that word and thing do not necessarily coincide with one another
completely, but that the word is a symbol. But what does the word
symbolise? Most certainly only conceptions, be these now conscious
ones or as in the greater number of cases, unconscious; for how
should a word-symbol correspond to that innermost nature of which we
and the world are images? Only as conceptions we know that kernel,
only in its metaphorical expressions are we familiar with it; beyond
that point there is nowhere a direct bridge which could lead us to it.
The whole life of impulses, too, the play of feelings, sensations,
emotions, volitions, is known to us--as I am forced to insert here in
opposition to Schopenhauer--after a most rigid self-examination, not
according to its essence but merely as conception; and we may well be
permitted to say, that even Schopenhauer's "Will" is nothing else but
the most general phenomenal form of a Something otherwise absolutely
indecipherable. If therefore we must acquiesce in the rigid necessity
of getting nowhere beyond the conceptions we can nevertheless again
distinguish two main species within their realm. The one species
manifest themselves to us as pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations and
accompany all other conceptions as a never-lacking fundamental basis.
This most general manifestation, out of which and by which alone we
understand all Becoming and all Willing and for which we will retain
the name "Will" has now too in language its own symbolic sphere:
and in truth this sphere is equally fundamental to the language,
as that manifestation is fundamental to all other conceptions. All
degrees of pleasure and displeasure--expressions of _one_ primal
cause unfathomable to us--symbolise themselves in _the tone of the
speaker:_ whereas all the other conceptions are indicated by the
_gesture-symbolism_ of the speaker. In so far as that primal cause
is the same in all men, the _tonal subsoil_ is also the common
one, comprehensible beyond the difference of language. Out of it
now develops the more arbitrary gesture-symbolism which is not
wholly adequate for its basis: and with which begins the diversity
of languages, whose multiplicity we are permitted to consider--to
use a simile--as a strophic text to that primal melody of the
pleasure-and-displeasure-language. The whole realm of the consonantal
and vocal we believe we may reckon only under gesture-symbolism:
consonants _and_ vowels without that fundamental tone which is
necessary above all else, are nothing but _positions_ of the organs
of speech, in short, gestures--; as soon as we imagine the _word_
proceeding out of the mouth of man, then first of all the root of the
word, and the basis of that gesture-symbolism, the _tonal subsoil,_
the echo of the pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations originate. As our
whole corporeality stands in relation to that original phenomenon, the
"Will," so the word built out of its consonants and vowels stands in
relation to its tonal basis.
This original phenomenon, the "Will," with its scale of
pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations attains in the development of music
an ever more adequate symbolic expression: and to this historical
process the continuous effort of lyric poetry runs parallel, the effort
to transcribe music into metaphors: exactly as this double-phenomenon,
according to the just completed disquisition, lies typified in language.
He who has followed us into these difficult contemplations readily,
attentively, and with some imagination--and with kind indulgence where
the expression has been too scanty or too unconditional--will now
have the advantage with us, of laying before himself more seriously and
answering more deeply than is usually the case some stirring points of
controversy of present-day æsthetics and still more of contemporary
artists. Let us think now, after all our assumptions, what an
undertaking it must be, to set music to a poem; _i.e.,_ to illustrate
a poem by music, in order to help music thereby to obtain a language
of ideas. What a perverted world! A task that appears to my mind like
that of a son wanting to create his father! Music can create metaphors
out of itself, which will always however be but schemata, instances as
it were of her intrinsic general contents. But how should the metaphor,
the conception, create music out of itself! Much less could the idea,
or, as one has said, the "poetical idea" do this. As certainly as a
bridge leads out of the mysterious castle of the musician into the free
land of the metaphors--and the lyric poet steps across it--as certainly
is it impossible to go the contrary way, although some are said to
exist who fancy they have done so. One might people the air with the
phantasy of a Raphael, one might see St. Cecilia, as he does, listening
enraptured to the harmonies of the choirs of angels--no tone issues
from this world apparently lost in music: even if we imagined that that
harmony in reality, as by a miracle, began to sound for us, whither
would Cecilia, Paul and Magdalena disappear from us, whither even
the singing choir of angels! We should at once cease to be Raphael:
and as in that picture the earthly instruments lie shattered on the
ground, so our painter's vision, defeated by the higher, would fade
and die away.--How nevertheless could the miracle happen? How should
the Apollonian world of the eye quite engrossed in contemplation be
able to create out of itself the tone, which on the contrary symbolises
a sphere which is excluded and conquered just by that very Apollonian
absorption in Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot raise out
of itself the pleasure at Non-appearance; the delight of perceiving is
delight only by the fact that nothing reminds us of a sphere in which
individuation is broken and abolished. If we have characterised at
all correctly the Apollonian in opposition to the Dionysean, then the
thought which attributes to the metaphor, the idea, the appearance,
in some way the power of producing out of itself the tone, must
appear to us strangely wrong. We will not be referred, in order to be
refuted, to the musician who writes music to existing lyric poems; for
after all that has been said we shall be compelled to assert that the
relationship between the lyric poem and its setting must in any case
be a different one from that between a father and his child. Then what
exactly?
