Chapter 34 twenty-three

Whoever wishes to test accurately whether he belongs to the true aesthetic audience or to the Socratic critics need only ask himself frankly how he feels when he appreciates the miracle of the stage performance: does he feel that his demanding Is the historical consciousness of psychological causality insulted, or is the miracle tolerated in a friendly concession as a phenomenon which is understandable to the child but rather alien to him, or does he feel otherwise.He can thereby measure his ability in general to understand myth as a condensed picture of the world, which, as an abbreviation of phenomena, cannot be without wonder.But it is probable that almost everyone, under strict examination, feels himself so corrupted by the historically critical spirit of modern culture that it is only in an academic way, through indirect abstraction, that it is possible to believe that myths once existed.Without myth, however, all cultures lose their healthy natural creativity.Only a perspective mediated by myth can bind the entire cultural movement into a unity.All imagination and Apollonian dream power are freed from boundless wandering only by means of myth.The mythical image must be the imperceptible but ubiquitous patron saint under whose protection young minds grow and grown men interpret their lives and struggles through its symbols.Even the state admits that there is no unwritten law stronger than the foundation of mythology, which guarantees the connection between the state and religion, and the growth of the state out of mythical ideas.

Meanwhile, now one may imagine an abstract man, an abstract education, an abstract custom, an abstract power, an abstract state, without the guidance of myth; A culture without a solid and sacred cradle, doomed to exhaust all possibilities, and stuntedly sucked nourishment from all other cultures—this is modernity, the fruit of Socraticism aimed at destroying myth.Today, standing here is a man who has lost his mythology. He is always hungry, digging, rummaging, and searching for his roots in all past ages, even if he has to dig into the most distant ancient times.The huge historical interest of the insatiable modern culture, the collection of countless other cultures, the thirst for knowledge, if not the loss of mythology, the loss of mythology's home and mythology's mother, what does it prove?One may well ask oneself, what is the frenetic excitement of this culture, if not the impatience of the famished?Who wants to contribute to a culture to which nothing it devours satiates it, and to which the strongest nourishing food tends to be reduced to "history and criticism" at its touch?

If our German national character has become inextricably entangled with German culture, and even merged into one, as we have seen to our dismay in civilized France, we too must feel bitter despair about it.What has long been the cause of France's great virtue and great advantage, namely, the fusion of nation and culture, makes us, in view of the above, to be thankful that our so problematic culture has hitherto had nothing to do with the noble core of our national character. something in common.On the contrary, all our hopes rest fervently on the realization that beneath this restless and twitching cultural life and civilizing struggle lies a magnificent, essentially healthy, ancient power, though only in very rare moments. The ground germinated for a while, and then fell into a deep dream again, waiting for the future awakening.Out of this abyss grew the German Reformation, and in its hymns the future tune of German music sounded for the first time.Luther's hymns sound so deep, brave, spiritual, filled with such beautiful and tender feelings, like the first call of Dionysus bursting from the dense forest at the approach of spring.The solemn and indulgent ranks of the Dionysians answer the call with echoes, to whom we thank for German music—we also thank them for the rebirth of German mythology!

I know that I must now guide my dedicated friend to a lonely height where he has but few companions, and I will encourage him to say, Let us follow the Greeks, our brilliant guides.To clarify our aesthetic perception, we have hitherto borrowed from them two figures of the gods, each of whom presides over a separate field of art, and with Greek tragedy we have a presentiment of their mutual contact and inspiration.It seems to us that these two artistic motive forces have dramatically torn each other apart, leading to the downfall of Greek tragedy.The degeneration of the Greek national character and the decline and fall of Greek tragedy are consistent, prompting us to seriously reflect on how art and nation, myth and custom, tragedy and country are necessarily and closely related to each other.The downfall of tragedy is at the same time the downfall of myth.Before this time, the Greeks instinctively connected all experiences immediately with their myths, and even understood them only through this connection.In their view, the present moment must thereby also immediately sub specie aeterni (submit into the category of eternity), and in a sense become timeless.Both the state and the arts are immersed in this timeless flow, seeking peace from the burdens and longings of the present.A nation (and a person) is worth only insofar as it imprints its own experience with eternity, for in doing so it appears otherworldly, its relativity to time, its true meaning to life. Meaning is an unconscious inner belief of metaphysical meaning.The opposite happens when a people begins to understand itself historically, dismantling the barriers of myth around itself.Often associated with this is a decidedly secular tendency to depart from the unconscious metaphysics of the early life of the nation, with ethical consequences.Greek art, and especially Greek tragedy, prevented the destruction of mythology in the first place, so they must be destroyed together in order to leave the native land and live unfettered in the wasteland of thought, custom, and behavior.Even then, the metaphysical impulse tried to create for itself an even weakened form of apotheosis in the burgeoning scientific Socraticism.But, at a lower stage, this impulse leads only to a frenzied search which gradually disappears in the den of myths and superstitions which gather from everywhere.The Greeks are still not reconciled to being in this den until they learn, like Graculus, to mask their fanaticism with Greek glee and Greek frivolity, or to anesthetize themselves completely with any kind of gloomy Oriental superstition.

Since the Alexandrian age was finally revived in the fifteenth century after an indescribably long hiatus, we have come startlingly closer to it again.The same exuberant thirst for knowledge culminated, the same insatiable pleasure in invention, the same terrible worldly tendencies, plus a vagrancy of homelessness, a greed to squeeze into other people's feasts, a frivolity towards the modern Worship, or an insensible departure from the "present," subspecie saeculi (relegating everything to the secular category): all these offer the same omens, reminding one of the same flaws contained in the core of this culture, of the mythical destroy.It seemed almost impossible to carry on a continuous transplant of foreign myths without this transplanting irreparably damaging the trees themselves.Trees may once have been strong enough to re-exclude foreign elements with a hard struggle, but often they must decay, or be exhausted by morbid overgrowth.We so value the pure and strong core of the German national character that we dare to expect it to be free from brutally imported foreign elements, and dare to believe that self-reflection of the German spirit is possible.It might be thought that the German spirit must begin its struggle by excluding Rome.He may perhaps see, in the victories and bloody glory of the latest war, the surface preparation and encouragement for it.An inner impulse, however, strives in the race to remain worthy of the noble pioneers of this path, worthy of Luther and our great artists and poets.But he must not believe that such a struggle can be waged without his gods, without his mythical homeland, without the "return" of all things German!If the German looks timidly about him, seeking for himself a guide to his long-lost homeland, since he hardly knows the way any more--well, he has only to heed the cheerful call of the Dionysus, It was soaring above his head, willing to show him the way home.