The Birth of Tragedy/The Case of Wagner

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Two representative and important works in one volume by one of the greatest German philosophers.The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was Nietzsche's first book. Its youthful faults were exposed by Nietzsche in the brilliant "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" which he added to the new edition of 1886. But the book, whatever its excesses, remains one of the most relevant statements on tragedy ever penned. It exploded the conception of Greek culture that was prevalent down through the Victorian era, and it sounded themes developed in the twentieth century by classicists, existentialists, psychoanalysts, and others.The Case of Wagner (1888) was one Nietzsche's last books, and his wittiest. In attitude and style it is diametrically opposed to The Birth of Tragedy. Both works transcend their ostensible subjects and deal with art and culture, as well as the problems of the modern age generally.Each book in itself gives us an inadequate idea of its author; together, they furnish a striking image of Nietzsche's thought. The distinguished translations by Walter Kaufmann superbly reflect in English Nietzsche's idiom and the vitality of his style. Professor Kaufmann has also furnished running footnote commentaries, relevant passages from Nietzsche's correspondence, a bibliography, and, for the first time in any edition, an extensive index to each book.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, Music, German Literature, History, 19th Century

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1888

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

You say “Tomayto”
I say “Tomahto”
You say “Potayto”
I say “Potahto”
Tomayto, Tomahto, Potayto, Potahto
Let’s call the whole thing off

You spell “Apollonian”
I spell “Apollinian”
You say “Dio-nice-ian”
I say “Dio-niss-ian”
Apollinian, Dionysian, Hegelian Dialectic
Let’s call the whole thing off

You say “Wagnerian”
Nietzsche says “Wankerian”
You say “Romantic”
Nietszche says “Pedantic”
Romantic, pedantic, Wagner was a wanker
Let’s call the whole thing off

[Susan Budd · Rating 5 out of 5]

With The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche forever changed my image of Socrates. At first I felt bereaved, though I was loath to admit it. Socrates was my hero and Nietzsche pulled his pants down and spanked his butt. Then after chastising the philosopher roundly, he restored him to his exalted place and gave credit where credit was due.

But my reverence for Socrates was not so easily restored. And I can’t say that I did restore it. Or that I even want to restore it. As I said, I was bereaved at first. I wanted to fully accept Nietzsche’s redemption of Socrates, but I couldn’t unsee what Nietzsche revealed to me. Then I saw what my problem was. My hero worship of Socrates was based on a myth. Nietzsche was just the myth-buster. He showed me Socrates as Socrates was, not as I fancied him to be. He freed me from my hero worship.

This is how you philosophize with a hammer!

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven't read the extant Greek tragedians, it would be extremely surprising to me if you found The Birth of Tragedy anything other than incomprehensible. If you want a thorough understanding, you'd also have to have a decent command of Schopenhauer, Plato, and Goethe, just to name a few.

Personally, I've delved into the Greek playwrights as of late, so I came at this book from that angle -- to see what he had to say about Aeschylus for example -- rather than the point of view of reading another Nietzsche book. I can say that having read the Greeks, the sections mentioning them were easier to understand. In total, it must be said, there aren't too many sections where he refers directly to a particular play or playwright; very little would be seen as what I would call commentary. Still, reading Nietzsche's thoughts on Greek tragedy was a pleasure, and seeing what he took from them -- opinions that became the foundations of a nascent philosophy -- gives me more appreciation for him as a writer, philosopher and person. His clowning on Euripides as someone who flat out didn't get Aeschylus was interesting. His critique of Socrates vis-a-vis Euripides was awesome. His statement that Greek tragedy is a Hegelian synthesis of primordial and dream forces? Maybe I wouldn't have put it that way, but he certainly felt something when he read the Oresteia, and it's pretty powerful to share that level of feeling with a guy like him. Plus, in this book he talks about primordial oneness, he sticks up for art that is unknowable, irrational. Could Nietzsche have something like personality brewing inside of him? Could he have, dare I say, spirituality?!?!

There's a lot of good stuff here. Plenty of one-liners and zingers too. The Case of Wagner was lost on me, but Kaufman is the man when it comes to Nietzsche, so get this volume should you choose to read Nietzsche's sterling debut.

[Artemis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Thus the Dionysian is seen to be, compared to the Apollinian, the eternal and original artistic power that first calls the whole world of phenomena into existence - and it is only in the midst of this world that a new transfiguring illusion becomes necessary in order to keep the animated world of individuation alive.
If we could imagine dissonance become man - and what else is man? - this dissonance, to be able to live, would need a splendid illusion that would cover dissonance with a veil of beauty. This is the true artistic aim of Apollo in whose name we comprehend all those countless illusions of the beauty of mere appearance that at every moment make life worth living at all and prompt the desire to live on in order to experience the next moment.
Of this foundation of all existence - the Dionysian basic ground of the world - not one whit more may enter the consciousness of the human individual than can be overcome again by this Apollinian power of transfiguration. Thus these two art drives must unfold their powers in strict proportion, according bf to the law of eternal justice. Where the Dionysian powers rise up as impetuously as we experience them now, Apollo, too, must already have descended among us, wrapped in a cloud: and the next generation will probably behold his most ample beautiful affects” (143-144)

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Getting serious about understanding Nietzsche, I got down to what I thought was his first book, The Birth of Tragedy--not finding out until much later that, in fact, he wrote quite a bit before that, mostly in his academic field: classical philology. Happily, I got the Kaufmann translation pictured, the notes of which were quite helpful.
The Birth of Tragedy is filled with enthusiastic generalizations around the central dichotomy of the Apollonian versus the Dionysian in relationship, first, to the supposed genius of ancient Greece and, second, to the promise of German genius in the person of Richard Wagner, the operatic composer. The generalizations are objectionable to be sure, but the enthusiasm is catching and the influence of this book is undeniable.
The Case of Wagner, a lesser work, wittily represents Nietzsche's recantation of his youthful esteem for the composer.

[Abrahamus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reading was a re-match of sorts: the closest I ever came to a genuine crisis of faith as a young adult was when I first encountered Nietzsche through this work in an Intro to Philosophy class at a state university – a match for which I found myself totally unprepared. That experience was followed by several years in which my own Christian faith endured something of a dormant period wherein I made little forward progress. But after I had discovered Christian thinkers out there who displayed both a willingness and ability to grapple with these ideas formidably and effectively, the recovery from that period of uncertainty and disillusionment also shaped the trajectory for much of my life since, and some of the causes to which I have devoted considerable effort have found their roots in that struggle. For one thing, it made me painfully aware of how lightweight my own education had been, and it set me upon a (never-ending) path toward self re-education, even as I have striven to establish an educational path for my own children whereby they would not be caught like a deer in the headlights of onrushing atheist/agnostic postmodernism once they reached college age, as I had been.

