artists with a new conscience: what they now
exact and _obtain_ from themselves, they had never exacted before Wagner's
time--before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the
stage since Wagner rules there the most difficult things are expected,
blame is severe, praise very scarce,--the good and the excellent have
become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice.
Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more "dramatic" effect.
Even talent is out of the question. Expressiveness at all costs, which is
what the Wagnerian ideal--the ideal of decadence--demands, is hardly
compatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue--that is to
say, training, automatism, "self-denial". Neither taste, voices, nor
gifts, Wagner's stage requires but one thing: _Germans!_{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The definition
of a German: an obedient man with long legs.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} There is a deep significance
in the fact that the rise of Wagner should have coincided with the rise of
the "Empire": both phenomena are a proof of one and the same
thing--obedience and long legs.--Never have people been more obedient, never
have they been so well ordered about. The conductors of Wagnerian
orchestras, more particularly, are worthy of an age, which posterity will
one day call, with timid awe, the _classical age of war_.

Wagner understood how to command; in this respect, too, he was a great
teacher. He commanded as a man who had exercised an inexorable will over
himself--as one who had practised lifelong discipline: Wagner was, perhaps,
the greatest example of self-violence in the whole of the history of art
(--even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by
him. The note of a Torinese).

12.

This view, that our actors have become more worthy of respect than
heretofore, does not imply that I believe them to have become less
dangerous.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But who is in any doubt as to what I want,--as to what the
_three requisitions_ are concerning which my wrath and my care and love of
art, have made me open my mouth on this occasion?

_That the stage should not become master of the arts._

_That the actor should not become the corrupter of the genuine._

_That music should not become an art of lying._

_Friedrich Nietzsche._

Postscript

The gravity of these last words allows me at this point to introduce a few
sentences out of an unpr