Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthhe were victorious, if he spoke to men out of his liberated soul in thelanguage of his liberated art, only then would he encounter hisgreatest danger and his most tremendous battle; men would rathertear him and his art to pieces than admit they must perish for shamein the face of them. It is possible that the redemption of art, the onlygleam of light to be hoped for in the modern age, will be an eventreserved to only a couple of solitary souls, while the many continueto gaze into the flickering and smoky fire of their art: for they do notwant light, they want bedazzlement; they hate light - when it isthrown upon themselves.Thus they avoid the new bringer of light; but, constrained by thelove out of which he was born, he pursues them and wants to constrainthem. 'You shall pass through my mysteries', he cries to them,'you need their purifications and convulsions. Risk it for the sake ofyour salvation and desert for once the dimly lit piece of nature andlife which is all you seem to know; I lead you into a realm that is justas real, you yourselves shall say when you emerge out of my cave intoyour daylight which life is more real, which is really daylight andwhich cave. Nature is in its depths much richer, mightier, happier,more dreadful; in the way you usually live you do not know it: learnto become nature again yourselves and then with and in nature letyourselves be transformed by the magic of my love and fire.'It is the voice of Wagner's art which speaks thus to mankind. Thatwe children of a wretched age were permitted to be the first to hear itshows how worthy of pity precisely our age must be, and shows ingeneral that true music is a piece of fate and primal law; for it isimpossible to derive its appearance at precisely this time from anempty, meaningless act of chance; a Wagner who appeared bychance would have been crushed by the superior force of the opposingelement into which he was thrown. But there lies over the evolutionof the real Wagner a transfiguring and justifying necessity. Tobehold his art coming into existence is to behold a glorious spectacle,notwithstanding the suffering that attended it, for reason, law, purposeare evident everywhere. In his joy at this spectacle, the beholderwill laud this suffering itself and reflect with'delight on how primordiallydetermined nature and giftedness must turn everything toprosperity and gain no matter how hard the school it has to passthrough; how every kind of peril makes it bolder and every victorymore thoughtful; how it feeds on poison and misfortune and growsstrong and healthy in the process. Mockery and contradiction by theworld around it are a goad and a stimulus; if it wanders into error, it22 1