Η γέννηση της τραγωδίας

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Ζήσης Σαρίκας (Translator)

Σε ηλικία είκοσι έξι ετών, στις 2 Ιανουαρίου 1872, ο Φρίντριχ Νίτσε εκδίδει το πρώτο του βιβλίο, τη Γέννηση της τραγωδίας από το πνεύμα της μουσικής. Το βασικό λάθος θα ήταν να το δούμε -πράγμα που έγινε κατά κόρον στο παρελθόν και γίνεται ακόμη και σήμερα- σαν ένα κεφάλαιο στην ιστορία της αρχαίας ελληνικής φιλολογίας.

Χθες, περίμεναν από έναν νεαρό καθηγητή ελληνικής φιλολογίας ένα σοβαρό έργο ευρυμάθειας. Όταν εμφανίστηκε αυτό το φιλοσοφικό έργο, οι συνάδελφοι φιλόλογοι έκριναν πολύ άσχημα την ανάμειξη των ειδών που αντιπροσώπευε και αρνήθηκαν να προσπαθήσουν να το καταλάβουν.

Σήμερα, παρατηρείται η αντίστροφη κίνηση, που οδηγεί όμως στο ίδιο αποτέλεσμα: γνωρίζουμε τον Νίτσε ως φιλόσοφο και μάλιστα επίκαιρο, αυτόν που κλείνει τη "σύγχρονη" εποχή και εγκαινιάζει τη δική μας, "μεταμοντέρνα" εποχή, και ξαφνικά βρισκόμαστε μέσα σ' έναν κυκεώνα στοιχείων και νύξεων για μια αρχαία Ελλάδα που, δυστυχώς, παραμένει άγνωστη.

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

259 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1871

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

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

With his vivid, passionate language, 19th century German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche wrote his books as a way to pry open a space in a reader’s psyche, a space empowering an individual to embark on a journey of inner exploration. This is precisely why I think any attempt, no matter how well intended, to rephrase, paraphrase or synopsize Nietzsche, without including a fair amount of Nietzsche’s actual words, is a terrible injustice committed against one of the greatest literary stylists in the modern world. Thus I have included the below direct quotes from the first section of his book to allow Nietzsche, even in this brief review, to speak for himself. Please take my modest comments coupled with each quote as an invitation to explore this classic work on your own.

“We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics, once we perceive not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of vision, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollonian and Dionysian duality – just as procreation depending on the duality of the sexes.”

Nietzsche saw Greek tragedy as a prime example of how those ancient Greeks actually got it right; those ancients developed an accurate picture of the world as irrational, chaotic, primal Dionysian energy, energy that had to be softened, sweetened and otherwise contained by the Apollonian illusion of order, pattern and predictability (in a tragic play, such things as plot and character) to develop an art form acceptable to the public. The combination and balance of these two forces – chaotic Dionysian and orderly Apollonian – resulted in the Greek tragedy.

“In order to grasp these two tendencies, let us first conceive of them as the separate art worlds of dreams and intoxication.”

The two tendencies are the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The nature of the Apollonian is the dream that the world follows an ordered, harmonious, rational law; the nature of the Dionysian is the world as in the grip of chaotic, dark, vile, irrational forces. The type of art associated with the Apollonian would be Greek sculpture, such as marble statues of gods and goddesses portrayed as beings of great harmony, serenity and proportion. On the other hand, an example of the Dionysian would be a wild intoxicated nocturnal dance where the dancers are goaded into a frenzied swirl by a cacophony of deafening drums and flutes.

“The beautiful illusion of the dream worlds, in the creation of which every man is truly an artist, is the prerequisite of all plastic art.”

As frequently acknowledged, every child is an artist. Indeed, we all in our own way, beginning as children, create a picture world in our minds, featuring beautiful, fantastic illusions: breathtaking glass mountains, carefree, winged creatures soaring in the sky, elaborate castles, worlds of adventure and pleasure free of those irksome burdens such as sickness, hunger, disease, intense pain. It is these very marvelous, fanciful dreams that serve as the foundation for visual artworks created with paints and stone. Sidebar: It is this same artistic, imaginative tendency we all have that enables us to easily construct inner visual pictures as we read a work of fiction. Nietzsche would like us to extend our imaginative capacity, urging us to bring real style to our character and view ourselves as a work of art.

“Philosophical men even have a presentiment that the reality in which we live and have our being is also mere appearance, and that another, quite different reality lies beneath it. Schopenhauer actually indicates as the criterion of philosophical ability the occasional ability to view men and things are mere phantoms or dream images.”

Here Nietzsche is hinting at how philosophy beginning with Socrates and Plato, pushed the chaotic irrational forces of the universe to one side, even calling them phantoms or dream images. What truly matters in this view of the universe is reason. Reason is king. And since reason is at the heart of this philosophic conception of the universe, the very heartbeat of reality, why continue to have tragedy performed, an art form claiming chaos is at the heart of the universe? Nietzsche goes into great detail on how Socratic philosophy brought about the death of Greek tragedy.

“Function of art: to give us a hint of a truth, a truth that the world was chaotic and meaningless but, equally, art had to shield us from this dark, dreadful reality.”

This line of thinking is at the very core of why Nietzsche loved Greek tragedy: the tragic performance would give an audience a glimpse of the true nature of the world’s dark chaos but do it in a way via the dramatic art of plot, character and other theatrical devices to protect, to buffer and safeguard the audience so they could continue living and managing life in their society.

“Thus the aesthetically sensitive man stands in the same relation to the reality of dreams as the philosopher does to the reality of existence; he is a close and willing observer, for these images afford him an interpretation of life, and by reflecting on these processes he trains himself for life.”

As the philosopher uses logic, reason and analysis, so the aesthetically attuned person uses the dream-worlds of sleep, hallucinogens, the arts and creative imagination to explore different dimensions of experience. Nietzsche perceived the dark, chaotic forces of the universe as prominent, at the heart of the heart of life. He could see how these irrational forces could energize human experience rather than driving people down into hopeless despair and renunciation.



“Either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the songs of all primitive men and peoples speak, or with the potent coming of spring that penetrates all nature with joy, these Dionysian emotions awake, or as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness.”

Here Nietzsche is alluding to our willing surrender of our sense of separate individuality to the swirl of joyful, ecstatic unity with the universe. In our modern world, one could think of a rave concert. Drugs and the ecstatic state, anyone?

“In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying into the air, dancing. His very gestures express enchantment.”

Taking the raw, primal energy and filtering it through Apollonian illusion. Here Nietzsche is suggesting art gives shape, form and color; art peddles a certain untruth since ultimately there is only the dark, irrational chaos. But this artistic untruth is completely necessary; otherwise, we couldn’t face the chaos.

“The noblest clay, the most costly marble, man, is here kneaded and cut, and to the sound of the chisel strokes of the Dionysian world-artist rings out the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries: “Do you prostrate yourselves, millions? Do you sense your Maker, world?”

A question worthy of consideration: Is tragedy a method and approach to life that actually works? Perhaps it is time for us modern people to reclaim the power and beauty of tragedy.

*I would like to thank a number of contemporary British philosophers for their podcasts and books on Nietzsche’s philosophy of art and tragedy. Listened to their podcasts repeatedly and reading several of their books over the last few years has really deepened and enriched my understanding and appreciation for this exciting subject. They are: Aaron Ridley, Christopher Janaway, Alex Neill, Simon May and Ken Gemes.

[Lea · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Tragedy sits in the midst of this superabundance of life, suffering, and delight, in sublime ecstasy, listening to a distant, melancholy singing which tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are delusion, will, woe.”

It is impossible to forget Nietzsche’s philosophy laid out in the Birth of Tragedy. Reading this book there is a great possibility you will go deep down the rabbit hole of Greek tragedy and it is a hell of a place to dwell in.
The Birth of Tragedy was written by young Nietzsche, being only 27 years old. He later critiqued his passionate, idealistic, poet-philosopher writing style but not the core ideas he outlined that massively impacted modern thought. Nietzsche here is verbose but vivid, daring, enthusiastic, in highest exaltation of his Dionysian self, making often abstract, vague arguments in a completely non-linear fashion which makes linear, coherent breaking down of text a demanding task. I will attempt to give my reflection on what would I consider the big overlaying themes.

