Chapter 9 9. Music and Poetry

Nietzsche discussed all kinds of art, including music, painting, sculpture, poetry, prose, drama, architecture, etc.As a philosopher who is good at music and poetry, his insights on music and poetry deserve our special attention. Nietzsche started from Schopenhauer's view of music in the early stage, and believed that music is a pure Dionysian art, "a universal mirror of the will of the world", directly expressing the primitive emotions of the world.The music is all about emotion, without any contamination of image.However, music has the ability to evoke images.Tragedy is the graphic manifestation of musical mood.Folk songs and lyric poems are the imitation of language to music.Even Apollonian art, including Greek sculpture and Homer, is in a sense the depiction of images evoked by musical moods.Therefore, music is an original art, which occupies a central position in all art categories.

Later, when Nietzsche was skeptical about metaphysics, including the metaphysics of art, he once denied the metaphysical meaning of music, and believed that music does not express "will", "things in themselves," and this meaning is put into music by reason.However, Nietzsche always regards music as the art with the most philosophical depth: "Has anyone ever discovered that music liberates the spirit and adds wings to the mind? The more a man is a musician, the more he is a philosopher? - The gray sky of abstract concepts It’s like being pierced by lightning; the light is bright enough to reveal everything; the great question is within reach; it’s like being on top of a mountain and the world is unobstructed.” Moreover, he also insists that music is only about emotions, a much more complete world of emotional expression ——The remains of Dionysian drama, in which drama, dance, music, and lyric poetry were originally integrated, and only later were they gradually specialized and differentiated.

Nietzsche loved German classical music in his youth, Wagner in his youth, and Bizet later.His requirements for music are: light, clear, gentle, easy to dance, and stretch the whole body and mind. Regarding poetry, Nietzsche has the following insights that deserve attention: First, the connection between poetry and mythology.Mythology is the ideal homeland of poetry, and because the spirit of science has destroyed mythology, poetry has no home to return to.What makes a poet a poet is that he sees himself surrounded by images, he sees directly "causality of fact" and not "cause and effect of logic".Mythology is such a way of thinking in images.In myth, language is in its primitive state, it is not concept but poetry, image and emotion.Due to the development of abstract thinking, language is sick and can no longer express feelings in a simple way.Man has become a slave to words, can no longer speak plainly, and loses the sense of correctness.The way out is to return to the primitive state of language, to think mythically.Second, the origin of poetry.Poetry originated from primitive witchcraft, and witch songs, spells, and oracles are the original forms of poetry.Primitive people put rhythm into speech for a superstitious function: to use the magic power of rhythm to force ghosts and gods to obey people's will, to benefit people, or to release anger and return to tranquility, so that human beings can also have peace.Third, the "objectivity" of poetry.Poetry should exclude purely personal desires and emotions.The "ego" of the lyric poet is not the empirical "little self" but the noumenal "big self", which calls out from the abyss of being and symbolically expresses the primordial mood of the world.