What is Music?

Nietzsche explains that dreams are appearances of appearances and links them to Apollo. "The beautiful illusion of the dream worlds, in the creation of which every man is truly an artist, is the prerequisite of all plastic art. . . In our dreams we delight in the immediate understanding of figures,"" Nietzsche writes. He suggests that even in our most vivid dreams that we still "have the sensation that it is a mere appearance."" But we do not only experience "agreeable and friendly images [but also] the serious, the troubled, the sad, the gloomy, the sudden restraints, the tricks of accident, anxious expectation . . . including the inferno."" Nietzsche says that we see these scenes "not without that fleeting sensation of illusion."" This dream experience is embodied by the Greeks in their Apollo. He is not only "the god of all plastic energies [but also] the soothsaying god. He, who is the shining one, the deity of light, is also ruler of the beautiful illusion of the inner world of fantasy."" This illusion is what makes life possible and worth living. Schopenhauer's term principium individuationis, or "principle of individuation,"" symbolizes the boundaries that separate you from the chaos of the real world as well as others while under the protective influence of Apollo (Cockburn; Nietzsche 33-35). .
             In opposition to Apollo is the god of the nonimagistic art, Dionysus. Nietzsche describes this opposition as similar to "the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations."" He is saying here that as men and women must come together to procreate, the opposing gods of art, too, come together to form "an equally Dionysian and Apollonian form of art "Attic tragedy."" Dionysus represents the collapse of the "principle of individuation- and the inability to discern the boundaries of appearance and reality. As a result, as Apollo is linked with dreams, Dionysus is linked with drunkenness, or the forgetting of the self.