Fast-forward 25 years or so, and, as much as I repudiate Nietzsche and hold him to be ultimately and profoundly mistaken (actually, “wicked” or “evil” would not be over-the-top descriptors, in my opinion), there is no denying the potency with which he casts his vision and his genuinely penetrating insights on a number of levels: he can be read with profit, as a helpful foil, to one who is mature in the Faith. And beyond all doubt he was a writer of masterful, compelling, and richly image-laden prose. Take just this one example, taken from Section 15 (Walter Kaufmann’s translation):

Nearly every age and stage of culture has at some time or other sought with profound irritation to free itself from the Greeks, because in their presence everything one has achieved oneself, though apparently quite original and sincerely admired, suddenly seemed to lose life and color and shriveled into a poor copy, even a caricature. And so time after time cordial anger erupts against this presumptuous little people that made bold for all time to designate everything not native as ‘barbaric.’ . . . And so one feels ashamed and afraid in the presence of the Greeks, unless one prizes truth above all things and dares acknowledge even this truth: that the Greeks, as charioteers, hold in their hands the reins of our own and every other culture, but that almost always chariot and horses are of inferior quality and not up to the glory of their leaders, who consider it sport to run such a team into an abyss which they themselves clear with the leap of Achilles.

The Birth of Tragedy was Nietzsche’s first published work (1872). While he himself was later highly critical of it – his own Attempt at Self Criticism was included as an introduction, beginning with the 1886 edition and onward – it nevertheless lays out themes that remained more or less constant throughout his career, most notably the Apollinian–Dionysian duality. (His “God is dead” theme, by which he takes belief in any kind of divine ordering of reality to be an outdated and now risible if at one time useful notion, would be expressly articulated in later works, but it is more or less tacitly assumed here.)

In attempting to summarize Nietzsche’s thesis in TBoT:

Nietzsche’s starting point is in reaction to the Romantic preoccupation with “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” which was much in evidence in his own day. Nietzsche’s response to this was to say, in essence: “No! All this ‘sweetness and light’ that we imagine to be the essence of Greco-Roman culture was actually founded upon some very dark stuff. They could never have produced the glorious works of art which they did had they not first peered deeply into the abyss of utter meaninglessness (The Dionysian) and, turning from that abyss without ever forgetting it, resolved through sheer force of will to impose an order and aesthetic beauty (The Apollinian) of their own devising upon the underlying chaos, resulting in the most profound art form the world has ever yet seen: Greek Tragedy.” (Translator Walter Kaufmann, in his Introduction, accurately observes that the real heart of the work lies in Sections 7–15, what comes before and after being notably inferior, as even Nietzsche himself acknowledged, the latter sections being the primary target of his Attempt at Self Criticism.)

In probably his most famous and enduring insight, Nietzsche posits that an understanding of and delicate counter-balancing of these two fundamental impulses, the Dionysian on the one hand and the Apollinian on the other, is the key to any lasting human achievement. To the Dionysian (associated with the Greco-Roman god of wine and orgiastic revelry and abandon) may be ascribed the following qualities: primal, emotive, intuitive, visceral, ecstatic, destructive, emphasis on unity and oneness (with nature); to the Apollinian (associated with the Greco-Roman god of light, music, and poetic expression): rarefied, artificial (artifice), rational, reasonable, restrained, constructive, emphasis on individuation.

Nietzsche essentially sees Art as being the one thing that can bring meaning and purpose to life and to society. (The gods of the Olympian pantheon, in Nietzsche’s view, were not really to be taken seriously, and were of no value with regard to establishing any ultimate and transcendent meaning and order upon the cosmos, a theme which the Greek tragedians themselves explored.) But if Art is to fulfill that role effectively, it must adequately synthesize both of these impulses without giving way too much to one or the other – the usual failing being to subvert the Dionysian in favor of the Apollinian, resulting in “art” that is really no more than sentimental drivel, or is overly pedantic and moralizing, etc. In his own view, this synthesis reached its short-lived apex in the expression of the earlier Greek tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles, only to suffer irrevocable degradation later on under Euripides, with ultimate blame for its demise being laid at the feet of Socrates.

Nietzsche asserts that a similar kind of grand aesthetic synthesis is needed in his own day, as the failure of the old “gods” (i.e. Christendom) to order society and give meaning to life becomes more and more apparent. (Nietzsche’s disdain for religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is already much in evidence in this work, but he also expresses loathing for the prospect of a future reality built upon cold scientific determinism.) Although he is very critical on the one hand of opera as an art form, he nevertheless sees it, out of all the modes of artistic expressions available in his own day, as having the most potential for the kind of grandiose aesthetic synthesis he has in mind. (At the time, he thought Richard Wagner to be the most promising of the lot, though he later famously fell out with and repudiated Wagner, The Case of Wagner (1888) thus being bound together in one volume with TBoT, in the edition I have.)

As compelling as I find (and others have found) Nietzsche’s explanation of the development of Greek tragedy, it has to be said that this defense of his thesis is not a scholarly one: virtually no direct evidence is cited, and the entire edifice is built upon conjecture. Overall, I think his conjecture is probably very close to the mark, though there are definitely numerous points (splitting hairs over the nuances of the “Attic Dithyramb,” gnostic-loaded assumptions and assertions regarding the form/conception vs. content/execution of music and art, etc.) where it feels like he has gotten way out onto the skinny branches.

I plan to continue further into Nietzsche’s other works in coming years, given that his influence upon the modern world is so profound. (He has rightly been called “The Grandfather of Postmodernism.”) I already have a copy of Beyond Good and Evil, one of his later works (my older kids read it as part of the senior year Omnibus curriculum), so I’ll probably delve into that one next, at some future point.

Some further miscellaneous thoughts regarding Nietzsche in general:

Nietzsche’s upbringing accounts for a lot, I think, and stands as a sober reminder of the harm that can be done when one is marinated from an early age in the worser aspects of a good thing, or a good thing gone to seed. In his case, the strict and repressive Lutheran upbringing he received is in evidence in a number of the ways in which he clearly mis-understands the Christian Faith even as he seeks to undermine and attack it. These include a tendency to caricature Christianity as being essentially marked by rigid moralism, as well as a gnostic overemphasis upon and preoccupation with the afterlife and a corresponding denigration of the present physical world. Ironically, his fundamental misunderstandings and false assumptions in these respects are shared by the majority of contemporary evangelicals, which is one reason why I think reading Nietzsche can be helpful. His analysis is often right on target and always scathing, though his solutions are of course completely wrong.

