WINCKELMANN’S APOLLO, NIETZSCHE’S
DIONYSUS: COLOR AND MUSIC
BABETTE BABICH
Es giebt keine schöne Fläche
ohne eine schreckliche Tiefe.
Nietzsche, 1870/1871
Fig.1. Laokoon in der Antike. Laokoon reset. Annäherung an den Antiken Laokoon.
Winckelmann Institute Exhibit, Humboldt University, Berlin, July 2017.
Photo: Babette Babich
Paradigms and Classics
The Laocoön is a cliché, an archaic instantiation of the classic as such and the
subject, at least since Lessing, of a call for renewed reflection. There are a
great, great many reasons for this, some including complex questions of
mimesis, as of ekphrasis,
1
as of the ranking of the arts of sculpture and of
literature. But from the point of view of the statue itself, phenomeno-
logically regarded, historico-hermeneutically regarded, there are a number
of dissonances. This essay considers these.
It might be said that the most significant dissonance of the many
regarding the Laocoön group Pliny famously reports seeing in the house of
New Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 10, Nos. 3 and 4 (Fall 2017/ Winter 2018), pp. 187–218.
© 2018 Nietzsche Society. ISSN 1091– 0239.