尼采: 悲劇的誕生 - 出於音樂精神
如果我們不僅達到了邏輯的洞見，而且也達到了直接可靠的直觀，認識到藝術的進展是與阿波羅和狄奧尼索斯之二元性聯繫在一起的，恰如世代繁衍取決於持續地鬥爭著的、只會週期性地出現和解的兩性關係，那麼，我們就在美學科學上多有創獲了。這兩個名詞，我們是從希臘人那裡借用來的；希臘人雖然沒有用概念、但卻用他們的諸神世界透徹而清晰的形象，讓明智之士感受到他們的藝術觀深邃而隱秘的信條。與希臘人的這兩個藝術神祇—阿波羅（Apollo）與狄奧尼索斯（Dionysus）——緊密相聯的，是我們的以下認識：
一
在希臘世界里存在著一種巨大的對立，按照起源和目標來講，就是造型藝術（即阿波羅藝術）與非造型的音樂藝術（即狄奧尼索斯藝術）之間的巨大對立。兩種十分不同的本能並行共存，多半處於公開的相互分裂中，相互刺激而達致常新的更為有力的生育，以便在其中保持那種對立的鬥爭，而“藝術”這個共同的名詞只不過是在表面上消除了那種對立；直到最後，通過希臘“意志”的一種形而上學的神奇行為，兩者又似乎相互結合起來了，在這種交合中，終於產生出既是狄奧尼索斯式的又是阿波羅式的阿提卡悲劇的藝術作品。
為了更細緻地瞭解這兩種本能，讓我們首先把它們設想為由夢（Traum）與醉（Raush）構成的兩個分離的藝術世界；在這兩種生理現象之間，可以看出一種相應的對立，猶如在阿波羅與狄奧尼索斯之間一樣。按照盧克萊修Lucretius的觀點，莊嚴的諸神形象首先是在夢中向人類心靈顯現出來的，偉大的雕塑家是在夢中看到超凡神靈的迷人形體的，而且，若要向這位希臘詩人探聽詩歌創作的奧秘，他同樣也會提到夢，給出一種類似於詩人漢斯•薩克斯 Hans Sachs的教誨—這位德國詩人在《工匠歌手 Meistersinger》中唱道：
我的朋友，解釋和記錄自己的夢，
這正是詩人的事業。
相信我，人最真實的幻想總是在夢中向他開啓：
所有詩藝和詩體
無非是真實之夢的解釋。
在夢境的創造方面，每個人都是完全的藝術家。夢境的美的假象乃是一切造型藝術的前提，其實，正如我們將會看到的，也是一大半詩歌的前提。我們在直接的形象領悟中盡情享受，所有形式都對我們說話，根本沒有無關緊要的和不必要的東西。而即便在這種夢之現實性的至高生命中，我們卻仍然具有對其假象的朦朧感覺：至少我的經驗是這樣，這種經驗是經常的，甚至是一種常態，為此我蠻可以提供許多證據，也可以提供出詩人們的名言來作證。哲學人士甚至預感到，在我們生活和存在於其中的這種現實性中，還隱藏著第二種完全不同的現實性，因而前一種現實性也是一種假象。叔本華Schopenhauer就徑直把這種天賦，即人們偶爾會把人類和萬物都看作單純的幻影或者夢境，稱為哲學才能的標誌。就如同哲學家之於此在之現實性，藝術上敏感的人也是這樣對待夢之現實性的；他明察秋毫，樂於觀察：因為他根據這些形象來解說生活，靠著這些事件來歷練自己的生活。他以那種普遍明智（Allverstandigkeit）在自己身上經驗到的，絕非只是一些適意而友好的形象而已：還有嚴肅的、憂鬱的、悲傷的、陰沈的東西，突發的障礙，偶然的戲弄，驚恐的期待，簡言之，生命的整個“神曲”，連同“地獄篇”，都在他身旁掠過，不光像一出皮影戲—因為他就在此場景中生活，一道受苦受難——但也不無那種倏忽而過的假象感覺。還有，也許有些人會像我一樣記得，在夢的危險和恐怖場景中有時自己會鼓足勇氣，成功地喊出：“這是一個夢啊！ 我要把它繼續做下去！”也曾有人跟我講過，有些人能夠超過三個晚上接著做同一個夢，繼續這同一個夢的因果聯繫。此類事實清楚地給出了證據，表明我們最內在的本質，我們所有人的共同根底，本身就帶著深沈歡愉和快樂必然性去體驗夢境。
這種夢境體驗的快樂必然性，希臘人同樣也在他們的阿波羅形象中表達出來了：阿波羅，作為一切造型力量的神，同時也是預言之神。按其詞根來講，阿波羅乃是“閃耀者、發光者”，是光明之神，他也掌管著內心幻想世界的美的假象。這種更高的真理，這些與無法完全理解的日常現實性相對立的狀態的完滿性，還有對在睡和夢中起治療和幫助作用的自然的深度意識，同時也是預言能力的象徵性類似物，一般地就是使生活變得可能、變得富有價值的各門藝術的象徵性類似物。然而，有一條柔弱的界線，夢境不可逾越之，方不至於產生病態的作用，不然的話，假象就會充當粗鄙的現實性來欺騙我們—這條界線在阿波羅形象中也是不可或缺的：造型之神（Bildnergott）的那種適度的自制，那種對粗野衝動的解脫，那種充滿智慧的寧靜。按其來源來講，他的眼睛必須是“太陽般發光的；即便在流露憤怒而不滿的眼神時，它也依然沐浴於美的假象的莊嚴中。於是，在某種古怪的意義上，叔本華關於那個囿於摩耶Maya面紗下的人所講的話，大抵也適用於阿波羅。《作為意志和表象的世界》第一篇第416 頁：
“有如在洶湧大海上，無邊無際，咆的波峰起伏不定，一個船夫坐在一隻小船上面，只好信賴這脆弱的航船；同樣地，在一個充滿痛苦的世界裡面，孤獨的人也安坐其中，只好依靠和信賴 principium individu-ationis ［個體化原理］了。”
是的，對於阿波羅，我們或許可以說，對個體化原理的堅定信賴，以及受縛於其中者的安坐，在阿波羅身上得到了最突出的表達，而且我們可以把阿波羅本身稱為個體化原理的壯麗神像，其表情和眼神向我們道出了“假象”的全部快樂和智慧，連同它的美。
在同一處，叔本華為我們描述了那種巨大的恐懼，即當人由於根據律在其某個形態中似乎遭遇到例外、從而突然對現象的認識形式生出懷疑時，人就會感到無比恐懼。如果我們在這種恐懼之外還加上那種充滿喜悅的陶醉，即在 principii individuationis ［個體化原理］破碎時從人的內心深處、其實就是從本性中升起的那種迷人陶醉，那麼，我們就能洞察到狄奧尼索斯的本質—用醉來加以類比是最能讓我們理解它的。無論是通過所有原始人類和原始民族在頌歌中所講的烈酒的影響，還是在使整個自然欣欣向榮的春天強有力的腳步聲中，那種狄奧尼索斯式的激情都蘇醒過來了，而在激情高漲時，主體便隱失於完全的自身遺忘狀態。即便在中世紀的德意志，受同一種狄奧尼索斯強力的支配，也還有總是不斷擴大的隊伍，載歌載舞，輾轉各地：在這些聖約翰John節和聖維托Vitus節舞者身上，重又現出希臘人的酒神歌隊，其前史可溯源於小亞細亞，直到巴比倫和放縱的薩卡人Sacaea。如今有些人，由於缺乏經驗或者由於呆頭呆腦，感覺自己是健康的，便譏諷地或者憐憫地躲避此類現象，有如對待“民間流行病”：這些可憐蟲當然不會知道，當狄奧尼索斯的狂熱者的熾熱生命從他們身旁奔騰而過時，恰恰是他們這種“健康”顯得多麼蒼白、多麼陰森。
