An Alchemy of Emotion:Rasaand Aesthetic Breakthroughs

Abstract

The Western aesthetic tradition, for all it says about aesthetic experience, says little about the breakthrough that precipitates it. The case of Friedrich Nietzsche, a notable exception, is instructive. In The Birth of Tragedy he describes the experience of music as provoking a sense of transformed identity, in which awareness of one's ordinary roles drops away. He describes the way in which this transformation rendered the spectator of Athenian tragedy a veritable Dionysian votary, suddenly able to see through the actor to the character, and through the character to the god.' Nietzsche's emphasis on these magical transformations, however, is not generally picked up by later Western philosophy. By contrast, we find a great deal on these matters in traditional Indian aesthetics, which focuses on aesthetic breakthrough to a far greater extent than the aesthetics of our own tradition. (Significantly, Arthur Schopenhauer's account of spiritual transformation, which influenced Nietzsche's analysis of Greek tragedy, draws directly on Indian thought.2) The Indian tradition analyzes the psychology of aesthetic breakthroughs and situates them in the broader context of human aspirations. The work of Abhinavagupta (eleventh century), in particular, also analyzes the relationship between aesthetic experience and other breakthroughs within human experience.3 I dian investigation of breakthroughs both within and beyond aesthetics challenges Western p ilosophy to investigate further art's connections with the ethical and spiritual dimensions of life.