Helenism and pessimism
Nietzsche makes an argument, similar to Aristotle's in Poetics, that the tragic theatre in Ancient Greece was the highest art form. Here he is specific about the time period - he thinks the early period of Greek art and philosophy is the pinnacle of Greek thought and civilization. As laid out in his also brilliant book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks the decline of Greek culture, as well as the whole Western civilization, started with Socrates who believed that truth can be reached through reason and dialectic, not through art, and caused the shift from mythos to logos. Inherent optimism is the aftermath of Socratic philosophy, reflected also in Christian morality, the tradition of Western rationalism and science where man thinks he can know everything and reign all (the inheritance of Genesis where God said to the man to rule all life) through reason, with faith in its complete omnipotence. Nietzsche thinks that we long waited for the first pessimist philosopher, his great influence, Schopenhauer, who was an original anti-rationalist, one who believed in the primacy of irrational Will. As Schopenhauer, Ancient Greeks were also pessimists, because they acknowledged the horrible and enigmatic character of existence - the pain, suffering and death that are inexplicable. The human mind is finite and the mystery that pervades life through tragedy goes beyond reason and consciousness. Through the invention of tragedy, Greek could go beyond pessimism to the tragic affirmation of life - they were saying yes to life more fully and passionately and descended into the mystery of life more profoundly than anyone.
They could say yes to life because the tragedy is formed by the interplay of two deities, of the two opposite ruling principles of life that Nietzsche named after two Greek gods, making now widely used terms of Apollonian and Dionysian.

The Apollonian
Apollon is the god of Reason and appearance, the Shining one that gives the enlightenment of logic and thrives in order, rules and perfect form whether it is morality, aesthetics, art, or beauty. Apollo is the bearer of the light of consciousness, self-knowledge and memory as his ruling principle is “Know thyself”. He gives the principle of individuation - the formation of finite identity through injection of limitation and measure, faith in the shining of one's own individuality and the unity of the Self. Apollinian art has extraordinary clarity, giving hard edges to what it depicts - painting, sculptures, epics, poetry - exemplifying the principium individuationis which Schopenhauer had located as the major error that we suffer from epistemologically that we perceive and conceive of the world in terms of separate objects, including separate persons. Apollo gives the sublime truth of logic and heals through it (medicine) and his truth shields us from chaos and suffering.

The Dionysian
Dionysus is the twice-born, the god of duality, the enigma and paradox, the god of many forms and inexpressible depth, a raving god whose presence makes man mad and incites him to savagery and lust for blood. He gives a compulsion to frenzy - excessive energy in intoxication and ecstasy. He is deeply rooted in nature, instinctual and animalistic and frees man from his humanity making him descend into passion, sexuality, cruelty and darkness. By bringing destruction, chaos and ugliness he brings a new creation as a new form cannot arise without the obliteration of the old. Opposite to Apollonian memory and self-knowledge, Dionysus is the god of forgetting - forgetting our strengths, our failures and struggles in order to achieve greatness, and forgetting oneself to reach a new state of being. Dionysus brings the annihilation of the principle of individuation as in forgetting one is free to merge into the collective where the boundaries of subjectivity exist no more. In Dionysian celebrations, masquerades and festivals one is transgressing the limits of own individuality in the obliteration of the self-identity where one can become anything he desires, anything at all. Dionysus heals through a creative transfiguration in the experience of both suffering and ecstasy, and in the return to the primordial unity, there is a reconciliation of humanity and nature. Dionysian gives us immediate access to nominal reality (the thing in itself) but bypasses the representing (Apollonian), and gives us feeling (pathos) for what lies beyond our boundary conditions bringing the wisdom of lived experience, not logic, as truth. In the Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche named himself "the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus."

“But how suddenly the wilderness of our tired culture, which we have just painted in such gloomy colours, can be transformed, when it is touched by Dionysiac magic! A storm seizes everything that is worn out, rotten, broken, and withered, wraps it in a whirling cloud of red dust and carries it like an eagle into the sky. Our eyes gaze in confusion after what has disappeared, for what they see is like something that has emerged from a pit into golden light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, so immeasurable and filled with longing. ”

The long-lasting repression of Dionysian in the West as part of our nature can make us idolize and glorify Dionysus, this alluring, but highly dangerous god. As much as it is fun to critique rationality, the Apollonian light of reason is the part that makes us capable of even reflecting on Dionysian - and the borders of our individuation shield us not to experience psychotic disintegration, but mystical unity. As much as Nietzsche critiqued Socrates - he did it by apparatus of classical intellectual - examination and judgment.

Greek Tragedy
“The metaphysical solace which, I wish to suggest, we derive from every true tragedy, the solace that in the ground of things, and despite all changing appearances, life is indestructibly mighty and pleasurable, this solace appears with palpable clarity in the chorus of satyrs, a chorus of natural beings whose life goes on ineradicably behind and beyond all civilization, as it were, and who remain eternally the same despite all the changes of generations and in the history of nations.“

Giving examples, Nietzsche makes an argument that Apollonian without the Dionysian is stale and restraining and Dionysian without the Apollonian is menacing and chaotic. The Greek Tragedy is the most perfect form because it represents the holy marriage of Apollonian and Dionysian, art that merges two sides, the mystical unity of life. In Ancient form Greek tragedy contained acting on stage as well as music and dance, and what Nietzsche finds vital for the catharsis of the audience - chorus. His thesis is that in the peaks of the tragedy the chorus dominates so that the audience sees on stage its own reflection, raised to overpowering heights of suffering and transfiguration. Nietzsche admired Aeschylus and Sophocles (and offers a great analysis of the characters in their plays, especially Oedipus as well as Prometheus), whereas with Euripides he thinks that the decline of Greek tragedy began. Euripides' plays acted out in theater had no longer dance, music, or choir within them, just pure forms of images, making his tragedies Apollonian, condensed philosophical thought with the accent on a psychological drama of individual, which represents the triumph of Socratic rationalism and asceticism. Euripides manifested an interest in an individual, in psychology, and worst of all, in the beneficial effects of rationality, or as Nietzsche tends to call it, ‘dialectic’, making him the poet of aesthetic Socratism (for something to be beautiful it must be reasonable).

Existential implication
Greek Tragedy gave Greeks “great health” as they not only could endure but worship as divine the contrast embedded in the nature of reality, pain and suffering as part of the primordial essence of being, of all forms of life and creation. Dionysian gives a justification of pain and tragedy on both a personal level as well on a cosmic level - suffering is an intrinsic part of all things and to remove it would be to remove life itself. An important part of Nietzsche's philosophy is the complete affirmation of life in the totality of being - he criticized the Christian morality for acknowledging solely moral aspects of life - and therefore rejecting the inherent immorality of existence, which is almost the same as hatred for life. Nietzschean tragic affirmation of life is saying yes to life even in its strangest, hardest, most nefarious problems - having a Will to live, truly Dionysian quality - to join together peak and abyss, horrors of darkness and heights of bliss. The great health in not only accepting the horrible, evil, problematic aspects of existence as necessary but affirming them as a desirable part of the whole. To know the good as well as the bad is to know the wholeness of life and only by knowing the wholeness can one say a complete YES to life. To experience the most painful thoughts and the most extreme form of nihilism, and yet be able to emerge from such depths and affirm life in its totality is undoubtedly the highest state of being.

Theory of Art
”Function of art: to give us a hint of a truth, a truth that the world was chaotic and meaningless but, equally, art had to shield us from this dark, dreadful reality.”

Nietzsche believed that when artists transfigure the world aesthetically it produces profound existential satisfaction - the world and suffering are justified by art and creativity, what he called the ”only satisfactory theodicy”. Art gives us both healing and redemption through illusion, and saves us from the horrors of existence, giving the affirmation, the blessing, the deification of existence itself. Therefore, art is “the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life”.
In a large sense, Nietzsche is a philosopher of self-realization, and the question he posed in the subtitle of Ecce Homo; “How one becomes who he is?” is central to his philosophy. How does a human become great? The Apollonian aspect of art, from the god of plastic energies, makes us dream beautiful illusions and create them in reality. The Dionysian aspect, makes us embody art in ourselves. Nietzsche believed that in the matrimony of Apollonian and Dionysian we are both the artists and the art form. Nietzsche believes that the Dionysian incites us to make ourselves into the work of art, an embodiment of art itself - one of the most beautiful thoughts that philosophy ever produced.

“Man is no longer an artist [as he had been in creating the gods], he has become a work of art: the artistic power of the whole of nature reveals itself to the supreme gratification of the primal Oneness amidst the paroxysms of intoxication.“

The Nietzschean, but also universal truth is we need both Apollonian and Dionysian, self-knowledge and self-forgetfulness, order and chaos, construction and destruction, pessimism and tragic affirmation - to be in unity of the opposite and to love life in the fullness of human experience.
Read Birth of Tragedy to gain more understanding of Greek tragedy on the journey of mythical inner exploration.