在狄奧尼索斯的魔力之下，不僅人與人之得以重新締結聯盟：連那疏遠的、敵意的或者被征服的自然，也重新慶祝它與自己失散之子—人類—的和解節日。大地自願地獻出自己的贈禮，山崖荒漠間的野獸溫順地走來。狄奧尼索斯的戰車綴滿鮮花和花環：豹和虎在它的軛下行進。我們不妨把貝多芬的《歡樂頌》轉換成一幅畫，讓我們的想象力跟進，想象萬民令人恐怖地落人塵埃，化為烏有：於是我們就能接近狄奧尼索斯了。現在，奴隸也成了自由人；現在，困頓、專橫或者“無恥的風尚”在人與人之間固定起來的全部頑固而敵意的藩籬，全都分崩離析了。現在，有了世界和諧的福音，人人都感到自己與鄰人不僅是聯合了、和解了、融合了，而且是合為一體了，彷彿摩耶Maya面紗已經被撕碎了，只還有些碎片在神秘的“太一”（das Ur-Eine）面前飄零。
載歌載舞之際，人表現為一個更高的共同體的成員：他忘掉了行走和說話，正要起舞凌空飛翔。他的神態透露出一種陶醉。正如現在野獸也能說話，大地流出乳汁和蜂蜜，同樣地，人身上發出某種超自然之物的聲音：人感覺自己就是神，正如人在夢中看見諸神的變幻，現在人自己也陶醉而飄然地變幻。人不再是藝術家，人變成了藝術品：在這裡，在醉的戰慄中，整個自然的藝術強力得到了彰顯，臻至“太一”最高的狂喜滿足。人這種最高貴的陶土，這種最可珍愛的大理石，在這裡得到捏制和雕琢，而向著狄奧尼索斯的宇宙藝術家的雕鑿之聲，響起了厄琉西斯的Eleusinian秘儀呼聲：“萬民啊，你們倒下來了？宇宙啊，你能預感到造物主嗎？”
十九
我們若要把這種蘇格拉底文化的核心內涵描述清楚，最好的做法莫過於把它命名為歌劇文化了，因為在歌劇領域里，這種文化以其特有的天真表達了自己的意願和認識；如果我們把歌劇的起源和歌劇發展的事實，與阿波羅Apollo因素和狄奧尼索斯Dionysus因素的永恆真理放在一起加以對照，我們就將大感驚奇。我首先要提醒讀者注意 抒情调 stilo rappresentativo和宣敘調recitative的形成過程。誰會相信，在帕菜斯特里那Palestrina那種無比祟高和無比神聖的音樂剛剛興起的時代里，人們竟能狂熱地接受和愛護這樣一種完全外化的、配不上虔誠的歌劇音樂，彷彿那就是一切真正音樂的復活了？另一方面，誰會把如此迅速地蔓延開來的對歌劇的興趣，一味地歸咎於那些佛羅倫薩人Florentine的享樂癖和他們那些戲劇歌手的虛榮心呢？在同一個時代，甚至在同一個民族里，與整個基督教中世紀都參與建造的帕萊斯特里那和聲的拱形建築一道，同時也出現了那種對於半拉子音樂語調的熱情—對於這一點，我只能根據一種在宣敘調之本質中一道發揮作用的藝術之外的傾向來加以解釋了。
聽眾想要聽清楚歌詞，歌手就要來滿足他的願望，其做法是多說少唱，在半唱中加強充滿激情的詞語表達。通過這樣一種激情的加強，歌手就使歌詞變得容易理解了，就克服了剩下的一半音樂。現在威脅著歌手的真正危險在於，有時他不合時宜地過分強調音樂，就必定會立即毀了話語的激情和歌詞的清晰性；而另一方面，他往往感到有一種衝動，要通過音樂來發洩，要嫻熟地展示他的歌喉。這裡“詩人”來幫他的忙，“詩人”知道怎麼為他提供足夠的機會，讓他使用抒情的感嘆詞，重復一些詞語和句子、等等 — 在這些場合，歌者現在就可能處於純粹音樂的元素中，而沒有顧及歌詞。富有情感而有力、但只是半唱的話語，與那種合乎抒情调之本質的全唱的感嘆詞相互交替，這樣一種交替，這種迅速變換的努力—時而要本著概念和觀念，時而要根據聽眾的音樂基礎來工作——是某種完全不自然的東西，是同樣十分內在地與狄奧尼索斯和阿波羅的藝術衝動相矛盾的，以至於我們必得推斷出，宣敘調的起源處於全部藝術本能之外。根據這種描述，就可以把宣敘調界定為史詩朗誦與抒情詩朗誦的混合，誠然決不是內在穩定的混合（那是兩個完全分離的事物不可能達到的），而是極其表皮的馬賽克式mosaic的鑲嵌黏合——此種情況在自然界和經驗領域里是完全沒有範例的。然而這並不是那些宣敘調發明者的看法；相反，他們自己以及他們的時代倒是相信，通過抒情调，古代音樂的奧秘已經解開了，唯據此才能解釋俄爾浦斯Orpheus、安菲翁Amphion的巨大影響，其實也就是希臘悲劇的巨大影響。這種新風格被視為最有效果的音樂、古希臘音樂的復蘇：的確，按照一般的完全大眾化的觀點，荷馬世界乃是原始世界，有了這種觀點，人們就可以沉浸於那個夢想，以為現在又進入天堂般的人類開端中了，在其中，音樂必然具有那種無可超越的純粹性、權能和無辜 — 那是詩人們在他們的牧歌pastoral中十分動人地敘述過的。在這裡，我們看到了歌劇這種真正現代的藝術種類最內在的生成過程：一種強大的需要在此要求一種藝術，但那是一種非審美的需要：對田園生活的渴望，對藝術的和善良的人類的一種遠古生存方式的信仰。宣敘調被視為那種原始人類的重新發現的語言；歌劇被視為那種田園式的或者英雄式的美好生靈重新找到的國度 —— 這種美好生靈同時在其所有行為中都遵循一種自然的藝術衝動，碰到他必須言說的一切東西至少都要唱些什麼，以便在情感稍有波動時就立即能引吭高歌。當時的人文學者用這種新創的天堂般的藝術家形象，來反對教會關於本身腐化墮落的人的老觀念，這種情況對於今天的我們來說是無關緊要的；但這樣一來，歌劇就得被理解為關於好人的對立信條，而有了這個信條，同時也就找到了一個對付悲觀主義的安慰手段 —— 恰恰是那個時代嚴肅的思索者，鑒於所有狀況的可怕的不確定性，最強烈地被引向了悲觀主義。我們今天只需認識到，這種新的藝術形式的真正魔力及其起源，就在於滿足一種完全非審美的需要，在於對人類本身的樂觀贊美，在於把原始人理解為天性善良和富有藝術氣質的人類。這個歌劇原則漸漸轉變成了一個咄咄逼人的駭人要求 —— 有鑒於當代的社會主義運動，我們再也不能對這個要求充耳不聞了。“善良的原始人”要求自己的權利：何等天堂般的前景啊！
除此之外，我還要端出一個同樣十分清晰的證明，來證明我的下列觀點：歌劇建立在與我們的亞歷山大文化相同的原則上。歌劇乃是理論家、外行批評家的產物，而非藝術家的產物：這是全部藝術史上最令人詫異的事實之一。首先必須弄懂歌詞，這是根本上毫無音樂修養的觀眾的要求：結果是，只有當人們發明了某種唱法，其歌詞能支配對位法，有如主人支配僕人一般，這時候才能指望音樂藝術的再生。因為正如靈魂比身體更高貴，歌詞要比伴奏的和聲系統高貴得多。在歌劇開端之際，人們就是按照不懂音樂的外行的這樣一種粗糙見解來處理音樂、形象與歌詞的聯繫的；也是在這種美學意義上，在佛羅倫薩上流社會的外行人圈子里，那些受庇護的詩人和歌手們開始了最初的試驗。這些無能於藝術創作的人為自已製造了一種藝術；恰恰是由於他們本身是毫不藝術的人。因為他們不能猜度狄奧尼索斯音樂的深邃之處，所以就把音樂欣賞轉變為抒情调之激情的合乎理智的詞語和聲音修辭，轉變為歌唱藝術的快感；因為他們不能看到任何幻景，所以就強迫機械師和佈景師為他們效力；因為他們不知道怎麼把握藝術家的真正本質，所以就按照自己的趣味變戲法，變出“藝術的原始人”來，也就是那種用激情歌唱和用韻文講話的人。他們夢想自己進入了一個時代，這個時代的激情足以產生出歌和詩：彷彿情緒曾經有能力創造出某種藝術似的。歌劇的前提乃是一種關於藝術過程的錯誤信念，也就是那種田園牧歌式的信念，即相信每一個有感覺能力的人根本上都是藝術家。根據這種信念，歌劇就成了藝術外行的表達，藝術外行用理論家那種快樂的樂觀主義來強力推行自己的法則。
