dream that directly precedes our wakening, and which can render in none but an allegoric form the contents of the first … . Further, we have compared the work of the Musician to the clairvoyante’s hypnotic vision (dem Gesichte der hellsehend gewordenen Somnambule), as the direct transcript of the inmost dream [Wahrtraum – Lit. [p. 110] ‘true-dream’] beheld by her and now imparted … to those outside … . – Still pursuing our analogy, with this physiologic phenomenon of hypnotic clairvoyance let us couple its fellow, that of ghost-seeing, and borrow from Schopenhauer, again, his hypothesis that it is a state of clairvoyance occurring in the waking brain; that is to say, it results from a temporary reduction in the waking power of sight, whose clouded eyes are now made use of by the inner impulse to impart to the form of consciousness most near to waking the message of the inmost veridical dream. This shape, projected before the eye from within, belongs in nowise to the material world of Appearance; yet it appears to the ghost-seer with all the signs and tokens of actual life. With this projection of the inner image before the waking eye – an act the inner will can accomplish only in rare and extraordinary cases – let us now compare the work of Shakespeare; and we shall find him to be the ghost-seer and spirit-raiser, who from the depths of his own inner consciousness conjures the shapes of men from every age, and sets them before his waking eye and ours in such a fashion that they seem to really live.
{FEUER} As soon as we have fully grasped the consequences of this analogy we may term Beethoven, whom we have likened to the clairvoyant, the hidden motor (den wirkenden Untergrund) of Shakespeare the ghost-seer: what brings forth Beethoven’s melodies, projects the spirit-shapes of Shakespeare; and both will blend into one being, if we let the musician enter not only the world of Sound, but at like [P. 111] time that of Light. (…) But we have already recorded the indisputable fact that, while we are lost in the hearing of music, our sight is so far paralysed that it no longer perceives objects with any degree of intensity; so this would be the state induced by the innermost Dream-world, the blinding of the eye that it might see the spirit-shape.” [785W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 109-111]
[786W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 111-112]
[P. 111] {FEUER} “ … Shakespeare’s spirit-shapes would be brought to sound through the full awaking of the inner organ of Music: or Beethoven’s motives would inspire the palsied sight to see those shapes distinctly, and embodied in those spirit-shapes they now would move before our eyes turned clairvoyant. In either case, identical in essence, the prodigious force here framing appearances from within outwards, against the ordinary laws of Nature, must be engendered by the deepest Want (Noth). And that Want presumably would be the same as finds vent in the common course of life, in the scream of the suddenly awakened from an obsessing vision of profoundest sleep [* Translator’s Footnote: “Cf. Kundry’s awakening in Parsifal, acts ii. and iii.] … . {FEUER} This awaking out of deepest Want we witness in that redoubtable leap from instrumental into vocal music – so offensive to ordinary aesthetic criticism – which has led us from our discussion of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to [P. 112] the above prolonged digression. What we here experience is a certain overcharge, a vast compulsion to unload without, only to be compared with the stress to waken from an agonising dream; and the important issue for the Art-genius of mankind, is that this special stress called forth an artistic deed whereby that genius gained a novel power, the qualification for begetting the highest Artwork.” [786W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 111-112]
