Section 16
Original German
An diesem ausgeführten historischen Beispiel haben wir klar zu machen gesucht, wie die Tragödie an dem Entschwinden des Geistes der Musik eben so gewiss zu Grunde geht, wie sie aus diesem Geiste allein geboren werden kann. Das Ungewöhnliche dieser Behauptung zu mildern und andererseits den Ursprung dieser unserer Erkenntniss aufzuzeigen, müssen wir uns jetzt freien Blicks den analogen Erscheinungen der Gegenwart gegenüber stellen; wir müssen mitten hinein in jene Kämpfe treten, welche, wie ich eben sagte, zwischen der unersättlichen optimistischen Erkenntniss und der tragischen Kunstbedürftigkeit in den höchsten Sphären unserer jetzigen Welt gekämpft werden. Ich will hierbei von allen den anderen gegnerischen Trieben absehn, die zu jeder Zeit der Kunst und gerade der Tragödie entgegenarbeiten und die auch in der Gegenwart in dem Maasse siegesgewiss um sich greifen, dass von den theatralischen Künsten z.B. allein die Posse und das Ballet in einem einigermaassen üppigen Wuchern ihre vielleicht nicht für Jedermann wohlriechenden Blüthen treiben. Ich will nur von der erlauchtesten Gegnerschaft der tragischen Weltbetrachtung reden und meine damit die in ihrem tiefsten Wesen optimistische Wissenschaft, mit ihrem Ahnherrn Sokrates an der Spitze. Alsbald sollen auch die Mächte bei Namen genannt werden, welche mir eine Wiedergeburt der Tragödie—und welche andere selige Hoffnungen für das deutsche Wesen!—zu verbürgen scheinen.
Bevor wir uns mitten in jene Kämpfe hineinstürzen, hüllen wir uns in die Rüstung unsrer bisher eroberten Erkenntnisse. Im Gegensatz zu allen denen, welche beflissen sind, die Künste aus einem einzigen Princip, als dem nothwendigen Lebensquell jedes Kunstwerks abzuleiten, halte ich den Blick auf jene beiden künstlerischen Gottheiten der Griechen, Apollo und Dionysus, geheftet und erkenne in ihnen die lebendigen und anschaulichen Repräsentanten zweier in ihrem tiefsten Wesen und ihren höchsten Zielen verschiedenen Kunstwelten. Apollo steht vor mir, als der verklärende Genius des principii individuationis, durch den allein die Erlösung im Scheine wahrhaft zu erlangen ist: während unter dem mystischen Jubelruf des Dionysus der Bann der Individuation zersprengt wird und der Weg zu den Müttern des Sein's, zu dem innersten Kern der Dinge offen liegt. Dieser ungeheuere Gegensatz, der sich zwischen der plastischen Kunst als der apollinischen und der Musik als der dionysischen Kunst klaffend aufthut, ist einem Einzigen der grossen Denker in dem Maasse offenbar geworden, dass er, selbst ohne jene Anleitung der hellenischen Göttersymbolik, der Musik einen verschiedenen Charakter und Ursprung vor allen anderen Künsten zuerkannte, weil sie nicht, wie jene alle, Abbild der Erscheinung, sondern unmittelbar Abbild des Willens selbst sei und also zu allem Physischen der Welt das Metaphysische, zu aller Erscheinung das Ding an sich darstelle. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, p. 310). Auf diese wichtigste Erkenntniss aller Aesthetik, mit der, in einem ernstern Sinne genommen, die Aesthetik erst beginnt, hat Richard Wagner, zur Bekräftigung ihrer ewigen Wahrheit, seinen Stempel gedrückt, wenn er im „Beethoven“ feststellt, dass die Musik nach ganz anderen aesthetischen Principien als alle bildenden Künste und überhaupt nicht nach der Kategorie der Schönheit zu bemessen sei: obgleich eine irrige Aesthetik, an der Hand einer missleiteten und entarteten Kunst, von jenem in der bildnerischen Welt geltenden Begriff der Schönheit aus sich gewöhnt habe, von der Musik eine ähnliche Wirkung wie von den Werken der bildenden Kunst zu fordern, nämlich die Erregung des Gefallens an schönen Formen. Nach der Erkenntniss jenes ungeheuren Gegensatzes fühlte ich eine starke Nöthigung, mich dem Wesen der griechischen Tragödie und damit der tiefsten Offenbarung des hellenischen Genius zu nahen: denn erst jetzt glaubte ich des Zaubers mächtig zu sein, über die Phraseologie unserer üblichen Aesthetik hinaus, das Urproblem der Tragödie mir leibhaft vor die Seele stellen zu können: wodurch mir ein so befremdlich eigenthümlicher Blick in das Hellenische vergönnt war, dass es mir scheinen musste, als ob unsre so stolz sich gebärdende classisch-hellenische Wissenschaft in der Hauptsache bis jetzt nur an Schattenspielen und Aeusserlichkeiten sich zu weiden gewusst habe.
