dictated this inscription, as also the taste which
seemed to be the privilege of the followers of Wagner. Many also, however
(it was singular enough), made this slight alteration in it: "Salvation
_from_ the Saviour"--People began to breathe again--

One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Let us try to
estimate the influence of this worship upon culture. Whom did this
movement press to the front? What did it make ever more and more
pre-eminent?--In the first place the layman's arrogance, the arrogance of
the art-maniac. Now these people are organising societies, they wish to
make their taste prevail, they even wish to pose as judges _in rebus
musicis et musicantibus_. Secondly: an ever increasing indifference
towards severe, noble and conscientious schooling in the service of art,
and in its place the belief in genius, or in plain English, cheeky
dilettantism (--the formula for this is to be found in the
_Mastersingers_). Thirdly, and this is the worst of all: _Theatrocracy_--,
the craziness of a belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the right
of the theatre to rule supreme over the arts, over Art in general.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But
this should be shouted into the face of Wagnerites a hundred times over:
that the theatre is something lower than art, something secondary,
something coarsened, above all something suitably distorted and falsified
for the mob. In this respect Wagner altered nothing: Bayreuth is grand
Opera--and not even good opera.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The stage is a form of Demolatry in the
realm of taste, the stage is an insurrection of the mob, a _plebiscite_
against good taste.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The case of Wagner proves this fact: he captivated
the masses--he depraved taste, he even perverted our taste for opera!--

One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. What has
Wagner-worship made out of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit? To him
belong that ambiguity and equivocation and all other qualities which can
convince the uncertain without making them conscious of why they have been
convinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer on a grand scale. There is
nothing exhausted, nothing effete, nothing dangerous to life, nothing that
slanders the world in the realm of spirit, which has not secretly found
shelter in his art, he conceals the blackest obscurantism in the luminous
orbs of the ideal. He flatters every nihilistic (Buddhistic) instinct and
togs it out in