Interlude XXV. Nietzsche - part 14 - The End & Snow

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude XXIV. Nietzsche - part 13

From The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche...

Sec 25 - The end - Snow?

...If we could imagine dissonance become man -- and what else is man? -- this dissonance, to be able to live, would need a splendid illusion that would cover dissonance with a veil of beauty. This is the true artistic aim of Apollo in whose name we comprehend all those countless illusions of the beauty of mere appearance that at every moment make life worth living at all and prompt the desire to live on in order to experience the next moment.

Of this foundation of all existence -- the Dionysian basic ground of the world -- not one whit more may enter the consciousness of the human individual than can be overcome again by this Apollinian power of transfiguration. Thus these two art drives must unfold their powers in a strict proportion, according to the law of eternal justice. Where the Dionysian powers rise up as impetuously as we experience them now [1871], Apollo, too, must already have descended among us, wrapped in a cloud; and the next generation will probably behold his most ample beautiful effects.

Time to recall Hans Castorp's dream in “Snow” from The Magic Mountain....

That this effect should be necessary, everybody should be able to feel most assuredly by means of intuition, provided he has ever felt, if only in a dream, that he was carried back into an ancient Greek existence. Walking under lofty Ionic colonnades, looking up towards a horizon that was cut off by pure and noble lines, finding reflections of his transfigured shape in the shining marble at his side, and all around him solemnly striding or delicately moving human beings, speaking with harmonious voices and in a rhythmic language of gestures -- in view of this continual influx of beauty, would he not have to exclaim, raising his hand to Apollo: ‘Blessed people of Hellas! How great must Dionysus be among you if the god of Delos considers such magic necessary to heal your dithyrambic madness!’

To a man in such a mood, however, an old Athenian, looking up at him with the sublime eyes of Aeschylus, might reply: ‘But say this, too, curious stranger: how much did this people have to suffer to be able to become so beautiful! But now follow me to witness a tragedy, and sacrifice with me in the temple of both deities!’

My "First time."

Have I told this story before in this blog? I don’t think so.  I first read The Birth of Tragedy for a class in college in the early 1970s. The professor was the “Kant man” at my university and Nietzsche was new to him (how this was possible I don’t know). At the beginning of each class Herr Doktor Professor would remove his jacket and hang it on a chair back, remove his watch and place in on the table, and he would then proceed to lecture while pacing back and forth across the small room in the basement of the Nursing College (the Philosophy department was the Cinderella of the Liberal Arts college) physically touching each wall. Literally bouncing off the walls in his enthusiasm.

We started with The Birth of Tragedy and then went through several of the other, especially meaty, books in Nietzsche’s oeuvre. Our professor’s enthusiasm was infectious and the class was a delight though, needless to say, challenging. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche is a follower of Schopenhauer, but he soon grows out of that pessimism. He is also, ultimately, a knife in the heart of Kant. There came a day during our class when our professor finally realized that he could go with Nietzsche or stay with Kant. After that, he lectured standing at the table with his watch on. It was one of my most memorable lessons in college.

Next: Interlude XXVI. Foucault - part 6.