high ecclesiastical consistory]." The ecclesiastical reference was too much for Nietzsche, and it seemed almost like a challenge. Referring to the incident ten years afterwards, he said, "This crossing of two books—it seemed as if I heard with it an ominous sound. Was it not as if swords crossed? … At any rate we both took it so; for we both kept silent."[1] So far as I know, there was no direct interchange between the two men thereafter. Wagner was undoubtedly displeased by the new manner and tone of Nietzsche's book, its almost exclusively critical character, and Nietzsche on his side could only say to himself, "Incredible! Wagner has become pious." "Parsifal", now in its final form, was in truth not only Christian, it was Buddhistic,[2]—it was a glorification of celibacy, and implied an aversion to the fundamental premises of life; it was pessimist, Schopenhauerian, in the worse senses of those words. For by this time—and really, except for a brief space, always—life was a supreme end to Nietzsche, and he revolted against those who would unnerve and weaken it. He thought they exercised a corrupting influence, and he felt the odor of corruption in "Parsifal." Once he exclaims, "The preaching of chastity [i.e., celibacy] is an incitement to the unnatural: I despise every one who does not feel 'Parsifal' as an attack on morality"[3] (he is thinking, of course, of those who have some understanding of "Parsifal," not of the common run of our opera-goers]. Wagner's influence, he feared, would ultimately coalesce with the stream which arises "the other side of the mountains and knows also how to flow over mountains." "Parsifal" was not, to him, a genuine German product, it was "Rome—Rome's faith without words."[4] l
The whole experience shook Nietzsche profoundly. In fact it became a turning-point—perhaps the great turning-point in his life. His faith in the future, in art as a redeeming agency and preparation for the future, his faith, I had almost said, in himself, hung on Wagner. "As I went further on by
- ↑ Ecce Homo, III, iii, § 5.
- ↑ Drews thinks Buddhistic rather than Christian (op. cit., pp. 188-92) agreeing with Pastor Kalthoff (Nietzsche und die Kulturprohleme unserei Zeit) that the Christian element is purely decorative.
- ↑ Nietzsche contra Wagner," vii, § 3.
- ↑ Werke, XI, 101, § 311, "Nietzsche contra Wagner," vii, § 1.
