others of suffering. Such suffering on their part is aimed at increasing
their feeling of intellectual dominance.
Neither of these methods of accommodating suffering produce ideal
results and are each flawed in their own way. This is where Nietzsche
turns to art as a medium that may be able to overcome such flaws that
are inherent in other methods of dealing with suffering. He begins his
discussion on the relation between art and ascetic ideals by questioning
the embrace of asceticism and Christian ideals in Wagner’s opera
Parsifal. As Scruton highlights, Nietzsche is ‘devoted to the demolition
of asceticism, he ridicules Parsifal, wondering whether the composer
had not intended the work as a kind of satyr play’ (Scruton, 2014 p.243).
In such distaste towards the Catholic asceticism expressed in Parsifal,
Nietzsche almost hopes for Wagner’s sake that this expression was
intended towards portraying Parsifal in a comedic light that involved
‘indulging in an excessive bout of the most extreme and deliberate
parody of the tragic itself’ (p.70). In toying with this idea of Wagner’s
intentions being aimed towards parodying the tragic, Nietzsche enters
into a profound discourse concerning the relationship of the artist and his
work. He praises the display of humility in an artist through parodying his
work in that an artist ‘reaches the final summit of his achievement when
he knows how to see himself and his art Beneath him, – and knows how
to laugh at himself’ (ibid). This is important because this is the first time
in the book that Nietzsche enters into discussion about the artist being
separate and distant from his art.
It is in section 4 of the third essay that we get Nietzsche’s argument for
the utility of art with regards to suffering. Following from his discussion
about Parsifal, Nietzsche states several premises that lead us into this
argument. Firstly, an artist is not what he creates and should not be
taken as seriously as his art because ‘he is merely the precondition for
the work, the womb, the soil’ (p.71). I take this to mean that it is true
that an artwork’s existence is dependent on the efforts of the artist, but
we should avoid the idea that the art and the artist therefore share the
same identity. Nietzsche brings in the idea of ‘psychological contiguity’
(ibid) to explain how we originally came by this misconception that an
artist’s work could be an extension of his identity. To bolster his point,
he gives examples of the necessary difference between an artist and
the characters he creates; ‘Homer would not have created Achilles and
Goethe would not have created Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles
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