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music, if music may legitimately be seen as
a repetition of the world; however, this
music becomes visible to him again, as in a
dream similitude, through Apollonian dream
influence. That reflection, without image or
ideal, of original pain in music, with its
redemption through illusion (Schein), now
produces a second reflection as a single
simile or example. 9
Let us look at the original:
Er is zuerst, als dionysischer Künstler,
gänzlich mit dem Ureinen, seinem Schmerz
und Widerspruch, eins geworden und
produziert das Abbild dieses Ureinen als
Musik, wenn anders diese mit Recht eine
Widerholung der Welt and ein zweiter
Abguss derselben gennant worden ist; jetzt
aber wird diese Musik ihm wieder, wie in
einem gleichnisartigen Traumbilde, unter
der apollonischen Traumeinwirkung
sichtbar. Jener bild- und begrifflose
Widerschein des Urschmerzes in der Musik,
mit seiner Erlösung im Scheine, erzeugt jetzt
eine zweite Spiegelung, als einzelnes
Gleichnis oder Exempel. 10
In this passage, many of Golfing’s tendencies are
apparent. “Zuerst” becomes “First and foremost,” that
is, a cliché. He renders a version in English that does
not lend itself to careful thought. How is it, for
example, that music becomes visible to him again
How was it visible the first time What is a dream
similitude How is dream similitude clarified through
Apollonian dream influence What sort of redemption
takes place through illusion Nietzsche is close to
Schopenhauer’s metaphysics in this passage, 11 and the
point he is making is at the frontier of what is
expressible, sounding a depth below where music and
images, let alone words, merge and arise together.
Nietzsche will plunge to these depths again when he
speaks of tragedy. This section, and the later passage
on tragedy, as well as the descriptions of the
Dionysian and Apollonian, must cohere not only with
each other but with the book as a whole throughout
the translation as they do in the original. What
Nietzsche says in the original German, unlike
Golfing’s English, is thinkable.
Kaufman takes this passage seriously and renders
a coherent version:
In the first place, as a Dionysian artist he has
identified himself with the primal unity, its
pain and contradiction. Assuming that music
has been correctly termed a repetition and a
recast of the world, we may say that he
produces the copy of this primal unity as
music. Now, however, under the Apollonian
dream inspiration, this music reveals itself to
him again as a symbolic dream image. The
inchoate, intangible reflection of the
primordial pain in music, with its
redemption in mere appearance, now
produces a second mirroring as a specific
symbol or example. 12
The reader is able to follow the above translation,
although Kaufman’s phrase inversion alters the flow
slightly. Music is an appearance as much as images
are. Pain expressed in music is redeemed through the
beautiful. As Dionysian, music reveals itself to the
musical poet as the primal unity of the world, which at
the same time displays itself in Apollonian images
that mirror the music, a second mirroring because
music already mirrors the primal unity. We can see
that Kaufman, familiar with the philosophical
tradition, is careful to make his version thinkable,
whereas Golfing seems to translate the words and
sentences as though they existed discretely without
seeing their semantic unity with the overall context.
Is it possible to get closer to Nietzsche than the
passages quoted Once Kaufman produced his works
of translation and argued that Nietzsche must be taken
seriously as a writer and thinker, then works like
Golfing’s were no longer acceptable. A previous
translation in the now defunct Oscar Levy series,
which was even more carefree, has been retired;
perhaps Golfing’s will soon vanish also. The issue
now, among careful translations, is interpretation. Can
a more philosophically coherent and stylistically
evocative version be produced The differences
between Kaufman’s version and Speirs’ and Smith’s
are subtle. I chose this passage in the book specifically
because its difficulty gave me the opportunity to
expose interpretive stresses in all the versions.
As I look at this passage in Kaufman’s version
more closely, I have the feeling that something is
amiss, or at least problematic. What is the relation
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