88 Nietzscheour gaze and experience. We therefore fail to see the earth or hear the
sound of birds, and language becomes parched Hölderlin called this
state of affairs the "night of the gods," and warned of the "hypocrisy"
with which mythological themes and names are misappropriated for
pure artificiality. For Hölderlin, and then for Nietzsche, it was critical to
see the mythical as a life force that returns a festive bounty to being. The
most effective way to create a zone that nourishes the senses amid the
indifference of nature is through culture. Culture enables us to experi-
ence mutual regard in our interpersonal encounters and to forge bonds
of solidarity and trust in the rules and institutions that govern meaning-
ful connections between people. Culture represents an effective and per-
petual effort to surmount the indifference of the world, at least in an
inner domain. For both Nietzsche and Hölderlin, the "night of the
gods" was overshadowing culture. Overwhelming indifference had per-
meated the core of culture and was causing personal relations to atro-
phy. It was therefore imperative that mythical energies be activated in an
attempt to establish binding values of coexistence. Myths create a basis
on which to establish a profound level of understanding in society. In
doing so, they provide a response to the great silence of nature and the
erosion of meaning in society.
Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche judged their era to be in a
dire social situation brought on by a sensory deficit, and therefore set
about finding or inventing new myths. Nietzsche looked back to the
Greek gods Dionysus and Apollo in order to understand their elemen-
tal life and cultural forces and used them as a "compression of phe-
nomena" (1,145; jBjT§ 23)—his definition of myth. Nietzsche and
Wagner each attempted to resuscitate myth, and refused to put up with
what Max Weber later called the "disenchantment" of the world by
rationalization, technology, and a bourgeois economic oudooL They
agonized at the mythlessness of their times and saw in the sphere of art
an opportunity to revitalize or re-create myths. At a time in which art
had started to become a pleasant trifle under the prevailing economic
constraints, they fought to raise the status of art, which they placed at