Title: The complete works of
Friedrich
Nietzsche.
Nietzsche - v01 - Birth of Tragedy
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Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
Copyright:
Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized
http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain in the United
States of America. It may not be in the public domain in other countries.
Copies are provided as a preservation service. Particularly outside of the
United States, persons receiving copies should make appropriate efforts to
determine the copyright status of the work in their country and use the
work accordingly. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or
the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as
illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions.
Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights
may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The
digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc.
(indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests
that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used
commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly,
non-commercial purposes.
Find this book online: https://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015005887552
This file has been created from the computer-extracted text of scanned page
images. Computer-extracted text may have errors, such as misspellings,
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Original from: University of Michigan
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Generated at University of Chicago on 2022-10-12 12:43 GMT
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME THREE
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
r
## p. ii (#12) ##############################################
3312
1910
Grados
Micrra
"nin
Of the Second Edition,
:: making Three Thousand Copies printed,
this is
No, 1968.
.
. .
. . . . .
. .
. .
. .
. .
.
. .
## p. iii (#13) #############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
OR
HELLENISM AND PESSIMISM
WORLD
TRANSLATED BY
WM. A. HAUSSMANN, PH. D.
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1910
## p. iv (#14) ##############################################
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed by MORRISON & GIBE LIMITED, Edinburgh
## p. v (#15) ###############################################
CONTENTS.
PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
AN ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM -
FOREWORD TO RICHARD WAGNER -
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
## p. vi (#16) ##############################################
## p. vii (#17) #############################################
INTRODUCTION. *
Frederick Nietzsche was born at Rocken near
Liitzen, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on
the 15th of October 1844, at 10 a. m. The day
happened to be the anniversary of the birth of
Frederick-William IV. , then King of Prussia, and
the peal of the local church-bells which was intended
to celebrate this event, was, by a happy coincidence,
just timed to greet my brother on his entrance into
the world. In 1841, at the time when our father was
tutor to the Altenburg Princesses, Theresa of Saxe-
Altenburg, Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Olden-
burg, and Alexandra, Grand Duchess Constantine
of Russia, he had had the honour of being presented
to his witty and pious sovereign. The meeting
seems to have impressed both parties very favour-
ably; for, very shortly after it had taken place, our
father received his living at Rocken "by supreme
command. " His joy may well be imagined, there-
fore, when a first son was born to him on his beloved
* This Introduction by E. Fbrster. Nietzsche, which appears
in the front of the first volume of Naumann's Pocket Edition of
Nietzsche, has been translated and arranged by Mr. A. M.
Ludovici.
'
## p. viii (#18) ############################################
Vlll INTRODUCTION.
and august patron's birthday, and at the christening
ceremony he spoke as follows:—" Thou blessed
month of October! —for many years the most
decisive events in my life have occurred within thy
thirty-one days, and now I celebrate the greatest
and most glorious of them all by baptising my
little boy! O blissful moment! O exquisite
festival! O unspeakably holy duty! In the
Lord's name I bless thee! —With all my heart
I utter these words: Bring me this, my beloved
child, that I may consecrate it unto the Lord.
My son, Frederick William, thus shalt thou be
named on earth, as a memento of my royal
benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born! "
Our father was thirty-one years of age, and our
mother not quite nineteen, when my brother was
born. Our mother, who was the daughter of a
clergyman, was good-looking and healthy, and was
4>ne of a very large family of sons and daughters.
Our\paternal grandparents, the Rev. Oehler and
his wife, in Pobles, were typically healthy people.
Strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a
cheerful outlook on life, were among the qualities
which every one was pleased to observe in them.
Our grandfather Oehler was a bright, clever man,
and quite the old style of comfortable country
parson, who thought it no sin to go hunting.
He scarcely had a day's illness in his life, and would
certainly not have met with his end as early as he
did—that is to say, before his seventieth year—if
his careless disregard of all caution, where his
health was concerned, had not led to his catching
a severe and fatal cold. In regard to our grand-
## p. ix (#19) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. IX
mother Oehler, who died in her eighty-second year,
all that can be said is, that if all German women
were possessed of the health she enjoyed, the
German nation would excel all others from the
standpoint of vitality. She bore our grandfather
eleven children; gave each of them the breast for
nearly the whole of its first year, and reared them
all. It is said that the sight of these eleven
children, at ages varying from nineteen years to one
month, with their powerful build, rosy cheeks, beam-
ing eyes, and wealth of curly locks, provoked the
admiration of all visitors. Of course, despite their
extraordinarily good health, the life of this family
was not by any means all sunshine. Each of the
children was very spirited, wilful, and obstinate, and
it was therefore no simple matter to keep them in
order. Moreover, though they always showed the
utmost respect and most implicit obedience to their
parents—even as middle-aged men and women—
misunderstandings between themselves were of con-
stant occurrence. Our Oehler grandparents were
fairly well-to-do; for our grandmother hailed from
a very old family, who had been extensive land-
owners in the neighbourhood of Zeitz for centuries,
and her father owned the baronial estate of Wehlitz
and a magnificent seat near Zeitz in Pacht. When
she married, her father gave her carriages and
horses, a coachman, a cook, and a kitchenmaid,
which for the wife of a German minister was then,
and is still, something quite exceptional. As a
result of the wars in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, however, our great-grandfather
lost the greater part of his property.
## p. x (#20) ###############################################
X INTRODUCTION.
Our father's family was also in fairly comfortable
circumstances, and likewise very large. Our grand-
father Dr. Nietzsche (D. D. and Superintendent)
married twice, and had in all twelve children, of
whom three died young. Our grandfather on this
side, whom I never knew, must certainly have been
a distinguished, dignified, very learned and reserved
man; his second wife—our beloved grandmother—
was an active-minded, intelligent, and exceptionally
good-natured woman. The whole of our father's
family, which I only got to know when they were
very advanced in years, were remarkable for their
great power of self-control, their lively interest in
intellectual matters, and a strong sense of family
unity, which manifested itself both in their splen-
did readiness to help one another and in their very
excellent relations with each other. Our father
was the youngest son, and, thanks to his un-
commonly lovable disposition, together with other
gifts, which only tended to become more marked
as he grew older, he was quite the favourite of
the family. Blessed with a thoroughly sound
constitution, as all averred who knew him at the
convent-school in Rossleben, at the University, or
later at the ducal court of Altenburg, he was tall
and slender, possessed an undoubted gift for poetry
and real musical talent, and was moreover a man
of delicate sensibilities, full of consideration for his
whole family, and distinguished in his manners.
My brother often refers to his Polish descent, and
in later years he even instituted research-work with
the view of establishing it, which met with partial
success. I know nothing definite concerning these
## p. xi (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
investigations, because a large number of valuable
documents were unfortunately destroyed after his
breakdown in Turin. The family tradition was
that a certain Polish nobleman Nicki (pronounced
Nietzky) had obtained the special favour of
Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, and had
received the rank of Earl from him. When, how-
ever, Stanislas Leszcysski the Pole became king,
our supposed ancestor became involved in a con-
spiracy in favour of the Saxons and Protestants.
He was sentenced to death; but, taking flight,
according to the evidence of the documents, he was
ultimately befriended by a certain Earl of Briihl,
who gave him a small post in an obscure little
provincial town. Occasionally our aged aunts
would speak of our great-grandfather Nietzsche,
who was said to have died in his ninety-first year,
and words always seemed to fail them when they
attempted to describe his handsome appearance,
good breeding, and vigour. Our ancestors, both
on the Nietzsche and the Oehler side, were very
long-lived. Of the four pairs of great-grandparents,
one great-grandfather reached the age of ninety,
five great-grandmothers and -fathers died between
eighty-two and eighty-six years of age, and two only
failed to reach their seventieth year.
The sorrow which hung as a cloud over our
branch of the family was our father's death, as the
result of a heavy fall, at the age of thirty-eight.
