Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 15

171.

MUSIC AS A LATE-COMER IN EVERY CULTURE.-Among all the arts that are accustomed to grow on a definite culture-soil and under definite social and political conditions, music is the last plant to come up, arising in the autumn and fading-season of the culture to which it belongs. At the same time, the first signs and harbingers of a new spring are usually already noticeable, and sometimes music, like the language of a forgotten age, rings out into a new, astonished world, and comes too late. In the art of the Dutch and Flemish musicians the soul of the Christian middle ages at last found its fullest tone: their sound-architecture is the posthumous but legitimate and equal sister of Gothic. Not until Handel's music was heard the note of the best in the soul of Luther and his kin, the great Judaeo-heroical impulse that created the whole Reformation movement. Mozart first expressed in golden melody the age of Louis XIV.

and the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain. The eighteenth century-that century of rhapsody, of broken ideals and transitory happiness-only sang itself out in the music of Beethoven and Rossini. A lover of sentimental similes might say that all really important music was a swan-song.-Music is, in fact, not a universal language for all time, as is so often said in its praise, but responds exactly to a particular period and warmth of emotion which involves a quite definite, individual culture, determined by time and place, as its inner law. The music of Palestrina would be quite unintelligible to a Greek; and again, what would the music of Rossini convey to Palestrina?-It may be that our most modern German music, with all its pre-eminence and desire of pre-eminence, will soon be no longer understood. For this music sprang from a culture that is undergoing a rapid decay, from the soil of that epoch of reaction and restoration in which a certain Catholicism of feeling, as well as a delight in all indigenous, national, primitive manners, burst into bloom and scattered a blended perfume over Europe. These two emotional tendencies, adopted in their greatest strength and carried to their farthest limits, found final expression in the music of Wagner. Wagner's predilection for the old native sagas, his free idealisation of their unfamiliar G.o.ds and heroes,-who are really sovereign beasts of prey with occasional fits of thoughtfulness, magnanimity, and boredom,-his re-animation of those figures, to which he gave in addition the mediaeval Christian thirst for ecstatic sensuality and spiritualisation-all this Wagnerian give-and-take with regard to materials, souls, figures, and words-would clearly express the spirit of his music, if it could not, like all music, speak quite unambiguously of itself. This spirit wages the last campaign of reaction against the spirit of illumination which pa.s.sed into this century from the last, and also against the super-national ideas of French revolutionary romanticism and of English and American insipidity in the reconstruction of state and society.-But is it not evident that the spheres of thought and emotion apparently suppressed by Wagner and his school have long since acquired fresh strength, and that his late musical protest against them generally rings into ears that prefer to hear different and opposite notes; so that one day that high and wonderful art will suddenly become unintelligible and will be covered by the spider's web of oblivion?-In considering this state of affairs we must not let ourselves be led astray by those transitory fluctuations which arise like a reaction within a reaction, as a temporary sinking of the mountainous wave in the midst of the general upheaval. Thus, this decade of national war, ultramontane martyrdom, and socialistic unrest may, in its remoter after-effect, even aid the Wagnerian art to acquire a sudden halo, without guaranteeing that it "has a future" or that it has _the_ future. It is in the very nature of music that the fruits of its great culture-vintage should lose their taste and wither earlier than the fruits of the plastic arts or those that grow on the tree of knowledge. Among all the products of the human artistic sense ideas are the most solid and lasting.

172.

THE POET NO LONGER A TEACHER.-Strange as it may sound to our time, there were once poets and artists whose soul was above the pa.s.sions with their delights and convulsions, and who therefore took their pleasure in purer materials, worthier men, more delicate complications and denouements. If the artists of our day for the most part unfetter the will, and so are under certain circ.u.mstances for that very reason emanc.i.p.ators of life, those were tamers of the will, enchanters of animals, creators of men. In fact, they moulded, re-moulded, and new-moulded life, whereas the fame of poets of our day lies in unharnessing, unchaining, and shattering.-The ancient Greeks demanded of the poet that he should be the teacher of grown men. How ashamed the poet would be now if this demand were made of him! He is not even a good student of himself, and so never himself becomes a good poem or a fine picture. Under the most favourable circ.u.mstances he remains the shy, attractive ruin of a temple, but at the same time a cavern of cravings, overgrown like a ruin with flowers, nettles, and poisonous weeds, inhabited and haunted by snakes, worms, spiders, and birds; an object for sad reflection as to why the n.o.blest and most precious must grow up at once like a ruin, without the past and future of perfection.

