No More Learning

, in a
wholly un-Germanic, genuinely neo-Latin shallow
and unmetaphysical philosophy. I cannot help
seeing in the prevailing international movements
of the present day, and the simultaneous promulga-
tion of universal suffrage, the effects of the fear
of war above everything else, yea I behold behind
these movements, those truly international home-
less money-hermits, as the really alarmed, who,
with their natural lack of the State-instinct, have
learnt to abuse politics as a means of the Exchange,
and State and Society as an apparatus for their own


## p. 15 (#45) ##############################################

THE GREEK STATE IS
enrichment. Against the deviation of the State-
tendency into a money-tendency, to be feared from
this side, the only remedy is war and once again
war, in the emotions of which this at least becomes
obvious, that the State is not founded upon the fear
of the war-demon, as a protective institution for
egoistic individuals, but in love to fatherland and
prince, it produces an ethical impulse, indicative of
a much higher destiny. If I therefore designate as
a dangerous and characteristic sign of the present
political situation the application of revolutionary
thought in the service of a selfish State-less
money-aristocracy, if at the same time I conceive
of the enormous dissemination of liberal optimism
as the result of modern financial affairs fallen
into strange hands, and if I imagine all evils
of social conditions together with the necessary
decay of the arts to have either germinated from
that root or grown together with it, one will have
to pardon my occasionally chanting a Psean on war.
Horribly clangs its silvery bow; and although it
comes along like the night, war is nevertheless
Apollo, the true divinity for consecrating and puri-
fying the State. First of all, however, as is said in
the beginning of the "Iliad," he lets fly his arrow
on the mules and dogs. Then he strikes the men
themselves, and everywhere pyres break into flames.
Be it then pronounced that war is just as much a
necessity for the State as the slave is for society,
and who can avoid this verdict if he honestly asks
himself about the causes of the never-equalled Greek
art-perfection?
He who contemplates war and its uniformed pos-


## p. 16 (#46) ##############################################

16 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
sibility, the soldier's profession, with respect to the
hitherto described nature of the State, must arrive
at the conviction, that through war and in the pro-
fession of arms is placed before our eyes an image,
or even perhaps the prototype of the State. Here we
see as the most general effect of the war-tendency an
immediate decomposition and division of the chaotic
mass into military castes, out of which rises, pyramid-
shaped, on an exceedingly broad base of slaves the
edifice of the "martial society. " The unconscious
purpose of the whole movement constrains every in-
dividual under its yoke, and produces also in hetero-
geneous natures as it were a chemical transformation
of their qualities until they are brought into affinity
with that purpose. In the highest castes one per-
ceives already a little more of what in this internal
process is involved at the bottom, namely the crea-
tion of the military genius—with whom we have
become acquainted as the original founder of states.
In the case of many States, as, for example, in the
Lycurgian constitution of Sparta, one can distinctly
perceive the impress of that fundamental idea of the
State, that of the creation of the military genius. If
we now imagine the military primal State in its
greatest activity, at its proper " labour," and if we
fix our glance upon the whole technique of war,
we cannot avoid correcting our notions picked up
from everywhere, as to the "dignity of man" and
the "dignity of labour" by the question, whether
the idea of dignity is applicable also to that labour,
which has as its purpose the destruction of the
"dignified" man, as well as to the man who is
entrusted with that "dignified labour," or whether


## p. 17 (#47) ##############################################

THE GREEK STATE 17
in this warlike task of the State those mutually
contradictory ideas do not neutralise one another. I
should like to think the warlike man to be a means
of the military genius and his labour again only
a tool in the hands of that same genius; and not
to him, as absolute man and non-genius, but to him
as a means of the genius—whose pleasure also can
be to choose his tool's destruction as a mere pawn
sacrificed on the strategist's chessboard—is due a
degree of dignity, of that dignity namely, to have
been deemed worthy of being a means of the genius.
But what is shown here in a single instance is valid
in the most general sense; every human being, with
his total activity, only has dignity in so far as he is
a tool of the genius, consciously or unconsciously;
from this we may immediately deduce the ethical
conclusion, that "man in himself," the absolute man
possesses neither dignity, nor rights, nor duties;
only as a wholly determined being serving uncon-
scious purposes can man excuse his existence.
Plato's perfect State is according to these con-
siderations certainly something still greater than
even the warm-blooded among his admirers believe,
not to mention the smiling mien of superiority with
which our "historically" educated refuse such a
fruit of antiquity. The proper aim of the State,
the Olympian existence and ever-renewed procrea-
tion and preparation of the genius,—compared with
which all other things are only tools, expedients
and factors towards realisation—is here discovered
with a poetic intuition and painted with firmness.
Plato saw through the awfully devastated Herma
of the then-existing State-life and perceived even



