Chapter 32 twenty one

When I return from this persuasive tone to the contemplative mood, I repeat: only from the Greeks can one understand what this miraculous sudden awakening of tragedy means for the inner basis of the life of a people. .The nation that started the Persian war was a nation of tragic mysteries. After experiencing this war, it once again needed tragedy as an indispensable medicine for recovery.Who could have imagined that this nation, stimulated for many generations by the most violent convulsions of Dionysus, has penetrated into the bone marrow, and then can equally strongly express the purest political emotions, the most natural homeland instincts, and the primitive male joy of fighting?It is true that wherever the Dionysian impulse spreads in full swing, there is always a Dionysian freedom from the bondage of the individual, especially manifested in the weakening of political instincts until they become indifferent and even hostile to politics.However, on the other hand, Apollo, the god of founding, is undoubtedly the patron saint of the principle of individuation. Without the affirmation of individuality, it is impossible to have a sense of city-state and hometown.There is only one way to lead a people out of indulgence, and it leads to Indian Buddhism, which requires that rare trance that transcends space, time, and individuality in order to be generally able to endure longing for nothingness; Philosophy, which teaches man to overcome his indescribable distaste for the secular world through imagination.Due to the absolute rampantness of political impulse, a nation is also bound to fall into the path of extreme secularization, the Roman Empire is its largest and most terrible expression.

Standing between India and Rome, tempted by the two and forced to make a choice, the Greeks invented a third way in a classical purity, which certainly did not become their long-term custom, but also because of it. Immortal.For the beloved of God dies early, and this is true of all things, and it is equally true that they therefore live eternally with God.After all, one does not require the most precious things to have the durability and toughness of leather; and the durability of firmness, such as that possessed by the Roman national character, is probably not a necessary attribute of perfection.But if we ask, in the heyday of the Greeks, the Dionysian and political impulses were particularly strong, and what kind of magic drug kept them from meditating and forgetting the machine, nor in the mad pursuit of world hegemony and world reputation, To exhaust oneself, but to achieve such a beautiful mixture, as if concocting a famous wine that is both exciting and sober; then, we must think of the great power of tragedy to inspire, purify, and release the vitality of a whole nation.Only when it appears to us in the Greeks as the epitome of all the power of prevention, as the goddess of mediation between the most indomitable and most sinister characters of the nation, can we appreciate its highest value.

Tragedy imbibes the highest unbridled spirit of music, so that in the Greeks, as in ours, it immediately completes the music, but then it arranges beside it the tragic myth and the tragic hero, like the Titans. Hercules carried the entire Dionysian world on his back like that, thus unburdening us.On the other hand, through the same tragic myth, with the help of the image of the tragic hero, it liberates us from the ardent desire to live, and personally points out a different kind of existence and a higher joy, the fighting hero Prepared for it with foreboding, not by his victory, but by his demise.Tragedy sets the sublime simile of myth between the universal effect of its music and its Dionysian audience, evoking the illusion that music is only the highest expressive means of activating the mythical world.Tragedy falls into this noble illusion, and with all its hands and feet it dances the Dionysian dance, surrendering itself without hesitation to a joyous sense of freedom that it is music itself; without this illusion it would not be Dare to be so unrestrained.Myth protects us from music, and at the same time it alone gives music the highest freedom.In return, music also endows tragic myth with a metaphysical meaning so moving and convincing that language and image would never have acquired it without the aid of music.Especially by means of music, the spectator of tragedy has at once so vivid a foreboding of the highest joy attained through destruction and negation that he feels that he hears the deepest mysteries of all things plainly spoken to him.

Regarding this difficult concept, what I have discussed above may only provide an introductory statement that a few people can immediately comprehend. Then, please allow me to encourage my friends to try again, and ask them to learn from our common experience. An individual example of the subject, be prepared to recognize general principles.In this example, I don't want to speak to those who appreciate the music with the images of the plot, the lines and emotions of the actors.For them music is not their mother tongue, and in spite of all these aids they can at best go only to the antechamber of musical comprehension, not to enter its depths.Some of them, like Gervinus, had never reached the front hall by this road.I speak only to those who are close to the musical nature, who are in music as in a mother's arms, and deal with things only through unconscious musical relations.I ask these real musicians a question: Can they imagine a man who, without the aid of words and pictures, feels the third act of Tristan und Isolde exactly as he feels a great symphony, Will not be suffocated by the spasm and tension of the wings of the soul?Would not a man, on this occasion, put his ear to the heart of the world's will, and feel the violent desire to live flow like a roaring torrent or like a splashing stream to all the veins of the world?How could he, in his poor, frail husk, bear the echoes of innumerable cheers and wailings from "the vast spaces of the world's night," without continually escaping from his primordial homeland in this metaphysical shepherd's dance?But if, after all, such a work can be fully understood without denying the existence of the individual, if after all such a work can be created without destroying its author, how are we to explain this contradiction?

