Nietzsche on Art

Nietzsche on Art

“The basic transformative impulse known to the human experience.” (Twilight of the Idols, p. 24) This, the approach Nietzsche takes to art, denies the interpretations of Kant and Schopenhauer in which “our interest and response to the beautiful is altogether separate from our practical interests.” (Nussbaum 55) For Nietzsche art is something inextricably entangled with our practical lives. It is not a temporary escape from our experience of a dismal and meaningless existence. Art is instead a way for human beings to bring meaning into a world that would otherwise be intolerable. It is, in a way, the reason for living.

In the broadest sense art represents “the human being’s power to create an order in the midst of disorder, to make up a meaning where nature herself does not supply one.” (Nussbaum 54) Nietzsche establishes this idea in his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, through an analysis of Greek Tragedy and the two conflicting artistic impulses (and often these ideas take other roles), the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the synthesis of which makes art possible. This essay will first examine the state of the world without art, as recognized by the Greeks. It will then examine both the Apollonian and Dionysian natures that allow us to create art. Finally, it will examine the way in which art can be our redemption.

The Greeks were able to create art in the form of tragedy because they “knew and felt the horror of existence.” (The Birth of Tragedy, p. 9) This is illustrated by Nietzsche through reference to the Greek myth of King Midas and the god Selenius. Selenius is captured by the human king and forced to answer the question ‘what is best and most desirable for man?’ The god responds “What is best of all is beyond your reach forever: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you – is to quickly die.” (BT 8) This myth represents the Greek realization of the two paramount, albeit depressing, realities of human life: meaninglessness and suffering.
For Nietzsche there is no meaning inherent in nature for us to pursue. We live in a world filled with constant change. In Plato’s words it is a world not of “being,” but of “becoming.” We don’t see things in the world as finished products, but as travelers moving towards various conclusions. Children are on their way to adulthood, buildings are on their way to collapse, and our scientific pursuits are on their way to disproof. Everything in this world is transient, and in that transience resists adherence to permanent principles. As such, the world is only “incompletely comprehensible.” Man often sees what he cannot explain. His rules are fraught with exceptions. These engender what Schopenhauer calls a “terrible awe that seizes upon man, when he is suddenly unable to account for the cognitive forms of a phenomenon.” (BT3) Humans come into the world without a rule book or an instruction manual. Nature has left unanswered many of our most burning questions. “What should I do?” “How should I live?” “Why am I here?”

To add insult to injury, we navigate this chaotic world in a state of suffering. We are constantly struggling to survive, or to better our position in a world were nothing will stay in place for long. In a sense, we can get no peace. The Greeks were right, it seems, to view life in this world with horror. How is one to live knowing these things to be true? It is difficult for one to imagine climbing out of bed in light of these weighty damnations.
But there is hope for us, and Nietzsche sees this hope in art. Art can be our answer in this chaotic world. Human beings can use art to bring meaning into our world, and though we may still suffer, that suffering is much more bearable when it is given purpose.

The Apollonian and Dionysian natures are in opposition. The former represents an appreciation of order, light and clarity. It is experienced by the individual aware of his individuality. It is manifested in the world as the “serene sense of proportion” found in the static art of sculpture and in the mind by images and symbols. The Dionysian represents the beauty of chaos and drunkenness or madness. It is experienced by the individual lost in the excitement of the Primal Unity of the world, temporarily unaware of himself as an individual unit. It is “that flood which breaks through all restraints in the Dionysian festivals and which finds it’s artistic expression in music.” It is manifested in the world as music and in the mind as will. In short, the best way to capture the essence of the two ideas is to consider the difference between enjoying a stature and enjoying a song. For Nietzsche these natures come together in the highest expression of art in tragic drama. As we will see, life affirming art needs a script (the Apollonian) and a soundtrack (the Dionysian).

Nietzsche’s explanation of the Apollonian nature begins with an insightful example. The Apollonian aspect of art is a lot like dreaming. This example is instructive in two points. First, the dream world is much different than the real world. In the dream world there are no loose ends, and no questions. All is exposed to the Apollonian light. “In our dreams we delight in the immediate apprehension of form; all forms speak to us; none are unimportant; none are superfluous.” (BT 2) We don’t feel the need to ask questions in our dreams, at least, not while we are having them. In this way the dream is analogous to a piece of artwork. In art the artist creates the representation of the world himself and exposes it in a meaningful way. All that the artist presents in the artwork is important, and is there for a reason. This is because the world presented in the art work was put together by a human being in an ordered way. Each line on the canvas, unlike each tree in the forest, is there for a reason. There are no loose ends at the close of a Greek Tragedy, each character has his role, and fits into his place.

Secondly, the dreamer chooses to continue dreaming. “It is a dream. I will dream on.” (BT 10) The visions in the dream are analogous to apollonian art, which places its emphasis on the love of appearances. Although the dreamer is aware the dream is fictitious, he still cares about what is going on in the dream world. Analogously, the artist cares about the art. The artist experiences in art, as in dreams, the “whole divine comedy of life… not like mere shadows on a wall – for in these scenes he lives and suffers.” (BT 2) When we watch a film (if it’s good) we care about the ending and the characters. Knowing that the movie is not real does not preclude us from crying at the ending.

