Chapter 30 The Birth of Tragedy Chapter Sixteen

birth of tragedy Chapter Sixteen In the historical examples above, we have endeavored to make clear that tragedy must perish with the spirit of music, so it must surely be revived only by means of the spirit of music.In order to temper this dire alarmism, and on the other hand to point out the origin of this knowledge, we must now broaden our horizons to face the modern analogue; we must move into the heart of that struggle.I have just said that the struggle between the insatiable and optimistic thirst for knowledge and the narcissism of tragic art is fought at the highest level of the modern world.I will leave aside other opposing tendencies, for they have always been against the arts, especially against tragedy, and have now become so rampant with their triumphant confidence that in the dramatic arts only the comedy and the dance-drama flourish a little, but A single flower blooms alone, but not everyone appreciates its color and fragrance.I shall confine myself to the most authoritative protests against the tragic worldview, and I mean the predominantly optimistic scientific spirit that originated with the patriarch Socrates.I shall then proceed to enumerate those forces which, in my opinion, suffice to guarantee the recurrence of tragedy, or even to offer the German genius a bright future!

Before we plunge into the struggle, let us arm ourselves with the knowledge we already possess.Some have painstakingly deduced the origin of art from a single principle, as if all works of art arose from one and indispensable source of life; Well, I see them as living representatives of two realms of art which differ in their inner nature and highest purpose.I regard Apollo, God of Dreams, as a genius incarnated by the "Principle of Personality", on which only the relief of illusion can be truly obtained, but under the mysterious cheer of Dionysus, the magic of personalization is shattered, and the way opened to the Mother of All, to the core of all things.Schopenhauer alone, among the great thinkers of modern times, sees this great opposition like a gully separating the plastic art of Oneiroi from the musical art of Dionysus, so he does not need to be guided by the symbols of these two Greek gods. It can also be seen that music alone has special properties and ancient roots among all kinds of arts, because music is not like other arts, it is not a reproduction of phenomena, but a direct portrayal of will itself, so it has a strong influence on all natural objects in the universe. It is super-in-itself for all phenomena, and it-in-itself (the world of will and representation) for all phenomena.Regarding this most important aesthetic insight (strictly speaking, true aesthetics begins with it), Richard Wagner has assured him that it is an eternal truth.In his "On Beethoven", he once asserted that the evaluation of music must be based on aesthetic principles different from the principles of all plastic arts. Generally speaking, it should not be evaluated according to the category of beauty; A degenerate art, accustomed to aesthetic concepts that apply only to plastic art, requires music to produce the same effects as plastic art, in other words, requires music to evoke the pleasure of beautiful forms.In light of this great antithesis, I felt it necessary to go further into the nature of Greek tragedy, and thus to reveal deeply the Greek genius, for after all I believed that I could exercise a magic power to make tragedy beyond the aesthetic terms that are in vogue today. The fundamental question of this came vividly to my mind.Therefore, I have gained a very deep understanding of the characteristics of the Greeks, and I can't help but feel that those pretentious studies of Greek antiquity are still chasing rumors and are only satisfied with superficial knowledge.