”Yes, my friends, believe as I do in Dionysiac life and in the rebirth of tragedy. The time of Socratic man is past. Put on wreaths of ivy, take up the thyrsus and do not be surprised if tigers and panthers lie down, purring and curling round your legs. Now you must only dare to be tragic human beings, for you will be released and redeemed. You will accompany the festive procession of Dionysos from India to Greece! Put on your armour for a hard fight, but believe in the miracles of your god!”

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apollo Vs Dionysus: A Darwinian Drama


Nietzsche never struck me as a real philosopher. He was too much the story-teller.

This is probably his most a-philosophical (?) work. But it is my favorite. It was the most accessible to me and it was the most relevant of his works. It helped me form my own convictions. It was universal and yet not choke full of platitudes. It was forceful but not descending into loud (almost incomprehensible) invectives. (you know which works I subtly allude to)

'Birth of Tragedy' was his first major work and to me (in contradiction of the previous paragraph) his most philosophical. It seems to me to be the very soul of his philosophy - that was then refined and reformed in the fire of his (self-imposed?) suffering. The later philosophy is the ‘Nietzschian’ one - grand and too powerful to ignore. But, this earlier core is, to me, the real beauty that livens all the later fury.

Nietzsche, already in this, his first work (ostensibly on the source of Greek tragedy), set Dionysus (the god of vitality, ecstasy, thriving life, and of wine) against Apollo (the god of tranquillity, logic, and of contemplation).

According to Nietzsche, in Greek tragedy as in life, it is the unruly chorus who represented Dionysus and was a crying-out of humanity (the species) itself. Apollo, on the other hand, was represented by the human actors and expressed himself through the orderly dialogue. Apollo was designed to be noticed - the conscious story. Dionysus was designed to be evoked - the collective unconscious?

In this early core of Nietzschian philosophy, a philosophy of species vs individuals, of species evolution pitted against human vanity, Dionysus is the strength of the human race, of life itself (vide Darwin) but manifests only as mere background to any given human drama (but still the source of all drama and is THE actual Drama).

Apollo, in contrast, is expressed in any given human drama (composed or lived) - important and represented and thought about. But, always about mere individuals, weak and mortal.

With this early work Nietzsche leapt into the depths and all the later developments was a climb back and proclamations of the reality of the Deep. Or even attempts to reconcile with it. It is tragic that it evolved into a darker, crueler negation clothed as an affirmation. At least in this work, he adored and embraced the tragic sensibility which is the condition for man - of adoration of life and of its cruel laws, despite all the weakness of the individual - the real genesis of the Superman.





Disclaimer #1: Written more than a year after the original reading and after only a cursory re-reading/re-glancing. Please trust the reviewer when he asserts that the work is powerful enough to stay fresh-to-review even after a year has passed.


Disclaimer #2: Required Expansion of Essay: 'The Superman as The Buddha: The Inevitable Evolution of Tragic Consciousness'

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another '10%' book for me: I think I understood about 10% of what Nietzsche was trying to say - so here is my 10% review: the dichotomy between (A)pollonian (rational) and (D)ionysian (irrational) impulses is a constant 'tug-of-war' that seems to go on for the soul of a nation; indeed this is the singular impulse that must be addressed if one is to talk of creativity and the 'Primordial Unity' that underlines all such endeavors. Nietzsche then turns his focus to Greek tragedy to 'flesh' out both A and D as concepts that help to define spiritual 'maps' a nation will follow. I am going to steer clear of the Greek playwrights and his analysis of the Socratic Dialectic - sorry, but 10% is all I can offer.

[Sean Barrs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nietzsche talks in abstract ways and I find it very difficult to access his words and ideas, and even harder to actually agree with them or sympathise with his stance.

As such, I’ve always found this book a little odd. I read it years ago for university, but I recently picked it up again with the hope of appreciating it a little more now that I’m older and more widely read. It didn’t make any difference. Perhaps it’s this work or perhaps me and Nietzsche just don’t get on, either way I will have to read more of his work to find out.

Here though, Nietzsche argues that Ancient Greek drama had the potential to transcend history and become relevant in a modern society. He argues that the cultural revival of tragedy was bound up with the music of Richard Wagner as a sort of muse for modern forms of art. His ideas are centred on two complementary forces: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. When these two forms meet the highest art is produced.

The Apollonian represents the traditional Hellenic image of tranquillity, harmony and jolliness. The Dionysian force represents hidden depths, ecstasy, disturbing realities and orgy. Both are lesser components of a greater whole. Nietzsche also argues that the suffering of Dionysus is a long founded tradition in Greek Tragedy, as it comprised some of its earliest forms. Therefore, Dionysus was the first stage hero and he can be produced again in a more modern way. These artistic traditions can return.

So there we have it and I am a little conflicted. I see the elements he discusses within classic literature. Sophocles’Oedipus the King and Euripides’ The Bacchae are perhaps the best examples I can think of. They are masterpieces in the realms of drama; yet, they are also products of their time. To Nietzsche they are the epitomes of high art, though in declaring them so he drastically undervalues all subsequent works by great authors who do not display a balance of the forces he argues for because there are certainly great things that do not fit his parameters.

So I found this quite tiresome to read and the arguments quite restricting. Hopefully, I will take more from Beyond Good and Evil.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, I finished Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It strikes me now that that book and this one are similar, in that they shed light on the two thinkers as young men. In Marx’s Critique, we see the twenty-something grappling with the tentacled beast of Hegel; in The Birth of Tragedy, we see young Nietzsche taking his first bold step off the straight-and-narrow path of academia into his own world of thought. Both books are, to put it delicately, ‘young men’s books’—bold, daring, reckless, overly-ambitious, under-researched, brimming over with impetuosity and life. But the major difference between the two works is that Marx’s Critique (apart from its famous preface) is quite boring; while Nietzsche’s debut has all the fire and fury you’d expect from the mustachioed thinker.

As a piece of scholarship, this book is worthless. Everyone told Nietzsche so immediately, and it’s unnecessary to say more on the subject. But as a piece of… something, it’s fantastic. Here we get the rare treat of Nietzsche’s excellent prose combined with a fairly straightforward argument. But what, exactly, is the argument?

Although commonly discussed, I think that Nietzsche’s division of Apollonian/Dionysian is also commonly misrepresented. (For the sake of honesty, I should say I’m merely parroting what I read in the Douglas Smith’s introduction, bolstered by my own reading.) The main conflict Nietzsche identifies is not Apollonian vs. Dionysian, but Apollonian/Dionysian vs. Socratism.

Apollonian art is representational, such as paintings, sculpture, novels, and epic poetry. That’s why Nietzsche calls Homer the ultimate Apollonian artist, because he paints a picture with words. Now, mind you, these images don’t have to be rational. In fact, they often aren’t. (Does anything about the Iliad or the Odyssey strike you as particularly rational?) In fact, one of the first examples Nietzsche uses as Apollonian imagery are dreams—the ultimate in senselessness.

Dionysian art is not representational. It is, rather, a pure manifestation of the will to live. This is heavily influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy: Schopenhauer, building on Kant, thought that the world of the senses was but a visual manifestation of the primordial Will to Live—which is Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Kant’s noumena. Thus, since Apollonian art represents this world of the senses, it ends up being copy of a copy—twice removed from the primordial will. But music is a pure sensation, and therefore closer to the fundamental truth of reality.

So, for Nietzsche, the greatness of Greek Tragedy is that it combined these two aspects of art: the representational and nonrepresentational. The drama depicted on stage is Apollonian; but the music of the Chorus is Dionysian. It is the balance of myth and music, of words and will. And therein lies the rub.*

The death of tragedy comes with this fateful balance is disrupted. And it is disrupted by rationality: in the form of Euripides and Socrates. Socrates’s (or Plato’s) way of thinking was opposed to both the Apollonian and the Dionysian. His guiding light was reason, cold and pure. Socrates’s objection to Apollonian art is similar to Schopenhauer’s—it is a mere representation of the visual world, which itself is a mere manifestation of the Ideal Forms. But music is equally abhorrent for Socrates, because it is irrational, and distracts the soul from philosophy. In place of the Will to Live Socrates proposes the Will to Truth.

From then on, nonrepresentational art is not to be trusted, since it appeals to the senses, like wine or the lust for power. The point of art becomes, instead, to manifest reason and truth rather than to represent the Will to Live. Instead of the Apollonian world of dreams and myth we get the Socratic world of diagrams and dialectic.