Nietzsche is often misunderstood or misrepresented as a nihilist, but he was most definitely not a nihilist, at least not in the strict sense. His great concern was actually to strive against nihilism, which he feared would be the most obvious and natural course for society to follow if the old “gods” (including the Christian God, most certainly and especially) were swept away without any replacement to provide meaning, purpose, moral values, beauty, etc. But God is not mocked, and to the extent that he strove to establish some other foundation for all of these things he was a player in the very game which he critiqued and warned against. Ultimately, nihilism is the only alternative to the worship of the true God and assimilation into the Triune Life. In the end, I think Nietzsche acquiesced to this, if not explicitly then certainly experientially and ontologically, as the inescapable telos of the (godless and false) premises which he refused to relinquish. As Francis Schaeffer observes: “I am convinced that when Nietzsche . . . went insane . . . it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.” (How Should We Then Live?, Chapter 9) So in the end, I think that Nietzsche’s reputation as the harbinger of the sort of Postmodern apathy, despair and nihilism that has marked the 20th and 21st centuries is well-earned, even if unwittingly so.

Much has also been made of the influence that Nietzsche’s thought had upon more specific 20th century events, the rise of totalitarian regimes in general and of Nazism in particular. The overall picture here is a complicated one. It is certainly true on the one hand that this reputation is due in a significant degree to misrepresentation and misappropriation of his views and writings by hacks in the decades following his collapse and death. Nietzsche apparently repudiated anti-Semitism, at least in formal terms, and this was also a factor in his break with Wagner. Nevertheless, I don’t think that Nietzsche can escape culpability in this regard by a long shot. For instance, though caution should be taken with regard to back-loading ideaologies of six or seven decades later, it should be noted that the Aryan vs. Semitic distinction raises its head here (Section 9). (Aryan is simply the older, now discredited-by-association term for what we now call Indo-European. By Semitic, Nietzsche apparently has in mind what we would term Judeo-Christian.) A definite undercurrent of hubristic German nationalism is also at work, even here in TBoT (e.g. Sections 19 and 20), and though I haven’t read further yet, I expect that one would find plenty more legitimate fuel, for the latter tendency especially, as his views on the Übermensch get developed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and so on.

I had to pause midway my reading of TBoT for several months due to various factors, but in the meantime got turned on to Jordan Peterson, who has some interesting things to say about Nietzsche (and other things). (Just do a YouTube search, if interested.) I certainly don’t agree with him all the time – and I think there are some crucial points where he is either mis-reading or mis-representing Nietzsche’s views – but his insights overall are very good grist for the mill.

Also, I found the guys at partiallyexaminedlife.com to be both entertaining and insightful. Their perspective is not a Christian one, so there are of course very important aspects that they will necessarily miss altogether. But, that major qualification offered, their apparent familiarity with Nietzsche’s entire corpus is beneficial. Biggest takeaway here: Nietzsche can be very slippery and even contradictory, depending on exactly which works are under consideration. He often changes his tone and his arguments to fit what he thinks his audience needs to hear, and might be highly critical of something in one work or context (e.g. his disdain for Socrates in TBoT) and offer praise for the same somewhere else.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dionysian resplendence, in its yawning universality, is positioned in almost dialectical conversation with the Apollinian, the source of the “principle of individuation”. These two forces come to a harmonious arrangement in the Tragedy.

The Dionysian takes on an almost transcendent emphasis in music, which Nietzsche supposes to provide a glimpse into the universal, the intoxication of nature, representing the thing-in-itself in its generality (which is only made manifest in Tragedy by way of the Apollinian).

This Kantian language is no accident - it is shocking just how amenable Nietzsche is to Kant’s metaphysics at this early stage. He even pens an amazingly laudatory paragraph paying tribute to his philosophy of limits which supposedly put an end to the Socratic optimism in philosophy and science which, as he understands it, so plagued the arts since the degeneration of Tragedy via its merciless destruction of myth.

Nietzsche’s legendary reframing of Socrates casts his ethics in an entirely new, often uncomfortable light. The divine emphasis placed upon knowledge consequently proves dangerous for art as a product of instincts without careful reasoning (Freudian sublimation picks up where this leaves off).

His commentary on the loss of myth and its implications for the state of modern culture seems to already presage his wrestle with nihilism (and existentialism in general), with a godless world grasping in the dark for meaning and direction.

The final few sections of the text stray into a heady idealism of an uncharacteristically saccharine tone for Nietzsche (bordering on a panegyric to Wagner and the burgeoning modern German culture he represented), nonetheless peppered with sparkling musings on the nature of art and its relationship with the Dionysian and Apollinian tendencies.

Unquestionably a fascinating document of a Nietzsche in the early stages of becoming.

What this becoming leads to is no sooner presented in The Case Of Wagner, one of his very latest texts which involves a total reevaluation of the composer and dramatist.

Although it may seem strange at first to pair two texts from such vastly different Nietzsche’s, this very juxtaposition is key to grasping the arc of his thought.

Whilst the Case of Wagner depicts the man in a far less flattering light than Birth of Tragedy to say the least, this isn’t merely a product of their personal schism or a change in tastes.

The core difference here is really that, whereas Nietzsche once venerated Wagner as a genius of the Dionysian, the figurehead of a resurgent German artistic brilliance, a return to the “primordial home” and a retreat from the poison of Socratism, The Case of Wagner presents a genius of decadence (one poison is exchanged for another).

Suffice to say, this is hardly a compliment, even if Nietzsche recognises decadent tendencies within himself too. The difference is, he claims, that whereas Wagner surrenders, dare I say aspires, to decadence, Nietzsche at the very least fights against it.

Beyond Ride of The Valkyries, I seldom encounter Wagner in my daily life. Indeed, before reading this text, I was not even aware that he was responsible for it. As such, you would imagine that an entire essay focused upon him would present me with little to chew on.

However, it’s how Nietzsche uses Wagner as a paradigmatic example of the aforementioned cultural decadence, and what this means for the history of music, that really interests me.

With Wagner, music was infiltrated by a hollow drama, appearing to Nietzsche as little more than an outright lie. He fears that this introduction of the actor into music spells a new era of music as mendacity (somewhat echoing the Appolinian illusion).

Whilst this fear has proved somewhat justified, I don’t share Neitzche’s particularly pessimistic outlook on music’s future (and past, of course, with the vantage point of hindsight). Whilst his verdict on modern art is less romantically regressive in The Case of Wagner than in The Birth of Tragedy, it still retains a serious longing for what once was, and evidently sees no hope in what’s to come.

