/lit/ - Literature

No, read Nietzsche Contra Wagner.

The man knew what he wanted and went for it.

>>16873482
But the question is: Was Nietzsche's narcissism warranted?

>>16873450
Narcissism is never warranted.

>>16873450
on the contrary, what would warrant narcissism? What's the appeal to narcissistic figures? When you live to win sentiment and dress to impress, wearing your self absorbtion as a kind of mask to make up for your personal charisma you're rarely little more than a worthless annoying retard and utter faggot.

>>16873450
He actually wasn't as narcissistic as many make out; about as narcissistic as he got was thinking himself one of the most important men in history, and his supposed rudeness to others was far more occasional. On the contrary, he was often very polite and flattering of others, and stressed compassion as divinely important.

>This is the man to whom the highest honor is due. At a time when I was quite unknown it was he who reposed the fullest confidence in me. Without him, you would probably never have heard a single note from my pen. What I have and what I am I owe to him alone, to my dear, unwavering and wonderful friend Franz Liszt.
-Wagner addressing the concluding banquet after the first Ring Cycle performance in Bayreuth (1876), and giving due honor to Liszt.

>There is in contemporary art one name that is already glorious and will be more and more so: Richard Wagner. His genius has been a torch to me; I have followed it, and my friendship for Wagner has retained all the character of a noble passion. At one time (ten years ago), I dreamed of a new epoch for Weimar comparable to that of Karl Augustus, and epoch of which Wagner and I were to be the coryphaei, as Goethe and Schiller once were.
-Franz Liszt’s Testament, written in 1860

>>16873482
no, read Furtwängler contra Nietzsche

>It was in Nietzsche's nature that he could only be active in opposition to something. He stood against his era and held up the mirror to it; that was part of his attitude towards life. As long as it was to promote Wagner against rejection and dullness, as long as Wagner was not yet famous, Nietzsche was at his side and fought with him against the "educated" Germany. Then it became senseless. Then, after those highbrows also had swung over to Wagner, he had to keep fighting them on another level, even at the price of turning against the man he had previously esteemed.

>The last sentences of the "case of wagner" read: "The three demands to which I'm driven by my love of art: that the theater doesn't become master of the arts, that the actor does not become the seducer of the real, that music does not become an art of deception."
>With this definition, this hate-driven devil's advocate has done the best-aimed blow. Because by "exposing" Wagner as an actor - what in the eyes of Germans who easily think of theater as something suspicious, means no less than "Swindler" - he took from Wagner what every artist needs most of all, trust.
>Hereby Wagner is judged before all the world. He's never a poet, never a musician, never an artist of first rank. He was "theater" and nothing more, and therefore - and now the ring is closing - the typical decadent. Wagner is downright a school example of what decadence means in art.

>Nietzsche is himself guilty of every accusation that he bitterly throws at Wagner. He himself is the aphorist, who is unable or doesn't want to create something grand and coherent. He himself is the man of nuance, the relation, the finest and most fleeting associations, the rarest, delayed, most deep-seated sensations. And what concerns the will to effects - well, he really doesn't fall behind Wagnerians in this regard. His style proves this no less than his success which - to use his own words - tells against him as it tells against Wagner. Both are typical decadents but there's a difference. Wagner is, as it were, naive, believes in himself, doesn't know that he is decadent. But Nietzsche is more sincerely and truthfully - as he believes - conscious of it. Now a fact isn't overcome simply via diagnosis. I will not become healthier by knowing that I am sick. But this knowledge brings with it one thing: it makes me face myself differently. That's why it's so typical of the decadent that he cannot stand himself. Today that's all too often the reason for the preference of many people for ancient art from finished epochs - in music e.g. for the art of Mozart and Bach. You flee into the distance because you can't bear closeness; above all, you want to forget yourself and everything related to it, forget it as thoroughly as possible, just so as not to have to meet yourself. Where Nietzsche rages against Wagner, he rages against himself.

>>16873950
Brilliant, what are the sauce for these quotes anon?

>>16873450
>Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, and almost all the ancients spoke of themselves with pride, and so did Dante, Shakespeare, Bacon, and many others. That a man can have a great mind without his noticing something of it is an absurdity of which only hopeless incompetence can persuade itself, in order that it may also regard as modesty the feeling of its own insignificance.

That picture is ridiculous though. I would say Wagner is on relatively equal grounds with Aeschylus and Shakespeare.