One night, upon leaving some friends whom he had
accompanied home, he was met at the door of the
vicarage by our little dog. The little animal must
have got between his feet, for he stumbled and fell
'
## p. xii (#22) #############################################
xii INTRODUCTION.
backwards down seven stone steps on to the paving-
stones of the vicarage courtyard. As a result of
this fall, he was laid up with concussion of the brain,
and, after a lingering illness, which lasted eleven
months, he died on the 30th of July 1849. The
early death of our beloved and highly-gifted father
spread gloom over the whole of our childhood. In
1850 our mother withdrew with us to Naumburg
on the Saale, where she took up her abode with our
widowed grandmother Nietzsche; and there she
brought us up with Spartan severity and simplicity,
which, besides being typical of the period, was
quite de rigeur in her family. Of course, Grand-
mamma Nietzsche helped somewhat to temper her
daughter-in-law's severity, and in this respect our
Oehler grandparents, who were less rigorous with
us, their eldest grandchildren, than with their own
children, were also very influential. Grandfather
Oehler was the first who seems to have recognised
the extraordinary talents of his eldest grandchild.
From his earliest childhood upwards, my brother
was always strong and healthy; he often declared
that he must have been taken for a peasant-boy
throughout his childhood and youth, as he was so
plump, brown, and rosy. The thick fair hair which
fell picturesquely over his shoulders tended some-
what to modify his robust appearance. Had he not
possessed those wonderfully beautiful, large, and
expressive eyes, however, and had he not been so
very ceremonious in his manner, neither his teachers
nor his relatives would ever have noticed anything
at all remarkable about the boy; for he was both
modest and reserved.
## p. xiii (#23) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xiil
He received his early schooling at a preparatory
school, and later at a grammar school in Naumburg.
In the autumn of 1858, when he was fourteen years
of age, he entered the Pforta school, so famous for
the scholars it has produced. There, too, very
severe discipline prevailed, and much was exacted
from the pupils, with the view of inuring them to
great mental and physical exertions. Thus, if my
brother seems to lay particular stress upon the value
of rigorous training, free from all sentimentality, it
should be remembered that he speaks from experi-
ence in this respect. At Pforta he followed the
regular school course, and he did not enter a uni-
versity until the comparatively late age of twenty.
His extraordinary gifts manifested themselves
chiefly in his independent and private studies and
artistic efforts. As a boy his musical talent had
already been so noticeable, that he himself and other
competent judges were doubtful as to whether he
ought not perhaps to devote himself altogether to
music. It is, however, worth noting that everything
he did in his later years, whether in Latin, Greek, or
German work,bore the stamp of perfection—subject
of course to the limitation imposed upon him by his
years. His talents came very suddenly to the fore,
because he had allowed them to grow for such a
long time in concealment. His very first perform-
ance in philology, executed while he was a student
under Ritschl, the famous philologist, was also
typical of him in this respect, seeing that it was
ordered to be printed for the Rheinische Museum.
Of course this was done amid general and grave ex-
pressions of doubt; for, as Dr. Ritschl often declared,
J
## p. xiv (#24) #############################################
XIV INTRODUCTION.
it was an unheard-of occurrence for a student in his
third term to prepare such an excellent treatise.
Being a great lover of out-door exercise, such as
swimming, skating, and walking, he developed into a
very sturdy lad. Rohde gives the following descrip-
tion of him as a student: with his healthy com-
plexion,his outward and innercleanliness,hisaustere
chastity and his solemn aspect, he was the image of
that delightful youth described by Adalbert Stifter.
Though as a child he was always rather serious,
as a lad and a man he was ever inclined to see the
humorous side of things, while his whole being, and
everything he said or did, was permeated by an
extraordinary harmony. He belonged to the very
few who could control even a bad mood and conceal
it from others. All his friends are unanimous in
their praise of his exceptional evenness of temper
and behaviour, and his warm, hearty, and pleasant
laugh that seemed to come from the very depths
of his benevolent and affectionate nature. In him
it might therefore be said, nature had produced a
being who in body and spirit was a harmonious
whole: his unusual intellect was fully in keeping
with his uncommon bodily strength.
The only abnormal thing about him, and some-
thing which we both inherited from our father, was
short-sightedness, and this was very much aggra-
vated in my brother's case, even in his earliest school-
days, owing to that indescribable anxiety to learn
which always characterised him. When one listens
to accounts given by his friends and schoolfellows,
one is startled by the multiplicity of his studies even
in his schooldays.
## p. xv (#25) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XV
In the autumn of 1864, he began his university
life in Bonn, and studied philology and theology;
at the end of six months he gave up theology, and
in the autumn of 1865 followed his famous teacher
Ritschl to the University of Leipzig. There he
became an ardent philologist, and diligently sought
to acquire a masterly grasp of this branch of know-
ledge. But in this respect it would be unfair to
forget that the school of Pforta, with its staff of
excellent teachers — scholars that would have
adorned the chairs of any University—had already
afforded the best of preparatory trainings to any one
intending to take up philology as a study, more
particularly as it gave all pupils ample scope to
indulge any individual tastes they might have for
any particular branch of ancient history. The last
important Latin thesis which my brother wrote for
the Landes-Schule, Pforta, dealt with the Megarian
poet Theognis, and it was in the r61e of a lecturer
on this very subject that, on the 18th January
1866, he made his first appearance in public, before
the philological society he had helped to found in
Leipzig. The paper he read disclosed his investiga-
tions on the subject of Theognis the moralist and
aristocrat, who, as is well known, described and dis-
missed the plebeians of his time in terms of the
heartiest contempt. The aristocratic ideal, which
was always so dear to my brother, thus revealed
itself for the first time. Moreover, curiously enough,
it was precisely this scientific thesis which was the
cause of Ritschl's recognition of my brother and
fondness for him.
The whole of his Leipzig days proved of the
b
## p. xvi (#26) #############################################
XVI INTRODUCTION.
utmost importance to my brother's career. There
he was plunged into the very midst of a torrent
of intellectual influences which found an impression-
able medium in the fiery youth, and to which he
eagerly made himself accessible. He did not,
however, forget to discriminate among them, but
tested and criticised the currents of thought he
encountered, and selected accordingly. It is
certainly of great importance to ascertain what
those influences precisely were to which he yielded,
and how long they maintained their sway over him,
and it is likewise necessary to discover exactly
when the matured mind threw off these fetters in
order to work out its own salvation.
The influences that exercised power over him
in those days may be described in the three follow-
ing terms: Hellenism, Schopenhauer,Wagner. His
love of Hellenism certainly led him to philology;
but, as a matter of fact, what concerned him most
was to obtain a wide view of things in general,
and this he hoped to derive from that science;
philology in itself, with his splendid method and
thorough way of going to work, served him only
as a means to an end.
If Hellenism was the first strong influence which
already in Pforta obtained a sway over my brother,
in the winter of 1865-66, a completely new, and
therefore somewhat subversive, influence was intro-
duced into his life with Schopenhauer's philosophy.
When he reached Leipzig in the autumn of 1865,
he was very downcast; for the experiences that
had befallen him during his one year of student
life in Bonn had deeply depressed him. He had
## p. xvii (#27) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XVII
sought at first to adapt himself to his surround-
ings there, with the hope of ultimately elevating
them to his lofty views on things; but both these
efforts proved vain, and now he had come to
Leipzig with the purpose of framing his own
manner of life. It can easily be imagined how
the first reading of Schopenhauer's The World as
Will and Idea worked upon this man, still sting-
ing from the bitterest experiences and disappoint-
ments. He writes: "Here I saw a mirror in
which I espied the world, life, and my own nature
depicted with frightful grandeur. " As my brother,
from his very earliest childhood, had always missed
both the parent and the educator through our
father's untimely death, he began to regard
Schopenhauer with almost filial love and respect.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
Copyright:
Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized
http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain in the United
States of America. It may not be in the public domain in other countries.
