation can be applied to German history after his death as an explanation of the alarming ease with which the Weimar Republic was transformed into the thousand year Reich of National Socialism. According to Nietzsche’s position, such a change was eminently possible, since the apparent liberalism of the Weimar Republic can now be seen as merely a reactive response to the loss of the political and social certainties of Willhelminian Germany, a reaction which could easily be overturned into its other - the restoration of tradition and certainty, albeit of a brutal and distorted kind.^
Against this can be set active Nihilism, whose character will now be clear on the basis of the analyses of interpretation and temporality in the preceding chapters. Active Nihilism is that sense of freedom brought about by awareness of the contingency of all interpretative horizons, an acceptance of the historicity of all knowledge. It is a recognition of knowledge as the dialectic of interpretative will to power, with everything which that entails.
Having sketched out briefly how Nietzsche characterises the response to the crisis of Modernity (and for him Modernity is synonymous with crisis), it is now necessary to turn to the relation of art to Nihilism, and I shall begin by analysing further what Nietzsche means by the word ‘art’. The term ‘art’ seems to designate many things for Nietzsche, many of which are in conflict. As I claimed in my last chapter, it is important to keep in mind that art, for Nietzsche, consists less of empirical objects than in the state of artistic creativity, and hence his stress on the aesthetics of the artist. Art, considered thus, can be equated with the ‘aesthetic
179 attitude’, a reading which makes more plausible Nietzsche’s claim that art is the
‘counter-movement to Nihilism’.
As I have pointed out previously, though, art also seems to designate those objects which Nietzsche considers products of the genuine aesthetic drive and, and those fundamentally non-aesthetic objects which modern society still terms works of art. Implicit in this analysis is a notion of authenticity, a word which reminds us
of Nietzsche’s observation in The Birth o f Tragedy that a yawning gap has
appeared in modem society between ‘Bildung’ and ‘authentic’ art. Although the mature writings do not make use of the notion of authenticity explicitly, I am claiming that implicit in Nietzsche’s account of art, as well as in his more general interpretation of Modernity, authenticity is nevertheless a central idea, around which much of the argument revolves. This will become clear as I further examine Nietzsche’s discussion of art and Modernity.
In his work on Modernity Nietzsche frequently employs the opposition of Classical and Romantic, as artistic metaphors for the active / reactive dichotomy of Nihilism. However they are meant as rather more than just metaphors. The manner in which the problem of Modernity is confronted in art can be regarded as central to understanding the crisis facing contemporary society, and the Classical artistic response, in the form of Dionysian Classicism, should be understood as providing the key to the overcoming of reactive Nihilism in all other spheres of social being. In other words Nietzsche is using the practice of Dionysian Classicism as a device for leading the way, for communicating how one might imagine living in a post metaphysical, post-Modern society^. It is a practice which diverges considerably, however, from the actual artistic responses of Modernism.
Turning our attention to those artistic responses to Modernity which were known to Nietzsche we see two movements being singled out for censure, namely Realism and Romanticism (which latter should be distinguished from the more general typological category of ‘die Romantik’). Both movements are the products of Modernity, though they deal with the dissolution of the authority of tradition in very different ways. I shall deal with each in turn, beginning with Romanticism.
One of the principle features of Romanticism for Nietzsche is its status as a neurotic condition. I have indicated previously how Nietzsche describes the decadence of Modernity in medical terms, as a neurosis which needs curing, and his description of Romanticism is no different. Concerning Delacroix, for example,
he quotes with approval a passage from the novel Manette Salomon by the
Concourt brothers which observes that Delacroix ‘is the . . . image of the décadence of our time, the spoilt one, confusion .. . the passions, the nerves, the faiblesses of our time, modem torment’ (KSA 11: 25 [141] p. 51), adding a further comment at the end that ‘Delacroix a kind of Wagner’ (ibid.). A second note in the
180 Nachlafi quotes another passage from the same novel, half translated and half in
French, once again with regard to Delacroix; ‘Delacroix - he promised everything,
announced everything. His pictures ? Aborted masterpieces; the person who, après i
tout, will arouse the passions comme tout grand incomplet, a feverish life in all he
creates, une agitation de lunettes, un dessin fou’ (ibid. 25 [142] p. 51). In Beyond g
Good and Evil Nietzsche devotes a lengthy aphorism (§ 256) to the discussion of
the late Romantics of France and Richard Wagner. He writes, ‘all of them fanatics of expression “at any price” - 1 emphasise Delacroix, the most closely related to Wagner - all of them great discoverers in the realm of the sublime . . . even
greater discoverers as regards effects, display . . . born enemies of logic and ?
straight lines, lusting after the alien, the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, the ?
contradictory; Tantaluses of the will as human beings, successful plebeians who - j
knew themselves to be incapable of a respectable tempo, a lento in their work and creativity . . . unbridled workers, near self-destroyers in their work, antinomians and rebels against custom, ambitious and insatiable without balance and enjoyment, all of them eventually breaking down and sinking down before the cross (and that with right and reason: for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and original for a philosophy of the Antichrist ?)’(KSA 5 pp. 202-3). In his final analyses of Wagner he goes even further. Wagner does not aim merely to rebel against tradition and custom, rather he panders to the weak; ‘Revenge against life itself - the most voluptuous kind of rapture for such impoverished ones ! . . Wagner just as much as Schopenhauer answers the double requirement of these latter - they deny life, they defame it, thus they are my antipodes’ (KSA 6 p. 425).
