Section 5
Original German
Wir nahen uns jetzt dem eigentlichen Ziele unsrer Untersuchung, die auf die Erkenntniss des dionysisch-apollinischen Genius und seines Kunstwerkes, wenigstens auf das ahnungsvolle Verständniss jenes Einheitsmysteriums gerichtet ist. Hier fragen wir nun zunächst, wo jener neue Keim sich zuerst in der hellenischen Welt bemerkbar macht, der sich nachher bis zur Tragödie und zum dramatischen Dithyrambus entwickelt. Hierüber giebt uns das Alterthum selbst bildlich Aufschluss, wenn es als die Urväter und Fackelträger der griechischen Dichtung Homer und Archilochus auf Bildwerken, Gemmen u.s.w. neben einander stellt, in der sicheren Empfindung, dass nur diese Beiden gleich völlig originalen Naturen, von denen aus ein Feuerstrom auf die gesammte griechische Nachwelt fortfliesse, zu erachten seien. Homer, der in sich versunkene greise Träumer, der Typus des apollinischen, naiven Künstlers, sieht nun staunend den leidenschaftlichen Kopf des wild durch's Dasein getriebenen kriegerischen Musendieners Archilochus: und die neuere Aesthetik wusste nur deutend hinzuzufügen, dass hier dem „objectiven“ Künstler der erste „subjective“ entgegen gestellt sei. Uns ist mit dieser Deutung wenig gedient, weil wir den subjectiven Künstler nur als schlechten Künstler kennen und in jeder Art und Höhe der Kunst vor allem und zuerst Besiegung des Subjectiven, Erlösung vom „Ich“ und Stillschweigen jedes individuellen Willens und Gelüstens fordern, ja ohne Objectivität, ohne reines interesseloses Anschauen nie an die geringste wahrhaft künstlerische Erzeugung glauben können. Darum muss unsre Aesthetik erst jenes Problem lösen, wie der „Lyriker“ als Künstler möglich ist: er, der, nach der Erfahrung aller Zeiten, immer „ich“ sagt und die ganze chromatische Tonleiter seiner Leidenschaften und Begehrungen vor uns absingt. Gerade dieser Archilochus erschreckt uns, neben Homer, durch den Schrei seines Hasses und Hohnes, durch die trunknen Ausbrüche seiner Begierde; ist er, der erste subjectiv genannte Künstler, nicht damit der eigentliche Nichtkünstler? Woher aber dann die Verehrung, die ihm, dem Dichter, gerade auch das delphische Orakel, der Herd der „objectiven“ Kunst, in sehr merkwürdigen Aussprüchen erwiesen hat?
Ueber den Prozess seines Dichtens hat uns Schiller durch eine ihm selbst unerklärliche, doch nicht bedenklich scheinende psychologische Beobachtung Licht gebracht; er gesteht nämlich als den vorbereitenden Zustand vor dem Actus des Dichtens nicht etwa eine Reihe von Bildern, mit geordneter Causalität der Gedanken, vor sich und in sich gehabt zu haben, sondern vielmehr eine musikalische Stimmung („Die Empfindung ist bei mir anfangs ohne bestimmten und klaren Gegenstand; dieser bildet sich erst später. Eine gewisse musikalische Gemüthsstimmung geht vorher, und auf diese folgt bei mir erst die poetische Idee“). Nehmen wir jetzt das wichtigste Phänomen der ganzen antiken Lyrik hinzu, die überall als natürlich geltende Vereinigung, ja Identität des Lyrikers mit dem Musiker—der gegenüber unsre neuere Lyrik wie ein Götterbild ohne Kopf erscheint—so können wir jetzt, auf Grund unsrer früher dargestellten aesthetischen Metaphysik, uns in folgender Weise den Lyriker erklären. Er ist zuerst, als dionysischer Künstler, gänzlich mit dem Ur-Einen, seinem Schmerz und Widerspruch, eins geworden und producirt das Abbild dieses Ur-Einen als Musik, wenn anders diese mit Recht eine Wiederholung der Welt und ein zweiter Abguss derselben genannt worden ist; jetzt aber wird diese Musik ihm wieder wie in einem gleichnissartigen Traumbilde, unter der apollinischen Traumeinwirkung sichtbar. Jener bild- und begrifflose Wiederschein des Urschmerzes in der Musik, mit seiner Erlösung im