Copies are provided as a preservation service. Particularly outside of the
United States, persons receiving copies should make appropriate efforts to
determine the copyright status of the work in their country and use the
work accordingly. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or
the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as
illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions.
Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights
may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The
digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc.
(indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests
that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used
commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly,
non-commercial purposes.
Find this book online: https://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015005887552
This file has been created from the computer-extracted text of scanned page
images. Computer-extracted text may have errors, such as misspellings,
unusual characters, odd spacing and line breaks.
Original from: University of Michigan
Digitized by: Google
Generated at University of Chicago on 2022-10-12 12:43 GMT
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FIGAN.
A
#MICH
WVERSITI
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T. THA
WE UNIV
SITY OF
ICHIGAN
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SITY OA
OF MICA
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GHL
LIBRARLY
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME THREE
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
r
## p. ii (#12) ##############################################
3312
1910
Grados
Micrra
"nin
Of the Second Edition,
:: making Three Thousand Copies printed,
this is
No, 1968.
.
. .
. . . . .
. .
. .
. .
. .
.
. .
## p. iii (#13) #############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
OR
HELLENISM AND PESSIMISM
WORLD
TRANSLATED BY
WM. A. HAUSSMANN, PH. D.
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1910
## p. iv (#14) ##############################################
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed by MORRISON & GIBE LIMITED, Edinburgh
## p. v (#15) ###############################################
CONTENTS.
PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
AN ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM -
FOREWORD TO RICHARD WAGNER -
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
## p. vi (#16) ##############################################
## p. vii (#17) #############################################
INTRODUCTION. *
Frederick Nietzsche was born at Rocken near
Liitzen, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on
the 15th of October 1844, at 10 a. m. The day
happened to be the anniversary of the birth of
Frederick-William IV. , then King of Prussia, and
the peal of the local church-bells which was intended
to celebrate this event, was, by a happy coincidence,
just timed to greet my brother on his entrance into
the world. In 1841, at the time when our father was
tutor to the Altenburg Princesses, Theresa of Saxe-
Altenburg, Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Olden-
burg, and Alexandra, Grand Duchess Constantine
of Russia, he had had the honour of being presented
to his witty and pious sovereign. The meeting
seems to have impressed both parties very favour-
ably; for, very shortly after it had taken place, our
father received his living at Rocken "by supreme
command. " His joy may well be imagined, there-
fore, when a first son was born to him on his beloved
* This Introduction by E. Fbrster. Nietzsche, which appears
in the front of the first volume of Naumann's Pocket Edition of
Nietzsche, has been translated and arranged by Mr. A. M.
Ludovici.
'
## p. viii (#18) ############################################
Vlll INTRODUCTION.
and august patron's birthday, and at the christening
ceremony he spoke as follows:—" Thou blessed
month of October! —for many years the most
decisive events in my life have occurred within thy
thirty-one days, and now I celebrate the greatest
and most glorious of them all by baptising my
little boy! O blissful moment! O exquisite
festival! O unspeakably holy duty! In the
Lord's name I bless thee! —With all my heart
I utter these words: Bring me this, my beloved
child, that I may consecrate it unto the Lord.
My son, Frederick William, thus shalt thou be
named on earth, as a memento of my royal
benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born! "
Our father was thirty-one years of age, and our
mother not quite nineteen, when my brother was
born. Our mother, who was the daughter of a
clergyman, was good-looking and healthy, and was
4>ne of a very large family of sons and daughters.
Our\paternal grandparents, the Rev. Oehler and
his wife, in Pobles, were typically healthy people.
Strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a
cheerful outlook on life, were among the qualities
which every one was pleased to observe in them.
Our grandfather Oehler was a bright, clever man,
and quite the old style of comfortable country
parson, who thought it no sin to go hunting.
He scarcely had a day's illness in his life, and would
certainly not have met with his end as early as he
did—that is to say, before his seventieth year—if
his careless disregard of all caution, where his
health was concerned, had not led to his catching
a severe and fatal cold. In regard to our grand-
## p. ix (#19) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. IX
mother Oehler, who died in her eighty-second year,
all that can be said is, that if all German women
were possessed of the health she enjoyed, the
German nation would excel all others from the
standpoint of vitality. She bore our grandfather
eleven children; gave each of them the breast for
nearly the whole of its first year, and reared them
all. It is said that the sight of these eleven
children, at ages varying from nineteen years to one
month, with their powerful build, rosy cheeks, beam-
ing eyes, and wealth of curly locks, provoked the
admiration of all visitors. Of course, despite their
extraordinarily good health, the life of this family
was not by any means all sunshine. Each of the
children was very spirited, wilful, and obstinate, and
it was therefore no simple matter to keep them in
order. Moreover, though they always showed the
utmost respect and most implicit obedience to their
parents—even as middle-aged men and women—
misunderstandings between themselves were of con-
stant occurrence. Our Oehler grandparents were
fairly well-to-do; for our grandmother hailed from
a very old family, who had been extensive land-
owners in the neighbourhood of Zeitz for centuries,
and her father owned the baronial estate of Wehlitz
and a magnificent seat near Zeitz in Pacht. When
she married, her father gave her carriages and
horses, a coachman, a cook, and a kitchenmaid,
which for the wife of a German minister was then,
and is still, something quite exceptional. As a
result of the wars in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, however, our great-grandfather
lost the greater part of his property.
## p. x (#20) ###############################################
X INTRODUCTION.
Our father's family was also in fairly comfortable
circumstances, and likewise very large. Our grand-
father Dr. Nietzsche (D. D. and Superintendent)
married twice, and had in all twelve children, of
whom three died young. Our grandfather on this
side, whom I never knew, must certainly have been
a distinguished, dignified, very learned and reserved
man; his second wife—our beloved grandmother—
was an active-minded, intelligent, and exceptionally
good-natured woman. The whole of our father's
family, which I only got to know when they were
very advanced in years, were remarkable for their
great power of self-control, their lively interest in
intellectual matters, and a strong sense of family
unity, which manifested itself both in their splen-
did readiness to help one another and in their very
excellent relations with each other. Our father
was the youngest son, and, thanks to his un-
commonly lovable disposition, together with other
gifts, which only tended to become more marked
as he grew older, he was quite the favourite of
the family. Blessed with a thoroughly sound
constitution, as all averred who knew him at the
convent-school in Rossleben, at the University, or
later at the ducal court of Altenburg, he was tall
and slender, possessed an undoubted gift for poetry
and real musical talent, and was moreover a man
of delicate sensibilities, full of consideration for his
whole family, and distinguished in his manners.
My brother often refers to his Polish descent, and
in later years he even instituted research-work with
the view of establishing it, which met with partial
success. I know nothing definite concerning these
## p. xi (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
investigations, because a large number of valuable
documents were unfortunately destroyed after his
breakdown in Turin. The family tradition was
that a certain Polish nobleman Nicki (pronounced
Nietzky) had obtained the special favour of
Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, and had
received the rank of Earl from him. When, how-
ever, Stanislas Leszcysski the Pole became king,
our supposed ancestor became involved in a con-
spiracy in favour of the Saxons and Protestants.
He was sentenced to death; but, taking flight,
according to the evidence of the documents, he was
ultimately befriended by a certain Earl of Briihl,
who gave him a small post in an obscure little
provincial town. Occasionally our aged aunts
would speak of our great-grandfather Nietzsche,
who was said to have died in his ninety-first year,
and words always seemed to fail them when they
attempted to describe his handsome appearance,
good breeding, and vigour. Our ancestors, both
on the Nietzsche and the Oehler side, were very
long-lived. Of the four pairs of great-grandparents,
one great-grandfather reached the age of ninety,
five great-grandmothers and -fathers died between
eighty-two and eighty-six years of age, and two only
failed to reach their seventieth year.
