Chapter 27 sixteen

In the above historical examples, we have tried to show that tragedy must perish with the disappearance of the musical spirit, just as it can only be born from the musical spirit.In order to make this assertion less alarmist, and to point out the origin of our knowledge, we must now be free to examine a similar contemporary phenomenon; we must place ourselves in the midst of the struggle which I have just spoken of which is being waged at the highest level of the contemporary world. , that is, the struggle between insatiable optimistic realization and tragic artistic yearning.I do not speak here of all the other opposing tendencies, which have been opposed to art at all times, and especially to tragedy, and which have flourished in our own time, so that of the dramatic arts only farce and ballet have flourished, and have blossomed, perhaps, not to everyone's liking. .I want to speak only of the most grandiose objections to the tragic worldview (die tragische Weltbetrachtung), by which I mean the science that is in its deepest essence optimism, headed by its patriarch Socrates.I shall shortly enumerate those forces which, it seems to me, are capable of guaranteeing the recurrence of tragedy, and even a new bright hope of the German spirit!

Before we plunge into this struggle, let us arm ourselves with the knowledge we have gained thus far.Contrary to all those who deduce art from a single principle as the necessary source of life for all works of art, I have kept my eyes fixed on the two Greek gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, and realized that they are two A vivid representation of an artistic realm that differs in its deepest essence and supreme purpose.Apollo seems to me to be the patron saint of the beautifying principle of individuation, through which only true liberation in appearance can be attained; The way to the core is open.This great antithesis, which separates plastic art as Apollonian art from music as Dionysian art like a chasm, was understood by only one of the great thinkers, so that he could see music and all other things without the guidance of Greek mythology. Art has different properties and origins, because all other arts are copies of phenomena, but music is a direct reflection of will itself, so what it embodies is not any physical quality of the world, but its metaphysical quality, not any phenomenon but itself. of things (Schopenhauer: Volume I).With this most important insight in all aesthetics, there begins to be aesthetics in the strict sense.Richard Wagner admitted that this view is an eternal truth. He argued in "On Beethoven" that the evaluation of music should follow aesthetic principles that are completely different from all plastic arts, and that music cannot be measured by the category of beauty.But there is an erroneous aesthetic, based on lost art, accustomed to a notion of beauty that applies only to the world of images, that requires music to produce the same effect as a work of plastic art, that is, to evoke the pleasure of beautiful forms.Recognizing that great antithesis, I have had a strong urge to probe further into the nature of Greek tragedy, and thus reveal most profoundly the Greek creative spirit.For now I am confident that I have mastered the knack of grasping for myself the original problem of tragedy beyond the formulas of our popular aesthetics.I have thus been able to look at Greece with such a different eye that I cannot help feeling that our so pretentious study of classical Greece has so far only managed to appreciate the superficial and the superficial.

