Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 5 Number 1, April 2004

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From the Divine to the Dissolute: Schopenhauer and Death in Venice

by

Dylan Trigg

“There is now only one thing to be done, and that is to try to get well –

in Venice!

(Nietzsche to Peter Gast, 1^st March 1879)

For artists, musicians, and poets, Schopenhauer’s inclusion of Platonic Ideas in his aesthetic theory is arguably the most influential aspect of his philosophy. What they have found in it is as an inspiration as profound as it is diverse. For philosophers it remains an oddity. Seemingly caught between the Kantian thing-in-itself and Schopenhauer’s own notion of the will, its presence within the entire structure of his philosophy remains awkward. Arguing that the Idea is both the thing-in-itself, and as such devoid of spatial-temporal categories, whilst simultaneously manifesting itself as the ‘adequate objectivity’ of thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer’s claim seems immediately self-refuting. But even if we overlook the metaphysically tenuous foundation of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics, then we are faced with a dichotomy between willing and contemplative disinterestedness that strives to be exclusive of each other. When Schopenhauer contends that the aesthetic experience releases us from the tyranny of willing, albeit only as a momentary respite, he seems to suggest that the liberation is unequivocal. In the present essay we will argue a different case by suggesting that the division between both the aesthetic consciousness and the willing consciousness is one of profound ambiguity and oscillation, and that the occasion when we are exclusively conscious of one is unattainable. Since this ambiguity was never raised by Schopenhauer we shall make recourse to a literary example that does exemplify this oscillating ambiguity consummately, and that figure is Gustave von Aschenbach from Thomas Mann’s celebrated novella Death in Venice. Of course, that Mann was influenced by Schopenhauer, along with both Nietzsche and Wagner, is widely known and need not be discussed here.[i] For the sake of brevity and clarity, our task is only to relate the figure of Aschenbach to this excluded element in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, thus fulfilling the neglected aspect of the aesthetic therein. By way of a foundation then, let us begin by exploring how Schopenhauer’s aesthetics philosophically evolve within the broader context.

Since it is reliant upon each book for its entire understanding, Schopenhauer’s magnum opus The World as Will and Representation thus forms a complete work whereby each individual aspect is simultaneously reflected in the other aspects whilst likewise remaining inextricably bound with them. To this extent, in encountering his aesthetic theory, it is presupposed that we have already understood his epistemological theory, since the latter precedes the former and as such provides a foundation for it. But for the sake of clarity and because it is indispensable for an understanding of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics, let us unfold this epistemological foundation.

Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory rests upon a crucial epistemological distinction between knowledge acquired under the will and knowledge acquired independently of the will. Schopenhauer’s use of the term will, however, is not meant to carry subjective volitional overtones. On the contrary, for Schopenhauer the will is an entirely impersonal, blind, and arational force that negates the possibility of any absolute free will. The actions of my body, rather than being detached desires founded through independent or otherwise autonomous choice, are in fact expressions of the will manifest through desire, striving, want and lack, as he writes: “The act of will and the action of the body are not two different states objectively known, connected by the bond of causality; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect, but are one and the same thing, though given in two entirely different ways, first quite directly, and then in perception for the understanding.”[ii] To suppose a causal link between willing and bodily movement then, is palpably false. This unity between body and will forges an intimacy that is only ruptured once the nature of the will has been inspected since for Schopenhauer the will, not merely manifest in the body, is rather a unifying blind striving force that in fact is analogous to Kant’s thing-in-itself: “…only the will is thing in itself…It is that of which all representation, all object, is the phenomenon, the visibility, the objectivity. It is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force of nature, and also in the deliberate conduct of man, and the great difference between the two concerns only the degree of the manifestation, not the inner nature of what is manifested.” (W1, 110) Limited by space we shall not be able to consider the various nuances of Schopenhauer’s argument for the metaphysical aspect of the will. We cannot, for instance go into the highly contentious relation between the will and the thing-in-itself: i.e. that the former exists in space and time but that the latter necessarily excludes this, thus leaving an unexplained void; or whether the will does, as Schopenhauer claim, have ontological priority over representation. Let us instead jump to the characterization of the will itself. 

