/lit/ - Literature

>>23059273
>"I can’t read two lines of Goethe without recognizing the Jewish Jehovah; for him Jesus was a problematical figure, but God was as clear as crystal." He explains to us how Plato’s Theos paved the way for the Jewish God.

>Toward lunchtime he calls me and reads to me his new article, “Know Thyself.” — Whether the Jews can ever be redeemed is the question which, in connection with it, occupies our thoughts—their nature condemns them to the world’s reality. They have profaned Christianity, that is to say, adapted it to this world, and from our art, which can only be a refuge from prevailing conditions, they also expect world conquest.

>During a trip to London in 1877, Wagner lingered over the spectacle of the industrial and commercial activity spreading over the banks of the Thames and exclaimed: “It is here that Alberich’s dream has been accomplished. Nibelheim, world domination, activity, labour, everywhere one perceives the pressure of steam and fog.”

Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78:
>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.

Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79:
>How could I ever forget this friend of mine who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.

>>21402197
Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity only makes sense if you take for granted that Christianity is descended from Judaism.

>We have nothing here to do with the astoundingly varied attempts of speculative human reason to explain the nature of this Son of the God, who walked on earth and suffered shame: where the greater miracle had been revealed in train of that manifestation, the reversal of the will-to-live which all believers experienced in themselves, it already embraced that other marvel, the divinity of the herald of salvation. The very shape of the Divine had presented itself in anthropomorphic guise; it was the body of the quintessence of all pitying Love, stretched out upon the cross of pain and suffering. A—symbol?—beckoning to the highest pity, to worship of suffering, to imitation of this breaking of all self-seeking Will: nay, a picture, a very effigy! In this, and its effect upon the human heart, lies all the spell whereby the Church soon made the Græco-Roman world her own. But what was bound to prove her ruin, and lead at last to the ever louder "Atheism" of our day, was the tyrant-prompted thought of tracing back this Godliness upon the cross to the Jewish "Creator of heaven and earth," a wrathful God of Punishment who seemed to promise greater power than the self-offering, all-loving Saviour of the Poor. That god was doomed by Art: Jehova in the fiery bush, or even the reverend Father with the snow-white beard who looked down from out the clouds in blessing on his Son, could say but little to the believing soul, however masterly the artist's hand; whereas the suffering god upon the cross, "the Head with wounds all bleeding," still fills us with ecstatic throes, in the rudest reproduction.

>This cloud is still so dense, that it is truly astounding to see the highest minds of every age since the rise of the Bible enveloped in it, and thereby led to shallowness of judgment. Take Goethe, who held Christ for problematical, but the good God for wholly proven, albeit retaining the liberty to discover the latter in Nature after his own fashion; which led to all manner of physical assays and experiments, whose continued pursuit was bound, in turn, to lead the present reigning human intellect to the result that there's no God whatever, but only "Force and Matter".

>>21391668
Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78:
>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.

Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79:
>How could I ever forget this friend of mine who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.

>>21335679
>We have nothing here to do with the astoundingly varied attempts of speculative human reason to explain the nature of this Son of the God, who walked on earth and suffered shame: where the greater miracle had been revealed in train of that manifestation, the reversal of the will-to-live which all believers experienced in themselves, it already embraced that other marvel, the divinity of the herald of salvation. The very shape of the Divine had presented itself in anthropomorphic guise; it was the body of the quintessence of all pitying Love, stretched out upon the cross of pain and suffering. A—symbol?—beckoning to the highest pity, to worship of suffering, to imitation of this breaking of all self-seeking Will: nay, a picture, a very effigy! In this, and its effect upon the human heart, lies all the spell whereby the Church soon made the Græco-Roman world her own. But what was bound to prove her ruin, and lead at last to the ever louder "Atheism" of our day, was the tyrant-prompted thought of tracing back this Godliness upon the cross to the Jewish "Creator of heaven and earth," a wrathful God of Punishment who seemed to promise greater power than the self-offering, all-loving Saviour of the Poor. That god was doomed by Art: Jehova in the fiery bush, or even the reverend Father with the snow-white beard who looked down from out the clouds in blessing on his Son, could say but little to the believing soul, however masterly the artist's hand; whereas the suffering god upon the cross, "the Head with wounds all bleeding," still fills us with ecstatic throes, in the rudest reproduction.

