the satyr, like the idyllic shepherd of our more recent time, is the offspring of a longing after the primitive and the natural; but mark with what firmness and fearlessness the greek embraced the man of the woods, and again, how coyly and mawkishly the modern man dallied with the flattering picture of a tender, flute-playing, soft-natured shepherd! nature, on which as yet no knowledge has been at work, which maintains unbroken barriers to culture—this is what the greek saw in his satyr, which still was not on this account supposed to coincide with the ape. on the contrary: it was the archetype of man, the embodiment of his highest and strongest emotions, as the enthusiastic reveller enraptured by the proximity of his god, as the fellow-suffering companion in whom the suffering of the god repeats itself, as the herald of wisdom speaking from the very depths of nature, as the emblem of the sexual omnipotence of nature, which the greek was wont to contemplate with reverential awe. the satyr was something sublime and godlike: he could not but appear so, especially to the sad and wearied eye of the dionysian man. he would have been offended by our spurious tricked-up shepherd, while his eye dwelt with sublime satisfaction on the naked and unstuntedly magnificent characters of nature: here the illusion of culture was brushed away from the archetype of man; here the true man, the bearded satyr, revealed himself, who shouts joyfully to his god. before[pg 64] him the cultured man shrank to a lying caricature. schiller is right also with reference to these beginnings of tragic art: the chorus is a living bulwark against the onsets of reality, because it—the satyric chorus—portrays existence more truthfully, more realistically, more perfectly than the cultured man who ordinarily considers himself as the only reality. the sphere of poetry does not lie outside the world, like some fantastic impossibility of a poet's imagination: it seeks to be the very opposite, the unvarnished expression of truth, and must for this very reason cast aside the false finery of that supposed reality of the cultured man. the contrast between this intrinsic truth of nature and the falsehood of culture, which poses as the only reality, is similar to that existing between the eternal kernel of things, the thing in itself, and the collective world of phenomena. and even as tragedy, with its metaphysical comfort, points to the eternal life of this kernel of existence, notwithstanding the perpetual dissolution of phenomena, so the symbolism of the satyric chorus already expresses figuratively this primordial relation between the thing in itself and phenomenon. the idyllic shepherd of the modern man is but a copy of the sum of the illusions of culture which he calls nature; the dionysian greek desires truth and nature in their most potent form;—he sees himself metamorphosed into the satyr.

the revelling crowd of the votaries of dionysus rejoices, swayed by such moods and perceptions, the power of which transforms them before their[pg 65] own eyes, so that they imagine they behold themselves as reconstituted genii of nature, as satyrs. the later constitution of the tragic chorus is the artistic imitation of this natural phenomenon, which of course required a separation of the dionysian spectators from the enchanted dionysians. however, we must never lose sight of the fact that the public of the attic tragedy rediscovered itself in the chorus of the orchestra, that there was in reality no antithesis of public and chorus: for all was but one great sublime chorus of dancing and singing satyrs, or of such as allowed themselves to be represented by the satyrs. the schlegelian observation must here reveal itself to us in a deeper sense. the chorus is the "ideal spectator"[5] in so far as it is the only beholder,[6] the beholder of the visionary world of the scene. a public of spectators, as known to us, was unknown to the greeks. in their theatres the terraced structure of the spectators' space rising in concentric arcs enabled every one, in the strictest sense, to overlook the entire world of culture around him, and in surfeited contemplation to imagine himself a chorist. according to this view, then, we may call the chorus in its primitive stage in proto-tragedy, a self-mirroring of the dionysian man: a phenomenon which may be best exemplified by the process of the actor, who, if he be truly gifted, sees hovering before his eyes with almost tangible perceptibility the character he is to represent. the satyric chorus is first of all a[pg 66] vision of the dionysian throng, just as the world of the stage is, in turn, a vision of the satyric chorus: the power of this vision is great enough to render the eye dull and insensible to the impression of "reality," to the presence of the cultured men occupying the tiers of seats on every side. the form of the greek theatre reminds one of a lonesome mountain-valley: the architecture of the scene appears like a luminous cloud-picture which the bacchants swarming on the mountains behold from the heights, as the splendid encirclement in the midst of which the image of dionysus is revealed to them.

owing to our learned conception of the elementary artistic processes, this artistic proto-phenomenon, which is here introduced to explain the tragic chorus, is almost shocking: while nothing can be more certain than that the poet is a poet only in that he beholds himself surrounded by forms which live and act before him, into the innermost being of which his glance penetrates. by reason of a strange defeat in our capacities, we modern men are apt to represent to ourselves the ?sthetic proto-phenomenon as too complex and abstract. for the true poet the metaphor is not a rhetorical figure, but a vicarious image which actually hovers before him in place of a concept. the character is not for him an aggregate composed of a studied collection of particular traits, but an irrepressibly live person appearing before his eyes, and differing only from the corresponding vision of the painter by its ever continued life and action. why is it that[pg 67] homer sketches much more vividly[7] than all the other poets? because he contemplates[8] much more. we talk so abstractly about poetry, because we are all wont to be bad poets. at bottom the ?sthetic phenomenon is simple: let a man but have the faculty of perpetually seeing a lively play and of constantly living surrounded by hosts of spirits, then he is a poet: let him but feel the impulse to transform himself and to talk from out the bodies and souls of others, then he is a dramatist.

