tragedy, that eye in which the fine frenzy of artistic enthusiasm had
never glowed--let us think how it was denied to this eye to gaze with
pleasure into the Dionysian abysses--what could it not but see in the
"sublime and greatly lauded" tragic art, as Plato called it? Something
very absurd, with causes that seemed to be without effects, and
effects apparently without causes; the whole, moreover, so motley and
diversified that it could not but be repugnant to a thoughtful mind, a
dangerous incentive, however, to sensitive and irritable souls. We know
what was the sole kind of poetry which he comprehended: the _Æsopian
fable_: and he did this no doubt with that smiling complaisance with
which the good honest Gellert sings the praise of poetry in the fable
of the bee and the hen:--
"Du siehst an mir, wozu sie nützt,
Dem, der nicht viel Verstand besitzt,
Die Wahrheit durch ein Bild zu sagen."[18]
But then it seemed to Socrates that tragic art did not even "tell the
truth": not to mention the fact that it addresses itself to him who
"hath but little wit"; consequently not to the philosopher: a twofold
reason why it should be avoided. Like Plato, he reckoned it among the
seductive arts which only represent the agreeable, not the useful, and
hence he required of his disciples abstinence and strict separation
from such unphilosophical allurements; with such success that the
youthful tragic poet Plato first of all burned his poems to be able to
become a scholar of Socrates. But where unconquerable native capacities
bore up against the Socratic maxims, their power, together with the
momentum of his mighty character, still sufficed to force poetry itself
into new and hitherto unknown channels.
An instance of this is the aforesaid Plato: he, who in the condemnation
of tragedy and of art in general certainly did not fall short of
the naïve cynicism of his master, was nevertheless constrained by
sheer artistic necessity to create a form of art which is inwardly
related even to the then existing forms of art which he repudiated.
Plato's main objection to the old art--that it is the imitation of
a phantom,[19] and hence belongs to a sphere still lower than the
empiric world--could not at all apply to the new art: and so we find
Plato endeavouring to go beyond reality and attempting to represent
the idea which underlies this pseudo-reality. But Plato, the thinker,
thereby arrived by a roundabout road just at the point where he had
always been at home as poet, and from which Sophocles and all the old
artists had solemnly protested against that objection. If tragedy
absorbed into itself all the earlier varieties of art, the same
could again be said in an unusual sense of Platonic dialogue, which,
engendered by a mixture of all the then existing forms and styles,
hovers midway between narrative, lyric and drama, between prose and
poetry, and has also thereby broken loose from the older strict law
of unity of linguistic form; a movement which was carried still
farther by the _cynic_ writers, who in the most promiscuous style,
oscillating to and fro betwixt prose and metrical forms, realised also
the literary picture of the "raving Socrates" whom they were wont to
represent in life. Platonic dialogue was as it were the boat in which
the shipwrecked ancient poetry saved herself together with all her
children: crowded into a narrow space and timidly obsequious to the
one steersman, Socrates, they now launched into a new world, which
never tired of looking at the fantastic spectacle of this procession.
In very truth, Plato has given to all posterity the prototype of a new
form of art, the prototype of the _novel_ which must be designated as
the infinitely evolved Æsopian fable, in which poetry holds the same
rank with reference to dialectic philosophy as this same philosophy
held for many centuries with reference to theology: namely, the rank of
_ancilla._ This was the new position of poetry into which Plato forced
it under the pressure of the demon-inspired Socrates.
Here _philosophic thought_ overgrows art and compels it to cling close
to the trunk of dialectics. The _Apollonian_ tendency has chrysalised
in the logical schematism; just as something analogous in the case
of Euripides (and moreover a translation of the _Dionysian_ into the
naturalistic emotion) was forced upon our attention. Socrates, the
dialectical hero in Platonic drama, reminds us of the kindred nature
of the Euripidean hero, who has to defend his actions by arguments and
counter-arguments, and thereby so often runs the risk of forfeiting
our tragic pity; for who could mistake the _optimistic_ element
in the essence of dialectics, which celebrates a jubilee in every
conclusion, and can breathe only in cool clearness and consciousness:
the optimistic element, which, having once forced its way into tragedy,
must gradually overgrow its Dionysian regions, and necessarily impel it
to self-destruction--even to the death-leap into the bourgeois drama.