Fundamental to Schopenhauer’s will is its ontological priority, its inner aspect of the world itself, and its sovereignty over the intellect. Schopenhauer presents a phenomenal plurality within the representational world that mirrors the inner world of will, the world as unity. But what is the nature of this will that gives rise to phenomena itself? For Schopenhauer to equate the will with the ­thing-in-itself, then the will must circumvent space and time and so must be groundless and infinite, that is to say without constraints; since otherwise it is obliged to remain an occupant of the principium individuationis. The necessary groundlessness of will therefore entails purposelessness: for groundless implies unceasing or otherwise without end, and to be devoid of an end is to be devoid of goal, and as such devoid of a purpose. Even in the Heraclitean river, the mere presence of becoming over being does not denote meaning as such. Man then, as the highest grade of objectivity of the will – that is, where the will becomes most apparent – is the manifestation of a blind, unceasing force that ascribes no end and no meaning to its journey. Further, this all consuming force being not only purposeless is also in opposition to itself since the will strives to obtain and master that which it lacks and the one thing it remains subordinate to is itself. It is, as it were, like a dog chasing its own tail and only when the tail has been consumed can the striving cease: “So long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throngs of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace.” (W1, 196) We might object to the apparent purposelessness of existence by claiming that in death existence meets its end and so too its beginning: i.e. nothing. However, we must then ask: can purpose be attributed to nothing? – perhaps only in an Schopenhauerian framework and indeed Schopenhauer does allude to this in his second volume (W2, 637).

As a striving, unceasing and tormenting expression of will, man for the most part remains subordinate to the dictates of his desires and lacks, and moreover exists as a desire without end: “…its desires are unlimited, its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied desire gives birth to a new one” (W2, 573) But within his own body and at varying capacities, the will manifests itself in various degrees accordingly: “Teeth, gullet, and intestinal canal are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual impulse; grasping hands and nimble feet correspond to the more indirect strivings of the will which they represent”. (W1, 108) Yet, the pronouncement of the will reaches its highest and most volatile point in the sexual impulse. Schopenhauer’s consecration of the sexual impulse is unprecedented and not without a certain grandeur:  “…the sexual impulse is the kernel of the will-to-live, and consequently the concentration of all willing; …therefore, I have called the genitals the focus of the will. Indeed it may be said that man is concrete sexual impulse, for his origin is an act of copulation, and the desire of his desires is an act of copulation, and this impulse alone perpetuates and holds together the whole of his phenomenal appearance.” (W2, 514) As the kernel of the will, and as such the kernel of suffering, the sexual impulse, for Schopenhauer, is something to be fervently renounced: “Laughingly look upon the temptations of your body as you would at the playing of a practical joke planned against you but divulged to you”.[iii] Since the aesthetic aspect of Schopenhauer is entirely dependent upon the quitting of the will, principally in its sexual manifest, let us examine its negative aspects in greater detail. 

We have seen how Schopenhauer’s use of the term will implies an unceasing, blind striving that manifests itself consummately through desire, and at varying degrees such a boundless desire reaches its most vehement expression through the sexual urge. For Schopenhauer, under the dual dictates of willing and desire, man remains at the service of the will, obedient to its gestures, and driven to endure only through the twin occupations of self-preservation and reproduction. “It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort;” he writes of the ubiquitous nature of sexual desire, “it has an unfavourable influence on the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest mind.” (W2, 433) Clearly then, Schopenhauer’s understanding of the sexual urge entails an omnipotence that is both hidden and apparent in all conduct. To this extent, so long as we are influenced by the sway of a willing desire, then our claims to knowledge or satisfaction will remain relationally bound to those ends to which the will dictates: “Accordingly, it appears to on the whole as a malevolent demon, striving to pervert, to confuse, and to overthrow everything.” (W2, 534)

Schopenhauer’s negative theory of sexuality depends upon the belief that our existence as a whole is merely an expression of something ontologically prior to our own individuation and that we in turn partake of existence only insofar as we propagate the will: “It is true that the will-to-life manifests itself primarily as an effort to maintain the individual; yet this is only a stage towards the effort to maintain the species” (W2, 514) thus writes Schopenhauer on the difference between the individual that strives and the species of which he necessarily partakes. As willing beings, our claim to individual freedom is therefore negated by a determinism denoted by a force exterior of ourselves. Not even through reflective self-consciousness, Schopenhauer attests in his essay On the Freedom of the Will (1839), can the individual overcome the determinism of the will since self-consciousness itself, being necessitated by the will, also falls prey to the servility of the will. Convinced that the will of the individual is in essence free, thus he continues to will. Yet without having actually disrobed himself of his subservience to the will as a species, then the delusion that his will is free hence persists. In love too, Schopenhauer suggests, the mutual attraction between two lovers is merely an expression of the will striving to endure through procreation and reproduction: the child itself nothing more than a confirmation of the will’s endless hunger for persistence: “The growing attachment of two lovers is in itself in reality the will-to-live of the new individual…they feel the longing for an actual union and fusion into a single being, in order to go on living only as this being.” (W2, 536) Such “gross realism” (W2, 535) exists, Schopenhauer claims, so long as the individual is consumed by the deluded instincts of the ego. To endure whilst simultaneously serving the will, nature has had to make recourse to the implantation of delusive ends within the individual’s existence to hence maintain her own survival. We strive to such and such a point only insofar as the will might use us to its own blind benefit.

