Friday, June 08, 2007

Nietzsche



I found this revealing quote while reading Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. It reminded me of some of the threads on musics relationship to chess and how everyone has a different emotional state they like to get into when they play. Admittedly I dont understand more than twenty five percent of what Nietzsche is trying to say. So discovering two lines that dont reference an obscure ancient Greek philosopher and relate to the blog is no less than a miracle.

"In accordance with Schopenhauer's doctrine, we interpret music as the immediate language of the will, and our imaginations are stimulated to embody that immaterial world, which speaks to us with lively motion and yet remains invisible. Image and concept, on the other hand, gain a heightened significance under the influence of truly approprate music."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

so the trick is to find "truly appropriate music" so as to highten my sense of image....sweet, it all makes sense now. and the fact that you managed to get nietzsche to give advice on chess improvement means you WIN....

likesforests said...

I love listening to music, but it's hard to find songs that complement your chess thought process rather than competing with it. For example, I'm listening ro "Promontory" now which is track 13 here and while I enjoy the song my thoughts tend to wander away from the theme of the bishop pair in the endgame while I'm listening to it.