[Jack Theaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nietzsche.... the man was undoubtedly a genius, evidence of such is present in streams on the page, and I'm still not sure whether I like him.

In this, he utilises his philological expertise to affirm greek tragedy as the ultimate aesthetic. A bit ni(etz)che ((see what I did there)) you may ask? Indeed, yet Nietzsche provides a rigorous justification for it drawing upon the Gods Apollo and Dionysus with their surrounding cultures. Apollo; god of calm restraint and embodiment of form, acts as a counterweight to Dionysus; god of intoxication and the essence of humanity. Nietzsche commends dionysian elements in art, that which is not concerned with the esteem of others but merely seeks to be true to oneself - and in the moment, affirmed in his nihilistic belief that there need not be a meaning to life. Though, to prevent hedonistic anarchy, this must be tempered subtly by the calm yet beautiful placation of Apollo. Hence, Greek tragedy.

However Nietzsche laments its decline with the advent of that bastard Socrates. He laments the instilling of reason for reason's sake in the minds of men and the insistent rationalism accompanying. He laments the birth of theoretical man. There are three types of people in this world for Nietzsche; the every man who is content with the unexplained. The artist, rooted in tragedy, who garners euphoria from the unexplained and the coming to terms with it. Then there's the theoretical man, 'Jack the Wanderer' who must know, they embark on an endless, and doomed pursuit of knowledge which in the end leads them to nothing but stupefication as they are isolated in the overwhelming world of possibility. Ultimately the birth of theoretic man witnessed the death of tragedy, the gradual ascension of enlightenment, and the atrophy of proper culture.

Decadence, accompanying modernity, is rooted in this. Hence, the triumphant call for the revival of tragedy and the apollinian/dionysian dialectic that is to be established as the new soul of German music - who is to level this crusade though? Well, in Nietzsche's naivety, it is the task for none other than Wagner.

(Gave this four star at a push, in all honesty, I had no fucking clue what was going on 90% of the book)

[TL]

BT "Attempt at a Self-Criticism"
"Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration, weak and weary instincts...? Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, prompted by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence? Is it perhaps possible to suffer precisely from overfullness? The sharp-eyed courage that tempts and attempts, that craves the frightful as the enemy, the worthy enemy, against whom one can test one's strength? From whom one can learn what it means 'to be frightened'?"

"...what is the significance of all science, viewed as a symptom of life? For what—worse yet, whence—all science? How now? Is the resolve to be so scientific about everything perhaps a kind of fear of, an escape from, pessimism? A subtle last resort against—truth? And, morally speaking, a sort of cowardice and falseness? Amorally speaking, a ruse?"

"What I then got hold of...was the problem of science itself, science considered for the first time as problematic, as questionable. But the book in which my youthful courage and suspicion found an outlet—what an impossible book had to result from a task so uncongenial to youth! Constructed from a lot of immature, overgreen personal experiences, all of them close to the limits of communication, presented in the context of art—for the problem of science cannot be recognized in the context of science—a book perhaps for artists who also have an analytic and retrospective penchant (in other words, an exceptional type of artist for whom one might have to look far and wide and really would not care to look); a book full of psychological innovations and artists' secrets, with an artists' metaphysics in the background; a youthful work full of the intrepid mood of youth, the moodiness of youth, independent, defiantly self-reliant even where it seems to bow before an authority and personal reverence; in sum, a first book, also in every bad sense of that label."

"I do not want to suppress entirely how disagreeable [The Birth of Tragedy] now seems to me, how strange it appears now, after sixteen years—before a much older, a hundred times more demanding, but by no means colder eye which has not become a stranger to the task which this audacious book dared to tackle for the first time: to look at science in the perspective of the artist, but at art in that of life..."

"Still, the effect of the book proved and proves that it had a knack for seeking out fellow-rhapsodizers and for luring them on to new secret paths and dancing places."

"The question of the Greek's relation to pain, his degree of sensitivity, is basic: did this relation remain constant? Or did it change radically? The question is whether his ever stronger craving for beauty, for festivals, pleasures, new cults was rooted in some deficiency, privation, melancholy, pain? Supposing that this were true...how should we then have to explain the origin of the opposite craving, which developed earlier in time, the craving for the ugly; the good, severe will of the older Greeks to pessimism, to the tragic myth, to the image of everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal? What, then, would be the origin of tragedy? Perhaps joy, strength, overflowing health, overgreat fullness?

And what, then, is the significance, physiologically speaking, of that madness out of which tragic and comic art developed—the Dionysian madness? How now? Is madness perhaps not necessarily the symptom of degeneration, decline, and the final stage of culture? Are there perhaps—a question for psychiatrists—neuroses of health? of the youth and youthfulness of a people? Where does that synthesis of god and billy goat in the satyr point?"

"...could it be that the Greeks became more and more optimistic, superficial, and histrionic precisely in the period of dissolution and weakness—more and more ardent for logic and logicizing the world and thus more 'cheerful' and 'scientific'? How now? Could it be possible that, in spite of all 'modern ideas' and the prejudices of a democratic taste, the triumph of optimism, the gradual prevalence of rationality, practical and theoretical utilitarianism, no less than democracy itself which developed at the same time, might all have been symptoms of a decline of strength, of impending old age, and of physiological weariness? These, and not pessimism? Was Epicurus an optimist—precisely because he was afflicted?"

"...confronted with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional, morality), life must continually and inevitably be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral..."

"...[in this book] I spoiled the grandiose Greek problem, as it had arisen before my eyes, by introducing the most modern problems! That I appended hopes where there was no ground for hope, where everything pointed all too plainly to an end!"

"No! You ought to learn the art of this-worldly comfort first, you ought to learn to laugh, my young friends, if you are hell-bent on remaining pessimists. Then perhaps, as laughers, you may some day dispatch all metaphysical comforts to the devil—metaphysics in front. Or, to say it in the language of that Dionysian monster who bears the name of Zarathustra:

'Raise up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And don't forget your legs! Raise up your legs, too, good dancers; and still better: stand on your heads!

'This crown of the laugher, the rose-wreath crown: I crown myself with this crown; I myself pronounced holy my laughter. I did not find anyone else today strong enough for that.

'Zarathustra, the dancer; Zarathustra, the light one who beckons with his wings, preparing for a flight, beckoning to all birds, ready and heady, blissfully lightheaded;

'Zarathustra, the soothsayer; Zarathustra, the sooth-laugher; not impatient; not unconditional; one who loves leaps and side-leaps; I crown myself with this crown.