>The departure-point for the Jews winning a share in a development of the Christian religion lay ready in the historical fact—that Jesus of Nazareth was born in a corner of their little land, Judæa. Instead of seeing in so incomparably humble an origin a proof that among the ruling and highly-cultured nations of that historic period no birthplace could be found for the Redeemer of the Poor; that for very reason of its utmost lowliness this Galilee, distinguished by the contempt of the Jews themselves, could alone be chosen for cradle of the new belief,—to the first believers, poor shepherds and husbandmen in dull subjection to the Jewish law, it seemed imperative to trace the descent of their Saviour from the royal house of David, as if to exculpate his bold attack on all that Jewish law. Though it is more than doubtful if Jesus himself was of Jewish extraction, since the dwellers in Galilee were despised by the Jews on express account of their impure origin, we may gladly leave this point with all that concerns the history of the Redeemer to the Historian, who for his part declares that "he can make nothing of a sinless Jesus." For us it is sufficient to derive the ruin of the Christian religion from its drawing upon Judaism for the elaboration of its dogmas.

CONT

>We have nothing here to do with the astoundingly varied attempts of speculative human reason to explain the nature of this Son of the God, who walked on earth and suffered shame: where the greater miracle had been revealed in train of that manifestation, the reversal of the will-to-live which all believers experienced in themselves, it already embraced that other marvel, the divinity of the herald of salvation. The very shape of the Divine had presented itself in anthropomorphic guise; it was the body of the quintessence of all pitying Love, stretched out upon the cross of pain and suffering. A—symbol?—beckoning to the highest pity, to worship of suffering, to imitation of this breaking of all self-seeking Will: nay, a picture, a very effigy! In this, and its effect upon the human heart, lies all the spell whereby the Church soon made the Græco-Roman world her own. But what was bound to prove her ruin, and lead at last to the ever louder "Atheism" of our day, was the tyrant-prompted thought of tracing back this Godliness upon the cross to the Jewish "Creator of heaven and earth," a wrathful God of Punishment who seemed to promise greater power than the self-offering, all-loving Saviour of the Poor. That god was doomed by Art: Jehova in the fiery bush, or even the reverend Father with the snow-white beard who looked down from out the clouds in blessing on his Son, could say but little to the believing soul, however masterly the artist's hand; whereas the suffering god upon the cross, "the Head with wounds all bleeding," still fills us with ecstatic throes, in the rudest reproduction.

>This cloud is still so dense, that it is truly astounding to see the highest minds of every age since the rise of the Bible enveloped in it, and thereby led to shallowness of judgment. Take Goethe, who held Christ for problematical, but the good God for wholly proven, albeit retaining the liberty to discover the latter in Nature after his own fashion; which led to all manner of physical assays and experiments, whose continued pursuit was bound, in turn, to lead the present reigning human intellect to the result that there's no God whatever, but only "Force and Matter". It was reserved for a master-mind—how late alas!—to light this more than thousand-years' confusion in which the Jewish God-idea had plunged the whole of Christendom: that the unsatisfied thinker at last can set firm foot again on a soil of genuine Ethics, we owe to Kant's continuator, large-hearted Arthur Schopenhauer.

MY parents joined me in Leipsic in January, 1852, and in the spring of that year we planned a tour which was to take us to Switzerland in June.

In Leipsic I made the acquaintance of a man named Albert Wagner, meeting him quite frequently at the restaurant where I took my meals. While I was planning the tour, I chanced to mention it to him, and when he heard that I was going to Zürich, he said: "My brother, Richard Wagner, lives there. I will give you a letter of introduction to him." This was the first intimation I had that Albert was a brother of the composer. I suppose he had not thought it worth while to tell me. Richard was still under a political cloud in Saxony, and was compelled to live in exile on account of the part he had taken in the revolution of 1848; nor was his reputation as a composer then so general that Albert would have thought his kinship much to boast of.

We reached Zürich on June 5, 1852, and, the next morning, armed with the letter, I made my way to Wagner's chalet, which was situated on a hill in the suburbs. It was then about ten o'clock in the morning.