Jenes Urproblem möchten wir vielleicht mit dieser Frage berühren: welche aesthetische Wirkung entsteht, wenn jene an sich getrennten Kunstmächte des Apollinischen und des Dionysischen neben einander in Thätigkeit gerathen? Oder in kürzerer Form: wie verhält sich die Musik zu Bild und Begriff?—Schopenhauer, dem Richard Wagner gerade für diesen Punkt eine nicht zu überbietende Deutlichkeit und Durchsichtigkeit der Darstellung nachrühmt, äussert sich hierüber am ausführlichsten in der folgenden Stelle, die ich hier in ihrer ganzen Länge wiedergeben werde. Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, p. 309: „Diesem allen zufolge können wir die erscheinende Welt, oder die Natur, und die Musik als zwei verschiedene Ausdrücke derselben Sache ansehen, welche selbst daher das allein Vermittelnde der Analogie beider ist, dessen Erkenntniss erfordert wird, um jene Analogie einzusehen. Die Musik ist demnach, wenn als Ausdruck der Welt angesehen eine im höchsten Grad allgemeine Sprache, die sich sogar zur Allgemeinheit der Begriffe ungefähr verhält wie diese zu den einzelnen Dingen. Ihre Allgemeinheit ist aber keineswegs jene leere Allgemeinheit der Abstraction, sondern ganz anderer Art und ist verbunden mit durchgängiger deutlicher Bestimmtheit. Sie gleicht hierin den geometrischen Figuren und den Zahlen, welche als die allgemeinen Formen aller möglichen Objecte der Erfahrung und auf alle a priori anwendbar, doch nicht abstract, sondern anschaulich und durchgängig bestimmt sind. Alle möglichen Bestrebungen, Erregungen und Aeusserungen des Willens, alle jene Vorgänge im Innern des Menschen, welche die Vernunft in den weiten negativen Begriff Gefühl wirft, sind durch die unendlich vielen möglichen Melodien auszudrücken, aber immer in der Allgemeinheit blosser Form, ohne den Stoff, immer nur nach dem Ansich, nicht nach der Erscheinung, gleichsam die innerste Seele derselben, ohne Körper. Aus diesem innigen Verhältniss, welches die Musik zum wahren Wesen aller Dinge hat, ist auch dies zu erklären, dass, wenn zu irgend einer Scene, Handlung, Vorgang, Umgebung, eine passende Musik ertönt, diese uns den geheimsten Sinn derselben aufzuschliessen scheint und als der richtigste und deutlichste Commentar dazu auftritt; imgleichen, dass es Dem, der sich dem Eindruck einer Symphonie ganz hingiebt, ist, als sähe er alle möglichen Vorgänge des Lebens und der Welt an sich vorüberziehen: dennoch kann er, wenn er sich besinnt, keine Aehnlichkeit angeben zwischen jenem Tonspiel und den Dingen, die ihm vorschwebten. Denn die Musik ist, wie gesagt, darin von allen anderen Künsten verschieden, dass sie nicht Abbild der Erscheinung, oder richtiger, der adäquaten Objectität des Willens, sondern unmittelbar Abbild des Willens selbst ist und also zu allem Physischen der Welt das Metaphysische, zu aller Erscheinung das Ding an sich darstellt. Man könnte demnach die Welt ebensowohl verkörperte Musik, als verkörperten Willen nennen: daraus also ist es erklärlich, warum Musik jedes Gemälde, ja jede Scene des wirklichen Lebens und der Welt, sogleich in erhöhter Bedeutsamkeit hervortreten lässt; freilich um so mehr, je analoger ihre Melodie dem innern Geiste der gegebenen Erscheinung ist. Hierauf beruht es, dass man ein Gedicht als Gesang, oder eine anschauliche Darstellung als Pantomime, oder beides als Oper der Musik unterlegen kann. Solche einzelne Bilder des Menschenlebens, der allgemeinen Sprache der Musik untergelegt, sind nie mit durchgängiger Nothwendigkeit ihr verbunden oder entsprechend; sondern sie stehen zu ihr