Scheine, erzeugt jetzt eine zweite Spiegelung, als einzelnes Gleichniss oder Exempel. Seine Subjectivität hat der Künstler bereits in dem dionysischen Prozess aufgegeben: das Bild, das ihm jetzt seine Einheit mit dem Herzen der Welt zeigt, ist eine Traumscene, die jenen Urwiderspruch und Urschmerz, sammt der Urlust des Scheines, versinnlicht. Das „Ich“ des Lyrikers tönt also aus dem Abgrunde des Seins: seine „Subjectivität“ im Sinne der neueren Aesthetiker ist eine Einbildung. Wenn Archilochus, der erste Lyriker der Griechen, seine rasende Liebe und zugleich seine Verachtung den Töchtern des Lykambes kundgiebt, so ist es nicht seine Leidenschaft, die vor uns in orgiastischem Taumel tanzt: wir sehen Dionysus und die Mänaden, wir sehen den berauschten Schwärmer Archilochus zum Schlafe niedergesunken—wie ihn uns Euripides in den Bacchen beschreibt, den Schlaf auf hoher Alpentrift, in der Mittagssonne—: und jetzt tritt Apollo an ihn heran und berührt ihn mit dem Lorbeer. Die dionysisch-musikalische Verzauberung des Schläfers sprüht jetzt gleichsam Bilderfunken um sich, lyrische Gedichte, die in ihrer höchsten Entfaltung Tragödien und dramatische Dithyramben heissen.
Der Plastiker und zugleich der ihm verwandte Epiker ist in das reine Anschauen der Bilder versunken. Der dionysische Musiker ist ohne jedes Bild völlig nur selbst Urschmerz und Urwiederklang desselben. Der lyrische Genius fühlt aus dem mystischen Selbstentäusserungs- und Einheitszustande eine Bilder- und Gleichnisswelt hervorwachsen, die eine ganz andere Färbung, Causalität und Schnelligkeit hat als jene Welt des Plastikers und Epikers. Während der Letztgenannte in diesen Bildern und nur in ihnen mit freudigem Behagen lebt und nicht müde wird, sie bis auf die kleinsten Züge hin liebevoll anzuschauen, während selbst das Bild des zürnenden Achilles für ihn nur ein Bild ist, dessen zürnenden Ausdruck er mit jener Traumlust am Scheine geniesst—so dass er, durch diesen Spiegel des Scheines, gegen das Einswerden und Zusammenschmelzen mit seinen Gestalten geschützt ist—, so sind dagegen die Bilder des Lyrikers nichts als er selbst und gleichsam nur verschiedene Objectivationen von ihm, weshalb er als bewegender Mittelpunkt jener Welt „ich“ sagen darf: nur ist diese Ichheit nicht dieselbe, wie die des wachen, empirisch-realen Menschen, sondern die einzige überhaupt wahrhaft seiende und ewige, im Grunde der Dinge ruhende Ichheit, durch deren Abbilder der lyrische Genius bis auf jenen Grund der Dinge hindurchsieht. Nun denken wir uns einmal, wie er unter diesen Abbildern auch sich selbst als Nichtgenius erblickt d.h. sein „Subject“, das ganze Gewühl subjectiver, auf ein bestimmtes, ihm real dünkendes Ding gerichteter Leidenschaften und Willensregungen; wenn es jetzt scheint als ob der lyrische Genius und der mit ihm verbundene Nichtgenius eins wäre und als ob der Erstere von sich selbst jenes Wörtchen „ich“ spräche, so wird uns jetzt dieser Schein nicht mehr verführen können, wie er allerdings diejenigen verführt hat, die den Lyriker als den subjectiven Dichter bezeichnet haben. In Wahrheit ist Archilochus, der leidenschaftlich entbrannte liebende und hassende Mensch nur eine Vision des Genius, der bereits nicht mehr Archilochus, sondern Weltgenius ist und der seinen Urschmerz in jenem Gleichnisse vom Menschen Archilochus symbolisch ausspricht: während jener subjectiv wollende und begehrende Mensch Archilochus überhaupt nie und nimmer Dichter sein kann. Es ist aber gar nicht nöthig, dass der Lyriker gerade nur das Phänomen des Menschen Archilochus vor sich sieht als Wiederschein des ewigen Seins; und die Tragödie beweist, wie weit sich die Visionswelt des Lyrikers von jenem allerdings zunächst stehenden Phänomen entfernen kann.
