Redemption through Art 87with possessions, technology, science, and the archives of history. In the
second Untimely Meditation, Nietzsche would subject historidsm as a
means of grappling with the problems of life to detailed analysis.
However, he broached the subject in The Birth of Tragedy by posing this
question: "What can be the significance of the incredible compulsion
for history on the part of our malcontent modern culture, our devoted
amassing of coundess other cultures, our consuming desire for knowl-
edge, if not the loss of myth, the loss of a mythic homeland, of a mythic
womb?" (1,146; BT% 23). Nietzsche turned to myth because he could
not sustain religious faith, and because he did not believe rationality
capable of giving direction to life.
Myths and mythologizing are means of conferring visual significance
on otherwise meaningless phenomena. The indifference of the world
provokes the mythmaking potential of our consciousness. We resist the
notion of a world in which we cannot feel sure that we are somehow
"intended." A person who understands would like to be understood in
tum, not only by other people, but by a cosmos abundant with meaning.
Although people are themselves a part of nature, their consdousness
creates a sense of distance that impels them to expect that nature must
offer some counterpart to their own consciousness. People are uncom-
fortable with the thought of standing isolated with their consciousness,
and seek a response in nature. Myths are attempts to engage in dialogue
with nature. Events in nature are vital for mythical consciousness.
Nature expresses something, even if only an elemental will is manifest,
as it was for the Schopenhauerian Nietzsche. After braving a storm with
lightning and hail, the young Nietzsche declared in a letter: "How happy,
how powerful they are, pure will, untarnished by intellect!" (Β 2,122).
Hölderlin, whom Nietzsche greatly admired, had sought to update
our modes of expression for mythical experience in a strikingly urgent
and eloquent manner. Hölderlin was deeply pained by mankind's loss of
facility and ease in this realm of experience, which had been a matter of
everyday awareness for the Greeks. According to him, this loss makes us
sacrifice an entire dimension in which reality could truly be revealed to