THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

Out of the Spirit of Music

(1872)

Dover edition, 1995.

 Apollo
 God of Light and
the Sun
 Reason
 Poetry
 Music
 Healing
 Prophecy
 Sculpture & forms
 Clear boundaries
Apollo
 Apollo, like his twin Artemis, was
the son of Zeus and Leto. He was
born on the floating island of
Delos. When he was fully grown,
his father sent him on a mission to
the Oracle of Delphi on the
mountain Parnassus. He was to
capture the Oracle for his own. To
do this, he had to kill the Python, a
snake who guarded the Oracle.
From a deep cleft in the
mountain’s side, sulphurous fumes
rose up to the priestess who sat
above it. The fumes put her into a
magic sleep, and in her dreams
she heard Mother Earth’s voice.
She repeated Earth’s words, and
priests stood around her
translating.
principium individuationis
 Latin for the principle of
individuation. The idea, associated
with Apollo, of the uniqueness and
distinctiveness of each individual
person and thing. Nietzsche
contrasts this with the Dionysian
“mysterious Primordial Unity.”
Implicit in the concept of the
principium individuationis are the
boundaries between things that
separate humans from the world
and from each other. Nietzsche
describes “the state of individuation
as the origin and prime cause of all
suffering” and as “the prime cause
of evil” (34-35).
 Appearance
 Nietzsche's term for the nature of Apollonian
phenomena. Everything that we see around
us is appearance, as it is only a veil behind
which lies true reality. Likewise, the images
in dreams represent the appearance of
appearance. Nietzsche contrasts the concept
of Apollonian appearance, or illusion, to the
Dionysian suffering, or reality. Appearance is
necessary in order to shield us from the full
truth of human suffering which otherwise
would crush us with its magnitude.
 The veil of Maya
 Maya (Sanskrit māyā, from mā "not" and yā
"this"), in Hinduism, is a term describing many
things. Maya is the phenomenal world of
separate objects and people, which creates for
some the illusion that it is the only reality. For
the mystics this manifestation is real, but it is a
fleeting reality; it is a mistake, although a
natural one, to believe that maya represents a
fundamental reality. Each person, each physical
object, from the perspective of eternity is like a
brief, disturbed drop of water from an
unbounded ocean. The goal of enlightenment is
to understand this —more precisely, to
experience this: to see intuitively that the
distinction between the self and the universe is a
false dichotomy. The distinction between
consciousness and physical matter, between
mind and body, is the result of an unenlightened
perspective. Nietzsche probably gets the term
from Schopenhauer.
• Is
Is any
any of
of this
this starting
starting to
to sound
sound familiar?
familiar?
 The Matrix is everywhere,
it's all around us, here
even in this room. You can
see it out your window or
on your television. You
feel it when you go to
work, or go to church or
pay your taxes. It is the
world that has been pulled
over your eyes to blind
you from the truth.
Is
Is Nietzsche
Nietzsche offering
offering his
his reader
reader the
the red
red Dionysian
Dionysian pill?
pill?
 Dionysus
 God
God of of wine,
wine,
drunkenness,
drunkenness,
revelry,
revelry, fertility
fertility
 known
known as as the
the Liberator
Liberator
(Eleutherios),
(Eleutherios), freeing
freeing
one
one from
from one's
one's normal
normal
self,
self, by
by madness,
madness,
ecstasy,
ecstasy, oror wine
wine
 promoter
promoter of of civilization,
civilization,
aa lawgiver,
lawgiver, and
and lover
lover of
of
peace,
peace, as as well
well as the
patron
patron deity
