Between Mask and Myth: On Truth and Lies in Nietzsche, Broch, and Sainte-Beuve

Introduction

Nietzsche’s work revolves around fundamental tensions: between instinct and reason, life and form, scream and song. At the center of these oppositions lies one of his most fertile images: the relationship between Apollo and Dionysus. They are not merely symbols of order and chaos but interwoven forces that depend on one another. As Nietzsche suggests in The Will to Power, “in Dionysian intoxication there is sensuality and voluptuousness: it is not lacking in the Apollonian either.”² This interplay of energies lays the groundwork for thinking of art not as a faithful mirror of the world but as a revealing fiction: a lie that illuminates.

Writers like Hermann Broch and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, each from within their own traditions, intensify this perspective. Broch asserts that “only the lie is glory, not knowledge,”⁴ while Sainte-Beuve observes that one only admires the person who has “died at the right time.”⁵ This essay proposes that Nietzsche’s aesthetic vision finds a profound echo in both authors: the lie as a form of truth, art as a mask, myth as consolation, and the poet as a powerless yet essential medium.

The Lie as a Higher Form of Truth

In On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Nietzsche dismantles trust in rational objectivity. Language, he claims, is nothing more than “a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms.”³ “Truth” is merely a convention: “an illusion that we have forgotten is an illusion.”

This critique resonates in Broch’s narrative: “The poet can do nothing; he can prevent no evil; he is heard only when he glorifies the world […] only the lie is glory, not knowledge.”⁴ It is not about disinformation, but about transfiguring reality through symbols. Art, in lying, reveals us to ourselves. As Nietzsche writes: “Art is given to us so we do not die of the truth.”¹

Apollo Has Already Learned from Dionysus

Nietzsche’s statement that “in Dionysian intoxication there is sensuality […] it is not lacking in the Apollonian either”² dismantles the image of a rigid, ascetic Apollo. His formal purity is not a point of origin but a result. The serenity of Apollo emerges as a worked form of chaos, not its denial.

Theatrical masks—from Greek tragedy to commedia dell’arte—are not mere ornaments: they are symbolic structures that carry the memory of suffering.⁶ Behind order, there is a wound. The Apollonian does not repress Dionysus; it metabolizes him. The serene figure of art is already a form of wisdom—one that has known the abyss and, nonetheless, endured.

The Classic as Death in Time

“The only way to secure admiration is to have died at the right time,” declares Sainte-Beuve.⁵ The classic is the one whose work has been closed: it no longer changes, no longer grows. It has become symbol, canon, eternity. But this immortality also entails neutralization: risk has been eliminated.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, distrusts posthumous applause. For him, authentic tragic art lives in tension, in the imbalance of forces, in the unfinished. Dionysus embodies what is alive, what still trembles, what resists fixation. In contrast to the closure Sainte-Beuve celebrates, Nietzsche values openness, instability, trembling.

The Powerlessness of the Poet and the Function of Myth

The figure of the modern poet—according to Broch—is tragic: “The poet can do nothing […] he is only heard when he glorifies.”⁴ His power does not lie in direct intervention but in symbolic elaboration, in the act of constructing myths that grant meaning.

Nietzsche does not refute this view but transforms it. The poet’s impotence is not a lack but a condition. He does not resolve, but consoles. He does not explain, but gives form. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes: “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.”¹ Myth, far from being a leftover from superstition, is a higher form of spiritual resistance. It does not falsify reality—it renders it bearable.

The Artist Between Sacrifice and Glory

The artist lives between two extremes: victim and redeemer. His sacrifice lies in speaking a language unintelligible to his time; his glory arrives late. Nietzsche embodies this ambivalence: like Dionysus, he is torn apart by his era; like Apollo, he leaves a lasting form. This tension defines his philosophy of art. The Lebenslüge—the vital lie—is not an evasion, but a strategy. The public does not seek raw truths but transfigured reflections that save them from themselves. That is why art endures: not because it says what is, but because it shows what could be.

The comfort that art offers lies not in its literal truth, but in its capacity to figure truth in a more inhabitable form. It does not represent reality; it reimagines it. The artist immolates himself to open that symbolic fissure. His victory does not lie in being understood but in having faced the abyss without surrendering.

Conclusion

Nietzsche, Broch, and Sainte-Beuve—from different perspectives—invite us to rethink the role of art not as reproduction of the world, but as a force that transfigures it. Aesthetic falsehood, far from deceiving, illuminates the ineffable. Apollo is not Dionysus’s rival but his most faithful heir. The classic, admired for its closure, represents definitive form; but it is the tragic poet who, though powerless, makes reality resonate through myth.

Art, in its perpetual tension between form and chaos, between sacrifice and glory, reveals that beauty is a lie… that tells the truth.

Notes / Bibliography

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Madrid: Alianza, 2000.
2. ———, The Will to Power, Madrid: Tecnos, 2011.
3. ———, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Madrid: Tecnos, 2021.
4. Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil, Madrid: Alianza, 1979.
5. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, What Is a Classic?, Madrid: Casimiro, 2011.
6. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ilusión y verdad del arte. Selección, traducción y prólogo de Miguel Catalán. Madrid: Casimiro Libros, 2013.