let the attentive friend picture to himself purely and simply, according to his experiences, the effect of a true musical tragedy. i think i have so portrayed the phenomenon of this effect in both its phases that he will now be able to interpret his own experiences. for he will recollect that with regard to the myth which passed before him he felt himself exalted to a kind of omniscience, as if his visual faculty were no longer merely a surface faculty, but capable of penetrating into the interior, and as if he now saw before him, with the aid of music, the ebullitions of the will, the conflict of motives, and the swelling stream of the passions, almost sensibly visible, like a plenitude of actively moving lines and figures, and could thereby dip into the most tender secrets of unconscious emotions. while he thus becomes conscious of the highest exaltation of his instincts for conspicuousness and transfiguration, he nevertheless feels with equal[pg 168] definitiveness that this long series of apollonian artistic effects still does not generate the blissful continuance in will-less contemplation which the plasticist and the epic poet, that is to say, the strictly apollonian artists, produce in him by their artistic productions: to wit, the justification of the world of the individuatio attained in this contemplation,—which is the object and essence of apollonian art. he beholds the transfigured world of the stage and nevertheless denies it. he sees before him the tragic hero in epic clearness and beauty, and nevertheless delights in his annihilation. he comprehends the incidents of the scene in all their details, and yet loves to flee into the incomprehensible. he feels the actions of the hero to be justified, and is nevertheless still more elated when these actions annihilate their originator. he shudders at the sufferings which will befall the hero, and yet anticipates therein a higher and much more overpowering joy. he sees more extensively and profoundly than ever, and yet wishes to be blind. whence must we derive this curious internal dissension, this collapse of the apollonian apex, if not from the dionysian spell, which, though apparently stimulating the apollonian emotions to their highest pitch, can nevertheless force this superabundance of apollonian power into its service? tragic myth is to be understood only as a symbolisation of dionysian wisdom by means of the expedients of apollonian art: the mythus conducts the world of phenomena to its boundaries, where it denies itself, and seeks to flee back again into the bosom of the true and only reality; where it then, like[pg 169] isolde, seems to strike up its metaphysical swan-song:—
in des wonnemeeres
wogendem schwall,
in der duft-wellen
t?nendem schall,
in des weltathems
wehendem all—
ertrinken—versinken
unbewusst—h?chste lust![24]
we thus realise to ourselves in the experiences of the truly ?sthetic hearer the tragic artist himself when he proceeds like a luxuriously fertile divinity of individuation to create his figures (in which sense his work can hardly be understood as an "imitation of nature")—and when, on the other hand, his vast dionysian impulse then absorbs the entire world of phenomena, in order to anticipate beyond it, and through its annihilation, the highest artistic primal joy, in the bosom of the primordial unity. of course, our ?sthetes have nothing to say about this return in fraternal union of the two art-deities to the original home, nor of either the apollonian or dionysian excitement of the hearer,[pg 170] while they are indefatigable in characterising the struggle of the hero with fate, the triumph of the moral order of the world, or the disburdenment of the emotions through tragedy, as the properly tragic: an indefatigableness which makes me think that they are perhaps not ?sthetically excitable men at all, but only to be regarded as moral beings when hearing tragedy. never since aristotle has an explanation of the tragic effect been proposed, by which an ?sthetic activity of the hearer could be inferred from artistic circumstances. at one time fear and pity are supposed to be forced to an alleviating discharge through the serious procedure, at another time we are expected to feel elevated and inspired at the triumph of good and noble principles, at the sacrifice of the hero in the interest of a moral conception of things; and however certainly i believe that for countless men precisely this, and only this, is the effect of tragedy, it as obviously follows therefrom that all these, together with their interpreting ?sthetes, have had no experience of tragedy as the highest art. the pathological discharge, the catharsis of aristotle, which philologists are at a loss whether to include under medicinal or moral phenomena, recalls a remarkable anticipation of goethe. "without a lively pathological interest," he says, "i too have never yet succeeded in elaborating a tragic situation of any kind, and hence i have rather avoided than sought it. can it perhaps have been still another of the merits of the ancients that the deepest pathos was with them merely ?sthetic play, whereas with us the truth of nature must[pg 171] co-operate in order to produce such a work?" we can now answer in the affirmative this latter profound question after our glorious experiences, in which we have found to our astonishment in the case of musical tragedy itself, that the deepest pathos can in reality be merely ?sthetic play: and therefore we are justified in believing that now for the first time the proto-phenomenon of the tragic can be portrayed with some degree of success. he who now will still persist in talking only of those vicarious effects proceeding from ultra-?sthetic spheres, and does not feel himself raised above the pathologically-moral process, may be left to despair of his ?sthetic nature: for which we recommend to him, by way of innocent equivalent, the interpretation of shakespeare after the fashion of gervinus, and the diligent search for poetic justice.
thus with the re-birth of tragedy the ?sthetic hearer is also born anew, in whose place in the theatre a curious quid pro quo was wont to sit with half-moral and half-learned pretensions,—the "critic." in his sphere hitherto everything has been artificial and merely glossed over with a semblance of life. the performing artist was in fact at a loss what to do with such a critically comporting hearer, and hence he, as well as the dramatist or operatic composer who inspired him, searched anxiously for the last remains of life in a being so pretentiously barren and incapable of enjoyment. such "critics," however, have hitherto constituted the public; the student, the school-boy, yea, even the most harmless womanly creature,[pg 172] were already unwittingly prepared by education and by journals for a similar perception of works of art. the nobler natures among the artists counted upon exciting the moral-religious forces in such a public, and the appeal to a moral order of the world operated vicariously, when in reality some powerful artistic spell should have enraptured the true hearer. or again, some imposing or at all events exciting tendency of the contemporary political and social world was presented by the dramatist with such vividness that the hearer could forget his critical exhaustion and abandon himself to similar emotions, as, in patriotic or warlike moments, before the tribune of parliament, or at the condemnation of crime and vice:—an estrangement of the true aims of art which could not but lead directly now and then to a cult of tendency. but here there took place what has always taken place in the case of factitious arts, an extraordinary rapid depravation of these tendencies, so that for instance the tendency to employ the theatre as a means for the moral education of the people, which in schiller's time was taken seriously, is already reckoned among the incredible antiquities of a surmounted culture. while the critic got the upper hand in the theatre and concert-hall, the journalist in the school, and the press in society, art degenerated into a topic of conversation of the most trivial kind, and ?sthetic criticism was used as the cement of a vain, distracted, selfish and moreover piteously unoriginal sociality, the significance of which is suggested by the schopenhauerian parable of the porcupines, so that there[pg 173] has never been so much gossip about art and so little esteem for it. but is it still possible to have intercourse with a man capable of conversing on beethoven or shakespeare? let each answer this question according to his sentiments: he will at any rate show by his answer his conception of "culture," provided he tries at least to answer the question, and has not already grown mute with astonishment.
on the other hand, many a one more nobly and delicately endowed by nature, though he may have gradually become a critical barbarian in the manner described, could tell of the unexpected as well as totally unintelligible effect which a successful performance of lohengrin, for example, exerted on him: except that perhaps every warning and interpreting hand was lacking to guide him; so that the incomprehensibly heterogeneous and altogether incomparable sensation which then affected him also remained isolated and became extinct, like a mysterious star after a brief brilliancy. he then divined what the ?sthetic hearer is.
