| Summary: | This paper explores the question of the relationship between art, rhythm, and life through a
mobilisation of Giorgio Agamben’s discussion, first, of Nietzsche and the active nihilist’s relationship to art, and second, on his diagnosis of rhythm as pertaining to the “original structure” of the
work of art in The Man Without Content. Agamben’s notion of the “rhythmic” and “poietic” encounter is one which situates the experience of rhythm as the experience of the originary dimension of
temporality and of the human’s relationship to the world. Turning to Nietzsche, this paper seeks
to complicate Agamben’s picture by discussing Nietzsche’s under-discussed explorations of
rhythm and its connection to art (focusing primarily on his early works). Three distinct rhythms
will be identified: Apollonian, Dionysian, and the tragic or joyful rhythms of the Apollo-Dionysus
relation (discussed through Nietzsche’s reading of Heraclitus and of Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche’s Heraclitus). Reading Agamben through Nietzsche, it will be discussed how Agamben’s notion of rhythm (1) blends Apollonian and Dionysian elements; (2) does not through this blending
however offer a tragic or joyful notion of rhythm, which, for Nietzsche, follows from their double
affirmative rhythmisation. Instead of a rhythmic-poietic encounter opening an originary and authentic experience of temporality and dwelling, Nietzsche offers an account of tragic and joyful
rhythms which continually create new worlds.
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