Homer, Archilochus & Folk music
Intro & Preface & Contents
Previous: Interlude XIII. Nietzsche - part 2
From The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche...
Sec 5 - Homer and Archilochus
...Homer, the aged self-absorbed dreamer, the type of the Apollinian naive artist... Archilochus appalls us by his cries of hatred and scorn, by his drunken outbursts of desire. Therefore is not he, who has been called the first subjective artist essentially the non-artist? ...
[Nietzsche quotes Schiller’s claim that for him the act of poetic creation starts with] a musical mood... ...they took for granted the union, indeed the identity, of the lyrist with the musician...
In the first place, as a Dionysian artist he has identified himself with the primal unity, its pain and contradiction. Assuming that music has been correctly termed a repetition and a recast of the world, we may say that he produces the copy of this primal unity as music. Now, however, under the Apollinian dream inspiration, this music reveals itself to him again as a symbolic dream image. The inchoate, intangible reflection of the primordial pain in music, with its redemption in mere appearance, now produces a second mirroring as a specific symbol or example. The artist has already surrendered his subjectivity in the Dionysian process...When Archilochus, the first Greek lyrist, proclaims to the daughters of Lycambes both his mad love and his contempt, it is not his passion alone that dances before us in orgiastic frenzy; but we see Dionysus and the Maenads, we see the drunken reveler Archilochus sunk down in slumber... the Dionysian-musical enchantment of the sleeper seems to emit image sparks, lyrical poems, which in their highest development are called tragedies and dramatic dihyrambs.
...The Dionysian musician is, without any images, himself pure primordial pain and its primordial re-echoing. The lyric genius is conscious of a world of images and symbols -- growing out of his state of mystical self-abnegation and oneness....
...Archilochus, the passionately inflamed, loving, and hating man, is but a vision of the genius, who by this time is no longer merely Archilochus, but a world-genius expressing his primordial pain symbolically in the symbol of the man Archilochus -- while the subjectively willing and desiring man, Archilochus, can never at any time be a poet...
No wonder Settembrini thinks music is problematic. I’m also thinking of Hans Castorp’s fondness for music.
On the Foucaultean front, Archilochus seems to have a lot in common with the mad, or semi-mad, artists Foucault celebrates -- Bosch and Artaud. (I really can't win in presenting this point here. The relevant material in James's book will come after The Birth of Tragedy.)
...Insofar as the subject [of lyric poetry] is the artist, however, he has already been released from his individual will [this follows a lengthy quote from Schopenhauer], and has become, as it were, the medium through which the one truly existent subject celebrates his release in appearance. For to our humiliation and exaltation, one thing above all must be clear to us. The entire comedy of art is neither performed for our betterment or education nor are we the true authors of this art world. On the contrary, we may assume that we are merely images and artistic projections for the true author, and that we have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art -- for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified -- while of course our consciousness of our own significance hardly differs from that which the soldiers painted on canvas have of the battle represented on it. Thus all our knowledge of art is basically quite illusory, because as knowing beings we are not one and identical with that being which, as sole author and spectator of this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual entertainment for itself....
Here I can’t help having in mind the Hindu “Devi” creation story. It amazes me that while Nietzsche talks about metaphysics he never seems to touch on cosmogony.
I would have sworn I had told the Devi creation myth somewhere but now I can't find it. I really need to work on my Labels.
My version of the myth goes like this: In The Beginning was mind contemplating itself. An aspect of that pure mind grew bored and started to dream. This aspect is known as the goddess Devi and everything we know as “reality” is her dream. And since there is nothing but her dream, we are both the dream and the dreamer.
Sec 6 - Folk music
...it might also be historically demonstrated that every period rich in folk songs has been most violently stirred by Dionysian currents, which we must consider the substratum and prerequisite of the folk song.
...we must conceive the folk song as the musical mirror of the world, as the original melody, now seeking for itself a parallel dream phenomenon and expressing it in poetry. Melody is therefore primary and universal... Melody generates the poem out of itself, ever again: that is what the strophic form of the folk song signifies...
Wiki: “Strophic form (also called "verse-repeating" or chorus form) is the term applied to songs in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. The opposite of strophic form, with new music written for every stanza, is called through-composed.“
“Many folk and popular songs are strophic in form, including the twelve bar blues, ballads, hymns and chants.“
Accordingly, we observe that in the poetry of the folk song, language is strained to its utmost that it may imitate music...
Our whole discussion insists that lyric poetry is dependent on the spirit of music just as music itself in its absolute sovereignty does not need the image and the concept, but merely endures them as accompaniments. The poem of the lyrist can express nothing that did not already lie hidden in that vast universality and absoluteness in the music that compelled him to figurative speech. Language can never adequately render the cosmic symbolism of music, because music stands in symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial pin in the heart of the primal unity, and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is beyond and prior to all phenomena. Rather, all phenomena, compared with it, are merely symbols: hence language, as the organ and symbol of phenomena, can never by any means disclose the innermost heart of music; language, in its attempt to imitate it, can only be in superficial contact with music; while all the eloquence of lyric poetry cannot bring the deepest significance of the latter one step nearer to us.
Again, Nietzsche would have loved the 1960s. This also gives insight into why the Taliban hate music so much. But there’s more. Rather than link back to Spring XXII, here’s the quote from Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and co-inventor of String theory:
The latest version of String Theory is called M-Theory, “M” for membrane. So we now realize that strings can coexist with membranes. So the subatomic particles we see in nature, the quark, the electrons are nothing but musical notes on a tiny vibrating string.
What is physics?
Physics is nothing but the laws of harmony that you can write on vibrating strings.
What is chemistry?
Chemistry is nothing but the melodies you can play on interacting vibrating strings.
What is the universe?
The universe is a symphony of vibrating strings.
And then what is the mind of God that Albert Einstein eloquently wrote about for the last 30 years of his life?
We now, for the first time in history have a candidate for the mind of God. It is, cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
We are nothing but melodies. We are nothing but cosmic music played out on vibrating strings and membranes. Obeying the laws of physics, which is nothing but the laws of harmony of vibrating strings.
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