I’m not sure why I took the trouble to summarize the book. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard it incorrectly summarized so many times before; or maybe it’s because it's so darn interesting. In any case, this is a marvelous little book, even if you think Nietzsche is both a bad scholar (which he is) and has dubious moral values (which is arguable). In the end, I think one of Nietzsche’s main points, at any time in his life, was that aesthetics is perhaps more important than either logic or ethics. Logic tells you what is true; ethics tell you what is right. But aesthetics makes life worth living—and who cares what’s true or right if it isn’t?




*One can see how influential this was on Freud, whose entire system is a kind of internalized version of Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s. For Freud, the primal id (read “the will to live” or “the Dionysian”) is represented symbolically via dreams (read “the world of the senses” or “the Apollonian”).

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nietzsche. Years ago, all I knew about him was that overused quote that says “Without music, life would be a mistake”. A couple of days ago, I found a funny picture that reminded of that.



Ha! Ok, maybe not funny ha-ha. If you speak Spanish...

Anyway. The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first work. I read it years ago (the great Schopenhauer led me to him) but I didn't remember much. Since I want (or wanted, I don't know) to start with Thus spoke Zarathustra, I figured I should begin with something shorter --I was going to write simpler, but... (?)
So, this book contains interesting thoughts about the dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. It was inspired by other ideas about two different things that conforms a constant struggle for us.
We have Apollo, god of the sun, reason, prophecy, healing, etc. and Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy. When these two forces combine, they form art, tragedies. They were last seen in Ancient Greece, because, according to Nietzsche, Euripides (and the ones that followed) deformed the concept of tragedy by using Socratic rationalism. That excess of rationality, that loss of the Dionysian ingredient made tragedy (the highest form of art) disappear.
This wasn't an easy read for me, but it was time well spent. This complex, impressive man deserves more time. He had interesting points of view and a strong, passionate writing style.
I know it's going to take a while, you know, the reading and the actually understanding part... However, this is an author whose outstanding work I need to get to know.

[Prerna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am the Dionysiac excess personified but action repels me. I am the Dionysiac expression of nature, and therefore I am an abominable crime against nature. I belong to the Dionysiac order of the cast of the die. I seek delight behind phenomena.

I am the feeling of myth personified and no, I am not a riddle. I simply immerse myself in the concept of this tragic, persisting, primeval reality

Nietzsche claims that tragedy is born only of the spirit of music. Is it this music that we dance to, weaving our lives together as a collective, cosmic tragedy?

Melodies are an abstraction of reality, so are our senses. Is art the enchantress, an intimation of the horror of life, or a consolation for it, or as Nietzsche claims, both?

I want to be this enchantress personified.

I could say a hundred things in praise of BT and a thousand things against it. But the difference between a person who reads this book and likes it and a person who does not read the book or reads the book and hates it, is about the same as the difference between the Dionysiac and the Apolline.

[Yules]

Read in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann.

For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy was born from the struggle between two forces: the Appollinian force of appearance (the form of the tragic figure on stage, speaking about his troubles), and Dionysian annihilation of form, which transcends appearances, obliterates the boundaries of selfhood, and reveals the one enduring life force that pulsates beneath all things. Individuation is Appollinian illusion; the collapse of individuation allows us to witness the primordial unity of reality, to feel the mystic Dionysian experience of oneness.

Nietzsche claims that “tragedy arose from the tragic chorus, and was originally chorus and nothing but chorus” (whether that’s indeed historically true I do not know). Thus, the Dionysian portion of the tragic art, effected in us by music, was born first. The Appollinian was added later, in the form of lyrics and myths and sense-making. Take only the Dionysian, and you’d undergo ecstatic self-oblivion, but see no individual heroes or stories on stage (as individuation is only the illusory veil of maya covering true, unified reality.) Take only the Appollinian, and you’d watch plays full of individual heroes and their stories, but never feel the transcendence that true art is meant to effect in us.

Art is not the imitation, but a supplement of reality. It comforts us, says Nietzsche, though not through catharsis of fear and pity, nor through resignation to the fates. Instead, “The metaphysical comfort [....] every true tragedy leaves us” is “that life is at the bottom of things, despite all changes in appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable.” You will die, yes, but that “eternal core of things” you’ve glimpsed in your Dionysian rapture will not.

As for me, none of my own Dionysian experiences have taken place while I was occupied with watching fictional characters on stage. Nietzsche would say that either I’m not enough of an aesthete, or the art I’ve encountered has failed to achieve its true goal.

[Steve]

Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

In Helen Morales' introduction to Tim Whitmarsh's fine new translation of Leucippe and Clitophon ,

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

written by the Alexandrian Greek Achilles Tatius in the 2nd century CE, she mentions that Nietzsche condemned the ancient Greek novels as a final sign of the degeneration of Greek literary art. I had forgotten all about that, so I thumbed through Die Geburt der Tragödie to find what he said in context and was pulled into the book again by his wonderful prose style and my curiosity about what else I may have forgotten in the intervening time. Of course, the thumbing turned into a re-read...

Die Geburt der Tragödie was Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) first book, though it transformed through a number of stages before it was published under this name first in 1872. It was modified twice more, and I read it in its final form of 1886. This final version had a new preface entitled Versuch einer Selbstkritik (Attempt at a Self-Criticism), wherein Nietzsche distanced himself from the text by explaining how his young, romantic self, under the excitement and pressure of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, had undertaken a task beyond his inexperienced reach. He calls the book poorly written, clumsy, embarrassing, overly enthusiastic and insufficiently argued, etc. He even calls it "here and there sweetened to the point of femininity"! (*) In this preface Nietzsche also takes the opportunity to eloquently and forcefully restate his view that morality, particularly Christian morality, is anti-life, that Christian teleology is life-hating.

In any case, Nietzsche had begun a very promising academic career at the University of Basel in Classical Philology, but this book killed it at once. A few responses by academics were published which dismantled the book from the point of view of academic considerations: he didn't take into account relevant literature and therefore misrepresented what was known (this is quite relevant, for he attacked the science of philology itself), he confused dates and pushed certain poets' works centuries before their time in order to make points, etc. The next semester, students avoided his lectures. He was finished. But in this book Nietzsche first formulated in a tentative form some of the ideas which later became central to his thought, a body of thought which hardly had any place in academia, anyway.(**)

So what is the book about? Way too much, actually. He begins by recalling the well known Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy: very roughly speaking, reason and measure versus irrationality and intoxication/ecstasy (a favorite topic of Hermann Hesse and so many other romantic/post-romantic German authors). Like the ancient Greeks, he also attributed dreams, viewed as prophesies and revelations, to the Apollonian side. But it is the Dionysian side which breaks down all barriers between individuals and between man and nature, which, unlike the Apollonian side - only permitting the awe-full admiration of the gods in dreams - actually permits one to feel like a god.

In quick succession Nietzsche tells us that dreams are a higher state of existence than "real life", that Homer was the first Apollonian artist and Archilochus (because lyrical poet = lyricist = musician = Dionysian) the first Dionysian artist, that the existence of the lyrical poet is a big problem for the philosophy of art (which he "solves"), etc., etc.

Nietzsche arrives at the topic of the origin of the Greek tragedy, but instead of examining the surviving primary sources he argues against Schlegel, Schiller and other very secondary sources. Distinguishing between the Apollonian rhapsody and the Dionysian dithyramb, Nietzsche repeats Aristotle's assertion that Greek tragedy originated in the dithyramb, and does so without mentioning Aristotle. He goes on to assert that the original Greek tragedies united both the Apollonian and Dionysian within themselves. In his own words:

Nach dieser Erkenntnis haben wir die griechische Tragödie als den dionysischen Chor zu verstehen, der sich immer von neuem wieder in einer apollinischen Bilderwelt entladet.

(According to this knowledge, we have to understand Greek tragedy as the Dionysian choir, which ever again anew discharges itself in an Apollonian world of images.)

He goes on to "explain" why the dialogue in the plays is Apollonian and why all the tragic heroes were masks of Dionysus. This original, pure tragedy soon degenerated into Attic comedy, which Nietzsche discusses next.

Nietzsche makes a notable assertion, which I oversimplify as follows: As part of this degeneration, the pair Euripides/Socrates introduced reason, as opposed to instinct, into the Greek theater. This turning towards reason and against the old, unspoken connection to the Dionysian roots of Greek culture initiated and accelerated the decay of that culture. He sketches how the birth of philosophy in Athens destroyed the original, more authentic and more valid Greek culture.(***) And, certainly, when one considers how Plato treated all of the arts in his Republic, Nietzsche is not merely spinning fables here.

