we have sighed;
they will upset our aesthetics!
they will upset our aesthetics!
Nietzsche - v01 - Birth of Tragedy
39
in it and composed of it, must regard as the Verily
Non-existent,-i. e. , as a perpetual unfolding in
time, space and causality in other words, as em. .
piric reality. If we therefore waive the consideration
of our own "reality” for the present, if we con-
ceive our empiric existence, and that of the world
generally, as a representation of the Primordial
Unity generated every moment, we shall then have
to regard the dream as an appearance of appearance,
hence as a still higher gratification of the prim-
ordial desire for appearance. It is for this same
reason that the innermost heart of Nature experi-
ences that indescribable joy in the naïve artist and
in the naïve work of art, which is likewise only
“ an appearance of appearance. ” In a symbolic
painting, Raphael, himself one of these immortal
“ naïve” ones, has represented to us this depoten-
tiating of appearance to appearance, the primordial
process of the naïve artist and at the same time of
Apollonian culture. In his Transfiguration, the
lower half, with the possessed boy, the despairing
bearers, the helpless, terrified disciples, shows to
us the reflection of eternal primordial pain, the sole
basis of the world: the “appearance” here is the
counter-appearance of eternal Contradiction, the
father of things. Out of this appearance then
arises, like an ambrosial vapour, a visionlike new
world of appearances, of which those wrapt in the
first appearance see nothing—a radiant floating in
purest bliss and painless Contemplation beaming
from wide-open eyes. Here there is presented to
our view, in the highest symbolism of art, that
Apollonian world of beauty and its substratum
## p. 40 (#80) ##############################################
40
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
the terrible wisdom of Silenus, and we comprehend,
by intuition, their necessary interdependence.
Apollo, however, again appears to us as the
apotheosis of the principium individuationis, in
which alone the perpetually attained end of the
Primordial Unity, its redemption through appear-
ance, is consummated : he shows us, with sublime
attitudes, how the entire world of torment is
necessary, that thereby the individual may be im-
pelled to realise the redeeming vision, and then,
sunk in contemplation thereof, quietly sit in his
fluctuating barque, in the midst of the sea.
This apotheosis of individuation, if it be at all
conceived as imperative and laying down precepts,
knows but one law—the individual, i. e. , the observ-
ance of the boundaries of the individual, measure
in the Hellenic sense. Apollo, as ethical deity,
demands due proportion of his disciples, and, that
this may be observed, he demands self-knowledge.
And thus, parallel to the æsthetic necessity for
beauty, there run the demands“ know thyself”
and “not too much," while presumption and
undueness are regarded as the truly hostile demons
of the non-Apollonian sphere, hence as char-
acteristics of the pre-Apollonian age, that of the
Titans, and of the extra-Apollonian world, that of
the barbarians. Because of his Titan-like love
for man, Prometheus had to be torn to pieces by
vultures; because of his excessive wisdom, which
solved the riddle of the Sphinx, Edipus had to
plunge into a bewildering vortex of monstrous
crimes : thus did the Delphic god interpret the
Grecian past.
## p. 41 (#81) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
41
So also the effects wrought by the Dionysian
appeared “ titanic" and "barbaric” to the Apol-
lonian Greek: while at the same time he could not
conceal from himself that he too was inwardly
related to these overthrown Titans and heroes.
Indeed, he had to recognise still more than this:
his entire existence, with all its beauty and moder-
ation, rested on a hidden substratum of suffering
and of knowledge, which was again disclosed to
him by the Dionysian. And lo! Apollo could
not live without Dionysus! The “titanic ” and
the “ barbaric” were in the end not less necessary
than the Apollonian. And now let us imagine to
ourselves how the ecstatic tone of the Dionysian
festival sounded in ever more luring and bewitching
strains into this artificially confined world built on Amtli;
appearance and moderation, how in these strains
all the undueness of nature, in joy, sorrow, and
knowledge, even to the transpiercing shriek, became
audible: let us ask ourselves what meaning could
be attached to the psalmodising artist of Apollo,
with the phantom harp-sound, as compared with
this demonic folk-song! The muses of the arts
of " appearance" paled before an art which, in its
intoxication, spoke the truth, the wisdom of Silenus
cried“ woe! woe! ” against the cheerful Olympians.