倘若我們希望把上面描寫過的在歌劇產生過程中起作用的兩個觀念統一到一個概念上，那麼，或許我們只能說，那是歌劇的牧歌傾向：在這裡我們只需動用席勒Schiller的說法和解釋。席勒說過，自然與理想要麼是哀傷的對象，要麼是快樂的對象 ——— 當自然被表現為失落了的東西而理想被表現為未達到的東西時，兩者就是哀傷的對象；而當兩者被設想為現實的東西時，它們就是快樂的對象。第一種情況提供出狹義的哀歌elegy，而第二種情況則產生出最廣義的牧歌idyll。
在這裡，我們要立即提請注意的是，在歌劇發生過程中那兩個觀念的共同特徵，即：在這兩個觀念當中，理想沒有被感受為未達到的，而自然沒有被感受為失落了的。按這種感受來看，曾有過一個人類的原始時代，當其時也，人類置身於自然的心臟中，並且在這種自然狀態中同時達到了人性的理想，處於一種天堂般的美好善意和藝術氛圍中：我們全都來源於這種完美的原始人，其實我們至今依然是他們的忠實肖像：只不過，我們必須自願地放棄多餘的博學和過於豐富的文化，藉此拋掉我們身上的某些東西，才能重新認識自己的這種原始人本色。
文藝復興時期有教養的人通過歌劇來模仿希臘悲劇，由此使自己回歸自然與理想的這樣一種和諧，回歸一種田園牧歌式的現實，他們就像但丁Dante利用維吉爾Virgil一般來利用希臘悲劇，方得以被引向天堂之門：而他們從這裡出發還繼續獨自前進，從一種對最高的希臘藝術形式的模仿，過渡到“對萬物的恢復”，過渡到對人類原始藝術世界的仿制。在理論文化的懷抱里，這些大膽的追求有著何等信心和善意啊！ —— 對於這一點，我們唯一地只能根據下面這種具有慰藉作用的信念來解釋，即相信：“人本身”是永遠有德性的歌劇主角，是永遠吹笛或者歌唱的牧人，如若他在某個時候真的喪失了自己，到最後總是一定能找回自己的；這個“人本身”唯一地只是樂觀主義的果實，有如一股甜蜜誘人的芳香，這種樂觀主義是從蘇格拉底世界觀的深溯里升騰起來的。
可見，歌劇的特徵絕不帶有對於一種永遠喪失的哀痛，而倒是有著一種對於永遠重獲的歡欣，對於一種田園牧歌式現實的愜意樂趣，在任何時候，人們至少把這種田園牧歌式的現實設想為真實的。在這方面，人們也許有朝一日會猜度，這種臆想的現實無非是一種幻想的愚蠢遊戲，每一個能夠以真實自然的可怕嚴肅來衡量它、把它與人類開端的原始場景相比較的人，都必定會厭惡地對它大聲呵斥：滾開，你這幽靈！儘管如此，倘若人們以為只要大喊一聲就能像趕跑鬼怪一樣斥退歌劇這種戲耍賣俏的貨色，那就弄錯了。誰要消滅歌劇，他就必須與那種亞歷山大式的明朗作鬥爭，這種明朗十分天真地用歌劇來談論它所喜愛的觀念，其實歌劇就是這種明朗的真正藝術形式了。可是，這樣一種藝術形式的起源根本不在審美領域里，而倒是從一個半拉子的道德範圍潛入到藝術領域里的，只能偶爾向我們隱瞞它的這樣一種雜交來源，那麼，對於藝術本身來說，我們能指望這種藝術形式發揮什麼作用呢？若不是從真正的藝術中汲取汁液，這種寄生的歌劇還能從哪裡獲得養料呢？難道我們不是可以推測，受到其田園牧歌的誘惑，在其亞歷山大式的諂媚術影響下，藝術那種堪稱真正嚴肅的至高使命 —— 使肉眼擺脫對黑夜之恐怖的注視，通過假象的療救之藥把主體從意志衝動的痙攣中挽救出來就會蛻化為一種空洞而渙散的娛樂傾向？在我討論抒情调之本質時所闡發的這樣一種風格混合中，狄奧尼索斯因素和阿波羅因素的永恆真理會變成什麼呢？——在那裡，音樂被視為奴僕，歌詞被視為主人，音樂與肉體並論，而歌詞與靈魂並論；在那裡，最高目標充其量只能指向一種描述性的音響圖畫，類似於從前在阿提卡Attic 新酒神頌歌Dithyramb中的情況； 在那裡，音樂已經完全疏離了自己作為狄奧尼索斯的世界鏡子的真正尊嚴，以至於它作為現象的奴僕，只能去模仿現象的形式本質，用線條和比例的遊戲來激發一種淺薄的快感。嚴格地審察一番，我們就會看到，歌劇對於音樂的這樣一種致命影響是徑直與現代音樂的整個發展相合的；在歌劇之發生過程以及由歌劇所代表的文化之本質中潛伏的樂觀主義，以駭人的速度成功地剝奪了音樂，使之失去了自己的狄奧尼索斯式的世界使命，並且賦予它一種玩弄形式的、娛樂性的特徵 一 這樣一種變化，也許只有那種從埃 斯庫羅斯Aeschylean的悲劇人物向亞歷山大的明靜人物的轉變才能與之相比擬。
然而，如果說在上面舉出的例證中，我們已經正確地把狄奧尼索斯精神的消失與希臘人那種極其顯眼的、但至今未經解釋的轉變和蛻化聯繫起來了 —— 那麼，若有一些極其可靠的徵兆向我們擔保，在我們當代世界里將出現一個相反的過程，即狄奧尼索斯精神的逐漸蘇醒，則我們心中一定會重新燃起何種希望啊！赫拉克勒斯Heracles的神性力量是不可能永遠在為翁法勒Omphale(希臘神話中的女王)的繁重勞役中衰退的。從德國精神的狄奧尼索斯根基中，已然升起了一種勢力，它與蘇格拉底文化的原始前提毫無共同之處，既不能根據這種文化來解釋，也不能根據這種文化來開脫自己，相反，它倒是被這種文化當作恐怖而無法解釋的東西、當作超強而敵對的東西 — 那就是德國音樂，我們首先要從巴赫Bach到貝多芬Beethoven、從貝多芬到瓦格納Wagner的強大而輝煌的歷程中來理解的德國音樂。我們今天渴求知識的蘇格拉底主義，在最佳情形下，又能拿這個從永不枯竭的深淵中升起的魔鬼怎麼辦呢？無論是從歌劇旋律的脈衝運動和華麗裝飾出發，還是借助於賦格曲fugue和對位辯證法contrapuntal dialectics的計算表，我們都找不到一個公式，以它的三倍強光降服那個魔鬼，並且強迫這個魔鬼開口說話。如今，我們的美學家們拿著他們特有的“美”的羅網，去追捕那個帶著不可捉摸的生命在他們面前嬉要的音樂天才，其動作既不能根據永恆的美來評判，也不能根據崇高來評判 — 這是何等好戲呢！ 我們只需親自到近處看一看，當這些音樂贊助人不知疲倦地高喊“美哉！美哉！”時，他們看起來是否真的像在美之懷抱中受過教養和疼愛的自然之寵兒，抑或他們倒是要為自己的粗野尋找一個騙人的掩蓋形式，為自己的缺乏感情的平淡無味尋找一個美學的藉口：在此我想到奧托•雅恩Otto Jahn，此公可為一例。不過，但願這個騙子和偽善者小心提防著德國音樂！因為在我們的全部文化當中，恰恰德國音樂是唯一純粹的、純淨的、具有淨化作用的火之精靈，正如以弗所Ephesus的偉大思想家赫拉克利特Heraclitus的學說所講的，萬物以雙重的循環軌道運動，來自火又回歸於火。今日我們所謂的一切文化、教化、文明，有朝一日必將出現在狄奧尼索斯面前，接受這位可靠的法官的審判！