The sorrow which hung as a cloud over our
branch of the family was our father's death, as the
result of a heavy fall, at the age of thirty-eight.
One night, upon leaving some friends whom he had
accompanied home, he was met at the door of the
vicarage by our little dog. The little animal must
have got between his feet, for he stumbled and fell
'
## p. xii (#22) #############################################
xii INTRODUCTION.
backwards down seven stone steps on to the paving-
stones of the vicarage courtyard. As a result of
this fall, he was laid up with concussion of the brain,
and, after a lingering illness, which lasted eleven
months, he died on the 30th of July 1849. The
early death of our beloved and highly-gifted father
spread gloom over the whole of our childhood. In
1850 our mother withdrew with us to Naumburg
on the Saale, where she took up her abode with our
widowed grandmother Nietzsche; and there she
brought us up with Spartan severity and simplicity,
which, besides being typical of the period, was
quite de rigeur in her family. Of course, Grand-
mamma Nietzsche helped somewhat to temper her
daughter-in-law's severity, and in this respect our
Oehler grandparents, who were less rigorous with
us, their eldest grandchildren, than with their own
children, were also very influential. Grandfather
Oehler was the first who seems to have recognised
the extraordinary talents of his eldest grandchild.
From his earliest childhood upwards, my brother
was always strong and healthy; he often declared
that he must have been taken for a peasant-boy
throughout his childhood and youth, as he was so
plump, brown, and rosy. The thick fair hair which
fell picturesquely over his shoulders tended some-
what to modify his robust appearance. Had he not
possessed those wonderfully beautiful, large, and
expressive eyes, however, and had he not been so
very ceremonious in his manner, neither his teachers
nor his relatives would ever have noticed anything
at all remarkable about the boy; for he was both
modest and reserved.
## p. xiii (#23) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xiil
He received his early schooling at a preparatory
school, and later at a grammar school in Naumburg.
In the autumn of 1858, when he was fourteen years
of age, he entered the Pforta school, so famous for
the scholars it has produced. There, too, very
severe discipline prevailed, and much was exacted
from the pupils, with the view of inuring them to
great mental and physical exertions. Thus, if my
brother seems to lay particular stress upon the value
of rigorous training, free from all sentimentality, it
should be remembered that he speaks from experi-
ence in this respect. At Pforta he followed the
regular school course, and he did not enter a uni-
versity until the comparatively late age of twenty.
His extraordinary gifts manifested themselves
chiefly in his independent and private studies and
artistic efforts. As a boy his musical talent had
already been so noticeable, that he himself and other
competent judges were doubtful as to whether he
ought not perhaps to devote himself altogether to
music. It is, however, worth noting that everything
he did in his later years, whether in Latin, Greek, or
German work,bore the stamp of perfection—subject
of course to the limitation imposed upon him by his
years. His talents came very suddenly to the fore,
because he had allowed them to grow for such a
long time in concealment. His very first perform-
ance in philology, executed while he was a student
under Ritschl, the famous philologist, was also
typical of him in this respect, seeing that it was
ordered to be printed for the Rheinische Museum.
Of course this was done amid general and grave ex-
pressions of doubt; for, as Dr. Ritschl often declared,
J
## p. xiv (#24) #############################################
XIV INTRODUCTION.
it was an unheard-of occurrence for a student in his
third term to prepare such an excellent treatise.
Being a great lover of out-door exercise, such as
swimming, skating, and walking, he developed into a
very sturdy lad. Rohde gives the following descrip-
tion of him as a student: with his healthy com-
plexion,his outward and innercleanliness,hisaustere
chastity and his solemn aspect, he was the image of
that delightful youth described by Adalbert Stifter.
Though as a child he was always rather serious,
as a lad and a man he was ever inclined to see the
humorous side of things, while his whole being, and
everything he said or did, was permeated by an
extraordinary harmony. He belonged to the very
few who could control even a bad mood and conceal
it from others. All his friends are unanimous in
their praise of his exceptional evenness of temper
and behaviour, and his warm, hearty, and pleasant
laugh that seemed to come from the very depths
of his benevolent and affectionate nature. In him
it might therefore be said, nature had produced a
being who in body and spirit was a harmonious
whole: his unusual intellect was fully in keeping
with his uncommon bodily strength.
The only abnormal thing about him, and some-
thing which we both inherited from our father, was
short-sightedness, and this was very much aggra-
vated in my brother's case, even in his earliest school-
days, owing to that indescribable anxiety to learn
which always characterised him. When one listens
to accounts given by his friends and schoolfellows,
one is startled by the multiplicity of his studies even
in his schooldays.
## p. xv (#25) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XV
In the autumn of 1864, he began his university
life in Bonn, and studied philology and theology;
at the end of six months he gave up theology, and
in the autumn of 1865 followed his famous teacher
Ritschl to the University of Leipzig. There he
became an ardent philologist, and diligently sought
to acquire a masterly grasp of this branch of know-
ledge. But in this respect it would be unfair to
forget that the school of Pforta, with its staff of
excellent teachers — scholars that would have
adorned the chairs of any University—had already
afforded the best of preparatory trainings to any one
intending to take up philology as a study, more
particularly as it gave all pupils ample scope to
indulge any individual tastes they might have for
any particular branch of ancient history. The last
important Latin thesis which my brother wrote for
the Landes-Schule, Pforta, dealt with the Megarian
poet Theognis, and it was in the r61e of a lecturer
on this very subject that, on the 18th January
1866, he made his first appearance in public, before
the philological society he had helped to found in
Leipzig. The paper he read disclosed his investiga-
tions on the subject of Theognis the moralist and
aristocrat, who, as is well known, described and dis-
missed the plebeians of his time in terms of the
heartiest contempt. The aristocratic ideal, which
was always so dear to my brother, thus revealed
itself for the first time. Moreover, curiously enough,
it was precisely this scientific thesis which was the
cause of Ritschl's recognition of my brother and
fondness for him.
The whole of his Leipzig days proved of the
b
## p. xvi (#26) #############################################
XVI INTRODUCTION.
utmost importance to my brother's career. There
he was plunged into the very midst of a torrent
of intellectual influences which found an impression-
able medium in the fiery youth, and to which he
eagerly made himself accessible. He did not,
however, forget to discriminate among them, but
tested and criticised the currents of thought he
encountered, and selected accordingly. It is
certainly of great importance to ascertain what
those influences precisely were to which he yielded,
and how long they maintained their sway over him,
and it is likewise necessary to discover exactly
when the matured mind threw off these fetters in
order to work out its own salvation.
The influences that exercised power over him
in those days may be described in the three follow-
ing terms: Hellenism, Schopenhauer,Wagner. His
love of Hellenism certainly led him to philology;
but, as a matter of fact, what concerned him most
was to obtain a wide view of things in general,
and this he hoped to derive from that science;
philology in itself, with his splendid method and
thorough way of going to work, served him only
as a means to an end.
If Hellenism was the first strong influence which
already in Pforta obtained a sway over my brother,
in the winter of 1865-66, a completely new, and
therefore somewhat subversive, influence was intro-
duced into his life with Schopenhauer's philosophy.
When he reached Leipzig in the autumn of 1865,
he was very downcast; for the experiences that
had befallen him during his one year of student
life in Bonn had deeply depressed him. He had
## p. xvii (#27) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XVII
sought at first to adapt himself to his surround-
ings there, with the hope of ultimately elevating
them to his lofty views on things; but both these
efforts proved vain, and now he had come to
Leipzig with the purpose of framing his own
manner of life. It can easily be imagined how
the first reading of Schopenhauer's The World as
Will and Idea worked upon this man, still sting-
ing from the bitterest experiences and disappoint-
ments. He writes: "Here I saw a mirror in
which I espied the world, life, and my own nature
depicted with frightful grandeur. " As my brother,
from his very earliest childhood, had always missed
both the parent and the educator through our
father's untimely death, he began to regard
Schopenhauer with almost filial love and respect.
