Everything which comes to the surface in the Apollonian part of Greek tragedy, in the dialogue, looks simple, translucent, beautiful. In this sense the dialogue is an image of the Greek man, whose nature reveals itself in dancing, because in dancing the greatest power is only latent, but it betrays its presence in the lithe and rich movement. Thus, the language of the Sophoclean heroes surprises us by its Apollonian clarity and brightness, so that we immediately imagine that we are glimpsing the innermost basis of their being, with some astonishment that the path to this foundation is so short.
However, once we look away from the character of the hero as it surfaces and becomes perceptible — a character who is basically nothing more than a light picture cast onto a dark wall, that is, an illusion through and through — we penetrate instead into the myth which projects itself in this bright reflection. At that point we suddenly experience a phenomenon which is the reverse of a well-known optical one. When we make a determined attempt to look directly at the sun and turn away blinded, we have dark coloured specks in front of our eyes, like a remedy, as it were. Those illuminated illusory pictures of the Sophoclean hero, briefly put, the Apollonian mask, are the reverse of that, necessary
creations of a glimpse into the inner terror of nature, bright spots, so to speak, to heal us from the horrifying night of the crippled gaze. Only in this sense can we think of correctly grasping the serious and significant idea of “Greek serenity”; whereas, nowadays we certainly come across the undoubtedly misconceived idea that this serenity is a condition of secure contentment on all the pathways and bridges of the present.
The most painful figure of the Greek stage, the ill-fated Oedipus, is understood by Sophocles as the noble man who is destined for error and misery in spite of his wisdom, but, who through his immense suffering, at the end exerts a magically beneficial effect around him, which still has an effect beyond his death.1 The noble man does not sin — that’s what the profound poet wishes to tell us: through Oedipus’ actions every law, every natural principle of order, indeed, the moral world may collapse, but because of these very actions a higher magical circle of consequences is created, which founds a new world on the ruins of the old world, which has been overthrown. Insofar as the poet is also a religious thinker, that is what he wishes to say to us; as a poet, he shows us first a wonderfully complicated legal knot, which the judge slowly undoes, link by link, in the process destroying himself. The real joy for the Greek in this dialectical solution is so great that because of it a sense of powerful serenity invests the entire work, which always breaks the sting of the dreadful assumptions of that plot.
In Oedipus in Colonus we run into this same serenity, but elevated in an immeasurable transfiguration. In contrast to the old man afflicted with excessive suffering, a man who is exposed purely as a man suffering from everything which happens to him — there stands the supernatural serenity which descends from the sphere of the gods and indicates to us that the hero in his purely passive conduct achieves his highest activity, which reaches out far over his own life; whereas, his conscious striving in his earlier life led him only to passivity. Thus, for the mortal eye the inextricably tangled legal knot of the Oedipus story is slowly untangled — and the most profound human joy suffuses us with this divine dialectical companion piece.
If we have done justice to the poet with this explanation, one can still nonetheless ask whether the content of the myth has been exhausted in that explanation. And here we see that the entire conception of the poet is simply nothing other than that illuminated image which healing nature holds up before us after a glimpse into the abyss. Oedipus the murderer of his father, the husband of his mother, Oedipus the solver of the riddle of the sphinx! What does the secret trinity of these fatal events tell us? There was a very ancient folk belief, especially in Persia, that a wise magus could be born only out of incest. Looking at Oedipus as the solver of riddles and emancipator of his mother, what we have to interpret immediately is the fact that right there where, through prophecy and magical powers, the spell of present and future is broken, that rigid law of individuation and the essential magic of nature in general, an immense natural horror — in this case incest — must have come first as the original cause. For how could we have compelled nature to yield up her secrets, if not for the fact that we fight back against her and win, that is, if not for the fact that we commit unnatural actions?
I see this insight stamped out in that dreadful trinity of Oedipus’s fate: the same man who solves the riddle of nature — of that ambiguous sphinx — must also break the most sacred natural laws when he murders his father and marries his mother. Indeed, the myth seems to want to whisper to us that wisdom, and especially Dionysian wisdom, is an unnatural atrocity, that a man who through his knowledge pushes nature into the abyss of destruction also has to experience in himself the disintegration of nature. “The spear point of knowledge turns itself against the wise man. Wisdom is a crime against nature.”1 The myth calls out such terrible statements to us, but, like a ray of sunlight,
the Greek poet touches the awe-inspiring and fearful Memnon’s Column of myth, so that it suddenly begins to play music — Sophoclean melodies.2
Now I’m going to compare the glory of passivity with the glory of activity which illuminates Aeschylus’s Prometheus. What Aeschylus the thinker had to say to us here, but what Aeschylus as a poet could only hint to us through a metaphorical picture — that’s something young Goethe knew how to reveal to us in the bold words of his Prometheus:
“Here I sit — I make men
in my own image,
a race like me,
to suffer, to weep,
to enjoy life and rejoice,
and to ignore you,
as I do.”3
Man, rising up into something Titanic, is victorious over his own culture and compels the gods to unite with him, because in his autonomous wisdom he holds their existence and the limits to their authority in his hand. The most marvellous thing in that poem of Prometheus, which is, according to its basic ideas, essentially a hymn celebrating impiety, is, however, the deep Aeschylean impulse for justice: the immeasurable suffering of the brave “individual,” on the one hand, and, on the other, the peril faced by the gods, in fact, a presentiment of a twilight of the gods, the compelling power for a metaphysical oneness, for a reconciliation of both these worlds of suffering — all this is a most powerful reminder of the central point and major claim of the Aeschylean world view, which sees Fate [Moira] enthroned over gods and men as eternal justice.