When I asked the maid who opened the door if Herr Wagner was at home and to be seen, she answered, as I had feared she would, that he was busily at work in his study, and could not be disturbed. I handed her my letter of introduction, and asked her to give it to Herr Wagner, and to say to him that I was expecting to remain in Zürich three or four days, and would call again, hoping to be fortunate enough to find him disengaged.

Just as I was turning to leave, I heard a voice at the head of the stairs call out, "Wer ist da?" I told the maid to deliver my letter immediately. As soon as Wagner had glanced through it, he exclaimed, "Kommen Sie herauf! Kommen Sie herauf!"

At that time Wagner was known, and that not widely, only as the composer of "Rienzi," "The Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin." I had heard only "The Flying Dutchman," but considered it a most beautiful work, and was eager to meet the composer.

Wagner's first words, as I met him on the landing at the head of the stairs, were: "You've come just at the right time. I've been working away at something, and I'm stuck. I'm in a state of nervous irritation, and it is absolutely impossible for me to go on. So I'm glad you've come."

Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78:
>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.

Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79:
>How could I ever forget this friend of mine who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.

>>20691520
Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78:
>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.

Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79:
>How could I ever forget this friend of mine [Nietzsche] who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.

>>20598038
>This question of Polygamy versus Monogamy thus brings us to the contact of the purely-human with the ever-natural. Superior minds have called Polygamy the more natural state, and the monogamic union a perpetual defiance of Nature. Undoubtedly, polygamous tribes stand nearer to the state of Nature, and, provided no disturbing mixtures intervene, thereby preserve their purity of type with the same success as Nature keeps her breeds of beasts unchanged. Only, a remarkable individuality the polygamous can not beget save under influence of the ideal canon of Monogamy; a force which sometimes exerts its power, through passionate affection and love's loyalty, in the very harems of the Orientals. It is here that the Woman herself is raised above the natural law of sex (das natürliche Gattungsgesetz), to which, in the belief of even the wisest lawgivers, she remained so bound that the Buddha himself thought needful to exclude her from the possibility of saint-hood. It is a beautiful feature in the legend, that shews the Perfect Overcomer prompted to admit the Woman.
>However, the process of emancipation of the Woman takes place amid ecstatic throes. Love—Tragedy.

>>20450530
Demonic possession.

>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.
- Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78

>How could I ever forget this friend of mine [Nietzsche] who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.
- Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79

>>20442397
>I gather from your brief allusions that our old friend Nietzsche has been holding himself aloof from you as well. There is no doubt that very striking changes have taken place in him; but anyone who observed him and his psychic spasms years ago could almost be justified in saying that a long-dreaded and not entirely unpredictable catastrophe had now overtaken him. I have retained sufficient friendship for him not to read his book – which I glanced through as I was cutting the pages – and can only wish and hope that he will thank me for it some day.
- Letter to Franz Overbeck 5/24/78

>How could I ever forget this friend of mine [Nietzsche] who was driven from me so forcefully? Although I constantly had the feeling that, at the time of his association with me, Nietzsche’s life was ruled by a mental spasm, and although it was bound to strike me as odd that this spasm could have produced so spiritually radiant and heart-warming a fire as was manifest in him to the astonishment of all, and although, finally, the ultimate decision which he reached in the inner development of his life filled me with the utmost horror when I saw how intolerable a pressure that spasm was finally causing him – I must no doubt also admit that in the case of so powerful a psychic process it is simply not possible to argue along moral lines and that one’s only response can be a shocked silence.
- Letter to Franz Overbeck 10/19/79