Here then Schopenhauer’s pessimism becomes wholly manifest: as beings whose existence is a but service to the will, which in turn propels them towards procreation only insofar as the will can perpetuate itself, man then, being nothing more than an individuated expression of willing, can only find solace when the relentless pulse of willing, being both without end and purposeless, has thus ceased. Remaining bound to the will, then our understanding of the world is such merely to reflect the will’s desires through our own apparently independent concepts: “…the intellect in its activity in the service of the will…really knows mere relations of things, primarily their relations to the will itself, to which it belongs, whereby they become motives of the will…” (W2, 363) It is apparent then, that Schopenhauer’s notion of will implies both an epistemological and ethical limitation that serves to bind the knower to a purely partial perspective founded in egotism and desire. When the will’s desires are quenched the ego feels pleasure, when its desires are denied then the ego feels torment, and in-between these two polarities exists an anticipation characterised by lack and ennui. How then does Schopenhauer propound a release from the life of willing into a life of will-less release? For Schopenhauer it is through the aesthetic experience, or perhaps more specifically the aesthetic consciousness, that the wilful tyranny gives rise to will-less bliss. Released from the confines of a willing and relational perspective upon the world, in the throes of aesthetic pleasure, consciousness is thus able to acquire to a non-relational vantage point whereby “the intellect then freely soars afloat.” (W2, 364) Schopenhauer admits, however, that the aesthetic disposition is rare and that he who can attain is rightly regarded as displaying characteristics of the genius (W1, 185), but that even when the servitude of the will has been crushed it is never a question of “lasting emancipation, but merely of a brief hour of rest…from the service of the will. (W2, 363)

Schopenhauer’s account of the aesthetic experience presupposes a release from the servitude of the will whereby consciousness becomes contemplative and the aspirations, desires, casual concerns and fears of the will subsides thus allowing for the pure subject of knowing, that is the subject devoid of the will’s cognitive influence, to emerge. But let us now ask how this release actually transpires. To enter into the aesthetic consciousness, Schopenhauer suggests, we are obliged to lose ourselves in the particular object so that “the consciousness of our own selves vanishes.” (W2, 368) Devoid of self-consciousness, and as such the subjective spirit, the self hence becomes a blank medium through which the essential and objective aspect of the aesthetic object can unfurl. Perception then, following Kant’s aesthetics, becomes ‘disinterestedness’ and as such no longer relates to the world in a utilitarian or casual matter. As with any heightened sense of consciousness, the ‘who’, ‘why’ or ‘where’ is thus reduced to a pure phenomenology of the object that no longer inquires but merely receives “simply and solely the what.” (W1, 178)

In his novel Nausea Sartre describes this moment of revelation with devastating clarity when the protagonist Roquentin is suddenly struck by the sheer facticity of a tree. When Roquentin no longer sees the tree as a detached observer classifying its divisible elements both spatially and temporally, then the tree suddenly takes on the appearance a formless and singular mass. The passage is worth quoting at length for its density alone: “The root of the chestnut tree plunged into the ground just underneath my bench. I no longer remembered that it was a root. Words had disappeared, and with them the meaning of things, the methods of using them, the feeble landmarks which men have traced on their surface…and then, all of sudden, there it was, as clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost its harmless appearance as an abstract category: it was the very stuff of things, that root was steeped in existence…this veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, in disorder…”[iv] Sartre’s passage affirms Schopenhauer’s subject losing himself in aesthetic contemplation, but whereas liberation is afforded in Schopenhauer’s vision, for Sartre the experience is nauseating in that it discloses the formless contingency upon which our existence is founded.