現在讓我們來回想一下，對於來自相同源泉的德國哲學精神來說，康德Kant和叔本華Schopenhauer已經使之有可能通過證明科學蘇格拉底主義的界限，消滅了後者那種自滿自足的此在快感，又通過這種證明，開創了一種關於倫理問題和藝術的無比深刻而嚴肅的考察，對於這種考察，我們可以徑直把它稱為用概念來表達的狄奧尼索斯智慧 — 德國音樂與德國哲學之間的這樣一種統一性之 mysterium ［奧秘］，若不是把我們引向一種新的此在existence形式，還能把我們指向何方呢？而關於這種新的此在形式的內涵，我們眼下就只能根據希臘的類比來予以猜度和瞭解了。因為希臘的楷模為我們，為站在兩種不同的此在形式的分界線上的我們，保存著這樣一種無法測度的價值，那就是，在這個楷模身上，所有那些過渡和鬥爭也都清楚地形成一種經典的、富有教育意義的形式了。只不過，我們現在彷彿是要以顛倒的次序，以類比方式來經歷希臘本質的各個偉大的主要時代，例如現在就要從亞歷山大時代退回到悲劇時代。這當兒，我們心中就會產生一種感覺，彷彿一個悲劇時代的誕生，對於德國精神來說只能意味著向自身的回歸，只能意味著幸福地重獲自身 —— 既然長期以來，從外部侵人的巨大勢力迫使在無助的形式野蠻狀態中得過且過的人們走向了一種受其形式支配的奴役狀態。現在，在返回到自己的本質源泉之後，德國精神終於可以無需羅馬文明的圍裙帶，敢於在所有民族面前勇敢而自由地闊步前進了：如果說德國精神懂得不懈地只向一個民族學習，那就是向希臘人學習，而能夠向希臘人學習，這畢竟已經是一種崇高的榮耀，一種出眾的珍品了。而如今，我們正在體驗和經歷悲劇的再生，而且我們正處於既不知道它從何而來又不明白它意欲何往的危險中，還有比現在更需要這些高明無比的導師的時候嗎？
二十五
音樂與悲劇神話同樣是一個民族的狄奧尼索斯Dionysus能力的表現，而且彼此不可分離。兩者起源於一個位於阿波羅Apollo因素之外的藝術領域；兩者都美化了一個區域，在這個區域的快樂和諧中，不諧和音以及恐怖的世界圖景都楚楚動人地漸趨消失；兩者都相信自己有極強大的魔法，都玩弄著反感不快的芒刺，兩者都用這種玩法為“最壞的世界”之實存本身辯護。在這裡，與阿波羅因素相比較，狄奧尼索斯因素顯示為永恆的和原始的藝術力量，說到底，正是這種藝術力量召喚整個現象世界進入此在existence之中：而在現象世界的中心，必需有一種全新的美化假象，方能使這個生氣盎然的個體化世界保持活力。倘若我們能設想不諧和音變成了人——要不然人會是什麼呢？ —— 那麼，為了能夠生活下去，這種不諧和音就需要一個壯麗的幻象，用一種美的面紗來掩飾它自己的本質。這就是阿波羅的真正藝術意圖：我們把所有那些美的假象的無數幻景全歸於阿波羅名下，它們在每個瞬同都使此在變得值得經歷，並且驅使我們去體驗下一個瞬間。
這當兒，有關一切實存的基礎，有關世界的狄奧尼索斯根基，能夠進入人類個體意識之中的東西不在多數，恰如它能夠重又為那種阿波羅式的美化力量所克服，以至於這兩種藝術衝動不得不根據永恆正義的法則，按相互間的嚴格比例展開各自的力量。 凡在狄奧尼索斯的強力如此猛烈地高漲之處（正如我們體驗到的那樣），阿波羅也必定已經披上雲彩向我們降落下來了；下一代人可能會看到它那極其豐碩的美的效果。
而這種效果是必需的 —— 對於這一點，或許每個人都能憑著直覺十分確鑿地感覺到，只要他（哪怕是在夢里）覺得自己被置回到了古希臘的實存之中：漫步於高高的伊奧尼亞Ionic柱廊下，仰望著一方由純潔而高貴的線條分划出來的天穹，身旁閃亮的大理石反映出自己得到美化的形象，周圍有莊嚴地行進或者徐徐而動的人們，唱著和諧的歌聲，展現出節奏分明的姿態語言 — 面對這種不斷湧現的美的洪流，他怎麼會不向阿波羅振臂高呼：“福樂的希臘民眾啊！如果得洛斯Delos之神(指阿波羅)認為必須用這樣一種魔力來治癒你們的酒神癲狂dithyrambic，那麼你們當中的狄奧尼索斯必定是多麼偉大啊！ — 而對於一個懷有如此心情的人，年邁的雅典人或許會用埃斯庫羅斯Aeschylus的崇高目光看著他，答道：“你這個奇聖的異鄉人啊，你倒也來說說：這個民族勢必受過多少苦難，才能變得如此之美！ 但現在，且跟我去看悲劇吧，到兩位神祇的廟里和我一起獻祭吧！”
【文本來源：尼采 - 悲劇的誕生， 孫周興 譯， 商務印書館 2012，第19-26,135-146,176-178 頁】
Nietzsche: THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY - Out Of The Spirit Of Music
1
We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics when we have succeeded in perceiving directly, and not only through logical reasoning, that art derives its continuous development from the duality of the Apolline and Dionysiac; just as the reproduction of species depends on the duality of the sexes, with its constant conflicts and only periodically intervening reconciliations. These terms are borrowed from the Greeks, who revealed the profound mysteries of their artistic doctrines to the discerning mind, not in concepts but in the vividly clear forms of their deities. To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apolline art of the sculptor and the non-visual, Dionysiac art of music. These two very different tendencies walk side by side, usually in violent opposition to one another, inciting one another to ever more powerful births, perpetuating the struggle of the opposition only apparently bridged by the word 'art'; until, finally, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic 'will', the two seem to be coupled, and in this coupling they seem at last to beget the work of art that is as Dionysiac as it is Apolline - Attic tragedy.
