Chapter 33 The Birth of Tragedy Chapter Nineteen

birth of tragedy Chapter Nineteen If we wish to describe clearly the main content of Socratic culture, we should call it opera culture; We will be amazed at the fact of development compared with these two eternal truths of dream and drunkenness.I am reminded first of the origin of stilorappresentativo and recitativo.Who would have believed that in the age when the incomparably sublime and sacred music of Da Palestrina had already arisen, people would accept its ostentatious and impious opera music, and love it with such ardor, As if it were the resurrection of all true music?Who, on the other hand, would blame the pleasure-seeking of Florentine society and the vanity of theatrical singers for such a burgeoning love of opera?At the same time, even in the same people, this enthusiasm for semi-musical recitatives and the harmony of the medieval Christian dome da Palestrina coincided: this phenomenon, we only know There is a tendency beyond the art of assisting in the very nature of what can be attributed to the recitative.

The audience hopes to hear the lyrics under the music clearly, and the singer satisfies his wish, because the singer speaks rather than sings, and strengthens the impression of sentimental words in half-singing and half-talking.Increased in appeal, he made it easier to understand the meaning of the words, and thus overcame the rest of the music, whose particular danger now threatened him was that he sometimes inadvertently overemphasized the music.This is bound to destroy the appeal of the language and the clarity of the sentence; but, on the other hand, he often feels an urge to sing the tune of the music and to perform the accomplishment of the voice.On this occasion the "poet" comes to his aid, and the poet knows how to afford him many opportunities for lyrical exclamations, repetitions of words, etc. - where the singer is now in a purely musical atmosphere, and can easily Some, don't have to take into account the lyrics.Emotional language only half-sung, and exclamations fully sung, alternate with each other (this is the characteristic of lyricism), appealing now to the understanding and imagination of the listener, now to his musical sense:—this Such rapid changes in singing are so unnatural and essentially contradictory to the artistic impulses of dreams and drunkenness that we must deduce that the origin of recitatives lies outside the sphere of all artistic instincts.From this point of view, recitative tone should be defined as a mixture of epic recitation and lyric recitation. Of course, this is by no means an inherently stable mixture, because two completely different elements cannot achieve this situation. The marquetry surface is glued together and nothing more.Such a bond has no precedent in the realms of nature and experience.However, this is not the opinion of the inventors of the recitative.They themselves and their age would rather believe; this lyric has solved the riddle of ancient music.Orpheus, Amphion, and even the immense influence of Greek tragedy can only be explained in this way.This new style is regarded as the most touching music, the awakening of ancient Greek music: indeed, according to the popular interpretation, the Homeric world is a primitive world, so they can indulge in dreams, thinking that they have fallen again to the paradise where human beings originated, where Music must also have that insurmountable purity, power, and that pure life that poets so eloquently sing about in pastoral drama.Here we gain insight into the inner development of this truly modern art—opera.Here, art is based on a strong demand, but this is a non-aesthetic demand: looking forward to the pastoral life, and believing that there were good people who loved art in prehistoric times.Reciprocation is seen as the rediscovered language of primitive man; opera is seen as the newly found land of the idyllic or epic good man, who obeys the natural artistic impulse in every move, and at the same time says every word at least Sing something, so if there is a slight fluctuation in emotion, I immediately sing a song to my heart's content.The humanists at that time used this new image of the artist of the Promised Land to oppose the church's old concept of seeing people as their own corrupt and depraved creatures.It is of little importance to us today; so we should say that opera is a contrary creed advanced by good men, but at the same time it offers a little consolation to the pessimism which, in these times of alarming vicissitudes, is People with lofty ideals feel deeply pessimistic and disappointed.For us today, we only need to understand that the inner magic of this new art form and its origin lie in satisfying a need that is completely unaesthetic, in praising human beings themselves with optimism, and in believing that primitive people are inherently benign. Lovers of art—this operatic principle has gradually become such a compelling and terrible demand that we can no longer ignore it in the present day of the modern socialist movement. The "good savage" claims his rights: the prospect of a Promised Land!

