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Art and Identity - Nietzsche
Art and Identity - Nietzsche
B3317.V359313 2005
193—dc22
2005051899
and the character of the artistic image as appearance (as phantasm, specter,
eidolon, semblance, simulacrum, Schein …). This entails the hierarchical sub-
ordination of sensible knowledge and the emotions to intellectual knowledge.
In the dialogue Io, Plato adds another line of argument to the aesthetic position
taken in The Republic: the rhapsodist and the poet are not “technicians,” they
do not speak with well-grounded knowledge, and the only possible source of
their utterance is a mysterious force that inspires them, a divine madness. This
is generally read as a statement that simply parallels The Republic: imitation is
condemned in the Io not on the basis that it makes copies of copies but because
it is an activity that cannot be fitted into a rational framework. The third book
of The Republic takes yet another tack: dramatic imitation is deprecated because
it entails the identification of the imitator with base and unworthy persons or
attitudes (Rep. 3.395d ff). But apart from this “moral” line of argument, taken
up again in book 10 with the one about a copy of a copy, there is a more radical
and global thread of argument that links the discourse of the Republic to that
of the Io in a more coherent fashion. The impossibility of defining poetry as a
techne, which is the conclusion of the Io and may be considered as a prelude to
the “condemnation” in the Republic, counts heavily against art primarily be-
cause it flouts the division of social roles.
But perhaps, I said, you would affirm it [the imitative, that is, the dramatic,
type of poetry] to be ill-suited to our polity, because there is no twofold or
manifold man among us, since every man does one thing… . If a man then, it
seems, who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and
imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself the poems
which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy
man and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there
is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to
arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring
myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool.3
It is true that right after this Plato appears to limit his condemnation once
again to imitations that lead to identification with what is most low and vile.4
But these lines allude to a more general and fundamental reason for condemn-
ing imitative art, a reason already adduced earlier in very explicit terms:
not even the poets themselves are able to produce good imitations, either
tragic or comic], so as to be incapable of imitating many things or of doing
the things themselves of which the imitations are likenesses.5
In the Platonic vision of the state, “there is no man of that kind … nor is
it lawful for such a man to arise”—a man, that is, who evades the logic of the
division of labor. The division of labor corresponds to an essential character of
human nature. There is no man capable of stepping outside himself and sinking
into other roles, other individualities; if it appears that there is, it happens only
in the realm of imitation and poetic fiction. But this weds the condemnation
of imitation as fiction and as a copy of a copy to the “technical” argument of
the Io by establishing a nexus between the true reality of human nature and the
division of labor. For that matter, in the Io itself this nexus is clearly articulated:
the reason it is impossible to define poetry in technical terms is the fact that the
appearance it produces causes the poet and the rhapsodist themselves, prior
even to the listener, to be transported outside themselves, so that it is no longer
they who are disposing words and images according to rules, but words and
images that are disposing of them. Thus poetry presents itself, in our experience
of it, as a sort of autonomous power of appearance, or—we might say—of the
signifier, a power that manifests itself precisely by transporting us beyond the
bounds of our “real” condition.6 This is why it cannot be theorized and reduced
to rules as a techne can.
The irreducibility of poetry to the model of the division of labor7 in this last
sense is thus rooted in the fact that poetry, as we experience it, is per se, consti-
tutively, a negation of the division of roles, a violation of the essential segmenta-
tion of human nature. Even when he does narrow his condemnation of poetic
imitation by sparing the narrative and mixed genres (on which, however, he
sets moral restrictions concerning the kinds of persons and states of mind they
may represent), Plato’s essential model of poetry is always dramatic representa-
tion, the kind that transports individuals outside themselves. It is only because
narrative and mixed poetry also ultimately imply transport outside oneself (the
rhapsodist referred to in the Io sings and narrates but does not actually do tragic
or comic theater), that it is necessary to set moral restrictions on the type of
events and personages they can represent.8 Even the “natural propensity” of the
poet for the sphere of the emotions rather than for the intelligent and composed
character9 has more to do with what we might call the ecstatic or disidentifying
essence of poetry than it does with his desire to please the audience. The intelli-
gent and composed character, “always similar to himself,” is not easy to imitate
Art and Identity: On the Relevance of Nietzsche’s Aesthetics
appearance and the negation of identity and social roles is what the Nietzschean
aesthetics is all about. I am far from claiming that we may speak of “the aes-
thetics of Nietzsche” as a coherent, unitary, and easily discernible whole. But
even the questions that such an expression immediately provokes form part, or
characterize the content of the problematic “Nietzschean aesthetics.” The main
reason for this is that the outline of the aesthetic problem grows progressively
more blurred as Nietzsche’s thought moves from The Birth of Tragedy, which is
still a book “on aesthetics,” to the reflections on art and artists in Human, All
Too Human, and on to the notes in the Nachlass and “the will to power as art.”