nur im Verhältniss eines beliebigen Beispiels zu einem allgemeinen Begriff: sie stellen in der Bestimmtheit der Wirklichkeit Dasjenige dar, was die Musik in der Allgemeinheit blosser Form aussagt. Denn die Melodien sind gewissermaassen, gleich den allgemeinen Begriffen, ein Abstractum der Wirklichkeit. Diese nämlich, also die Welt der einzelnen Dinge, liefert das Anschauliche, das Besondere und Individuelle, den einzelnen Fall, sowohl zur Allgemeinheit der Begriffe, als zur Allgemeinheit der Melodien, welche beide Allgemeinheiten einander aber in gewisser Hinsicht entgegengesetzt sind; indem die Begriffe nur die allererst aus der Anschauung abstrahirten Formen, gleichsam die abgezogene äussere Schale der Dinge enthalten, also ganz eigentlich Abstracta sind; die Musik hingegen den innersten aller Gestaltung vorhergängigen Kern, oder das Herz der Dinge giebt. Dies Verhältniss liesse sich recht gut in der Sprache der Scholastiker ausdrücken, indem man sagte: die Begriffe sind die universalia post rem, die Musik aber giebt die universalia ante rem, und die Wirklichkeit die universalia in re. Dass aber überhaupt eine Beziehung zwischen einer Composition und einer anschaulichen Darstellung möglich ist, beruht, wie gesagt, darauf, dass beide nur ganz verschiedene Ausdrücke desselben innern Wesens der Welt sind. Wann nun im einzelnen Fall eine solche Beziehung wirklich vorhanden ist, also der Componist die Willensregungen, welche den Kern einer Begebenheit ausmachen, in der allgemeinen Sprache der Musik auszusprechen gewusst hat: dann ist die Melodie des Liedes, die Musik der Oper ausdrucksvoll. Die vom Componisten aufgefundene Analogie zwischen jenen beiden muss aber aus der unmittelbaren Erkenntniss des Wesens der Welt, seiner Vernunft unbewusst, hervorgegangen und darf nicht, mit bewusster Absichtlichkeit, durch Begriffe vermittelte Nachahmung sein: sonst spricht die Musik nicht das innere Wesen, den Willen selbst aus; sondern ahmt nur seine Erscheinung ungenügend nach; wie dies alle eigentlich nachbildende Musik thut“.—
Wir verstehen also, nach der Lehre Schopenhauer's, die Musik als die Sprache des Willens unmittelbar und fühlen unsere Phantasie angeregt, jene zu uns redende, unsichtbare und doch so lebhaft bewegte Geisterwelt zu gestalten und sie in einem analogen Beispiel uns zu verkörpern. Andrerseits kommt Bild und Begriff, unter der Einwirkung einer wahrhaft entsprechenden Musik, zu einer erhöhten Bedeutsamkeit. Zweierlei Wirkungen pflegt also die dionysische Kunst auf das apollinische Kunstvermögen auszuüben: die Musik reizt zum gleichnissartigen Anschauen der dionysischen Allgemeinheit, die Musik lässt sodann das gleichnissartige Bild in höchster Bedeutsamkeit hervortreten. Aus diesen an sich verständlichen und keiner tieferen Beobachtung unzugänglichen Thatsachen erschliesse ich die Befähigung der Musik, den Mythus d.h. das bedeutsamste Exempel zu gebären und gerade den tragischen Mythus: den Mythus, der von der dionysischen Erkenntniss in Gleichnissen redet. An dem Phänomen des Lyrikers habe ich dargestellt, wie die Musik im Lyriker darnach ringt, in apollinischen Bildern über ihr Wesen sich kund zu geben: denken wir uns jetzt, dass die Musik in ihrer höchsten Steigerung auch zu einer höchsten Verbildlichung zu kommen suchen muss, so müssen wir für möglich halten, dass sie auch den symbolischen Ausdruck für ihre eigentliche dionysische Weisheit zu finden wisse; und wo anders werden wir diesen Ausdruck zu suchen haben, wenn nicht in der Tragödie und überhaupt im Begriff des Tragischen?
