Interlude XIII. Nietzsche - part 2 - mere appearance

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude XII. Nietzsche - part 1

From The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche...

Sec 4 - mere appearance of mere appearance

...Though it is certain that of the two halves of our existence, the waking and the dreaming states, the former appeals to us as infinitely preferable, more important, excellent, and worthy of being lived, indeed, as that alone which is lived -- yet in relation to that mysterious ground of our being of which we are the phenomena, I should, paradoxically as it may seem, maintain the very opposite estimate of the value of dreams. For the more clearly I perceive in nature those omnipotent art impulses, and in them an ardent longing for illusion, for redemption through illusion, the more I feel myself impelled to the metaphysical assumption that the truly existent primal unity, eternally suffering and contradictory, also needs the rapturous vision, the pleasurable illusion, for its continuous redemption. And we, completely wrapped up in this illusion and composed of it, are compelled to consider this illusion as the truly nonexistent -- i.e., as a perpetual becoming in time, space, and causality -- in other words, as empirical reality. If, for the moment, we do not consider the question of our own ‘reality,’ if we conceive of our empirical existence, and of that of the world in general, as a continuously manifested representation of the primal unity, we shall then have to look upon the dream as a mere appearance of mere appearance, hence as a still higher appeasement of the primordial desire for mere appearance. And that is why the innermost heart of nature feels ineffable joy in the naive artist and the naive work of art, which is likewise only ‘mere appearance of mere appearance.’

I can’t help feeling that this relates to Hans's dream in “Snow” (in The Magic Mountain). Also, as I am very interested in dreams, the relative reality of dreams, and also the nature of the dreamer, I find this passage particularly interesting.

Nietzsche seems to claim to understand his dreams better than has been my experience -- I am most often puzzled at best and often completely confused -- but what I find interesting is that in dreams “I” am able to create, seemingly instantaneously and with no effort, entire worlds that I could not draw or model while awake if you gave me days or weeks. This struck me years ago when I spent several weeks walking around my new neighborhood with a camera snapping photos of particularly fine architectural details. In a dream I ran into a truly wonderful such architectural feature inside a building and was irritated that I didn’t have my camera with me to capture something so beautiful and so beyond my ability to describe or reproduce. This was the sort of dream where you are at least dimly aware that you are dreaming and the question of “who” created this, if not me, so jarred me that I woke up.

...Because of his titanic love for man, Prometheus must be torn to pieces by vultures; because of his excessive wisdom, which could solve the riddle of the Sphinx, Oedipus must be plunged into a bewildering vortex of crime. Thus did the Delphic god interpret the Greek past.

The effects wrought by the Dionysian also seemed ‘titanic’ and ‘barbaric’ to the Apollinian Greek; while at the same time he could not conceal from himself that he, too, was inwardly related to these overthrown Titans and heroes. Indeed, he had to recognize even more than this: despite all its beauty and moderation, his entire existence rested on a hidden substratum of suffering and of knowledge, revealed to him by the Dionysian. And behold: Apollo could not live without Dionysus! The ‘titanic’ and the ‘barbaric’ were in the last analysis as necessary as the Apollinian.

This passage is particularly interesting when you consider Settembrini’s crusade (ha) to rid the world of suffering. Not only is it Faustian, it is also, from this perspective, futile; suffering -- as perhaps portrayed in Hans's dream in “Snow” -- is the foundation of the Apollinian existence.

And now let us imagine how into this world, built on mere appearance and moderation and artificially dammed up, there penetrated, in tones ever more bewitching and alluring, the ecstatic sound of the Dionysian festival; how in these strains all of nature’s excess in pleasure, grief, and knowledge became audible, even in piercing shrieks... The muses of the arts of ‘illusion’ paled before an art that, in its intoxication, spoke the truth... The individual, with his restraint and proportion, succumbed to the self-oblivion of the Dionysian states, forgetting the precepts of Apollo. Excess revealed itself as truth. Contradiction, the bliss born of pain, spoke out from the very heart of nature. And so wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollinian was checked and destroyed....

Since I came to The Birth of Tragedy looking for connections with The Magic Mountain, it is hard not to see Clavdia and even Peeperkorn in this passage. If Settembrini is the Apollinian then Clavdia is at least a tool, if not an agent of the Dionysian. And Peeperkorn certainly shares qualities with the satyr god.

This section concludes with a passage that talks about the “Doric” or Spartan art as the last vestige and holdout of the pure Apollinian, and of  ”Attic tragedy and the dramatic dithyramb” as the “mysterious union” of the Apollinian and Dionysian tendencies which... “found glorious consummation in this child -- at once Antigone and Cassandra.”

In my edition of the translation by Walter Kaufmann, there is a footnote here referring to a criticism of this passage by Wilamowitz (another young philologist and contemporary of Nietzsche’s) who offers a prize to anyone who can explain what Nietzsche means here about Antigone and Cassandra. I have to admit the man does have a point. Kaufmann thinks Antigone must represent the Apollinian while Cassandra represents the Dionysian. Cassandra happens to be one of my favorite characters in Hellenic myth and drama so my ears pricked up at this passage, but I don’t know what he means either.

Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, as she was a priestess of his. This gift was turned into a curse when she refused the sexual advances of the god, so that no one believed her prophecies. Now the Greeks played fast and loose with their myths to make a point (there are many variations on this story), but the thing I love about the Cassandra story is that it is possibly the only example of prophecy in literature that is handled honestly. The curse is absurd because it is the nature of true prophecy that you can’t change the future, because if you did, then it would not have been the future you saw in the first place. If you announce that your city’s enemies are going to sneak inside the walls by hiding in a big wooden horse -- and people believe you -- how is that horse going to get into the city?