He did not venerate him quite as other men did;
Schopenhauer's personality was what attracted and
enchanted him. From the first he was never
blind to the faults in his master's system, and in
proof of this we have only to refer to an essay he
wrote in the autumn of 1867, which actually con-
tains a criticism of Schopenhauer's philosophy.
Now, in the autumn of 1865, to these two
influences, Hellenism and Schopenhauer, a third
influence was added—one which was to prove the
strongest ever exercised over my brother—and it
began with his personal introduction to Richard
Wagner. He was introduced to Wagner by the
latter's sister, Frau Professor Brockhaus, and his
description of their first meeting, contained in a
letter to Erwin Rohde, is really most affecting.
For years, that is to say, from the time Bulow's
## p.
Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME THREE
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
r
## p. ii (#12) ##############################################
3312
1910
Grados
Micrra
"nin
Of the Second Edition,
:: making Three Thousand Copies printed,
this is
No, 1968.
.
. .
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## p. iii (#13) #############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
OR
HELLENISM AND PESSIMISM
WORLD
TRANSLATED BY
WM. A. HAUSSMANN, PH. D.
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1910
## p. iv (#14) ##############################################
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed by MORRISON & GIBE LIMITED, Edinburgh
## p. v (#15) ###############################################
CONTENTS.
PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
AN ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM -
FOREWORD TO RICHARD WAGNER -
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
## p. vi (#16) ##############################################
## p. vii (#17) #############################################
INTRODUCTION. *
Frederick Nietzsche was born at Rocken near
Liitzen, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on
the 15th of October 1844, at 10 a. m. The day
happened to be the anniversary of the birth of
Frederick-William IV. , then King of Prussia, and
the peal of the local church-bells which was intended
to celebrate this event, was, by a happy coincidence,
just timed to greet my brother on his entrance into
the world. In 1841, at the time when our father was
tutor to the Altenburg Princesses, Theresa of Saxe-
Altenburg, Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Olden-
burg, and Alexandra, Grand Duchess Constantine
of Russia, he had had the honour of being presented
to his witty and pious sovereign. The meeting
seems to have impressed both parties very favour-
ably; for, very shortly after it had taken place, our
father received his living at Rocken "by supreme
command. " His joy may well be imagined, there-
fore, when a first son was born to him on his beloved
* This Introduction by E. Fbrster. Nietzsche, which appears
in the front of the first volume of Naumann's Pocket Edition of
Nietzsche, has been translated and arranged by Mr. A. M.
Ludovici.
'
## p. viii (#18) ############################################
Vlll INTRODUCTION.
and august patron's birthday, and at the christening
ceremony he spoke as follows:—" Thou blessed
month of October! —for many years the most
decisive events in my life have occurred within thy
thirty-one days, and now I celebrate the greatest
and most glorious of them all by baptising my
little boy! O blissful moment! O exquisite
festival! O unspeakably holy duty! In the
Lord's name I bless thee! —With all my heart
I utter these words: Bring me this, my beloved
child, that I may consecrate it unto the Lord.
My son, Frederick William, thus shalt thou be
named on earth, as a memento of my royal
benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born! "
Our father was thirty-one years of age, and our
mother not quite nineteen, when my brother was
born. Our mother, who was the daughter of a
clergyman, was good-looking and healthy, and was
4>ne of a very large family of sons and daughters.
Our\paternal grandparents, the Rev. Oehler and
his wife, in Pobles, were typically healthy people.
Strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a
cheerful outlook on life, were among the qualities
which every one was pleased to observe in them.
Our grandfather Oehler was a bright, clever man,
and quite the old style of comfortable country
parson, who thought it no sin to go hunting.
He scarcely had a day's illness in his life, and would
certainly not have met with his end as early as he
did—that is to say, before his seventieth year—if
his careless disregard of all caution, where his
health was concerned, had not led to his catching
a severe and fatal cold. In regard to our grand-
## p. ix (#19) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. IX
mother Oehler, who died in her eighty-second year,
all that can be said is, that if all German women
were possessed of the health she enjoyed, the
German nation would excel all others from the
standpoint of vitality. She bore our grandfather
eleven children; gave each of them the breast for
nearly the whole of its first year, and reared them
all. It is said that the sight of these eleven
children, at ages varying from nineteen years to one
month, with their powerful build, rosy cheeks, beam-
ing eyes, and wealth of curly locks, provoked the
admiration of all visitors. Of course, despite their
extraordinarily good health, the life of this family
was not by any means all sunshine. Each of the
children was very spirited, wilful, and obstinate, and
it was therefore no simple matter to keep them in
order. Moreover, though they always showed the
utmost respect and most implicit obedience to their
parents—even as middle-aged men and women—
misunderstandings between themselves were of con-
stant occurrence. Our Oehler grandparents were
fairly well-to-do; for our grandmother hailed from
a very old family, who had been extensive land-
owners in the neighbourhood of Zeitz for centuries,
and her father owned the baronial estate of Wehlitz
and a magnificent seat near Zeitz in Pacht. When
she married, her father gave her carriages and
horses, a coachman, a cook, and a kitchenmaid,
which for the wife of a German minister was then,
and is still, something quite exceptional. As a
result of the wars in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, however, our great-grandfather
lost the greater part of his property.
## p. x (#20) ###############################################
X INTRODUCTION.
Our father's family was also in fairly comfortable
circumstances, and likewise very large. Our grand-
father Dr. Nietzsche (D. D. and Superintendent)
married twice, and had in all twelve children, of
whom three died young. Our grandfather on this
side, whom I never knew, must certainly have been
a distinguished, dignified, very learned and reserved
man; his second wife—our beloved grandmother—
was an active-minded, intelligent, and exceptionally
good-natured woman. The whole of our father's
family, which I only got to know when they were
very advanced in years, were remarkable for their
great power of self-control, their lively interest in
intellectual matters, and a strong sense of family
unity, which manifested itself both in their splen-
did readiness to help one another and in their very
excellent relations with each other. Our father
was the youngest son, and, thanks to his un-
commonly lovable disposition, together with other
gifts, which only tended to become more marked
as he grew older, he was quite the favourite of
the family. Blessed with a thoroughly sound
constitution, as all averred who knew him at the
convent-school in Rossleben, at the University, or
later at the ducal court of Altenburg, he was tall
and slender, possessed an undoubted gift for poetry
and real musical talent, and was moreover a man
of delicate sensibilities, full of consideration for his
whole family, and distinguished in his manners.
My brother often refers to his Polish descent, and
in later years he even instituted research-work with
the view of establishing it, which met with partial
success. I know nothing definite concerning these
## p. xi (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
investigations, because a large number of valuable
documents were unfortunately destroyed after his
breakdown in Turin. The family tradition was
that a certain Polish nobleman Nicki (pronounced
Nietzky) had obtained the special favour of
Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, and had
received the rank of Earl from him. When, how-
ever, Stanislas Leszcysski the Pole became king,
our supposed ancestor became involved in a con-
spiracy in favour of the Saxons and Protestants.
He was sentenced to death; but, taking flight,
according to the evidence of the documents, he was
ultimately befriended by a certain Earl of Briihl,
who gave him a small post in an obscure little
provincial town. Occasionally our aged aunts
would speak of our great-grandfather Nietzsche,
who was said to have died in his ninety-first year,
and words always seemed to fail them when they
attempted to describe his handsome appearance,
good breeding, and vigour. Our ancestors, both
on the Nietzsche and the Oehler side, were very
long-lived. Of the four pairs of great-grandparents,
one great-grandfather reached the age of ninety,
five great-grandmothers and -fathers died between
eighty-two and eighty-six years of age, and two only
failed to reach their seventieth year.