To reach a better understanding of these two tendencies, let us first conceive them as the separate art worlds of dream and intoxication, two physiological states which contrast similarly to the Apolline and the Dionysiac. It was in dreams, according to Lucretius, that the wondrous forms of the deities first appeared before the souls of men; in dreams that the great sculptor first saw the delightful bodies of superhuman beings; and the Hellenic poet, if questioned about the mysteries of poetic creation, would also have referred to dreams, and might have instructed his listeners much as Hans Sachs instructs us in Die Meistersinger:
It is the poet's task, my friend,
To note his dreams and comprehend.
Mankind's most true delusion seems
To be revealed to him in dreams:
All poesy and versification
Is merely dream interpretation.
The beautiful illusion of the dream worlds, in the creation of which every man is a consummate artist, is the precondition of all visual art, and indeed, as we shall see, of an important amount of poetry. We take pleasure in the immediate apprehension of form, all shapes speak to us, and nothing is indifferent or unnecessary. But even when this dream reality is presented to us with the greatest intensity, we still have a glimmering awareness that it is an illusion. That is my experience, at least, and I could cite many proofs, including the statements of the poets, to vouch for its frequency, its normality. Men of philosophy even have a sense that beneath the reality in which we live there is hidden a second, quite different world, and that our own world is therefore an illusion; and Schopenhauer actually says that the gift of being able at times to see men and objects as mere phantoms or dream images is the mark of the philosophical capacity. Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. It is not only pleasant and agreeable images that he experiences with such universal understanding: the serious, the gloomy, the sad and the profound, the sudden restraints, the mockeries of chance, fearful expectations, in short the whole 'divine comedy' of life, the Inferno included, passes before him, not only as a shadow-play - for he too lives and suffers through these scenes - and yet also not without that fleeting sense of illusion; and perhaps many, like myself, can remember calling out to themselves in encouragement, amid the perils and terrors of the dream, and with success: 'It is a dream! I want to dream on!' Just as I have often been told of people who have been able to continue one and the same dream over three and more successive nights: facts which clearly show that our innermost being, our common foundation, experiences dreams with profound pleasure and joyful necessity.
