[CHAPTER IV]
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND RICHARD WAGNER—BAYREUTH
Bayreuth has had a strange destiny. This little German town, so long obscure, scintillates in the eighteenth century, shines with a somewhat flickering brilliance, but becomes celebrated at last throughout all Europe. An intelligent Margravine—Frederick's sister, the friend of Voltaire and of French elegance—lives there, beautifies it, enlivens the barren country with castles, and lavishes on its façades the singular volutes of the "rococo" style. The Margravine dies and Bayreuth is again forgotten. A century passes and suddenly its fame returns; the little town that the Margrave adorned becomes the Jerusalem of a new art and a new religion. A strange destiny, but a factitious one. It is a poet who has regulated the antitheses. The history of Bayreuth ought to be included among Wagner's works.
He wished to set up his theatre in a quiet and secluded town. It suited him, not to go to his audience, but rather to force his audience to come to him. He chose, from many others, this town; the two Germanys would be thus confronted, the one, that of the past, a slave to French customs, mean and shabby; the other, that of the future, his own, an emancipating and innovating Germany. The work was started without delay. The master decided that the foundation-stone of his theatre should be laid with pomp on the 22nd of May, 1872, the anniversary of his birth.
"So we shall see one another again," wrote Nietzsche to his friend Rohde. "Our meetings are ever becoming more grandiose, more historical, are they not?"
They were present together at the ceremony, one of them coming from Basle, the other from Hamburg. Two thousand people were assembled in the little town. The weather was appalling. But the unceasing rain, the threatening sky, made the ceremony still more imposing. Wagnerian art is a serious thing and has no need of smiling heavens. The faithful disciples, standing in the open air at the mercy of the winds, saw the stone laid. In the hollow block Wagner deposited a piece of poetry written by himself, and then threw the first spadeful of plaster. In the evening he invited his friends to hear an execution of the "Symphony" with chorus, the orchestration of which he had in parts slightly strengthened. He personally conducted. Young Germany, assembled in the Margrave's theatre, listened piously to this work in which the nineteenth century declared its need, and when the final chorus struck up—"Millions of men embrace each other"—it really seemed, said a spectator, as if the sublime wish was about to be realised.
"Ah! my friend," wrote Nietzsche, "through what days we have lived! No one can rob us of these grave and sacred memories. We ought to go forth into life inspired to battle on their behalf. Above all, we ought to force ourselves to regulate all our acts, with as much gravity and force as is possible, so as to prove that we are worthy of the unique events at which we have assisted."
Nietzsche wanted to fight for Wagner, for he loved Wagner and he loved battle. "To arms, to arms!" he writes to Rohde; "war is necessary to me, ich brauche den Krieg." But he had already proved many a time, what he now began sadly to understand, that his nature did not lend itself to reticence and to the prudence necessary in such a contest, in which public opinion was the stake. There was no instant but a word, an attitude ran foul of his radical idealism. He felt the instinctive constraint that he had already known at Triebschen. Wagner disturbed him. He hardly recognised the grave and pure hero whom he had loved so much. He saw another man, a powerful workman, brutal, vindictive, jealous. Nietzsche had thought of making a tour in Italy, with a relation of Mendelssohn's; he was obliged to give up this idea in order to humour the master, who detested the race, even to the very name of Mendelssohn.
"Why is Wagner so distrustful?" Nietzsche wrote in his diary; "it excites distrust."