From Cloud to Chorus: Nietzsche and Saussure on Pre-Linguistic Indeterminacy

Rauschberg’s portrait of Nietzsche and Saussure. AI art

  

“In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate.” — Saussure (Course in General Linguistics, 1916/1983, p. 110)

“As Dionysian artist he is one with the Primordial Unity, its pain and contradiction.” — Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872/1967, §5)

Introduction

Two philologists writing at the turn of the twentieth century reach an uncanny consonance. Ferdinand de Saussure pictures the mind before language as a vaporous continuum; Friedrich Nietzsche dramatizes artistic genesis as an ecstatic immersion in a pre-formal abyss. Although they never met, each suggests that shape, articulation, and meaning arrive only after an underlying murk is carved into segments. This essay compares their accounts, arguing that both theorists cast language as a secondary imposition on formlessness. Yet they diverge in the frameworks that guide this view: Nietzsche pursues a metaphysics of aesthetic redemption, Saussure a structural theory of signification. This shared vision of pre-linguistic indeterminacy has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of subjectivity, expression, and the nature of form.

A Shared Intellectual Atmosphere

Nineteenth-century Germanophone culture was saturated with Kant’s idea of the imagination’s "free play." Schiller radicalized that notion, confessing that a “certain musical mood” precedes any clear poetic idea (Schiller, 1795/1967, Letter XXII). Nietzsche writes in The Birth of Tragedy:

“Schiller has enlightened us concerning his poetic procedure through a psychological observation which, though inexplicable to himself, is not apparently open to objection. He acknowledges that the preparatory state for the act of poetizing did not necessarily involve a sequence of images or logically connected thoughts, but rather a musical mood: ‘The perception with me is at first without a clear and definite object; this forms itself later. A certain musical mood of mind precedes, and only after this does the poetical idea follow with me.’"

Schopenhauer extended the line, describing music as a direct objectification of the blind Will:

“In song and in the lyrical mood, desire [...] and the pure perception of the surrounding [...] are wonderfully mingled with each other; [...] the subjective disposition, the affection of the will, imparts its own hue to the contemplated surrounding, and conversely, the surroundings communicate the reflex of their colour to the will” (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I. 295).

Nietzsche cites both men in The Birth of Tragedy §5, converting Schopenhauer’s metaphysics into the twin forces of Dionysus (raw intoxication) and Apollo (luminous form). Meanwhile, Saussure, though less overtly metaphysical, studied Indo-European roots under the same intellectual sky, absorbing romantic philology’s conviction that sound and sense are historically contingent rather than natural.

Nietzsche: Dionysian Depth, Apollonian Mask

For Nietzsche, genuine creation begins where individuality dissolves. In the Dionysian frenzy, “the artist has already surrendered his subjectivity… he produces the copy of this Primordial Unity as music” (Nietzsche, 1872/1967, p. 45). Music, unburdened by concept, voices primordial suffering and joy. Only afterward does the Apollonian dream overlay the tumult with images, words, and myth—structures that render the chaos tolerable. Art therefore masks terror with beautiful semblance; language, because it is an Apollonian technology of distinction, participates in this rescue mission. Hence Nietzsche’s famous assertion that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified” (§5). Form is consolation, not mirror.

Saussure: Linguistic Form as Segmentation

Saussure’s analytic vocabulary is cooler, yet his point is parallel. Thought and sound are each “equally featureless,” he explains; language arises when “a somewhat mysterious process” superimposes a grid on these continua (Saussure, 1916/1983, pp. 110–111). No pre-fabricated ideas wait to be labeled, nor do phonetic substances arrive rigid:

“Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed that were it not for signs, we should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure.”

Signification depends on difference, on the negative play between units. Without such segmentation, consciousness would remain an indistinct nebula. The linguistic system, then, does not translate prior mental furniture; it creates the furniture by slicing the cloud along socially habitual lines.

Convergence: Formlessness Precedes Form

Both writers therefore invert the commonsense order in which clear ideas precede words. For Nietzsche, the Dionysian substrate is ontological and affects the entire cosmos; for Saussure, the amorphous field is psychological and methodological. Yet each insists that shape is fabricated, not discovered. Moreover, both deploy binary models: Dionysian/Apollonian, thought/sound. In each pair, the second pole furnishes articulation, but only through differentiation. Even the metaphor chosen by Saussure—waves formed where air meets water—echoes the tidal imagery Nietzsche uses when describing the “billows of existence” that toss Archilochus about (§5).

Divergence: Aesthetics vs. Structure

Yet the affinities should not erase the rift. Nietzsche frames the pre-linguistic torrent as sacred terror; his concern is the redemptive power of tragedy, not communication. Saussure, by contrast, seeks a neutral science. He does not claim that undifferentiated thought is metaphysically real; it functions as a heuristic limit enabling systematic description. Further, Nietzsche portrays language as a derivative artistic mask, whereas Saussure treats language as primary social fact, grounding all subsequent cognition. Finally, Nietzsche values illusion because it redeems suffering; Saussure values structure because it allows analysis.

Toward Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida later stitches these legacies together, arguing that origin is always already deferred (différance). If Nietzsche names the abyss and Saussure maps the grid, Derrida exposes their mutual complicity: every grid carries a tremor, every abyss insinuates spacing. Our comparison helps illuminate that trajectory, and shows how post-structuralism inherits both the romantic metaphysics of creativity and the structuralist theory of signs.

Conclusion

When Nietzsche’s chorus rises from Dionysian depths and Saussure’s lattice of signs crystallizes within a mental cloud, we witness two distinct attempts to explain how coherence surfaces from chaos. They agree that order is manufactured, not innate; they part ways on why that matters. Where Nietzsche hears a hymn that justifies life, Saussure traces the schematic logic that enables every utterance. Their convergence reminds us that philology, whether existential or structural, begins by asking how marks on a page could ever speak a world into shape—and finds its answer in the creative violence of segmentation.

References

Nietzsche, F. (1967). The birth of tragedy (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Random House. (Original work published 1872)

Saussure, F. de (1983). Course in general linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). Duckworth. (Original work published 1916)

Schiller, F. (1967). On the aesthetic education of man (E. Wilkinson & L. Willoughby, Trans.). Clarendon Press. (Original work published 1795)

Schopenhauer, A. (1969). The world as will and representation (E. F. J. Payne, Trans.). Dover. (Original work published 1818)