25. M

25. Music and tragic myth are equally the expression of the Dionysian capacity of a people, and are inseparable from each other. Both originate in an ultra Apollonian sphere of art; both transfigure a region in the delightful accords of which all dissonance, just like the terrible picture of the world, dies charmingly away; both play with the sting of displeasure, trusting to their most potent magic; both justify thereby the existence even of the "worst world." Here the Dionysian, as compared with the Apollonian, exhibits itself as the eternal and original artistic force, which in general calls into existence the entire world of phenomena: in the midst of which a new transfiguring appearance becomes necessary, in order to keep alive the animated world of individuation. If we could conceive an incarnation of dissonance--and what is man but that?--then, to be able to live this dissonance would require a glorious illusion which would spread a veil of beauty over its peculiar nature. This is the true function of Apollo as deity of art: in whose name we comprise all the countless manifestations of the fair realm of illusion, which each moment render life in general worth living and make one impatient for the experience of the next moment. At the same time, just as much of this basis of all existence--the Dionysian substratum of the world--is allowed to enter into the consciousness of human beings, as can be surmounted again by the Apollonian transfiguring power, so that these two art-impulses are constrained to develop their powers in strictly mutual proportion, according to the law of eternal justice. When the Dionysian powers rise with such vehemence as we experience at present, there can be no doubt that, veiled in a cloud, Apollo has already descended to us; whose grandest beautifying influences a coming generation will perhaps behold. That this effect is necessary, however, each one would most surely perceive by intuition, if once he found himself carried back--even in a dream--into an Old-Hellenic existence. In walking under high Ionic colonnades, looking upwards to a horizon defined by clear and noble lines, with reflections of his transfigured form by his side in shining marble, and around him solemnly marching or quietly moving men, with harmoniously sounding voices and rhythmical pantomime, would he not in the presence of this perpetual influx of beauty have to raise his hand to Apollo and exclaim: "Blessed race of Hellenes! How great Dionysus must be among you, when the Delian god deems such charms necessary to cure you of your dithyrambic madness!"--To one in this frame of mind, however, an aged Athenian, looking up to him with the sublime eye of Æschylus, might answer: "Say also this, thou curious stranger: what sufferings this people must have undergone, in order to be able to become thus beautiful! But now follow me to a tragic play, and sacrifice with me in the temple of both the deities!" APPENDIX. [Late in the year 1888, not long before he was overcome by his sudden attack of insanity, Nietzsche wrote down a few notes concerning his early work, the _Birth of Tragedy._ These were printed in his sister's biography (_Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches,_ vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 102 ff.), and are here translated as likely to be of interest to readers of this remarkable work. They also appear in the _Ecce Homo._--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.] "To be just to the _Birth of Tragedy_(1872), one will have to forget some few things. It has _wrought effects,_ it even fascinated through that wherein it was amiss--through its application to _Wagnerism,_ just as if this Wagnerism were symptomatic of _a rise and going up._ And just on that account was the book an event in Wagner's life: from thence and only from thence were great hopes linked to the name of Wagner. Even to-day people remind me, sometimes right in the midst of a talk on _Parsifal,_ that _I_ and none other have it on my conscience that such a high opinion of the _cultural value_ of this movement came to the top. More than once have I found the book referred to as 'the _Re_-birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music': one only had an ear for a new formula of _Wagner's_ art, aim, task,--and failed to hear withal what was at bottom valuable therein. 'Hellenism and Pessimism' had been a more unequivocal title: namely, as a first lesson on the way in which the Greeks got the better of pessimism,--on the means whereby they _overcame_ it. Tragedy simply proves that the Greeks were _no_ pessimists: Schopenhauer was mistaken here as he was mistaken in all other things. Considered with some neutrality, the _Birth of Tragedy_ appears very unseasonable: one would not even dream that it was _begun_ amid the thunders of the battle of Wörth. I thought these problems through and through before the walls of Metz in cold September nights, in the midst of the work of nursing the sick; one might even believe the book to be fifty years older. It is politically indifferent--un-German one will say to-day,--it smells shockingly Hegelian, in but a few formulæ does it scent of Schopenhauer's funereal perfume. An 'idea'--the antithesis of 'Dionysian _versus_ Apollonian'--translated into metaphysics; history itself as the evolution of this 'idea'; the antithesis dissolved into oneness in Tragedy; through this optics things that had never yet looked into one another's face, confronted of a sudden, and illumined and _comprehended_ through one another: for instance, Opera and Revolution. The two decisive _innovations_ of the book are, on the one hand, the comprehension of the _Dionysian_ phenomenon among the Greeks (it gives the first psychology thereof, it sees therein the One root of all Grecian art); on the other, the comprehension of Socratism: Socrates diagnosed for the first time as the tool of Grecian dissolution, as a typical decadent. 'Rationality' _against_ instinct! 'Rationality' at any price as a dangerous, as a life-undermining force! Throughout the whole book a deep hostile silence on Christianity: it is neither Apollonian nor Dionysian; it _negatives_ all _æsthetic_ values (the only values recognised by the _Birth of Tragedy),_ it is in the widest sense nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian symbol the utmost limit of _affirmation_ is reached. Once or twice the Christian priests are alluded to as a 'malignant kind of dwarfs,' as 'subterraneans.'"