We may approach this original problem by asking the following question: What is the aesthetic effect when these two separate artistic forces, Apollonian and Dionysian, act together?Or more briefly, how does music relate to images and concepts? ——It is at this point that Wagner praised Schopenhauer's unsurpassed clarity and thoroughness.Schopenhauer discusses this issue in the most detail on page 309 of Volume 1, which I quote here in full: "According to all this, we can regard the phenomenal or natural world and music as two different manifestations of the same thing, which is therefore the only medium of resemblance between the two, and must be known in order to understand the resemblance. Therefore, if If music is regarded as the expression of the world, then it is a universal language of the highest level, and even its relationship with conceptual universality is roughly equivalent to the relationship between conceptual universality and individual things. However, its universality is by no means abstract the empty universality of the concept, and another universality altogether, with a well-known and obvious definiteness. In this it is like geometrical figures and numbers, which are all possible. The universal form of the object of experience, apriori (a priori) applies to all objects, but with a certainty that is not abstract, but intuitive and well-known. All possible pursuits, agitations, and expressions of the will, all human beings Inner processes, which reason classifies under the broad negative concept of emotion, can be expressed in innumerable possible melodies, but this expression always has the universality of pure form without substance, always according to the thing-in-itself. Not according to the phenomenon, it seems to be the inner soul of the invisible body of the phenomenon. This close relationship between music and the true meaning of all things can also make the following phenomena be explained: any scene, plot, event, and environment are matched with appropriate music. It is as if telling us their hidden meanings, and in this respect the most correct and clearest explanations; likewise, the man who is completely absorbed in the impression of a symphony, seems to see the possible events of life and the world before his eyes. However, when he thought about it carefully, he could not point out any similarities between the music and the things that appeared before his eyes. For, as mentioned earlier, music is different from all other arts. It is not a copy of phenomena, or rather In other words, it is not the corresponding objectification of the will, but the direct reflection of the will itself, so what it embodies is not any physical property of the world but its metaphysical property, not any phenomenon but a thing in itself. Therefore, the world can be called concrete It is the same as calling it the embodied will. This also explains why music can make every picture or even every scene of real life and the real world appear meaningful at once. Of course, the music The more the melody resembles the inner spirit of the phenomenon concerned, the more so. On the basis of this, one can set music to make a poem a song, an intuitive performance a drama, or both an opera. This individual picture of life , the universal language with music, to which their union or agreement is not absolute; on the contrary, the relation of the two is that of a handy example to a universal concept. What they describe in the certainty of reality , is exactly the same thing that music expresses in the universality of pure form. For the melody, like the universal concept, is to some extent an abstraction of reality. Reality, the world of individual , also provides the intuitive, the particular and individual, the single instance, to the universality of the melody. However, these two universalities are in a sense opposite to each otherThis opposite: the concept contains only the form originally abstracted from intuition, like the shell peeled off from the thing, so it is indeed an abstraction; mind.This relationship is aptly expressed in the terms of the scholastics, namely: the concept is universalia post rem (after the universality of things), music provides universalia ante rem (before the universality of things), and reality is universalia in rem (universality in things).In general, however, the connection between musical composition and visual performance is possible, as stated above, because the two are simply quite different manifestations of the same inner essence of the world.The melody of a song, the music of an opera, will be full of expressive power if, in the specific case, such a connection actually exists, that the composer knows how to express in the universal language of music the will impulse which constitutes the core of the event.However, the similarity between the two discovered by the composer must come from a direct understanding of the nature of the world, his reason is not aware of it, and he cannot consciously and intentionally imitate indirectly with the help of concepts.Otherwise, instead of expressing the inner essence, the will, music would only imitate the phenomenon of will unqualifiedly, as all music specialized in imitation does. "

In this way, according to Schopenhauer's theory, we directly understand music as the language of the will, and feel our imagination being stimulated to shape the invisible but vivid spiritual world that speaks to us. Similar examples show it.On the other hand, images and concepts take on a deeper meaning with a really consistent music.Therefore, Dionysian art often exerts a double influence on the Apollonian artistic ability: music first brings out the metaphorical intuition of the universality of Dionysus, and then makes the metaphorical image show the deepest meaning.From these self-evident but unattainable facts, I speculate that music has the power to produce myths, the most eloquent examples, especially tragic myths.Mythology talks about Dionysian awareness in parables.I have already described the phenomenon of the lyric poet: how music, in the lyric poet, strives to express its essence in the image of the Apollinian.Now if we imagine that music, at its height, must strive for the highest degree of visualization, then we must consider that it is likely to find symbolic expression for its inherent Dionysian wisdom.But where else can we look for this expression than tragedy, and in general, the notion das Tragische?

Tragedy cannot really be deduced from the essence of art, usually understood in terms of the single categories of appearance and beauty.Only from the spirit of music can we understand the pleasure of individual destruction.For through the single instance of the destruction of the individual we only perceive the eternal phenomenon of the Dionysian art which expresses the omnipotent will which seems to be hidden behind the principle of individuation, which endures beyond all phenomena through aeons. of eternal life.The metaphysical pleasure born of tragedy is a displacement of the instinctive, unconscious Dionysian wisdom to the world of images.The hero of tragedy, the supreme phenomenon of the will, is negated for our pleasure, since he is after all only a phenomenon, and his destruction does not detract in the slightest from the eternal life of the will.Tragedy cries: "We believe in eternal life." Music is the immediate idea of ​​this eternal life.The plastic arts have an entirely different purpose: here Apollinian overcomes individual suffering by extolling the eternity of phenomena, here beauty triumphs over life's inherent misery, in a sense that pain has disappeared from the face of nature.In Dionysian art and its tragic symbols, the same nature cries out to us, but with a sincere and candid voice: "Be like me! In the vicissitudes of things, be the first ever creative, ever alive, ever loving the change of appearances." mother!"