deity of
of
agriculture
agriculture and
and the
the
theater
theater
 as
as Lyaeus ("he who
releases")
releases") as as a god ofof
relaxation
relaxation and
and freedom
freedom
from
from worry
worry
 Dionysus
 Dionysus had an unusual birth that evokes the
difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian
pantheon. His mother was Semele (daughter
of Cadmus), a mortal woman, and his father
Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus's wife, Hera, a
jealous and vain goddess, discovered the affair
while Semele was pregnant. Appearing as an
old crone (in other stories a nurse), Hera
befriended Semele, who confided in her that
her husband was actually Zeus. Hera
pretended not to believe her, and planted
seeds of doubt in Semele's mind. Curious,
Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal
himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood.
Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she
persisted and he agreed. Mortals, however,
cannot look upon a god without dying. He
came to her wreathed in bolts of lightning and
she perished in the ensuing blaze. Zeus
rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by
sewing him into his thigh (referred as his
testicles). A few months later, Dionysus was
born. In this version, Dionysus is borne by two
mothers (Semele and Zeus) before his birth,
hence the epithet dimetor (two mothers)
associated with "twice-born".
Dionysos is depicted in this painting newly born from the thigh of Zeus.
The king of the gods holds a thyrsos (a pine-cone tipped staff), one of
the usual attributes of Dionysos, and sits on a stool spread with a deer
skin. His infant son holds a vine-branch in one hand and a wine cup in
the other, indicating his destined role as the god of wine. The goddesses
Aphrodite and Eileithyia stand on either side, Aphrodite holding a pair of
flower blooms, and Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, raising her hand
to release the child. ca 460 BC
 In another version of the birth story, Dionysus was the son of
Zeus and Persephone, the queen of the underworld. A jealous
Hera again attempted to kill the child, this time by sending
Titans to rip Dionysus to pieces after luring the baby with toys.
Zeus drove the Titans away with his thunderbolts, but only after
the Titans ate everything but the heart, which was saved,
variously, by Athena, Rhea, or Demeter. Zeus used the heart to
recreate him in the womb of Semele, hence he was again "the
twice-born". Sometimes people said that he gave Semele the
heart to eat to impregnate her. The rebirth in both versions of
the story is the primary reason he was worshipped in mystery
religions, as his death and rebirth were events of mystical
reverence.
It is possible that
Dionysian mythology
would later find its way
into Christianity? There
are many parallels
between Dionysus and
Jesus: both were said to
have been born from a
virgin mother, a mortal
woman, but fathered by
the king of heaven, to
have returned from the
dead, to have
transformed water into
wine, and to have been
liberator of mankind. The
modern scholar Barry
Powell also argues that
Christian notions of
eating and drinking "the
flesh" and "blood" of
Jesus were influenced
by the cult of Dionysus.
 Early tradition holds that drama and comedy
evolved between 800 - 500 BCE from the
dithyramb, the songs, folk tales and dances
offered to Dionysus. The word tragoidia, where
our word tragedy is derived, is a portmanteau of
two Greek words: tragos, "the goat", which is
akin to "gnaw", and odia meaning song, from
aeidein, to sing. This explains the very rare
archaic translation as "goat-men sacrifice song.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