Schopenhauer, der sich die Schwierigkeit, die der Lyriker für die philosophische Kunstbetrachtung macht, nicht verhehlt hat, glaubt einen Ausweg gefunden zu haben, den ich nicht mit ihm gehen kann, während ihm allein, in seiner tiefsinnigen Metaphysik der Musik, das Mittel in die Hand gegeben war, mit dem jene Schwierigkeit entscheidend beseitigt werden konnte: wie ich dies, in seinem Geiste und zu seiner Ehre, hier gethan zu haben glaube. Dagegen bezeichnet er als das eigenthümliche Wesen des Liedes Folgendes (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, S. 295): „Es ist das Subject des Willens, d.h. das eigene Wollen, was das Bewusstsein des Singenden füllt, oft als ein entbundenes, befriedigtes Wollen (Freude), wohl noch öfter aber als ein gehemmtes (Trauer), immer als Affect, Leidenschaft, bewegter Gemüthszustand. Neben diesem jedoch und zugleich damit wird durch den Anblick der umgebenden Natur der Singende sich seiner bewusst als Subjects des reinen, willenlosen Erkennens, dessen unerschütterliche, selige Ruhe nunmehr in Contrast tritt mit dem Drange des immer beschränkten, immer noch dürftigen Wollens: die Empfindung dieses Contrastes, dieses Wechselspieles ist eigentlich, was sich im Ganzen des Liedes ausspricht und was überhaupt den lyrischen Zustand ausmacht. In diesem tritt gleichsam das reine Erkennen zu uns heran, um uns vom Wollen und seinem Drange zu erlösen: wir folgen; doch nur auf Augenblicke: immer von Neuem entreisst das Wollen, die Erinnerung an unsere persönlichen Zwecke, uns der ruhigen Beschauung; aber auch immer wieder entlockt uns dem Wollen die nächste schöne Umgebung, in welcher sich die reine willenlose Erkenntniss uns darbietet. Darum geht im Liede und der lyrischen Stimmung das Wollen (das persönliche Interesse des Zwecks) und das reine Anschauen der sich darbietenden Umgebung wundersam gemischt durch einander: es werden Beziehungen zwischen beiden gesucht und imaginirt; die subjective Stimmung, die Affection des Willens, theilt der angeschauten Umgebung und diese wiederum jener ihre Farbe im Reflex mit: von diesem ganzen so gemischten und getheilten Gemüthszustande ist das ächte Lied der Abdruck“.