He continues, asserting that all of Western culture is overshadowed by the nefarious, optimistic, knowledge-seeking, Apollonian degenerate Socrates and his followers. Science is their love child and is only enabling greed and materialism and abstraction while destroying art and alienating mankind from its roots. He calls for a revolution away from the Apollonian back to the Dionysian, and precisely this call he develops and intensifies in his later work. We know in hindsight that some very nasty people took up this cry for instinct, roots and the transcendence of self and went to some very bad places with it. I deny that this is in any way Nietzsche's responsibility or that such thinking must lead necessarily to such places. On the contrary, such thinking can lead, for example, to Zen Buddhism.

This book does not try to present a thesis and make a reasoned argument in support of it, complete with evidence of all kinds. No, it is poetic and somewhat confused speculation and enthusiasm; it is a piece of romantic literature, not philosophy or philology, though it makes one suggestive and interesting point, as mentioned earlier. It is a beautifully expressed, extended essay in which the young Nietzsche shows us some of the things he is enthused about. With that in mind, one can enjoy his youthful, undisciplined enthusiasm and fondly recall from one's earlier years a similar state of being. (Or, if one is young enough to be in that state of being, one can see a kindred spirit - always a pleasant experience.)

Before closing, I absolutely have to express my admiration for Nietzsche's prose - he is the greatest prose stylist among the many German philosophers I have read. He, even more than that great prose stylist Plato, can sweep the reader along, can woo him into a state of willing acceptance, nay, enthusiasm for his views. It is a pleasure to read his writings, even when, in the back of one's mind, one is often thinking "I don't find this to be valid at all."

(*) A cutting criticism from a man who thought masculinity was the measure of correct thought and emotion. This criticism was leveled at his younger self!

(**) I don't understand that remark as being negative either for Nietzsche or for academia.

(***) This prefigures the mature Nietzsche's rejection of reason, as opposed to instinct and will.

Note: If you care to know what star rating I give this book, please see my blog at

http://leopard.booklikes.com/blog

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helps me understand why I don't like Socrates: his generalization about rationality and virtue is too optimistic, unartistic, and will-negating. In one word, boring. Rationality itself can never make life worth living. Disillusion, semblance, errors, deceptions, irrational impulses, all of which Socrates negate, are inseparable from life, they are what life ultimately rests on. What can theoretical knowledge possibly lead to, other than the killing of action, or the nihilistic revelation that it makes more sense to die than live? What makes life worth-living? Nietzsche's answer is tragedy, the unity of Apolline semblance and Dionysiac intoxication, the unity of Apolline individuality and Dionysiac non-individual will, the unity of the true essence of the world and the necessary illusion that makes it tolerable to us. The Birth of Tragedy is a strong critic of Socratism and Western culture following from that. German Romanticism at its zenith!

[Brian Michels · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before Nietzsche became unhinged he wrote this great work. It took a toll on me after I read it because it was my introduction to Nietzsche and everything of his that I read afterwards was miscued; it scattered my thought process for a few years. The Joyful Wisdom, filled with remarkable poetry, was nearly like an acid trip. Thank goodness young minds have the capacity of recovering.

At its simplest, The Birth of Tragedy is a foundation for drama - that which captures you and also moves you, wax and wane of the mind, the up and down tugs on your heartstrings, or a punch to the relaxed gut. It's one thing and still another, the back and forth of Apollo and Dionysis in a shared space and time each with their moments. More complex, and more definitive, and more exemplary of Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy could be seen as the birth of Irony.

[marco renzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

È sempre difficile, per chi non ci è troppo abituato, avvicinarsi a un filosofo e alla filosofia in sé.
Nella sua ambiguità e nei suoi giochi, la letteratura si presta a ben altre immediatezze, talvolta veicolando anche concetti propri di altre discipline, come la Storia o, appunto, la Filosofia, troppo spesso ritenute ostiche da chi non le frequenta assiduamente, preferendo, a torto o a ragione, certe impalpabilità letterarie, cercando la distanza pure dalla logica e dalle scienze.

Conservo della filosofia un sacco di reminiscenze scolastiche, universitarie soltanto di striscio; poi, letture e letturine sparpagliate, sempre per vedere di entrarci dentro a poco a poco, magari affidandomi a coloro che ne sanno, a quegli studiosi capaci di condensare in poche pagine il pensiero di un filosofo tirando grossomodo le somme.
Sempre di introduzioni e interpretazioni si tratta, ovvio: ed è qui che uno deve andare dritto alla fonte, a consultare direttamente l'autore, se davvero si vuole addentrare nella disciplina.

A casa avevo un sacco di testi filosofici che mi scrutavano severi; tra questi, alla fine, ne ho scelto uno di Nietzsche: vuoi perché mi era stato in precedenza consigliato o perché spesso mi era stato indicato come uno dei pensatori più prossimi alla sensibilità letteraria; e dopo aver letto La nascita della tragedia, sento di doverlo confermare anch'io.

Nietzsche nasceva come filologo classico, un ragazzo prodigio con cattedra a Basilea. Studioso e intellettuale dalle infinite conoscenze, i greci e i latini li conosceva a menadito, a partire dalla lingua stessa, senza tuttavia tralasciarne i contenuti, le poetiche e lo spirito.
Ed è ai greci che si rifà in questo suo primo libro, un assurdo concentrato di idee, concetti, arti e, com'è chiaro, filosofia.

Mentirei se dicessi d'aver capito tutte queste densissime pagine: diciamo che ho inteso senza comprendere del tutto. Anche perché, Nietzsche non lascia al lettore - mi riferisco in particolare al novizio - molto spazio di comprensione, sebbene l'assunto di base sia cristallino: bisogna ripartire dai greci, dalla tragedia greca, e di questa far rivivere lo spirito metafisico, Dionisiaco, contrapposto qui a quello socratico, l'Apollineo.

Due concetti, Apollineo e Dionisiaco, che mi fecero fare qualche bella figura al liceo, e che qui ho ritrovato con piacere quasi nostalgico: sono in effetti sviscerati in tutte le loro declinazioni, con rimandi agli autori tragici che fecero grande la cultura greca, nonché ai filosofi a essi coevi.
Inoltre, il Filosofo si concentra anche sull'imprescindibilità della Musica, nella fattispecie quella strumentale, riallacciandosi alle bellissime pagine che Schopenhauer le dedicò nel Mondo come volontà e rappresentazione (finalmente qualcosa che conosco un po' meglio).

La scrittura di Nietzsche è un magma incandescente: fluviale ed evocativa come lo spirito al quale egli si rifa, trovando un filo conduttore che parte dalla grecità e arriva alla cultura tedesca del suo tempo, passando per un pessimismo che permea la disillusa visione dell'età contemporanea.

La nascita della tragedia è un testo che può sembrare semplice rispetto ad altri suoi fratelli e parenti, predecessori o epigoni; ma è un dato solo apparente: questo è un volumetto ricco e complesso, che spalanca portoni e apre inattesi spiragli di luce, a tratti indecifrabili. È l'opera prima di uno dei più grandi filosofi mai nati, dunque quella che darà il là a quello che sarà poi il pensiero nietzschiano.
Insomma, tutto parte da qui.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nietzsche is dead-serious in this book and without any traces of playfulness, irony, turn of phrases and directions, irreverent, and so on - style that will become part of his writings soon after this book. In fact this book is dedicated to Wagner and his total respect and admiration for him is reflected in its style. Nietzsche expressed a few fundamental insights here: the Ancient Greek was something unique and amazing and we are still living in their shadow, that modernity and their sciences in their democratic quest to explain the essential are falling more and more into unessential and nihilism, that the Germans are unique and may redeem us from this state of affairs but the future signs are not good in this respect, that music, tragedy, geniuses, myths, and similar are essential for our salvation.


Original 2023 review:
Young Nietzsche appeals to Wagner, Schopenhauer, Goethe, and even to Kant in order to defend the Dionysian and the Greek tragedy against the Apollonian, Socrates, the optimism and superficiality of sciences, and so on. The individual may try to hide behind Apollonian appearances and subterfuges, but in the end the creative destruction represented by the Dionysus will triumph in life. The proper understanding of all that is essential in life and art should be purely aesthetic; while any ethical, logical, or scientific interpretation is just missing the point. Nietzsche is quite verbose, passionate, and optimistic in this book. Later Nietzsche will denounce Wagner's music, Schopenhauer's philosophy, the German culture as a whole, and this book as fundamentally romantic and decadent; while Dionysus will morph and take a clear identity as Zarathustra and/or the Antichrist.