In addition, I would like to offer an equally obvious evidence in support of my view that opera and our Alexandrian culture are founded on the same principles.Opera is the product of the theoretician, of the layman in criticism and not of the artist: that is one of the most astonishing facts in all the history of art.The unmusician audience, who demanded first of all to understand the words, believed that only when a singing method was invented in which the words dominated the counterpoint, as a master rules his servants, could there be hope for the regeneration of music.For it is said that words are more valuable than the melodic system of the accompaniment, just as the soul is more valuable than the body.In the early days of opera, music, painting, and poetry were combined in one furnace, which was handled according to the rough opinions of ordinary laymen who did not understand music.In the spirit of this aesthetic, the first experiments were carried out by those pious poets and singers in the high society of Florentine laymen.A man who has no artistic ability creates an art for himself precisely because he himself does not understand art.Because he cannot comprehend the depths of drunken music, his taste in music is reduced to appreciating the easy-to-understand passion and loveliness of lyric, and the decadence of singing art; because he is incapable of seeing visions, He compels stage-setters and decorators to serve him; and since he does not know the true quality of mastering art, he fantasizes, according to his own artistic taste, that "art-loving primitive," that is to say, in passionate People who sing and recite verses under their influence.He dreams of returning to the ancient times when passion was enough to produce song and poetry, as if emotion had always been able to create works of art!The premise of opera is a false belief in the process of artistic creation, the pastoral belief that anyone who feels something is an artist.In this belief, the opera becomes an expression of artistic vulgarity, and it delights to dictate to art with the optimism of the theoretician.

If we wish to unite the two above-mentioned notions of influence on the origin of opera into one concept, we may say "the pastoral tendency of opera"; at this point we may wish to use only Schiller's terms and explanations.Schiller said: "Nature and the ideal are either objects of sorrow, assuming the former has been lost and the latter unattained; or objects of joy, assuming that both are real. The first case provides a narrow sense of lamentation, the second This situation provides an idyll in a broad sense." Here, what immediately attracts attention is the common feature of these two concepts in the origin of opera: we will feel that the ideal is not unreached, and nature is not lost.In this sense, man had a primitive age when he was close to the mind of nature, and at the same time attained the ideal of man in a state of nature, in the benevolence and art of Paradise; Such a perfect descendant of primitive man.In fact, we are all faithful portraits of them, but we have to discard some things in order to recognize ourselves as primitive people again: it depends on whether we voluntarily abandon superfluous knowledge and superfluous culture.Educated people in the Renaissance used opera to imitate Greek tragedy, in order to return to the harmony between nature and ideals, and to return to the reality of pastoral; he used Greek tragedy, just like Dante used Virgil, and relied on him to lead the way to the gate of heaven At the same time, from this place, he groped alone and continued to move forward, from the imitation of tragedy, the highest Greek art form, to "recovering all cultural heritage", to the imitation of the primitive artistic realm of human beings.What joyful confidence lies at the heart of theoretical culture in these bold attempts! ——We can only say that this is out of a kind of consoling belief: the "comfortable man" is always a venerable opera hero, always a shepherd boy who plays the flute and sings softly, even if he does sometimes lose his normalcy for a while, but he It always comes back to its true colors at last; we can only say that it is the result of optimism, like a fragrant cloud rising from the abyss of the Socratic worldview.

Therefore, the characteristics of opera do not contain the eternal sorrow of elegy, but the joy of eternal restoration, the leisure and ease of pastoral life, and people can at least temporarily imagine pastoral life as real life.However, it may suddenly dawn on a man that this imaginary reality is but a play of idle fantasies, measured by the terrible majesty of true nature, compared with the primitive reality of the earliest days of man, and any one will cry out in disgust: Phantom, go away!Even so, you are mistaken if you think that you can repel this vain opera like a phantom with a single shout.Whoever wants to destroy opera must take up the struggle against the optimism of Alexandria, which expresses itself so naively about the concepts it favors, for which it is in fact its peculiar art-form.However, if a form of art arose entirely outside the sphere of aesthetics, if it only sneaked into the realm of art from half the sphere of morality, so that it could only occasionally hide its hybrid pedigree from us, you would expect that form to have a significant impact on art itself. What's the use?What milk can this parasitic operatic form draw if it does not feed on true art?This highest and truly serious mission of art, that is to say, to hide the horrors of the night from the naked eye, to save man from convulsions of will with the elixir of illusion;—this mission, under the lure of the pastoral life, Under the flattery of Alexandria's ideas, it will degenerate into an empty plaything, can't we expect such a result?In such a mixture of styles, what would be the result of the eternal truths of drunkenness and dreams?This style, as I have already analyzed, is the lyrical element: the music is regarded as a slave, the words are regarded as masters; the music is compared to the body, and the words to the soul; its highest purpose is like the music of the Attic comedy before. In that case, at most, it is just a voice to write love.Music has completely abandoned its true glory as the mirror of drunkenness, and has become the slave of phenomena. It can only imitate the formal elements of phenomena, and enliven a shallow pleasure with lines and proportions.On closer inspection, it is not difficult to see that the fatal influence of opera on music coincides with the general development of modern music.The optimism lurking in the roots of opera and the cultural essence it represents has usurped the world mission of music's intoxication at an astonishing speed, branding it a game of form and entertainment—this transformation is only possible in Egypt. The transformation of the tragic hero of Scrooth into the happy character of Alexandria is not comparable.