## p. 18 (#48) ##############################################

I8 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
then something divine in its interior. He believed
that one might be able to take out this divine image
and that the grim and barbarically distorted out-
side and shell did not belong to the essence of the
State: the whole fervour and sublimity of his politi-
cal passion threw itself upon this belief, upon that
desire—and in the flames of this fire he perished.
That in his perfect State he did not place at the
head the genius in its general meaning, but only
the genius of wisdom and of knowledge, that he
altogether excluded the inspired artist from his
State, that was a rigid consequence of the Socratian
judgment on art, which Plato, struggling against
himself, had made his own. This more external,
almost incidental gap must not prevent our recog-
nising in the total conception of the Platonic State
the wonderfully great hieroglyph of a profound and
eternally to be interpreted esoteric doctrine of the
connection between State and Genius. What we be-
lieved we could divine of this cryptograph we have
said in this preface.
N


## p. 19 (#49) ##############################################

The Greek Woman
(Fragment, 1871)


## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################



## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################

Just as Plato from disguises and obscurities brought
^to light the innermost purpose of the State, so also
he conceived the chief cause of the position of the
Hellenic Woman with regard to the State; in both
cases he saw in what existed around him the image
of the ideas manifested to him, and of these ideas
of course the actual was only a hazy picture and
phantasmagoria. He who according to the usual
custom considers the position of the Hellenic Woman
to be altogether unworthy and repugnant to human-
ity, must also turn with this reproach against the
Platonic conception of this position; for, as it were,
the existing forms were only precisely set forth in
this latter conception. Here therefore our question
repeats itself: should not the nature and the position
of the Hellenic Woman have a necessary relation to
the goals of the Hellenic Will?
Of course there is one side of the Platonic con-
ception of woman, which stands in abrupt contrast
with Hellenic custom: Plato gives to woman a full
share in the rights, knowledge and duties of man,
and considers woman only as the weaker sex, in
that she will not achieve remarkable success in all
things, without however disputing this sex's title to
all those things. We must not attach more value to
this strange notion than to the expulsion of the artist
out of the ideal State; these are side-lines daringly


## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################

22 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
mis-drawn, aberrations as it were of the hand other-
wise so sure and of the so calmly contemplating
eye which at times under the influence of the de-
ceased master becomes dim and dejected; in this
mood he exaggerates the master's paradoxes and
in the abundance of his love gives himself satisfac-
tion by very eccentrically intensifying the latter's
doctrines even to foolhardiness.
The most significant word however that Plato as
a Greek could say on the relation of woman to the
State, was that so objectionable demand, that in the
perfect State, the Family was to cease. At present let
us take no account of his abolishing even marriage,
in order to carry out this demand fully, and of his
substituting solemn nuptials arranged by order of
the State, between the bravest men and the noblest
women, for the attainment of beautiful offspring.
In that principal proposition however he has in-
dicated most distinctly—indeed too distinctly, offen-
sively distinctly—an important preparatory step of
the Hellenic Will towards the procreation of the
genius. But in the customs of the Hellenic people
the claim of the family on man and child was
extremely limited: the man lived in the State, the
child grew up for the State and was guided by the
hand of the State. The Greek Will took care that
the need of culture could not be satisfied in the
seclusion of a small circle. From the State the
individual has to receive everything in order to
return everything to the State. Woman accord-
ingly means to the State, what sleep does to man.
In her nature lies the healing power, which replaces
that which has been used up, the beneficial rest in


## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################

THE GREEK WOMAN 23
which everything immoderate confines itself, the
eternal Same, by which the excessive and the surplus
regulate themselves. In her the future generation
dreams. Woman is more closely related to Nature
than man and in all her essentials she remains ever
herself. Culture is with her always something ex-
ternal, a something which does not touch the kernel
that is eternally faithful to Nature, therefore the
culture of woman might well appear to the Athenian
as something indifferent, yea—if one only wanted to
conjure it up in one's mind, as something ridiculous.
He who at once feels himself compelled from that
to infer the position of women among the Greeks as
unworthy and all too cruel, should not indeed take
as his criterion the " culture " of modern woman and
her claims, against which it is sufficient just to point
out the Olympian women together with Penelope,
Antigone, Elektra. Of course it is true that these
are ideal figures, but who would be able to create
such ideals out of the present world ? —Further in-
deed is to be considered what sons these women
have borne, and what women they must have been
to have given birth to such sons! The Hellenic
woman as viother had to live in obscurity, because
the political instinct together with its highest aim
demanded it. She had to vegetate like a plant, in
the narrow circle, as a symbol of the Epicurean
wisdom Aa0e /ftwo-as. Again, in more recent times,
with the complete disintegration of the principle of
the State, she had to step in as helper; the family
as a makeshift for the State is her work; and in this
sense the artistic aim of the State had to abase
itself to the level of a domestic art. Thereby it has


## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################

24 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
been brought about, that the passion of love, as the
one realm wholly accessible to women, regulates our
art to the very core. Similarly, home-education
considers itself so to speak as the only natural one
and suffers State-education only as a questionable
infringement upon the right of home-education: all
this is right as far as the modern State only is
concerned. —With that the nature of woman withal
remains unaltered, but her power is, according to
the position which the State takes up with regard
to women, a different one. Women have indeed
really the power to make good to a certain extent
the deficiencies of the State—ever faithful to their
nature, which I have compared to sleep. In Greek
antiquity they held that position, which the most
supreme will of the State assigned to them: for
that reason they have been glorified as never since.
The goddesses of Greek mythology are their images:
the Pythia and the Sibyl, as well as the Socratic
Diotima are the priestesses out of whom divine
wisdom speaks. Now one understands why the
proud resignation of the Spartan woman at the
news of her son's death in battle can be no fable.
Woman in relation to the State felt herself in her
proper position, therefore she had more dignity than
woman has ever had since. Plato who through
abolishing family and marriage still intensifies the
position of woman, feels now so much reverence
towards them, that oddly enough he is misled by a
subsequent statement of their equality with man, to
abolish again the order of rank which is their due:
the highest triumph of the woman of antiquity, to
have seduced even the wisest!


## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################

THE GREEK WOMAN 2$
As long as the State is still in an embryonic con-
dition woman as mother preponderates and deter-
mines the grade and the manifestations of Culture:
in the same way as woman is destined to comple-
ment the disorganised State. What Tacitus says of
German women: inesse quin etiam sanctum aliquid
etprovidum putant, necaut consilia earum aspernantur
aut responsa neglegunt, applies on the whole to all
nations not yet arrived at the real State. In such
stages one feels only the more strongly that which
at all times becomes again manifest, that the instincts
of woman as the bulwark of the future generation
are invincible and that in her care for the preser-
vation of the species Nature speaks out of these
instincts very distinctly. How far this divining
power reaches is determined, it seems, by the greater
or lesser consolidation of the State: in disorderly
and more arbitrary conditions, where the whim or
the passion of the individual man carries along with
itself whole tribes, then woman suddenly comes for-
ward as the warning prophetess. But in Greece too
there was a never slumbering care that the terribly
overcharged political instinct might splinter into
dust and atoms the little political organisms before
they attained their goals in any way. Here the
Hellenic Will created for itself ever new imple-
ments by means of which it spoke, adjusting, moder-
ating, warning: above all it is in the Pythia, that
the power of woman to compensate the State mani-
fested itself so clearly, as it has never done since.
That a people split up thus into small tribes and
municipalities, was yet at bottom whole and was
performing the task of its nature within its faction,


## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################

26 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
was assured by that wonderful phenomenon the
Pythia and the Delphian oracle: for always, as long
las Hellenism created its great works of art, it spoke
out of one mouth and as one Pythia. We cannot
hold back the portentous discernment that to the
Will individuation means much suffering, and that in
order to reach those individuals It needs an enor-
mous step-ladder of individuals. It is true our brains
reel with the consideration whether the Will in order
to arrive at Art, has perhaps effused Itself out into
these worlds, stars, bodies, and atoms: at least it
ought to become clear to us then, that Art is not
necessary for the individuals, but for the Will itself:
a sublime outlook at which we shall be permitted to
, glance once more from another position.


## p. 27 (#57) ##############################################

On Music and Words
(Fragment, 1871)


## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################



## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################

What we here have asserted of the relationship
between language and music must be valid too, for
equal reasons concerning the- relationship of Mime
to Music. The Mime too, as the intensified sym-
bolism of man's gestures, is, measured by the eternal
significance of music, only a simile, which brings
into expression the innermost secret of music but
very superficially, namely on the substratum of the
passionately moved human body. But if we include
language also in the category of bodily symbolism,
and compare the drama, according to the canon
advanced, with music, then I venture to think, a
proposition of Schopenhauer will come into the
clearest light, to which reference must be made again
later on. "It might be admissible, although a
purely musical mind does not demand it, to join
and adapt words or even a clearly represented
action to the pure language of tones, although the
latter, being self-sufficient, needs no help; so that
our perceiving and reflecting intellect, which does
not like to be quite idle, may meanwhile have light
and analogous occupation also. By this concession
to the intellect man's attention adheres even more
closely to music, by this at the same time, too, is
placed underneath that which the tones indicate in
their general metaphorless language of the heart, a
visible picture, as it were a schema, as an example
illustrating a general idea . . . indeed such things will
r