'This crown of the laugher, the rose-wreath crown: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown. Laughter I have pronounced holy: you higher men, learn—to laugh!'

Sils-Maria, Oberengadin
August 1886—"



BT 25
"Music and tragic myth are equally expressions of the Dionysian capacity of a people, and they are inseparable. Both derive from a sphere of art that lies beyond the Apollinian; both transfigure a region in whose joyous chords dissonance as well as the terrible image of the world fade away charmingly; both play with the sting of displeasure, trusting in their exceedingly powerful magic arts; and by means of this play both justify the existence of even the 'worst world.' Thus the Dionysian is seen to be, compared to the Apollinian, the eternal and original artistic power that first calls the whole world of phenomena into existence—and it is only in the midst of this world that a new transfiguring illusion becomes necessary in order to keep the animated world of individuation alive.

If we could imagine dissonance become man—and what else is man?—this dissonance, to be able to live, would need a splendid illusion that would cover dissonance with a veil of beauty. This is the true artistic aim of Apollo in whose name we comprehend all those countless illusions of the beauty of mere appearance that at every moment make life worth living at all and prompt the deisre to live on in order to experience the next moment.

Of this foundation of all existence—the Dionysian basic ground of the world—not one whit more may enter the consciousness of the human individual that can be overcome again by this Apollinian power of transfiguration. Thus these two art drives must unfold their powers in a strict proportion, according to the law of eternal justice. Where the Dionysian powers rise up as impetuously as we experience them now, Apollo, too, must already have descended among us, wrapped in a cloud; and the next generation will probably behold his most ample beautiful effects.

That this effect should be necessary, everybody should be able to feel most assuredly by means of intuition, provided he has ever felt, if only in a dream, that he was carried back into an ancient Greek existence. Walking under lofty Ionic colonnades, looking up toward a horizon that was cut off by pure and noble lines, finding reflections of his transfigured shape in the shining marble at his side, and all around him solemnly striding or delicately moving human beings, speaking with harmonious voices and in a rhythmic language of gesture—in view of this continual influx of beauty, would he not have to exclaim, raising his hand to Apollo: 'Blessed people of Hellas! How great must Dionysus be among you if the god of Delos considers such magic necessary to heal your dithyrambic madness!'

To a man in such a mood, however, an old Athenian, looking up at him with the sublime eyes of Aeschylus, might reply: 'But say this too, curious stranger: how much did this people have to suffer to be able to become so beautiful! But now follow me to witness a tragedy, and sacrifice with me in the temple of both deities!'"



CW Preface
"What does a philosopher demand of himself first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become 'timeless.' With what must he therefore engage in the hardest combat? With whatever marks him as the child of his time. Well then! I am, no less than Wagner, a child of this time; that is, a decadent: but I comprehended this, I resisted it. The philosopher in me resisted.

Nothing has preoccupied me more profoundly than the problem of decadence—I had reasons. 'Good and evil' is merely a variation of that problem. Once one has developed a keen eye for the symptoms of decline, one understands morality, too...

For such a task I required a special self-discipline: to take sides against everything sick in me...including all of modern 'humaneness.'— A profound estrangement, cold, sobering up—against everything that is of this time, everything timely—and most desirable of all, the eye of Zarathustra, an eye that beholds the whole fact of man at a tremendous distance—below. For such a goal—what sacrifice wouldn't be fitting? what 'self-overcoming'? what 'self-denial'?

My greatest experience was a recovery. Wagner is merely one of my sicknesses.

Not that I wish to be ungrateful to this sickness. When in this essay I assert that Wagner is harmful, I wish no less to assert for whom he is nevertheless indispensable—for the philosophers. Others may be able to get along without Wagner; but the philosopher is not free to do without Wagner. He has to be the bad conscience of his time: for that he needs to understand it best. But confronted with the labyrinth of the modern soul, where could he find a guide more initiated, a more eloquent prophet of the soul, than Wagner? Through Wagner modernity speaks most intimately, concealing neither its good nor its evil—having forgotten all sense of shame. And conversely: one has almost completed an account of the value of what is modern once one has gained clarity about what is good and evil in Wagner.

I understand perfectly when a musician says today: 'I hate Wagner, but I can no longer endure any other music.' But I'd also understand a philosopher who would declare: 'Wagner sums up modernity. There is no way out, once must first become a Wagnerian.'"



CW Second Postscript
"Everything in music today that lays claim to a 'great style' either deceives us or deceives itself. This alternative gives enough food for thought; for it includes some casuistry about the value of these two cases. 'Deceives us': most people's instinct protests against this—they don't want to be deceived—but I myself should prefer even this type to the other ('deceives itself'). This is my taste.—"

"What we can still experience at best are exceptions. From the rule that corruption is on top, that corruption is fatalistic, no god can save music."



CW Epilogue
"These opposite forms in the optics of value are both necessary: they are ways of seeing, immune to reasons and refutations. One cannot refute Christianity; one cannot refute a disease of the eye. That pessimism was fought like a philosophy was the height of scholarly idiocy. The concepts 'true' and 'untrue' have, as it seems to me, no meaning in optics.—

What alone should be resisted is that falseness, that deceitfulness of instinct which refuses to experience these opposites as opposites...

Such innocence among opposites, such a 'good conscience' in a lie is actually modern par excellence, it almost defines modernity. Biologically, modern man represents a contradiction of values; he sits between two chairs, he says Yes and No in the same breath...we are, physiologically considered, false.— A diagnosis of the modern soul—where would it begin? With a resolute incision into this instinctive contradiction, with the isolation of its opposite values, with the vivisection of the most instructive case."

"The need for redemption, the quintessence of all Christian needs...is the most honest expression of decadence, it is the most convinced, most painful affirmation of decadence in the form of sublime symbols and practices. The Christian wants to be rid of himself...

Noble morality, master morality, conversely, is rooted in a triumphant Yes said to oneself—it is self-affirmation, self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime symbols and practices, but only because 'its heart is too full.' All of beautiful, all of great art belongs here: the essence of both is gratitude. One the other hand, one cannot dissociate from it an instinctive aversion against decadents, scorn for their symbolism, even horror..."

[Nicolas Baird · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I read this because some post on Reddit said I had to read 'Birth of Tragedy' before reading 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. It's probably true that 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' is not the place to start as an introduction to Nietzsche, but let me tell you, neither are these two books.