Aus dem Wesen der Kunst, wie sie gemeinhin nach der einzigen Kategorie des Scheines und der Schönheit begriffen wird, ist das Tragische in ehrlicher Weise gar nicht abzuleiten; erst aus dem Geiste der Musik heraus verstehen wir eine Freude an der Vernichtung des Individuums. Denn an den einzelnen Beispielen einer solchen Vernichtung wird uns nur das ewige Phänomen der dionysischen Kunst deutlich gemacht, die den Willen in seiner Allmacht gleichsam hinter dem principio individuationis, das ewige Leben jenseit aller Erscheinung und trotz aller Vernichtung zum Ausdruck bringt. Die metaphysische Freude am Tragischen ist eine Uebersetzung der instinctiv unbewussten dionysischen Weisheit in die Sprache des Bildes: der Held, die höchste Willenserscheinung, wird zu unserer Lust verneint, weil er doch nur Erscheinung ist, und das ewige Leben des Willens durch seine Vernichtung nicht berührt wird. „Wir glauben an das ewige Leben“, so ruft die Tragödie; während die Musik die unmittelbare Idee dieses Lebens ist. Ein ganz verschiednes Ziel hat die Kunst des Plastikers: hier überwindet Apollo das Leiden des Individuums durch die leuchtende Verherrlichung der Ewigkeit der Erscheinung, hier siegt die Schönheit über das dem Leben inhärirende Leiden, der Schmerz wird in einem gewissen Sinne aus den Zügen der Natur hinweggelogen. In der dionysischen Kunst und in deren tragischer Symbolik redet uns dieselbe Natur mit ihrer wahren, unverstellten Stimme an: „Seid wie ich bin! Unter dem unaufhörlichen Wechsel der Erscheinungen die ewig schöpferische, ewig zum Dasein zwingende, an diesem Erscheinungswechsel sich ewig befriedigende Urmutter!“
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.
Through this historical example, developed in detail, we have tried to make clear that tragedy perishes with the fading of the spirit of music just as surely as it can be born from that spirit alone. To temper the strangeness of this claim and, on the other hand, to reveal the origin of this insight of ours, we must now confront the analogous phenomena of the present with an unclouded gaze. We must enter the midst of those struggles which, as I have just said, are being fought in the highest spheres of our present world between the insatiable desire for optimistic knowledge and the tragic need for art. Here I will disregard all the other hostile drives that work against art, and against tragedy in particular, in every age, and that are spreading through the present with such confidence of victory that, among the theatrical arts, for example, farce and ballet alone put forth their blossoms in a somewhat luxuriant growth—blossoms whose scent may not please everyone. I will speak only of the most illustrious opposition to the tragic view of the world, by which I mean science, optimistic in its deepest essence, with its ancestor Socrates at its head. Soon, too, the powers will be named that seem to me to guarantee a rebirth of tragedy—and what other blessed hopes for the German spirit!