Here, interposed between our highest musical excitement and music, are tragic myths and tragic heroes, who are in essence no more than similes for the most universal facts that only music can directly express.But if we feel as purely Dionysian beings, the myth as a metaphor stays with us quite imperceptibly, and does not prevent us for a moment from hearing the echo of the universalia ante rem (the universality before things).But here at last the power of Apollo breaks out, restoring the nearly collapsed individual with the elixir of blissful vision.We seem to see Tristan again suddenly, and he asks himself in a daze: "This is old, why should it wake me up?" We, how lonely and empty the sea is.In all cases of violent emotional conflict, we held our breath and thought that we were dying and had only a hair connected with life, but now we see only the wounded and dying hero crying desperately: "Longing! Longing! When I am dying, I am still longing." and would not die because of longing!" After such emaciated torments, the cry of a trumpet broke our hearts more like the worst torment, now there is a distance between us and the "cry itself." Kuvinar hails Isolde's homecoming.Although we too feel the sorrow of pity, in a sense this feeling of pity saves us from the primordial suffering of the world, just as the allegorical picture of myth saves us from looking directly at the highest world idea, Thoughts and words free us from the flood of the unconscious will.This majestic Apollonian vision makes us feel as if the world of sound itself were presented to us as a world of shapes, as if the fate of Tristan and Isolde had been molded in it as if in the softest and most malleable material. .

So the Apollonian factor deprives us of the Dionysian universality, makes us infatuated with the individual, binds our sympathy to the individual, uses the individual to satisfy our desire for the beauty of great and sublime forms; it shows us the images of life one by one , Inspiring us to comprehend the mysteries of life contained in it.The Apollinian factor pulls man out of the self-destruction of mystical indulgence with the enormous energy of images, concepts, ethical lessons, sympathetic arousal, coaxes him to avoid the universality of the Dionysian process and creates an illusion that seems to He sees individual images of the world, such as Tristan and Isolde, and music only sees this image more closely and deeply.Since the rejuvenating power of the Apollonian hand can arouse in us the illusion that the Dionysian factor seems to actually serve the Apollonian factor, can enhance its effect, and even music seems to be essentially the art of describing the Apollonian content. , so what can it not do?

Because the expected harmony between the complete drama and its music predominates, the drama attains a height of grandeur beyond the reach of drama.All lifelike stage figures are reduced before our eyes to vibrating clear lines by virtue of the melodic clues of their independent movements.These juxtaposed clues can be heard in the subtle changes in harmony that match the progress of the plot.By this change of harmony we grasp directly the relation of things, perceptible to the senses, and not in an abstract way; just as by this change of harmony we realize that only in the relation of The character and the essence of a melodic thread are fully revealed.When the music prompts us to look more and deeper than ever before, and unfolds the plot before our eyes like the most delicate veil, our penetrating eyes seem to see the stage world expanding to infinity, and being captured by the inner world. The brilliance illuminates.What can the dramatist achieve by direct means, starting from language and concept, with far more complete mechanisms, to achieve this depth and interior illumination of the visible world of the stage?It is true that musical tragedy also uses language, but at the same time it shows the deep foundation and birthplace of language, and clarifies the generation of language profoundly to us.

After all, however, it may be said with certainty that the process here described is only a magnificent appearance, the aforementioned Apollonian vision, by which we are able to moderate the overflow and excess of Dionysus.The relation of music to theater is, of course, essentially the opposite: music is the real idea of ​​the world, theater is only the reflection of this idea, its individualized image.The consistency between the melody clue and the vivid image of the characters, the harmony between the harmony and the character relationship, is a consistency in the sense of opposites, just like what we can feel when watching musical tragedies.We can make figures vivid and radiant, but they remain only appearances, and no bridge can lead this appearance to the true reality, the mind of the world.Music, however, is the voice of the world; and though innumerable phenomena of the same kind may be manifested by a certain music, they can never exhaust the essence of this music, but are always only its surface portrayal.Of course, the vulgar and absurd statement of the antithesis of soul and body can explain nothing of the complex relationship between music and drama, but it can only disturb everything.Yet the unphilosophical vulgarity of this opposition seems to have become, for God knows why, an extremely current dogma among our philosophers; I know, or, God knows why, I don't want to know at all.

One conclusion seems to follow from our analysis: the Apollinian element in tragedy, with its phantasmagoria, completely overcomes the Dionysian element of music, and uses music to its ends, even as the drama attains the highest elucidation.Of course, an extremely important addition must be added: at the most critical moment, this Apollonian illusion will be shattered.Since all actions and images are illuminated from within, and with the help of music, the drama unfolds before our eyes, as if we saw locomotives flitting up and down, weaving silk, the drama as a whole achieves an effect, a Aside effects from all Apollo art effects.In the total effect of tragedy the Dionysian element regains the predominance; tragedy ends with a tone unknown in the realm of Apollonian art.The Apollonian phantasm thus reveals the truth, proving that it has always concealed the real Dionysian effect in the tragedy.But the Dionysian effect is so powerful that in the finale it pushes the Apollonian drama itself into a position where it begins to speak with Dionysian wisdom, makes it deny itself and its Apollonian clarity.Therefore, the complex relationship between the Apollonian and Dionysian elements in tragedy can be symbolized by the fraternal alliance of the two gods: Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo, and Apollo finally speaks the language of Dionysus.In this way the highest purpose of tragedy and of art in general is achieved.