Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthquite novel style of execution, were repeatedly swept away by thesludge of prevailing thoughtlessness and habit; and these effects,moreover, always involved him in mixing with a theatre whosewhole being had become for him an object of. disgust. Did notGoethe himself lose the desire to attend performances of his ownIphigenie: 'I suffer dreadfully', he said in explanation, 'when I have toassociate with these phantoms, who never appear as they ought todo.' Meanwhile his 'success' at this theatre grown repulsive to himcontinued to increase; finally the point was reached at which thegreat theatres lived for the most part on the fat takings brought themby the Wagnerian art-works disguised as operas. The confusioninvolved in this growing passion on the part of the opera public evenseized hold on many of Wagner's friends: though he had sufferedmuch in patience, he now had to suffer the worst and see his friendsintoxicated by 'successes' and 'victories' precisely where hisuniquely lofty idea was denied and derided. It almost seemed asthough a people in many respects serious and ponderous was refusingto be deprived of a systematic levity in regard to its most seriousartist, as though this were why everything vulgar, thoughtless, ineptand malicious in the German character had to be discharged at him.- When, therefore, during the German War a more expansive andfreer current of feeling seemed to come uppermost, Wagner rememberedthe duty imposed upon him by his loyalty to rescue at any ratehis greatest work from the success born of misunderstanding andthe abuse to which his other words had been subjected, and to presentit at its own unique tempo as an example for all future time: thushe conceived the idea of Bayreuth. In the wake of that current of feelinghe believed he saw an enhanced feeling of duty also awaken in thoseto whom he wished to entrust his most precious possession - and itwas out of this feeling of mutual duty that there grew the event whichlies like strange sunlight upon recent and immediately coming years;designed for the benefit of a distant future, a future that is merelypossible but not demonstrable, a future that is to the present andto men knowing only the present not much more than an enigmaor an abomination, to those few permitted to assist in its creationa foretaste and fore-experience of the highest kind through whichthey know themselves blessed, blessing and fruitful beyond theirspan of time, to Wagner himself a darkness of toil, care, reflection,wrath, a renewed raging of the hostile elements, but aboveall the light of the star of selfless loyalty and in this light transformedinto an unspeakable happiness!235