Chapter 16 Fives

We are now approaching the real purpose of our research, which is to recognize the creativity of the Dionysian and Apollonian types and their works of art, and to comprehend at least forebodingly this mysterious combination.We must now first ask, where, in the world of the Greeks, first appeared in the world of the Greeks the new germs which later developed into tragedies and dramas of Dionysia?On this point, the ancients themselves inspired us with images. They regarded Homer and Archilochus as the ancestors of Greek poetry and torchbearers, and they were displayed side by side on sculptures, ornaments, etc., and they really felt that only these two The same perfect and straightforward nature is worthy of respect, and from them a stream of fire gushed out to warm the Greeks for generations.Homer, the white-haired dreamer who devoted himself to himself, the model of Apollonian culture and naive artist, now stares in amazement at the excited face of Archilochus, the wild and martial muse full of life's passion. Interpretation as the first "subjective" artist rises up against the "objective" artist.This explanation is useless to us, because we think that the subjective artist is nothing but a bad artist, and that in every kind and height of art the first thing is to overcome the subjectivity, to get rid of the "ego," to silence all individual wills and desires.Without objectivity, without pure and detached contemplation, it is impossible to conceive even the bare minimum of genuine artistic creation.For this, our aesthetics must first solve this problem: how can a "lyric poet" be an artist?The experience of all ages shows that they are always pouring out their "selves," and never tire of singing to us their passions and longings.It is this Archilochus, beside Homer, who makes our hearts tremble with his indignant and ironic cries, and his intoxicating passions.Was he not, the first so-called subjective artist, a real non-artist?But how, then, to explain the reverence he received?This reverence is justified by the oracle at Delphi, the home of "objective" art.

With regard to his own creative process, Schiller illuminates us with a psychological observation that he himself does not know, but which is undoubtedly brilliant.He admits that the preparatory state of poetry creation is by no means a series of thought-organized images before the eyes or in the mind, but rather a musical mood ("The feeling has no clear and definite object in me at the beginning; This came later. The first musical moods passed, and then I had poetic images in my head").We would add that one of the most important phenomena of all ancient lyric poetry is that everywhere the lyric poet and the musician are naturally combined and even become one.Modern lyric poetry seems, by comparison, to be a headless god.We can now interpret the lyric poet in the following way, in light of the aesthetic metaphysics set forth above.In the first place, as Dionysian artist, he was completely at one with the One, with its pains and conflicts, and made a copy of the One, music, if music had the right to be called the duplication and reproduction of the world; , the music became visible to him again in the metaphorical dream.The formless and conceptless representation of the original pain in music, now relying on its release in appearance, produces a second image, which becomes another metaphor or example.The artist has renounced his subjectivity in the Dionysian process.Now, the picture that showed him his unity with the mind of the world was a dream that made palpable the primordial conflict, the primordial pain, and the primordial joy of appearance.Thus the "ego" of the lyric poet calls out from the abyss of being; the so-called "subjectivity" of the lyric poet by modern aestheticians is only an illusion.When Archilochus, the first Greek lyric poet, expressed both his infatuation and contempt to the daughters of Lygambes, it was not his ecstasy and throbbing passion that presented itself to us.We see Dionysus and his maids, and we see Archilochus, the drunk, as described by Euripides in "The Companion of Dionysus", lying drunk in the Alps at noon, when the sun was shining. on the lawn.At this time, Apollo approached and touched him with a laurel branch.Then the magic of Dionysus and music in the drunken recumbent seemed to shoot picturesque fireworks all around. This is lyric poetry, and its highest development form is called tragedy and drama Dionysia.

