Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer’s shop; I stared unthinkingly at his piled-up wares, neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen, while another man was just putting his hand in a cage, where he seized a live hen and tore its head off. The hideous scream of the animal, and the pitiful, weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered transfixed my soul with horror. - Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of this impression, although I had experienced it often before. - It is dreadful to see how our lives - which, on the whole, remain addicted to pleasure - rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruellest misery! This has been so self-evident to me from the very beginning, and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility has increased that I really do believe that the legitimate reason for all my sufferings lies in the fact that I still cannot positively abandon my life and all its aspirations. The consequence of this is bound to make itself felt in everything, indeed, only on the basis of this discord can one explain my behaviour with its often incomprehensible vicissitudes and not infrequent tendency to treat with bitterness even what is most dear to me. Wherever I perceive evident contentment, or the intention of ensuring the same, I turn away with a certain sense of inner horror. As soon as another’s existence seems to me to be lacking in suffering and carefully calculated to keep all suffering at bay, I can follow it only with unsmotherable bitterness, so remote is it from what I regard as the real solution to man’s task. And so, without feeling any envy, I have nevertheless felt an instinctive hatred of the rich: I admit that not even they can be called happy, in spite of their possessions; but they have the quite obvious intention of wishing to be so; and it is this which alienates me from them. With subtle intent they avoid anything that could possibly make them feel sympathetic towards the misery upon which all their longed-for contentment rests, and it is this alone that keeps me a world apart from them. I have observed the way in which I am drawn in the other direction with a force that inspires me with sympathy, and that everything touches me deeply only insofar as it arouses fellow-feeling in me, i.e. fellow-suffering. I see in this fellow-suffering the most salient feature of my moral being, and presumably it is this that is the well-spring of my art.
But what characterizes fellow-suffering is that it is by no means conditioned in its affections by the individual qualities of the suffering object but rather by the perception of suffering itself. In love it is otherwise: here we advance to a feeling of fellow-joy, and we can share the joy of an individual only if we find the latter’s particular characteristics acceptable in the highest degree, and homogeneous. This is more likely in the case of common types, since here it is purely sexual relations which are almost exclusively at work. The more noble the nature, the more difficult it is to achieve fellow-joy through redintegration: but, if we succeed, there is nothing to equal it! - Fellow-suffering, by contrast, is something we can feel for even the commonest and least of beings, a being which, apart from its suffering, is totally unsympathetic towards us, indeed, may even be antipathetic in what it is capable of enjoying. The reason for this, at all events, is infinitely profound and, if we recognize it, we shall thereby see ourselves raised above the very real barriers of our personality. For what we encounter when we exercise fellow-suffering in this way is suffering as such, divorced from all personality.
In order to steel themselves against the power of fellow-suffering, people commonly assert that it is demonstrably the case that lower natures feel suffering far less keenly than a higher organism: they argue that, as the sensibility that first makes fellow-suffering possible increases, so, proportionately, does suffering gain in reality: in other words, the fellow-suffering that we expend on lower natures is a waste of emotional effort, being an exaggeration, and even a pampering of feeling. - This opinion, however, rests upon a fundamental error which is at the basis of every realistic philosophy; for it is precisely here that we see idealism in its truly moral stature inasmuch as it reveals the former as an example of egotistical narrow-mindedness. The question here is not what the other person suffers but what I suffer when I know him to be suffering. After all, we know what exists around us only inasmuch as we picture it in our imagination, and how I imagine it is how it is for me. If I ennoble it, it is because I myself am noble, if I feel the other man’s suffering to be deep, it is because I myself feel deeply when I imagine his suffering, and whoever, by contrast, imagines it to be insignificant reveals in doing so that he himself is insignificant. Thus my fellow-suffering makes the other person’s suffering an actual reality, and the more insignificant the being with which I can suffer, the wider and more embracing is the circle which suggests itself to my feelings. - But here lies an aspect of my nature which others may see as a weakness. I admit that unilateral actions are much impeded by it; but I am certain that when I act, I then act in accordance with my essential nature, and certainly never cause pain to anyone intentionally. This consideration alone can influence me in all my actions: to cause others as little suffering as possible. On this point I am totally at one with myself, for only in this way can I hope to give others joy, as well: for the only true, genuine joy is to be found in the conformity of fellow-suffering. But I cannot obtain this by force: it must be granted me by the other person’s friendly nature, which is why I have only ever encountered a single perfect example of this phenomenon! -
But I am also clear in my own mind why I can even feel greater fellowsuffering for lower natures than for higher ones. A higher nature is what it is precisely because it has been raised by its own suffering to the heights of resignation, or else has within it - and cultivates - the capacity for such a development. Such a nature is extremely close to mine, is indeed similar to it, and with it I attain to fellow-joy. That is why, basically, I feel less fellowsuffering for people than for animals. For I can see that the latter are totally denied the capacity to rise above suffering, and to achieve a state of resignation and deep, divine calm. And so, in the event of their suffering, as happens when they are tormented, all I see - with a sense of my own tormented despair - is their absolute, redemption-less suffering without any higher purpose, their only release being death, which confirms my belief that it would have been better for them never to have entered upon life. And so, if this suffering can have a purpose, it is simply to awaken a sense of fellowsuffering in man, who thereby absorbs the animal’s defective existence, and becomes the redeemer of the world by recognizing the error of all existence. (This meaning will one day become clearer to you from the Good Friday morning scene in the third act of Parzival.) But to see the individual’s capacity for redeeming the world through fellow-suffering atrophy, undeveloped and most assiduously neglected, makes me regard people with utter loathing, and weakens my sense of fellow-suffering to the point where I feel only total insensitivity towards their distress. It is in his distress that the individual’s road to salvation is to be found, a road which is not open to animals; if he does not recognize this to be so but insists upon considering it to be locked and barred to him, I feel an instinctive urge to throw this door wide open for him, and am capable of going to lengths of great cruelty in order to make him conscious of the need to suffer. Nothing leaves me colder than the philistine’s complaint that he has been disturbed in his contentment: any compassion here would be pure complicity. Just as my entire nature involves shaking people out of their common condition, here, too, I feel an urge simply to spur them on in order to make them feel life’s great anguish! -
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Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 221