[Stratos Maragos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Τέτοια βιβλία και τόσο μεγάλοι φιλόσοφοι είναι υπεράνω κάθε κριτικής και βαθμολογίας. Ο Νίτσε υπήρξε επιπλέον και εξαιρετικός λογοτέχνης που μοιράζεται παραστατικά τις πρωτότυπες ιδέες του. Είναι πάντα προτιμότερο να τον διαβάζεις απευθείας χωρίς καμιά διαμεσολάβηση.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very obviously a major work of literary criticism. Nietzsche succeeds with the very improbable endeavor of presenting a new vision of Greek tragedy in opposition to the interpretation of Aristotle. Reducing to the point of absurdity, Aristotle argues that tragedy offers us catharsis; that is to say, it purges us of our existential anxiety whereas Nietzsche argues that tragedy is a celebration of the basic absurdity of man's condition.

Nietzsche attacks with considerable success everything I learned about Greek tragedy 45 years ago as an undergraduate and have believed without question ever since. It was explained to me that Euripides was the greatest of the Greek tragedians because of the realism of his characters and his skepticism with respect to the Greek Gods. Aeschylus and Sophocles were too respectful of the Olympic deities and their theatre was considered to be awkward by contemporary standards. Euripides Bacchantes, in which the protagonist is murdered by a mob of drunken women participating in the spring bacchanalia, was presented as his chef d'oeuvre.

Nietzsche in contrasts considers the bacchanalia or the Dionysian rites to have been essential to the dynamism of Greek culture. He argues that all protagonists in Greek drama were based on Dionysus in that all died a horrible death not because of their faults but simply because of an absurd fate. Greek tragedy then in the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles was a celebration of the courage of the Dionysian man to fight courageously against a cruel destiny. Euripides destroyed Greek tragedy by judging events by the standards of common sense and by criticizing the Gods for their cruelty or worse questioning their existence.

Plato finished the work of undermining Greek tragedy begun by Euripides by giving the Hellenistic world a new hero Sophocles, the purely theoretical man, in contrast to Dionysus a God of spontaneous nature. Two thousand dreadful years followed. Fortunately Germany had come to the rescue of Hellenic culture. In Nietzsche's opinion, Wagner with his operas had finally restored Greek tragedy to its position of prominence in our European-Hellenistic civilization.

As literary criticsm, the Birth of Tragedy is absolutely brilliant. I am no way qualified to comment on it as philosophy. Being Catholic and Aristotelian I cannot agree with Nietzsche but I must acknowledge the brilliance of this particular work.

Do not even consider reading this work unless you have read the Bacchantes by Euripides, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and the Frogs by Aristophanes.

[Κωνσταντίνος Τσεντεμεΐδης · Rating 5 out of 5]

ΝΙΤΣΕ :-"Μακαριε λαε της Ελλάδας! Πόσο μεγάλος πρέπει να είναι ανάμεσα σας ο Διόνυσος, αν ο Θεός της Δήλου θεωρεί απαραίτητα τέτοια μάγια για να γιατρεψει την διθυραμβικη τρελα σας! "


ΑΙΣΧΥΛΟΣ :-" Μα πες και τούτο όμως παραξενε ξένε : πόσο θα υπέφερε αυτός ο λαός για να μπόρεσει να γίνει τόσο ωραίος! "


Περισσότερη Ελλάδα απ όση μπορούμε να σηκώσουμε...

[P.E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Díada Dionisio - Apolo


Citas:

'Mientras en el teatro y en el concierto había implantado su dominio el crítico, en la escuela el periodista, en la sociedad la prensa, el arte degeneraba hasta convertirse en un objeto de entretenimiento de la más baja especie, y la crítica estética era utilizada como aglutinante de una sociedad vanidosa, disipada, egoísta y, además, miserablemente carente de originalidad [...]'


'[...] nosotros no podemos ya gozar como hombres enteros: estamos, por así decirlo, rotos en pedazos por las artes absolutas, y ahora gozamos también como pedazos, unas veces como hombres-oídos, otras veces como hombres-ojos, y así sucesivamente.'


'imagínese una cultura que no tenga una sede primordial fija y sagrada, sino que esté condenada a agotar todas las posibilidades y a nutrirse mezquinamente de todas las culturas – eso es el presente, como resultado de aquel socratismo dirigido a la aniquilación del mito.'


'¿[Y si ocurriera que] fue precisamente en los tiempos de su disolución y debilidad cuando los griegos se volvieron cada vez más optimistas, más superficiales, más comediantes, también más ansiisos de lógica y de logicización del mundo, es decir, a la vez «más joviales» y «más científicos»?


'el valor de un pueblo [...] se mide precisamente por su mayor o menor capacidad de imprimir a sus vivencias el sello de lo eterno: pues, por decirlo así, con esto queda desmundanizado y muetra su convicción inconsciente e íntima de la relatividad del tiempo y del significado verdadero, esto es, metafísico de la vida. Lo contrario de esto acontece cuando un pueblo comienza a concebirse a sí mismo de un modo histórico'


'Todo es uno, nos dice. La vida es como una fuente eterna que constantemente produce individuaciones y que, produciéndolas, se desgarra a sí misma. [...] La vida es, pues, el comienzo de la muerte, pero la muerte es la condición de nuestra vida. La ley eterna de las cosas se cumple en el devenir constante. No hay culpa, ni en consecuencia redención, sino la inocencia del devenir.'


'El pensamiento trágico es la intuición de la unidad de todas las cosas y su afirmación consiguiente: afirmación de la vida y de la muerte, de la unidad y de la separación. Mas no una afirmación heroica o patética, no una afirmación titánica o divina, sino la afirmación del niño de Heráclito, que juega junto al mar.'


'La tragedia, surgida de la profunda fuente de la compasión, es pesimista por esencia. La existencia es en ella algo muy horrible, el ser humano, algo muy insensato. El héroe de la tragedia no se evidencia, como cree la estética moderna, en la lucha con el destino, tampoco sufre lo que merece. Antes bien, se precipita a su desgracia ciego y con la cabeza tapada'


'no [son] capaces de reconocer en el arte nada más que un acesorio divertido, nada más que un tintineo, del que sin duda se puede prescindir, añadido a la «seriedad de la existencia»: como si nadie supiese qué es lo que significa semejante «seriedad de la existencia» cuando se hace esa contraposición.
[...] el arte es [la actividad propiamente metafísica de esta vida [...].'


'Eurípides se propuso mostrar al mundo, como se lo propuso también Platón, el reverso del poeta “irrazonable”; su axioma estético “todo tiene que ser consciente para ser bello” es, como he dicho, la tesis paralela a la socrática, “todo tiene que ser consciente para ser bueno”. De acuerdo con esto, nos es l��cito considerar a Eurípides como el poeta del socratismo estético. Sócrates era, pues, aquel segundo espectador que no comprendía la tragedia antigua y que, por ello, no la estimaba; aliado con él, Eurípides se atrevió a ser el heraldo de una nueva forma de creación artística. Si la tragedia antigua pereció a causa de él, entonces el socratismo estético es el principio asesino; y puesto que la lucha estaba dirigida contra lo dionisíaco del arte anterior, en Sócrates reconocemos el adversario de Dioniso.'

'Basta con recordar las consecuencias de las tesis socráticas: «la virtud es el saber; se peca sólo por ignorancia; el virtuoso es el feliz»; en estas tres formas básicas del optimismo está la muerte de la tragedia.'


'El presupuesto de la ópera es una creencia falsa acerca del procesi artístico, a saber, la creencia idílica de que propiamente todo hombre sensible es un artista.'


'En la consciencia del despertar de la embriaguez ve por todas partes lo espantoso o absurdo del ser hombre: esto le produce náusea.[...]

Aquí ha sido alcanzado el límite más peligroso que la voluntad helénica, con su principio básico optimista-apolíneo, podía permitir. Aquí esa voluntad intervino [...] con su fuerza curativa natural, para dar la vuelta a ese estado de ánimo negador: el medio de que se sirve es la obra de arte trágica y la idea trágica.'


'Sobre todo se trataba de transformar aquellos pensamientos de náusea sobre lo espantoso y lo absurdo de la existencia en representaciones con las que se pueda vivir: esas representaciones son lo sublime, sometiendo artístico de lo espantoso, y lo ridiculo, descarga artística de la náusea de lo absurdo. Estos 2 elementos [se unen] para formar una obra de arte que recuerda la embriaguez, que juega con la embriaguez.'



