CHAPTER VIII
RELATIONS WITH WAGNER
The intellectual preparation for the new culture which Nietzsche hoped for had been made, he thought, by Kant and Schopenhauer—the former in demonstrating the limits of scientific knowledge, the latter in facing fearlessly the tragic facts of existence and in proposing the production of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, as the true aim of human life. But the practical attaining of the result was another matter—and art, he believed, might render great assistance to this end. Yes, a certain kind of art would stand almost in a relation of cause and effect to it—namely, art of the Dionysiac type such as had existed among the Greeks. Nietzsche thought he discovered the beginnings of such an art in the work of a contemporary—Richard Wagner. Wagner was, in a sense, a disciple of Schopenhauer; he possessed an ardent moral nature and was dissatisfied with the existing forms of social and political life; he too looked, however vaguely, for a new culture, and was not without the thought that art—and his art in particular—might serve to this end.
I
It is necessary to explain at the outset Nietzsche's view of the peculiar nature of musical art—something I passed over in treating his view of art in general. In it he follows closely in the footsteps of Schopenhauer. Music is radically different from the other arts. A picture, a statue, or a poem of the epic order portrays things without us, or as we might imagine their existing without us—it gives us objects. Music, on the other hand, expresses feeling and has nothing to do directly with objects. It reflects moods, desires, longings, resolves—the whole spontaneous and voluntary side of our nature, which Schopenhauer summed up as will. No doubt most of us are conscious
