NIETZSCHE AND ART
by
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
Author of 'Who is to be Master of the World?'
"Rien n'est beau que le vrai, dit un vers respecté;
et moi, je luiréponds, sans crainte d'un blasphème:
Rien n'est vrai sans beauté."—Alfred de Musset.
CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.
LONDON
1911
Preface
"We philosophers are never more delighted than when we are taken forartists."[1]
In this book, which embodies a course of lectures delivered in asomewhat condensed and summarized form at University College, London,during November and December, 1910, I have done two things. I havepropounded Nietzsche's general Art doctrine, and, with the view ofillustrating it and of defining it further, I have also applied itsleading principles to one of the main branches of Art.
As this has not been done before, either in English or in anyContinental language, my book is certainly not free from the crudenessand inadvertences which are inseparable from pioneer efforts of thisnature. Nevertheless it is with complete confidence, and a deepconviction of its necessity, that I now see it go to print; for,even if here and there its adventurous spirit may ultimately requiremodification, I feel certain that, in the main, time itself, togetherwith the help of other writers, will fully confirm its general thesis,if I should be unable to do so.
Sooner or later it will be brought home to us in Europe that wecannot with impunity foster and cultivate vulgarity and mob qualitiesin our architecture, our sculpture, our painting, our music andliterature, without paying very dearly for these luxuries in ourrespective national politics, in our family institutions, and evenin our physique. To connect all these things together, and to showtheir inevitable interdependence, would be a perfectly possible thougharduous undertaking. In any case, this is not quite the task I haveset myself in this work. I have indeed shown that to bestow admirationon a work of extreme democratic painting and at the same time to beconvinced of the value of an aristocratic order of society, is tobe guilty of a confusion of ideas which ultimately can lead only todisastrous results in practical life; but further than this I have notgone, simply because the compass of these lectures did not permit of myso doing.
Confining myself strictly to Nietzsche's æsthetic, I have been contentmerely to show that the highest Art, or Ruler Art, and therefore thehighest beauty,—in which culture is opposed to natural rudeness,selection to natural chaos, and simplicity to natural complexity,—canbe the flower and product only of an aristocratic society which, in itstraditions and its active life, has observed, and continues to observe,the three aristocratic principles,—culture, selection and simplicity.
Following Nietzsche closely, I have sought to demonstrate thedifference between the art which comes of inner poverty (realism, ordemocratic art), and that which is the result of inner riches (RulerArt).
Identifying the first with the reflex actions which respond to externalstimuli, I have shown it to be slavishly dependent upon environmentfor its existence, and, on that account, either beneath reality(Incompetence), on a level with reality (Realism), or fantasticallydifferen