The individual, with all his boundaries and due
proportions, went under in the self-oblivion of the
Dionysian states and forgot the Apollonian pre-
cepts. The Undueness revealed itself as truth,
contradiction, the bliss born of pain, declared itself
out of the heart of nature. And thus, wherever
the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was
## p. 42 (#82) ##############################################
42 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
(_routed and annihilated. But it is quite as certain
that, where the first assault was successfully with-
stood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic
god exhibited itself as more rigid and menacing
than ever. For I can only explain to myself the
Doric state and Doric art as a permanent war-camp
of the Apollonian: only by incessant opposition
; to tT« ~tltlHFc-barBaric nature of the Dionysian
| was it possible for an art so defiantly-prim, so
encompassed with bulwarks, a training so warlike
and rigorous, a constitution so cruel and relentless,
_to last for any length of time.
j Up to this point we have enlarged upon the
/ observation made at the beginning of this essay:
how the Dionysian and the Apollonian, in ever
'new births succeeding and mutually augmenting
( one another, controlled the Hellenic genius: how
I from out the age of "bronze," with its Titan
(\ i. struggles and rigorous folk-philosophy, the Homeric
v. j world develops under the fostering sway of the
\ Apollonian impulse to beauty, how this " naive"
i splendour is again overwhelmed by the inbursting
I flood of the Dionysian, and how against this new
power the Apollonian rises to the austere majesty
of Doric art and the Doric view of things. If,
then, in this way, in the strife of these two hostile
principles, the older Hellenic history falls into four
great periods of art, we are now driven to inquire
after the ulterior purpose of these unfoldings and
processes, unless perchance we should regard the
last-attained period, the period of Doric art, as the
end and aim of these artistic impulses: and here
the sublime and highly celebrated art-work of
1
## p. 43 (#83) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 43
Attic tragedy and dramatic dithyramb presents
itself to our view as the common goal of both
these impulses, whose mysterious union, after
many and long precursory struggles, found its
glorious consummation in such a child,—which is
at once Antigone and Cassandra.
5.
We now approach the real purpose of our in-
vestigation, which aims at acquiring a knowledge
of the Dionyso-Apollonian genius and his art-
work, or at least an anticipatory understanding of
the mystery of the aforesaid union. Here we
shall ask first of all where that new germ which
subsequently developed into tragedy and dramatic
dithyramb first makes itself perceptible in the
Hellenic world. The ancients themselves supply
the answer in symbolic form, when they place
Homer and Archilochus as the forefathers and -
torch:bearers of Greek poetry side by side on
gems, sculptures, etc. , in the sure conviction that
only these two thoroughly original compeers, from
whom a stream of fire flows over the whole of
Greek ^posterity, should be taken into considera-
tion. (Homer, the aged dreamer sunk in himself,
the type of the Apollonian naive artist, beholds
now with astonishment the impassioned genius of
the warlike votary of the muses, Archilochus,;
violently tossed to and fro on the billows of exist-
ence: and modern aesthetics could only add by
way of interpretation, that here the "objective"
artist is confronted by the first " subjective" artist. v
## p. 44 (#84) ##############################################
44 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
But this interpretation is of little service to us,
because we know the subjective artist only as the
poor artist, and in every type and elevation of
art we demand specially and first of all the con-
quest of the Subjective, the redemption from the
"ego" and the cessation of every individual will
and desire; indeed, we find it impossible to believe
in any truly artistic production, however insignifi-
cant, without objectivity, without pure, interestless
contemplation. Hence our aesthetics must first
solve the problem as to how the "lyrist" is
possible as an artist: he who according to the
experience of all ages continually says " 1" and
sings off to us the entire chromatic scale of his
passions and desires. This very Archilochus
appals us, alongside of Homer, by his cries of hatred
and scorn, by the drunken outbursts of his desire.
Is not just he then, who has been called the first
subjective artist, the non-artist proper? But
whence then the reverence which was shown to
him—the poet—in very remarkable utterances by
the Delphic oracle itself, the focus of "objective"
art?
