“Music stimulates us to contemplate symbolically Dionysiac
universality, and music allows the symbolic image to emerge in its highest
significance. From these facts, intelligible in themselves and not inaccessible
to a more penetrating examination, I conclude that music is able to give birth
to myth (the most significant example) and particularly the tragic myth: the
myth which expresses Dionysian knowledge in symbols” (Birth of Tragedy, 79).
This music must not promote otherworldly hopes or celebrate any
sort of spiritual release from the physical world. Rather than seeking release
from the phenomenal into the numenal, or the individual soul overcoming the sufferings
of the body, a Dionysian art form would profoundly affirm Being:
“Let us imagine a coming generation with such intrepidity of
vision, with such a heroic penchant for the tremendous; let us imagine the bold
stride of these dragon-slayers, the proud audacity with which they turn their
back on all the weaklings’ doctrines of optimism in order to ‘live resolutely
in wholeness and fullness,” (88).
“The End” by the Doors, with their revival of the oedipal
myth: “The killer awoke before dawn, he put is boots on, He took a face from
the ancient gallery, and he walked on down the hall, He went into the room
where his sister lived, and...Then he, Paid a visit to his brother, and then
he, He walked on down the hall, and, And he came to a door...and he looked
inside. Father, yes son, I want to kill you. Mother...I want to...fuck you.
And with the transformation that seems to occur within the
person over the duration of this song; with feelings of primordial unity; feels
like an authentic Dionysian art and an affirmation of Being and total
acceptance of what Being IS. Morrison seems to stare into the abyss and offer
up this song as an ode and an anecdote to the human condition.
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