Before we plunge into the midst of those struggles, let us clothe ourselves in the armor of the insights we have won so far. In contrast to all those intent on deriving the arts from a single principle as the necessary source of life for every artwork, I keep my gaze fixed on those two artistic divinities of the Greeks, Apollo and Dionysus, and recognize in them the living, visible representatives of two worlds of art, different in their deepest essence and their highest aims. Apollo stands before me as the transfiguring genius of the principle of individuation, through whom alone redemption in semblance can truly be attained, while at the mystical, jubilant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is shattered and the way lies open to the Mothers of being, to the innermost core of things. This tremendous opposition, which gapes open between the plastic arts as the Apollonian art and music as the Dionysian art, became apparent to only one of the great thinkers with such clarity that, even without the guidance of this Hellenic symbolism of the gods, he recognized in music a character and origin different from those of all the other arts: it is not, like all of them, an image of appearance, but an immediate image of the will itself, and thus represents the metaphysical in relation to everything physical in the world, the thing in itself in relation to all appearance. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, p. 310). Richard Wagner has set his seal on this most important insight in all aesthetics—with which aesthetics, taken in a more serious sense, first begins—confirming its eternal truth when he establishes in “Beethoven” that music must be judged by aesthetic principles entirely different from those of all the visual arts, and not by the category of beauty at all, even though a mistaken aesthetics, guided by a misguided and degenerate art, had grown accustomed, starting from the concept of beauty valid in the world of visual form, to demand an effect from music similar to that of works of visual art: namely, the arousal of pleasure in beautiful forms. After recognizing that tremendous opposition, I felt a powerful necessity to approach the essence of Greek tragedy, and with it the deepest revelation of Hellenic genius. For only now did I believe I possessed the magic to go beyond the phraseology of our customary aesthetics and bring the primal problem of tragedy bodily before my soul. This granted me so strangely distinctive a glimpse into the Hellenic world that it could only seem to me as though our classical-Hellenic scholarship, for all its proud bearing, had so far in the main known only how to feast on shadow plays and externals.
Perhaps we may touch on that primal problem with this question: what aesthetic effect arises when those inherently separate artistic powers, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, become active side by side? Or, more briefly: how does music relate to image and concept?—Schopenhauer, whom Richard Wagner praises for an unsurpassable clarity and transparency of exposition on precisely this point, discusses the matter most fully in the following passage, which I will reproduce here in its entirety. Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, p. 309: “In accordance with all this, we can regard the world of appearances, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore itself the sole mediator of the analogy between them and must be known if that analogy is to be understood. Accordingly, when regarded as an expression of the world, music is a language universal to the highest degree, whose relation even to the universality of concepts is roughly that of concepts to individual things. Its universality, however, is by no means the empty universality of abstraction, but of an entirely different kind, joined to clear definiteness throughout. In this it resembles geometrical figures and numbers, which, as the universal forms of all possible objects of experience and applicable to all of them prior to experience, are nevertheless not abstract but directly apprehensible and thoroughly determinate. All possible strivings, excitations, and expressions of the will, all those processes within the human being that reason casts into the broad negative concept of feeling, can be expressed through the infinitely many possible melodies, but always in the universality of mere form, without the material, always only in terms of their in-itself, not their appearance—as it were their innermost soul, without a body. This intimate relation of music to the true essence of all things also explains why, when suitable music sounds during any scene, action, event, or setting, it seems to disclose its most secret meaning to us and to serve as its truest and clearest commentary; likewise, why someone who gives himself wholly to the impression of a symphony feels as though he were seeing all possible events of life and the world pass before him. Yet on reflection he can point to no resemblance between that play of sounds and the things that hovered before his mind. For music, as I have said, differs from all other arts in that it is not an image of appearance, or more precisely of the adequate objecthood of the will, but an immediate image of the will itself, and thus represents the metaphysical in relation to everything physical in the world, the thing in itself in relation to all appearance. Accordingly, the world could just as well be called embodied music as embodied will. This, then, explains why music immediately makes every painting, indeed every scene of actual life and the world, stand out with heightened significance—all the more so, of course, the closer the analogy between its melody and the inner spirit of the given appearance. On this rests the possibility of setting a poem to music as a song, or a visual representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera. Such individual images of human life, set to the universal language of music, are never connected