But how cogent is Schopenhauer’s claim that cathartic release can emerge through a loss of self? Certainly in the heights of aesthetic ecstasy, where we soar to moments that no longer seem pertinent to the everyday, then it would seem as though we are indeed lost in the experience, unable to be recovered. Such a state, as described by Schopenhauer, involves a disrobing of the will’s malign influence so that the self is transposed into will-less bliss. But if the will is that which drives us towards the attainment of ends and if the attainment of an end can be equated with happiness – however short-lived – then if the will is suspended how can bliss be attained? Schopenhauer, aware of this problem[v]  emphasised that although the will-less subject is devoid of the possibility of attaining happiness, so too is he devoid of the possibility of attaining suffering since here there is no will to satisfy or frustrate: “Happiness and unhappiness have vanished; we are no longer the individual; that is forgotten; we are only pure subject of knowing” (W1, 197-198). By sacrificing the subject for a unity with the object, Schopenhauer would thus seem to align himself with mysticism: “This pure will-less knowledge is reached by the consciousness of other things” he writes, “being raised to so high a potential that the consciousness of our selves vanishes” (W2, 368). Elsewhere he speaks of the pure subject of knowing as a mysterious ‘World-Eye’: “This eye looks out from all living, though with very different degrees of clearness, and is untouched by their arising and passing away” (W2, 371); and again: “We are only that one eye of the world which looks out from all knowing creatures, but in which man alone can be wholly free from serving the will. In this way, all difference of individuality disappears so completely that it is all the same whether the perceiving eye belongs to a mighty monarch or a to a stricken beggar” (W1, 198). This is all very well, but if consciousness loses itself in the object, becoming the pure subject of knowing, then presumably the point of reference whereby consciousness acknowledges its own experience is also lost. How then, can it – the subject – yield any knowledge of the experience if its own presence is absent? Schopenhauer retorts by claiming consciousness is “hardly anything more than the medium through which the perceived object appears in the world as representation” (W2, 368). Yet, if consciousness is only the medium through which it receives phenomena, then how can it be endowed with the “blessedness of will-less perception which spreads so wonderful a charm over the past and the distant” (W1, 198) Both ‘charm’ and ‘blessedness’ imply that a subject must be present: do they otherwise exist in abstracto? 

Later on, Schopenhauer has a different strategy, utilizing his thesis that happiness is only the negative condition of being: “…happiness or satisfaction is of a negative nature, that is simply the end of a suffering, whereas pain is always that which is positive. And so with the disappearance of all willing from consciousness, there yet remains the state of pleasure, in other words absence of all pain”. (P2, 416) This however conjures up more a state of Stoic apatheia than anything else - a point of indifference where self-consciousness is transported into blank objectivity. Furthermore, without the contrast of pain, pleasure is non-existent; pain is necessary for pleasure to be recognized as such; and without a point of self-reference, i.e. the experience of pleasure, or pain where, one might ask, is the individual in this? Schopenhauer retains the belief that “the individual is transformed into a subject that merely knows and no longer wills; and yet he remains conscious of himself and of his activity as such”. (P2, 416) Schopenhauer’s claim is that if volition, i.e. will, is removed then the pure subject of knowing still endures. But can one exist without the other? For is the intellect not an impotent mechanism without the will driving it, and likewise is the will not a blind arational pull without the intellect guiding it?  Writing on the correlation between the subject of knowing and the object of knowledge, Schopenhauer alludes: “Without the object, without the representation, I am not knowing subject, but mere, blind will; in just the same way, without me as subject of knowledge, the thing known is not object, but mere will, blind impulse.” (W1, 180)

For the moment we shall be forced to leave these quandaries aside. Having now explicated the palliative aspect of Schopenhauer’s theory let us now turn to its cognitive counterpart. We have already seen that Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory denotes a release from the anguish of willing, but we are now obliged to pose the question if the will has been suspended during the aesthetic experience then what does emerge in the moment of aesthetic consciousness? In the second book of his The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer had already related the will to Kant’s thing-in-itself, implying that the will was the essential aspect of outward phenomena. Arguing that Kant’s doctrine is parallel to Plato’s, in the third book Schopenhauer goes a step further by connecting the thing-in-itself to the Platonic and eternal Idea, and by dint of consequence, to the will: “…for us the Idea is only the immediate, and therefore adequate, objectivity of the thing-in-itself, which itself, however, is the will – the will in so far as it is not yet objectified, has not yet become representation.” (W1, 174) This is a key passage, but one that requires clarification before its importance can be rendered explicit. Existing non-relationally, beyond the constrains of space, time, and causality, by definition Kant’s thing-in-itself is unknowable. And yet for Schopenhauer when a subject filters his very subjectivity upon an object so that its essential element is realized, then for Schopenhauer we are able to acquire an ‘adequate objectivity’ of the thing-in-itself, that is – as Idea. Schopenhauer’s claim that the Idea is both thing-in-itself and representation is as ambiguous as it is contentious. For all his conviction “that the inner meaning of” both Kant’s and Plato’s “is wholly the same” (W1, 172), Schopenhauer never seems entirely at ease with this apparent polarity confessing later that “Idea and thing-in-itself are not for us absolutely one and the same.” (W1, 174) Nevertheless, despite its admittedly spurious foundation,  what remains consistent in Schopenhauer’s account of the Platonic Idea vis-à-vis Kant’s thing-in-itself, is that the Idea embodies the essential aspect of an object stripped of its superfluity and manifest as the species alone. 