In The Case of Wagner Nietzsche once again uses medical imagery, asking ‘Is
Wagner even a human ? Is he not rather a disease ? He makes everything he touches sickly - he has made music sickly’ ibid. p. 21).
What is significant about all these discussion is the sense of Romanticism as a neurotic condition permeated by confusion. Most especially in the passages on Delacroix, one can see how the reaction against tradition and custom has led to the unleashing of self-destructive energies. It is a confusion accompanied by prolonged, dangerous and decadent introspection, with the emphasis constantly on subjective expression ‘at any price’. I say dangerous because the extreme self absorption which Nietzsche here comments on parallels the birth of asceticism he
outlines in On the Genealogy of morals . If we recall, asceticism was seen to be
dangerous cultural manifestation because it represents a turning of energies, more specifically will to power, against themselves, rather than directing them outwards. Asceticism thus constitutes a fetishism of the process which first generated
subjectivity. As Nietzsche writes, ‘The whole inner world, originally thin as if 4
stretched between two membranes, extended and expanded, acquired depth,
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181 breadth and height in the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited’ (KSA
5 p. 332).
Romantic repressive self-absorption is a state which is to be found in
Nietzsche’s more general description of modern humanity in The Antichrist,
stemming from the fact that while the false strictures of custom have been rejected, 4
the transcendent foundation of their authority, which Nietzsche introduces by mentioning the cross, still remains as an object of desire. All the Romantics eventually sink down ‘before the Cross’, an indication that they too are caught up in the reactive moment of the dialectic of Nihilism. It is an interpretation which suggests that behind their antinomian production there still lies the hope for redemption through some form of restoration of transcendent values, a hope whose lack of fulfilment leads inevitably to despair.
If we consider Realism, we find that in many respects this constitutes the other partner in the dialectic of reactive Nihilism, indeed Nietzsche explicitly refers
to Flaubert in Twilight of the Idols in such terms; ‘On ne peut penser et écrire
qu’assis (G. Flaubert). With that I have you. Nihilist !’ (KSA 6 p. 64). I have earlier given the grounds for Nietzsche’s criticism of Realism, together with the positivism of which it is the product. The criticisms are two-fold. The first is the criticism of the notion that it is possible to produce a non-perspectival representation, and the second is of the notion that there is an objective order of things to be merely reproduced through mimesis. The second objection hardly needs any further treatment, but I shall develop Nietzsche’s first critique beyond what I have said previously. As regards the first aspect of Realist myth, Nietzsche is quite clear about the impossibility of the author’s transcending his own subjective perspective. In a note from the NachlaB of 1884 he writes, ‘People have regarded as “impersonal” what was the expression of the most powerful persons . . . But the gentlemen would love to hide and be rid of themselves, e.g. Flaubert’ (KSA 11: 25 [117] p. 44). Moreover Nietzsche interprets such putative self-transcendence on the part of the artist as an expression of decadence, a denigration of the self which mirrors the Romantic denigration of the objective. In a note from the same notebook Nietzsche says ‘It is a self-denigration amongst the modems, that they would like to “be rid of themselves” in art, just like Schopenhauer - to take refuge in the object, “deny” themselves’ (ibid.: 25 [164] p. 57). It is a criticism which he does not
retract, noting in Nietzsche contra Wagner , that ‘In Goethe, for example,
superabundance was creative, in Flaubert hate: . . . “Flaubert est toujours haïssable, l’homme n’est rien, l’œuvre est tout” . . . he tortured himself whenever he composed poetry, just as Pascal tortured himself whenever he thought - they both had “unegoistic” sensibilities - the principle of décadence’ (KSA 6 pp. 426-7).
182 Realism, too, turns out to be a reactive response to the loss of tradition and
the legitimacy of traditional values. This time, however, unlike Romanticism, it does not resort to a destructive and self-destructive ressentiment against the world, but rather takes refuge in a new alternative order of things, at the same time wiping out the subject who might put the legitimacy of that order in doubt once again. It is a rejection of tradition in the name of a higher objective truth, uncritically reinscribing those values which sustained tradition into a new scheme of values, a phenomenon to which I alluded in the previous chapter.
We can see this process at work if we observe the political issues at stake.