>>16873975
speech "der fall wagner"
>Furtwängler, Wilhelm-Ton und Wort. Aufsätze und Vorträge 1918 bis 1954.

>>16873450
Was the cartoonist jewish?

>>16873950
Though I wouldn't say Wagner is strictly a "decadent", at his highest he is that which is traditional in the very noblest and self-sacrificing. He is as modern a traditional as one may be, or as traditional a modern may be; what work shows this more closely than Tristan? In its historical importance its artistic themes are replicated, and who knows how Wagner will be viewed in a thousand or few hundred more years, like Shakespeare or Aeschylus?

>Then came the Students' Association. The League of Virtue was founded. All so fantastic that no human being could grasp it. But I did. Now it is me no one grasps: I am the most German being, I am the German spirit. Question the incomparable magic of my works, compare them with the rest: and you can, for the present, say no differently than that - it is German. But what is this German? It must be something wonderful, mustn't it, for it is humanly finer than all else? - Oh heavens! It should have a soil, this German! I should be able to find my people! What a glorious people it ought to become. But to this people only could I belong. -
- Wagner's diary

>>16874023
based and fuhrerpilled

>>16874023

>>16873950
based furtwangler

>>16873450
absolutely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pTaH8USQH4

>>16874556
I don't really like that stage design.

>>16873540
Sort of, yeah, though all of his constructive work is basically useless to a modern audience. The best thing to read him for is the death of God and his dissection of nihilism.
>>16873950
LOL did Furtwängler read "Nietzsche Contra Wagner" at all? It seems like he has no idea what Nietzsche's objections to Wagner actually were. Do recall that Nietzsche was also very learned in music. He initially sided with Wagner because he thought that Wagner was a revolutionary who was blowing away the formal conventions through pure genius and will to power - instead, it turned out that Wagner was dispensing with form simply because it made it easier to make a spectacle, to create music obsessed with the "little sound" that aims at grabbing attention rather than presenting a pure and beautiful unity, a perfect form. The same can be said of Lizst. Nietzsche's opposition to Wagner (and Romanticism more broadly) has nothing to do with contrarianism. He accuses Wagner of being an actor first and foremost because of his plebeian art - his desperate desire to please, to capture attention - that is what in Nietzsche's eyes makes him an actor and his music - garish and disgusting.

>>16875043
>Wagner was dispensing with form simply because it made it easier to make a spectacle, to create music obsessed with the "little sound" that aims at grabbing attention rather than presenting a pure and beautiful unity, a perfect form. The same can be said of Lizst. Nietzsche's opposition to Wagner (and Romanticism more broadly) has nothing to do with contrarianism. He accuses Wagner of being an actor first and foremost because of his plebeian art - his desperate desire to please, to capture attention - that is what in Nietzsche's eyes makes him an actor and his music - garish and disgusting.
Lol did Nietzsche even hear Wagner? No one denies Nietzsche's disingenuousness with his critiques of Wagner. He's love of Wagner goes far more deep, and he never denied his genius to himself, nor did he ever cease admiring say, Tristan und Isolde. There is a difference between public necessity and personal choice in Herr Nietzsche here. And likely, self-deception. Also didn't he say Wagner was like French overly indulgent emotionalism but Liszt was of the German kind of music???

Anyhow, Nietzsche effectively retained the same beliefs about Wagner's importance so much so it makes his public opinions about Wagner either an act itself or just of practical choice. Just look at his opinion on something like Tristan und Isolde. He ranked it above Da Vinci, as everyone knows.

Nietzsche's whole critique of Wagner is a well-thought subversion, it attaches onto recognisable centres of focus, disgusting innuendos. Furtwangler was undoubtedly not right in his whole characterisation of Nietzsche, but he was write in calling his late writings on Wagner a purposeful delegitimization.

>>16873450
How is wagner related with literature and neetch?

>>16875172
Are you not familiar with their relationship?

>>16875159
>Lol did Nietzsche even hear Wagner?
Go listen carefully to Flight of the Valkyries and then go back and listen to an older, pre-Romantic and more traditional piece. If you pay attention to the individual sounds and the overarching structure, you can notice the difference yourself without any musical education.

