“No mental state is less creative than mild sadness, the very negation of inspiration. Everything depends on the level of sadness, on the frequency of its vibrations. At a certain level it is poetical, at another musical, and finally religious. Thus there are different kinds of sadness: of poets, of musicians, of saints. The sadness of poets or musicians leaves their heart, goes around the world, and returns like an echo. The sadness of saints also leaves the heart but it stops in God, thus fulfilling every saint's secret wish, to become his prisoner.” ArtPhilosophyGodMusicSadnessSaints Book:Tears and Saints Source: Tears and Saints
“I cannot differentiate between tears and music' (Nietzsche). Whoever is not immediately struck by the profundity of this statement has not lived for a minute in the intimacy of music. I know no other music than that of tears. Born out of the loss of paradise, music gives birth to the symbols of this loss: tears.” PhilosophyMusicTearsPessimismNietzsche Book:Tears and Saints Source: Tears and Saints
“A passion for music is in itself an avowal. We know more about a stranger who yields himself up to it than about someone who is deaf to music and whom we see every day.” PhilosophyMusicPessimism Book:The Trouble with Being Born Source: The Trouble with Being Born
“The empire of the sky occupies territory emptied of vitality. Heavenly imperialism aims at biological neutrality. How does music suck our blood? Man cannot live without support in space. But music annihilates space completely. The only art capable of bringing comfort, yet it opens up more wounds than all the others! Music is the sound track of askesis. Could one make love after Bach? Not even after Handel, whose unearthliness does not have a heavenly perfume. Music is a tomb of delights, beatitude which buries us. Saintliness also draws blood. We lose it in direct proportion to our longing for heaven. The roads to heaven have been worn smooth by all the erring instincts. Indeed, heaven was born of these errors.” PhilosophyMusicSaintsSaintliness Book:Tears and Saints Source: Tears and Saints
“Bach was quarrelsome, litigious, self-serving, greedy for titles and honors, etc. So what! A musicologist listing the cantatas whose theme is death has remarked that no mortal ever had such a nostalgia for it. Which is all that counts. The rest has to do with biography.” PhilosophyDeathMusicPessimism Book:The Trouble with Being Born Source: The Trouble with Being Born
“Only musical ecstasy makes me feel immortal. Oh, those clear days when your heart borrows color from the sky, and deep sonoroties revive memories from beyond the horizon! It will be in vain then to try and shed tears for time.” TimeMusicImmortal Book:Tears and Saints Source: Tears and Saints