Where does it get its power of discrimination from, and especially the apparently so laborious recognition of the Intermediate, since the Good does not offer itself to it at all? For the sign of the Good is this: it .. stands on its own ground {bontsiek selbstdaisi) ; and the public, brought up on the bad and mediocre, must raise itself before it can approach it. The hugely popular publisher refused, as he "had to consider his public." It was the public of the.
However, there is clearly another audience, at least not smaller than that readership, namely the immensely varied audience of the theaters: In the last part of our research we focused exclusively on the leaders of the audience, and we investigated the identity of left the audience out of our sight.
PUBLIC AND POPULARITY. 6
If, having assigned this meaning to it, we take leave of Criticism in the same way as we have already been obliged to treat the reading public for whom it is intended, we confine our main inquiry to that living composition before whom the work of art is directly be placed. We will begin by confessing that it will be difficult to ascribe unconditionally to a modern audience those important qualities which we must necessarily judge, or must judge, of that "vox populi." here indolence next to generosity, coarseness corresponding to affection, but above all unreceptiveness and insensibility to impressions of a deeper kind, are fully satisfied: though we must admit that, as with every crowd, one also meets with those elements of sympathetic self-abandonment without what don't say anything good. What brought them here can surely be measured as nothing but the search for amusement, and that in the case of every arrival; only the strange diversity of receptivity, in kind than in degree, is more evident to the physiognomic observer of a theater audience than anywhere else—even "than at church, since there hides hypocrisy that dares figure here unashamedly.
Also, the different strata of society and education to which the spectators belong are by no means an indication of the receptiveness of the individual: in the most cherished places, like the cheapest seats, one encounters the same phenomenon of interest and apathy side by side. . Again, during a performance of the "Walkiire" at Bayreuth, an elderly gentleman whom I greatly esteemed and who had the kindest disposition in life, complained of the intolerable length of the scene between Wotan and Briinnhilde in the second act. The first lady would have been charmed by a variably sparkling ballet, the second gentleman by a clever and exciting drama of intrigue, to which their partners might have remained indifferent. .'.
In our larger German cities, where, in consequence of the abandonment of the theaters for speculation, the so-called Genre and Folk theaters have been erected near the houses kept by the courts, the Parisian model may. However, it seems that the Opera House, if only for the appeal of their scenic and musical pomp, will always be exposed to the danger of placing their work before an audience deeply divided within itself and widely different from its host powers. . We perceive that each reporter can give his own color to the displayed favor or disfavour.
PUBLIC AND POPULARITY. 65 judgment in this regard might be harder to arrive at here
Therefore, he who has to address the German public can count on nothing other than the widely varying sensitivity to emotional rather than artistic impressions; and however. But how should a man proceed who feels obliged to appeal to this naive receptivity, when experience teaches him that this is the very thing that most playwrights also count on and abuse in favor of Evil.' The prevails among them. Anyone who denies this maxim, who has neither interest nor pleasure in misleading the public, would probably do better - as long as he is given the free time to belong entirely to himself - to leave the public out of the picture entirely. to let; the less he thinks about this and devotes himself completely to his work, because from the depths of his own soul an Ideal Audience will arise for him: and although this too will not know much about art and art storms, it will all the more do so.
On the contrary, Bad could be defined as the bare aim to please, which simultaneously evokes the image and governs its execution. As we have had to give to our public no developed sense of artistic form, and scarcely anything else than the very varied receptivity which the mere desire to amuse excites, we must admit that a work which aims only at the exploitation of that desire is in itself without any values, and closely approaches the category of morally bad insofar as it serves to profit from the most questionable qualities of the crowd. If the meaning of worthy popularity can scarcely be determined with certainty, in view of the deplorable obscurity between art and our modern publicity,.
It is impossible to class Rossini with the bad, and out of the question of ranking him with the mediocre composers; but since we cannot connect him with our heroes of German art, our Mozart or Beethoven, we are left here with a difficultly defined equation, perhaps the same. For there still remains the most despicable view of all, namely, the attempt to deceive alike the public, and the judgment of true artists, as if light and defective goods were offered as of full and lasting weight. At last it comes before the public, - ay, our public theater: at first it finds itself in the sea; here something seems too long, could wish for a little lengthening.
