German spirit, nobody any longer
understands a word I say. The _Kreus-Zeitung_ has brought this home to me,
not to speak of the _Litterarisches Centralblatt_. I have given the
Germans the deepest books that they have ever possessed--a sufficient
reason for their not having understood a word of them.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} If in this essay I
declare war against Wagner--and incidentally against a certain form of
German taste, if I seem to use strong language about the cretinism of
Bayreuth, it must not be supposed that I am in the least anxious to
glorify any other musician. Other musicians are not to be considered by
the side of Wagner. Things are generally bad. Decay is universal. Disease
lies at the very root of things. If Wagner's name represents the ruin of
music, just as Bernini's stands for the ruin of sculpture, he is not on
that account its cause. All he did was to accelerate the fall,--though we
are quite prepared to admit that he did it in a way which makes one recoil
with horror from this almost instantaneous decline and fall to the depths.
He possessed the ingenuousness of decadence: this constituted his
superiority. He believed in it. He did not halt before any of its logical
consequences. The others hesitated--that is their distinction. They have no
other. What is common to both Wagner and "the others" consists in this:
the decline of all organising power, the abuse of traditional means,
without the capacity or the aim that would justify this. The counterfeit
imitation of grand forms, for which nobody nowadays is strong, proud,
self-reliant and healthy enough, excessive vitality in small details;
passion at all costs; refinement as an expression of impoverished life,
ever more nerves in the place of muscle. I know only one musician who
to-day would be able to compose an overture as an organic whole: and
nobody else knows him.(13) He who is famous now, does not write better
music than Wagner, but only less characteristic, less definite music:--less
definite, because half measures, even in decadence, cannot stand by the
side of completeness. But Wagner was complete, Wagner represented thorough
corruption, Wagner has had the courage, the will, and the conviction for
corruption. What does Johannes Brahms matter?{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} It was his good fortune to
be misunderstood by Germany; he was taken to be an antagonist of
Wagner--people required an antagonist!--But he did not write necessary
music, above all he