music; he flatters every form of Christianity, every
religious expression of decadence. He that hath ears to hear let him hear:
everything that has ever grown out of the soil of impoverished life, the
whole counterfeit coinage of the transcendental and of a Beyond found its
most sublime advocate in Wagner's art, not in formulae (Wagner is too
clever to use formulae), but in the persuasion of the senses which in their
turn makes the spirit weary and morbid. Music in the form of Circe {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} in
this respect his last work is his greatest masterpiece. In the art of
seduction "Parsifal" will for ever maintain its rank as a stroke of
genius.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} I admire this work. I would fain have composed it myself. Wagner
was never better inspired than towards the end. The subtlety with which
beauty and disease are united here, reaches such a height, that it casts
so to speak a shadow upon all Wagner's earlier achievements: it seems too
bright, too healthy. Do ye understand this? Health and brightness acting
like a shadow? Almost like an objection?{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} To this extent are we already
pure fools.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Never was there a greater Master in heavy hieratic
perfumes--Never on earth has there been such a connoisseur of paltry
infinities, of all that thrills, of extravagant excesses, of all the
feminism from out the vocabulary of happiness! My friends, do but drink
the philtres of this art! Nowhere will ye find a more pleasant method of
enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manliness in the shade of a
rosebush.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Ah, this old magician, mightiest of Klingsors; how he wages war
against us with his art, against us free spirits! How he appeals to every
form of cowardice of the modern soul with his charming girlish notes!
There never was such a _mortal hatred_ of knowledge! One must be a very
cynic in order to resist seduction here. One must be able to bite in order
to resist worshipping at this shrine. Very well, old seducer! The cynic
cautions you--_cave canem_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. I contemplate the
youthlets who have long been exposed to his infection. The first
relatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of their taste. Wagner
acts like chronic recourse to the bottle. He stultifies, he befouls the
stomach. His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling for rhythm. What
the Wagnerite calls