DONNY CONTRASTS NIETZSCHE'S APOLLO/DIONYSIAN AESTHETIC W/ PIRSIG'S
METAPHYSICAL-AESTHETIC.
Nietzsche's (essentually Greek) view is actually the opposite of RMP's
view/representation. For Nietzsche, the Absolute is static (Void-like?)
perfection and the field of time/experience is a chaotic whirl of opposing
forces which arises from (or falls out of) the Absolute. For RMP, the
ultimate, "pre-intelectual" *Reality* is characterized as dynamic and
what's left in it's wake is the patterened, "static" world of concepts and
labels and hierarchies.
Apollo--->Dionysis
DQ---->sq
**************************************
Hello.
This Nietzsche quastion sort-of bounced around in my head and --
while reading Spengler's *Decline of the West* -- I hit apon the
difference here.
First, as I said before, Nietzsche's distinction -- the Apollonian
and the Dionyssian -- is not at all a metaphysical distinction. It referes
to the two types of "rapture" or "frenzy" one experiences in the presence
of art or beauty or the sublime. Apollonian art is art that arrests you
-- you are STOPED! Frozen like a deer in headlights. The awe you
expereience shuts you down. This is the "rapture" most suited to
(acording to Nietzsche) painting, sculpture, and archatecture.
Dionysisn "rapture" is the experience that fills you w/ energy --
it MOVES you. You're reved-up. You're now ready to take on the world. GO
GET 'EM TIGER!! This sort of "rapture" is best expressed through drama
and music. And the highest form of art is (far Nietzsche) dramatic
tragedy -- because only it can unite the two experiences. You are at once
filled w/ energy and shut down.
Now, this is Nietszche's system, but he took it principally from
Greek aesthetics. Hegel -- whome Nietszche didn't know much of and liked
even less -- had previously described Greek art in a similer way:
In-itself (Apollo) implicit, immedeat unity
For-itself (Dioysis) -- which seperates itself out, tears itself apart and
devours itself
and In-and-for-Itself (dramatic tragedy) which is a *medeated* unity --
oneness now *explicit*
Now what got my mind into this was reading Spengler, where --
right towards the begining -- he talks about how different cultures have
had different concepts of time, and one really good key to understanding
any culture is to understand it's idea of time (it's necessary to
undersatnd anything about Classical Greece).
Spengler writes:
_______________________
In the world-consciousness of the Hellenes all experience, not merely
personal but communal past, was immediatly transformed into a timeless,
immobile, mythically-fashioned background.... Thus...to Caeser there
seemed at the least nothing preposterous in claiming decent from Venus....
The Classic possesed no *memory*, no organ of history in this special
sense.... Past and future...are absent and the "pure Present," which so
often roused Goethe's admiration in every product of Classical life and in
sculpture particuarly, fills that life w/ an intesnsity that is to us
perfectly unknown.
_______________________
I won't bore you w/ the examples and evidence Spengler gives, but
the picture of time -- the Greek picture -- he arrives at here is that the
present situation/moment ("What's going on here, now?") is like an island
-- and bellow the surface of this sea is the timelsee world of Myth and
Dream. The present situation arises out of this timless field, runs it's
course, and then colapses back into it -- replaced by another "present
situation." But TIME HERE IS NOT A LINE.
Now... how this relates to Nietszche and Pirsig:
In the Classic (and Nietzschien) view, the Absolute -- the Eternal
world (Plato's world of Forms) is static. It is frozen; it is w/o time.
Then, there arises (or falls) out of this the field of time-space
experience -- which is never any "larger" that "What's going on here,
now?"
RMP's concept of time is certainly more Western ('Time is an arrow
in fligt'... or a train), and it significantly informed by a different
aesthetic experience. RMP's primary aesthetic experience -- which informs
all his subsequent metaphysical thinking and writing -- was the experience
of a seed crystal.
From ZMM, chap 15:
__________________________
A supersaturated solution is one in which the saturation point, at
which no more material can be disolved, has been exceeded. This can occure
because the saturation point becomes higher as the temperature of the
solution is incressed. When you dissolve the material at a high
temperature and then cool the solution, the material sometimes doesn't
crystalize out because the molocules don't know how. They require
something to get them started, a seed crystal, or a grain of dust or even
a sudden scratch or tap on the surrounding glass.
He [young Phaedrus in the lab] walked to the water tap to cool the
sollution but never got there. Before his eyes, as he walked, he saw a
star of crystalline material in the solution appear and grow suddenly and
radically until it filled the entire vessel. He *saw* it grow. Where
before was only clear liquid there was now a mass so solid he could turn
the vessel upside down and nothing would come out.
___________________________
This experience left a mark in Pirsig's mind, for sure. His
picture of the world is one in which there is first a fluid, dynamic
moment that is then replaced by a static crystal hierarchy. This is his
cutting-edge pre-intellectual moment (DQ) and the memories and concepts
and words which are left in it's wake (sq). His world is an ever-growing
"wave of crystalization" being led by ever-retreating DQ.
I think Pirsig and Nietzsche have two different pictures of time
-- illustrated by the difference between DQ-->sq and the Apollo-Dionysisn
relationships. Now let's all plese check ourselves before we are tempted
to ask "Well, which is right?" Remember: A picture can't be right or
wrong; a picture is just a picture. Only things we might say about a
picture could be right or wrong.
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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