Romanticism and its opposite. In regard to all æsthetic values I now avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every individual case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been creative here? At first another distinction might perhaps seem preferable, it is far more obvious,—e.g. the distinction which decides whether a desire for stability, for eternity, for Being, or whether a desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, has been the cause of creation. But both kinds of desire, when examined more closely, prove to be ambiguous, and really susceptible of interpretation only according to that scheme already mentioned and which I think is rightly preferred.
The desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, may be the expression of an overflowing power pregnant with promises for the future (my term for this, as is well known, is Dionysian); it may, however, also be the hate of the ill-constituted, of the needy and of the physiologically botched, that destroys, and must destroy, because such creatures are indignant at, and annoyed by everything lasting and stable.
The act of immortalising can, on the other hand, be the outcome of gratitude and love: an art which has this origin is always an apotheosis art; dithyrambic, as perhaps with Rubens, happy, as perhaps with Hafiz; bright and gracious, and shedding a ray of glory over all things, as in Goethe. But it may also, however, be the outcome of the tyrannical will of the great sufferer who would make the most personal, individual, and narrow trait about him, the actual idiosyncrasy of his pain—in fact, into a binding law and imposition, and who thus wreaks his revenge upon all things by stamping, branding, and violating them with the image of his torment. The latter case is romantic pessimism in its highest form, whether this be Schopenhauerian voluntarism or Wagnerian music.
847.
It is a question whether the antithesis, classic and romantic, does not conceal that other antithesis, the active and the reactive.
848.
In order to be a classic, one must be possessed of all the strong and apparently contradictory gifts and passions: but in such a way that they run in harness together, and culminate simultaneously in elevating a certain species of literature or art or politics to its height and zenith (they must not do this after that elevation has taken place ...). They must reflect the complete state (either of a people or of a culture), and express its most profound and most secret nature, at a time when it is still stable and not yet discoloured by the imitation of foreign things (or when it is still dependent ...); not a reactive but a deliberate and progressive spirit, saying Yea in all circumstances, even in its hate.
"And does not the highest personal value belong thereto?" It is worth considering whether moral prejudices do not perhaps exercise their influence here, and whether great moral loftiness is not perhaps a contradiction of the classical? ... Whether the moral monsters must not necessarily be romantic in word and deed? Any such preponderance of one virtue over others (as in the case of the moral monster) is precisely what with most hostility counteracts the classical power in equilibrium, supposing a people manifested this moral loftiness and were classical notwithstanding, we should have to conclude boldly that they were also on the same high level in immorality! this was perhaps the case with Shakespeare (provided that he was really Lord Bacon).