The sorrow which hung as a cloud over our
branch of the family was our father's death, as the
result of a heavy fall, at the age of thirty-eight.
One night, upon leaving some friends whom he had
accompanied home, he was met at the door of the
vicarage by our little dog. The little animal must
have got between his feet, for he stumbled and fell
'
## p. xii (#22) #############################################
xii INTRODUCTION.
backwards down seven stone steps on to the paving-
stones of the vicarage courtyard. As a result of
this fall, he was laid up with concussion of the brain,
and, after a lingering illness, which lasted eleven
months, he died on the 30th of July 1849. The
early death of our beloved and highly-gifted father
spread gloom over the whole of our childhood. In
1850 our mother withdrew with us to Naumburg
on the Saale, where she took up her abode with our
widowed grandmother Nietzsche; and there she
brought us up with Spartan severity and simplicity,
which, besides being typical of the period, was
quite de rigeur in her family. Of course, Grand-
mamma Nietzsche helped somewhat to temper her
daughter-in-law's severity, and in this respect our
Oehler grandparents, who were less rigorous with
us, their eldest grandchildren, than with their own
children, were also very influential. Grandfather
Oehler was the first who seems to have recognised
the extraordinary talents of his eldest grandchild.
From his earliest childhood upwards, my brother
was always strong and healthy; he often declared
that he must have been taken for a peasant-boy
throughout his childhood and youth, as he was so
plump, brown, and rosy. The thick fair hair which
fell picturesquely over his shoulders tended some-
what to modify his robust appearance. Had he not
possessed those wonderfully beautiful, large, and
expressive eyes, however, and had he not been so
very ceremonious in his manner, neither his teachers
nor his relatives would ever have noticed anything
at all remarkable about the boy; for he was both
modest and reserved.
## p. xiii (#23) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xiil
He received his early schooling at a preparatory
school, and later at a grammar school in Naumburg.
In the autumn of 1858, when he was fourteen years
of age, he entered the Pforta school, so famous for
the scholars it has produced. There, too, very
severe discipline prevailed, and much was exacted
from the pupils, with the view of inuring them to
great mental and physical exertions. Thus, if my
brother seems to lay particular stress upon the value
of rigorous training, free from all sentimentality, it
should be remembered that he speaks from experi-
ence in this respect. At Pforta he followed the
regular school course, and he did not enter a uni-
versity until the comparatively late age of twenty.
His extraordinary gifts manifested themselves
chiefly in his independent and private studies and
artistic efforts. As a boy his musical talent had
already been so noticeable, that he himself and other
competent judges were doubtful as to whether he
ought not perhaps to devote himself altogether to
music. It is, however, worth noting that everything
he did in his later years, whether in Latin, Greek, or
German work,bore the stamp of perfection—subject
of course to the limitation imposed upon him by his
years. His talents came very suddenly to the fore,
because he had allowed them to grow for such a
long time in concealment. His very first perform-
ance in philology, executed while he was a student
under Ritschl, the famous philologist, was also
typical of him in this respect, seeing that it was
ordered to be printed for the Rheinische Museum.
Of course this was done amid general and grave ex-
pressions of doubt; for, as Dr. Ritschl often declared,
J
## p. xiv (#24) #############################################
XIV INTRODUCTION.
it was an unheard-of occurrence for a student in his
third term to prepare such an excellent treatise.
Being a great lover of out-door exercise, such as
swimming, skating, and walking, he developed into a
very sturdy lad. Rohde gives the following descrip-
tion of him as a student: with his healthy com-
plexion,his outward and innercleanliness,hisaustere
chastity and his solemn aspect, he was the image of
that delightful youth described by Adalbert Stifter.
Though as a child he was always rather serious,
as a lad and a man he was ever inclined to see the
humorous side of things, while his whole being, and
everything he said or did, was permeated by an
extraordinary harmony. He belonged to the very
few who could control even a bad mood and conceal
it from others. All his friends are unanimous in
their praise of his exceptional evenness of temper
and behaviour, and his warm, hearty, and pleasant
laugh that seemed to come from the very depths
of his benevolent and affectionate nature. In him
it might therefore be said, nature had produced a
being who in body and spirit was a harmonious
whole: his unusual intellect was fully in keeping
with his uncommon bodily strength.
The only abnormal thing about him, and some-
thing which we both inherited from our father, was
short-sightedness, and this was very much aggra-
vated in my brother's case, even in his earliest school-
days, owing to that indescribable anxiety to learn
which always characterised him. When one listens
to accounts given by his friends and schoolfellows,
one is startled by the multiplicity of his studies even
in his schooldays.
## p. xv (#25) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XV
In the autumn of 1864, he began his university
life in Bonn, and studied philology and theology;
at the end of six months he gave up theology, and
in the autumn of 1865 followed his famous teacher
Ritschl to the University of Leipzig. There he
became an ardent philologist, and diligently sought
to acquire a masterly grasp of this branch of know-
ledge. But in this respect it would be unfair to
forget that the school of Pforta, with its staff of
excellent teachers — scholars that would have
adorned the chairs of any University—had already
afforded the best of preparatory trainings to any one
intending to take up philology as a study, more
particularly as it gave all pupils ample scope to
indulge any individual tastes they might have for
any particular branch of ancient history. The last
important Latin thesis which my brother wrote for
the Landes-Schule, Pforta, dealt with the Megarian
poet Theognis, and it was in the r61e of a lecturer
on this very subject that, on the 18th January
1866, he made his first appearance in public, before
the philological society he had helped to found in
Leipzig. The paper he read disclosed his investiga-
tions on the subject of Theognis the moralist and
aristocrat, who, as is well known, described and dis-
missed the plebeians of his time in terms of the
heartiest contempt. The aristocratic ideal, which
was always so dear to my brother, thus revealed
itself for the first time. Moreover, curiously enough,
it was precisely this scientific thesis which was the
cause of Ritschl's recognition of my brother and
fondness for him.
The whole of his Leipzig days proved of the
b
## p. xvi (#26) #############################################
XVI INTRODUCTION.
utmost importance to my brother's career. There
he was plunged into the very midst of a torrent
of intellectual influences which found an impression-
able medium in the fiery youth, and to which he
eagerly made himself accessible. He did not,
however, forget to discriminate among them, but
tested and criticised the currents of thought he
encountered, and selected accordingly. It is
certainly of great importance to ascertain what
those influences precisely were to which he yielded,
and how long they maintained their sway over him,
and it is likewise necessary to discover exactly
when the matured mind threw off these fetters in
order to work out its own salvation.
The influences that exercised power over him
in those days may be described in the three follow-
ing terms: Hellenism, Schopenhauer,Wagner. His
love of Hellenism certainly led him to philology;
but, as a matter of fact, what concerned him most
was to obtain a wide view of things in general,
and this he hoped to derive from that science;
philology in itself, with his splendid method and
thorough way of going to work, served him only
as a means to an end.
If Hellenism was the first strong influence which
already in Pforta obtained a sway over my brother,
in the winter of 1865-66, a completely new, and
therefore somewhat subversive, influence was intro-
duced into his life with Schopenhauer's philosophy.
When he reached Leipzig in the autumn of 1865,
he was very downcast; for the experiences that
had befallen him during his one year of student
life in Bonn had deeply depressed him. He had
## p. xvii (#27) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XVII
sought at first to adapt himself to his surround-
ings there, with the hope of ultimately elevating
them to his lofty views on things; but both these
efforts proved vain, and now he had come to
Leipzig with the purpose of framing his own
manner of life. It can easily be imagined how
the first reading of Schopenhauer's The World as
Will and Idea worked upon this man, still sting-
ing from the bitterest experiences and disappoint-
ments. He writes: "Here I saw a mirror in
which I espied the world, life, and my own nature
depicted with frightful grandeur. " As my brother,
from his very earliest childhood, had always missed
both the parent and the educator through our
father's untimely death, he began to regard
Schopenhauer with almost filial love and respect.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
Copyright:
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME THREE
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
r
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3312
1910
Grados
Micrra
"nin
Of the Second Edition,
:: making Three Thousand Copies printed,
this is
No, 1968.