This same joyful necessity of dream experiences was also expressed by the Greeks in the figure of Apollo: Apollo, the deity of all plastic forces, is also the soothsaying god. Etymologically the 'shining one', the deity of light, he also holds sway over the beautiful illusion of the inner fantasy world. The higher truth, the perfection of these states in contrast to imperfectly comprehensible daily reality, the deep awareness of nature healing and helping in sleep and dreams, is at the same time the symbolic analogue of soothsaying powers and of art in general, through which life is made both possible and worth living. But our image of Apollo must incorporate the delicate line that the dream image may not overstep without becoming pathological, in which case illusion would deceive us as solid reality; it needs that restraining boundary, that freedom from wilder impulses, that sagacious calm of the sculptor god. His eye must be sunlike, as befits his origin; even should it rage and show displeasure, it still bears the solemnity of the beautiful illusion. And thus we might say of Apollo what Schopenhauer said of man caught up in the veil of Maya (The World as Will and Representation I [p. 352])
Just as the boatman sits in his little boat, trusting to his fragile craft in a stormy sea which, boundless in every direction, rises and falls in howling, mountainous waves, so in the midst of a world full of suffering the individual man calmly sits, supported by and trusting the principium individuationis.
Indeed, it might be said of Apollo that the unshaken faith in that principium and the peaceful stillness of the man caught up in it have found their most sublime expression in him, and we might even describe Apollo as the glorious divine image of the principium individuationis, from whose gestures and looks all the delight, wisdom and beauty of 'illusion' speak to us.
In the same passage Schopenhauer has described the tremendous dread that grips man when he suddenly loses his way amidst the cognitive forms of appearance, because the principle of sufficient reason, in one of its forms, seems suspended. If we add to this dread the blissful ecstasy which, prompted by the same fragmentation of the principium individuationis, rises up from man's innermost core, indeed from nature, we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the nature of the Dionysiac, most immediately understandable to us in the analogy of intoxication. Under the influence of the narcotic potion hymned by all primitive men and peoples, or in the powerful approach of spring, joyfully penetrating the whole of nature, those Dionysiac urges are awakened, and as they grow more intense, subjectivity becomes a complete forgetting of the self. In medieval Germany, too, the same Dionysiac power sent singing and dancing throngs, constantly increasing, wandering from place to place: in these dancers of Saint John and Saint Vitus we can recognize the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their prehistory in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea. Some people, either through a lack of experience or through obtuseness, turn away with pity or contempt from phenomena such as these as from folk diseases', bolstered by a sense of their own sanity; these poor creatures have no idea how blighted and ghostly this 'sanity' of theirs sounds when the glowing life of Dionysiac revellers thunders past them.
Not only is the bond between man and man sealed by the Dionysiac magic: alienated, hostile or subjugated nature, too, celebrates her reconciliation with her lost son, man. The earth gladly offers up her gifts, and the ferocious creatures of the cliffs and the desert peacefully draw near. The chariot of Dionysus is piled high with flowers and garlands; under its yoke stride tigers and panthers. If we were to turn Beethoven's 'Hymn of Joy' into a painting, and not to restrain the imagination even as the multitudes bowed awestruck into the dust: this would bring us close to the Dionysiac. Now the slave is a free man, now all the rigid and hostile boundaries that distress, despotism or 'impudent fashion' have erected between man and man break down. Now, with the gospel of world harmony, each man feels himself not only united, reconciled, and at one with his neighbour, but one with him, as if the veil of Maya had been rent and now hung in rags before the mysterious primal Oneness.
Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and talk, and is about to fly dancing into the heavens. His gestures express enchantment. Just as the animals now speak, and the earth yields up milk and honey, he now gives voice to supernatural sounds: he feels like a god, he himself now walks about enraptured and elated as he saw the gods walk in dreams. Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: the artistic power of the whole of nature reveals itself to the supreme gratification of the primal Oneness amidst the paroxysms of intoxication. The noblest clay, the most precious marble, man, is kneaded and hewn here, and to the chisel-blows of the Dionysiac world-artist there echoes the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries, 'Do you bow low, multitudes? Do you sense the Creator, world?'
19
We cannot describe the innermost content of this Socratic culture more accurately than by calling it the culture of opera. For it is in this area that this culture has voiced its desires and perceptions with a naïveté all its own, which is surprising if we compare the genesis of opera and the history of its development with the eternal truths of the Apolline and the Dionysiac. I should like first of all to remind the reader of the origin of the stilo rappresentativo and the recitative. Is it conceivable that the music of opera, thoroughly externalized and incapable of reverence, should have been enthusiastically welcomed and cherished, as the rebirth, so to speak, of all true magic, by an age that had just produced the ineffably sublime and sacred music of Palestrina? And who, on the other hand, would attribute the wild spread of the love of opera solely to the luxuriousness of the diversion-seeking Florentine circles and the vanity of their dramatic singers? I can only explain the fact that this passion for a half-musical 'speech' arose in the same age, indeed among the same people, alongside the vaulted arches of Palestrina's harmonies, which the whole of the Christian Middle Ages had helped to build, with reference to an extra-artistic tendency which contributed to the essence of the recitative.
