Nietzsche and Bergson

Within that state of exhaustion that characterized European society and culture after the fin de siècle, young Chennevière observed that the intellect had produced mainly errors through centuries of destruction, and religious and moral injustice. In the midst of all this, Friedrich Nietzsche represented for Rudhyar the Romantic glorification of an individual against a universe. He later recalled that the Nietzschean outlook gave him “a philosophical justification … in an unclear and subconscious manner,” severing him from the milieu that had enveloped his ancestral roots, birth, and education. Rudhyar's fascination with the imagery of autumnal decay paralleled the fin-de-siècle aesthetics and its contemplation of the closings of civilizations and cultures: the falling leaves with such shades as scarlet, russet, brown, and amber, the symbolism of death and decay, and the prospect of rebirth (through germinating seeds), and the autumnal ramifications of potentiality and expectancy. His was a mind that liked to behold and think about life in such symbolic terms. Rudhyar explained how he was inspired by the idea of cycles and his early naiveté during his teens:

I had had an idea, a naive idea, when I was seventeen or eighteen, that I had more or less invented the idea of cycles, because I had never heard anybody talk about it, except Nietzsche's “Eternal Return,” which was not at all what I meant. Nobody else spoke about cycles of history or anything like that. But when I began to read Blavatsky and other things I saw suddenly that was not a new idea; everybody knew that in Europe and in the Orient.

In his novel Rania (1973), Rudhyar identified his own youth with the life of Boris, one of the characters in the novel, who devours the writings of Nietzsche. Boris is depicted for his experience of personal transformation and self-awareness: “Nietzsche became his god. He sneered at his previous mysticism. Away with all softness and love! He would be a master, a master of himself, master of men… . He walked for hours in absolutely dark forests, dominating his fears.” Daniel, too, aspired to leave behind the “softness” of the Romantic spirit and the “darkness” of the forest of the Old World. The way Rudhyar embraced philosophy, art, literature, and music shows an affinity to Nietzsche's multifarious philosophy of art, science, religion, and history.