Schopenhauer’s claim is that during the aesthetic experience both a release from the suffering of the will and a receptivity to the eternal Idea emerges. It is within this notion of receptivity of the will that we now take up our argument, viz. that to expound a ‘deliverance’ from the will whilst in aesthetic consciousness is never wholly attained but is rather a precarious ambiguity between willing and Idea. But before we turn to the embodiment of this ambiguity through the literary guise of Gustave von Aschenbach let us first ascertain the extent of Schopenhauer’s argument.

What is notable about Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory is that its success depends upon a denial of the self, and that the longer this denial is sustained the more effective the experience is: “Apprehension of an Idea, its entry into our consciousness, comes about only by means of a change in us, which might also be regarded as an act of self-denial.” (W2, 367) Of course, what is in fact being denied is the will. During the aesthetic experience the ratio between will and intellect, which for Schopenhauer are natural polarities, sways favourably towards the intellect so that the will’s influence is quietened. For the most part, as we have seen, knowledge remains bound to the will and thus to the body (W1, 177), but for the genius who is able to maintain sovereignty over the will then this balance between will and intellect is an “instinctive necessity” (W2, 380) rather than a forced endeavour. If this is the case then the genius surely wouldn’t need to deny his nature if his nature is such to be endowed with a disposition towards intellect over will. Later Schopenhauer describes the genius as having a surplus of intellect which directs itself towards the universal of existence (W2, 377). For the genius as artist, then perception takes on a form of essentiality that is otherwise unattainable to the willing man. Being able to perceive the universal in the particular, the genius is able communicate the Idea through his specific aesthetic expression. Those lines from profound poems and passages from sublime music that we already seem to be familiar with whilst hearing then, seem to confirm Schopenhauer’s theory that the genius draws out the universal from the particular whilst expressing something beyond the present: “Always to see the universal in the particular is precisely the fundamental characteristic of genius, whereas the normal man recognizes in the particular only the particular as such; for only as such does it belong to reality, which alone has interest for him, has reference to his will.” (W2, 379)

The genius is thus a creature of reflection, whilst the ordinary man lives in accordance with animalistic desires, concerned only with the immediate acquisition of transitory ends. But we are now faced with the question of what influence the will has within both the genius and in the aesthetic consciousness in general. For Schopenhauer it is clear that the experience is one of deliverance and that the gaping void between willing and Ideas is both irrevocable and exclusive. For the genius this is apparent in his lack of attention with regards to his own welfare (W2, 384). Schopenhauer concedes to the abnormality of such a condition but argues that it confirms the genius’ status as being rooted in the intellect and not the body. Not concerned with the utility of his own pragmatic ends, the genius thus strives towards the objective in the hope that his work will acquire the eternal. As such the genius is often a miserable being, living in wretched conditions: untimely and posthumous, his rewards are always beyond himself. But it is because his intellect is sovereign over the will that he is able to abide wretched conditions, knowing that his work will redeem him.  The genius then, embodies an ideal for Schopenhauer, a paradigm of will-less contemplation through which utility and striving are subdued.

Turning to the figure of Gustave von Aschenbach – the genius as writer – then we find almost all of Schopenhauer’s descriptions confirmed, even the physiognomical description attests Aschenbach’s countenance. Of course, that Aschenbach is reminiscent of, if not influenced by, the figure of Mahler is widely known.[vi] In both the novella and in Visconti’s film (1971), Aschenbach’s resemblance to both Schopenhauer’s genius and Mahler is striking[vii]. When Schopenhauer speaks in physiognomical terms about the genius then what he seeks to emphasize is the dignity of the genius and his seeming detachment from the body: “This human superiority is exhibited in the highest degree by the Apollo Belvedere. The head of the god of the Muses, with eyes far afield, stands so freely on the shoulders that it seems to be wholly delivered from the body, and no longer subjects to its cares.” (W1, 178) This important passage suggests two things: firstly, that even in the physical guise the deliverance from the will is already established by the upward glance of the head; and secondly, that Schopenhauer is aligning such an ideal with that of Apollo. In our understanding of Aschenbach these two points will be central.