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70 RICHARD WAGNERS PROSE WORKS
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72 RICHARD WAGNERS PROSE WORKS
PUBLIC AND POPULARITY, 73 So much for the utilitarian round of our Academic
74 RICHARD WAGNERS PROSE WORKS
Here the necessity of a metaphysical explanation of those phenomena in the life of the universe which remain a little incomprehensible to purely physical apprehensions, is rejected with the bitterest corn. For we are now told that, as no change ever took place without sufficient ground, so the most astonishing phenomena—of which the work of "genius." Meanwhile, however, the chain of logical deductions is not extended so far as an explanation of the work of Genius, inferiority powers commonly regarded as temperament, such as impetuousness of will, one-sided energy, and obstinacy, to retain things as much as possible the realm of Physics.
Since the progress of the natural sciences thus entails the unmasking of every mystery of being as merely imaginary secrets, the only concern must henceforth be the act of knowing; but intuitive knowledge seems to be entirely excluded, because it might lead to metaphysical vagaries, namely, to the recognition of relations which are justly withheld from the abstract scientific concept until Logic has founded them on the evidence of chemistry. Although we have only superficially addressed the issue of the newer, so-called "historical" method of science (as is inevitable for those outside the esoteric field), I believe. How this solitary Understander will feel in his exclusive greatness is not easy to imagine; we only hope that, at the end of his career, he may not have to repeat the cries of Faust at the beginning of Goethe's tragedy.
In any case, we fear that no one can share with him his joy in knowing; and whether it appears that the State, so careful otherwise of the common advantage, might spend too much money on the private happiness of this unit, if the latter should even prove a fact. Seeing the things he thinks is mostly denied him from youth up, and his contact with the so-called actuality of being is. Together with his colleagues and the other "cultural philistines"* he can form his own audience, here and there united with bookworm princes and princesses for academic junkets; to art - like Goliath of
Knowledge takes more and more into account the same perception from an earlier stage of human reason, similar to the coccyx axis, which we still keep from the animal's tail - it pays attention only when it offers archaeological possibilities for its launch of a historical thesis: this is how it values Mendelssohn's.
PUBLIC AND POPULARITY. 'J']
And it seems almost right that Jehovah should finally completely suppress the God so monstrously wrongly derived from him. What a melancholy, what a discreditable fate, is that 6f..eur/whole Theology, maintained to give our doctors of the church and popular preachers little else than the guidance of an insincere interpretation of the truths contained in u priceless Gospels are contained. What is the preacher bound to in the pulpit, but to compromises between the extreme contradictions, whose subtleties must necessarily challenge our faith itself and make us ask: Who knows Jesus now.
It chooses its fate for Judaism, and like every Jew it wonders whether the bells still ring on Sunday morning for a Jew who was crucified two thousand years ago.* How often and meticulously have the Gospels not been critically searched, their origins and compilation exposed beyond doubt; so that one might think that the very proof of the falsity and irrelevance of their contradictory issue would have finally opened the eyes of criticism to the exalted figure of the Redeemer and his work. Jesus revealed to us; the God whom no god, no sage or hero of the world, had known before; the God who made Himself known among the Pharisees, scribes and sacrificial priests. Evidence of such a claim is lacking.” - In the next paragraph the reference to 'free spirits' again applies to Nietzsche, who gave himself (apparently to himself alone) that title and dedicated his work just mentioned to the memory of Voltaire, Tr.
The great critic Voltaire, that idol of all "free minds," judged MaidofOrleans on the evidence of the historical documents of his time, and consequently felt justified in the view presented of him in his filthy poem. What our Schiller was given to know in the most magnificent free of her fatherland, was here shown to Raphael in the bare and theological. Subsequent complications were not slow to arise; To see it, it may reward wise statesmen to give non-owners at least an interest in the maintenance of property.
The period of two thousand years which great historical civilizations have hitherto covered in their evolution from barbarism back to barbarism would take us somewhere about the middle of the next millennium.