Here now we may be met on the ground of a favourite æsthetic notion
with the proposition, "It is not the poem which gives birth to
the setting but the _sentiment_ created by the poem." I do not
agree with that; the more subtle or powerful stirring-up of that
pleasure-and-displeasure-subsoil is in the realm of productive art
_the_ element which is inartistic in itself; indeed only its total
exclusion makes the complete self-absorption and disinterested
perception of the artist possible. Here perhaps one might retaliate
that I myself just now predicated about the "Will," that in music
"Will" came to an ever more adequate symbolic expression. My answer,
condensed into an æsthetic axiom, is this: _the Will is the object of
music but not the origin of it,_ that is the Will in its very greatest
universality, as the most original manifestation, under which is to
be understood all Becoming. That, which we call _feeling,_ is with
regard to this Will already permeated and saturated with conscious and
unconscious conceptions and is therefore no longer directly the object
of music; it is unthinkable then that these feelings should be able
to create music out of themselves. Take for instance the feelings of
love, fear and hope: music can no longer do anything with them in a
direct way, every one of them is already so filled with conceptions.
On the contrary these feelings can serve to symbolise music, as the
lyric poet does who translates for himself into the simile-world of
feelings that conceptually and metaphorically unapproachable realm
of the Will, the proper content and object of music. The lyric poet
resembles all those hearers of music who are conscious of an _effect
of music on their emotions;_ the distant and removed power of music
appeals, with them, to an _intermediate realm_ which gives to them
as it were a foretaste, a symbolic preliminary conception of music
proper, it appeals to the intermediate realm of the emotions. One might
be permitted to say about them, with respect to the Will, the only
object of music, that they bear the same relation to this Will, as the
analogous morning-dream, according to Schopenhauer's theory, bears to
the dream proper. To all those, however, who are unable to get at music
except with their emotions, is to be said, that they will ever remain
in the entrance-hall, and will never have access to the sanctuary of
music: which, as I said, emotion cannot show but only symbolise.
With regard however to the origin of music, I have already explained
that that can never lie in the Will, but must rather rest in the lap of
that force, which under the form of the "Will" creates out of itself a
visionary world: _the origin of music lies beyond all individuation,_ a
proposition, which after our discussion on the Dionysean self-evident.
At this point I take the liberty of setting forth again comprehensively
side by side those decisive propositions which the antithesis of the
Dionysean and Apollonian dealt with has compelled us to enunciate:
The "Will," as the most original manifestation, is the object of music:
in this sense music can be called imitation of Nature, but of Nature in
its most general form.--
The "Will" itself and the feelings--manifestations of the Will already
permeated with conceptions--are wholly incapable of creating music out
of themselves, just as on the other hand it is utterly denied to music
to represent feelings, or to have feelings as its object, while Will is
its only object.--
He who carries away feelings as effects of music has within them as
it were a symbolic intermediate realm, which can give him a foretaste
of music, but excludes him at the same time from her innermost
sanctuaries.--
The lyric poet interprets music to himself through the symbolic
world of emotions, whereas he himself, in the calm of the Apollonian
contemplation, is exempted from those emotions.--
When, therefore, the musician writes a setting to a lyric poem he is
moved as musician neither through the images nor through the emotional
language in the text; but a musical inspiration coming from quite a
different sphere _chooses_ for itself that song-text as allegorical
expression. There cannot therefore be any question as to a necessary
relation between poem and music; for the two worlds brought here into
connection are too strange to one another to enter into more than a
superficial alliance; the song-text is just a symbol and stands to
music in the same relation as the Egyptian hieroglyph of bravery did to
the brave warrior himself. During the highest revelations of music we
even feel involuntarily the _crudeness_ of every figurative effort and
of every emotion dragged in for purposes of analogy; for example, the
last quartets of Beethoven quite put to shame all illustration and the
entire realm of empiric reality. The symbol, in face of the god really
revealing himself, has no longer any meaning; moreover it appears as an
offensive superficiality.
