Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationspower, fame, pleasure, and he was tormented even more frequendyby the inexorable need to earn a living: traps and fetters layeverywhere. How is it possible to stay loyal, to remain whole, underthese conditions? - This doubt often overcame him, and then, aswould happen with an artist, fo und expression in the figures of hisart: Elizabeth can only suffer, pray and die for Tannhauser, she savesthe restless and immoderate man through her loyalty, but not fo rthis life. Danger and despair lie in wait for every true artist throwninto the modern world. He can acquire honours and power in manyfo rms, he is frequently offered peace and contentment, but alwaysonly in the shape in which they are known to modern man and inwhich to the honest artist they must become choking foul air. It is inthe temptation to this, and likewise in resistance to this temptation,that his danger lies; in disgust with the modern manner of acquiringpleasure and reputation, in rage at all self-seeking contentment inthe manner of modern man. Think of him occupying an officialposition, as Wagner had to fill the office of conductor at town andcourt theatres; we can see how the mostiierious artist will try forciblyto impose seriousness on the institution of which he is part, aninstitution which has, however, been constructed frivolously anddemands frivolity almost as a matter of principle; how he partiallysucceeds but in the end always fails; how he begins to feel disgustand wants to flee; how he fails to find anywhere to flee to, and is againand again obliged to return to the gypsies and outcasts of our cultureas one of them. If he frees himself from one situation he rarely findsa better, and sometimes he is plunged into the direst need. ThusWagner moves from town to town, companion to companion, countryto country, and one hardly knows what it was in each of them thatkept him there for as long as it did. A heavy atmosphere lies over thegreater part of his life hitherto; he seems to have abandoned anygeneral hopes and to have lived from day to day: and thus he eludeddespair, but at the price of abandoning belief. He must often havefelt like a· wanderer in the night, heavily burdened and profoundlyexhausted, who is yet each night revitalized; sudden death thenappeared to his eyes, not as something to fear, but as an alluringspectre. Burden, pathway and night, all gone in a trice! - that was aseductive idea. A hundred times he threw himself back into life withshort-breathed hope and put all spectres behind him. But he almostalways did so with an immoderation which revealed that he placedno great faith in this hope but was only intoxicating himself with it.The contrast between his desires and his incapacity to fulfil them was204