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.We are reminded of his notion of  ennoblement through degeneration inHuman, All Too Human, but it is a different kind of  ennoblement throughdegeneration which he describes in the preface to The Case of Wagner: hisown.The  case of Wagner is presented as part of his own case history;that work announces his  recovery from his own youthful Romanticism,his triumph over his own (physiological and philosophical) decadence.Wagner, he declares,  is merely one of my sicknesses (CW, Preface).Yetthis illness was necessary in order to acquaint him with the pathologiesafflicting modern civilisation and thus enable him to overcome them: the philosopher is not free to do without Wagner.I d.understand aphilosopher who would declare  Wagner sums up modernity.There isno way out, one must first become a Wagnerian  (CW, Preface).Hysteria and histrionicsDespite the red-faced indignation with which many Wagnerians greetedthe publication of Nietzsche s broadside, his appraisal of their idol s pu-tative nevrosité was not entirely without precedent  or even a grain oftruth.Wagner himself had confided to his friend August Röckel as longago as 1854 that he suffered from a nervous condition which saw himoscillating between the extremes of lassitude and creative elation:when I experience the wretched state in which I now normally find myself, Icannot help but believe my nerves to be ruined; miraculously, however, these samenerves  when the time is right and beautiful, appropriate stimuli come to me perform the most wondrous services; I then achieve a degree of perceptiveness,a sense of well-being through what I experience and create such as I have neverknown before.Should I now say that my nerves are ruined? I cannot.I see only thatmy nature s normal state is exaltation and its abnormal state common repose.24In line with his own self-portrait, and ever since the uproar surround-ing the 1861 performance of Tannhäuser in Paris, when the Journal amu-sant had punningly referred to its composer as  vagues-nerfs , the Meisterhad been regarded as the century s leading exponent of what was to be-come known as  neuromanticism , a  nerve-artist (Nervenkünstler), as23Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann, p.452 (14 March 1830).24Richard Wagner, Briefe an August Röckel (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1894), pp.44 5.176 Degenerationthe historian Karl Lamprecht later termed that modern breed of artistswhose work, he thought, was conditioned by a greater neurologicalsensitivity.25 Around the same time, Judith Gautier described the com-poser as  excessively nervous and impressionable , and the critic EduardHanslick dismissed Wagner s famous  unending melody as  formless-ness raised to a principle, systematised non-music, melodic nerve-feverscribbled down on a stave.26 Whether Nietzsche was aware of Wagner sself-confessed weak nerves or that the man and his art were increasinglybeing identified in the public consciousness with nervous illness is un-clear.But he certainly knew that he was not the first to label his formermentor a  sick genius.Ever since the 1870s, the Meister s music had,beyond the walls of the devoted Wagner-Vereine, attracted an increasingamount of public opposition.Whilst his earlier, more traditional compo-sitions could reckon with a measure of appreciation, even enthusiasm, theinnovations of his later works were met with uncomprehending hostility.Accordingly, as often happens when what someone is saying cannot beunderstood by his audience, Wagner s Zukunftsmusik was denounced atthe ravings of a lunatic.Of course, the notion that Wagner was insanehad to begin with no more than polemical significance, but it was notlong before a practising physician, with all the literal-mindedness of thenineteenth-century scientist, decided to throw his professional weight be-hind this popular diagnosis.In 1873, the Munich psychiatrist TheodorPuschmann sparked a minor scandal with the publication of a shortcase-study entitled Richard Wagner: Eine psychiatrische Studie [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]