'Birth of Tragedy' is Nietzsche's first major work and if you have a philosophy background, you will probably be fine with all the references to Socratic philosophers, Greek tragedies, and Schopenhauer. You could also quickly read Goethe's Faust if you haven't and that would tee you up decently for 'Birth of Tragedy'. However, especially for this Nietzsche double-feature, you really need to know Wagner. It is my own fault for not realizing that a book called 'The Case of Wagner' relies heavily on knowing the work of this composer. I don't even know where I would start in this regard. I listened to a bunch of Wagner while reading this book; it did not help.

I understand how if you are already familiar with Nietzsche, not just his work, but his life, these two books actually go together quite well. Nietzsche's references and dissection of music and theatre and how they can represent Dyonisian and Apolonian forces in 'Birth of Tragedy' is probably an interesting way to approach his later break from Wagner. In fact, without knowing any other Nietzsche, I'm guessing that these two books are probably an autobiographical segment of Nietzsche's life in relation to his friendship and disillusionment with Wagner.

Once again, as someone who knows very little about philosophy, I regret reading this book first. I am going to be more discerning with the next book of his I choose. Still, the first 40 per cent of this book (40 per cent of the combined length) is actually quite interesting, even if I had to pause to go look up some of the tragedies he references. Kauffman, the translator, also indicates with a footnote where Nietzsche retrospectively thought the book should have probably stopped. If you read until this point it isn't as brutal a slog.

[Gus Lovell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Birth of Tragedy is an abject failure as a work of literary criticism, and anthropology, but a triumph as a work of philosophy and creative writing. The dilemma between the Apolline and the Dyonisiac is a useful paradigm, especially for writing about tragedy. I tend to agree with the standard view that the first fifteen sections are much stronger than the final ten.

It’s also worth noting that Euripides’ Bacchae features some of the most significant dramatisations of a boundary being destroyed. I’m thinking of Dionysus destroying Pentheus’ palace, and the androgyny that features as a major aesthetic point. This is not mentioned by Nietzsche, so why it is excluded from his notion of the Dionysiac is somewhat unclear to me. You could argue the play is “warning against” this and therefore Socratic, but this strikes me as a reductive reading.

The edition’s amenities are very useful, and user friendly.

I read The Case of Wagner several months after the first text. It’s a minor work comparatively and I didn’t read them side by side, but they are well coupled by the editor if for no other reason than that they make clear that Nietzsche’s views on Wagner were far from static.

[Mark Mateo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a bit of a slog at the beginning, and at times his criticism of Socrates feels like it would be better directed toward a criticism of the Enlightenment or modern science -- there are differences. Still supremely interesting to read and discuss in class.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely stellar reading

[Michael Barron]

In Nietzsche’s early writing, it’s clear and obvious he’d be a fan of Young Thug - pure Dionysian expression. In mature Nietzsche this truism comes under attack

[Micah · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've never read any Greek tragedies but thanks to Nietzsche i don't have to, sad that Socrates forced Euripides to stop writing good plays

[riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

My apologies to Nietzsche because I know for a FACT that I do not have that Dionysian/Apollonian balance. I am very much a Dionysian mess.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A used to read a lot of Nietzsche in my early 20s--almost obsessively, really. Just on outside of that I purchased this paperback compendium of basically his first and last work from the sadly gone A Common Reader (R.I.P.). I finally gotten around to read it and it makes me want to once again read a lot of Nietzsche. This introductions and footnotes from the eminent, enlightening, and elucidating Walter Kaufmann make this a translation and presentation worth seeking out. Kaufmann helps paint for me a troubled genius flung into academic heights and controversies suddenly while philosophizing during the Franco-Prussian_War and to an audience steeped in the classics. I doubt I or most any reader has the familiarity with Greek literature and the evolution of the Greek stage dramatic arts to truly get these works. Kaufmann does a lot to fill in that gap.

I happened to read a fair amount of this in a Movie Tavern bar awaiting The Avengers: Endgame and I can't help what the author of considerations like this would have thought of this decade-long arc:

... out of the original Titanic divine order of terror, the Olympian divine order of joy gradually evolved through the Apollinian impulse toward beauty, just as roses burst from thorny bushes. How else could this people, so sensitive, so vehement in its desires, so singularly capable of suffering , have endured existence, if it had not been revealed to them in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory?

The same impulse which calls art into being, as the complement and consummation of existence, seducing one to a continuation of life, was also the cause of the Olympian world which the Hellenic “will” made use of as a transfiguring mirror. Thus do the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it—the only satisfactory theodicy! Existence under the bright sunshine of such gods is regarded as desirable in itself, and the real pain of Homeric men is caused by parting from it, especially by early parting: so that now, reversing the wisdom of Silenus, we might say of the Greeks that “to die soon is worst of all for them, the next worst—to die at all.”

This reading did much for me to see how the Apollinian (Kaufmann explains why this is a better translation) versus Dionysian is not a simplistic duality of opposites but a blending mix; more a yin and yang centered around a reverential and mystical view of music and the mythopoeic thought: a hypothetical stage of human thought (prior to scientific thought) that produces myths.

Perhaps we may touch on this fundamental problem by asking: what aesthetic effect results when the essentially separate art-forces, the Apollinian and the Dionysian, enter into simultaneous activity? Or more briefly: how is music related to image and concept? Schopenhauer, whom Richard Wagner, with special reference to this point, praises for an unsurpassable clearness and clarity of exposition, expresses himself most thoroughly on the subject in the following passage which I shall cite here at full length ( Welt als Wille und Vorstellung , I, p. 309 87 ): “According to all this, we may regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, 88 which is therefore itself the only medium of their analogy, so that a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy. Music, therefore, if regarded as an expression of the world, is in the highest degree a universal language, which is related indeed to the universality of concepts, much as they are related to the particular things. Its universality, however, is by no means that empty universality of abstraction, but of quite a different kind, and is united with thorough and experience and applicable to them all a priori , and yet are not abstract but perceptible and thoroughly determinate. All possible efforts, excitements, and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, in the mere form, without the material, always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon without the body. This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it. This is so truly the case that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony, seems to see all the possible events of life and the world take place in himself; yet it he reflects, he can find no likeness between the music and the things that passed before his mind. For, as we have said, music is distinguished from all the other arts by the fact that it is not a copy of the phenomenon, or, more accurately, of the adequate objectivity of the will, but an immediate copy of the will itself, and therefore complements everything physical in the world and every phenomenon by representing what is metaphysical, the thing in itself. We might, therefore, just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will; and this is the reason why music makes every painting, and indeed every scene of real life and of the world, at once appear with higher significance, certainly all the more, in proportion as its melody is analogous to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon. Therefore we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a visible representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera. Such particular pictures of human life, set to the universal language of music, are never bound to it or correspond to it with stringent necessity; but they stand to it only in the relation of an example chosen at will to a general concept.

