Margrieta Beer

“ In the multitudinous and manifold forms of human life, and in the unceasing change of events, the artist looks only on the Idea, knowing it as the abiding and the essential, as that which is known with equal truth for all time. Art, therefore, is the bridge between two worlds. It leads us from things as they seem to things as they really are.
It is the genius who possesses this power of vision, and whose magic works can unfold before the eyes of ordinary mortals the spirit of beauty as she has revealed herself to him. ”

“ Then only does man experience the sense of solidarity and kinship which runs through all things, and feel himself one with the universe.
These recurring waves of mysticism seem always to appear in the history of thought at the end of a specially brilliant intellectual period. It is as though the human mind, having striven to the top of its capacity on the lines of the intellect and the reason, impatient at its own limitations, and wearying of the discrepancy between its endeavours and its achievements, turns eagerly in the opposite direction, and directs its gaze inward. ”

“ Suffering is in the very nature of all life, and the ceaseless efforts which we make to banish it succeed only in making it change its form. Yet we pursue our lives, absorbed in the interests of the moment, just as we blow out a soap bubble as large as possible, although we know perfectly well that it will burst. Willing or striving may be compared to an unquenchable thirst. Every act of willing presupposes a want. The basis of all willing is need or deficiency. The nature of man, therefore, is subject to pain originally and through its very nature. ”

“ Science can only follow the unresting and inconstant stream of appearances. It can never reach a final goal nor attain complete satisfaction, any more than by running we can reach the place where the clouds touch the horizon. But art, on the other hand, is everywhere at its goal. It plucks the object of its contemplation out of the stream of things as they seem, and holds it isolated before its vision. ”

“ Happiness, therefore, always lies in the future, or else in the past. The present, Schopenhauer compares to a small dark cloud, which the wind drives over the sunny plain. Before and behind it all is bright, but the cloud itself always casts a shadow. The present is always insufficient, the future is uncertain, and the past irrevocable.
The will strives always, for striving is its real nature. No attainment of the goal can put an end to this constant striving. It is not susceptible, therefore, of any final satisfaction, for in itself it goes on for ever. ”

“ It is like the alms thrown to the beggar, that keeps him alive today, that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow.
Without peace no true well-being is possible. But when some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, and knowledge is delivered from the slavery of the will, we have a vision of things free from this relation of the will. We can observe them without personal interest, without subjectivity. ”

“ The modern art of music was not developed in their day, and yet both these philosophers seem to have had prophetic insight in understanding the nature of the marvellous spell and power of sound. Music to them was an imitation, a copy of character, and as such of profound importance in education. Music reflects character, and therefore moulds and influences it. The foundations of character, says Plato, are laid in music, which charms the souls of the young into the path of virtue. Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, making the soul harmonious and graceful. ”

“ Art is the most joy-giving and the only innocent side of life. It is, says Schopenhauer, in the full significance of the word, the flower of life. The pleasure which we receive from all beauty, the consolation which art affords, enables us to forget the cares of life. This pleasure consists in the contemplation of the Ideas, in the contemplation of the inner truth of life, which reveals to us a drama full of significance. In entering into the state of pure contemplation, our happiness lies in the sense of being lifted, for the time being, above all willing, beyond all wishes and desires. ”

“ Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never the events themselves. This inner meaning of life, the eternal truth of things, is felt and understood immediately when we listen to great music. "All things eternal," wrote Wagner, "can be expressed with unmistakable certainty in music." And in another passage, he says, "Music can never and in no possible alliance cease to be the highest, the redeeming art. It is of her nature, that what all the other arts but hint at, through her and in her becomes the most indubitable of certainties, the most direct and definite of truths." ”

“ It is far more correct to regard misery and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life, for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. It is difficult to conceive how men can deceive themselves and be persuaded that life is there to be thankfully enjoyed, and that man exists in order to be happy. The constant illusion and disillusion seem intended to awaken the conviction, that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts, or our struggles, and that all good things are but empty vanity. ”

“ We are then set free from the miserable striving of the will. It is this deliverance that art effects for us, and which is accomplished only by the inner power of the artistic nature. Art frees us from all subjectivity, from the bondage of the will. This freeing of knowledge lifts us out of all the misery of endless desire, as wholly and entirely as do sleep and dreams. Happiness and unhappiness have disappeared. We are no longer individuals. ”

