Wagner - Bizet - Nietzsche

"The existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon".[Nietzsche, 'Birth of Tragedy']

Art can only be seen as the product of a particular people, a unique ethnos.Art must, like any self-respecting man, be only true to itself; it must deplore anything which seeks to undermine it, devalue it, dilute it or 'dumb it down'.All cultural strength is repaired by a periodic return to the roots.It is this emphasis which explains Wagner's so-called anti-Semitism, a sentiment shared by Nietzsche during his Wagner Period;"Wagner's ideal art in which he shows a close affinity to Schiller, is especially detested by our 'Jews' - and you know what a far-reaching element this is".[Nietzsche, letter to Gersdorff 1870]

There are many who regard this period of Nietzsche's output [late 1860s to mid 1870s] as being his best;"The early Nietzsche - the friend of R.Wagner. The young Nietzsche, hopeful, confident, looking towards the future with a supreme faith in his ideals and his friends; the combative Nietzsche, who in the early 1870s was in the full possession of his powers of body and mind,'Fiery, elastic, and as conscious of his own strength as a young lion',as he appeared to his friend and fellow author Deussen".[Prof Holzer, quoted in the 'Nietzsche Wagner Correspondence']

The interaction between Wagner and Nietzsche should be seen [as it was by the composer Richard Strauss, who immortalised Zarathustra as a tone poem] as one of the great cultural events of the 19th century;"I know of no other way by which I could have been vouchsafed the purest, serenest delight than through the Wagner music, and this, despite the fact that it by no means speaks always of happiness, but more often of uncanny subterranean forces, of human conduct, of suffering in the midst of happiness, and of the finiteness of all human happiness. The enchantment, therefore, that radiates from this music must lay in the manner in which it speaks to us".[Nietzsche, notebook 1875]

Wagner demonstrated through his Art the tenacity of all heroic Will to Power; this was recognised also by Adolf Hitler in 1944;"Think of Wagner and how he was torn to bits for ten years by the critics! The same thing happened with Bizet's 'Carmen'. And now the critics who tore these masterpieces to shreds are completely and utterly forgotten, and the works live on".

The parallel between Wagner and Carmen evidences Hitler's aqaintance with Nietzsche's work, who in his later writing made Carmen the antithesis of Wagner's Parsifal. It is worth noting that the ability to hold both these polarities up at the same time is thoroughly Nietzschean.