Vom Tanzen der Delphine

The arbitrariness of today's notion of rhythm is contrasted with the mythical-cyclical concept of rhythm, which encompasses all areas of the Greek musiké, the 'art of the muse'. Not only the unity of music, dance and language is meant by this, but also the musiké of sacred architecture, of painting and sculpture, i.e. all areas of early human thought and artifacts. Reality, which in the Greek view consists of the limited and the unlimited, the measured and the immeasurable, the rational and the irrational, the conscious and the unconscious, the human and the numinous, is thought to be complementary: in their ambiguity, the opposites are inextricably interwoven and merge into one another. This 'spiritual' reality of the Greeks is non-objective, not solely subject to the categories of space, time and causality; it cannot be unlocked by rational-positivistic means alone, rather the images of myth or mythical 'philosophy' ought to be consulted and be used for interpretation. The character and the development of rhythm up to late antiquity will be demonstrated primarily on the basis of ancient metrics, music and proportion theory.