Lyric as Mirror of the Primordial One: Nietzsche and the Birth of Tragedy

Archilochus and Homer. AI art

Introduction

Section 5 of The Birth of Tragedy marks a turning point in Nietzsche’s argument. He announces this shift unambiguously: “We now approach the real purpose of our investigation, which aims at acquiring a knowledge of the Dionyso-Apollonian genius and his art-work.” Here, Nietzsche addresses a fundamental problem: how is lyric poetry possible if art, by definition, must overcome subjectivity? This question finds embodiment in the figure of Archilochus, whose poetry is saturated with personal passions. Opposite him stands Homer, emblem of Apollonian serenity. But far from reading this contrast as a mere difference in temperament, Nietzsche reveals a subterranean unity: both poets represent distinct stages within the same aesthetic and metaphysical process. Lyric art, for Nietzsche, is born when the subject dissolves into the Dionysian current and reappears, transfigured, in the Apollonian dream-image.

Homer and Archilochus: Beyond Opposition

Classical iconography often places Homer and Archilochus side by side as the progenitors of Greek poetry. For Nietzsche, this juxtaposition encodes a profound intuition. Homer, the “aged dreamer sunk in himself,” represents contemplative, serene, Apollonian art. Archilochus, by contrast, is swept along by vehement passions, a “warlike votary of the Muses.” Modern aesthetics had translated this contrast into the opposition between objective and subjective art. Nietzsche rejects this dichotomy as simplistic and ultimately mistaken.

In his view, true art always demands a “conquest of the Subjective, the redemption from the ‘ego’ and the cessation of every individual will and desire.” If this criterion holds, then the lyric poet cannot be merely a “subjective” artist in the psychological sense. What, then, is taking place in Archilochus’s poetic creation?

The Problem of the Lyric Poet

Archilochus presents a paradox. His verses seem to overflow with personal emotions—love, hatred, contempt. Yet Nietzsche warns that this subjectivity is merely apparent. He writes: “The ‘I’ of the lyrist sounds therefore from the abyss of being: its ‘subjectivity,’ in the sense of the modern aesthetes, is a fiction.” What speaks through the poet is not the empirical individual, but a deeper force that expresses itself through the mask of the "I".

This allows Nietzsche to preserve the core demand of his aesthetic theory: the artwork must arise from impersonal contemplation. Lyric poetry, far from violating this requirement, enacts it through more intricate means.

Schiller and the Poetic Genesis

To explain how the poet accesses this impersonal dimension, Nietzsche turns to a statement by Friedrich Schiller. The German poet noted that, before writing, he experienced a “musical mood” without a definite object: “The perception with me is at first without a clear and definite object; this forms itself later.” For Nietzsche, this phenomenon—left somewhat mysterious by Schiller—is an essential clue. Music, the Dionysian expression of the primordial One, precedes any representational clarity.

In the lyric poet, this musical state is transfigured—under the influence of Apollo—into symbolic images. Thus the poetic utterance is born. Lyric does not emerge from personal emotion but from immersion in the metaphysical ground of reality.

The Double Reflection: Music and Dream

Nietzsche describes this process as a double mediation: “He produces the copy of this Primordial Unity as music [...]; but now, under the Apollonian dream-inspiration, this music again becomes visible to him as in a symbolic dream-picture.” The poet first merges with the primordial pain; then, this formless pathos takes on image and contour. It is in this second phase that the lyric “I” appears—not as empirical subject, but as symbol.

Lyric arises, then, from an oscillation between music and dream, between the ineffable and its formal translation. This dynamic lays the groundwork for tragedy, where the double nature of the aesthetic will be staged in its fullest development.

Beyond the Empirical Subject

The climax of Nietzsche’s argument is a radical inversion of perspective: the true poet is not the man Archilochus, but the One speaking through him. Nietzsche formulates it thus: “That man Archilochus, whose desires and impulses are directed to a definite object, and who appears real to himself, can never at any time be a poet.” The lyric “I” is not a psychological entity, but a mask assumed by the genius of the world.

By uniting music and language, ancient Greek lyric attains a dimension in which individual subjectivity is suspended. From this foundation, tragic drama will emerge—an art form in which Dionysus and Apollo are fused without negating one another.

Conclusion

In §5 of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche radically reconfigures the understanding of lyric poetry and, in doing so, lays the foundation for his theory of tragic art. Rejecting the superficial opposition between subjectivity and objectivity, he proposes a deeper aesthetic ontology in which the poet becomes a mediator between the primordial One and the realm of appearances. This union—of Dionysian music and Apollonian image—explains how lyric can convey metaphysical truth without falling into individualist expression. It is on this basis that Nietzsche can ultimately affirm: “It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (The Birth of Tragedy, §5).

Notes and Bibliography

• Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1967.
• Schiller, Friedrich. On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry. Trans. Julius A. Elias. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966.
• Szondi, Peter. Poetics and Philosophy of History. Trans. Martha Woodmansee. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.