134 Nietzsche§ 3). Anyone who wishes to hear within himself the echoes of the
"entire sonority of the world" and requires true philosophy to replicate
this sonority "conceptually" will also be on the lookout for an actual, not
just metaphorical, music in which this perceived inner connection of the
world resounds. We are already aware that, for Nietzsche, this world of
music was Wagnerian.
In the mid-1870s, three aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy coalesced.
The first was his insistence that knowledge turn against knowledge, in
the manner of Stirner, to make direct experience possible, thereby real-
izing the "unhistorical," and pulling thought up into the domain of the
"suprahistorical." This is the second aspect. Stable structures and con-
nections become apparent from the bird's-eye view We should not
imagine the description of life from this vantage point in overly discur-
sive terms, or expect its "object" to be overly intelligible, because—and
this is the third aspect—Nietzsche regarded this sort of conceptual
description as an inferior version of an experience that is better sung in
the language of music. "Intuitive knowledge" is his name for this idea,
which has devised a "higher" nature under the influence of Wagner. But
the 1878 reflection cited earlier suggests that the inversive dynamics of
the influence of Wagner, which Nietzsche declared its "most splendid"
aspect, "ultimately turns against him" (8,543). How are we to under-
stand this?
Nietzsche wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug on January 14,1880: "I
think of him [Wagner] with undying gratitude because it is to him that I
owe some of my most powerful incitements to intellectual independ-
ence" (B 6,5). If we consider this statement in combination with a nota-
tion made in 1878, which at first blush appears to contrast with it,
"Wagner does not have the power to make man free and great" (8,496),
the "incitement to intellectual independence" can apply only to
Nietzsche's need to mobilize all of his power to step outside Wagner's
magic circle. Nietzsche was therefore grateful to Wagner's powerful sway
over him because it enabled him to attain a state of independence. At the
end of his Wagner phase, he was proud that he had finally found the exit