DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0369
AFTER-ECHOES OF RAPHAEL
confine men’s upward vision, but set it free, so as to initiate many to these
sublimities.
NIETZSCHE as a humanist understood Raphael, with his profound sense
for mythology, which for the poetic man “transposes the horizon”, and of
which the figures must be the daemonic guardians, all-present though un-
noticed, under whose protection the young soul grows up, by whose signs the
grown man interprets his life and his struggles.1 For four centuries men were
able to suppose that they lived in familiarity with Raphael as artist and seer.
But as Nietzsche, the uncompleted teacher of coming generations, interpreted
Raphael, this “natura naturans”, in his truly religious paganism, this nature
suddenly came to present entirely new aspects, of a deeply stimulating historical truth.
The master who was perpetually subjecting himself stands for Nietzsche beside
Goethe as one of the great learners who “renounced themselves” through
learning:
“One must be able to learn.2 In an artist opposition is frequently offered by
jealousy or that pride which, on feeling something unfamiliar, immediately
puts out its stings and instinctively takes up an attitude of defence instead of
that of a learner. In Raphael, like Goethe, both jealousy and pride are lacking,
and for that reason they were great learners. Raphael disappears before our eyes as
one who is a learner, in the midst of his adoption of what his great rival (Michael
Angelo) designated as his ‘nature’;—but before he had transferred to himself
the whole of Michael Angelo, he died—and the last series of his works, as the
beginning of a new course of studies, is less perfect, merely good, just because
the great learner was interrupted by death in his most difficult task and took
with him the final justifying purpose upon which he was directing his gaze.”
§ Relation to Music
In Nietzsche’s lofty survey of the arts, the words on music, in the Geburt der
Tragodie, seem to have been spoken also of rhythm in the great dramatic
painter: “music is not a reflection of phenomena, but a direct reflection of the
will itself, thus presenting to everything physical in the world the metaphysical,
to every phenomenon the thing in itself.”3 This allegorical character of music
Nietzsche pursues into the sphere of colour: “the same princely distinction of
convention shown by Raphael in the use of the simplest conventional colours”
was possessed by CHOPIN, with regard however not to colours but to con-
ventionality of melody and rhythm;4 for Nietzsche the two coincide, even in the
“highest sense for form”.
1 Geburt der Tragodie, 23 (ed. Musarion, III, p. 154).
2 Morgenrote'. Gedanken uber die moralischen Vorurteile, Book V, 540 (ed. Musarion, X, p. 330).
3 Geburt der Tragodie, 16 (ed. Musarion, III, p. 107 f.).
4 Menschliches, Allzumenschlich.es, IV, 159 (ed. Musarion, IX, p. 265).
351
confine men’s upward vision, but set it free, so as to initiate many to these
sublimities.
NIETZSCHE as a humanist understood Raphael, with his profound sense
for mythology, which for the poetic man “transposes the horizon”, and of
which the figures must be the daemonic guardians, all-present though un-
noticed, under whose protection the young soul grows up, by whose signs the
grown man interprets his life and his struggles.1 For four centuries men were
able to suppose that they lived in familiarity with Raphael as artist and seer.
But as Nietzsche, the uncompleted teacher of coming generations, interpreted
Raphael, this “natura naturans”, in his truly religious paganism, this nature
suddenly came to present entirely new aspects, of a deeply stimulating historical truth.
The master who was perpetually subjecting himself stands for Nietzsche beside
Goethe as one of the great learners who “renounced themselves” through
learning:
“One must be able to learn.2 In an artist opposition is frequently offered by
jealousy or that pride which, on feeling something unfamiliar, immediately
puts out its stings and instinctively takes up an attitude of defence instead of
that of a learner. In Raphael, like Goethe, both jealousy and pride are lacking,
and for that reason they were great learners. Raphael disappears before our eyes as
one who is a learner, in the midst of his adoption of what his great rival (Michael
Angelo) designated as his ‘nature’;—but before he had transferred to himself
the whole of Michael Angelo, he died—and the last series of his works, as the
beginning of a new course of studies, is less perfect, merely good, just because
the great learner was interrupted by death in his most difficult task and took
with him the final justifying purpose upon which he was directing his gaze.”
§ Relation to Music
In Nietzsche’s lofty survey of the arts, the words on music, in the Geburt der
Tragodie, seem to have been spoken also of rhythm in the great dramatic
painter: “music is not a reflection of phenomena, but a direct reflection of the
will itself, thus presenting to everything physical in the world the metaphysical,
to every phenomenon the thing in itself.”3 This allegorical character of music
Nietzsche pursues into the sphere of colour: “the same princely distinction of
convention shown by Raphael in the use of the simplest conventional colours”
was possessed by CHOPIN, with regard however not to colours but to con-
ventionality of melody and rhythm;4 for Nietzsche the two coincide, even in the
“highest sense for form”.
1 Geburt der Tragodie, 23 (ed. Musarion, III, p. 154).
2 Morgenrote'. Gedanken uber die moralischen Vorurteile, Book V, 540 (ed. Musarion, X, p. 330).
3 Geburt der Tragodie, 16 (ed. Musarion, III, p. 107 f.).
4 Menschliches, Allzumenschlich.es, IV, 159 (ed. Musarion, IX, p. 265).
351