>>20161989
>Now, in respect of plastic art it is palpable that its ideally creative force diminished in exact proportion as it withdrew from contact with religion. Betwixt those sublimest revelations of religious art, in the godlike birth of the Redeemer and the last fulfilment of the work of the Judge of the world, the saddest of all pictures, that of the Saviour suffering on the cross, had likewise attained to its height of perfection; and this remained the archetype of the countless representations of martyred saints, their agonies illumined by the bliss of transport. Here the portrayal of bodily pain, with the instruments of torture and their wielders, already led the artists down to the common actual world, whose types of human wickedness and cruelty surrounded them beyond escape. And then came "Characteristique," with its multiple attraction for the artist; the consummate "portrait" of even the vulgarest criminal, such as might be found among the temporal and spiritual princes of that remarkable time, became the painter's most rewarding task; as on the other hand, he early enough had taken his motives for the Beautiful from the physical charms of the women in his voluptuous surroundings.
>The last sunset flush of artistic idealising of the Christian dogma had been kissed by the morning glow of the reviving Grecian art-ideal: but what could now be borrowed from the ancient world, was no longer that unity of Greek art with Antique religion whereby alone had the former blossomed and attained fruition. We have only to compare an antique statue of the goddess Venus with an Italian painting of the women chosen to impersonate this Venus, to perceive the difference between religious ideal and worldly reality. Greek art could only teach its sense of form, not lend its ideal content; whilst the Christian ideal had passed out of range of this sense-of-form, to which the actual world alone seemed henceforth visible. What shape this actual world at last took on, and what types alone it offered to the plastic arts, we will still exclude from our inquiry; suffice it to say that that art which was destined to reach its apogee in its affinity with religion, completely severing itself from this communion—as no one can deny—has fallen into utter ruin.

>>20017499
>His physical appearance in 1839 was described by the painter Friedrich Pecht: strikingly elegant, indeed aristocratic in his appearance, despite his somewhat short legs, and with such a strikingly beautiful woman on his arm (his wife Minna] that she alone would have sufficed to make the couple interesting, if Wagner himself had not had such an arresting head that one’s attention was involuntarily fixed upon him.

>Meeting him a few years later (1843), the author Eliza Wille described him thus: It had remained a fleeting encounter […]. But Wagner’s features had impressed themselves on my mind: his elegant, supple figure, the head with the mighty brow, the acute eye and the energetic lines around his small and tightly closed mouth. A painter who was sitting next to me drew my attention to his straight, protruding chin, which seemed to be carved out of stone, giving the face a special character.

>Gautier remembered being fixed for a full, silent minute by the soul-scoping intensity of his gaze. In letters home, Villiers described the “fabulous being” in terms suitable for the cruel angels and crazed scientists of his stories: Something like immortality made visible, the other world rendered transparent, creative power pushed to a fantastic point, and, with that, the sweat and the shining of genius, the impression of the infinite around his head and in the naïve profundity of his eyes. He is terrifying.

>>19749460
>Goethe held Christ for problematical, but the good God for wholly proven, albeit retaining the liberty to discover the latter in Nature after his own fashion; which led to all manner of physical assays and experiments, whose continued pursuit was bound, in turn, to lead the present reigning human intellect to the result that there's no God whatever, but only "Force and Matter."

>Goethe held Christ for problematical, but the good God for wholly proven, albeit retaining the liberty to discover the latter in Nature after his own fashion; which led to all manner of physical assays and experiments, whose continued pursuit was bound, in turn, to lead the present reigning human intellect to the result that there's no God whatever, but only "Force and Matter."

>>19507899
>His physical appearance in 1839 was described by the painter Friedrich Pecht: strikingly elegant, indeed aristocratic in his appearance, despite his somewhat short legs, and with such a strikingly beautiful woman on his arm (his wife Minna] that she alone would have sufficed to make the couple interesting, if Wagner himself had not had such an arresting head that one’s attention was involuntarily fixed upon him.

>Meeting him a few years later (1843), the author Eliza Wille described him thus: It had remained a fleeting encounter […]. But Wagner’s features had impressed themselves on my mind: his elegant, supple figure, the head with the mighty brow, the acute eye and the energetic lines around his small and tightly closed mouth. A painter who was sitting next to me drew my attention to his straight, protruding chin, which seemed to be carved out of stone, giving the face a special character.

