/lit/ - Literature

>The friendship deepened into something like a father-son connection. "Strictly speaking, you are, aside from my wife, the one prize I have received in life," Wagner wrote to his disciple in 1872. Later, in a draft of the preface to the second part of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche described the relationship as "my only love-affair," before striking the phrase from his proofs.

>Nietzsche’s research resulted in Human, All-too-human (1878), which introduced his readers to the corrosive attacks on conventional pieties for which he became famous, as well as to a style of writing in short, numbered paragraphs and pithy aphorisms to which he often returned in later work. When he sent the book to the Wagners early in 1878, it effectively ended their friendship: Nietzsche later wrote that his book and Wagner’s Parsifal libretto crossed in the mail “as if two swords had crossed” (EH III; HH 5).

>In the privacy of Nietzsche's letters these things are openly stated, again and again: a superabundance of quotations offer themselves. Six years after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche wrote to his sister: ‘Certainly those were the best days of my life, the ones I spent with him at Tribschen and through him in Bayreuth (1872, not 1876)… And the disillusionment and leaving Wagner – was not that putting my very life in danger? Have I not needed almost six years to recover from that pain?’ (3 February 1882). Five months later he wrote to Lou Salomé: ‘I have had such experiences with this man and his work, and it was a passion which lasted a long time – passion is the only word for it. The renunciation that it required, the rediscovering of myself that eventually became necessary, was among the hardest and most melancholy things that have befallen me’ (16 July 1882). Nine days after that he wrote to another friend: ‘I have been since 1876 more a battlefield than a man’; and then to Lou Salomé a month later: ‘First, one has the difficulty of emancipating oneself from one's chains; and, ultimately, one has to emancipate oneself from this emancipation too! Each of us has to suffer, though in greatly differing ways, from the chain sickness, even after he has broken the chains.’ And so it goes on, in letter after letter, the sense of grief, loss, bereavement. When Wagner did in fact die the following year Nietzsche wrote: ‘It was hard to be for six years the enemy of a man whom one has revered above all others.’ Not surprisingly, he never ceased to dream about Wagner, and especially to dream that he was back in the Garden of Eden that had been Tribschen.

>In Ecce Homo, for instance, written five years after Wagner's death, Nietzsche says: ‘I think I know better than anyone the prodigy Wagner could be, the fifty worlds of strange delights to which no one but he possessed the wings to soar; and being what I am, namely strong enough to turn the most dubious and perilous things to my own advantage, and thus to grow stronger, I name Wagner my life's great benefactor.’ This is often quoted. But in his very next sentence he says: ‘that we have suffered more deeply, including from one another, than people of this century are capable of suffering, will eternally join our names together’.

>Only nine days after Wagner's death Nietzsche wrote to one of his closest friends: ‘Wagner was by far the fullest human being I have known, and in this respect I have had to forgo a great deal for six years’ (22 February 1883). But his next sentence is: ‘But something like a deadly offence came between us; and something terrible could have happened if he had lived longer.’ What on earth was this ‘something terrible’ that could have happened? And what was the ‘deadly offence’?

>In the privacy of Nietzsche's letters these things are openly stated, again and again: a superabundance of quotations offer themselves. Six years after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche wrote to his sister: ‘Certainly those were the best days of my life, the ones I spent with him at Tribschen and through him in Bayreuth (1872, not 1876)… And the disillusionment and leaving Wagner – was not that putting my very life in danger? Have I not needed almost six years to recover from that pain?’ (3 February 1882). Five months later he wrote to Lou Salomé: ‘I have had such experiences with this man and his work, and it was a passion which lasted a long time – passion is the only word for it. The renunciation that it required, the rediscovering of myself that eventually became necessary, was among the hardest and most melancholy things that have befallen me’ (16 July 1882). Nine days after that he wrote to another friend: ‘I have been since 1876 more a battlefield than a man’; and then to Lou Salomé a month later: ‘First, one has the difficulty of emancipating oneself from one's chains; and, ultimately, one has to emancipate oneself from this emancipation too! Each of us has to suffer, though in greatly differing ways, from the chain sickness, even after he has broken the chains.’ And so it goes on, in letter after letter, the sense of grief, loss, bereavement. When Wagner did in fact die the following year Nietzsche wrote: ‘It was hard to be for six years the enemy of a man whom one has revered above all others.’ Not surprisingly, he never ceased to dream about Wagner, and especially to dream that he was back in the Garden of Eden that had been Tribschen.

>In Ecce Homo, for instance, written five years after Wagner's death, Nietzsche says: ‘I think I know better than anyone the prodigy Wagner could be, the fifty worlds of strange delights to which no one but he possessed the wings to soar; and being what I am, namely strong enough to turn the most dubious and perilous things to my own advantage, and thus to grow stronger, I name Wagner my life's great benefactor.’ This is often quoted. But in his very next sentence he says: ‘that we have suffered more deeply, including from one another, than people of this century are capable of suffering, will eternally join our names together’.

>Only nine days after Wagner's death Nietzsche wrote to one of his closest friends: ‘Wagner was by far the fullest human being I have known, and in this respect I have had to forgo a great deal for six years’ (22 February 1883). But his next sentence is: ‘But something like a deadly offence came between us; and something terrible could have happened if he had lived longer.’ What on earth was this ‘something terrible’ that could have happened? And what was the ‘deadly offence’?

