Human All-Too-Human, Part 1


Page 33 of 70



209.

Joy in Old Age.—The thinker, as likewise the artist, who has put his best self into his works, feels an almost malicious joy when he sees how mind and body are being slowly damaged and destroyed by time, as if from a dark corner he were spying a thief at his money-chest, knowing all the time that it was empty and his treasures in safety.

210.

Quiet Fruitfulness.—The born aristocrats of the mind are not in too much of a hurry; their creations appear and fall from the tree on some quiet autumn evening, without being rashly desired, instigated, or pushed aside by new matter. The unceasing desire to create is vulgar, and betrays envy, jealousy, and ambition. If a man is something, it is not really necessary for him to do anything—and yet he does a great deal. There is a human species higher even than wie "productive" man.

211.

Achilles and Homer.—It is always like the case of Achilles and Homer,—the one has[Pg 190] the experiences and sensations, the other describes them. A genuine author only puts into words the feelings and adventures of others, he is an artist, and divines much from the little he has experienced. Artists are by no means creatures of great passion; but they frequently represent themselves as such with the unconscious feeling that their depicted passion will be better believed in if their own life gives credence to their experience in these affairs. They need only let themselves go, not control themselves, and give free play to their anger and their desires, and every one will immediately cry out, "How passionate he is!" But the deeply stirring passion that consumes and often destroys the individual is another matter: those who have really experienced it do not describe it in dramas, harmonies or romances. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, in so far as they are not artists, but that is a different thing.

212.

Old Doubts About the Effect of Art.—Should pity and fear really be unburdened through tragedy, as Aristotle would have it, so that the hearers return home colder and quieter? Should ghost-stories really make us less fearful and superstitious? In the case of certain physical processes, in the satisfaction of love, for instance, it is true that with the fulfilment of a need there follows an alleviation and temporary decrease in the impulse. But fear and pity are not in this sense the needs of particular organs[Pg 191] which require to be relieved. And in time every instinct is even strengthened by practice in its satisfaction, in spite of that periodical mitigation. It might be possible that in each single case pity and fear would be soothed and relieved by tragedy; nevertheless, they might, on the whole, be increased by tragic influences, and Plato would be right in saying that tragedy makes us altogether more timid and susceptible. The tragic poet himself would then of necessity acquire a gloomy and fearful view of the world, and a yielding, irritable, tearful soul; it would also agree with Plato's view if the tragic poets, and likewise the entire part of the community that derived particular pleasure from them, degenerated into ever greater licentiousness and intemperance. But what right, indeed, has our age to give an answer to that great question of Plato's as to the moral influence of art? If we even had art,—where have we an influence, any kind of an art-influence?

213.

Pleasure in Nonsense.—How can we take pleasure in nonsense? But wherever there is laughter in the world this is the case: it may even be said that almost everywhere where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only[Pg 192] imagined in jest), is a pleasure; for it temporarily liberates us from the yoke of the obligatory, suitable and experienced, in which we usually find our pitiless masters; we play and laugh when the expected (which generally causes fear and expectancy) happens without bringing any injury. It is the pleasure felt by slaves in the Saturnalian feasts.

214.

The Ennobling of Reality.—Through the fact that in the aphrodisiac impulse men discerned a godhead and with adoring gratitude felt it working within themselves, this emotion has in the course of time become imbued with higher conceptions, and has thereby been materially ennobled. Thus certain nations, by virtue of this art of idealisation, have created great aids to culture out of diseases,—the Greeks, for instance, who in earlier centuries suffered from great nervous epidemics (like epilepsy and St. Vitus' Dance), and developed out of them the splendid type of the Bacchante. The Greeks, however, enjoyed an astonishingly high degree of health—their secret was, to revere even disease as a god, if it only possessed power.

215.

Music.—Music by and for itself is not so portentous for our inward nature, so deeply moving, that it ought to be looked upon as the direct language of the feelings; but its ancient union with poetry has infused so much symbolism[Pg 193] into rhythmical movement, into loudness and softness of tone, that we now imagine it speaks directly to and comes from the inward nature. Dramatic music is only possible when the art of harmony has acquired an immense range of symbolical means, through song, opera, and a hundred attempts at description by sound. "Absolute music" is either form per se, in 'the rude condition of music, when playing in time and with various degrees of strength gives pleasure, or the symbolism of form which speaks to the understanding even without poetry, after the two arts were joined finally together after long development and the musical form had been woven about with threads of meaning and feeling. People who are backward in musical development can appreciate a piece of harmony merely as execution, whilst those who are advanced will comprehend it symbolically. No music is deep and full of meaning in itself, it does not speak of "will," of the "thing-in-itself"; that could be imagined by the intellect only in an age which had conquered for musical symbolism the entire range of inner life. It was the intellect itself that first gave this meaning to sound, just as it also gave meaning to the relation between lines and masses in architecture, but which in itself is quite foreign to mechanical laws.

216.

Gesture and Speech.—Older than speech is the imitation of gestures, which is carried on[Pg 194] unconsciously and which, in the general repression of the language of gesture and trained control of the muscles, is still so great that we cannot look at a face moved by emotion without feeling an agitation of our own face (it may be remarked that feigned yawning excites real yawning in any one who sees it). The imitated gesture leads the one who imitates back to the sensation it expressed in the face or body of the one imitated. Thus men learned to understand one another, thus the child still learns to understand the mother. Generally speaking, painful sensations may also have been expressed by gestures, and the pain which caused them (for instance, tearing the hair, beating the breast, forcible distortion and straining of the muscles of the face). On the other hand, gestures of joy were themselves joyful and lent themselves easily to the communication of the understanding; (laughter, as the expression of the feeling when being tickled, serves also for the expression of other pleasurable sensations). As soon as men understood each other by gestures, there could be established a symbolism of gestures; I mean, an understanding could be arrived at respecting the language of accents, so that first accent and gesture (to which it was symbolically added) were produced, and later on the accent alone. In former times there happened very frequently that which now happens in the development of music, especially of dramatic music,—while music, without explanatory dance and pantomime (language of gesture), is at first only empty sound, but by long familiarity with that[Pg 195] combination of music and movement the ear becomes schooled into instant interpretation of the figures of sound, and finally attains a height of quick understanding, where it has no longer any need of visible movement and understands the sound-poet without it. It is then called absolute music, that is music in which, without further help, everything is symbolically understood.



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