However, once we look away from the character of the hero as it surfaces and becomes perceptible — a character who is basically nothing more than a light picture cast onto a dark wall, that is, an illusion through and through — we penetrate instead into the myth which projects itself in this bright reflection. At that point we suddenly experience a phenomenon which is the reverse of a well-known optical one. When we make a determined attempt to look directly at the sun and turn away blinded, we have dark coloured specks in front of our eyes, like a remedy, as it were. Those illuminated illusory pictures of the Sophoclean hero, briefly put, the Apollonian mask, are the reverse of that, necessary
creations of a glimpse into the inner terror of nature, bright spots, so to speak, to heal us from the horrifying night of the crippled gaze. Only in this sense can we think of correctly grasping the serious and significant idea of “Greek serenity”; whereas, nowadays we certainly come across the undoubtedly misconceived idea that this serenity is a condition of secure contentment on all the pathways and bridges of the present.
The most painful figure of the Greek stage, the ill-fated Oedipus, is understood by Sophocles as the noble man who is destined for error and misery in spite of his wisdom, but, who through his immense suffering, at the end exerts a magically beneficial effect around him, which still has an effect beyond his death.1 The noble man does not sin — that’s what the profound poet wishes to tell us: through Oedipus’ actions every law, every natural principle of order, indeed, the moral world may collapse, but because of these very actions a higher magical circle of consequences is created, which founds a new world on the ruins of the old world, which has been overthrown. Insofar as the poet is also a religious thinker, that is what he wishes to say to us; as a poet, he shows us first a wonderfully complicated legal knot, which the judge slowly undoes, link by link, in the process destroying himself. The real joy for the Greek in this dialectical solution is so great that because of it a sense of powerful serenity invests the entire work, which always breaks the sting of the dreadful assumptions of that plot.
In Oedipus in Colonus we run into this same serenity, but elevated in an immeasurable transfiguration. In contrast to the old man afflicted with excessive suffering, a man who is exposed purely as a man suffering from everything which happens to him — there stands the supernatural serenity which descends from the sphere of the gods and indicates to us that the hero in his purely passive conduct achieves his highest activity, which reaches out far over his own life; whereas, his conscious striving in his earlier life led him only to passivity. Thus, for the mortal eye the inextricably tangled legal knot of the Oedipus story is slowly untangled — and the most profound human joy suffuses us with this divine dialectical companion piece.
If we have done justice to the poet with this explanation, one can still nonetheless ask whether the content of the myth has been exhausted in that explanation. And here we see that the entire conception of the poet is simply nothing other than that illuminated image which healing nature holds up before us after a glimpse into the abyss. Oedipus the murderer of his father, the husband of his mother, Oedipus the solver of the riddle of the sphinx! What does the secret trinity of these fatal events tell us? There was a very ancient folk belief, especially in Persia, that a wise magus could be born only out of incest. Looking at Oedipus as the solver of riddles and emancipator of his mother, what we have to interpret immediately is the fact that right there where, through prophecy and magical powers, the spell of present and future is broken, that rigid law of individuation and the essential magic of nature in general, an immense natural horror — in this case incest — must have come first as the original cause. For how could we have compelled nature to yield up her secrets, if not for the fact that we fight back against her and win, that is, if not for the fact that we commit unnatural actions?
I see this insight stamped out in that dreadful trinity of Oedipus’s fate: the same man who solves the riddle of nature — of that ambiguous sphinx — must also break the most sacred natural laws when he murders his father and marries his mother. Indeed, the myth seems to want to whisper to us that wisdom, and especially Dionysian wisdom, is an unnatural atrocity, that a man who through his knowledge pushes nature into the abyss of destruction also has to experience in himself the disintegration of nature. “The spear point of knowledge turns itself against the wise man. Wisdom is a crime against nature.”1 The myth calls out such terrible statements to us, but, like a ray of sunlight,
the Greek poet touches the awe-inspiring and fearful Memnon’s Column of myth, so that it suddenly begins to play music — Sophoclean melodies.2
Now I’m going to compare the glory of passivity with the glory of activity which illuminates Aeschylus’s Prometheus. What Aeschylus the thinker had to say to us here, but what Aeschylus as a poet could only hint to us through a metaphorical picture — that’s something young Goethe knew how to reveal to us in the bold words of his Prometheus:
“Here I sit — I make men
in my own image,
a race like me,
to suffer, to weep,
to enjoy life and rejoice,
and to ignore you,
as I do.”3
Man, rising up into something Titanic, is victorious over his own culture and compels the gods to unite with him, because in his autonomous wisdom he holds their existence and the limits to their authority in his hand. The most marvellous thing in that poem of Prometheus, which is, according to its basic ideas, essentially a hymn celebrating impiety, is, however, the deep Aeschylean impulse for justice: the immeasurable suffering of the brave “individual,” on the one hand, and, on the other, the peril faced by the gods, in fact, a presentiment of a twilight of the gods, the compelling power for a metaphysical oneness, for a reconciliation of both these worlds of suffering — all this is a most powerful reminder of the central point and major claim of the Aeschylean world view, which sees Fate [Moira] enthroned over gods and men as eternal justice.
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