Let us but realise the consequences of the Socratic maxims: "Virtue is
knowledge; man only sins from ignorance; he who is virtuous is happy":
these three fundamental forms of optimism involve the death of tragedy.
For the virtuous hero must now be a dialectician; there must now be a
necessary, visible connection between virtue and knowledge, between
belief and morality; the transcendental justice of the plot in Æschylus
is now degraded to the superficial and audacious principle of poetic
justice with its usual _deus ex machina_.
How does the _chorus,_ and, in general, the entire Dionyso-musical
substratum of tragedy, now appear in the light of this new
Socrato-optimistic stage-world? As something accidental, as a readily
dispensable reminiscence of the origin of tragedy; while we have
in fact seen that the chorus can be understood only as the cause of
tragedy, and of the tragic generally. This perplexity with respect to
the chorus first manifests itself in Sophocles--an important sign that
the Dionysian basis of tragedy already begins to disintegrate with
him. He no longer ventures to entrust to the chorus the main share
of the effect, but limits its sphere to such an extent that it now
appears almost co-ordinate with the actors, just as if it were elevated
from the orchestra into the scene: whereby of course its character
is completely destroyed, notwithstanding that Aristotle countenances
this very theory of the chorus. This alteration of the position of
the chorus, which Sophocles at any rate recommended by his practice,
and, according to tradition, even by a treatise, is the first step
towards the _annihilation_ of the chorus, the phases of which follow
one another with alarming rapidity in Euripides, Agathon, and the New
Comedy. Optimistic dialectics drives, _music_ out of tragedy with the
scourge of its syllogisms: that is, it destroys the essence of tragedy,
which can be explained only as a manifestation and illustration of
Dionysian states, as the visible symbolisation of music, as the
dream-world of Dionysian ecstasy.
If, therefore, we are to assume an anti-Dionysian tendency operating
even before Socrates, which received in him only an unprecedentedly
grand expression, we must not shrink from the question as to what
a phenomenon like that of Socrates indicates: whom in view of the
Platonic dialogues we are certainly not entitled to regard as a purely
disintegrating, negative power. And though there can be no doubt
whatever that the most immediate effect of the Socratic impulse tended
to the dissolution of Dionysian tragedy, yet a profound experience of
Socrates' own life compels us to ask whether there is _necessarily_
only an antipodal relation between Socratism and art, and whether the
birth of an "artistic Socrates" is in general something contradictory
in itself.
For that despotic logician had now and then the feeling of a gap, or
void, a sentiment of semi-reproach, as of a possibly neglected duty
with respect to art. There often came to him, as he tells his friends
in prison, one and the same dream-apparition, which kept constantly
repeating to him: "Socrates, practise music." Up to his very last days
he solaces himself with the opinion that his philosophising is the
highest form of poetry, and finds it hard to believe that a deity will
remind him of the "common, popular music." Finally, when in prison,
he consents to practise also this despised music, in order thoroughly
to unburden his conscience. And in this frame of mind he composes
a poem on Apollo and turns a few Æsopian fables into verse. It was
something similar to the demonian warning voice which urged him to
these practices; it was because of his Apollonian insight that, like a
barbaric king, he did not understand the noble image of a god and was
in danger of sinning against a deity--through ignorance. The prompting
voice of the Socratic dream-vision is the only sign of doubtfulness
as to the limits of logical nature. "Perhaps "--thus he had to ask
himself--"what is not intelligible to me is not therefore unreasonable?
Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is banished?
Perhaps art is even a necessary correlative of and supplement to
science?"
[18]
In me thou seest its benefit,--
To him who hath but little wit,
Through parables to tell the truth.
[19] Scheinbild = ειδολον.--TR.
15.