As to Liszt, this is what I found:
>In a word: “Wagner and Liszt.” Never yet have the “uprightness” and “genuineness” of musicians been put to such a dangerous test. It is glaringly obvious: great success, mob success is no longer the achievement of the genuine,—in order to get it a man must be an actor!—Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner—they both prove one and the same thing: that in declining civilisations, wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes superfluous, prejudicial, unfavourable. The actor, alone, can still kindle great enthusiasm.

He did acknowledge Wagner's genius - as an actor, a cheat, a scam. His incredible ability to put on a show in all aspects of life, without ever being himself, not even once, not for a moment. Apart from that he conceded him no ability in music. I am unaware of any specific criticisms of Tristan and Isolde, however. If I have read those, I can't recall them.

>Anyhow, Nietzsche effectively retained the same beliefs about Wagner's importance so much so it makes his public opinions about Wagner either an act itself or just of practical choice.

Nietzsche did believe Wagner was important, in the same sense that he believed cancer is important to a cancer patient. In fact, I'd argue that Wagner was pretty much the main reason why Nietzsche hated Germany.

>
Nietzsche's whole critique of Wagner is a well-thought subversion, it attaches onto recognisable centres of focus, disgusting innuendos. Furtwangler was undoubtedly not right in his whole characterisation of Nietzsche, but he was write in calling his late writings on Wagner a purposeful delegitimization.

I am not at all convinced, having listened to Wagnerian and traditional music. I can literally hear the exact problems Nietzsche wrote about.

>>16875181
No

>>16875259
>If you pay attention to the individual sounds and the overarching structure, you can notice the difference yourself without any musical education.
My gosh anon, you can notice a difference in any elapse of time, between music, but most evidently in the great developments of music in the common practice period. I could say Bach is a restricted old hack, and if you go back and listen to him, you can actually hear the difference between him and Beethoven. These are all anecdotes, not without validity, but the assumptions of these anecdotes being quite thoroughly wrong. Also I want to be clear, I know Nietzsche very often heard Wagner's music, I was being ironic. As for Liszt again, I remember reading quite distinctly that Nietzsche called Liszt far greater than Wagner, and as I said before of the German stock-- but knowing Nietzsche he contradicts himself on the regular (not to say that makes him true or untrue, it's just an evident observation for whatever conclusion).

>He did acknowledge Wagner's genius - as an actor, a cheat, a scam.
Oh come on anon, practically everyone recognises Wagner's genius as a musician, playwright, poet and overall thinker; morally disagreeing with him is not to deny his genius, but it is to say that he must not be entirely some horrible greedy Nibelungen creator type actor who spreads only vapidity and evil. It's also interesting that you say Nietzsche never recognised the intelligence of his music in later works, because it signifies even stronger that what Nietzsche was trying to do was not give Wagner any legitimacy in the slightest. What is Wagner's most renowned and greatest accepted proof of his genius? His music.

For Tristan:
>"Tristan and Isolde is the real opus metaphysicum of all art ... insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death ... it is overpowering in its simple grandeur". In a letter to his friend Erwin Rohde in October 1868, Nietzsche described his reaction to Tristan's prelude: "I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof from this music; every nerve in me is atwitch, and it has been a long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this overture". Even after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche continued to consider Tristan a masterpiece: "Even now I am still in search of a work which exercises such a dangerous fascination, such a spine-tingling and blissful infinity as Tristan – I have sought in vain, in every art."

>I am not at all convinced, having listened to Wagnerian and traditional music. I can literally hear the exact problems Nietzsche wrote about.
I don't deny the natural ear, but Wagner being a difficult one to get into for a purely musical concern, but I will say insultingly and only factually that you lack the basic musical skills effort put into music to understand quite what Wagner is doing. I am willing to bet that you haven't heard that much of Wagner, some of the overtures or such?

CONT

>>16875259
You must be a scoundrel or rat to not like such music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6OQCncAiC8

Nietzsche certainly liked it, and gave it the credence in many of his works to proper philosophical interpretation (such as BG&E), and evidently even more so in his head. I can assure you Nietzsche did not one day arrive horoically from his sleep, and assert the blatant decadence of this coward and sham-actor Wagner! This is the man Nietzsche championed as the greatest living artist for quite a few years, and even said he probably wouldn't have survived his youth without Wagner, even when everything was said and done about his break.

>>16875259
Nietzsche once called Wagner the greatest living genius

>>16875352
>*not insultingly* and only factually that you lack the basic musical skills *or* effort put into music to under quite what Wagner was doing.