We might as well approach this basic question with a question: When these two fundamentally different artistic forces, dream and intoxication, work together, what aesthetic effect will it produce?Or to put it more simply: what is the relationship of music to images and concepts?Richard Wagner, especially on this subject, praised Schopenhauer's exposition for its insurmountable clarity and incisiveness.Schopenhauer speaks most fully in the following passage, which I shall try to quote in full:— "According to all this, we may regard the phenomenal or natural world and music as two different manifestations of the same thing (by, meaning the will), so that the will is the only medium of resemblance between the two; to understand that resemblance, we need It needs to be known. Music, therefore, is the highest common language if it is regarded as the expression of the world; its relation to the universality of concepts is by no means the empty universality of abstract concepts, but the It is of another kind altogether; it has a very clear definiteness. In this respect music is rather like geometric figures and numbers, which are the common form of all possible objects of experience, and are a pri-ori ( a priori) applicable to all things, but still not abstract, but obvious and extremely definite. All possible pursuits, impulses, manifestations of will, all experiences in the human mind, all that reason classifies under the so-called emotion Everything in the concept of broad negation can be expressed in countless possible melodies, but always as mere form without the universality of matter, always according to the thing in itself and not according to the phenomenon, as if the inner soul of the phenomenon without body This close relationship of music to the essence of all things can also explain the fact that any scene, action, event, or environment with appropriate music seems to show us its mysterious meaning , seems to give it the most correct and clear explanation; similarly, anyone who is fascinated by the impression of a symphony always seems to see all kinds of possible events of life and the world rippling in his chest, but if he thinks about it carefully, he can't see it. It cannot be pointed out that this music has any similarity with the events in the rippling chest. For, as stated above, the difference between music and other arts is that music is not the reproduction of phenomena, or, more correctly, it is not the proper adaptation of will. Objectification, but a direct reflection of will itself, so it is a supernatural thing for all natural things in the universe, and a thing-in-itself for all phenomena. Therefore, we can call the world embodied music, just as we call it Therefore, it is not difficult to explain why music can make every picture, even every situation of real life and the world, appear at once more profound meaning. Of course, the more similar the melody of the music is The inner spirit of a phenomenon, the more profound its meaning. Based on this, we can make poetry a song with music, a general performance a ballet, or both an opera. Such a picture of life fragments, A common language with music does not have to be combined with music, or fully correspond to it. Their relation to music is nothing more than a random example to illustrate a general concept. They express it with the clarity of reality, and music with The universality of pure form. For melody, like conceptions in general, is an abstraction of reality. The real world, and thus the world of individual things, is both the universality of concepts and the universality of melody. Provides objects of vision, particular and particular things, individual situations. But these two generalities are in certain relations opposite to each other: for concepts are butSummarizing things, they seem to be shells peeled off from things, so they are real sbstraota (abstract); music, on the other hand, provides the deepest core prior to all images, or the soul of things.This relationship is best described in the terms of cumbersome philosophers: the concept is univerB salia postrem (universality after things), while music provides universalia ante rem (universality before things), and the real world is universalia in re (universality in things).In general, however, the relationship between composition and performance is possible because, as stated above, the two are but entirely different expressions of the inner essence of the same world.If, in particular cases, such a relation does exist, that is, if the composer is able to express in the common language of music the act of will which constitutes the nucleus of a particular event; The melody, the music of this opera, is expressive.However, the resemblance between the two discovered by the composer must come from his direct knowledge of the nature of the world beyond the comprehension of reason, and should never be intentionally imitated indirectly by means of concepts; otherwise, the music cannot express the will itself. the inner nature of the will, but merely a false and endless imitation of the phenomena of the will.This is the fault of all musical works devoted to imitation" ("The World of Will and Representation").

Thus, according to Schopenhauer, we can understand music as the direct language of the will: we feel our imaginations aroused to shape the spiritual world, sound and invisible but alive, and we want to express it in similar fables. It visualizes.On the other hand, images and concepts acquire a higher level of significance under the influence of truly consistent music.The art of ecstasy therefore tends to have two effects on the capacity of the art of dream: music first brings about the symbolic intuition of the universality of ecstasy, and then music also makes this symbolic image manifest in its highest significance.From these self-evident and decipherable facts, I surmise that music has the power to produce myths (i.e., the most meaningful allegories), especially tragic myths: myth is the way of knowing that expresses drunkenness in symbols.With regard to the phenomenon of the lyric poet, I have said how, in lyric poetry, music strives to express its nature in dream-images.Now imagine that music, at its highest stage, must strive for the highest symbolization.We should think that music also has the potential to find symbolic expressions for its peculiar Dionysian wisdom.But where do we look for this method of expression, except in the concepts of tragedy and tragedy in general?

To be honest, it is impossible to deduce the concept of "tragedy" from the artistic qualities that are generally understood in terms of the pure category of illusion and beauty. Only from the spirit of music can we understand the pleasure of personal destruction.For only on the basis of the particular instance of personal annihilation can we understand the eternal phenomenon of intoxicating art, which expresses the omnipotent will that seems to be hidden behind the principle of individuality, the eternal life beyond the phenomenon that endures through all eons. .The detached pleasure of the tragic is only the stage term of the instinctive, unconscious Dionysian wisdom: the tragic hero, the highest expression of the will, is negated for our pleasure, because he is nothing but a phenomenon, a manifestation of the will. Eternal life will not be affected by his destruction. "We believe in immortality," cried Tragedy.And music directly expresses the idea of ​​eternal life.The plastic arts have an entirely different purpose: in the plastic arts the Oneiroi overcomes personal misery by extolling the eternal glory of phenomena, beauty triumphs over the misery inherent in life, and pain has, so to speak, vanished from the face of the soul.On the contrary, in the symbolism of drunken art and its tragedy, the soul cries to us with a frank and sincere voice: "follow my example! In the ever-changing phenomena, I am forever creating, forever living, through aeons Mother of Immortal Roots!"