However, art is not complete if it only incorporates the Apollonian. Nietzsche cannot argue that art is a driving and transformative force behind all life if we merely watch and enjoy the play. Only when art correctly balances the Dionysian with the Apollonian does it act as a force in the world (and as such really is art). The Dionysian plays two important roles in Nietzsche’s understanding. First, it is the nature that gives birth to the creative activity that yields art. Secondly, it is the nature that allows art to effect the audience in a meaningful way. It allows us to give our lives their highest dignity: “our significance as works of art.” We will see that in both cases the Dionysian manifests itself in terms of a “fundamental mood” obtained by the artist at creation and shared with the audience at appreciation. (BT 17)

In the first role, it is the mood of chaotic creativity that gives birth to art. Before there was Starry Night, there was Van Gogh’s inspiration. This inspiration comes in the form of an irrational “intuition and ecstasy that are the only authentic modes of artistic creation.” (Stern 44) It would be hard to argue that Van Gogh was prompted toward painting by a rational calculation of the profits it would secure him. In fact, given the dismal rejection (during his life) of nearly every piece of artwork he ever created, such a calculation would indeed prove he was privy to the irrational and insane. Instead, it seems rational on our part, to apply here what the German dramatist Schiller describes as a musical mood. “A certain musical mood of mind precedes, and only after this ensues the poetical idea.” (BT14) Van Gogh was overcome by a feeling, not a thought.

It is important to note that the Dionysian mood is not characterized by a stroke of genius in the creation of the artwork’s form. The mood is not the sudden realization of what the finished product should be. It is not imagery or form that comes to the artist for these have a rational component, but a feeling that cannot be expressed fully in language. Purely Dionysian expression is limited to music. However, any valuable Apollonian art is born in the Dionysian mood, as we will see later with Greek Tragedies.

Let us then, in understanding the second role of the Dionysian (its ability to move the audience) consider, as Nietzsche does quite beautifully, the effect of music on human beings. The prime example is that of revelers who lose themselves in the excitement of a Dionysian festival. To do Nietzsche justice here requires he be quoted at length:

“Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice, or “shameless fashion” have erected between man and man, are broken down. Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbor, but as one with him … In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air. His very gestures bespeak enchantment … He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy, like to the gods whom he saw walking about in his dreams. He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art … The noblest clay, the most costly marble, man, is here kneaded and cut.” (BT4)

We are elevated by music to passion, to frenzy. We are caught by “the emotional power of the tone, the uniform flow of the melos, and the utterly incomparable flow of the melos” and thrown towards something fleeting that escapes our so limited linguistic and rational abilities. (BT7) The enchantment brought about by music entices a lust for life and an empowerment of the will that can be contained even after the music stops. In this way the Dionysian gives art its ability to elicit response in our empirical world; it supplies art with the transformative impulse that causes it to be so connected to our practical existence.

Dionysian art, while primary, is not sufficient to achieve art’s meaning in the world. Nietzsche argues for a balance. It is easy to see why this is necessary. Yes, music is empowering, indeed it elicits a response. Without Apollonian forms, however, to help one interpret its meaning in an empirical way, the meaning, like the music itself, will be fleeting. This is because of music’s distance from our empirical reality. The two natures must be synthesized to be truly meaningful, and this is most effectively done through drama.

Consider listening to, and appreciating, a symphony. While Beethoven has succeeded in making me feel strongly, I am left grasping at straws how to conceive of this feeling in words or actions. “In what form does music appear in the mirror of symbolism? It appears as will…” But while I may be moved in an abstract way by its beauty, I can divulge no rational meaning from the experience. I am unable to extract any advice on how I should live my life from the symphony. Without Apollonian symbols (visual or literary) it does not change my world. Inversely, to appreciate a statue I enjoy its aesthetic beauty. I may stand in awe of its order and craftsmanship, and perhaps even learn something about the character it represents or human anatomy, but it would be highly unusual for its presence in a room to drive me to dance, or conduce any other sort of physical reaction.

In Greek Tragedy, however, we see at once the apollonian in the poetry and the plot, and the Dionysian in the music and the acting. They are combined in the way that music gives birth to the plot (ie the ‘symbols’ or words and images). Music reveals itself to the writer “as a symbolic dream picture.” (BT 14) We can understand good Drama, then, as a dream written down by an artist as a reaction to a piece of music (or musical mood) that is itself a reflection of the Primal Unity of human beings. Thus, Nietzsche calls drama a reflection of a reflection.

By watching a piece of drama, built on “the articulation of a fundamental mood, or what we would call style of life” we are both inspired to live and given something to aspire towards. (Stern 45) The hero of a fiction embodies a symbol that I can emulate, and the Dionysian force behind the work supplies the will to do so. Because the play is built on a fundamental mood that everyone who watches it is left with, it is able to create, in a social way, collective understandings including values and aspirations. Greek Tragedy took the collective mood of a people, added to it symbols and manifested it as a work of drama that supplied them a meaning. Certain deeds, as portrayed as valiant and daring in the drama, for instance, were inspiring for all in the audience, and became valued by the society. The society was given common heroes, who people aspired to become.

The fact that these dramas portrayed fictitious events was not important. The supplied values that became real and common. These common understandings that art created filled the void that nature supplied. Just as the dream that we know is unreal can still have meaning for us, so to can the striving towards an ideal have meaning for us. The most important function of art is its use as a transfigurative mirror. In striving for the “style of life” put forth in the work of art, one can fulfill that greatest - though fleeting and fragile - possibility of humanity, to create oneself as a work of art.