## p. 30 (#60) ##############################################

30 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
even heighten the effect of music. " (Schopenhauer,
Parerga, II. , "On the Metaphysics of the Beauti-
ful and ^Esthetics," § 224. ) If we disregard the
naturalistic external motivation according to which
our perceiving and reflecting intellect does not like
to be quite idle when listening to music, and atten-
tion led by the hand of an obvious action follows
better—then the drama in relation to music has been
characterised by Schopenhauer for the best reasons
as a schema, as an example illustrating a general
idea: and when he adds "indeed such things will
even heighten the effect of music" then the enor-
mous universality and originality of vocal music, of
the connection of tone with metaphor and idea
guarantee the correctness of this utterance. The
music of every people begins in closest connection
with lyricism and long before absolute music can be
thought of, the music of a people in that connection
passes through the most important stages of develop-
ment. If we understand this primal lyricism of a
people, as indeed we must, to be an imitation of
the artistic typifying Nature, then as the original
prototype of that union of music and lyricism must
be regarded: the duality in the essence of language,
already typified by Nature. Now, after discussing
the relation of music to metaphor we will fathom
deeper this essence of language.
In the multiplicity of languages the fact at once
manifests itself, that word and thing do not neces-
sarily coincide with one another completely, but that
the word is a symbol. But what does the word sym-
bolise? Most certainly only conceptions, be these
now conscious ones or as in the greater number of


## p. 31 (#61) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 31
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 ex-
pressions 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 concep-
tion; 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 neverthe-
less again distinguish two main species within their
realm. The one species manifest themselves to us
as pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations and accom-
pany all other conceptions as a never-lacking funda-
mental 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 mani-
festation 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


## p. 32 (#62) ##############################################

32 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
cause is the same in all men, the tonal subsoil is also
the common one, comprehensible beyond the differ-
ence 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 con-'
sonantal 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 con-
templations readily, attentively, and with some
imagination—and with kind indulgence where the


## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 33
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 aesthetics 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,
3


## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################

34 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
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 con-
quered just by that very Apollonian absorption in
Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot
raiseout 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 individua-
tion is broken and abolished. If we have character-
ised 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 aesthetic 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 in-
artistic in itself; indeed only its total exclusion
makes the complete self-absorption and disinterested


## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 35
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 aesthetic 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 permeat-
ed 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 them-
selves. 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 metaphori-
cally unapproachable realm of the Will, the proper
content and object of music. The lyric poet re-
sembles 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 rela-
tion to this Will, as the analogous morning-dream,


## p. 35 (#66) ##############################################

34 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
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 con-
quered just by that very Apollonian absorption in
Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot
raiseout 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 individua-
tion is broken and abolished. If we have character-
ised 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 aesthetic 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 in-
artistic in itself; indeed only its total exclusion
makes the complete self-absorption and disinterested



## p. 35 (#67) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 35
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 aesthetic 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 permeat-
ed 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 them-
selves. 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 metaphori-
cally unapproachable realm of the Will, the proper
content and object of music. The lyric poet re-
sembles 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 rela-
tion to this Will, as the analogous morning-dream,


## p. 35 (#68) ##############################################

34 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
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 con-
quered just by that very Apollonian absorption in
Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot
raiseout 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 individua-
tion is broken and abolished. If we have character-
ised 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 aesthetic 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 in-
artistic in itself; indeed only its total exclusion
makesthc complete self-absorption and disinterested



## p. 35 (#69) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 35
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 aesthetic 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 permeat-
ed 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 them-
selves. 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 metaphori-
cally unapproachable realm of the Will, the proper
content and object of music. The lyric poet re-
sembles 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 rela-
tion to this Will, as the analogous morning-dream,


## p. 35 (#70) ##############################################

34 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
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 con-
quered just by that very Apollonian absorption in
Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot
raiseout 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 individua-
tion is broken and abolished. If we have character-
ised 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 aesthetic 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 in-
artistic in itself; indeed only its total exclusion
makes the complete self-absorption and disinterested



## p. 35 (#71) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 35
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 aesthetic 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 permeat-
ed 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 them-
selves. 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 metaphori-
cally unapproachable realm of the Will, the proper
content and object of music. The lyric poet re-
sembles 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 rela-
tion to this Will, as the analogous morning-dream,


## p. 36 (#72) ##############################################

36 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
according to Schopenhauer's theory, bears to the
dream proper. To all those, however, who are un-
able 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 can-
not 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 is self-evident.
At this point I take the liberty of setting forth again
comprehensively side by side those decisive proposi-
tions which the antithesis of the Dionysean and A pol -
Ionian 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—manifesta-
tions of the Will already permeated with concep-
tions—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. —


## p. 37 (#73) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 2)7
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 there-
fore be any question as to a necessary relation be-
tween 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 in-
voluntarily the crudeness of every figurative effort
and of every emotion dragged in for purposes of
analogy; for example, the last quartets of Bee-
thoven 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 con-
sidering 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 unanalys-
able in its charms. To the dithyrambic world-
redeeming exultation of this music Schiller's poem,