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## p. iii (#13) #############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
OR
HELLENISM AND PESSIMISM
WORLD
TRANSLATED BY
WM. A. HAUSSMANN, PH. D.
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1910
## p. iv (#14) ##############################################
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed by MORRISON & GIBE LIMITED, Edinburgh
## p. v (#15) ###############################################
CONTENTS.
PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
AN ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM -
FOREWORD TO RICHARD WAGNER -
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
-
## p. vi (#16) ##############################################
## p. vii (#17) #############################################
INTRODUCTION. *
Frederick Nietzsche was born at Rocken near
Liitzen, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on
the 15th of October 1844, at 10 a. m. The day
happened to be the anniversary of the birth of
Frederick-William IV. , then King of Prussia, and
the peal of the local church-bells which was intended
to celebrate this event, was, by a happy coincidence,
just timed to greet my brother on his entrance into
the world. In 1841, at the time when our father was
tutor to the Altenburg Princesses, Theresa of Saxe-
Altenburg, Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Olden-
burg, and Alexandra, Grand Duchess Constantine
of Russia, he had had the honour of being presented
to his witty and pious sovereign. The meeting
seems to have impressed both parties very favour-
ably; for, very shortly after it had taken place, our
father received his living at Rocken "by supreme
command. " His joy may well be imagined, there-
fore, when a first son was born to him on his beloved
* This Introduction by E. Fbrster. Nietzsche, which appears
in the front of the first volume of Naumann's Pocket Edition of
Nietzsche, has been translated and arranged by Mr. A. M.
Ludovici.
'
## p. viii (#18) ############################################
Vlll INTRODUCTION.
and august patron's birthday, and at the christening
ceremony he spoke as follows:—" Thou blessed
month of October! —for many years the most
decisive events in my life have occurred within thy
thirty-one days, and now I celebrate the greatest
and most glorious of them all by baptising my
little boy! O blissful moment! O exquisite
festival! O unspeakably holy duty! In the
Lord's name I bless thee! —With all my heart
I utter these words: Bring me this, my beloved
child, that I may consecrate it unto the Lord.
My son, Frederick William, thus shalt thou be
named on earth, as a memento of my royal
benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born! "
Our father was thirty-one years of age, and our
mother not quite nineteen, when my brother was
born. Our mother, who was the daughter of a
clergyman, was good-looking and healthy, and was
4>ne of a very large family of sons and daughters.
Our\paternal grandparents, the Rev. Oehler and
his wife, in Pobles, were typically healthy people.
Strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a
cheerful outlook on life, were among the qualities
which every one was pleased to observe in them.
Our grandfather Oehler was a bright, clever man,
and quite the old style of comfortable country
parson, who thought it no sin to go hunting.
He scarcely had a day's illness in his life, and would
certainly not have met with his end as early as he
did—that is to say, before his seventieth year—if
his careless disregard of all caution, where his
health was concerned, had not led to his catching
a severe and fatal cold. In regard to our grand-
## p. ix (#19) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. IX
mother Oehler, who died in her eighty-second year,
all that can be said is, that if all German women
were possessed of the health she enjoyed, the
German nation would excel all others from the
standpoint of vitality. She bore our grandfather
eleven children; gave each of them the breast for
nearly the whole of its first year, and reared them
all. It is said that the sight of these eleven
children, at ages varying from nineteen years to one
month, with their powerful build, rosy cheeks, beam-
ing eyes, and wealth of curly locks, provoked the
admiration of all visitors. Of course, despite their
extraordinarily good health, the life of this family
was not by any means all sunshine. Each of the
children was very spirited, wilful, and obstinate, and
it was therefore no simple matter to keep them in
order. Moreover, though they always showed the
utmost respect and most implicit obedience to their
parents—even as middle-aged men and women—
misunderstandings between themselves were of con-
stant occurrence. Our Oehler grandparents were
fairly well-to-do; for our grandmother hailed from
a very old family, who had been extensive land-
owners in the neighbourhood of Zeitz for centuries,
and her father owned the baronial estate of Wehlitz
and a magnificent seat near Zeitz in Pacht. When
she married, her father gave her carriages and
horses, a coachman, a cook, and a kitchenmaid,
which for the wife of a German minister was then,
and is still, something quite exceptional. As a
result of the wars in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, however, our great-grandfather
lost the greater part of his property.
## p. x (#20) ###############################################
X INTRODUCTION.
Our father's family was also in fairly comfortable
circumstances, and likewise very large. Our grand-
father Dr. Nietzsche (D. D. and Superintendent)
married twice, and had in all twelve children, of
whom three died young. Our grandfather on this
side, whom I never knew, must certainly have been
a distinguished, dignified, very learned and reserved
man; his second wife—our beloved grandmother—
was an active-minded, intelligent, and exceptionally
good-natured woman. The whole of our father's
family, which I only got to know when they were
very advanced in years, were remarkable for their
great power of self-control, their lively interest in
intellectual matters, and a strong sense of family
unity, which manifested itself both in their splen-
did readiness to help one another and in their very
excellent relations with each other. Our father
was the youngest son, and, thanks to his un-
commonly lovable disposition, together with other
gifts, which only tended to become more marked
as he grew older, he was quite the favourite of
the family. Blessed with a thoroughly sound
constitution, as all averred who knew him at the
convent-school in Rossleben, at the University, or
later at the ducal court of Altenburg, he was tall
and slender, possessed an undoubted gift for poetry
and real musical talent, and was moreover a man
of delicate sensibilities, full of consideration for his
whole family, and distinguished in his manners.
My brother often refers to his Polish descent, and
in later years he even instituted research-work with
the view of establishing it, which met with partial
success. I know nothing definite concerning these
## p. xi (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
investigations, because a large number of valuable
documents were unfortunately destroyed after his
breakdown in Turin. The family tradition was
that a certain Polish nobleman Nicki (pronounced
Nietzky) had obtained the special favour of
Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, and had
received the rank of Earl from him. When, how-
ever, Stanislas Leszcysski the Pole became king,
our supposed ancestor became involved in a con-
spiracy in favour of the Saxons and Protestants.
He was sentenced to death; but, taking flight,
according to the evidence of the documents, he was
ultimately befriended by a certain Earl of Briihl,
who gave him a small post in an obscure little
provincial town. Occasionally our aged aunts
would speak of our great-grandfather Nietzsche,
who was said to have died in his ninety-first year,
and words always seemed to fail them when they
attempted to describe his handsome appearance,
good breeding, and vigour. Our ancestors, both
on the Nietzsche and the Oehler side, were very
long-lived. Of the four pairs of great-grandparents,
one great-grandfather reached the age of ninety,
five great-grandmothers and -fathers died between
eighty-two and eighty-six years of age, and two only
failed to reach their seventieth year.
The sorrow which hung as a cloud over our
branch of the family was our father's death, as the
result of a heavy fall, at the age of thirty-eight.
One night, upon leaving some friends whom he had
accompanied home, he was met at the door of the
vicarage by our little dog. The little animal must
have got between his feet, for he stumbled and fell
'
## p. xii (#22) #############################################
xii INTRODUCTION.
backwards down seven stone steps on to the paving-
stones of the vicarage courtyard. As a result of
this fall, he was laid up with concussion of the brain,
and, after a lingering illness, which lasted eleven
months, he died on the 30th of July 1849. The
early death of our beloved and highly-gifted father
spread gloom over the whole of our childhood. In
1850 our mother withdrew with us to Naumburg
on the Saale, where she took up her abode with our
widowed grandmother Nietzsche; and there she
brought us up with Spartan severity and simplicity,
which, besides being typical of the period, was
quite de rigeur in her family. Of course, Grand-
mamma Nietzsche helped somewhat to temper her
daughter-in-law's severity, and in this respect our
Oehler grandparents, who were less rigorous with
us, their eldest grandchildren, than with their own
children, were also very influential. Grandfather
Oehler was the first who seems to have recognised
the extraordinary talents of his eldest grandchild.