The singer accommodates the listener who wishes to hear the words distinctly beneath the music, by speaking more than singing, and by intensifying the dramatic expression of the words with this half-song. By thus intensifying the pathos he makes the words easier to understand, and overcomes the other half of the music. He now runs the risk of the music becoming predominant at an inopportune moment, immediately destroying the pathos of the speech and the distinctness of the words, while he feels a constant impulse towards musical discharge and a virtuoso presentation of his vocal abilities. Here the 'poet' comes to his aid, providing him with ample opportunities for lyrical interjections, repetitions of words, sentences and so on, at which points the singer, now in the purely musical element, can relax without consideration for the words. This alternation of emotionally charged speech, only partly sung, and wholly sung interjections, the basis of stilo rappresentativo, this rapidly alternating attempt to affect now the listener's attentive-ness to concept and idea, and now his musical response, is both so utterly unnatural and so profoundly contradictory of the Apolline and Dionysiac artistic impulses that we must infer an origin of the recitative in something extrinsic to all artistic instincts. According to this description, the recitative might be defined as a mixture of epic and lyrical declamation; not a profoundly stable mixture, which could not be achieved from such thoroughly diverse components, but a highly external, mosaic-like conglutination entirely without parallel in the world of nature and experience. But this was not the opinion of the inventors of recitative: they themselves, and along with them their own times, believed that stilo rappresentativo had solved the mystery of ancient music, the secret that alone was able to explain the enormous effect of Orpheus, Amphion and even of Greek tragedy. The new style was held to be the reawakening of the most effective music, the music of ancient Greece; indeed, given the general and quite traditional view of the Homeric world as the primal world, they were able to succumb to the dream that they had returned to mankind's beginnings in paradise, when music too must necessarily have had that unparalleled purity, power and innocence of which the poets spoke so movingly in their pastoral plays. This allows us to see to the heart of the development of that truly modern genre, opera: here art is responding to a powerful need, but that need is non-aesthetic - the longing for an idyll, a belief in the primordial existence of the artistic, good man. The recitative was held to be the rediscovered language of those primitive men; opera was seen as the rediscovered country of that idyllically or heroically good creature, who obeyed a natural artistic impulse in all that he did, and every time he had something to say sang it at least in part, bursting fully into song at the slightest stirring of the emotions. We are not concerned to point out that with this newly created image of the paradisiacal artist the humanists of the day were doing battle with the old ecclesiastical idea of man as irredeemably corrupt and damned, so that opera can be seen both as the opposition dogma of the good man, and at the same time as an antidote to the pessimism that was such a temptation to the serious-minded people of the day, given the terrible uncertainties of every condition of life at that time. It is enough that we should recognize how the true magic, and hence the genesis of this art form, lay in the satisfaction of a thoroughly non-aesthetic need, in the optimistic glorification of man himself, in the image of primitive man as naturally good and artistic, a principle that opera gradually transformed into a menacing and terrible demand which, in the face of the socialist movements of the present day, we can no longer ignore. The 'noble savage' is claiming his rights. A paradisiacal prospect indeed!
I should like to add an equally clear confirmation of my view that opera is built on the same principles as our own Alexandrian culture. Opera is the offspring of theoretical man, the critical layman, not the artist: one of the most surprising facts in the history of all the arts. It was truly unmusical listeners who demanded that the words should be understood above all else; so that a rebirth of music could only occur when a way of singing was discovered in which the words would hold sway over counterpoint as a master holds sway over his servant. For the words, it was felt, were nobler than the accompanying harmonic system just as the mind is nobler than the body. It was with just this amateur, unmusical crudeness that the combinations of music, image and word were treated in the earliest days of opera; and it was in the spirit of this aesthetic that the first experiments were encouraged by the elegant amateur circles, amongst the poets and singers that they patronized. The man who is incapable of art creates for himself a kind of art by the very fact that he is the inartistic man as such. Because he has no notion of the Dionysiac depths of music, he transforms musical enjoyment into a rationalistic words-and-music rhetoric of passion in the stilo rappresentativo, and into a voluptuous sensuality of vocal music; because he is incapable of vision he forces the mechanic and the decorative artist into his service; because the true essence of the artist is beyond his comprehension, he conjures up the 'artistic primitive man' in accordance with his own taste, the man who passionately sings and declaims. He dreams himself into an age in which passion alone suffices to produce songs and poems: as if the emotions had ever been capable of artistic creation. Opera is based on a fallacious belief concerning the artistic process, the idyllic belief that anyone capable of emotion is an artist. According to this belief, opera is the expression of amateurism in art, dictating its laws with the cheerful optimism of theoretical man.
If we wish to combine the two ideas which we have just shown to have influenced the origin of opera within a single concept, we need only speak of an idyllic tendency in opera: and we need look no further than Schiller's formulation and explanation. Either, Schiller says, nature and the ideal are objects of grief, when the former is portrayed as lost and the latter as unattainable; or else both are objects of joy, being portrayed as real. The first of these is represented by the elegy in a narrow sense, the latter by the idyll in the broadest sense.
Here we should immediately point out the common feature of these two ideas in the genesis of the opera - that the ideal is not felt to be unattainable, nor nature to be lost. According to this sentiment, man enjoyed a prehistoric age in which he dwelt within the very heart of nature, and thanks to his natural state he had directly accomplished the ideal of humanity, in paradisiacal virtue and artistry. And from this primitive man we are all supposed to be descended - indeed we are his very image. In order to recognize ourselves as these primitive men all we need to do is cast some things aside, voluntarily relinquishing our superfluous scholarship, our excessive culture.
It was to such a consonance of nature and the ideal, to such an idyllic reality, that the cultured man of the Renaissance allowed himself to be returned by his operatic imitation of Greek tragedy, and he used that tragedy as Dante used Virgil, to reach the gates of paradise: although from that point onwards he continued the journey alone, and passed over from an imitation of the supreme Greek art form to a 'restitution of all things', an imitation of man's original art world. What good-natured confidence there was in these bold strivings, in the very midst of theoretical culture! - only to be explained by the comforting belief that 'man in himself was the eternally virtuous operatic hero, the eternally piping or singing shepherd, who must always finally rediscover himself as such, if indeed he had ever really lost himself for any time; only to be seen as the fruit of that optimism that now rises like a sickly and seductive column of scented vapour from the depths of the Socratic world-view.
So the face of opera is not marked by the elegiac pain of eternal loss, but rather by the cheerfulness of eternal rediscovery, the cosy enjoyment of an idyllic reality, which can at least be imagined as real at any time - perhaps, at the same time, with a sense that this supposed reality is nothing but a fantastically silly dalliance, which would make anyone capable of comparing it with the terrible seriousness of nature as it really is, or with the primal scenes of mankind's actual origins, cry in disgust: 'Away with the phantom!' Nevertheless, we would be wrong to believe that such a trifling matter as opera could simply be exorcized, like a ghost, by a vigorous shout. Anyone wishing to destroy opera must take up arms against the Alexandrian cheerfulness that uses it so naively as a way of expressing its favourite idea, whose true art form it is. But what could art itself expect from the effects of a genre whose origins lie outside the realm of aesthetics, which has rather crept across from a half-moral sphere to the realm of art, deceiving us only every now and again about its hybrid origins? What juices nourish this parasitic creature, opera, if not those of true art? Would we be wrong to suppose that, beneath its idyllic seductions, its Alexandrian blandishments, the supreme and properly serious task of art - that of rescuing the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and releasing the subject, with the healing balm of illusion, from the convulsive stirrings of the will - might degenerate into an empty and frivolous amusement? What becomes of the eternal truths of the Dionysiac and the Apolline in a mixture of styles such as I have shown to be the essence of stilo rappresentativo? Where music is considered the servant, the text the master, and where music is compared to the body, the text to the soul? Where the highest goal is at best a descriptive tone-painting, like that of the New Attic Dithyramb? Where music is utterly estranged from its true dignity as a Dionysiac mirror to the world, to the point where,a slave to appearance, it can only imitate the forms of the phenomenal world, and from the play of lines and proportions produce a superficial amusement? Close observation reveals that this fatal influence of opera on music practically coincides with the whole of the development of modern music; the optimism that lurks in the genesis of opera and in the essence of the culture it represents has managed with frightening rapidity to divest music of its Dionysiac cosmic significance, and to turn it into a formally playful entertainment; a transformation which we might only compare, say, with the metamorphosis of Aeschylean man into the cheerful man of the Alexandrians.