“ As in the life of the plant, so in the life of all men. There is the same restless, unsatisfied striving, a ceaseless {42} movement through ever-ascending forms, until finally the seed becomes a new starting-point. This is repeated ad infinitum, nowhere an end, nowhere a final satisfaction, nowhere a resting-place. No possible satisfaction in the world can suffice to still the cravings of the will, to set a goal to its infinite aspirations, and to fill the bottomless abyss of its heart. ”

“ Talent is limited to detecting the relations which exist between individual phenomena, whereas genius rises to a vision of the universal in the individual. The genius has a vision of another and a deeper world, because he sees more profoundly into the world which lies before him. "To compare useful people with men of genius is like comparing building stone with diamonds." Mere men of talent come always at the right time, for they are called forth by the needs of their own age. ”

“ From his earliest days he had been abnormally sensitive to the misery that lies beneath the surface of life. Pain is essential to life and cannot be evaded. If it can find entrance in no other form, then it comes in the sad, grey garments of tedium and ennui.
The purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence, and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it. This "divine release from the common ways of men" can only be found through art. But even this release, which is accessible only to the few, increases the capacity for suffering. ”

“ To the great mass of mankind there is something alien and repellent in this grim and bitter outlook of hopelessness. It finds little or no response in the heart of the normal human being, even though at times the nightmare view may force itself upon him. "Deliverance," says the Indian poet Tagore, "is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. All my illusions will burn into illumination of joy and all my desires ripen into fruits of love." ”

“ With such intensity did Schopenhauer feel that pessimism was the only possible conclusion, that he maintained that optimism was not only absurd, but really a wicked way of thought. For optimism is a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. He revolted against the theory of Leibnitz, who maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is, on the contrary, he declared, the worst of all possible worlds. Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the will to live, the real originator of the world, which views itself complacently in its works. ”

“ It records the history of the will enlightened by intellect. In the world of experience the will expresses itself in action. But melody does more, it expresses the inner side of the action, drawing out from the deeps its secret history, its motives and efforts, its passionate yearning and inner excitements, all that which the reason includes in the concept of feeling. For this reason music has been called the language of feeling and passion, as words are the language of the reason. ”

“ The concrete image, the whole full-blooded individual was always clearly before his mind, but beyond that he saw and realised something more universal, from which it necessarily and inevitably springs. He saw that the truth of nature does not lie on the surface, but in a deeper unity, which the penetrative insight of the artist alone can grasp.
In the system of Schopenhauer, then, art acquires almost the character of a religion. It becomes the means by which the ultimate essence, the soul of whatever exists, is disengaged from the world of matter. ”

“ The common mortal, he says, that manufacture of nature, which she produces by the thousand every day, is not capable of observation that is wholly disinterested in every sense. He can turn his attention to things only so far as they have some relation to his will, however indirect it may be. This is why he is so soon done with everything, with works of art, objects of natural beauty, and everywhere with all that is truly significant in the various scenes of life. He does not linger in the pursuit of beauty, but seeks only to gain his own way in life. ”

“ This joy is in no way akin to the passionate delight experienced by those who love life. That is a fleeting emotion, which has keen suffering as its correlative. But "it is a {89} peace that cannot be shaken, a deep rest and inward serenity, a state which we cannot contemplate without the greatest longing, when it is brought before our imagination, because we at once recognise it as that which infinitely surpasses anything else. Then we feel that every gratification won from the world is merely like the alms which the beggar receives from life to-day, that he may hunger again on the morrow. ”

“ Tragedy is the summit of poetic art. Here the unspeakable pain, the wail of humanity, the triumph of evil, the mastery of chance is unfolded before us. It is one and the same will that appears throughout. ”

“ His analysis of the worth of human life, as represented in this theory of pessimism, is the most passionate and terrible indictment of existence which has ever found expression. His sense of disenchantment is felt with such intensity, that it colours and distorts the whole fabric of his vision of life. ”

“ It lays bare the inmost kernel which lies hidden in the heart of all things. It penetrates to the very heart of nature. The ineffable joy which we derive from music, which haunts our consciousness as the vision of a distant paradise, restores to us all the emotions of our inmost nature, but divested entirely of the sting of actuality, and far removed from its pain.
It is interesting to compare the view of Schopenhauer, that music is a copy of the will itself, with the theory of Plato and Aristotle, which maintained that music is a direct reflection of character. ”