Wer vermöchte in dieser Schilderung zu verkennen, dass hier die Lyrik als eine unvollkommen erreichte, gleichsam im Sprunge und selten zum Ziele kommende Kunst charakterisirt wird, ja als eine Halbkunst, deren Wesen darin bestehen solle, dass das Wollen und das reine Anschauen d.h. der unaesthetische und der aesthetische Zustand wundersam durch einander gemischt seien? Wir behaupten vielmehr, dass der ganze Gegensatz, nach dem wie nach einem Werthmesser auch noch Schopenhauer die Künste eintheilt, der des Subjectiven und des Objectiven, überhaupt in der Aesthetik ungehörig ist, da das Subject, das wollende und seine egoistischen Zwecke fördernde Individuum nur als Gegner, nicht als Ursprung der Kunst gedacht werden kann. Insofern aber das Subject Künstler ist, ist es bereits von seinem individuellen Willen erlöst und gleichsam Medium geworden, durch das hindurch das eine wahrhaft seiende Subject seine Erlösung im Scheine feiert. Denn dies muss uns vor allem, zu unserer Erniedrigung und Erhöhung, deutlich sein, dass die ganze Kunstkomödie durchaus nicht für uns, etwa unsrer Besserung und Bildung wegen, aufgeführt wird, ja dass wir ebensowenig die eigentlichen Schöpfer jener Kunstwelt sind: wohl aber dürfen wir von uns selbst annehmen, dass wir für den wahren Schöpfer derselben schon Bilder und künstlerische Projectionen sind und in der Bedeutung von Kunstwerken unsre höchste Würde haben—denn nur als aesthetisches Phänomen ist das Dasein und die Welt ewig gerechtfertigt:—während freilich unser Bewusstsein über diese unsre Bedeutung kaum ein andres ist als es die auf Leinwand gemalten Krieger von der auf ihr dargestellten Schlacht haben. Somit ist unser ganzes Kunstwissen im Grunde ein völlig illusorisches, weil wir als Wissende mit jenem Wesen nicht eins und identisch sind, das sich, als einziger Schöpfer und Zuschauer jener Kunstkomödie, einen ewigen Genuss bereitet. Nur soweit der Genius im Actus der künstlerischen Zeugung mit jenem Urkünstler der Welt verschmilzt, weiss er etwas über das ewige Wesen der Kunst; denn in jenem Zustande ist er, wunderbarer Weise, dem unheimlichen Bild des Mährchens gleich, das die Augen drehn und sich selber anschaun kann; jetzt ist er zugleich Subject und Object, zugleich Dichter, Schauspieler und Zuschauer.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the 1886 issue, with the Attempt at Self-Criticism and the Preface to Richard Wagner, made directly from the German of the Fritzsch Neue Ausgabe and read against its page images; reviewed against the German before publication.
We now approach the true aim of our inquiry, which seeks knowledge of the Dionysian-Apollonian genius and his artwork, or at least an intuitive understanding of that mystery of union. Here we first ask where that new germ, which later developed into tragedy and the dramatic dithyramb, first became perceptible in the Hellenic world. Antiquity itself gives us a pictorial answer when, on sculptures, engraved gems, and the like, it places Homer and Archilochus side by side as the forefathers and torchbearers of Greek poetry, in the sure feeling that these two alone were to be regarded as equally and wholly original natures, from whom a stream of fire continued to flow through all subsequent Greek generations. Homer, the aged dreamer absorbed in himself, the type of the Apollonian, naive artist, now looks in astonishment at the passionate head of Archilochus, the warlike servant of the Muses driven wildly through existence; and modern aesthetics could add by way of interpretation only that here the “objective” artist was set against the first “subjective” one. This interpretation does little for us, because we know the subjective artist only as a bad artist, and in every kind and degree of art demand first and foremost the conquest of the subjective, redemption from the “I,” and the silencing of every individual will and desire; indeed, without objectivity, without pure, disinterested contemplation, we can never believe in even the slightest truly artistic creation. Therefore our aesthetics must first solve the problem of how the “lyric poet” is possible as an artist: he who, according to the experience of every age, always says “I” and sings before us the whole chromatic scale of his passions and desires. Beside Homer, this very Archilochus terrifies us with the cry of his hatred and scorn, with the drunken outbursts of his desire; does this not make him, the first artist called subjective, the true nonartist? But why, then, the reverence shown to him as a poet, precisely by the Delphic oracle too, the hearth of “objective” art, in some very remarkable pronouncements?
