326 EpilogueThe coolness of Thomas Mann's later writings almost makes us for-
get the heat of his enthusiasm for Nietzsche in the early years of the
twentieth century. The Dadaists were also fired up by Nietzsche.
Adamandy opposed to any separation of the aesthetic and political
spheres, they called for a "rebirth of society by unifying all artistic means
and powers" (Hugo Ball). The followers of Stefan George, known as the
"George circle," and the symbolists also believed in political and socie-
tal "rebirth" from the sovereign spirit of art. Franz Werfel proclaimed
the "enthronement of the heart" Fantasies of the omnipotence of art
and artists reigned supreme. The spirit of Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie
had liberated the arts from subjugation to the reality principle. Artists
regained confidence in the visions with which they registered their
protest against the wretchedness of reality. Vision, protest, and trans-
formation constituted the holy trinity of expressionism.
The fact that Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie paved the way for the pow-
erful influence of Henri Bergson's philosophy before World War I in
Germany, and that in turn France became receptive to Nietzsche by way
of Bergson, must be considered an aspect of Nietzsche's resonance.
Bergson's major work, L'Evolution créatrice (Creative Evolution, 1907),
was published in German translation in 1912. Bergson, like Nietzsche,
developed a philosophy of the creative will, although he, of course,
stopped short of naming it "will to power." Nonetheless, the manner in
which the two philosophers linked the individual to the universal was
similar. Everything that acts in the wodd and in nature as a whole simul-
taneously acts as creative energy for the individual. According to
Bergson, we feel the forces that operate in all things within ourselves as
welL His enthusiastic description of the creative universe included the
same wave metaphor that Nietzsche had employed. In contrast to
Nietzsche, though, Bergson made the enigma of freedom the central
concern of the universe. Cosmic events unfolded in a circular fashion
for both men, but Bergson thought more along the lines of an upward
spiral. Nietzsche also sought to link the cosmic recurrence of the same
with a dynamics of enhancement, but never altogether succeeded in this