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Third EssayWhat Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?5
So what, then, do ascetic ideals mean? In the case of an artist, we know the answer immediately - nothing at all! . . . Or they mean so many things, that they amount to nothing at all! . . . So let`s eliminate the artists right away. They do not stand independent of the world and against the world long enough for their evaluations and the changes in those evaluations to merit our interest for their own sake! They have in all ages been valets to a morality or philosophy or religion, quite apart from the fact that, often enough, they unfortunately have been the all-too-adaptable courtiers of groups of their followers and, above all, their patrons and fine-nosed flatterers of old or even newly arriving powers. At the very least, they always need a means of protection, a support, an already established authority. The artist never stands by himself - standing alone contravenes his deepest instincts.
Hence, for example, Richard Wagner took the philosopher Schopenhauer (once his time had come) as his point man, his protection. Who could have even imagined that he would have had the courage for an ascetic ideal without the support which Schopenhauer`s philosophy offered, without the authority of Schopenhauer, which had become predominant in Europe in the 1860`s? (And that`s not even considering whether in the new Germany it would have been at all possible to be an artist without the milk of a pious, imperially pious way of thinking).
And so with this we come to the more serious question: what does it mean when a real philosopher pays homage to the ascetic ideal, a truly independent spirit like Schopenhauer, a man and a knight with an iron gaze, who was courageous enough to be himself, who knew how to stand alone and did not first wait for a point man and higher signs. Here let`s consider right away the remarkable and for all kinds of people fascinating position of Schopenhauer on art, for that was apparently the reason Richard Wagner first moved over to Schopenhauer (persuaded to do that, as we know, by the poet Herwegh).
That shift was so great that it opened up a complete theoretical contrast between his earlier and his later aesthetic beliefs, between, for example, the earlier views expressed in "Opera and Drama" and the later views in the writings which he published from 1870 on. In particular, what is perhaps most surprising is that from this point on Wagner ruthlessly altered his judgment of the value and place of music itself. Why should it concern him that earlier he had used music as a means, a medium, a "woman," something which simply required a purpose, a man, in order to flourish - that is, drama! But suddenly he realized that with Schopenhauer`s theory and innovation he could do more in majorem musicae gloriam [for the greater glory of music] - that is, through the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer had understood it: music set apart from all other arts, the inherently independent art, and not, like the other arts, offering copies of phenomena, but rather the voice of the will itself speaking out directly from the "abyss" as its most authentic, most primordial, most original revelation. With this extraordinary increase in the value of music, as this seemed to grow out of Schopenhauer`s philosophy, the musician himself suddenly grew in value to an unheard-of extent: from now on he would be an oracle, a priest, even more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece of the "essence" of things, a telephone from the world beyond us - in future he didn`t speak only of music, this ventriloquist of God; he talked metaphysics. Is it any wonder finally one day he spoke about ascetic ideals? . . .
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