or in correspondence with it through any thoroughgoing necessity; rather, they stand to it only as an arbitrarily chosen example stands to a universal concept. They present in the definiteness of reality what music expresses in the universality of mere form. For melodies, like universal concepts, are in a certain sense an abstraction from reality. Reality, that is, the world of individual things, supplies what is perceptible, particular, and individual—the individual case—both for the universality of concepts and for that of melodies. Yet these two universalities are in a certain respect opposed: concepts contain only the forms first abstracted from perception, as it were the outer husk stripped from things, and are thus abstractions in the strictest sense; music, by contrast, gives the innermost core that precedes all formation, or the heart of things. This relation could be expressed quite well in the language of the Scholastics by saying: concepts are universals after the thing, music gives universals before the thing, and reality gives universals in the thing. But the very possibility of a relation between a composition and a visual representation rests, as I have said, on their being merely quite different expressions of the same inner essence of the world. When such a relation is actually present in a particular case, when the composer has known how to express in the universal language of music the stirrings of the will that constitute the core of an event, then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive. But the analogy the composer discovers between the two must have arisen from an immediate knowledge of the essence of the world, without his reason being conscious of it; it must not be an imitation mediated by concepts and made with conscious intention. Otherwise the music does not express the inner essence, the will itself, but merely imitates its appearance inadequately, as all music that is properly imitative does.”—
Thus, following Schopenhauer’s teaching, we understand music as the immediate language of the will and feel our imagination stirred to give form to that invisible yet so vividly moving spirit world that speaks to us, and to embody it for ourselves in an analogous example. On the other hand, image and concept acquire a heightened significance under the influence of music that truly corresponds to them. Dionysian art therefore ordinarily exerts two effects on the Apollonian artistic faculty: music prompts a vision in likenesses of Dionysian universality; music then makes the likeness-image stand out with the highest significance. From these facts, intelligible in themselves and accessible to any deeper observation, I infer music’s capacity to give birth to myth, that is, the most significant example, and specifically to tragic myth: the myth that speaks in likenesses of Dionysian knowledge. In the phenomenon of the lyric poet I have shown how music struggles within him to make its essence known in Apollonian images. If we now imagine that music at its highest intensification must also seek the highest embodiment in images, we must consider it possible that it can find the symbolic expression of its own Dionysian wisdom. And where else should we seek this expression, if not in tragedy and in the very concept of the tragic?
The tragic cannot honestly be derived at all from the essence of art as commonly understood through the sole category of semblance and beauty; only through the spirit of music do we understand a joy in the annihilation of the individual. For individual examples of such annihilation merely make clear to us the eternal phenomenon of Dionysian art, which expresses the will in its omnipotence, as it were behind the principle of individuation, eternal life beyond all appearance and despite all annihilation. Metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of images: the hero, the highest appearance of the will, is negated to our delight because he is, after all, only appearance, and his annihilation does not touch the eternal life of the will. “We believe in eternal life,” cries tragedy, while music is the immediate idea of this life. The sculptor’s art has an entirely different aim: here Apollo overcomes the suffering of the individual through the radiant glorification of the eternity of appearance; here beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life, and in a certain sense pain is lied away from the features of nature. In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism, that same nature addresses us in its true, undisguised voice: “Be as I am! Beneath the ceaseless change of appearances, the eternally creative primordial mother, eternally compelling into existence, eternally finding satisfaction in this change of appearances!”
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.
Through this detailed historical example, we have tried to make one point clear: tragedy dies when the spirit of music disappears, just as surely as it can be born only from that spirit. To make this claim seem less strange, and also to show where our insight came from, we must now face similar phenomena in the present with an open gaze. We must enter the very struggles that, as I just said, are being fought in the highest spheres of our present world between insatiable, optimistic knowledge and the tragic need for art. Here I will set aside all the other opposing drives that work against art, and especially tragedy, in every age. Even today they spread with such confidence of victory that, among the theatrical arts, for example, only farce and ballet flourish with any luxuriance, putting out blossoms whose scent perhaps does not please everyone. I want to speak only of the most distinguished opposition to the tragic view of the world. By this I mean science, which is optimistic in its deepest nature, with its ancestor Socrates at its head. Soon I will also name the powers that seem to me to guarantee a rebirth of tragedy—and what other happy hopes for the German spirit!
