Here are some notes I took while reading.


The Dionysian musician is the pure artist in the sense that he himself is the "pure primordial pain and its primordial re-echoing". When poked by Apollo, "tragedies and dramatic dithyrambs" are produced.



The lyric genius is someone who symbolizes himself, subjects himself into the constraints of language and rationality in order to actualize the Dionysian contradiction. In contrast, we have the plastic artist whose concern is in the realm of images. However, Dionysian music is without images. Then we have the epic poet who lives in images, lives in what we may call "dreams" where he sees pleasure in even the expression of an "angry Achilles".



"In direct contrast to this, the images of the lyrist are nothing but his very self and, as it were, only different projections of himself, so he, as the moving center of this world, may say “I”: of course, this self is not the same as that of the waking, empirically real man, but the only truly existent and eternal self resting at the basis of things, through whose images the lyric genius sees this very basis."



To understand this part, I looked at some of Morioka's ideas—mainly his conception of an existential solipsistic being. The lyrist, using the Dionysian primal unity and the Apollonian arrangement of thought, becomes closest to this solipsistic being, which can be interpreted as "truly existent and eternal self resting at the basis of things".



Archilochus then, allows himself objectivity even while frisking in the realm of subjectivity. In a sense, this solipsistic being is merely using Archilochus as the medium, the symbol, in which the primordial pain can be expressed; he is the paintbrush that brings paint to the canvas.



Schopenhauer seems to interpret the singer as this subjective-objective contradiction whose artistic value comes from that, but Nietzsche seems to dismiss this judgement as irrelevant.



Nietzsche then says something interesting. The value of existence (as an aesthetic phenomenon) is independent of our subjective valuations of the world. He then proceeds to end section five with how the artistic genius "is at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator." I suppose this means that the genius, being the subject who produces art is at the same time the medium in which this art is produced. In a sense, he is detached from the artist and is therefor placed as the spectator.