## p. 38 (#74) ##############################################

38 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
"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 front
Schiller'spoem. All that noble sublimity, yea the
grandeur of Schiller's verses has, beside the truly
naive-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 zesthetic
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 Sym-
phony, 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 convinc-
ing 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


## p. 39 (#75) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 39
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 in-
cite in us any rational conceptions but, as its eccle-
siastical 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 gene-
ral 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 Dionys-
ean excitement has a listener just as little as the


## p. 40 (#76) ##############################################

40 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
orgiastic crowd, a listener to whom he might have
something to communicate, a listener as the epic nar-
rator 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 com-
peers. 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 Maenads.
The lyric musician sings "as the bird sings,"* 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 under-
stand 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 any-
thing. 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 iEschylian
choir songs. These most daring and obscure in-
* A reference to Goethe's ballad, The Minstrel, st. 5:
"I sing as sings the bird, whose note
The leafy bough is heard on.
The song that falters from my throat
For me is ample guerdon. " Tk.


## p. 41 (#77) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 41
tricacies 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 wonder-
ful 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 in-
terpret music through the symbolism of metaphors
and emotions, but who has nothing to communicate
to the listener; an artist who, in complete aloof-
ness, 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 com-
prehensible 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 Handel, 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 clear-
est testimonies, with the demand of the listener to
understand the word.
What? The listener demands? The word is to
be understood?


## p. 42 (#78) ##############################################

42 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
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 pre-
sumption 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 accord-
ing to that idea attempt are absolute impossi-
bilities. 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 aber-
ration of music, but an erroneous conception of
aesthetics. If I herewith, after all, justify the nature
of the opera for aesthetics, 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,


## p. 43 (#79) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 43
with regard to that opera's music and poetry, then he,
in Dionysean-Apollonian emotion and self-forgetful-
ness,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 marion-
ettes. 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 dra-


## p. 43 (#80) ##############################################

42 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
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 pre-
sumption 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 accord-
ing to that idea attempt are absolute impossi-
bilities. 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 aber-
ration of music, but an erroneous conception of
aesthetics. If I herewith, after all, justify the nature
of the opera for aesthetics, 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,



## p. 43 (#81) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 43
with regard to that opera's music and poetry, then he,
in Dionysean-Apollonian emotion and self-forgetful-
ness,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 marion-
ettes. 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 dra-


## p. 44 (#82) ##############################################

44 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
matic 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 orches-
tra, above all, of the most important instruments
the orchestra has: the singers; and from this jug-
glery 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
naive aberrations with a serious or even pathetic
reproach?
But what will the opera mean as "dramatic"
music, in its possibly farthest distance from pure
music, efficient in itself, and purely Dionysean?
Let us imagine a passionate drama full of inci-
dents which carries away the spectator, and which
is already sure of success by its plot: what will
"dramatic " music be able to add, if it does not take
away something? Firstly, it will take away much:
for in every moment where for once the Dionysean
power of music strikes the listener, the eye is dimmed
that sees the action, the eye that became absorbed
in the individuals appearing before it: the listener
now forgets the drama and becomes alive again to it
only when the Dionysean spell over him has been
broken. In so far, however, as music makes the
listener forget the drama, it is not yet "dramatic"
music: but what kind of music is that which is not
allowed to exercise any Dionysean power over the
listener? And how is it possible? It is possible


## p. 45 (#83) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 45
as purely conventional symbolism, out of which con-
vention has sucked all natural strength: as music
which has diminished to symbols of remembrance:
and its effect aims at reminding the spectator of
something, which at the sight of the drama must not
escape him lest he should misunderstand it: as a
trumpet signal is an invitation for the horse to trot.
Lastly, before the drama commenced and in inter-
ludes or during tedious passages, doubtful as to
dramatic effect, yea, even in its highest moments,
there would still be permitted another species of
remembrance-music, no longer purely conventional,
namely emotional-music, music, as a stimulant to
dull or wearied nerves. I am able to distinguish
in the so-called dramatic music these two elements
only: a conventional rhetoric and remembrance-
music, and a sensational-music with an effect essen-
tially physical: and thus it vacillates between the
noise of the drum and the signal-horn, like the mood
of the warrior who goes into the battle. But now
the mind, regaling itself on pure music and educated
through comparison,demands a masqueradeiox those
two wrong tendencies of music; "Remembrance"
and "Emotion" are to be played, but in good music,
which must be in itself enjoyable, yea, valuable;
what despair for the dramatic musician, who must
mask the big drum by good music, which, however,
must nevertheless have no purely musical, but only
a stimulating effect! And now comes the great
Philistine public nodding its thousand heads and
enjoys this " dramatic music" which is ever ashamed
of itself, enjoys it to the very last morsel, without
perceiving anything of its shame and embarrass-