Sculptors and their epic poets alike are immersed in the pure contemplation of images.The Dionysian musician has no image at all, he is the original pain itself and its original echoes.The genius of the lyric poet feels that out of the mystical state of self-renunciation and unity grows a world of images and similes, a world of entirely different colors, causality, and tempo than that of the sculptor and epic poet.Sculptors and epic poets live happily in images, and in images alone, with delight and love for their smallest features.For them the image of angry Achilles is only an image, whose angry expression they enjoy with the joy of a dream of appearance.At this time, they rely on the mirror of appearance to prevent them from blending with the image they have created.On the contrary, the images of the lyric poet are only the lyric poet himself, they seem to be various objectifications of himself, so that he is, so to speak, the moving center of the world of that "ego".This self, however, is not the self of the waking man who experiences reality, but the fundamentally only truly existing, eternal self, grounded in the ground of all things, through whose copy the lyric poet sees the ground of all things.Now let us imagine that under these copies he also discovers himself as a non-genius (Nichtgenius), his "subject", a mass of subjective passions and desires directed at what he considers to be a real and certain object.In this way, the lyric genius and his relative non-genius seem to be one, so that the former speaks of himself in the word "I."But this phenomenon can no longer confuse us now, although it confuses those who assume that the lyric poet is a subjective poet.In fact, Archilochus, who burns with passion, loves and hates, is only a phantom of creativity, and at this moment he is no longer Archilochus, but the world's creativity through Its man speaks symbolically of his raw pain.On the contrary, Archilochus, who subjectively wishes and longs, can never be a poet.Yet it is not at all necessary for the lyric poet to regard the phenomenon of Archilochus merely as a reappearance of an eternal existence; the tragedy demonstrates how far the lyric poet's fantasy world can be removed from the phenomenon which is admittedly the first to appear.

Schopenhauer does not shy away from the difficulties lyric poets pose to philosophy of art, and he believes that a way out can be found, although I do not agree with his way out.In his profound metaphysics of music, only he has mastered the means to completely eliminate difficulties.I believe that in his spirit and with respect for him, success will come.However, he describes the nature of poetry in this way (Book I, p. 295): "What a singer is acutely aware of is the subject of the will, that is, his own wishes, which are often fulfilled and relieved wishes (pleasures), More often a repressed wish (sorrow), always an impulsive, passionate and excited state of mind. At the same time, the singer becomes aware, by observing the surrounding nature, that he is a subject of pure knowledge without will. Later, the The unbreakable celestial tranquility is contrasted with the torments of ever-restricted, ever more pitiful desires. In fact, all lyric poetry speaks of this feeling of contrast and alternation, which, generally speaking, constitutes the lyrical mood. In the lyrical mood, pure knowledge seems to come to us, to free us from the desire and its torment. We obey, but only for a moment, the desire, the memory of one's purpose, always redirected to the serene contemplation scrambles for us. However, we are always drawn again away from the wish by the beautiful landscape in front of us, in which pure knowledge without will reveals itself to us. Thus, in the lyric poem and the lyrical mood, the wish (personal purpose, interest) The pure contemplation of the things in front of us is strangely mixed with each other. We will explore and speculate on the relationship between the two. In a kind of reflection, the subjective emotion and the excitement of the will dye their own colors on the things under observation, and reflect Come and take the color of the scene itself. The true lyric is the imprint of this whole mixed and separated mood."

Who can fail to see from this account that lyric poetry is described as an imperfect, seemingly haphazard art that seldom achieves its purpose, or even as a semi-art whose essence should be desire With pure contemplation, that strange mixture of non-aesthetic and aesthetic states?We would rather maintain that the opposition that Schopenhauer still uses as a measure of value and by which art is divided, that of subjective and objective art, is not applicable in aesthetics at all.Here the subject, the individual who desires and pursues his own ends, can only be seen as the enemy of art, not its source.But the artist is the subject in the sense that he has escaped his own will, as if becoming the medium through which a true subject celebrates its liberation in appearance.When we criticize, we must be very clear about this: the whole comedy of art is not played for us, for example, to improve and educate us, and we are not the real creators of this artistic world.We might as well look at ourselves in this way: for the true creators of the art world, we are already pictures and artistic projections, and our highest dignity lies in the value as works of art-because only as aesthetic phenomena, life and the world can be There is always a good reason.Yet we are never more conscious of our value than the soldier on the canvas has of the battle on the canvas.So, in the final analysis, all our knowledge of art is utterly false knowledge, because, as knowers, we are not at one with that essence which, as sole author and spectator of artistic comedy, has prepared for itself this permanent entertainment.Only when he merged with the world's original artist in the art creation activities did he know a little about the eternal nature of art.In this state, he is like a magic painting told in a fairy tale, able to miraculously turn his eyes to watch himself quietly.At this time, he is both subject and object, both poet and actor and audience.