But if we are right, in our exemplification, to compare the disappearance of the Dionysiac spirit with a highly striking but as yet unexplained transformation and degeneration in Greek man, what hopes must awaken in us when all the most certain signs augur the opposite process, the gradual awakening of the Dionysiac spirit, in our contemporary World! The divine power of Heracles cannot lie eternally dormant in the prodigal service of Omphale. From the Dionysiac soil of the German spirit a power has arisen that has nothing in common with the original conditions of Socratic culture: that culture can neither explain nor excuse it, but instead finds it terrifying and inexplicable, powerful and hostile - German music, as we know it pre-eminently in its mighty sun-cycle from Bach to Beethoven, from Beethoven to Wagner. Even under the most favourable conditions, what can the knowledge-hungry Socratism of our own times do with this daemon rising from the bottomless depths? Neither in the flourishes and arabesques of operatic melody nor with the help of the arithmetical abacus of the fugue and contrapuntal dialectics shall we find the formula by whose thrice powerful light that daemon might be subjugated and compelled to speak. What a spectacle it is to see our aestheticians, armed with the butterfly net of their own peculiar 'beauty', beating the air as they chase after the spirit of music, while it scampers away before them with an incomprehensible life, their movements falling sadly short of any standards of eternal beauty or sublimity ! Let us take a close look at these patrons of music in the flesh, as they tirelessly call 'Beauty! Beauty!' - do they really behave like nature's favourite children, formed and coddled in the lap of beauty, or are they not rather in search of a deceptive disguise for their own clumsiness, an aesthetic pretext for their own unfeeling sobriety? I am thinking of Otto Jahn, for example. But the liar and hypocrite should take care with German music, for in the whole of our culture it is the only pure, clear and cleansing fire-spirit from which and towards which, as in the teaching of the great Heraclitus of Ephesus, all things move in a double orbit. Everything that we now call culture, education and civilization will one day appear before that infallible judge, Dionysus.
Let us, then, recall how through Kant and Schopenhauer the spirit of German philosophy which flows from the same sources, was able to destroy scientific Socratism's complacent delight in existence by demonstrating its limitations, and how it thus introduced an infinitely more profound and serious consideration of ethical questions and art, which we might almost describe as Dionysiac wisdom in conceptualized form. Whither does the mystery of the union of German music and German philosophy point, if not to a new mode of existence of which we can only gain an inkling through Greek analogies? For the Greek model is of inestimable value to us as we stand at the boundary between two different modes of existence; all transitions and struggles assume classical and instructive form in that model. Only we seem to be experiencing the great epochs of Hellenism in reverse order, and seem now, for example, to be moving backwards from the Alexandrian age to the tragic period. And as we do so we have a sense that the birth of a tragic age for the German spirit would mean only a return to itself, a blissful self-rediscovery. For a long time terrible external invading powers had forced it, living as it did in a helpless barbarism of form, into slavery under their own form. Now at last, having returned to the original source of its being, it can dare to stride bold and free before all peoples, freed from the apron-strings of Romance civilization; if it can only learn constantly from one nation, the Greeks - to learn from them is already in itself a glorious thing and a rare distinction. And when have we ever needed these supreme teachers more than we need them today, as we experience the rebirth of tragedy, and risk neither knowing whence it comes nor being able to tell whither it seeks to go?
25
Music and tragic myth are to an equal extent expressions of the Dionysiac capacity of a people, and they are inseparable. Both originate in a sphere of art beyond the Apolline. Both transfigure a region in whose chords of delight dissonance as well as the terrible image of the world charmingly fade away; they both play with the sting of displeasure, trusting to their extremely powerful magical arts; both use this play to justify the existence even of the 'worst world'. Here the Dionysiac, as against the Apolline, proves to be the eternal and original artistic force, calling the whole phenomenal world into existence: in the midst of it a new transfiguring illusion is required if the animated world of individuation is to be kept alive. If we could imagine dissonance becoming man -and what else is man? - then in order to stay alive that dissonance would need a wonderful illusion, covering its own being with a veil of beauty. That is the real artistic intention of Apollo, in whose name we bring together all those innumerable illusions of the beauty of appearance, which at each moment make life worth living and urge us to experience the next moment.
From the foundation of all existence, the Dionysiac substratum of the world, no more can enter the consciousness of the human individual than can be overcome once more by that Apolline power of transfiguration, so that both of these artistic impulses are forced to unfold in strict proportion to one another, according to the law of eternal justice. Where the Dionysiac powers have risen as impetuously as we now experience them, Apollo, enveloped in a cloud, must also have descended to us; some future generation will behold his most luxuriant effects of beauty.
But anyone would intuitively sense the necessity of this effect if he had once, even while dreaming, imagined himself transposed back to life in ancient Greece: strolling beneath rows of tall Ionic columns, glancing up towards a horizon carved from pure and noble lines, beside him reflections of his transfigured form in gleaming marble, surrounded by people solemnly walking or in delicate motion, with harmonic sounds and a rhythmic gestural language - must he not, to this continuous influx of beauty, raise his hand to Apollo and exclaim: 'Happy race of Greeks! How great must Dionysus be among you, if the Delian god thinks such enchantment necessary to heal your dithyrambic madness!' - But one who was of this mind could find himself answered by an aged Athenian, glancing up at him with the sublime eye of Aeschylus: 'But consider this, too, wonderful stranger: how much did this people have to suffer to become so beautiful! But now follow me to the tragedy, and sacrifice with me in the temple of both deities!'
[Source: Friedrich Nietzsche - The Birth Of Tragedy Out Of The Spirit Of Music, Translated By Shaun Whiteside, Edited By Michael Tanner, Penguin Books, 2003, Pp.62-68,167-176, 205-207]