In the sense of these last portentous questions it must now be
indicated how the influence of Socrates (extending to the present
moment, indeed, to all futurity) has spread over posterity like an
ever-increasing shadow in the evening sun, and how this influence
again and again necessitates a regeneration of _art,_--yea, of art
already with metaphysical, broadest and profoundest sense,--and its own
eternity guarantees also the eternity of art.
Before this could be perceived, before the intrinsic dependence of
every art on the Greeks, the Greeks from Homer to Socrates, was
conclusively demonstrated, it had to happen to us with regard to these
Greeks as it happened to the Athenians with regard to Socrates. Nearly
every age and stage of culture has at some time or other sought with
deep displeasure to free itself from the Greeks, because in their
presence everything self-achieved, sincerely admired and apparently
quite original, seemed all of a sudden to lose life and colour
and shrink to an abortive copy, even to caricature. And so hearty
indignation breaks forth time after time against this presumptuous
little nation, which dared to designate as "barbaric" for all time
everything not native: who are they, one asks one's self, who, though
they possessed only an ephemeral historical splendour, ridiculously
restricted institutions, a dubious excellence in their customs, and
were even branded with ugly vices, yet lay claim to the dignity and
singular position among the peoples to which genius is entitled among
the masses. What a pity one has not been so fortunate as to find the
cup of hemlock with which such an affair could be disposed of without
ado: for all the poison which envy, calumny, and rankling resentment
engendered within themselves have not sufficed to destroy that
self-sufficient grandeur! And so one feels ashamed and afraid in the
presence of the Greeks: unless one prize truth above all things, and
dare also to acknowledge to one's self this truth, that the Greeks,
as charioteers, hold in their hands the reins of our own and of
every culture, but that almost always chariot and horses are of too
poor material and incommensurate with the glory of their guides, who
then will deem it sport to run such a team into an abyss: which they
themselves clear with the leap of Achilles.
In order to assign also to Socrates the dignity of such a leading
position, it will suffice to recognise in him the type of an unheard-of
form of existence, the type of the _theoretical man,_ with regard
to whose meaning and purpose it will be our next task to attain
an insight. Like the artist, the theorist also finds an infinite
satisfaction in what _is_ and, like the former, he is shielded by this
satisfaction from the practical ethics of pessimism with its lynx eyes
which shine only in the dark. For if the artist in every unveiling
of truth always cleaves with raptured eyes only to that which still
remains veiled after the unveiling, the theoretical man, on the other
hand, enjoys and contents himself with the cast-off veil, and finds
the consummation of his pleasure in the process of a continuously
successful unveiling through his own unaided efforts. There would
have been no science if it had only been concerned about that _one_
naked goddess and nothing else. For then its disciples would have been
obliged to feel like those who purposed to dig a hole straight through
the earth: each one of whom perceives that with the utmost lifelong
exertion he is able to excavate only a very little of the enormous
depth, which is again filled up before his eyes by the labours of his
successor, so that a third man seems to do well when on his own account
he selects a new spot for his attempts at tunnelling. If now some one
proves conclusively that the antipodal goal cannot be attained in this
direct way, who will still care to toil on in the old depths, unless he
has learned to content himself in the meantime with finding precious
stones or discovering natural laws? For that reason Lessing, the most
honest theoretical man, ventured to say that he cared more for the
search after truth than for truth itself: in saying which he revealed
the fundamental secret of science, to the astonishment, and indeed,
to the vexation of scientific men. Well, to be sure, there stands
alongside of this detached perception, as an excess of honesty, if not
of presumption, a profound _illusion_ which first came to the world
in the person of Socrates, the imperturbable belief that, by means
of the clue of causality, thinking reaches to the deepest abysses of
being, and that thinking is able not only to perceive being but even
to _correct_ it. This sublime metaphysical illusion is added as an
instinct to science and again and again leads the latter to its limits,
where it must change into _art; which is really the end, to be attained
by this mechanism_.
If we now look at Socrates in the light of this thought, he appears to
us as the first who could not only live, but--what is far more--also
die under the guidance of this instinct of science: and hence the
picture of the _dying, Socrates_, as the man delivered from the fear of
death by knowledge and argument, is the escutcheon, above the entrance
to science which reminds every one of its mission, namely, to make
existence appear to be comprehensible, and therefore to be justified:
for which purpose, if arguments do not suffice, _myth_ also must be
used, which I just now designated even as the necessary consequence,
yea, as the end of science.