## p. 46 (#84) ##############################################

46 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
ment. Rather the public feels its skin agreeably
tickled, for indeed homage is being rendered in
all forms and ways to the public! To the pleasure-
hunting, dull-eyed sensualist, who needs excite-
ment, to the conceited "educated person" who
has accustomed himself to good drama and good
music as to good food, without after all making
much out of it, to the forgetful and absent-minded
egoist, who must be led back to the work of art with
force and with signal-horns because selfish plans
continually pass through his mind aiming at gain
or pleasure. Woe-begone dramatic musicians!
"Draw near and view your Patrons' faces! The
half are coarse, the half are cold. " "Why should you
rack, poor foolish Bards, for ends like these the gra-
cious Muses? "* And that the muses are tormented,
even tortured and flayed, these veracious miserable
ones do not themselves deny!
We had assumed a passionate drama, carrying
away the spectator, which even without music would
be sure of its effect. I fear that that in it which is
"poetry" and not action proper will stand in relation
to true poetry as dramatic music to music in general:
it will be remembrance- and emotional-poetry.
Poetry will serve as a means, in order to recall in
a conventional fashion feelings and passions, the
expression of which has been found by real poets
and has become celebrated, yea, normal with them.
Further, this poetry will be expected in dangerous
moments to assist the proper "action,"—whether
a criminalistic horror-story or an exhibition of
* A quotation from Goethe's "Faust": Part I. , lines 91,
92, and 95, 96. —Tr.


## p. 47 (#85) ##############################################

ON MUSIC AND WORDS 47
witchery mad with shifting the scenes,—and to
spread a covering veil over the crudeness of the
action itself. Shamefully conscious that the poetry
is only masquerade which cannot bear the light of
day, such a "dramatic" rime-jingle clamours now
for "dramatic" music, as on the other hand again
the poetaster of such dramas is met after one-fourth
of the way by the dramatic musician with his talent
for the drum and the signal-horn and his shyness of
genuine music, trusting in itself and self-sufficient.
And now they see one another; and these Apol-
lonian and Dionysean caricatures, this par nobile
fratrum, embrace one another!


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Homer's Contest
Preface to an Unwritten Book (1872)


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WHEN one speaks of "humanity" the notion lies
at the bottom, that humanity is that which separates
and distinguishes man from Nature. But such a
distinction does not in reality exist: the "natural"
qualities and the properly called "human" ones
have grown up inseparably together. Man in his
highest and noblest capacities is Nature and bears
in himself her awful twofold character. His abilities «,
generally considered dreadful and inhuman are —
perhaps indeed the fertile soil, out of which alone
can grow forth all humanity in emotions, actions
and works.
Thus the Greeks, the most humane men of ancient
times, have in themselves a trait of cruelty, of tiger-
like pleasure in destruction: a trait, which in the
grotesquely magnified image of the Hellene, in
Alexander the Great, is very plainly visible, which,
however, in their whole history, as well as in their
mythology, must terrify us who meet them with
the emasculate idea of modern humanity. When
Alexander has the feet of Batis, the brave defender
of Gaza, bored through, and binds the living body to
his chariot in order to drag him about exposed to
the scorn of his soldiers, that is a sickening^ cari-
cature of Achilles, who at night ill-uses Hector's
corpse by a similar trailing; but even this trait has
for us something offensive, something which inspires


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52 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
horror. It gives us a peep into the abysses of hatred.
With the same sensation perhaps we stand before
the bloody and insatiable self-laceration of two
Greek parties, as for example in the Corcyrean
revolution. When the victor, in a fight of the cities,
according to the law of warfare, executes the whole
male population and sells all the women and children
into slavery, we see, in the sanction of such a law,
that the Greek deemed it a positive necessity to
allow his hatred to break forth unimpeded; in such
moments the compressed and swollen feeling re-
lieved itself; the tiger bounded forth, a voluptuous
cruelty shone out of his fearful eye. Why had the
Greek sculptor to represent again and again war and
fights in innumerable repetitions, extended human
bodies whose sinews are tightened through hatred
or through the recklessness of triumph, fighters
wounded and writhing with pain, or the dying with
the last rattle in their throat? Why did the whole
Greek world exult in the fighting scenes of the
"Iliad"? I am afraid, we do not understand them
enough in "Greek fashion," and that we should
even shudder, if for once we did understand them
thus.
But what lies, as the mother-womb of the Hellenic,
behind the Homeric world? In the latter, by the
extremely artistic definiteness, and the calm and
purity of the lines we are already lifted far above
the purely material amalgamation: its colours, by
an artistic deception, appear lighter, milder, warmer;
its men, in this coloured, warm illumination, appear
better and more sympathetic—but where do we look,
if, no longer guided and protected by Homer's hand,