173.

LOOKING FORWARD AND BACKWARD.-An art like that which streams out of Homer, Sophocles, Theocritus, Calderon, Racine, Goethe, as the superabundance of a wise and harmonious conduct of life-that is the true art, at which we grasp when we have ourselves become wiser and more harmonious. It is not that barbaric, if ever so delightful, outpouring of hot and highly coloured things from an undisciplined, chaotic soul, which is what we understood by "art" in our youth. It is obvious from the nature of the case that for certain periods of life an art of overstrain, excitement, antipathy to the orderly, monotonous, simple, logical, is an inevitable need, to which artists must respond, lest the soul of such periods should unburden itself in other ways, through all kinds of disorder and impropriety. Hence youths as they generally are, full, fermenting, tortured above all things by boredom, and women who lack work that fully occupies their soul, require that art of delightful disorder. All the more violently on that account are they inflamed with a desire for satisfaction without change, happiness without stupor and intoxication.

174.

AGAINST THE ART OF WORKS OF ART.-Art is above all and first of all meant to embellish life, to make us ourselves endurable and if possible agreeable in the eyes of others. With this task in view, art moderates us and holds us in restraint, creates forms of intercourse, binds over the uneducated to laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed speech and silence. Hence art must conceal or transfigure everything that is ugly-the painful, terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of every effort will always break out afresh in accordance with the very origin of human nature. Art has to perform this duty especially in regard to the pa.s.sions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to cause the significant factor to s.h.i.+ne through unavoidable or unconquerable ugliness.

To this great, super-great task the so-called art proper, that of works of art, is a mere accessary. A man who feels within himself a surplus of such powers of embellishment, concealment, and transfiguration will finally seek to unburden himself of this surplus in works of art. The same holds good, under special circ.u.mstances, of a whole nation.-But as a rule we nowadays begin art at the end, hang on to its tail, and think that works of art const.i.tute art proper, and that life should be improved and transformed by this means-fools that we are! If we begin a dinner with dessert, and try sweet after sweet, small wonder that we ruin our digestions and even our appet.i.tes for the good, hearty, nouris.h.i.+ng meal to which art invites us!

175.

CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF ART.-Why, really, does a creative art nowadays continue to exist? Because the majority who have hours of leisure (and such an art is for them only) think that they cannot fill up their time without music, theatres and picture-galleries, novels and poetry. Granted that one could keep them from this indulgence, either they would strive less eagerly for leisure, and the invidious sight of the rich would be less common (a great gain for the stability of society), or they would have leisure, but would learn to reflect on what can be learnt and unlearnt: on their work, for instance, their a.s.sociations, the pleasure they could bestow. All the world, with the exception of the artist, would in both cases reap the advantage.-Certainly, there are many vigorous, sensible readers who could take objection to this. Still, it must be said on behalf of the coa.r.s.e and malignant that the author himself is concerned with this protest, and that there is in his book much to be read that is not actually written down therein.

176.

THE MOUTHPIECE OF THE G.o.dS.-The poet expresses the universal higher opinions of the nation, he is its mouthpiece and flute; but by virtue of metre and all other artistic means he so expresses them that the nation regards them as something quite new and wonderful, and believes in all seriousness that he is the mouthpiece of the G.o.ds. Yes, under the clouds of creation the poet himself forgets whence he derives all his intellectual wisdom-from father and mother, from teachers and books of all kinds, from the street and particularly from the priest. He is deceived by his own art, and really believes, in a nave period, that a G.o.d is speaking through him, that he is creating in a state of religious inspiration. As a matter of fact, he is only saying what he has learnt, a medley of popular wisdom and popular foolishness. Hence, so far as a poet is really _vox populi_ he is held to be _vox dei_.

177.

