We have therefore, according to the doctrine of Schopenhauer, an
immediate understanding of music as the language of the will, and
feel our imagination stimulated to give form to this invisible and
yet so actively stirred spirit-world which speaks to us, and prompted
to embody it in an analogous example. On the other hand, image and
concept, under the influence of a truly conformable music, acquire a
higher significance. Dionysian art therefore is wont to exercise--two
kinds of influences, on the Apollonian art-faculty: music firstly
incites to the _symbolic intuition_ of Dionysian universality, and,
secondly, it causes the symbolic image to stand forth _in its fullest
significance._ From these facts, intelligible in themselves and not
inaccessible to profounder observation, I infer the capacity of music
to give birth to _myth,_ that is to say, the most significant exemplar,
and precisely _tragic_ myth: the myth which speaks of Dionysian
knowledge in symbols. In the phenomenon of the lyrist, I have set forth
that in him music strives to express itself with regard to its nature
in Apollonian images. If now we reflect that music in its highest
potency must seek to attain also to its highest symbolisation, we must
deem it possible that it also knows how to find the symbolic expression
of its inherent Dionysian wisdom; and where shall we have to seek for
this expression if not in tragedy and, in general, in the conception of
the _tragic_?
From the nature of art, as it is ordinarily conceived according to
the single category of appearance and beauty, the tragic cannot be
honestly deduced at all; it is only through the spirit of music that
we understand the joy in the annihilation of the individual. For in
the particular examples of such annihilation only is the eternal
phenomenon of Dionysian art made clear to us, which gives expression
to the will in its omnipotence, as it were, behind the _principium
individuationis,_ the eternal life beyond all phenomena, and in
spite of all annihilation. The metaphysical delight in the tragic
is a translation of the instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom
into the language of the scene: the hero, the highest manifestation
of the will, is disavowed for our pleasure, because he is only
phenomenon, and because the eternal life of the will is not affected
by his annihilation. "We believe in eternal life," tragedy exclaims;
while music is the proximate idea of this life. Plastic art has an
altogether different object: here Apollo vanquishes the suffering of
the individual by the radiant glorification of the _eternity of the
phenomenon_; here beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life;
pain is in a manner surreptitiously obliterated from the features of
nature. In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism the same nature
speaks to us with its true undissembled voice: "Be as I am! Amidst the
ceaseless change of phenomena the eternally creative primordial mother,