 1842 - 1900
 Birth of Tragedy
(1871) was his first
major book.
 Nietzsche wanted to show
that there are two principles
fundamental to the
universe. They are ancient
and immortal—gods. They
are not psychological. These
two forces strive against
each other, but sometimes
find a temporary
reconciliation or marriage.
Nietzsche’s argument is
that the ancient Greeks
created, for a time, a ritual
form by which the two
forces are harnessed and
brought into harmony. This
was a new way to look at
ancient Greek drama.
 The Dionysos Theatre in Athens built into the Acropolis, ~3rd century
BC.
 Nietzsche was not just working
out a new theory of Greek
theater, but a theory of art and a
philosophical approach to life.

 “This view of things already provides us

with all the elements of a profound and
pessimistic contemplation of the world,
together with the mystery doctrine of
tragedy:

1. the fundamental knowledge of the oneness

of everything existent;

2. the conception of individuation as the prime

cause of evil; and

3. art as the joyous hope that the bonds of

individuation may be broken in augury of a
restored oneness” (Section 10, 35).
“I see Apollo as the transfiguring genius of the principium
individuationis through which alone the redemption in appearance
is truly to be obtained” (Section 16, 56).

“Apollo overcomes the suffering of the individual by the luminescent

glorification of the eternity of the phenomenon: here beauty triumphs
over the suffering inherent in life; pain is in a sense obliterated from
the features of nature” (Section 16, 59).
“Dionysian art, too, wishes to convince us of the eternal joy of existence
only we are to seek this joy not in phenomenon, but behind them. We
are to recognize that all that comes into being must be ready for a
sorrowful end; we are forced to look into the terrors of the individual
existence—yet we are not to become rigid with fear: a metaphysical
comfort tears us momentarily from the bustle of the transforming figures.
We are really for a brief moment Primordial Being itself, feeling its raging
desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the
destruction of phenomena, now appear to us as a necessary thing, in
view of the surplus of countless forms of existence which force and push
one another into life, in view of the exuberant fertility of the universal will.
We are pierced by the maddening sting of these pains just when we
have become, as it were, one with the infinite primordial joy in existence,
and when we anticipate, in Dionysian ecstasy, the indestructibility and
eternity of this joy. In spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living
beings, not as individuals, but as the one living being, merged with its
creative delight” (Section 16, 60).
 The book’s subtitle is Out of the Spirit of Music. Why music?

“Music is
distinguished from
all the other arts by
the fact that it is
not a copy of the
phenomenon . . .
but is the direct
copy of the will Followers of Dionysus prepare the wine amidst
music and dance.
itself” (58).

“It is only through the spirit of music that we can

understand the joy involved in the annihilation of the
individual. For only by the particular examples of
such annihilation are we made clear as to the
eternal phenomenon of Dionysian art, which gives
expression to the will in its omnipotence, as it were,
behind the principium individuationis, the eternal life
beyond all phenomenon, and despite all
annihilation” (Section 16, 59).
 The second part of
Nietzsche’s argument is
that the Greek’s balance
between the Apollonian
and Dionysian was
overthrown and Greek
tragedy destroyed with
the rise of two figures.
As a result, Western
civilization was changed
forever.

Socrates Euripides
(c. 469 / 471 BC – 399 BC) (480-406 B.C.)
Privileging rational and logical explanation, Socrates and Euripides effectively
eliminated the Dionysian element from Greek drama. And without the Dionysian, the
Apollonian could not survive. In Nietzsche’s own time of the Industrial Revolution,
science had become the dominant explanation for the world—the end result of a history
connecting Nietzsche’s own time all the way back to Socrates and Euripides.

“Let us imagine the one great Cyclops eye of Socrates fixed on

tragedy, an eye in which the fine frenzy of artistic enthusiasm
had never glowed. To this eye was denied the pleasure of
gazing into the Dionysian abysses” (Section 14, 48).
The problem with science is that it “pretends . . . to be able to fathom the innermost
essence of things.” In reality, it serves only “to elevate the mere phenomenon, the work
of Maya, to the position of the sole and highest reality, putting it in place of the
innermost and true essence of things, and thus making impossible any knowledge of this
essence.” In regards to the truth of human existence, the effect of privileging scientific
claims this way is to lull “the dreamer still more soundly asleep” (Section 18, 66).
However, Nietzsche hopes that
a new spirit may yet prevail and
bring back the spirit of music, “Let's imagine a growing generation with this
tragedy, and Dionysian wisdom bold vision, this heroic desire for the
and thus save Western, or at magnificent; let's imagine the valiant step of
least German, culture. these dragon-slayers, the proud daring with
which they turn their backs on all the
doctrines of weakness belonging to that
optimism [of science and logic], in order to
‘live resolutely,’ fully and completely. Would
that not require the tragic man of this culture
in his self-discipline of seriousness and
terror to desire a new art, the art of
metaphysical consolation—namely, tragedy
—to claim it as Helen, and exclaim with
Faust:

With my desire's power, should I not call

Into this life the fairest form of all?” (66-67)

Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883)

to whom the book is dedicated