There is only one satisfactory way to account for this: my hypothesis is that
Nietzsche’s original model of aesthetic experience was narrowly based on the
problem of tragedy and the word-music relationship and that it evolved as his
critique of Platonic-Christian metaphysics and the civilization grounded on it
grew more radical. When he was a young man, his belief in “the art of our works
of art”10 had gone hand in hand with his faith that tragedy was being reborn
in the Wagnerian musical revolution. But as his critique expands, it draws art
into the same field of force as metaphysics, morality, and religion: art too is an
aspect of nihilism, one of those phenomena to which by now we have severed
our ties. Yet if it is clear in Human, All Too Human and his subsequent writ-
ing that the art of our works of art cannot be the model, or even the point of
departure, for a new tragic civilization, it is no less clear that art as it has been
determined in the European tradition has an ambiguous character and that not
everything in it is destined to perish with the devaluation of the highest values.
That is why art still features so prominently in the works of Nietzsche’s matu-
rity, from Zarathustra to the late notes for The Will to Power. The fact is that a
Dionysian ember still glows in art, despite all the mystifications and moralizing
misinterpretations that Nietzsche lays bare in his analysis, and the renewal of
tragic civilization depends on fanning it back to life. “Incipit tragoedia” is the
heading of the last aphorism of the fourth book of The Gay Science, in which
Zarathustra is first proclaimed.
Yet everything said to this point still concerns the “philological” problem of
defining a Nietzschean aesthetics—the problem of isolating a nucleus of propo-
sitions regarding art in Nietzsche’s thought and establishing their relationship
with his other doctrines and their development. From the perspective that in-
terests me here, it is less important to achieve such a reconstruction than it is to
sharpen our focus on the characteristic connection, explicitly theorized in full
as early as The Birth of Tragedy, between aesthetic appearance and the negation
of identity.
Art and Identity: On the Relevance of Nietzsche’s Aesthetics
not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature, which
has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated celebrates once more her rec-
onciliation with her lost son, man… . Now the slave is a free man; now
all the rigid, hostile barriers that necessity, caprice, or “impudent conven-
tion” have fixed between man and man are broken. Now, with the gospel of
universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and
fused with his neighbor, but as one with him, as if the veil of Maya had been
torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the mysterious
primordial unity.11
The heart of the festivals of Dionysus consisted almost everywhere “in ex-
travagant sexual licentiousness, whose waves overwhelmed all family life and
its venerable traditions.”12 Nietzsche distinguishes between the “barbaric Dio-
nysian” of the original Thracian founders of the cult and the “Hellenic Diony-
sian,” and although the remark quoted refers exclusively to the former, within
a few lines he asserts that at a certain point similar instincts penetrated to the
core of Greekness as well. The Dionysian is actualized when man is reconciled
with nature and with the rest of mankind in primal unity. This can only come
about through a violent break with the “venerable traditions” on which society
is built, above all the principium individuationis and all it entails.
Everything said about the Dionysian applies to the tragic as well—for the
tragic is not the balanced synthesis of the Dionysian and the Apollonian that
a number of explicit statements by Nietzsche appear to suggest. In The Birth
Art and Identity: On the Relevance of Nietzsche’s Aesthetics
Should our analysis have established that the Apollinian element in tragedy
has by means of its illusion gained a complete victory over the primordial
Dionysian element of music, making music subservient to its aims, namely,
to make the drama as vivid as possible—it would certainly be necessary to
add a very important qualification: at the most essential point this Apollinian
illusion is broken and annihilated. The drama that, with the aid of music, un-
folds itself before us with such inwardly illumined distinctness in all its move-
ments and figures, as if we saw the texture coming into being on the loom
as the shuttle flies to and fro—attains as a whole an effect that transcends all
Apollinian artistic effects. In the total effect of tragedy, the Dionysian predom-
inates once again. Tragedy closes with a sound which could never come from
the realm of Apollinian art. And thus the Apollinian illusion reveals itself as
what it really is—the veiling during the performance of the tragedy of the
real Dionysian effect; but the latter is so powerful that it ends by forcing the
Apollinian drama itself into a sphere where it begins to speak with Dionysian
wisdom and even denies itself and its Apollinian visibility. Thus the intricate
relation of the Apollinian and the Dionysian in tragedy may really be symbol-
ized by a fraternal union of the two deities: Dionysus speaks the language of
Apollo and Apollo, finally, the language of Dionysus, and so the highest goal
of tragedy and of all art is attained.14
The two principles, which were compared in chapter 1 to the male and female
elements in procreation, have become brothers here. But their brotherhood
is not in the least one of equals: Dionysus may indeed speak the language of