Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditations2It would be strange if that which a man can do best and most likes todo failed to become a visible presence within the total fo rmation ofhis life; and in the case of men of exceptional abilities their life mustbecome not only a reflection of their character, as is the case witheveryone, but first and foremost a reflection of their intellect and ofthe capacities most personal to them. The life of the epic poet willhave something of the epic about it as is the case with Goethe, bythe way, whom the Germans insist, quite wrongly, in seeing as principallya lyric poet - and the life of the dramatist will take adramatic course.The dramatic element in Wagner's development is quite unmistakablefrom the moment when his ruling passion became aware ofitself and took his whole nature in its charge: from that time on therewas an end to fu mbling, straying, to the proliferation of secondaryshoots, and within the most convoluted courses and often daringtrajectories assumed by his artistic plans there rules a single innerlaw, a will, by which they can be expfained, however strange thisexplanation will often sound. But there was also a pre-dramatic erain Wagner's life, that of his childhood and YQuth, and one cannotpass this era in review without encountering riddles. He himself doesnot yet seem to be present at all and that which, with hindsight, onemight perhaps interpret as a sign of his presence appears at first asthe simultaneous existence of qualities which must excite misgivingsrather than hopeful anticipation: a spirit of restlessness, of irritability,a nervous hastiness in seizing hold upon a hundred different things,a passionate delight in experiencing moods of almost pathologicalintensity, an abrupt transition from the most soulful quietude tonoise and violence. He was held in check by no traditional familyinvolvement in any particular art: he might as easily have adoptedpainting, poetry, acting, music as academic scholarship or anacademic fu ture; and a superficial view of him might suggest that hewas a born dilettante. The little world under whose spell he grew upwas not such as one could have congratulated an artist on having fo ra homeland. He was very close to enjoying the perilous pleasure inthe superficial tasting of one thing after another in the intellectualrealm, as he was to the self-conceit engendered by much superficialknowledge which is commonplace in cities of scholars; his sensibilitieswere easily aroused and as easily satisfied; wherever the eyesof the boy rested he saw himself surrounded by a strangely pre-200