Leer más:
La rebelión de las masas
Mes idées politiques
Discours de Suède
The Human Crisis
L’été
L'Homme révolté

Berserk, Vol. 1
Citadelle
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Apologie de Socrate/Criton
The Republic
L'univers, les dieux, les hommes



Otras obras por Nietzsche:
On the Genealogy of Morals
Beyond Good and Evil
Thus Spoke Zarathustra




Música:
Algo por Paco de Lucía o Camarón de la Isla

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recipe for "The Birth of Tragedy":

1. Add one part speculative psychological inquiry into the deepest recesses of Hellenic consciousness.
2. Stir in some rousing and thought-provoking anti-Socratic and anti-Euripidean invective.
3. Season with a pinch of ecstatically Dionysiac rhetoric.
4. If necessary, add more speculative psychological inquiry to taste.
5. Beat vigorously until mixture produces an unqualified dithyrambic adoration of Richard Wagner.
6. Let stand until properly matured.

Serves 1.

[Jonathan Terrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Birth of Tragedy is by far the better written and useful of the three works by Friedrich Nietzsche that I have so far read. Thus proving that when he is not angrily ranting about religion and morality, that Nietzsche does have important points to make about humanity. That is not to say that Nietzsche does not have his own pointed comments about religion in this narrative argument that he creates, more that these comments are superseded by the other arguments created by Nietzsche.

In the foreword to this edition, Nietzsche himself claims that he looks back with an academic disgust at his writing in this book. He claims that it is the sickly, sweet and confident work of a much younger man, as if that is a clear problem with the work itself. I myself (perhaps because I am a younger man) do not see this as an issue altogether and see the older Nietzsche as falling into the trap of becoming increasingly bitter, sceptical and closed-minded. Ironically everything that he accuses religion of fostering. Personally, reading The Birth of Tragedy I note that it appears as if Nietzsche was headed down a path that hinted at accepting a kind of Christian, or other religious, spirituality and his older persona would not allow him to accept the direction of his conclusions. Sad to say, Nietzsche 'throws the baby out with the bathwater' when it comes to anything connected to religion.

Speaking about this, it becomes clear that even from a younger age Nietzsche had this stumbling block when it came to religion. In his introductory notes, Nietzsche states that he created this work on the basis that, more or less, he wished to find a force that denoted that which was 'Anti-Christ'. Or, according to him, denied a sense of Christian morality, that was amoral as life is amoral, and was also artistic. The prompting of such words amounting to a blatant suggestion that Christianity or modern religion could not be artistic. Which personally is an insulting suggestion and one which again causes me to wonder why Nietzsche hates the Christian ethic so very much. Certainly, the modern day Christian artist may work within a box (hence my ultimate respect for those people who attempt to break ground and boxes - like Switchfoot or Skillet), but that is not enough to say that art cannot be made by Christians or by religious individuals. It is, in fact, a denial of history to state as much.

That aside, the argument made across the entirety of this volume is what I am really here to discuss. And the argument that Nietzsche makes is that art focuses around two different forces. He argues that life similarly focuses around two forces, like good or evil, order and chaos. For art these two dichotomous forces are named by Nietzsche as the Appolonian and the Dionysian - named after the two Greek gods of art.

Nietzsche classifies the Appolonian as representative of order and structure within art. For instance he represents this as linked to sculpture. The Dionysian is linked to the chaotic forces of art - to music for example - and the case is made that art flows from and between these two forces. As it is also explained, the Appolonian is like dreaming and the Dionysian is like intoxication. These are two states of consciousness that are linked together and yet are separate entities.

In many ways this work is about the history of art and tragedy in particular as seen from the perspective of a history of the Greeks. He discusses how tragedy and comedy are part of these Dionysian and Appolonian forces and that particularly the chaotic Dionysian is part of life and art itself. However, Nietzsche also discusses a period of time in which tragedy became usurped by Socratic thinking. In other words tragedy dies in an age of questions being asked and answered to provide rational solutions to that which may be irrational. However, Nietzsche concludes by stating that we may enter a period whereby we see a 'rebirth of tragedy' as an art form and as is accepted in life.

As stated, there is plenty of literary value to be taken from this book. I have an issue with Nietzsche's constant need to belittle religion, yet he'd probably also have an issue with the fact that I bring up my views and beliefs due to their links to 'religion'. That said if there is one Nietzsche book I recommend it would be this.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nietzsche is really speaking about the death of tragedy not its birth. He really doesn't like humanism in any of its variations. He says that it's our experiences which give us our understanding (a very Husserlian Phenomenological thing to say). The instinct, emotion, passion, the mysticism within us, and our intuitions are what really empower us (he says) not our reason. Music and dance lets the real person who lies within come to full actualization. Knowledge of the real world is not truth and it is the disclosure (as in the Homeric myths) that gives us our understanding (according to him).

The metaphor he uses to describe the development of tragedy throughout history could just as easily be applied to within a person in themselves and almost for sure could be used by Freudian psychology and its various off shoots to explain the conscious verse unconscious selves within us and for both Freud and Nietzsche reaching into the unconscious will give us our true selves. In the end, he thinks the individual is master of his own domain and the primal instinct within us has been extinguished since the time of the Socratics, and we are all the worst for it.

The Republican's who embrace a neanderthal like Donald Trump would do well to read Nietzsche. They would understand how to frame their arguments better than they usually do. There is a part in this book where he'll speak about the special character of the Germans. Patriotism always means the group you belong to is special because you are in that group. By definition, you have to make some other group less special. Republicans under Donald Trump definitely are trying to do that. But, there is more than just the patriotism that would appeal to Republicans in this book. He also wants to feel his way to the right answer so that facts can be replaced with 'alternative facts' (whatever those are?) as long as you can feel the answer then it is better than knowing through reason.

Reason is definitely not a virtue for Nietzsche or any Republican who is a climate change denier Also, Republicans mock Freud, but seem to love to blame the victim too. Everything in their world view is the fault of the individual. (They loved thinking, refrigerator moms caused autism. They love blaming the mother when they can. Little realizing sometimes people are born that way and there is no one to blame except the universe. They believe that you are the master of your own fate. The captain of your own ship. Time and chance play no role in their world view).

This book is slightly different then the other ones of his that I've read recently. He doesn't show contempt for the reader, he wants to be taken seriously, and he doesn't hate women overtly (yes, he does mention 'feminine traits' as being bad, after all, 'virtus' originally meant 'manly excellence', so that which is worthy of being imitated was according to the man not from the woman, but overall that kind of thinking is within the time frame he was writing in. I'd be even able to site modern people who say stupid things like that such as a previous governor (Schwarzenegger) of California who said "don't be a sissy man" and that was within the bounds of most Republicans and they even like that kind of talk, but that's not what I think nor believe).

Nietzsche's fluency with Greek Gods and Titans was overwhelmingly elegant. He also seemed to be even more pessimistic than Schopenhauer within this book. I liked it when he quotes someone as to the one thing we should all know is "that we would have been better not to be born".

If you do read this one, I would suggest reading "Genealogy of Morals" first even though it was written latter. Nietzsche hasn't yet flushed out many of his thoughts within this book (Birth of Tragedy) and "Genealogy of Morals" will fill in those obvious gaps making this book easy to understand.

[Deniz Urs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bakkhos boy versin içimizden..!

[Felix · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book relies so heavily on references to the Greek classics - to the point where it has the risk of being utterly obscure without familiarity with large parts of the canon of Greek literature. But when the thread can be followed, this is a really beautiful meditation on the nature and meaning of the tragic in art.

Fundamentally, Nietzsche poses an opposition between the primordial Dionysian and the the ordered well-formed Appollian. The culture emerges awash in the former, and eventually declines straining under the weight of the latter. Dionysius sits close to music, allowing nature to speak through art, whereas Apollo demands structure and order (and opens the way to more analytical philosophical enquiry).

This book is so abstract that it's hard to make any statement as to whether it is right or wrong. Fundamentally, it asks unanswerable questions, but then meditates on the answer extensively. It's a great read though, because Nietzsche spins a pretty interesting attempt at an answer. It works just as well as literature as it does as philosophy (if not even better!).

[luchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

whoever recommended this as my first nietzsche read, i will find and destroy you

[Irina Constantin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A citi Nietzsche înseamnă a asista la o lungă prelegere (de catedră), sau nu, despre luciditate, o reînnoire a spiritului meu declamator se produce, de fiecare dată în mine, când reiau o carte de Nietzsche.
Nașterea tragediei am început-o din vară, nu a mers, spiritul meu, pe atunci, încă stagna și nu putea atârnă liber de placa infinitului, acum o săptămână, am continuat-o, nu aș fi putut să o las așa în neștire, o cartea de Nietzsche e totuși un "eveniment" pentru mine, iar Nașterea tragediei este a cincea carte citită de la filosof.
Cartea reprezinta mai mult un elogiu adus filosofiei antice de unde se inspira Nietzsche, Socrate îi e zeu și demon.
Natura dionisiaca a omului e confruntata cu cea apolonica.
Are loc bătălia între echilibrul materiei și dezordinea ei, adica dionisiacul. Nu se ajunge niciodată la un verdict concret.