He who once makes intelligible to himself how, after the death of
Socrates, the mystagogue of science, one philosophical school succeeds
another, like wave upon wave,--how an entirely unfore-shadowed
universal development of the thirst for knowledge in the widest
compass of the cultured world (and as the specific task for every
one highly gifted) led science on to the high sea from which since
then it has never again been able to be completely ousted; how
through the universality of this movement a common net of thought
was first stretched over the entire globe, with prospects, moreover,
of conformity to law in an entire solar system;--he who realises all
this, together with the amazingly high pyramid of our present-day
knowledge, cannot fail to see in Socrates the turning-point and vortex
of so-called universal history. For if one were to imagine the whole
incalculable sum of energy which has been used up by that universal
tendency,--employed, _not_ in the service of knowledge, but for the
practical, _i.e.,_ egoistical ends of individuals and peoples,--then
probably the instinctive love of life would be so much weakened in
universal wars of destruction and incessant migrations of peoples,
that, owing to the practice of suicide, the individual would perhaps
feel the last remnant of a sense of duty, when, like the native of
the Fiji Islands, as son he strangles his parents and, as friend, his
friend: a practical pessimism which might even give rise to a horrible
ethics of general slaughter out of pity--which, for the rest, exists
and has existed wherever art in one form or another, especially as
science and religion, has not appeared as a remedy and preventive of
that pestilential breath.
In view of this practical pessimism, Socrates is the archetype of
the theoretical optimist, who in the above-indicated belief in the
fathomableness of the nature of things, attributes to knowledge and
perception the power of a universal medicine, and sees in error and
evil. To penetrate into the depths of the nature of things, and to
separate true perception from error and illusion, appeared to the
Socratic man the noblest and even the only truly human calling: just as
from the time of Socrates onwards the mechanism of concepts, judgments,
and inferences was prized above all other capacities as the highest
activity and the most admirable gift of nature. Even the sublimest
moral acts, the stirrings of pity, of self-sacrifice, of heroism,
and that tranquillity of soul, so difficult of attainment, which the
Apollonian Greek called Sophrosyne, were derived by Socrates, and his
like-minded successors up to the present day, from the dialectics of
knowledge, and were accordingly designated as teachable. He who has
experienced in himself the joy of a Socratic perception, and felt how
it seeks to embrace, in constantly widening circles, the entire world
of phenomena, will thenceforth find no stimulus which could urge him
to existence more forcible than the desire to complete that conquest
and to knit the net impenetrably close. To a person thus minded the
Platonic Socrates then appears as the teacher of an entirely new form
of "Greek cheerfulness" and felicity of existence, which seeks to
discharge itself in actions, and will find its discharge for the most
part in maieutic and pedagogic influences on noble youths, with a view
to the ultimate production of genius.
But now science, spurred on by its powerful illusion, hastens
irresistibly to its limits, on which its optimism, hidden in the
essence of logic, is wrecked. For the periphery of the circle of
science has an infinite number of points, and while there is still no
telling how this circle can ever be completely measured, yet the noble
and gifted man, even before the middle of his career, inevitably comes
into contact with those extreme points of the periphery where he stares
at the inexplicable. When he here sees to his dismay how logic coils
round itself at these limits and finally bites its own tail--then the
new form of perception discloses itself, namely _tragic perception,_
which, in order even to be endured, requires art as a safeguard and
remedy.
If, with eyes strengthened and refreshed at the sight of the Greeks, we
look upon the highest spheres of the world that surrounds us, we behold
the avidity of the insatiate optimistic knowledge, of which Socrates is
the typical representative, transformed into tragic resignation and the
need of art: while, to be sure, this same avidity, in its lower stages,
has to exhibit itself as antagonistic to art, and must especially have
an inward detestation of Dionyso-tragic art, as was exemplified in the
opposition of Socratism to Æschylean tragedy.
