ModernGermanLiterature18801950

94 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

the union otapollinisch and dionysisch generates art. Apollo is form
plastic art, rationalism, subjective creation; Dionysus is formless-
ness, music, mysticism, intoxication creating in the forgetfulness
of self (Selbstvergessenheit im Rauscbe). Art fluctuates between two
extremes of perfect form and formlessness, between classical archi-
tecture and music, between fixed and unfixed. Between these two
extremes - the two worlds of intoxication and dream (Rauscb und
Traum} - there is an ascending gradation in music, lyric verse,
epic, plastic art, architecture towards fixity of image - each image
(Abbild} being an Apolline dream-shape, or the will to existence
as phenomenon of what is in the world beyond sense shapeless.
Dream shapes that which is shapeless in chaos; the Greek gods
themselves are dreamed visions of pure limbs in a vaporous void.
This dream world of lovely illusion (der schone Scheiri) is limited,
and therefore calm; but intoxication is limitless, and therefore
orgiastic. Judgment is calm, but ecstasy is drunken. All creation
of life is in ecstasy; what is not created in ecstasy is without life;
life can only come of life; calmness, even 'health', is barren, dead.1
The calm shapers of vision - the Apolline or subjective poets -
scorn Dionysiac orgies as morbid; little they know how livid and
ghastly (leichenfarbig und gespenstiscti) their 'health' looks when the
glowing life of Dionysiac revellers reels past them. Apollo is raised
above nature, not one with nature; but nature joins the mad rout
of Dionysus: panther and tiger pace under his yoke; in Dionysiac
frenzy man is one again with nature, he dances upwards into the
air, he floats on enchanted clouds like the gods. Apollo is the artist
with measuring mind and shaping hands - shaping an idolon;
Dionysus drunk is more than artist, he is god, he is art itself; his
frenzy of rapture creates the noblest work of art - man magnified
and panting in passion. Now these two opposite ideals of Traum-
kunst, or shaping vision, and ILaMschkunst,2 or creation in ecstasy,
are united in the ancient Greek tragedy, which springs from the
chorus of satyrs; for in Greek tragedy Apollo shapes, in a sym-
bolic vision, the oneness with nature of the drunken reveller.
Music is the highest of the arts; for, though it shapes no visions,
it expresses that ancient pain (IJrschmer^) felt by man when by the

1 Niet2sche has no inkling of Thomas Mann's insistent teaching (the bio-
logical fact) that creation kills the creator; that creation, while the highest
manifestation of life, is also the beginning of the death of life.

2 Ideas vital for the intelligence of literature after 1890*