Dionisiacul e la fel de liber ca apolonicul, în viziunea lui Nietzsche, are loc o "forma mentis " adică o stare a minții dintre ethos și pathos, cele două stari permanente ale omului obișnuit care se afla în coliziune și se completează una pe alta până la marele "război" cognitiv.
Nașterea tragediei este, în primul rând, un lung eseu filosofic, o prelegere de catedră, deși Nietzsche respinge acest aspect cu vehemență, un fapt cunoscut fiind că el și-a dat demisia din profesor universitar.
Nebunia ajunsă într-o stare apropiată catharsisului își caută refugiul în antici, ca o alinarea surda, Nietzsche îl aclama pe Gothe, Schopenhauer, ca și cum și-ar cauta scăparea în cei ca el, ca și cum s-ar simți izgonit cu forța din fața catedrei universitare, unde în ultimele clipe, ajunsese să-i frecventeze cursurile doar 2-3 studenți.
Considerat de critici ca promotor al nazismului ideologic alături de Richard Wagner, Nietzsche dedică o carte exclusiv anticilor, dar și muzicii lui Bach, Mozart, Richard Wagner.
Muzicalitate operei se întrezărește mai mult în a doua parte a cărții, cuvintele curg precum șuvoiul tăios a unui țurțure care se dezgheață încet, atârnând la streșina unui acoperiș.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never read Nietzsche before, but after reading, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, and Freud, I thought I was ready for some Nietzsche. It would also make me look clever if let's say The Birth of Tragedy ever came up in conversation at a dinner party or whilst out dining with friends. Not that that was ever likely to happen, but you just never know. This was everything I would come to expect from a philosopher, and although I was intrigued by what he was getting across, his convoluted writing wasn't easy to grasp at times. I can't say that I loved it, because I didn't, but then it wasn't a waste of time either. I could relate to his notion of art and music in particular, but overall the stimulation this book gave me never really got out of second gear.

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 3 out of 5]

باز هم ترجمه‌ی بی‌نظیری از خانم منجم که در عین روان بودن از بار ژرف موضوع نکاهید. نیچه در این کتاب، با انگیزه‌های مختلفی که به‌نظرم مهم‌ترینش، بحران فرهنگی‌ای بود که غرب را مورد گزند خویش قرار می‌داد، با بررسی تعادل و تضادی که میان عنصر دیونزیوسی و آپولوییِ یونان باستان قرار دارد، روح موسیقی را واکاوی می‌کند و از خلال موسیقی که از نظر نیچه‌ی فیلسوف، والاترین شکل هنر است، به‌دنبال راهی برای جلوگیری از انحطاط فرهنگی می‌گردد. یکی از مهم‌ترین آثار نیچه که حتما باید خوانده شود.

[Matthew Hartley · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.’


In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s first book, he describes what he believes are the two central forces in art and how they merged to form Greek tragedy. The two forces are the Dionysian and the Apolline. The Dionysian is wild, formless and is associated with music, the will and breaking through cultural norms. The Apolline deals with sculpture, dreams, poetry, restraint and the individual.

The ancient Greeks needed Apolline myths, which were born from dreams. They took form as the Olympian pantheon and served as a beautiful veil to cover the suffering and pain of life. The Greeks gained strength from these Olympian Gods and came to see them as strong and beautiful reflections of themselves. Nietzsche says, ‘the gods provide a justification for the life of man by living it themselves.’

The Dionysian drive however, which was part of religious rites, was very different. In the festivals man came face to face with nature and the individual was consumed. The festivals were joyous, musical, sexual and intoxicating. They gave a true glimpse into the nature of life, with its undercurrent of constant striving, willing and breaking through of cultural norms.

Nietzsche describes how the Apolline and Dionysian forces merged in Attic tragedy, after at first being at odds. He believed the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles were both Apolline and Dionysian. With the musical chorus (representing the will) in tragic drama, one had insight into the true nature of the world. Despite the death of the tragic hero, the audience was consoled because of the Apollonian vision before them and the fact that the underlying will in all life lives on.

This ideal artistic state was not to last however. Along came the philosopher Socrates who was purely intellectual and hoped to get to the truth about the natural order of the world using reason and discarding instinctual feeling. He believed ‘virtue is knowledge,’ and the scientific approach killed tragedy and severed man from the healthy Dionysian state, and Apolline art died there with it.

This was seen by Nietzsche to be disastrous, because the problem with science is that it can’t adequately explain the world and give it meaning, so this can herald in an age of nihilism. At this point art is then needed again to give the world meaning.

Nietzsche at the time of writing BOT believed his contemporary Richard Wager was going to herald in the contemporary form of Greek Tragedy in their native Germany. He fell out with Wagner though, shortly after writing this book and changed many of his former views.

In conclusion, this is a good book if you want to know more about art, Greek culture, the value of myth and the potential problems of scientific and rational inquiry. I’d suggest though that the reader first have some knowledge of the Greek classics before they attempt to read this book.

[Luthfi Ferizqi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Birth of Tragedy, first published in 1872, marks the debut of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical career, and it left me astonished.

This book took me by surprise, primarily because of the dense network of references Nietzsche employs—references that demand a certain level of prior knowledge. Central to his argument are the works of the great Greek tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles. These plays, rich with complex characters and profound themes, are crucial for understanding Nietzsche's exploration of the origins of tragedy.

Personally, I’ve only read Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, which gave me a glimpse into the tragic spirit Nietzsche vividly describes. He portrays a world where tragedy flourished before the rationalism of Socrates began to undermine it. However, I realized that my limited exposure to these ancient works somewhat hindered my grasp of Nietzsche's broader arguments.

Another challenge in reading this book is Nietzsche’s frequent citations of Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher whose works I have yet to delve into. Schopenhauer's influence is deeply woven into Nietzsche's thought, particularly in how Nietzsche develops his ideas about art and the human condition. Without familiarity with Schopenhauer’s philosophy, it can be difficult to fully appreciate the nuances of Nietzsche's argument.

Despite these challenges, I found myself captivated by Nietzsche’s exploration of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles—concepts that symbolize the dual forces of order and chaos, reason and passion, in human existence. His relentless critique of Socrates, whom he blames for the decline of Greek tragedy, also resonated with me, though it left me pondering the implications of such a stance.

Yet, in many ways, The Birth of Tragedy feels more like a philosophical treatise or a critical essay on the decline of ancient tragedy and the potential for its rebirth through the music of Richard Wagner, a composer Nietzsche admired at the time. Nietzsche suggests that Wagner’s music could revive the lost Dionysian spirit of ancient Greece, breathing new life into modern art.

In conclusion, I believe this is a book that demands more than one reading.

[Kaleb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good news and bad news. Bad news, this has been my least favorite Nietzsche by far, and I probably wouldn't have finished it without the class. Lots of it feels repetitive or unclear, and not unclear in a cool, poetic Nietzschean way, unclear in a "bad argumentation" way. Good news, however. This was his first book and a few years after he wrote it, he called it "badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof". So Nietzsche and I agree, making this opinion acceptable.

The general concept is actually pretty cool, there are 2 artistic "drives" the Greeks had, the Apollonian (order, individuation, permanence, like poetry and sculpture) and the Dionysian (chaos, loss of self, orgiastic, irrational, like music) and that the Greek tragedy is this amazing art form because it combines the two drives, and allows us to accept/understand the suffering in life. Despite the general concept being great, again, the argumentation and the details are just unclear. So, the first Nietzsche flop, sadly.

One more thing. Nietzsche values music more than any other art form, including writing, and it makes me sad that he tried to write music and was pretty bad at it. Whenever he praises music, it's like wow this is sad, he tried to do this and couldn't.

(2.5)

Quotes

"Wisdom, the myth seems to whisper to us, and Dionysiac wisdom in particular, is an unnatural abomination: whoever plunges nature into the abyss of destruction by what he knows must in turn experience the dissolution of nature in his own person."

"We talk so abstractly about poetry because we are usually all bad poets. "

"This close relation that music has to the true nature of all things can also explain the fact that, when music suitable to any scene, action, event, or environment is played, it seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears to be the most accurate and distinct commentary on it."

"Perhaps there is a kingdom of wisdom from which the logician is banished? "