Schiller has shed light on the process of his poetic creation through a psychological observation that he himself could not explain, yet that does not seem dubious. He confesses that, in the preparatory state before the act of composing poetry, he did not have before him and within him a series of images with an ordered causality of thoughts, but rather a musical mood (“At first, feeling in me has no definite and clear object; this takes shape only later. A certain musical state of mind comes first, and only after this does the poetic idea follow in me”). If we now add the most important phenomenon of all ancient lyric poetry, the union, indeed identity, of the lyric poet with the musician, everywhere regarded as natural—beside which our modern lyric poetry looks like a divine statue without a head—we can now, on the basis of our previously expounded aesthetic metaphysics, explain the lyric poet to ourselves as follows. First, as a Dionysian artist, he has become entirely one with the primordial One, its pain and contradiction, and produces the image of this primordial One as music, if music has indeed rightly been called a repetition of the world and a second cast of it; but now this music becomes visible to him again, as in a symbolic dream-image, under the influence of Apollonian dreaming. That imageless and conceptless reflection of primordial pain in music, with its redemption in semblance, now produces a second mirroring, as an individual symbol or example. The artist has already surrendered his subjectivity in the Dionysian process: the image that now shows him his unity with the heart of the world is a dream-scene that gives visible form to that primordial contradiction and primordial pain, together with the primordial pleasure of semblance. The lyric poet’s “I” thus sounds from the abyss of being; his “subjectivity,” in the sense of modern aestheticians, is a fiction. When Archilochus, the first lyric poet of the Greeks, declares his raging love and at the same time his contempt to the daughters of Lycambes, it is not his passion that dances before us in an orgiastic frenzy: we see Dionysus and the maenads, we see the intoxicated enthusiast Archilochus sunk in sleep—as Euripides describes it to us in The Bacchae, sleep on a high mountain pasture in the midday sun—and now Apollo approaches him and touches him with the laurel. The sleeper’s Dionysian-musical enchantment now sprays, as it were, sparks of images around him: lyric poems, which in their highest development are called tragedies and dramatic dithyrambs.
The sculptor, and likewise the epic poet akin to him, is absorbed in the pure contemplation of images. Without any image at all, the Dionysian musician is himself entirely primordial pain and its primordial echo. Out of the mystical state of self-abandonment and unity, the lyrical genius feels a world of images and symbols growing forth, with an entirely different coloring, causality, and speed from the world of the sculptor and epic poet. While the latter lives in these images, and only in them, with joyful contentment, and never tires of lovingly contemplating them down to their smallest details; while even the image of the wrathful Achilles is for him only an image, whose wrathful expression he enjoys with that dreamlike pleasure in semblance—so that, through this mirror of semblance, he is protected against becoming one and fusing with his figures—the lyric poet’s images, by contrast, are nothing but himself, and, as it were, only different objectifications of him, which is why he, as the animating center of that world, may say “I.” Only this selfhood is not the same as that of the waking, empirically real human being, but the only truly existent and eternal selfhood, resting at the foundation of things, through whose images the lyrical genius sees right through to that foundation. Now let us imagine how, among these images, he also sees himself as a nongenius—that is, his “subject,” the whole tumult of subjective passions and impulses of will directed toward a particular thing that seems real to him. If it now appears as though the lyrical genius and the nongenius bound to him were one, and as though the former spoke that little word “I” of himself, this semblance will no longer be able to mislead us, as it certainly has misled those who called the lyric poet the subjective poet. In truth, Archilochus, the passionately inflamed human being who loves and hates, is only a vision of the genius who is already no longer Archilochus but the genius of the world, and who symbolically expresses his primordial pain in that image of the human being Archilochus; whereas that subjectively willing and desiring human being Archilochus can never, ever be a poet. But it is by no means necessary for the lyric poet to see before him only the phenomenon of the human being Archilochus as a reflection of eternal being; and tragedy shows how far the lyric poet’s visionary world can move away from that phenomenon, which admittedly lies nearest to hand.