Here also, connections to Arthur Schopenhauer which are clarified by Kaufmann. Much here resonates with me in the myth-respecting views of C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell:

But without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity: only a horizon defined by myths completes and unifies a whole cultural movement. Myth alone saves all the powers of the imagination and of the Apollinian dream from their aimless wanderings. The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles. Even the state knows no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical foundation that guarantees its connection with religion and its growth from mythical notions.


By way of comparison let us now picture the abstract man, untutored by myth; abstract education; abstract morality; abstract law; the abstract state; let us imagine the lawless roving of the artistic imagination, unchecked by any native myth; let us think of a culture that has no fixed and sacred primordial site but is doomed to exhaust all possibilities and to nourish itself wretchedly on all other cultures—there we have the present age, the result of that Socratism which is bent on the destruction of myth. And now the mythless man stands eternally hungry, surrounded by all past ages, and digs and grubs for roots, even if he has to dig for them among the remotest antiquities. The tremendous historical need of our unsatisfied modern culture, the assembling around one of countless other cultures, the consuming desire for knowledge—what does all this point to, if not to the loss of myth, the loss of the mythical home, the mythical maternal womb? Let us ask ourselves whether the feverish and uncanny excitement of this culture is anything but the greedy seizing and snatching at food of a hungry man—and who would care to contribute anything to a culture that cannot be satisfied no matter how much it devours, and at whose contact the most vigorous and wholesome nourishment is changed into “history and criticism”?

Here the mystical appeal of music to Nietzsche and one of the passages that made me double-down and buy the ebook, too:

“The joy aroused by the tragic myth has the same origin as the joyous sensation of dissonance in music. The Dionysian, with its primordial joy experienced even in pain, is the common source of music and tragic myth.”

This is hints to one of the many misconceptions the Nazis has on Nietzsche and how much he would have loathed their co-opting his terminology for their Degenerate Art Exhibition.

[Nick Tramdack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just three stars for this one. My interest in Nietzsche is mostly as a stylist. And although the ideas in this book are cool, the incredibly honed aphoristic style of the later works was not present in this, Nietzsche's first book. And he admitted as much.

Nevertheless here are some notes, keyed up to the Walter Kaufmann translation. Maybe by doing this I can create a kind of gloss on the text, a Birth of Tragedy broken down into discrete (fu fu fu... and easily used out of context) "MONEY QUOTES".

21, attempt at self-criticism: "Are there perhaps neuroses of health?"

39: "It is in Doric art that this majestically rejecting attitude of Apollo is immortalized."

41: on the Olympian gods: "We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified."

43: According to Nietzsche, "Harmony with nature" is a romantic cliche not required in real cultures.

45: Why believe the "metaphysical assumption": that dreams are actually needed to "redeem" the real world?

46: "The muses of the arts of "illusion" paled before an art that, in its intoxication, spoke the truth." I don't remember what this sentence refers to, but what a sentence it is.

55: "The poems of the lyrist can express nothing that did not already lie hidden in that vast universality and absoluteness in the music that compelled him to figurative speech."

60: "Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion." - This is Nietzsche's big insight about Hamlet. Hamlet went on a heroic journey, came back with a profound insight into this horrible world, and now finds it ridiculous that he should be asked to sort out a world gone wrong.

75: Nietzsche's extraordinary story: "For this is the way in which religions are wont to die out: under the stern, intelligent eyes of an orthodox dogmatism, the mythical premises of a religion are systematized as a sum total of historical events; one begins to apprehensively defend the credibility of the myths, while at the same time one opposes any continuation of their natural vitality and growth; the feeling for myth perishes, and its place is taken by the claim of religion to historical foundations."

82: astonishing sentence: "What does the lamentation of the destroyer profit us, or his confession that it was the most beautiful of all temples?"

86: Socratic summary: "To be good everything must be conscious." Euripedian summary: "To be beautiful everything must be conscious."

104: Plastic arts: "...here beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life; pain is obliterated by lies from the features of nature."

117: stunning, true ending of a sentence: "...as if emotion had ever been able to create anything artistic."

122-123: N's naysaying about modern Germany: "We can understand why so feeble a culture hates true art; it fears destruction from its hands."

123: on Duerer's image of the knight: "Our Schopenhauer was such a Duerer knight: he lacked all hope, but he desired truth. He has no peers."

131: Maybe this is a forced comparison, but N's idea that "the tragic myth is to be understood only as a symbolization of Dionysian wisdom through Appolinian artifices" reminds me of Flannery O'Connor's comment (somewhere) that art's function is to depict an action only to reveal a mystery.

141: here, Nietzsche's reference to an earlier section (s.5, the world is only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon) foreshadows postmodern concepts: "...it is precisely the tragic myth which has to convince us that even the ugly and the disharmonic are part of an artistic game that the will in the eternal amplitude of its pleasure plays with itself."

and one more...

144: On the Greeks: "...how much did this people have to suffer to be able to become so beautiful!"

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can one say? One of the towering minds at work. The earlier work is certainly more of a hike, but packed with so many fascinating insights!

The Wagner book is a lark, catty and vicious, and also packed with fascinating insights.

[Adam Feng · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book on Greek tragedy without any Greek citations!!

Nietzsche the Philologist gives way to Nietzsche the Philosopher here, and the result is…?

As always, unsure of what to make of much of what he says. Some of it obscure, some of it plainly untrue, some of it brilliant beyond belief. That’s just how it goes with him, I suppose.

4/5

[Jenni Lunde · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a weakness for both these books, since "Birth of a Tragedy" is my favorite work of Nietzsche's, and "The Case of Wagner" helps me out. I'm the worst (unrepentant) kind of Wagnerite. But I *have* begun the 12-step program to rid myself of my addiction. It is as follows:

Step 1- I admitted I was powerless over my addiction - that my life had become unmanageable, and that Wagner was the greatest composer of all time.
Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, and that the Ring of the Nibelungs was not that Power.
Step 3 - Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of the gods, at least the ones that are still in existence.
Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, with a lovely handstitched border in three shades of black.
Step 5 - Admitted to the gods, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs, rights, lefts, etc. Even if I did go into to much detail and accidentally recite Wagner’s life story once or twice at the same time.
Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have the gods remove all these defects of my character, with a sandblaster if necessary.
Step 7 - Humbly asked the gods to remove my shortcomings, and replace them with longcomings.
Step 8 - Made a list of all persons I had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Except for that one guy from school five years ago. He deserved what he got, and had it coming to him.
Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Then a nice shove in front of the bus worked just as well.
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong promptly admitted it, but in Sindarin so nobody else would think I was stupid.
Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with the gods, praying only for knowledge of their will for me and the power to carry that out, or at least the ability to say “to hell with it all” with a straight face.
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I have tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all my affairs. But only on alternate Thursdays in the month of January between the hours of noon and noon-thirty.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an absolute rarity for me on two levels. Firstly, it's a book I didn't finish (I always finish books) and secondly because it was a Nietzsche book I didn't like.

