Nietzsche and Tolstoy

As I was looking up some more information on the topic to write my blog I came across this quote by Tolstoy, “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”  This quote threw me off a little bit because when I first approached the question I thought they were talking about the same thing.  Nietzsche, in his work, talks about the duality of an artist.  He uses the characters of Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus, to represent the duality.  Now this duality is not the typical one we are used to, good vs. evil, but rather it is a duality between, what he calls, dreams and drunkenness.  This is the key to understanding why Tolstoy would have been quoted saying it as well as it explains why I thought they were similar at first.  The Apollo/Dream aspect of Nietzsche is was chiefly based off of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.  It is the idea that when one dreams, they are aware that reality exists under the dream and the dream is not real.  Apollo represents restraint as one is able to separate their emotions from getting in the way of reality.  The Dionysus/Drunkenness aspect is the mere loss of restraint.  The Apollo idea remains at the forefront of our life, yet, when it fails, Dionysus appears.

To bring this back to Tolstoy, he claims that genuine infection of the meaning and emotion of art from the artist to the view is the only true art.  Though we have heard about many philosophers who claim one needs to be disconnected emotionally from art, Tolstoy claims that it the viewer cannot readily see the meaning and emotion conveyed by the artist, it is not a good piece of art.  To me, it seems like this idea of art, this immense passion is very similar to the emotion that occurs when, according to Nietzsche, Apollo is lost and Dionysus comes forth.  This explains a little of the meaning behind the quote above.  Nietzsche thought that emotion was only shown when someone let down their guards and fell into a drunken state of mind.  Tolstoy claimed that it was in the passionate emotional state of mind when true feelings made their way onto a canvas and to the viewer.