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etween a repetition and recast of the world and a
copy of the primal unity Does this passage assert that
music is a copy both of the primal unity and of the
world Isn’t this a contradiction, and not the one
Nietzsche intends In order to clarify what is
bothering me and to find out whether I am misreading
this or whether there is actually a problem, I will
produce a working translation and use it in an effort to
assess Kaufman’s and other versions. My first version
actually suffers from a slight misreading, which I
correct below. But, as such mishaps are part of the
struggle of reconciling texts, I begin with the slightly
off version:
He has first, as Dionysian artist, become
completely at one with the primal unity, its
pain and contradiction, and produces the
likeness of this primal unity as music; even
if this has been rightly called by others a
repetition of the world and a recasting of it;
but now this music manifests itself to him
again as in an allegorical dream image under
the effect of the Apollonian dream. That
imageless and non-conceptual reflection of
the primal pain in the music, with its
redemption in appearance, produces now a
second mirroring, an individual likeness or
example.
At first this seems to confirm my feeling that
Kaufman made a mistake. But as I ponder more
deeply the discrepancy between my version and his,
my sense of the passage begins to shift, a
bewilderment that ultimately leads to a richer version.
When my uneasiness began, I wondered first whether
Nietzsche, in his effort to reconcile Wagner’s practice
of giving expression to the world through music (the
Rhine river, the golden Ring, and even the rocks of
the Rhine have voices) with Schopenhauer’s view that
music was a copy of the primal One, had attempted to
merge the two incompatible sources. As I began to
read Kaufman, music would be a copy (repetition) of
the world, which is itself already a copy of the primal
unity. This would make music a copy of a copy, and
the Apollonian likeness would become a third-level
copy, or mirroring, not, as Nietzsche calls it, a second
mirroring. At this point, as often happens, the passage
becomes even more opaque.
Therefore, I should take my own advice and
consider another translation. Speirs renders the
passage in the following way:
In the first instance the lyric poet, a
Dionysian artist, has become entirely at one
with the primordial unity, with its pain and
contradiction, and he produces a copy of this
primordial unity as music, which has been
described elsewhere, quite rightly, as a
repetition of the world and a second copy of
it; now, however, under the influence of
Apollonian dream, the music in turn
becomes visible to him as in a symbolic
dream image. The image-less and conceptless
reflection of the original pain in music,
with its release and redemption in
semblance, now generates a second
reflection, as a single symbolic likeness or
exemplum. 13
Speirs specifically calls music a second copy of
the world as well as a copy of the primordial unity,
but only as described elsewhere. Is Nietzsche creating
a juxtaposition between his description of music as a
copy of the primal One and somebody else’s
description of music as a copy of the world I find my
interpretation of this passage to be faltering. What is
involved here is precisely the ontological status of the
music as Nietzsche sees it. Since the extended title of
the essay was to have been “The Birth of Tragedy out
of the Spirit of Music,” it is clear that this passage is
crucial. What is music’s relation to the world If we
cannot understand this passage correctly, how can we
understand the Dionysian substratum of Greek
tragedy, to which this passage is building up
I now turn to Smith and I am trying to think
through the problem with the help of these translations
in the process of writing about this passage. As a
translator, I am struggling with the relation of music
to the world and to the primal unity. Smith renders the
passage as follows:
He has in the first place as a Dionysian artist
become entirely fused with the original
Unity, with its pain and contradiction, and
produced the copy of this original unity in
the form of music, assuming, that is, that it
is correct to identify music as a repetition
and cast of the world; but now this music
becomes visible to him again, as in an
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