One must not think any the worse of us for considering from this point
of view one item so that we may speak about it without reserve, namely
the _last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony,_ a movement which
is unprecedented and unanalysable in its charms. To the dithyrambic
world-redeeming exultation of this music Schiller's poem "To Joy,"
is wholly incongruous, yea, like cold moon-light, pales beside that
sea of flame. Who would rob me of this sure feeling? Yea, who would
be able to dispute that that feeling during the hearing of this music
does not find expression in a scream only because we, wholly impotent
through music for metaphor and word, already _hear nothing at all
from Schiller's poem._ All that noble sublimity, yea the grandeur of
Schiller's verses has, beside the truly naïve-innocent folk-melody of
joy, a disturbing, troubling, even crude and offensive effect; only
the ever fuller development of the choir's song and the masses of the
orchestra preventing us from hearing them, keep from us that sensation
of incongruity. What therefore shall we think of that awful æsthetic
superstition that Beethoven himself made a solemn statement as to his
belief in the limits of absolute music, in that fourth movement of the
Ninth Symphony, yea that he as it were with it unlocked the portals
of a new art, within which music had been enabled to represent even
metaphor and idea and whereby music had been opened to the "conscious
mind." And what does Beethoven himself tell us when he has choir-song
introduced by a recitative? "Alas friends, let us intonate not these
tones but more pleasing and joyous ones!" More pleasing and joyous
ones! For that he needed the convincing tone of the human voice, for
that he needed the music of innocence in the folk-song. Not the word,
but the "more pleasing" sound, not the idea but the most heartfelt
joyful tone was chosen by the sublime master in his longing for the
most soul-thrilling ensemble of his orchestra. And how could one
misunderstand him! Rather may the same be said of this movement as
_Richard Wagner_ says of the great "_Missa Solemnis_" which he calls "a
pure symphonic work of the most genuine Beethoven-spirit" (Beethoven,
p. 42). "The voices are treated here quite in the sense of human
instruments, in which sense Schopenhauer quite rightly wanted these
human voices to be considered; the text underlying them is understood
by us in these great Church compositions, not in its conceptual
meaning, but it serves in the sense of the musical work of art, merely
as material for vocal music and does not stand to our musically
determined sensation in a disturbing position simply because it does
not incite in us any rational conceptions but, as its ecclesiastical
character conditions too, only touches us with the impression of
well-known symbolic creeds." Besides I do not doubt that Beethoven, had
he written the Tenth Symphony--of which drafts are still extant--would
have composed just the _Tenth_ Symphony.
Let us now approach, after these preparations, the discussion of the
_opera,_ so as to be able to proceed afterwards from the opera to
its counterpart in the Greek tragedy. What we had to observe in the
last movement of the Ninth, _i.e.,_ on the highest level of modern
music-development, viz., that the word-content goes down unheard in
the general sea of sound, is nothing isolated and peculiar, but the
general and eternally valid norm in the vocal music of all times, the
norm which alone is adequate to the origin of lyric song. The man in
a state of Dionysean excitement has a _listener_ just as little as
the orgiastic crowd, a listener to whom he might have something to
communicate, a listener as the epic narrator and generally speaking the
Apollonian artist, to be sure, presupposes. It is rather in the nature
of the Dionysean art, that it has no consideration for the listener:
the inspired servant of Dionysos is, as I said in a former place,
understood only by his compeers. But if we now imagine a listener at
those endemic outbursts of Dionysean excitement then we shall have to
prophesy for him a fate similar to that which Pentheus the discovered
eavesdropper suffered, namely, to be torn to pieces by the Mænads. The
lyric musician sings "as the bird sings,"[1] alone, out of innermost
compulsion; when the listener comes to him with a demand he must
become dumb. Therefore it would be altogether unnatural to ask from
the lyric musician that one should also understand the text-words of
his song, unnatural because here a demand is made by the listener, who
has no right at all during the lyric outburst to claim anything. Now
with the poetry of the great ancient lyric poets in your hand, put
the question honestly to yourself whether they can have even thought
of making themselves clear to the mass of the people standing around
and listening, clear with their world of metaphors and thoughts;
answer this serious question with a look at Pindar and the Æschylian
choir songs. These most daring and obscure intricacies of thought,
this whirl of metaphors, ever impetuously reproducing itself, this
oracular tone of the whole, which we, _without_ the diversion of music
and orchestration, so often cannot penetrate even with the closest
attention--was this whole world of miracles transparent as glass to
the Greek crowd, yea, a metaphorical-conceptual interpretation of
music? And with such mysteries of thought as are to be found in Pindar
do you think the wonderful poet could have wished to elucidate the
music already strikingly distinct? Should we here not be forced to an
insight into the very nature of the lyricist--the artistic man, who
to _himself_ must interpret music through the symbolism of metaphors
and emotions, but who has nothing to communicate to the listener; an
artist who, in complete aloofness, even forgets those who stand eagerly
listening near him. And as the lyricist his hymns, so the people sing
the folk-song, for themselves, out of in-most impulse, unconcerned
whether the word is comprehensible to him who does not join in the
song. Let us think of our own experiences in the realm of higher
art-music: what did we understand of the text of a Mass of Palestrina,
of a Cantata of Bach, of an Oratorio of Händel, if we ourselves perhaps
did not join in singing? Only for _him who joins_ in singing do lyric
poetry and vocal music exist; the listener stands before it as before
absolute music.