Schiller has enlightened us concerning his poetic
procedure by a psychological observation, inexplic-
able to himself, yet not apparently open to any
objection. He acknowledges that as the prepara-
tory state to the act of poetising he had not
perhaps before him or within him a series of
pictures with co-ordinate causality of thoughts, but
, rather a musical mood (" The perception with me
is at first without a clear and definite object; this
forms itself later. A certain musical mood of
## p. 45 (#85) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 45
mind precedes, and only after this does the poetical >,-~
idea follow with me. "). Add to this the most im-
portant phenomenon of all ancient lyric poetry,
the union, regarded everywhere as natural, of the -
lyrist with the musician, their very identity, indeed,
—compared with which our modern lyric poetry
is like the statue of a god without a head,—and
we may now, on the basis of our metaphysics of
aesthetics set forth above, interpret the lyrist to
ourselves as follows. As Dionysian artist he is
in the first place become altogether one with the »
. Primordial Unity, its pain and contradiction, and ,,. . . '
he produces the copy of this Primordial Unity as •. fa
jmusic, granting that music has been correctly
. termed a repetition and a recast of the world;
but now, under the Apollonian dream-inspiration,
this music again becomes visible to him as in a
symbolic dream-picture. Xne formless and in-
tangible reflection of the primordial pain in music, k
with its redemption in appearance, then generates
a second mirroring as a concrete symbol or _
. example. The artist has already surrendered his
subjectivity in the Dionysian process: the picture
which now shows to him his oneness with the
heart of the world, is a dream-scene, which em-
bodies the primordial contradiction and primordial
pain, together with the primordial joy, of appear-
ance. The "I" of the lyrist sounds therefore
from the abyss of being: its "subjectivity," in the
sense of the modern aesthetes, is a fiction. When
Archilochus, the first lyrist of the Greeks, makes
known both his mad love and his contempt to the
daughters of Lycambes, it is not his passion which
## p. 46 (#86) ##############################################
46 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
dances before us in orgiastic frenzy: we see
Dionysus and the Maenads, we see the drunken
reveller Archilochus sunk down to sleep—as
Euripides depicts it in the Bacchae, the sleep on
the high Alpine pasture, in the noonday sun:—
and now Apollo approaches and touches him with
the laurel. The Dionyso-musical enchantment of
the sleeper now emits, as it were, picture sparks,
lyrical poems, which in their highest development
are called tragedies and dramatic dithyrambs.
The plastic artist, as also the epic poet,who is
related to him, is sunk in the pure contemplation
\\. i of pictures. The Dionysian musician is, without
I 111 any picture, himself just primordiaf pain and the
'' I primordial re-echoing thereof. . The lyric genius
is conscious of a world of pictures and symbols—
growing out of the state of mystical self-abnega-
Jion and oneness,—which has a colouring causality
and velocity quite different from that of the world
of the plastic artist and epic poet. While the
latter lives in these pictures, and only in them,
with joyful satisfaction, and never grows tired
of contemplating them with love, even in their
minutest characters, while even the picture of the
angry Achilles is to him but a picture, the angry
expression of which he enjoys with the dream-
joy in appearance—so that, by this mirror of
appearance, he is guarded against being unified
and blending with his figures;—. the pictures of
the lyrist onAhe other hand are nothing but his
[ very self and, as it were, only different projections
of himseji^on_account^of. which he as the moving
centre-of this, world is. entitled to say j" I ": only
## p. 47 (#87) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
47
,
of course this self is not the same as that of the
waking, empirically real man, but the only verily
existent and eternal self resting at the basis of
things, by means of the images whereof the lyric
genius sees through even to this basis of things,
Now let us suppose that he beholds himself also
among these images as non-genius, i. e. , his subject,
the whole throng of subjective passions and im-
pulses of the will directed to a definite object
which appears real to him ; if now it seems as if
the lyric genius and the allied non-genius were
one, and as if the former spoke that little word
“I” of his own accord, this appearance will no
longer be able to lead us astray, as it certainly
led those astray who designated the lyrist as the
subjective poet. In truth, Archilochus, the pas-
sionately inflamed, loving and hating man, is but
a vision of the genius, who by this time is no
longer Archilochus, but a genius of the world, who
expresses his primordial pain symbolically in the
figure of the man Archilochus : while the subject-
ively willing and desiring man, Archilochus, can
never at any time be a poet. It is by no means
necessary, however, that the lyrist should see
nothing but the phenomenon of the man Archi-
lochus before him as a reflection of eternal being;
and tragedy shows how far the visionary world of
the lyrist may depart from this phenomenon, to
which, of course, it is most intimately related.