Before we plunge into these struggles, let us put on the armor of the insights we have gained so far. Others work hard to derive the arts from a single principle, treating it as the necessary source of life for every artwork. In contrast, I keep my eyes fixed on those two Greek gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus. I recognize in them the living, visible representatives of two worlds of art, different in their deepest nature and highest goals. Apollo stands before me as the glorifying spirit of the principle of individuation. Only through him can release in semblance truly be achieved. But under Dionysus’ mystical cry of joy, the spell of individuation is broken. The way lies open to the Mothers of being, to the innermost core of things. An enormous gulf thus opens between the visual art of form, as Apollonian art, and music, as Dionysian art. Only one of the great thinkers saw this opposition clearly enough to give music a character and origin distinct from all the other arts, even without the guidance of this Greek symbolism of the gods. Unlike all the other arts, he held, music is not a copy of appearance but a direct copy of the will itself. It therefore presents the metaphysical counterpart to everything physical in the world, the thing in itself as the counterpart to every appearance. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, p. 310). This is the most important insight in all aesthetics. Taken seriously, it is where aesthetics first begins. Richard Wagner has set his seal on it, confirming its eternal truth, when he states in “Beethoven” that music must be judged by completely different aesthetic principles from all the visual arts, and not at all by the category of beauty. An erroneous aesthetics, however, guided by a misdirected and degenerate art, has become accustomed to taking the concept of beauty valid in the world of visual form and demanding a similar effect from music as from works of visual art: namely, the arousal of pleasure in beautiful forms. Once I recognized that enormous opposition, I felt a strong urge to approach the nature of Greek tragedy, and with it the deepest revelation of the Greek genius. Only now did I believe I possessed the magic power to move beyond the phrases of our customary aesthetics and bring tragedy’s fundamental problem vividly before my mind. This gave me such a strangely distinctive view into the Greek world that I had to feel our so proudly self-important scholarship on classical Greece had so far mainly known only how to feast on shadow plays and externals.
Perhaps we can touch on that fundamental problem with this question: what aesthetic effect arises when the Apollonian and Dionysian powers of art, separate in themselves, become active alongside each other? Or, more briefly: how does music relate to image and concept? Richard Wagner praises Schopenhauer for unsurpassable clarity and transparency of presentation on precisely this point. Schopenhauer discusses it most fully in the following passage, which I will reproduce here at its full length. Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, p. 309: “From all this it follows that we can regard the world of appearances, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing. That thing itself is therefore the only link between them that makes their analogy possible. We must know it to understand that analogy. Accordingly, when considered as an expression of the world, music is a language of the highest degree of universality. Its relation even to the universality of concepts is roughly like their relation to individual things. But its universality is by no means the empty universality of abstraction. It is of a completely different kind and is combined with clear definition throughout. In this it resembles geometrical figures and numbers. As the universal forms of all possible objects of experience, applicable to all of them in advance of experience, these are nevertheless not abstract, but directly perceptible and completely definite. All possible efforts, impulses, and expressions of the will, all those processes within human beings that reason throws into the broad negative concept of feeling, can be expressed through the infinitely many possible melodies. But they are always expressed in the universality of form alone, without material content; always only as they are in themselves, not as appearances—as though they were their innermost soul without a body. Music has this intimate relationship with the true nature of all things. This also explains why, when appropriate music accompanies any scene, action, event, or setting, it seems to unlock its most secret meaning for us and serves as its truest and clearest commentary. It likewise explains why someone who gives himself over entirely to the impression of a symphony feels as if every possible event in life and the world were passing before him. Yet on reflection he can point to no similarity between that play of sounds and the things that appeared in his mind. For, as I have said, music differs from all the other arts in this: it is not a copy of appearance, or more precisely of the will’s adequate objectivity, but a direct copy of the will itself. It therefore presents the metaphysical counterpart to everything physical in the world, the thing in itself as the counterpart to every appearance. Accordingly, we could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will. This