When we initially encounter Aschenbach he is modelled as a man of reserve, exhaustion, discipline, and above all else genius: “…the author of the clear and vigorous prose epic…the patient artist…the creator of that powerful story…the author, finally, of the passionate treatment of the topic “Art and the Intellect,” an essay whose power of organization and antithetical eloquence had prompted serious observers to rank it alongside Schiller’s “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry.” (DV, 7) That such a description confirms Schopenhauer’s Apollonian ideal is indubitable. In his essay, ‘Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy and Mann’s Death in Venice’, Manfred Dierks writes: “Aschenbach…is ‘Socratic’ in that Nietzsche sees a logical connection between the Socratic and the Apollonian…”[viii] For Nietzsche, Apollo embodies Aschenbach’s “restraint, that freedom from the wilder emotions, that calm of the sculptor god.”[ix] Nietzsche’s understanding of Apollo, however, would seem prima facie to oppose that of Schopenhauer’s since Nietzsche’s Apollo, whilst maintaining clarity and order, is nevertheless veiled by Schopenhauer’s principium individuationis. Schopenhauer meanwhile, affirms the superiority of Apollo on account of his severance from the will and his deliverance from the veil of Maya and as such the principium individuationis. (W1, 194)

This opposition is at least true for Nietzsche’s metaphysical understanding of Apollo. But when we then come to understand Nietzsche’s Apollo in an aesthetic sense then the implicit pejorative tones have been supplanted by praise and accolade to the extent that “Apollo…appears to us as the apotheosis of the principium individuationis” [x] The transition from the metaphysical to the aesthetic then, instigates a shift consciousness whereby, as Julian Young writes: “the aesthetically Apollonian is the metaphysically Apollonian perceived as beautiful.”[xi]

This duality between the metaphysical and the aesthetic Apollonian is pertinent to our study since it displays the inward polarity of the figure of Apollo between will and representation, and as such affirms (or will do) Aschenbach’s own oscillation between intellect and will, or more precisely between Apollo and Dionysus. Still, in both Aschenbach and Nietzsche, we must not be mistaken into thinking that either Apollo or Dionysus is exclusive of the other or otherwise entirely the dormant counterpart; rather both the Dionysian and the Apollonian, as well as the will and the intellect, are but two perspectives on the same object that only when reconciled allow for an absolute perspective. Nietzsche writes: “I see Apollo as the transfiguring genius of the principium individuationis through which alone the redemption in illusion is truly to be obtained; while by the mystical triumphant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken, and the way lies open to the Mothers of Being, to the innermost heart of things.” [xii] Though still under the pervasive influence of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s holistic and affirmative stance with regards to the Apollonian/Dionysian divide, digresses from Schopenhauer’s moralistic onus upon the former. Indeed, for Schopenhauer the submission to the Dionysian is a submission to the very thing that aesthetics seeks to overcome – the will. But let us now transpose this dichotomy between willing and intellect onto Aschenbach himself.

As an Apollonian aesthete, Aschenbach’s dignified countenance as a detached viewer of Beauty is affirmed with his initial contact with the young Polish boy Tadzio who unquestionably incarnates the Idea of Beauty. When Aschenbach first encounters the “perfectly beautiful” (DV, 21) form of Tadzio, then his attraction and contemplation seems to align itself directly with the Schopenhauerean notion of beauty as “quite obviously {giving} rise to our delight and pleasure, without its having any reference to our personal aims and so to our will.” (P2, 415) Aschenbach concedes and even whilst contemplating Tadzio in the dining hall of the hotel he thus manages to entertain himself with “abstract, even transcendent matter.” (DV, 23) Aschenbach’s reserve and “cool air of appraisal” (DV, 25) echoes Schopenhauer’s genius calmly absorbed in the Idea, since as we have already seen the essence of the genius lies in his capacity for reflection (W2, 381-2), and it is this aptitude for quiet reflection that gives rise to the genius’ ability to perceive the universal in the particular. Indeed, Mann’s allusions to the formality of Grecian sculpture – “the face of Eros, with the yellowish glaze of Parian marble” (DV, 25)  –  seem to suggest Aschenbach viewing the boy solely as an aesthetic object devoid of any particular, subjective or expendable characteristics, and as such as a universal.