WHAT ALL ART WANTS TO DO AND CANNOT.-The last and hardest task of the artist is the presentment of what remains the same, reposes in itself, is lofty and simple and free from the bizarre. Hence the n.o.blest forms of moral perfection are rejected as inartistic by weaker artists, because the sight of these fruits is too painful for their ambition. The fruit gleams at them from the topmost branches of art, but they lack the ladder, the courage, the grip to venture so high. In himself a Phidias is quite possible as a poet, but, if modern strength be taken into consideration, almost solely in the sense that to G.o.d nothing is impossible. The desire for a poetical Claude Lorrain is already an immodesty at present, however earnestly one man's heart may yearn for such a consummation.-The presentment of the highest man, the most simple and at the same time the most complete, has. .h.i.therto been beyond the scope of all artists. Perhaps, however, the Greeks, in the ideal of Athene, saw farther than any men did before or after their time.

178.

ART AND RESTORATION.-The retrograde movements in history, the so-called periods of restoration, which try to revive intellectual and social conditions that existed before those immediately preceding,-and seem really to succeed in giving them a brief resurrection,-have the charm of sentimental recollection, ardent longing for what is almost lost, hasty embracing of a transitory happiness. It is on account of this strange trend towards seriousness that in such transient and almost dreamy periods art and poetry find a natural soil, just as the tenderest and rarest plants grow on mountain-slopes of steep declivity.-Thus many a good artist is unwittingly impelled to a "restoration" way of thinking in politics and society, for which, on his own account, he prepares a quiet little corner and garden. Here he collects about himself the human remains of the historical epoch that appeals to him, and plays his lyre to many who are dead, half-dead, and weary to death, perhaps with the above-mentioned result of a brief resurrection.

179.

HAPPINESS OF THE AGE.-In two respects our age is to be accounted happy.

With respect to the _past_, we enjoy all cultures and their productions, and nurture ourselves on the n.o.blest blood of all periods. We stand sufficiently near to the magic of the forces from whose womb these periods are born to be able in pa.s.sing to submit to their spell with pleasure and terror; whereas earlier cultures could only enjoy themselves, and never looked beyond themselves, but were rather overarched by a bell of broader or narrower dome, through which indeed light streamed down to them, but which their gaze could not pierce. With respect to the _future_, there opens out to us for the first time a mighty, comprehensive vista of human and economic purposes engirdling the whole inhabited globe. At the same time, we feel conscious of a power ourselves to take this new task in hand without presumption, without requiring supernatural aids. Yes, whatever the result of our enterprise, however much we may have overestimated our strength, at any rate we need render account to no one but ourselves, and mankind can henceforth begin to do with itself what it will.-There are, it is true, peculiar human bees, who only know how to suck the bitterest and worst elements from the chalice of every flower. It is true that all flowers contain something that is not honey, but these bees may be allowed to feel in their own way about the happiness of our time, and continue to build up their hive of discomfort.

180.

A VISION.-Hours of instruction and meditation for adults, even the most mature, and such inst.i.tutions visited without compulsion but in accordance with the moral injunction of the whole community; the churches as the meeting-places most worthy and rich in memories for the purpose; at the same time daily festivals in honour of the reason that is attained and attainable by man; a newer and fuller budding and blooming of the ideal of the teacher, in which the clergyman, the artist and the physician, the man of science and the sage are blended, and their individual virtues should come to the fore as a collective virtue in their teaching itself, in their discourses, in their method-this is my ever-recurring vision, of which I firmly believe that it has raised a corner of the veil of the future.

181.

EDUCATION A DISTORTION.-The extraordinary haphazardness of the whole system of education, which leads every adult to say nowadays that his sole educator was chance, and the weatherc.o.c.k-nature of educational methods and aims, may be explained as follows. The oldest and the newest culture-powers, as in a turbulent ma.s.s-meeting, would rather be heard than understood, and wish to prove at all costs by their outcries and clamourings that they still exist or already exist. The poor teachers and educators are first dazed by this senseless noise, then become silent and finally apathetic, allowing anything to be done to them just as they in their turn allow anything to be done to their pupils. They are not trained themselves, so how are they to train others? They are themselves no straight-growing, vigorous, succulent trees, and he who wishes to attach himself to them must wind and bend himself and finally become distorted and deformed as they.

182.

PHILOSOPHERS AND ARTISTS OF THE AGE.-Rhapsody and frigidity, burning desires and waning of the heart's glow-this wretched medley is to be found in the picture of the highest European society of the present day. There the artist thinks that he is achieving a great deal when through his art he lights the torch of the heart as well as the torch of desire. The philosopher has the same notion, when in the chilliness of his heart, which he has in common with his age, he cools hot desires in himself and his following by his world-denying judgments.