Next: Interlude XIV. Nietzsche - part 3.

Spring XXIV. Walking in the country + Hans Castorp

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: XXIII. Silence

Morning after morning, of late, I have taken my walk in the same direction, my purpose being to look at a plantation of young larches. There is no lovelier colour on earth than that in which they are now clad; it seems to refresh as well as gladden my eyes, and its influence sinks deep into my heart. Too soon it will change; already I think the first radiant verdure has begun to pass into summer’s soberness. The larch has its moment of unmatched beauty -- and well for him whose chance permits him to enjoy it, spring after spring.  

Could anything be more wonderful than the fact that here am I, day by day, not only at leisure to walk forth and gaze at the larches, but blessed with the tranquillity of mind needful for such enjoyment? On any morning of spring sunshine, how many mortals find themselves so much at peace that they are able to give themselves wholly to delight in the glory of heaven and of earth? Is it the case with one man in every fifty thousand? Consider what extraordinary kindness of fate must tend upon one, that not a care, not a preoccupation, should interfere with his contemplative thoughts for five or six days successively! So rooted in the human mind (and so reasonably rooted) is the belief in an Envious Power, that I ask myself whether I shall not have to pay, by some disaster, for this period of sacred calm. For a week or so I have been one of a small number, chosen out of the whole human race by fate’s supreme benediction. It may be that this comes to every one in turn; to most, it can only be once in a lifetime, and so briefly. That my own lot seems so much better than that of ordinary men, sometimes makes me fearful.

Beta.

I have mentioned Hans Castorp and my obsession with The Magic Mountain (and the related obsession with Faust) before, but reading this section -- for the 3rd time! -- I finally realized just how similar the positions of Henry Ryecroft and Hans Castorp really are. That they themselves have almost nothing in common perhaps distracted me from seeing the similarity of their positions. This was not my original intention, but it seems that I am going to now lay-out the premise of The Magic Mountain. I will let you judge if I’m just seeing the Tristero everywhere (Thomas Pynchon, Crying of Lot 49, reference).

Young Hans takes a break, between completing his engineering education and starting his job at a Hamburg shipyard, and takes a train to Davos in the high Swiss Alps to visit his ailing (of tuberculosis) cousin, Joachim Ziemssen. Within the two weeks of his visit, he too, is diagnosed with tuberculosis and so joins his cousin in the rigorous treatment of a deluxe sanitorium in 1907. This treatment consists of eating frequent, large, and excellent meals -- there are two breakfasts and an afternoon tea -- interspersed with ambles on the scenic grounds and extended periods of rest, while bundled up in blankets and furs, on comfortable lounge chairs set on balconies looking out over the valley, with the peaks of the Alps as a backdrop.

As a patient, Han’s task is to rest and get well enough to return to the flatlands. As character, Han’s task is to revel in the freedom (for a good Lutheran German this freedom takes on a quasi-sexual aspect) of not doing anything productive but just enjoying himself and thinking -- what he calls “taking stock” in one translation and “playing king” in another. The German term is Regeiren which seems to mean “to govern,” but perhaps has additional connotations -- if only in Mann’s coinage. (I’m having a surprisingly hard time learning any more about the German background of this crucial word in a significant German work of literature. My neighborhood Goethe-Institut was of no assistance at all.)

So, like Henry, Hans wanders the countryside picking and studying flowers, spends hours on his balcony or in his room reading the latest scholarship on a wide variety of scientific topics that interest him, particularly biology and anything having to do with how the body lives and, even more interesting to young Hans, how it dies. He thinks about all the big questions of science and philosophy and religion. And, also like Henry, exists outside the everyday world of commerce and (dare I say it) striving -- these two are anything but Faustian. Hans and Henry are fantasies for thinking people. They have nothing to do but think and read with servants to bring them the best food and see to the housekeeping, and lovely scenery out every window. Death is lurking about in both cases, but such is life. Sickness and death is not an obstruction but part of the curriculum. Enough for now.

Next: Spring XXV. The end of spring.

Spring VI. Actuary & the seasons

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Poverty, bad back, and fate

How many more springs can I hope to see? A sanguine temper would say ten or twelve; let me dare to hope humbly for five or six. That is a great many. Five or six spring-times, welcomed joyously, lovingly watched from the first celandine to the budding of the rose; who shall dare to call it a stinted boon? Five or six times the miracle of earth reclad, the vision of splendour and loveliness which tongue has never yet described, set before my gazing. To think of it is to fear that I ask too much.

Alpha.

And so he did -- ask for too much -- as Gissing was dead within a year of finishing this book. But how rare it is to truly appreciate the turn of the seasons as Ryecroft does here. When I think of the people in literature who have been in a position to do this, I don’t come up with many examples. Austen’s heroines were doomed to study the seasons, as strolling about the countryside was one of their chief occupations, in their otherwise constricted lives. Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim At Tinker Creek is an excellent modern example, but her situation was very unusual. Wendell Berry is a farmer and poet so is all but required to note such things.

Mostly this makes me think of Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain -- my obsession. There, as here, the careful observation of flowers and trees is used to emphasize the passage of seasons and of time. Hans, a young engineer-to-be from Hamburg, discovers the wonders of nature in the Swiss Alps as part of his "Taking Stock" as he lives the life of a well-off tuberculosis patient. Like Henry, he studies botany books and even collects samples to preserve and study. More, this study is a part of his scientific-humanistic life, which balances his mystical-spiritual life, and so is part of the dialectic he represents.

On rare occasions I will buy a few flowers from a corner stand. But I then keep the flowers for months as I find their dried out form (sometimes) as appealing as their original form. Not sure what either Mann or Gissing would make of this.

Next: Spring VII. Roots of philosophy?