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homer's contest 53
we step backwards into the pre-Homeric world?
Only into night and horror, into the products of a
fancy accustomed to the horrible. What earthly
existence is reflected in the loathsome-awful theo-
gonian lore : a life swayed only by the children of the
night, strife, amorous desires, deception, age and
death. Let us imagine the suffocating atmosphere
of Hesiod's poem, still thickened and darkened and
without all the mitigations and purifications, which
poured over Hellas from Delphi and the numerous
seats of the gods! If we mix this thickened Boeotian
air with the grim voluptuousness of the Etruscans,
then such a reality would extort from us a world of
myths within which Uranos, Kronos and Zeus and
the struggles of the Titans would appear as a relief.
Combat in this brooding atmosphere is salvation and \
safety; the cruelty of victory is the summit of life's
glories. And just as in truth the idea of Greek law
has developed from murder and expiation of murder,
so also nobler Civilisation takes her first wreath of
victory from the altar of the expiation of murder.
Behind that bloody age stretches a wave-furrow deep
into Hellenic history. The names of Orpheus, of
Musseus, and their cults indicate to what conse-
quences the uninterrupted sight of a world of warfare
and cruelty led—to the loathing of existence, to the
conception of this existence as a punishment to be
borne to the end, to the belief in the identity of ex-
istence and indebtedness. But these particular con-
clusions are not specifically Hellenic; through them
Greece comes into contact with India and the Orient
generally. The Hellenic genius had ready yet an-
other answer to the question: what does a life of


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54 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
fighting and of victory mean? and gives this answer
in the whole breadth of Greek history.
In order to understand the latter we must start
from the fact that the Greek genius admitted the
existing fearful impulse, and deemed it justified;
whereas in the Orphic phase of thought was con-
tained the belief that life with such an impulse as
its root would not be worth living. Strife and the
pleasure of victory were acknowledged; and nothing
separates the Greek world more from ours than the
colouring, derived hence, of some ethical ideas, e. g. , of
Eris and of Envy.
When the traveller Pausanius during his wander-
ings through Greece visited the Helicon, a very old
copy of the first didactic poem of the Greeks," The
Works and Days " of Hesiod, was shown to him, in-
scribed upon plates of lead and severely damaged
by time and weather. However he recognised this
much, that, unlike the usual copies, it had not at its
head that little hymnus on Zeus, but began at once
with the declaration: "Two Eris-goddesses are on
earth. " This is one of the most noteworthy Hellenic
thoughts and worthy to be impressed on the new-
comer immediately at the entrance-gate of Greek
ethics. "One would like to praise the one Eris, just
as much as to blame the other, if one uses one's
reason. For these two goddesses have quite different
dispositions. For the one, the cruel one, furthers the
evil war and feud! No mortal likes her, but under
the yoke of need one pays honour to the burdensome
Eris, according to the decree of the immortals. She,
as the elder, gave birth to black night. Zeus the high-
ruling one, however, placed the other Eris upon the


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homer's contest 55
roots of the earth and among men as a much better
one. She urges even the unskilled man to work, and
if one who lacks property beholds another who is
rich, then he hastens to sow in similar fashion and to
plant and to put his house in order; the neighbour
vies with the neighbour who strives after fortune.
Good is this Eris to men. The potter also has a
grudge against the potter, and the carpenter against
the carpenter; the beggar envies the beggar, and the
singer the singer. "
The two last verses which treat of the odium figu-
linum appear to our scholars to be incomprehensible
in this place. According to their judgment the pre-
dicates: "grudge " and " envy " fit only the nature of
the evil Eris, and for this reason they do not hesitate
to designate these verses as spurious or thrown by
chance into this place. For that judgment however
a system of Ethics other than the Hellenic must have
inspired these scholars unawares; for in these verses
to the good Eris Aristotle finds no offence. And not
only Aristotle but the whole Greek antiquity thinks
of spite and envy otherwise than we do and agrees
with Hesiod, who first designates as an evil one that
Eris who leads men against one another to a hostile
war of extermination, and secondly praises another
Eris as the good one, who as jealousy, spite, envy, in-
cites men to activity but not to the action of war to
the knife but to the action of contest. The Greek is
envious and conceives of this quality not as a blemish,
but as the effect of a beneficent deity. What a gulf
of ethical judgment between us and him? Because
he is envious he also feels, with every superfluity of
honour, riches, splendour and fortune, the envious