Schopenhauer, who did not conceal from himself the difficulty the lyric poet presents for a philosophical consideration of art, believes he has found a way out that I cannot follow, although in his profound metaphysics of music he alone had been given the means by which that difficulty could be decisively removed—as I believe I have done here, in his spirit and in his honor. He, by contrast, describes the distinctive essence of song as follows (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, S. 295): “It is the subject of the will, that is, one’s own willing, that fills the singer’s consciousness, often as a released, satisfied willing (joy), but probably still more often as a thwarted willing (sorrow), always as emotion, passion, an agitated state of mind. Beside this, however, and at the same time, the sight of surrounding nature makes the singer conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-less knowing, whose unshakable, blissful calm now stands in contrast to the urge of willing, always restricted, always still in want: the feeling of this contrast, of this interplay, is really what expresses itself in the song as a whole and what constitutes the lyrical state at all. In this state, pure knowing approaches us, as it were, to redeem us from willing and its urge: we follow, but only for moments; again and again willing, the memory of our personal aims, tears us away from calm contemplation; but again and again, too, the nearest beautiful surroundings, in which pure, will-less knowledge presents itself to us, lure us away from willing. Thus in song and in the lyrical mood, willing (the personal interest in an aim) and pure contemplation of the surroundings that present themselves are wondrously intermingled: relations between the two are sought and imagined; the subjective mood, the affection of the will, imparts its color by reflection to the contemplated surroundings, and these in turn to that mood: the authentic song is the imprint of this entire, so mingled and divided state of mind.”
Who could fail to recognize in this account that lyric poetry is characterized here as an art imperfectly attained, one that reaches its goal only by leaps, as it were, and seldom—indeed, as a half-art whose essence is supposed to consist in the wondrous intermingling of willing and pure contemplation, that is, of the unaesthetic and the aesthetic state? We maintain, rather, that the whole opposition by which even Schopenhauer still classifies the arts as if by a standard of value, the opposition of subjective and objective, has no place at all in aesthetics, since the subject, the individual who wills and advances his egoistic aims, can be conceived only as the opponent, not the origin, of art. But insofar as the subject is an artist, he is already redeemed from his individual will and has become, as it were, a medium through which the one truly existent subject celebrates its redemption in semblance. For this above all must be clear to us, to our humiliation and exaltation: that the whole comedy of art is by no means performed for us, for our improvement and education, say, and that we are just as little the true creators of that world of art; but we may indeed assume of ourselves that, for its true creator, we are already images and artistic projections, and have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art—for only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world eternally justified—while, to be sure, our consciousness of this significance of ours is scarcely different from the consciousness that warriors painted on a canvas have of the battle depicted on it. Thus all our knowledge of art is at bottom entirely illusory, because as knowers we are not one and identical with that being who, as the sole creator and spectator of that comedy of art, provides eternal enjoyment for himself. Only insofar as the genius, in the act of artistic procreation, fuses with that primordial artist of the world does he know anything of the eternal essence of art; for in that state he is, wondrously, like the uncanny fairy-tale image that can turn its eyes and look at itself; now he is at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator.
Plain English translation
Complete machine-assisted Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same German text, without reference to the Musean edition or to any English translation.