I like Nietzsche. I should loathe him because he stands for a lot that I don't, but he's a valuable opponent, a bold adversary, and a damn witty, funny, engaging and utterly beautiful writer. I used to teach a Nietzsche module at the college where I work and I never got bored of the annual walk through "Beyond Good and Evil". Every re-reading threw up something I'd not seen before or took me down new avenues of thought that I'd missed previously. Antichrist, Genealogy, Human All To Human, whatever it was- I loved Nietzsche's writing and would beg people to give him a chance.

However, this book was dire. His writing lacks the snap and crackle of his later works. He's too bogged down with dreary Schopenhauerian language and Kantian concepts (something he admits himself) to break free and be the bold iconoclast we know and love. His fawning and frankly creepy introduction to Wagner is the most horrifying love letter anyone could wish to read. It's like a boy who has fallen in love with his scout master and a read a bit of Byron for inspiration.

I love Nietzsche. I didn't really like this book. It's like listening to an early album by a band you love and seeing the seeds of what made the bad great without there being anything actually enjoyable in its own right there. So I stopped reading. Defeated. And he'd laugh at me for it.

[R.a. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well . . .

How can one not recommend what Kaufmann (the translator) describes as “one of the most important critical documents since Aristotle’s Poetics?” And, in my humble reading experience, I have to agree.

Simply, The Birth . . . represents some of the most profound and impressionable observations about art.

It is here, with Nietzsche, that the Apollonian-Dionysian opposites are posed. Additionally, the exploration of meaning behind these gods and “gods as concepts” is incisive.

I must agree again with Kaufmann regarding the later sections of the work. Despite a few new insights here and there, these sections, sections 16 through 27, become repetitious and take away rather than support the power of the work.

While Kaufmann highlights sections 7-15, I have to say that I enjoyed the introductory sections, sections 1-7, as well since they “set the stage” well for the weighted observations explored in 7-15.

With The Case of Wagner, . . . well . . . Nietzsche’s criticisms begin, continue, grow, and finally, explode.

This text, while interesting with regard to Nietzsche and his relation to Wagner, is not at the incisive pitch of his other work. However, one can see why this text, specifically, is included: to show Nietzsche’s 180-degree reversal.

[Zach Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Nietzsche is so refreshing. He tears through the pretensions of Plato and joyfully mocks Socrates. He makes the best case for the necessity of tragedy since Aristotle. He is uniquely pessimistic and yet life affirming at the same time. Humans and artists and painfully aware of the terrible "truth of Silenus." Art and tragedy in particular are not only the highest justification of human existence, but furthermore, is absolutely necessary to human survival.

Nietszche's style is perfectly fitting to the theme of his book. He is the artistic philosopher that he calls on all philosophy to be.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was inspired to read this by the discussions of it in THE ABSENT SEA by Carlos Franz. In the Franz novel, and pretty much everywhere else, the meaning of this book is boiled down to the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus. I disagree.

Apollo and Dionysus are actually intertwined and almost part of each other. The real conflict is between Dionysus and Socrates (via Euripides). Whereas Apollo actually allows a space for Dionysus to flourish, Socrates is a demon that destroys him. It makes me want to reread the tragedies.

I wish philosophers still wrote like this.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Birth of Tragedy is deeper and more complex than its Apollinian v. Dionysian rep, The Case of Wagner now obscure in its trashing of a 19th Century composer (and the entirety of the late 19th Century he represented) -- though Nietzsche's points about Wagner's insidious decadence and jingoism are eerily prescient.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Passionate, first major work of Nietzsche. A little too sycophantic when it comes to his assessment of Wagner. But, the Apollonian/Dionysian aesthetic is thought-provoking, though not very flattering to "reason". See Ayn Rand's Return of the Primitive for an excellent critique of the A/D conflict.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish I wasn't so compelled to finish every book I start.

[Aria · Rating 1 out of 5]

gibberish

[Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic text on the purposes of art in general, and so-called tragic art as the highest art. This rings true to me, because of how I feel that what I feel to be gnosticism in art (this feeling that there's some kind of revelation just behind the corner, that the very matter of our existence is characterized by the operations of some cruel deity) is similar to what Nietzsche means by tragic art. This is precisely the art that has ended up, despite myself being in large part my favorite. Gravity's Rainbow, A Voyage to Arcturus, Blood Meridian, The Waste Land, and the work of Mahler and Rachmoninov. The emphasis on the foundational character of music rings true. The distinction between Apollinian and Dionysian is an interesting one. I like the way Nietzsche puts art on the pedestal of creating meaning in a now meaningless existence where God is dead.

This work is very gnostic in character, even if he didn't know it. Perhaps that's because he's very much influenced by the metaphysics of Schopenhauer, who's work his very buddhistic and gnostic, heavily emphasizing the distinction between will and representation, the idealized "thing-in-itself" and the mere image. In accessing that noumenal space is tantamount to transcendence, and ultimate contact with the essence of the soul the gnostic sense, past the evil machinations of the demiurge. This is what tragic art, according to Nietzsche, approaches. He says "individuation" is the root of all suffering, and this is akin to saying that the demiurge, as creator, as an entity that strayed from oneness and unity, is responsible for all suffering.

I love his vitriol against the notion that art must be intelligible. This is a notion that fundamentally misunderstands the nature and purpose of art, as an organic extension, a reaching into the unknown of the unconscious, and hence, like a tree or a rock, need not be explainable or intelligible, only that it might have its effects. He blames the tendency towards intelligibility on Socrates, who set us down the wrong-headed course of scientism and logic, which in the end could never lead anywhere except disillusionment, perhaps where we're at today. Only tragic art can give meaning back to our lives.

I also like "The Case of Wagner," where he tempers some of these grandiose ideas with more sober criteria (and perhaps more true), such as, "Whatever [art] is good makes me fertile. I have no other gratitude nor do I have any other proof for what is good." Perhaps this is the last word in art criticism.