Wagner again, draped with German “virtues.”
I think I know the Wagnerians; I have experienced three generations, beginning with the late Brendel2 who confounded Wagner and Hegel, down to the “idealists” of the Bayreuther Blätter3 who confound Wagner and themselves—I have heard every kind of confession of “beautiful souls” about Wagner. A kingdom for one sensible word!—In truth, a hair-raising company! Nohl, Pohl, Kohl—droll with charm, in infinitum!4 Not a single abortion is missing among them, not even the anti-Semite.—Poor Wagner! Where had he landed!—If he had at least entered into swine!5 But to descend among Germans!
Really, for the instruction of posterity one ought to stuff a genuine Bayreuther or, better yet, preserve him in spirits, for spirits are lacking—with the label: that is how the “spirit” looked on which the Reich was founded.
Enough; in the midst of it I left for a couple of weeks,6 very suddenly, although a charming Parisienne tried to console me; the only excuse I offered Wagner was a fatalistic telegram. In Klingenbrunn, a small town concealed in the woods of the Böhmerwald, I dragged around my melancholy and contempt for Germans like a disease—and from time to time I’d write a sentence into my notebook, under the general title ‘The Plowshare”—hard psychologica that can perhaps still be found in Human, All-Too-Human.
3
What reached a decision in me at that time was not a break with Wagner: I noted a total aberration of my instincts of which particular blunders, whether Wagner or the professorship at Basel, were mere symptoms. I was overcome by impatience with myself; I saw that it was high time for me to recall and reflect on myself. All at once it became clear to me in a terrifying way how much time I had already wasted—how useless and arbitrary my whole existence as a philologist appeared in relation to my task. I felt ashamed of this false modesty.
Ten years lay behind me in which the nourishment of my spirit had really come to a stop; I had not learned anything new that was useful; I had forgotten an absurd amount for the sake of dusty scholarly gewgaws. Crawling scrupulously with bad eyes through ancient metrists—that’s what I had come to!—It stirred my compassion to see myself utterly emaciated, utterly starved: my knowledge simply failed to include realities, and my “idealities” were not worth a damn.
A truly burning thirst took hold of me: henceforth I really pursued nothing more1 than physiology, medicine, and natural sciences—and I did not return even to properly historical studies until my task compelled me to, imperiously. It was then, too, that I first guessed how an activity chosen in defiance of one’s instincts, a so-called “vocation” for which one does not have the least vocation, is related to the need for deadening the feeling of desolation and hunger by means of a narcotic art—for example, Wagnerian art.
Looking about me cautiously, I have discovered that a large number of young men experience the same distress: one antinatural step virtually compels the second. In Germany, in the Reich—to speak unambiguously—all too many are condemned to choose vocations too early, and then to waste away under, a burden they can no longer shake off.—These people require Wagner as an opiate: they forget themselves, they are rid of themselves for a moment.—What am I saying? For five or six hours!
4
It was then that my instinct made its inexorable decision against any longer yielding, going along, and confounding myself. Any kind of life, the most unfavorable conditions, sickness, poverty—anything seemed preferable to that unseemly “selflessness” into which I had got myself originally in ignorance and youth and in which I had got stuck later on from inertia and so-called “sense of duty.”1
Here it happened in a manner that I cannot admire sufficiently that, precisely at the right time, my father’s wicked heritage came to my aid—at bottom, predestination to an early death.2 Sickness detached me slowly: it spared me any break, any violent and offensive step. Thus I did not lose any good will and actually gained not a little. My sickness also gave me the right to change all my habits completely; it permitted, it commanded me to forget; it bestowed on me the necessity of lying still, of leisure, of waiting and being patient.—But that means, of thinking.—My eyes alone put an end to all bookwormishness—in brief, philology: I was delivered from the “book;” for years I did not read a thing—the greatest benefit I ever conferred on myself.—That nethermost self which