Here then with agitated spirit we knock at the gates of the present and
the future: will that "transforming" lead to ever new configurations
of genius, and especially of the _music-practising Socrates_? Will the
net of art which is spread over existence, whether under the name of
religion or of science, be knit always more closely and delicately,
or is it destined to be torn to shreds under the restlessly barbaric
activity and whirl which is called "the present day"?--Anxious, yet
not disconsolate, we stand aloof for a little while, as the spectators
who are permitted to be witnesses of these tremendous struggles and
transitions. Alas! It is the charm of these struggles that he who
beholds them must also fight them!
16.
By this elaborate historical example we have endeavoured to make it
clear that tragedy perishes as surely by evanescence of the spirit of
music as it can be born only out of this spirit. In order to qualify
the singularity of this assertion, and, on the other hand, to disclose
the source of this insight of ours, we must now confront with clear
vision the analogous phenomena of the present time; we must enter
into the midst of these struggles, which, as I said just now, are
being carried on in the highest spheres of our present world between
the insatiate optimistic perception and the tragic need of art. In
so doing I shall leave out of consideration all other antagonistic
tendencies which at all times oppose art, especially tragedy, and which
at present again extend their sway triumphantly, to such an extent that
of the theatrical arts only the farce and the ballet, for example, put
forth their blossoms, which perhaps not every one cares to smell, in
tolerably rich luxuriance. I will speak only of the _Most Illustrious
Opposition_ to the tragic conception of things--and by this I mean
essentially optimistic science, with its ancestor Socrates at the head
of it. Presently also the forces will be designated which seem to me
to guarantee _a re-birth of tragedy_--and who knows what other blessed
hopes for the German genius!
Before we plunge into the midst of these struggles, let us array
ourselves in the armour of our hitherto acquired knowledge. In
contrast to all those who are intent on deriving the arts from one
exclusive principle, as the necessary vital source of every work of
art, I keep my eyes fixed on the two artistic deities of the Greeks,
Apollo and Dionysus, and recognise in them the living and conspicuous
representatives of _two_ worlds of art which differ in their intrinsic
essence and in their highest aims. Apollo stands before me as the
transfiguring genius of the _principium individuationis_ through
which alone the redemption in appearance is to be truly attained,
while by the mystical cheer of Dionysus the spell of individuation
is broken, and the way lies open to the Mothers of Being,[20] to the
innermost heart of things. This extraordinary antithesis, which opens
up yawningly between plastic art as the Apollonian and music as the
Dionysian art, has become manifest to only one of the great thinkers,
to such an extent that, even without this key to the symbolism of the
Hellenic divinities, he allowed to music a different character and
origin in advance of all the other arts, because, unlike them, it is
not a copy of the phenomenon, but a direct copy of the will itself, and
therefore represents _the metaphysical of everything physical in the
world_, the thing-in-itself of every phenomenon. (Schopenhauer, _Welt
als Wille und Vorstellung,_ I. 310.) To this most important perception
of æsthetics (with which, taken in a serious sense, æsthetics properly
commences), Richard Wagner, by way of confirmation of its eternal
truth, affixed his seal, when he asserted in his _Beethoven_ that
music must be judged according to æsthetic principles quite different
from those which apply to the plastic arts, and not, in general,
according to the category of beauty: although an erroneous æsthetics,
inspired by a misled and degenerate art, has by virtue of the concept
of beauty prevailing in the plastic domain accustomed itself to demand
of music an effect analogous to that of the works of plastic art,
namely the suscitating _delight in beautiful forms._ Upon perceiving
this extraordinary antithesis, I felt a strong inducement to approach
the essence of Greek tragedy, and, by means of it, the profoundest
revelation of Hellenic genius: for I at last thought myself to be in
possession of a charm to enable me--far beyond the phraseology of our
usual æsthetics--to represent vividly to my mind the primitive problem
of tragedy: whereby such an astounding insight into the Hellenic
character was afforded me that it necessarily seemed as if our proudly
comporting classico-Hellenic science had thus far contrived to subsist
almost exclusively on phantasmagoria and externalities.