196 Nietzscheseeks the truth, but the imagination is also engaged in the process—
more than scientists care to admit Science aims at finding truths, but it
invents them as well Art readily acknowledges its basis in the imagina-
tion; it creates a world of illusions and weaves a beautiful cloak to lay
over reality. Whereas science demands that truth be unveiled, art loves
veils. Since art is well versed in invention, it is no secret to art how much
invention and drive for refined education is involved in science, much as
science is loath to acknowledge that. Nietzsche called this disparity the
"problem of science" as seen from the perspective of art.
When Nietzsche ventured to contemplate art from the perspective of
science, he found that its central quandary was its claim to truth. This
claim to truth is generally just as unacknowledged in art as is fictionality
in science. Art wraps its implicit claim to truth in illusions, and science
conceals its implicit fictionality in its claim to truth. Nietzsche attacked
art for feigning truth that it cannot provide. He stated baldly that, when
it comes to art, 'Ve do not make contact with the 'essence of the world
in itself'" (2,30; HH I § 10). Even though artistic intuition may be
inspiring, stimulating, and profound, ultimately it is nothing but "repre-
sentations." They give shape to feelings, but are not necessarily felt.
Nietzsche knew his obsessions well enough to gauge the extent of his
disillusionment. A long habit of metaphysics resisted it The metaphys-
ical need that loves a mystery wished to fathom what holds the wodd
together. After this metaphysical drive had been pushed beyond the
boundaries of stricdy regulated science, it found refuge in art. Nietzsche
cited the effect of Beethoven's music to illustrate how strong it remains
in the enlightened "free spirit." Beethoven's music, he wrote, produces
"a reverberation of a metaphysical string that was long silenced or even
split apart," for example, when a person feels himself "floating above
the earth in a starry vault with the dream of immortality in his heart"
(2,145; HH I § 153) while listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Nietzsche's words allude to Wagner's essay on Beethoven, but he was
also criticizing his own definition of art as "truly metaphysical activity,"
and now claimed that anyone seeking to satisfy his metaphysical needs