In the foregoing instances, however, we have rightly connected the disappearance of the Dionysian spirit with the very definite but as yet unexplained transformation and degeneration of the Greeks; That is: in today's world, the spirit of Dionysus is gradually awakening, what ardent hope will be restored in our hearts!It is absolutely impossible for Hercules' supernatural power to serve Queen Wengfali forever, and spend his ambitions in his comfort zone!From the drunken roots of the German spirit arose a power which, since it had nothing in common with the ancient conditions of Socratic culture, could neither be explained nor excused; To Socratic culture seems inexplicable or even extremely hostile.Of course, I mean German music, as we all know, mainly from Bach to Beethoven, from Beethoven to Wagner and other music masters.Even under the most favorable circumstances, how would today's Socratic intellectualism deal with this genie from the abyss?Neither by the score charms of operatic melody nor by the wishful thinking of futuristic and counterpoint dialectics could a spell be found that would subdue this genie with its triple brilliance and force it to speak.Just look at today's aesthetes, with specially made "beauty" snares, to disperse or capture the elusive musical geniuses that are spinning before their eyes, and when excited, use concepts such as "eternal beauty" or "sublime" to judge :—What a pitiful sight it is!We have only to see these so-called patrons of music up close, and they never tire of exclaiming: "Beautiful! Beautiful!" We can easily see whether they are really like nature's darlings reared in the bosom of beauty, or whether they are just To cover one's indecency with a deceitful garb, or to defend one's poverty of feeling with an aesthetic pretext.I think of Otto Jahn as an example.However, let this hypocritical liar beware of German music!Because music is indeed the only pure, clean, and purifying spirit of fire in all of our culture. The great Ephesian philosopher Heraclitus once said that fire is the source from which all things come from and to which all things return, and the cycle goes back and forth.Everything we call culture, education, and civilization today will one day stand before the right judge Dionysus!

Again, let us recall that Kant and Schopenhauer have made it possible for the German philosophical spirit from a homologous origin to specify the limits of scientific Socraticism, thereby destroying its self-satisfied desire to exist, having defined science, introducing An infinitely deeper and more serious moral outlook we may without hesitation call conceptual Dionysian wisdom.What, then, does the mystery of the agreement between German music and German philosophy teach us?Not to indicate a new way of life.Can we understand the meaning of this life only by conjecture from Greek precedent?For us today, who stand on the boundary line between two different ways of life, the example of the Greeks remains invaluable, because all the transformations and struggles of the past have left their traces there; but now we will experience the Greeks in reverse order. The great principal ages of genius, e.g., from the age of Alexandria backwards to the age of Greek tragedy.At the same time, we also feel: as if the birth of the age of tragedy signified only the return of the German spirit to itself, the wellspring of a life of hopeless savagery, forced for a long time under the domination of a powerful invading power, which dared to fight against all peoples. There is no need for Roman civilization to lead it to learn to walk, as long as it can firmly learn from a nation, learn from the ancient Greeks-after all, learning from the Greeks is a noble honor and outstanding superiority.Today, when we are experiencing the rebirth of tragedy, but we don't know where it comes from, and we don't know where it is going. We don't need those most brilliant teachers more than today?