We now approach the real goal of our inquiry: to understand the Dionysian-Apollonian genius and his artwork, or at least to gain an intuitive understanding of that mystery of unity. Our first question here is where the new seed that later developed into tragedy and the dramatic dithyramb first made itself felt in the Greek world. Antiquity itself gives us a visual answer. In sculptures, engraved gems, and similar works, it places Homer and Archilochus side by side as the founding fathers and torchbearers of Greek poetry. It does so with the sure feeling that only these two should be regarded as equally original natures, from whom a stream of fire flows onward through all later Greek generations. Homer, the aged dreamer absorbed in himself, the model of the Apollonian, naive artist, now looks in astonishment at the passionate head of Archilochus, that warlike servant of the Muses driven wildly through existence. Modern aesthetics knew only how to add the interpretation that here the first “subjective” artist was set against the “objective” one. This interpretation does little for us. We recognize the subjective artist only as a bad artist. In every kind and level of art, our first and foremost demand is that the subjective be overcome, the artist freed from the “I,” and every individual will and desire silenced. Indeed, without objectivity, without pure contemplation free from personal interests, we cannot believe in even the smallest truly artistic creation. So our aesthetics must first solve this problem: how is the “lyric poet” possible as an artist? The experience of every age shows that he always says “I” and sings through the whole chromatic scale of his passions and desires before us. It is precisely this Archilochus, beside Homer, who frightens us with the cry of his hatred and mockery, with the drunken outbursts of his desire. As the first so-called subjective artist, isn’t he therefore really a nonartist? But then where does the reverence shown to him as a poet come from—reverence shown especially by the Delphic oracle itself, the hearth of “objective” art, in some very remarkable pronouncements?
Schiller shed light on his own process of composing poetry through a psychological observation that he himself could not explain, though he did not find it troubling. He admits that the preparatory state before the act of composing did not consist of a series of images before and within him, with thoughts arranged in a causal order. Rather, it was a musical mood: “At first my feeling has no definite, clear object; this forms only later. A certain musical state of mind comes first, and only then does the poetic idea follow.” Now add the most important phenomenon of all ancient lyric poetry: the union, indeed identity, of the lyric poet with the musician, which was everywhere taken as natural. Compared with this, our modern lyric poetry looks like a statue of a god without a head. On the basis of the aesthetic metaphysics set out earlier, we can now explain the lyric poet as follows. First, as a Dionysian artist, he has become completely one with the primal unity, its pain and contradiction. He produces the image of this primal unity as music, if music has rightly been called a repetition of the world and a second casting of it. But now, under the influence of Apollonian dreaming, this music becomes visible to him again as if in a symbolic dream image. That reflection of primal pain in music, without images or concepts and with its deliverance in semblance, now produces a second reflection, as a single symbol or example. The artist has already given up his subjectivity in the Dionysian process. The image that now shows him his unity with the heart of the world is a dream scene. It makes perceptible that primal contradiction and primal pain, together with the primal pleasure of semblance. The lyric poet’s “I” therefore sounds from the depths of being. His “subjectivity,” in the sense used by modern aesthetic theorists, is an imagined thing. When Archilochus, the Greeks’ first lyric poet, declares his raging love and also his contempt to the daughters of Lycambes, it is not his passion that dances before us in an orgiastic frenzy. We see Dionysus and the maenads. We see the intoxicated enthusiast Archilochus sunk into sleep—as Euripides describes such sleep for us in The Bacchae, on a high mountain pasture in the midday sun. Now Apollo approaches and touches him with the laurel. The sleeper’s Dionysian-musical enchantment now seems to spray sparks of images around him: lyric poems, which at their highest development are called tragedies and dramatic dithyrambs.
The sculptor, and likewise the epic poet who is related to him, is absorbed in the pure contemplation of images. The Dionysian musician has no image at all, but is himself entirely primal pain and its primal echo. From the mystical state of self-abandonment and unity, the lyric genius feels a world of images and symbols growing. This world has a completely different coloring, causal order, and speed from the world of the sculptor and epic poet. The epic poet lives in these images, and only in them, with joyful contentment. He never tires of looking lovingly at their smallest details. Even the image of angry Achilles is only an image to him. He enjoys its angry expression with that dreamlike pleasure in semblance, so that this mirror of semblance protects him from becoming one with his figures and merging with them. The lyric poet’s images, by contrast, are nothing but himself, as it were only different forms in which he becomes an object. That is why, as the center that sets that world in motion, he may say “I.” But this selfhood is not the same as that of a waking, empirically real person. It is the only selfhood that truly exists at all, eternal and resting at the foundation of things. Through its images, the lyric genius sees right through to that foundation. Now let us imagine him seeing among these images himself as a person without genius: that is, his “subject,” the whole swarm of subjective passions and impulses of will directed at a particular thing that seems real to him. If it now seems that the lyric genius and the person without genius attached to him are one, and that the former is speaking that little word “I” about himself, this semblance can no longer mislead us. It certainly misled those who called the lyric poet the subjective poet. In truth, Archilochus, the passionately inflamed person who loves and hates, is only a vision of the genius. This genius is no longer Archilochus, but the genius of the world, and expresses his primal pain symbolically in that image of the person Archilochus. By contrast, Archilochus the subjective person who wills and desires can never, under any circumstances, be a poet. But it is by no means necessary for the lyric poet to see only the appearance of the person Archilochus before him as a reflection of eternal being. Tragedy proves how far the lyric poet’s world of visions can move away from that appearance, even though it admittedly lies closest to him at first.