the dionysian excitement is able to impart to a whole mass of men this artistic faculty of seeing themselves surrounded by such a host of spirits, with whom they know themselves to be inwardly one. this function of the tragic chorus is the dramatic proto-phenomenon: to see one's self transformed before one's self, and then to act as if one had really entered into another body, into another character. this function stands at the beginning of the development of the drama. here we have something different from the rhapsodist, who does not blend with his pictures, but only sees them, like the painter, with contemplative eye outside of him; here we actually have a surrender of the individual by his entering into another nature. moreover this phenomenon appears in the form of an epidemic: a whole throng feels itself metamorphosed in this wise. hence it is that the dithyramb is essentially different from every other variety of the choric song. the virgins, who with[pg 68] laurel twigs in their hands solemnly proceed to the temple of apollo and sing a processional hymn, remain what they are and retain their civic names: the dithyrambic chorus is a chorus of transformed beings, whose civic past and social rank are totally forgotten: they have become the timeless servants of their god that live aloof from all the spheres of society. every other variety of the choric lyric of the hellenes is but an enormous enhancement of the apollonian unit-singer: while in the dithyramb we have before us a community of unconscious actors, who mutually regard themselves as transformed among one another.

this enchantment is the prerequisite of all dramatic art. in this enchantment the dionysian reveller sees himself as a satyr, and as satyr he in turn beholds the god, that is, in his transformation he sees a new vision outside him as the apollonian consummation of his state. with this new vision the drama is complete.

according to this view, we must understand greek tragedy as the dionysian chorus, which always disburdens itself anew in an apollonian world of pictures. the choric parts, therefore, with which tragedy is interlaced, are in a manner the mother-womb of the entire so-called dialogue, that is, of the whole stage-world, of the drama proper. in several successive outbursts does this primordial basis of tragedy beam forth the vision of the drama, which is a dream-phenomenon throughout, and, as such, epic in character: on the other hand, however, as objectivation of a[pg 69] dionysian state, it does not represent the apollonian redemption in appearance, but, conversely, the dissolution of the individual and his unification with primordial existence. accordingly, the drama is the apollonian embodiment of dionysian perceptions and influences, and is thereby separated from the epic as by an immense gap.

the chorus of greek tragedy, the symbol of the mass of the people moved by dionysian excitement, is thus fully explained by our conception of it as here set forth. whereas, being accustomed to the position of a chorus on the modern stage, especially an operatic chorus, we could never comprehend why the tragic chorus of the greeks should be older, more primitive, indeed, more important than the "action" proper,—as has been so plainly declared by the voice of tradition; whereas, furthermore, we could not reconcile with this traditional paramount importance and primitiveness the fact of the chorus' being composed only of humble, ministering beings; indeed, at first only of goatlike satyrs; whereas, finally, the orchestra before the scene was always a riddle to us; we have learned to comprehend at length that the scene, together with the action, was fundamentally and originally conceived only as a vision, that the only reality is just the chorus, which of itself generates the vision and speaks thereof with the entire symbolism of dancing, tone, and word. this chorus beholds in the vision its lord and master dionysus, and is thus for ever the serving chorus: it sees how he, the god, suffers and glorifies himself, and therefore does not itself act.[pg 70] but though its attitude towards the god is throughout the attitude of ministration, this is nevertheless the highest expression, the dionysian expression of nature, and therefore, like nature herself, the chorus utters oracles and wise sayings when transported with enthusiasm: as fellow-sufferer it is also the sage proclaiming truth from out the heart of nature. thus, then, originates the fantastic figure, which seems so shocking, of the wise and enthusiastic satyr, who is at the same time "the dumb man" in contrast to the god: the image of nature and her strongest impulses, yea, the symbol of nature, and at the same time the herald of her art and wisdom: musician, poet, dancer, and visionary in one person.

agreeably to this view, and agreeably to tradition, dionysus, the proper stage-hero and focus of vision, is not at first actually present in the oldest period of tragedy, but is only imagined as present: i.e., tragedy is originally only "chorus" and not "drama." later on the attempt is made to exhibit the god as real and to display the visionary figure together with its glorifying encirclement before the eyes of all; it is here that the "drama" in the narrow sense of the term begins. to the dithyrambic chorus is now assigned the task of exciting the minds of the hearers to such a pitch of dionysian frenzy, that, when the tragic hero appears on the stage, they do not behold in him, say, the unshapely masked man, but a visionary figure, born as it were of their own ecstasy. let us picture admetes thinking[pg 71] in profound meditation of his lately departed wife alcestis, and quite consuming himself in spiritual contemplation thereof—when suddenly the veiled figure of a woman resembling her in form and gait is led towards him: let us picture his sudden trembling anxiety, his agitated comparisons, his instinctive conviction—and we shall have an analogon to the sensation with which the spectator, excited to dionysian frenzy, saw the god approaching on the stage, a god with whose sufferings he had already become identified. he involuntarily transferred the entire picture of the god, fluttering magically before his soul, to this masked figure and resolved its reality as it were into a phantasmal unreality. this is the apollonian dream-state, in which the world of day is veiled, and a new world, clearer, more intelligible, more striking than the former, and nevertheless more shadowy, is ever born anew in perpetual change before our eyes. we accordingly recognise in tragedy a thorough-going stylistic contrast: the language, colour, flexibility and dynamics of the dialogue fall apart in the dionysian lyrics of the chorus on the one hand, and in the apollonian dream-world of the scene on the other, into entirely separate spheres of expression. the apollonian appearances, in which dionysus objectifies himself, are no longer "ein ewiges meer, ein wechselnd weben, ein glühend leben,"[9] as is the music of the chorus,[pg 72] they are no longer the forces merely felt, but not condensed into a picture, by which the inspired votary of dionysus divines the proximity of his god: the clearness and firmness of epic form now speak to him from the scene, dionysus now no longer speaks through forces, but as an epic hero, almost in the language of homer.