From his earliest childhood upwards, my brother
was always strong and healthy; he often declared
that he must have been taken for a peasant-boy
throughout his childhood and youth, as he was so
plump, brown, and rosy. The thick fair hair which
fell picturesquely over his shoulders tended some-
what to modify his robust appearance. Had he not
possessed those wonderfully beautiful, large, and
expressive eyes, however, and had he not been so
very ceremonious in his manner, neither his teachers
nor his relatives would ever have noticed anything
at all remarkable about the boy; for he was both
modest and reserved.
## p. xiii (#23) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. xiil
He received his early schooling at a preparatory
school, and later at a grammar school in Naumburg.
In the autumn of 1858, when he was fourteen years
of age, he entered the Pforta school, so famous for
the scholars it has produced. There, too, very
severe discipline prevailed, and much was exacted
from the pupils, with the view of inuring them to
great mental and physical exertions. Thus, if my
brother seems to lay particular stress upon the value
of rigorous training, free from all sentimentality, it
should be remembered that he speaks from experi-
ence in this respect. At Pforta he followed the
regular school course, and he did not enter a uni-
versity until the comparatively late age of twenty.
His extraordinary gifts manifested themselves
chiefly in his independent and private studies and
artistic efforts. As a boy his musical talent had
already been so noticeable, that he himself and other
competent judges were doubtful as to whether he
ought not perhaps to devote himself altogether to
music. It is, however, worth noting that everything
he did in his later years, whether in Latin, Greek, or
German work,bore the stamp of perfection—subject
of course to the limitation imposed upon him by his
years. His talents came very suddenly to the fore,
because he had allowed them to grow for such a
long time in concealment. His very first perform-
ance in philology, executed while he was a student
under Ritschl, the famous philologist, was also
typical of him in this respect, seeing that it was
ordered to be printed for the Rheinische Museum.
Of course this was done amid general and grave ex-
pressions of doubt; for, as Dr. Ritschl often declared,
J
## p. xiv (#24) #############################################
XIV INTRODUCTION.
it was an unheard-of occurrence for a student in his
third term to prepare such an excellent treatise.
Being a great lover of out-door exercise, such as
swimming, skating, and walking, he developed into a
very sturdy lad. Rohde gives the following descrip-
tion of him as a student: with his healthy com-
plexion,his outward and innercleanliness,hisaustere
chastity and his solemn aspect, he was the image of
that delightful youth described by Adalbert Stifter.
Though as a child he was always rather serious,
as a lad and a man he was ever inclined to see the
humorous side of things, while his whole being, and
everything he said or did, was permeated by an
extraordinary harmony. He belonged to the very
few who could control even a bad mood and conceal
it from others. All his friends are unanimous in
their praise of his exceptional evenness of temper
and behaviour, and his warm, hearty, and pleasant
laugh that seemed to come from the very depths
of his benevolent and affectionate nature. In him
it might therefore be said, nature had produced a
being who in body and spirit was a harmonious
whole: his unusual intellect was fully in keeping
with his uncommon bodily strength.
The only abnormal thing about him, and some-
thing which we both inherited from our father, was
short-sightedness, and this was very much aggra-
vated in my brother's case, even in his earliest school-
days, owing to that indescribable anxiety to learn
which always characterised him. When one listens
to accounts given by his friends and schoolfellows,
one is startled by the multiplicity of his studies even
in his schooldays.
## p. xv (#25) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XV
In the autumn of 1864, he began his university
life in Bonn, and studied philology and theology;
at the end of six months he gave up theology, and
in the autumn of 1865 followed his famous teacher
Ritschl to the University of Leipzig. There he
became an ardent philologist, and diligently sought
to acquire a masterly grasp of this branch of know-
ledge. But in this respect it would be unfair to
forget that the school of Pforta, with its staff of
excellent teachers — scholars that would have
adorned the chairs of any University—had already
afforded the best of preparatory trainings to any one
intending to take up philology as a study, more
particularly as it gave all pupils ample scope to
indulge any individual tastes they might have for
any particular branch of ancient history. The last
important Latin thesis which my brother wrote for
the Landes-Schule, Pforta, dealt with the Megarian
poet Theognis, and it was in the r61e of a lecturer
on this very subject that, on the 18th January
1866, he made his first appearance in public, before
the philological society he had helped to found in
Leipzig. The paper he read disclosed his investiga-
tions on the subject of Theognis the moralist and
aristocrat, who, as is well known, described and dis-
missed the plebeians of his time in terms of the
heartiest contempt. The aristocratic ideal, which
was always so dear to my brother, thus revealed
itself for the first time. Moreover, curiously enough,
it was precisely this scientific thesis which was the
cause of Ritschl's recognition of my brother and
fondness for him.
The whole of his Leipzig days proved of the
b
## p. xvi (#26) #############################################
XVI INTRODUCTION.
utmost importance to my brother's career. There
he was plunged into the very midst of a torrent
of intellectual influences which found an impression-
able medium in the fiery youth, and to which he
eagerly made himself accessible. He did not,
however, forget to discriminate among them, but
tested and criticised the currents of thought he
encountered, and selected accordingly. It is
certainly of great importance to ascertain what
those influences precisely were to which he yielded,
and how long they maintained their sway over him,
and it is likewise necessary to discover exactly
when the matured mind threw off these fetters in
order to work out its own salvation.
The influences that exercised power over him
in those days may be described in the three follow-
ing terms: Hellenism, Schopenhauer,Wagner. His
love of Hellenism certainly led him to philology;
but, as a matter of fact, what concerned him most
was to obtain a wide view of things in general,
and this he hoped to derive from that science;
philology in itself, with his splendid method and
thorough way of going to work, served him only
as a means to an end.
If Hellenism was the first strong influence which
already in Pforta obtained a sway over my brother,
in the winter of 1865-66, a completely new, and
therefore somewhat subversive, influence was intro-
duced into his life with Schopenhauer's philosophy.
When he reached Leipzig in the autumn of 1865,
he was very downcast; for the experiences that
had befallen him during his one year of student
life in Bonn had deeply depressed him. He had
## p. xvii (#27) ############################################
INTRODUCTION. XVII
sought at first to adapt himself to his surround-
ings there, with the hope of ultimately elevating
them to his lofty views on things; but both these
efforts proved vain, and now he had come to
Leipzig with the purpose of framing his own
manner of life. It can easily be imagined how
the first reading of Schopenhauer's The World as
Will and Idea worked upon this man, still sting-
ing from the bitterest experiences and disappoint-
ments. He writes: "Here I saw a mirror in
which I espied the world, life, and my own nature
depicted with frightful grandeur. " As my brother,
from his very earliest childhood, had always missed
both the parent and the educator through our
father's untimely death, he began to regard
Schopenhauer with almost filial love and respect.
He did not venerate him quite as other men did;
Schopenhauer's personality was what attracted and
enchanted him. From the first he was never
blind to the faults in his master's system, and in
proof of this we have only to refer to an essay he
wrote in the autumn of 1867, which actually con-
tains a criticism of Schopenhauer's philosophy.
Now, in the autumn of 1865, to these two
influences, Hellenism and Schopenhauer, a third
influence was added—one which was to prove the
strongest ever exercised over my brother—and it
began with his personal introduction to Richard
Wagner. He was introduced to Wagner by the
latter's sister, Frau Professor Brockhaus, and his
description of their first meeting, contained in a
letter to Erwin Rohde, is really most affecting.
For years, that is to say, from the time Bulow's
## p.