Was the divide ever healed?

>>17924740
Who was the master/slave in their relationship?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXh5JprKqiU

>Famously, in his published writing Nietzsche sets up Bizet against Wagner, declares Carmen to be the greatest of all operas, and compares its music favourably with Wagner's in a certain amount of detail. But he does not believe this either. Privately, in a letter to a friend he writes: 'What I say about Bizet, you should not take seriously the way I am, Bizet does not matter at all to me. But as an ironic antithesis to Wagner, it has a strong effect' (27 December 1888). It does indeed, and has been quoted ever since. We begin to realise who, as between Nietzsche and Wagner, is the actor, the master of insincere effect. As for Wagner the man, although Nietzsche heaped almost incredible public abuse on his head ('Is Wagner a human being at all? Isn't he rather a sickness?' — this remark in The Wagner Case is representative of dozens such to be found in his writings) he never, in spite of himself, lost a vivid sense of Wagner's greatness. In the last year of his effective life he wrote to a friend: 'Wagner himself, as man, as animal, as God and artist, surpasses a thousand times the understanding and the incomprehension of our Germans' (26 February 1888).

>>17468283
>Famously, in his published writing Nietzsche sets up Bizet against Wagner, declares Carmen to be the greatest of all operas, and compares its music favourably with Wagner's in a certain amount of detail. But he does not believe this either. Privately, in a letter to a friend he writes: 'What I say about Bizet, you should not take seriously the way I am, Bizet does not matter at all to me. But as an ironic antithesis to Wagner, it has a strong effect' (27 December 1888). It does indeed, and has been quoted ever since. We begin to realise who, as between Nietzsche and Wagner, is the actor, the master of insincere effect. As for Wagner the man, although Nietzsche heaped almost incredible public abuse on his head ('Is Wagner a human being at all? Isn't he rather a sickness?' — this remark in The Wagner Case is representative of dozens such to be found in his writings) he never, in spite of himself, lost a vivid sense of Wagner's greatness. In the last year of his effective life he wrote to a friend: 'Wagner himself, as man, as animal, as God and artist, surpasses a thousand times the understanding and the incomprehension of our Germans' (26 February 1888).

And there are countless other letters like this from Nietzsche. Not appreciating Wagner is a sign of low intelligence.

>>17382033
Wagner and Nietzsche are one of the greatest and funniest duos.

>Famously, in his published writing Nietzsche sets up Bizet against Wagner, declares Carmen to be the greatest of all operas, and compares its music favourably with Wagner's in a certain amount of detail. But he does not believe this either. Privately, in a letter to a friend he writes: 'What I say about Bizet, you should not take seriously the way I am, Bizet does not matter at all to me. But as an ironic antithesis to Wagner, it has a strong effect' (27 December 1888). It does indeed, and has been quoted ever since. We begin to realise who, as between Nietzsche and Wagner, is the actor, the master of insincere effect. As for Wagner the man, although Nietzsche heaped almost incredible public abuse on his head ('Is Wagner a human being at all? Isn't he rather a sickness?' — this remark in The Wagner Case is representative of dozens such to be found in his writings) he never, in spite of himself, lost a vivid sense of Wagner's greatness. In the last year of his effective life he wrote to a friend: 'Wagner himself, as man, as animal, as God and artist, surpasses a thousand times the understanding and the incomprehension of our Germans' (26 February 1888).

And there are countless other letters like this of Nietzsche, must be pretty embarrassing rn for peabrained Nietzscheans who couldn't understand irony or the idea of intellectual testing.

>In the evening we are visited by Dr. Rée, whose cold and precise character does not appeal to us; on closer inspection we come to the conclusion that he must be an Israelite.
>R. reads some of Nietzsche's latest book [Human, All Too Human] and is astonished by its pretentious ordinariness. "I can understand why [Paul] Rée's company is more congenial to him than mine." And when I remark that to judge by this book N.'s earlier ones were just reflections of something else, they did not come from within, he says, "And now they are Rée-flections!"
- Cosima diary

Who was right?

Who was in the right?

>>16061767

>>16001498

Who was correct?

>>15639483
>>15639502
>>15639506
>>15639508
>>15639509
>*Ahem*
>The famous episode of Wagner contacting Nietzsche’s physician appears as well: Wagner sent word to the doctor to inform him that excessive masturbation was responsible for Nietzsche’s health problems. Köhler interprets Wagner as lamenting about Nietzsche’s lack of intercourse with women.

The caring Wagner contacted Nietzsche's doctor --an avid admirer of Wagner-- who revealed to him Nietzsche's sickness, one character of it being a suffering eyesight, which in earnest worry for Nietzsche's future did Wagner conclude to be the result of masturbation. He wrote to Dr. Eiser "I have been thinking for some time, in connection with N.s malady, of similar cases I have observed among talented young intellectuals. I watched these young men go to rack and ruin and realised only too painfully that such symptoms were the result of masturbation." Somehow this correspondence became widely known in the Bayreuth gossip.


Literally chad womaniser and caring Wagner, vs bitter maladied masturbatory virgin Nietzsche.