Discussion Questions and Music for March 10th Presentation

1. In the preface and §6 of The Case of Wagner Nietzsche calls Wagner “decadent.” In §7 he offers a dense and confusing explanation of decadence. What do you think Nietzsche means by the word “decadent?”
2. Nietzsche’s changing opinion of Wagner? The Birth of Tragedy depicted Wagner as an artist who could revive the classical Greek tragedy in the modern era. The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche Contra Wagner speak of him in much less laudatory terms. What in Wagner caused Nietzsche’s opinion to change? Does Nietzsche’s opinion change further between The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche Contra Wagner? Can any of Nietzsche’s praise be maintained in light of these later works?
3. In §1 of The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche talks about ‘burying’ his ears in Bizet’s Carmen. This is in contrast with the sort of ‘superficial’ listening engendered by Wagner’s compositions. Why is it not possible to ‘bury’ one’s ears in Wagner? What is the difference (phenomenological or otherwise) between these two types of listening?
4. How do we listen to Bizet after being exposed to Wagner? 
5. In §7 of The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche writes the following about Wagner: “What is the sign of every literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of the page, the page gains life at the expense of the whole.” In Walter Kaufmann’s translation of the text he adds the footnote: “To those who know Nietzsche’s own books only superficially, this may seem to be a perfect description of his style.” Do we see a connection between the decadence of Wagner to the work of Nietzsche?