What did Richard Wagner read during his last years in Bayreuth?
Here are the philosophers he had in his library:
>Bacon. Böhme. Bruno. Descartes. Diderot. Eckhart. Erasmus. Gracian. Hobbes. Kant. Confucius. La Rochefoucauld. Locke. Maistre. Montaigne. Montesquieu. Nietzsche. Paracelsus. Pascal. Rousseau. Schopenhauer. Spinoza. Voltaire.
And here are the classical authors he had read during his time in Wahnfried:
>Aeschylus. Anacreon. Archilochus. Aristophanes. Aristotle. Aurelius. Boethius. Caesar. Catullus. Cicero. Euripides. Hesiod. Homer. Horace. Juvenal. Lucian. Martial. Ovid. Pausanias. Persius. Pindar. Plato. Plautus. Plutarch. Propertius. Seneca the Younger. Sophocles. Suetonius. Terence. Theocritus. Tibullus. Vergil. Vitruvius. Xenophon.
There's a lot of other stuff he probably read during his time Wahnfried, such as the German mystics (Eckhart, Tauler, Suso), German fabulists (Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Straßburg) and lots of German romantic literature (Goethe, Schlegel). He also seemingly inherited Schlegel's love of Indian literature (hence why he has the Pañcatantra, Bhagavad-Gita, Vedas, Sutta Nipata, Kalidasa, and much more in his library).
Source: https://wagnermuseum.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2019/01/bestandsliste_wahnfried.pdf

>>19237548
These answers make me believe that none of the people have read or understood Weininger

>His physical appearance in 1839 was described by the painter Friedrich Pecht: strikingly elegant, indeed aristocratic in his appearance, despite his somewhat short legs, and with such a strikingly beautiful woman on his arm (his wife Minna] that she alone would have sufficed to make the couple interesting, if Wagner himself had not had such an arresting head that one’s attention was involuntarily fixed upon him.

>Meeting him a few years later (1843), the author Eliza Wille described him thus: It had remained a fleeting encounter […]. But Wagner’s features had impressed themselves on my mind: his elegant, supple figure, the head with the mighty brow, the acute eye and the energetic lines around his small and tightly closed mouth. A painter who was sitting next to me drew my attention to his straight, protruding chin, which seemed to be carved out of stone, giving the face a special character.

>Gautier remembered being fixed for a full, silent minute by the soul-scoping intensity of his gaze. In letters home, Villiers described the “fabulous being” in terms suitable for the cruel angels and crazed scientists of his stories: “Something like immortality made visible, the other world rendered transparent, creative power pushed to a fantastic point, and, with that, the sweat and the shining of genius, the impression of the infinite around his head and in the naïve profundity of his eyes. He is terrifying.”

>Cosima states: I Reflect how R.’s nature consists, like his works, of a mixture of great strength and delicacy; his mouth, ears, skin are as fine and delicate as a woman's, his bone structure sturdy, even gnarled.

>THE Greek Fate is the inner Nature-necessity, from which the Greek—because he did not understand it —sought refuge in the arbitrary political State. Our Fate is the arbitrary political State, which to us shews itself as an outer necessity for the maintenance of Society; and from which we seek refuge in the Nature-necessity, because we have learnt to understand the latter, and have recognised it as the conditionment of our being and all its shapings.

>>18712721

>I said above, the Jews had brought forth no true poet. We here must give a moment's mention, then, to HEINRICH HEINE. At the time when Goethe and Schiller sang among us, we certainly know nothing of a poetising Jew: at the time, however, when our poetry became a lie, when every possible thing might flourish from the wholly unpoetic element of our life, but no true poet—then was it the office of a highly-gifted poet-Jew to bare with fascinating taunts that lie, that bottomless aridity and jesuitical hypocrisy of our Versifying which still would give itself the airs of true poesis. His famous musical congeners, too, he mercilessly lashed for their pretence to pass as artists; no make-believe could hold its ground before him: by the remorseless demon of denial of all that seemed worth denying was he driven on without a rest, through all the mirage of our modern self-deception, till he reached the point where in turn he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers.—He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern Civilisation.

>>18399076
>The last sunset flush of artistic idealising of the Christian dogma had been kissed by the morning glow of the reviving Grecian art-ideal: but what could now be borrowed from the ancient world, was no longer that unity of Greek art with Antique religion whereby alone had the former blossomed and attained fruition. We have only to compare an antique statue of the goddess Venus with an Italian painting of the women chosen to impersonate this Venus, to perceive the difference between religious ideal and worldly reality. Greek art could only teach its sense of form, not lend its ideal content; whilst the Christian ideal had passed out of range of this sense-of form, to which the actual world alone seemed henceforth visible. What shape this actual world at last took on, and what types alone it offered to the plastic arts, we will still exclude from our inquiry; suffice it to say that that art which was destined to reach its apogee in its affinity with religion, completely severing itself from this communion— as no one can deny—has fallen into utter ruin.