Schopenhauer, who did not shut his eyes to the
difficulty presented by the lyrist in the philo-
sophical contemplation of art, thought he had
found a way out of it, on which, however, I can-
## p. 48 (#88) ##############################################
48 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
not accompany him; while he alone, in his pro-
found metaphysics of music, held in his hands the
means whereby this difficulty could be definitely
removed: as I believe I have removed it here in
his spirit and to his honour. In contrast to our
view, he describes the peculiar nature of song as
follows * (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I.
295):—" It is the subject of the will, i. e. , his own
volition, which fills the consciousness of the singer;
often as an unbound and satisfied desire (joy),
but still more often as a restricted desire (grief),
always as an emotion, a passion, or an agitated
frame of mind. Besides this, however, and along
with it, by the sight of surrounding nature, the
singer becomes conscious of himself as the subject
of pure will-less knowing, the unbroken, blissful
peace of which now appears, in contrast to the
stress of desire, which is always restricted and
always needy. The feeling of this contrast, this
alternation, is really what the song as a whole
expresses and what principally constitutes the
lyrical state of mind. In it pure knowing comes
to us as it were to deliver us from desire and
the stress thereof: we follow, but only for an
instant; for desire, the remembrance of our
personal ends, tears us anew from peaceful con-
templation; yet ever again the next beautiful i.
surrounding in which the pure will-less knowledge
presents itself to us, allures us away from desire.
Therefore, in song and in the lyrical mood, desire
* World as Will and Idea, I. 323, 4th ed. of Haldane
and Kemp's translation. Quoted with a few changes.
## p. 49 (#89) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 49
(the personal interest of the ends) and the pure
perception of the surrounding which presents itself,
are wonderfully mingled with each other; con-
nections between them are sought for and ima-
gined; the subjective disposition, the affection of
the will, imparts its own hue to the contemplated
surrounding, and conversely, the surroundings com-
municate the reflex of their colour to the will.
The true song is the expression of the whole of
this mingled and divided state of mind. "
Who could fail to see in this description that
lyric poetry is here characterised as an imperfectly
attained art, which seldom and only as it were in
leaps arrives at its goal, indeed, as a semi-art, the
essence of which is said to consist in this, that desire
and pure contemplation, i. e. , the unaesthetic and the
aesthetic condition, are wonderfully mingled with
each other? We maintain rather, that this entire
antithesis, according to which, as according to
some standard of value, Schopenhauer, too, still
classifies the arts, the antithesis between the
subjective and the objective, is quite out of place
in aesthetics, inasmuch as the subject, i. e. , the
desiring individual who furthers his own egoistic
ends, can be conceived only as the adversary, not
as the origin of art. In so far as the subject is
the artist, however, he has already been released
from his individual will, and has become as it
were the medium, through which the one verily
existent Subject celebrates his redemption in
appearance. For this one thing must above all
be clear to us, to our humiliation and exaltation,
that the entire comedy of art is not at all per-
D
## p. 50 (#90) ##############################################
50
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
formed, say, for our betterment and culture, and
that we are just as little the true authors of this
art-world: rather we may assume with regard to
ourselves, that its true author uses us as pictures
and artistic projections, and that we have our
highest dignity in our significance as works of art
—for only as an esthetic phenomenon is existence
and the world eternally justified:while of course
our consciousness of this our specific significance
hardly differs from the kind of consciousness which
the soldiers painted on canvas have of the battle
represented thereon. Hence all our knowledge
of artis at bottom quite illusory, because, as
knowing persons we are not one and identical
with the Being who, as the sole author and spec-
tator of this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual
entertainment for himself. Only in so far as the
genius in the act of artistic production coalesces
with this primordial artist of the world, does he
get a glimpse of the eternal essence of art, for in
this state he is, in a marvellous manner, like the
weird picture of the fairy-tale which can at will
turn its eyes and behold itself; he is now at once
subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spec-
tator.
6.
With reference to Archilochus, it has been
established by critical research that he introduced
the folk-song into literature, and, on account
thereof, deserved, according to the general estimate
of the Greeks, his unique position alongside of
Homer. But what is this popular folk-song in
## p. 51 (#91) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
g.
contrast to the wholly Apollonian epos? What
else but the perpetuum vestigium of a union of the --
Apollonian and the Dionysian? Its enormous
diffusion among all peoples, still further enhanced
by ever new births, testifies to the power of this
artistic double impulse of nature: which leaves its
vestiges in the popular song in like manner as the
orgiastic movements of a people perpetuate them-
selves in its music. Indeed, one might also
furnish historical proofs, that every period which
is highly productive in popular songs has been
most violently stirred by Dionysian currents, which
we must always regard as the substratum and
prerequisite of the popular song.