Without personal motivations orientated within the sphere of the will, then Aschenbach is able to behold Tadzio in a disinterested but nevertheless engaged manner. The intellectual satisfaction of grasping Tadzio as an abstract Idea satisfies the need for Beauty whilst simultaneously the dignity of which “his entire development had been a conscious and defiant rise to…” (DV, 10) If we remind ourselves that Schopenhauer’s pure subject of knowing knows only non-relational entitles whereby the division between willing and intellect has been rendered “more indirect and limited” (W2, 363), then we can see how Aschenbach’s aspiration towards dignity is maintained under the poise of pure knowledge. What Aschenbach sees in Tadzio is “beauty itself, the pure form of divine thought, the universal and pure perfection that lives in the spirit and which here, graceful and lovely, presented itself for worship in the form of a human likeness and exemplar.” (DV, 37) This passage alone confirms Aschenbach’s status as the pure subject of knowing whose “intellect was in labour” and whose “educated mind set in motion.” (DV, 37). Thus far then, Aschenbach has correlated consummately with Schopenhauer’s genius who loses himself in the object of aesthetic contemplation and who therefore “continues to exist only as a pure subject, as clear mirror of the object.” (W1, 178) If Aschenbach’s aesthetic stance were to go no further, then our central thesis that Schopenhauer’s voyant necessitates an evasive ambiguity between willing and the intellect would have no foundation. But with this initial premise established let us now turn to Aschenbach’s transfiguration from the passive pure subject of knowing to the active desiring Dionysiac, whose aesthetic disposition – dignified, reserved, and distinctly Apollonian –  soon gives way to volitional infatuation that whilst founded in the contemplation of Beauty is nevertheless ruptured by the presence of desire.

Indications that Aschenbach’s disinterested contemplation of Tadzio are beginning to be pervaded by the influence of the will appear primarily when he seeks to reduce Tadzio to a particular from a universal; that is, when Aschenbach relates the boy to his own relational willing. As an Idea, Tadzio exists for Aschenbach as “the pure objectivity of perception”, and as such necessarily abstract and elusive. Indeed the very foreignness of Tadzio, his Polish tongue, only accentuates the distance between Aschenbach and the boy so that the aesthetic consciousness can sufficiently emerge without recourse to the intrusion of language. But nevertheless this distance between subject and object is tainted when Aschenbach relates Tadzio to his own willing and thus attempts a conversation with him (DV, 39). What renders Aschenbach an interested inquirer of beauty rather than a disinterested viewer of the Beautiful is the growing curiosity which Tadzio arouses. Indeed, this emergence of a curiosity that unfurls in the aesthetic experience is a dynamic that seems notably absent from Schopenhauer’s account. On the contrary, Schopenhauer’s description of both the genius and the aesthetic experience presuppose that the experience is in some fashion exclusive and that there hence exists a sharp divide between “the whirl and tumult of life” and the will-less release whereby the intellect “moves freely over objects, and yet is generically active worth being spurred on by the will.” (W2, 381) And yet, if the will isn’t wholly extinguished then can we reasonably expect it to have no influence? Schopenhauer seems to suggest that the greater the separation between will and intellect the greater the objectivity (W2, 382); and indeed this severance reaches its apotheosis in the genius who is able to achieve a “complete detachment of the intellect from its root.” (W2, 383) But this then obliges us to ask whether or not the facet of curiosity, which is surely the meditating agent which instigates the transition from intellect to will, is orientated in the will or in the intellect. If curiosity is founded in the intellect then it would naturally lead the genius to tumble towards the willing desire which in turn seeks to render the universal its own particular. Being the adequate objectivity of the thing-in-itself, by nature the Idea is elusive and as such prone to further inquisition. For Aschenbach this is palpable: “There arises…a certain restlessness and frustrated curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed urge for acquaintanceship…and longing is the result of insufficient knowledge.” (DV, 42) Here Mann has identified exactly what Schopenhauer’s account neglects: the dormant desire for absolute knowledge. Schopenhauer, however, does recognize the existence of curiosity but in accordance with his notorious disparagement towards the feminine, lavishes it in contempt: “Craving for knowledge, when directed to the universal, is simply called desire for knowledge; but when it is directed to the particular, it is called inquisitiveness of curiosity. Boys often show a desire for knowledge, little girls mere curiosity, the latter to an astonishing degree and often with tiresome ingeniousness.” (P2, 62) Such a divorce between knowledge and curiosity is entirely evident in Aschenbach, only whereas Schopenhauer contends that the desire for knowledge is enough for the adequate objectivity of the thing-in-itself, for Aschenbach the experience is unquenched precisely because it pertains to the universal and therefore the abstract. Bound by the abstract necessity of the Idea, the adequate objectivity of the thing-in-itself is perhaps not adequate enough for the genius whose plethora of intellect demands a union between subject and object so that the object itself can be, as it were, consumed – “Some sort of relationship or acquaintance necessarily had to develop between Aschenbach and the young Tadzio...” (DV, 42)

