tout mepriser._"{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} "Is it true," a little girl once
asked her mother, "that the beloved Father is everywhere?--I think it quite
improper,"--a hint to philosophers.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The shame with which Nature has
concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas should be held in higher
esteem. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for _not revealing her
reasons?_{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Perhaps her name, to use a Greek word is _Baubo_?--Oh these
Greeks, they understood the art of _living!_ For this it is needful to
halt bravely at the surface, at the fold, at the skin, to worship
appearance, and to believe in forms, tones, words, and the whole _Olympus
of appearance_! These Greeks were superficial--from _profundity_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} And are
we not returning to precisely the same thing, we dare-devils of intellect
who have scaled the highest and most dangerous pinnacles of present
thought, in order to look around us from that height, in order to _look
down_ from that height? Are we not precisely in this respect--_Greeks_?
Worshippers of form, of tones, of words? Precisely on that
account--_artists_?

SELECTED APHORISMS FROM NIETZSCHE'S RETROSPECT OF HIS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP
WITH WAGNER.

(_Summer 1878._)

1.

My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast,
and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The
preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thoroughly
repelled me.

2.

I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied with the decorations,
the scenery and the mechanical contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much
industry and ingenuity was applied to the task of chaining the imagination
to matters which did not belie their _epic_ origin. But as to the
naturalism of the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the orchestra!!
What affected, artificial and depraved tones, what a distortion of nature,
were we made to hear!

3.

We are witnessing the death agony of the _last Art_: Bayreuth has
convinced me of this.

4.

My picture of Wagner, completely surpassed him; I had depicted an _ideal
monster_--one, however, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling the
enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was
only like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving
which was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives,
received