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$6 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
eye of a god resting on himself, and he fears this
envy; in this case the latter reminds him of the
transitoriness of every human lot; he dreads his
very happiness and, sacrificing the best of it, he bows
before the divine envy. This conception does not
perhaps estrange him from his gods; their signifi-
cance on the contrary is expressed by the thought
that with them man in whose soul jealousy is en-
kindled against every other living being, is never
allowed to venture into contest. In the fight of
Thamyris with the Muses, of Marsyas with Apollo,
in the heart-moving fate of Niobe appears the hor-
rible opposition of the two powers, who must never
fight with one another, man and god.
The greater and more sublime however a Greek
is, the brighter in him appears the ambitious flame,
devouring everybody who runs with him on the same
track. Aristotle once made a list of such contests
on a large scale; among them is the most striking
instance how even a dead person can still incite a
living one to consuming jealousy; thus for example
Aristotle designates the relation between the Kolo-
phonian Xenophanes and Homer. We do not under-
stand this attack on the national hero of poetry in
all its strength, if we do not imagine, as later on also
with Plato, the root of this attack to be the ardent
desire to step into the place of the overthrown poet
and to inherit his fame. Every great Hellene hands
^on the torch of the contest; at every great virtue a
newlight is kindled. If the young Themistocles could
not sleep at the thought of the laurels of Miltiades so
his early awakened bent released itself only in the
long emulation with Aristides in that uniquely note-


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homer's contest 57
worthy, purely instinctive genius of his political
activity, which Thucydides describes. How charac-
teristic are both question and answer, when a notable
opponent of Pericles is asked, whether he or Pericles
was the better wrestler in the city, and he gives the
answer: "Even if I throw him down he denies that
he has fallen, attains his purpose and convinces those
who saw him fall. "
If one wants to see that sentiment unashamed in
its naive expressions, the sentiment as to the neces-
sity of contest lest the State's welfare be threatened,
one should think of the original meaning of Ostra-
cism, as for example the Ephesians pronounced it at
the banishment of Hermodor. "Among us nobody
shall be the best; if however someone is the best, then
let him be so elsewhere and among others. " Why v
should not someone be the best? Because with that )
the contest would fail, and the eternal life-basis of I
the Hellenic State would be endangered. Later on
Ostracism receives quite another position with regard
tp the contest; it is applied, when the danger be-
comes obvious that one of the great contesting poli-
ticians and party-leaders feels himself urged on in
the heat of the conflict towards harmful and destruc-
tive measures and dubious coups a"Mat. The original
sense of this peculiar institution however is not that
of a safety-valve but that of a stimulant. The all-
excelling individual was to be removed in order that
the contest of forces might re-awaken, a thought
which is hostile to the "exclusiveness" of genius
in the modern sense but which assumes that in
the natural order of things there are always several
geniuses which incite one another to action, as much
r


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58 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
also as they hold one another within the bounds
of moderation. That is the kernel of the Hellenic
contest-conception: it abominates autocracy, and
fears its dangers; it desires as a preventive against
the genius—a second genius.
- Every natural gift must develop itself by contest.
Thus the Hellenic national pedagogy demands,
whereas modern educators fear nothing as much as,
the unchaining of the so-called ambition. Here one
fears selfishness as the "evil in itself"—with the ex-
ception of the Jesuits, who agree with the Ancients
and who, possibly, for that reason, are the most effi-
cient educators of our time. They seem to believe
that Selfishness, i. e. , the individual element is only
the most powerful agens but that it obtains its char-
acter as " good " and "evil" essentially from the aims
towards which it strives. To the Ancients however
the aim of the agonistic education was the welfare
of the whole, of the civic society. Every Athenian
for instance was to cultivate his Ego in contest, so
far that it should be of the highest service to Athens
and should do the least harm. It was not unmea-
sured and immeasurable as modern ambition gener-
ally is; the youth thought of the welfare of his native
town when he vied with others in running, throwing
or singing; it was her glory that he wanted to in-
crease with his own; it was to his town's gods that
he dedicated the wreaths which the umpires as a
mark of honour set upon his head. Every Greek
from childhood felt within himself the burning wish
to be in the contest of the towns an instrument for
the welfare of his own town; in this his selfishness
was kindled into flame, by this his selfishness was


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homer's contest 59
bridled and restricted. Therefore the individuals in
antiquity were freer, because their aims were nearer
and more tangible. Modern man, on the contrary,
is everywhere hampered by infinity, like the fleet-
footed Achilles in the allegory of the Eleate Zeno:
infinity impedes him, he does not even overtake the
tortoise.
But as the youths to be educated were brought
up struggling against one another, so their educators
were in turn in emulation amongst themselves. Dis-
trustfully jealous, the great musical masters, Pindar
and Simonides, stepped side by side; in rivalry
the sophist, the higher teacher of antiquity meets
his fellow-sophist; even the most universal kind
of instruction, through the drama, was imparted to
the people only under the form of an enormous
wrestling of the great musical and dramatic artists.
How wonderful! " And even the artist has a grudge
against the artist! " And the modern man dislikes
in an artist nothing so much as the personal battle-
feeling, whereas the Greek recognises the artist
only in such a personal struggle.