explains why music immediately gives heightened significance to every painting, indeed to every scene of actual life and the world. Of course, it does so all the more, the more closely its melody corresponds to the inner spirit of the given appearance. This is the basis on which we can set a poem to music as a song, a visual presentation as pantomime, or both as opera. Such individual images of human life, set beneath the universal language of music, are never connected with it or matched to it by any complete necessity. Their relation to it is only that of an arbitrarily chosen example to a general concept. In the definite form of reality, they present what music states in the universality of form alone. For melodies are, in a sense, like general concepts, an abstraction from reality. Reality—that is, the world of individual things—provides what can be perceived, what is particular and individual, the single case, for both the universality of concepts and the universality of melodies. But these two universalities are in a certain respect opposites. Concepts contain only the forms first abstracted from perception, as though they were the outer shell peeled off things, and are therefore abstractions in the strictest sense. Music, on the other hand, gives the innermost core preceding all form, or the heart of things. This relationship could be expressed very well in the language of the Scholastics: concepts are universals after the thing, music gives universals before the thing, and reality gives universals in the thing. But, as I have said, a relationship between a composition and a visual presentation is possible at all because the two are merely very different expressions of the same inner nature of the world. When such a relationship really exists in an individual case—when the composer has known how to express in music’s universal language the movements of the will that form the core of an event—then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive. But the analogy the composer has found between the two must have arisen from a direct knowledge of the world’s nature, without his reason being aware of it. It must not be a consciously intentional imitation mediated by concepts. Otherwise the music does not express the inner nature, the will itself, but merely imitates its appearance inadequately, as all music that is strictly imitative does.”—
Following Schopenhauer’s teaching, then, we understand music immediately as the language of the will. We feel our imagination stirred to give form to the invisible yet so vividly moving spirit world that speaks to us, and to embody it for ourselves in an analogous example. On the other hand, an image or concept gains heightened significance under the influence of music that truly corresponds to it. Dionysian art therefore generally has two effects on the Apollonian artistic capacity. Music prompts us to see the Dionysian universal in symbolic images. Music then makes the symbolic image stand out with the highest significance. From these facts, understandable in themselves and open to any deeper observation, I infer music’s ability to give birth to myth—that is, the most meaningful example—and specifically to tragic myth: the myth that speaks of Dionysian knowledge in symbolic images. In the case of the lyric poet, I have shown how music struggles within the poet to express its nature in Apollonian images. Now let us imagine that music at its highest intensity must also seek its fullest expression in images. We must then consider it possible that music can also find the symbolic expression of its own Dionysian wisdom. And where else should we look for this expression, if not in tragedy and in the concept of the tragic in general?
The tragic cannot honestly be derived from the nature of art as people usually understand it, solely under the categories of semblance and beauty. Only through the spirit of music do we understand joy in the destruction of the individual. For individual examples of such destruction merely make clear to us the eternal phenomenon of Dionysian art. This art expresses the will in its omnipotence, as though behind the principle of individuation: eternal life beyond all appearance and despite all destruction. The metaphysical joy in the tragic translates instinctive, unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of images. The hero, the highest appearance of the will, is negated to our delight because he is only an appearance, and his destruction does not touch the will’s eternal life. “We believe in eternal life,” tragedy cries, while music is the immediate idea of this life. The artist who works in visual forms has a completely different goal. Here Apollo overcomes the individual’s suffering through a radiant glorification of the eternity of appearance. Here beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life. In a certain sense, a lie erases pain from nature’s features. In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism, that same nature speaks to us in its true, undisguised voice: “Be as I am! Beneath the unceasing change of appearances, I am the primal mother, eternally creative, eternally compelling existence, eternally satisfied by this change of appearances!”
About this section
Section 16 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 24 of 33 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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