Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsforcefulness and rhythmic versatility, a remarkabl e richness instrong and significant words, simplification of sentence construction,an almost unique inventiveness in the language of surging feelingand presentiment, occasionally a quite pure bubbling up of popularcolloquialisms and proverbiality- these are among the qualities thatwould have to be listed, and yet the mightiest and most admirablewould still have been fo rgotten. Whoever reads, one after the other,two such poems as Tristan and the Meistersinger will feel a sense ofamazement and perplexity in respect of the verbal language similarto that which he fe els in respect of the music: namely, how it couldhave been possible to create two worlds as disparate in form, colourand articulation as they are in soul. Th is is the mightiest of Wagner'sgifts, something that only a great master can succeed in: the ability tomint fo r every work a language of its own and to bestow upon a newsubjectivity also a new body and a new sound. Where this rarest ofpowers expresses itself, censure of individual excesses and singularities,or of the more frequent obscurities of expression and thought, willalways be no more than petty and unfrl.&itful. Moreover, those whohave hitherto censured most loudly have at bottom fo und not somuch the language as the soul, the whole way of feeling and suffering,repellent and unheard-of. Let us wait until they themselves haveacquired a new soul, then they themselves will also speak a newlanguage: and then, it seems to me, the German language as a wholewill be in better shape than it is now.Before all, however, no one who reflects on Wagner as poet andsculptor of language should forget that none of the Wagneriandramas is intended to be read, and thus they must not be importunedwith the demands presented to the spoken drama. The latterwants to influence the feelings solely through concepts and words;this ojective brings it beneath the sway of rhetoric. But in life passionis rarely loquacious: in the spoken drama it has to be if it is to communicateitself at all. When the language of a people is already in astate of decay and detrition, however, the poet of the spoken dramais tempted to give his thoughts and language unusual colours and toinvent neologisms; he wants to elevate language so that it can againexpress exalted feelings and he thereby incurs the danger of notbeing understood at alL He likewise seeks to communicate somethingof nobility to the passions through witty aphorisms and conceitsand thereby falls into another kind of danger: he appears falseand artificial. For real passion does not speak in maxims, and thepoetic easily arouses distrust of its honesty if it differs essentially238