Schopenhauer did not hide from himself the difficulty that the lyric poet presents for a philosophical understanding of art. He believes he has found a way out, but I cannot follow him along it. Yet he alone, in his profound metaphysics of music, had been given the means to remove that difficulty decisively. I believe I have done so here in his spirit and in his honor. Instead, he identifies the distinctive nature of song as follows (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, S. 295): “It is the subject of willing, that is, one’s own willing, that fills the singer’s consciousness, often as a released, satisfied willing (joy), but still more often as an obstructed willing (sorrow). It is always an emotion, a passion, a stirred-up state of mind. Yet alongside this and at the same time, the sight of the surrounding natural world makes the singer conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-less knowing. The unshakable, blissful calm of this knowing now contrasts with the pressure of willing, which is always limited and still needy. The feeling of this contrast, this interplay, is really what the song as a whole expresses, and what makes up the lyrical state in general. In this state, pure knowing seems to approach us to free us from willing and its pressure. We follow, but only for moments. Again and again, willing, the memory of our personal aims, tears us away from calm contemplation. But again and again, the immediate beauty of our surroundings, in which pure, will-less knowledge presents itself to us, draws us away from willing. That is why in song and in the lyrical mood, willing (the personal interest in a goal) and pure contemplation of the surroundings before us are strangely mixed together. Connections between the two are sought and imagined. The subjective mood, the state of the will, imparts its coloring to the surroundings being contemplated, and these in turn reflect their coloring onto that mood. A genuine song is the imprint of this entire state of mind, so mixed and divided.”
Who could fail to recognize in this description that lyric poetry is being characterized as an incompletely achieved art, an art that seems always to be leaping and rarely reaching its goal? Indeed, it is described as a half-art whose essence is supposed to consist in a strange mixture of willing and pure contemplation: that is, of the nonaesthetic and the aesthetic state. We argue instead that this entire contrast between the subjective and the objective, by which even Schopenhauer still classifies the arts as if using a measuring rod of value, has no place at all in aesthetics. The subject, the individual who wills and pursues his selfish aims, can be thought of only as art’s opponent, not its origin. But insofar as the subject is an artist, he is already freed from his individual will. He has become something like a medium through which the one truly existing subject celebrates its deliverance in semblance. For above all, this must be clear to us, to humble and elevate us: the whole comedy of art is certainly not performed for us, say for the sake of our improvement and education. Nor are we the real creators of that art world. But we may assume that for its true creator we ourselves are already images and artistic projections, and that our highest dignity lies in our significance as works of art. For only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world eternally justified. Of course, our awareness of this significance of ours is hardly different from the awareness painted warriors have of the battle shown on their canvas. Thus all our knowledge of art is at bottom completely illusory, because as knowers we are not one and identical with that being who, as the sole creator and spectator of that comedy of art, gives himself eternal enjoyment. Only insofar as the genius merges, in the act of artistic creation, with that primal artist of the world does he know anything about the eternal essence of art. For in that state he is, in a marvelous way, like the uncanny image in the fairy tale that can turn its eyes and look at itself. Now he is at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator.
About this section
Section 5 is part of The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 13 of 33 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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