(Originally written June 21, 2007 in Book 15)
New State, New Topic: The Month of Nietzsche!
The Birth of Tragedy
Out of the Spirit of Music
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Basic Writings of Nietzsche
Trans. Walter Kaufmann
The Modern Library: NY, NY
2000 A.D.
Preface to Richard Wagner
"I am convinced that art represents the highest task of the truly metaphysical activity of this life, in the sense of that man to whom, as my sublime predecessor on this path, I wish to dedicate this essay"
Is Nietzsche claiming to be evolved beyond man?
Section 1
The continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollonian and Dionysian duality.
Apollonian art: sculpture
Dionysian art: music
Each is opposed to the other but drives the other to evolve.
The marriage of the two gave birth to the Attic tragedy.
Dreams are the inspiration of all art.
Every man is an artist in their own dreams.
But even in vivid dreams man is aware that he is seeing but mere appearances.
Dreams are "joyous necessity".
This "joyous necessity" is embodied in the Greek god Apollo.
Apollo was the god of light and the ruler of fantasy.
Dreams must not be allowed to step beyond mere appearance and trick us into believing that it is a crude reality.
Apollo is the divine image of the principium individuationis (principle of individuation).
Dionysian is intoxication.
As Dionysian emotions stir all subjective things vanish into a complete self-forgetfulness.
Man becomes united with man and nature in Dionysian server.
Dionysian is song and dance.
In Dionysian ferver man feels as if he were a god.
In Dionysian ferver man is no longer the artist, but the work of art itself.
Section 2
Apollonian and Dionysian artistic energies burst forth from nature without the mediation of the human artist.
Dionysian energy seeks to destroy the individual and create a mystical oneness of all things.
Every artist is an imitator of either Apollonian or Dionysian energy.
In ancient Dionysian festivals, "the most savage natural instincts were unleashed" (Nietzsche, 39).
Dionysian music excited both awe and terror.
Section 3
Apollo is the father of the Olympic gods.
The olympic gods were neither moral nor good, but full of excesses.
The Greeks created the Olympian gods to fulfill a profound need. The Apollonian impulse toward beauty moved the greek religion from the horror of the Titans to the beauty of the Olympiads.
Section 4
Eternal contradiction is the father of things.
Redemption of reality comes through mere appearance. Our longing for redemption constitutes a primordial need for mere appearance (art).
The suffering of waking life is necessary so that the individual may realize the redeeming vision of dreams.
Apollo requires self-knowledge of his disciples.
Apollonian life requires prudence and excess is a most demonic device in its culture.
It is for this reason that Dionysian life as excessive intoxication is seen as barbaric and evil by the Apollonian.
The Apollonian world was built on moderation and mere appearance.
The Apollonian art world could not drown out the sounds of the excesses of the Dionysian. "The muses of the arts of 'illusion' paled before an art that, in its intoxication, spoke the truth" (Nietzsche, 46).
"Excess revealed itself as truth" (Nietzsche, 46).
Wherever the Dionysian overtook the Apollonian, the Apollonian was completely destroyed. But where the Apollonian withstood the onslaught, the Apollonian became more power and more menacing.
The Homeric world developed under the Apollonian atmosphere.
Section 5
The Dionysian artist identifies himself with a primal unity and its pain and contradiction.
The subjective and objective opposition of Schopenhauer is irrelevant in aesthetics because the willing individual that furthers his own egoistic ends is merely the antagonist and not the origin of art.
If the subject is an artist he has already been released from his individual will and has become a medium through which the true subject celebrates his release in appearances.
Man is not the true author of the art world. "On the contrary, we may assume that we are merely images and artistic projections for the true author and that we have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art - for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified - while of course our consciousness of our own significance hardly differs from that which the holding painted on canvas have of the Cattle represented on it" (Nietzsche, 52).
All our knowledge of art is illusory, only through the process of creating art does one know the eternal truth of art as the creator becomes one with the primordial truth of the true artist.
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