Domhnall

S5: .... we know the subjective artist only as the poor artist, and throughout the entire range of art we demand first of all the conquest of the subjective, redemption from the “ego,” and the silencing of the individual will and desire. Indeed, we find it impossible to believe in any truly artistic production, however insignificant, if it is without objectivity, without pure contemplation devoid of interest. [Note - a concept from Schopenhauer] Hence our aesthetics must solve the problem of how the “lyrist” is possible as an artist - he who, according to the experience of all ages, is continually saying “I” and running through the entire chromatic scale of his passions and desires. …. Let us add to this the most important phenomenon of all ancient lyric poetry: they took for granted the union, indeed the identity, of the lyrist with the musician. Compared with this, our modern lyric poetry seems like the statue of a god without a head.

S8: We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets. At bottom, the aesthetic phenomenon is simple: let anyone have the ability to behold continually a vivid play and to live constantly surrounded by hosts of spirits, and he will be a poet; let anyone feel the urge to transform himself and to speak out of other bodies and souls, and he will be a dramatist.
The Dionysian excitement is capable of communicating this artistic gift to a multitude, so they can see themselves surrounded by such a host of spirits while knowing themselves to be essentially one with them. … And this phenomenon is experienced epidemically: a whole throng experiences the magic of this transformation.

S9: [Prometheus in a poem by Goethe:]

Here I sit, forming men
in my own image,
a race to be like me,
to suffer, to weep,
to delight and the rejoice,
and to defy you,
as I do.”

….In himself, the Titanic artist found the defiant faith that he had the ability to create men and at least destroy Olympian gods, by means of his superior wisdom which, to be sure, he had to atone for with eternal suffering. The splendid “ability” of the great genius for which even eternal suffering is a slight price, the stern pride of the artist…

S18: It is an eternal phenomenon: the insatiable will always finds a way to detain its creatures in life and compels them to live on, by means of an illusion spread over things. One is chained by the Socratic love of knowledge and the delusion of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art’s seductive veil of beauty fluttering before his eyes; still another by the metaphysical comfort that beneath the whirl of phenomena, eternal life flows on indestructibly - to say nothing of the more vulgar and almost more powerful illusions which the will always has to hand. These three stages of illusion are actually designed for the more nobly formed natures, who actually feel profoundly the weight and burden of existence, and must be deluded by exquisite stimulants into forgetfulness of their displeasure. All that we call culture is made up of these stimulants and according to the proportion of the ingredients, we have either a dominantly Socratic or artistic or tragic culture: or if historical exemplifications are permitted, there is either an Alexandrian or a Hellenic or a Buddhistic culture.

...But now that the Socratic culture can only hold the sceptre of its infallibility with trembling hands; now that it has been shaken from two directions - one by the fear of its own consequences which it at length begins to surmise, and again because it no longer has its former naive confidence in the eternal validity of its foundation - it is a sad spectacle to see how the dance of its thoughts rushes longingly towards ever new forms, to embrace them,... the theoretical man, alarmed and dissatisfied at his own consequences, no longer dares entrust himself to the terrible icy current of existence: he runs timidly up and down the bank. … Our art reveals this universal distress: in vain does one accumulate the entire “world literature” around modern man for his comfort: in vain does one place oneself in the midst of the art styles and artists of all ages, so that one may give names to them as Adam did to the beasts: one still remains eternally hungry, the “critic” without joy and energy, the Alexandrian man, who is at bottom a librarian and corrector of proofs, and wretchedly goes blind from the dust of books and from printer’s errors.

S23: But without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity: only a horizon defined by myths completes and unifies a whole cultural movement. Myth alone saves all the powers of the imagination… The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles. Even the state knows no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical foundation that guarantees its connection with religion and its growth from mythical notions.
By way of comparison, let us now picture the abstract man, untutored by myth; abstract education; abstract morality; abstract law; the abstract state: let us imagine the lawless roving of the artistic imagination, unchecked by any native myth; let us think of a culture that has no fixed and sacred primordial site but is doomed to exhaust all possibilities and to nourish itself wretchedly on all other cultures - there we have the present age, the result of that Socratism which is bent on the destruction of myth. And now the mythless man stands eternally hungry, surrounded by all past ages and digs for roots, even if he has to dig for them among the remotest antiquities…. who would care to contribute anything to a culture that cannot be satisfied no matter how much it devours, and at whose contact the most vigorous and wholesome nourishment is changed into “history and criticism”?