Europe Discovers Nietzsche 323to play down its Nietzschean, aesthetic essence. There was a reluctance
to admit that theories of the soul were based more in fantasy than in
fact. But Nietzsche never entertained the slightest doubts on this score.
The will to knowledge—whether the object of inquiry was the soul or
anything else—was always linked to the imagination.
The psychoanalytic establishment, already inspired by Nietzsche,
kept a wary distance from him in its initial phases, putting this new field
at a tremendous disadvantage. Nietzsche had the intuition, and particu-
lady the vocabulary, for the highly nuanced instinctive drives at the
boundary of the unconscious. Psychoanalytic theories of instincts, by
contrast, tended to the simplistic, being ultimately reduced to sexuality
and death. The result was a disastrous advance of a metaphoric use of
steam boilers, hydraulic machinery, and swamp drainage. Even the archi-
tecture of Viennese residences around 1900 was indicative of how peo-
ple imagined the "structure" of the soul. All of this was a far cry from
Nietzsche. Although he also employed imagery, and even comman-
deered a whole "mobile army of metaphors" (1,880; TF § 1), he rarely
conveyed the impression of reducing and objectifying. Even when his
subde analyses probed specific issues, the vastness of the horizons
stretching beyond them remained in view and gave his analyses their
unmistakable profound irony: he left a track in the sand and gave us to
understand that the next wave would once again wash it away.
All of the significant artistic currents in the early twentieth century,
from symbolism to art nouveau and expressionism, were inspired by
Nietzsche. Every self-respecting member of these circles had a
"Nietzsche experience." Harry Graf Kessler gave eloquent expression
to the manner in which his generation "experienced" Nietzsche: "He
did not merely speak to reason and fantasy. His impact was more
encompassing, deeper, and more mysterious. His ever-growing echo sig-
nified the eruption of Mystik into a rationalized and mechanized time.
He bridged the abyss {Abgrund) between us. and reality with the veil of
heroism. Through him we were transported out of this ice age, reen-
chanted and enraptured {entrückt)*' (Aschheim 23).