Of course, when Aschenbach does concede to his suppressed desire to consume Tadzio and thus entertains the notion that his desire will be realized, then he submits freely to the “eternal formula of longing…I love you!” (DV, 43-4) Having been smiled at by Tadzio, Aschenbach’s “conscious and defiant rise to dignity” (DV, 10) suddenly implodes, the spiritual beckoning of the Apollonian poise, though giving way, nevertheless gives birth to sensual intoxication and a Dionysian sense of dissolution.  Of course, we may well interpret such a moment of pathos not as a collision between willing and the intellect, or as an ambiguous state of oscillation that the aesthetic experience entails, but as a consequence of Aschenbach’s protracted repression. “Repression demands a persistent expenditure of force, and if this were to cease the success of the repression would be jeopardized.”[xiii] Thus writes Freud in his essay Repression. It would certainly be easy enough to interpret Aschenbach’s concession to desire as a result of an intra-psychic dynamic whereby Aschenbach’s hitherto sublimated desires finally desublimate themselves into a sexual yearning directed at Tadzio. But regardless of Aschenbach’s neurosis what is at stake presently is the existence of both the will and the intellect partaking of  each of their respective facets. Aschenbach had shown us that the exclusion to which Schopenhauer propounds as essential to the aesthetic consciousness is debatable, and that the “deliverance” (W2, 363) from the servitude of the will is not as unequivocal as it may initially seem.  Indeed, how else do we explain Aschenbach’s subdued delight in noticing minor flaws in Tadzio’s features: “He had occasion to notice, however, that Tadzio’s teeth were not a very pleasing sight…he is very sensitive, he is sickly…he will probably not live long. And he refrained from trying to account for the feeling of satisfaction and reassurance that accompanied this thought.” (DV, 29) What is central in this passage is the word ‘reassurance’. For Schopenhauer, the aesthetic consciousness is necessarily removed from the relational will, and the manifestation of the Idea itself is hence existent as a timeless, non-relational and as such the “species or kind taken empirically and in time.” (W2, 365) But by dint of this very polarity between the finite subject and the infinite Idea, Schopenhauer’s aesthetic consciousness entails a necessary estrangement whereby the subject, if swayed by the presence of the particular will, can only wholly correlate with the Idea if it mirrors the formers finite imperfection in its own gaze. Schopenhauer will retort by saying that during the aesthetic experience the disappearance of willing from consciousness implies a loss of individuality and as such any division between subject and object. That, furthermore, in such a state of disinterested elevation consciousness is “untouched by their {beings} arising and passing away. (W2, 371) But as we have already seen, Schopenhauer’s contention that the aesthetic experience is unequivocal seems dubious, and if it is in question then we must permit the presence of will to enter within the will-less conscious. Aschenbach’s suppressed pleasure in Tadzio’s imperfection – “ingenuous solicitude mixed with dissolute satisfaction” (DV, 52) – seems to suggest a desire to inflict the wilful sphere of the particular upon Tadzio so that Aschenbach can in turn equate himself with the Idea. This is surely confirmed, albeit in an inversed manner, when Aschenbach takes it upon himself to lavish himself in both cosmetics and hair dye at the barber so that he might too partake of an Idea that hitherto has seemed inaccessible: “His ageing body disgusted him when he looked at the sweet youth with whom he was smitten…he felt a need to restore and revive his body” (DV, 58) Tadzio’s imperfections then, permit Aschenbach a glimpse into an Idea which, having now been tainted by the presence of the particular, justify any attempt to align himself in that beauty.  

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In this present essay we have seen how the figure of Gustave von Aschenbach’s affirms the view that the mere contemplation of the Idea is inadequate for a mind capable of genius, and that only when the subject has been raised to the object (by means of a ersatz restoration of youth) or when the object has been lowered to the subject (by means of imperfection and decay) can harmony thus commence. But either way, Aschenbach’s oscillation between the divine contemplation of universal Ideas and the dissolute desire for particular satisfaction, fulfils a notion otherwise overlooked by Schopenhauer. Though we may indeed find chastity from the will during aesthetic experience by losing ourselves so “that the consciousness of our own selves vanishes”(W2, 368), it seems inevitable that a return to the cravings of the will is required in order to consummate the aesthetic experience; that is, in order to exhaust ourselves of desire. How else do we explain Aschenbach’s final death on the Lido as Tadzio adopts the form of the “psychagogue” pointing outwards beyond the sea but as a submission to the exhausted consummation of desire? That Aschenbach was therefore the “the poet of all those who work on the edge of exhaustion”, (DV, 10) seems a suitable epitaph to Schopenhauer’s own account of the aesthetic experience, oscillating, as it does, between the polarities of the will and the intellect.

References