But now the _opera_ begins, according to the clearest testimonies, with
the _demand of the listener to understand the word._
What? The listener _demands?_ The word is to be understood?
But to bring music into the service of a series of metaphors and
conceptions, to use it as a means to an end, to the strengthening
and elucidation of such conceptions and metaphors--such a peculiar
presumption as is found in the concept of an "opera," reminds me of
that ridiculous person who endeavours to lift himself up into the air
with his own arms; that which this fool and which the opera according
to that idea attempt are absolute impossibilities. That idea of the
opera does not demand perhaps an abuse from music but--as I said--an
impossibility. Music never _can_ become a means; one may push,
screw, torture it; as tone, as roll of the drum, in its crudest and
simplest stages, it still defeats poetry and abases the latter to its
reflection. The opera as a species of art according to that concept is
therefore not only an aberration of music, but an erroneous conception
of æsthetics. If I herewith, after all, justify the nature of the opera
for æsthetics, I am of course far from justifying at the same time bad
opera music or bad opera-verses. The worst music can still mean, as
compared with the best poetry, the Dionysean world-subsoil, and the
worst poetry can be mirror, image and reflection of this subsoil, if
together with the best music: as certainly, namely, as the single tone
against the metaphor is already Dionysean, and the single metaphor
together with idea and word against music is already Apollonian. Yea,
even bad music together with bad poetry can still inform as to the
nature of music and poesy.
When therefore Schopenhauer felt Bellini's "Norma," for example, as the
fulfilment of tragedy, with regard to that opera's music and poetry,
then he, in Dionysean-Apollonian emotion and self-forgetfulness, was
quite entitled to do so, because he perceived music and poetry in
their most general, as it were, philosophical value, _as_ music and
poetry: but with that judgment he showed a poorly educated taste,--for
good taste always has historical perspective. To us, who intentionally
in this investigation avoid any question of the historic value of an
art-phenomenon and endeavour to focus only the phenomenon itself,
in its unaltered eternal meaning, and consequently in its _highest_
type, too,--to us the art-species of the "opera" seems to be justified
as much as the folk-song, in so far as we find in both that union
of the Dionysean and Apollonian and are permitted to assume for the
opera--namely for the highest type of the opera--an origin analogous to
that of the folk-song. Only in so far as the opera historically known
to us has a completely different origin from that of the folk-song
do we reject this "opera," which stands in the same relation to that
generic notion just defended by us, as the marionette does to a living
human being. It is certain, music never can become a means in the
service of the text, but must always defeat the text, yet music must
become bad when the composer interrupts every Dionysean force rising
within himself by an anxious regard for the words and gestures of his
marionettes. If the poet of the opera-text has offered him nothing more
than the usual schematised figures with their Egyptian regularity, then
the freer, more unconditional, more Dionysean is the development of the
music; and the more she despises all dramatic requirements, so much
the higher will be the value of the opera. In this sense it is true the
opera is, at its best, good music, and nothing but music: whereas the
jugglery performed at the same time is, as it were, only a fantastic
disguise of the orchestra, above all, of the most important instruments
the orchestra has: the singers; and from this jugglery the judicious
listener turns away laughing. If the mass is diverted by _this very
jugglery_ and only _permits_ the music with it, then the mob fares as
all those do who value the frame of a good picture higher than the
picture itself. Who treats such naïve aberrations with a serious or
even pathetic reproach?