First of all, however, we regard the popular
song as the musical mirror of the world, as the
original melody, which now seeks for itself al
parallel dream-phenomenon and expresses it in
poetry. Melody is therefore primary and universal,
and as such may admit of several objectivations,
in several texts. Likewise, in the naïve estima-
tion of the people, it is regarded as by far the
more important and necessary. Melody generates/
the poem out of itself by an ever-recurring pro-
cess. The strophic form of the popular song points
to the same phenomenon, which I always beheld
with astonishment, till at last I found this explana-
tion. Any one who in accordance with this theory
examines a collection of popular songs, such as
“Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” will find innumer-
able instances of the perpetually productive
melody scattering picture sparks all around:
which in their variegation, their abrupt change,
## p. 52 (#92) ##############################################
52 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
1
II
their mad precipitance, manifest a power quite
unknown to the epic appearance and its steady
flow. From the point of view of the epos, this un-
equal and irregular pictorial world of lyric poetry
must be simply condemned: and the solemn
epic rhapsodists of the Apollonian festivals in
the age of Terpander have certainly done so.
Accordingly, we observe that jn_Jbhepoetising
of the popular song, language_is_ strained_to^ its
utmost ta imitate music; and hence. a new world
,of poetry begins with Archilochusj which is fun-
damentally opposed to the Homeric. And in
saying this we have pointed out the only possible
relation between poetry and music, between word
and tone: the word, the picture, the_. cpncept here
_seeks_an expression analogous to music and now
experiences in itseTf~ the power of music. In
this sense we may discriminate between rtwo main
currents in the history of the language of the
preek people, according as their language imitated
either the world of phenomena and of pictures, or
the world of music. One has only to reflect
seriously on the linguistic difference with regard
to colour, syntactical structure, and vocabulary in
Homer and Pindar, in order to comprehend the
significance of this contrast; indeed, it becomes
palpably clear to us that in the period between
Homer and Pindar the orgiastic flute tones of
Olympus must have sounded forth, which, in an
age as late as Aristotle's, when music was infinitely
more developed, transported people to drunken en-
thusiasm, and which, when their influence was first
felt, undoubtedly incited all the poetic means of
## p. 53 (#93) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 53
expression of contemporaneous man to imitation.
I here call attention to a familiar phenomenon of
our own times, against which our aesthetics raises
many objections. We again and again have
occasion to observe how a symphony of Beethoven
compels the individual hearers to use figurative
speech, though the appearance presented by a
collocation of the different pictorial world generated
by a piece of music may be never so fantastically
diversified and even contradictory. To practise
its small wit on such compositions, and to overlook
a phenomenon which is certainly worth explaining,
is quite in keeping with this aesthetics. Indeed,
even if the tone-poet has spoken in pictures con-
cerning a composition, when for instance he
designates a certain symphony as the " pastoral"
symphony, or a passage therein as " the scene by
the brook," or another as the "merry gathering
of rustics," these are likewise only symbolical
representations born out of music—and not perhaps
the imitated objects of music—representations
which can give us no information whatever con-
cerning the Dionysian content of music, and which
in fact have no distinctive value of their own
alongside of other pictorical expressions. This
process of a discharge of music in pictures we have
now to transfer to some youthful, linguistically
productive people, to get a notion as to how
the strophic popular song originates, and how the
entire faculty of speech is stimulated by this new
principle of imitation of music.
If, therefore, we may regard lyric poetry as the
effulguration of music in pictures and concepts,
## p. 54 (#94) ##############################################
54 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
fy
i
we can now ask: "how does music appear in
the mirror of symbolism and conception? " It
appears as will, taking the word in the Schopen-
hauerian sense, i. e. ,as the antithesis of the aesthetic,
purely contemplative, and passive frame of mind.
Here, however, we must discriminate as sharply
as possible between the concept of essentiality
and the concept of phenominality; for music,
according to its essence, cannot be will, because
as such it would have to be wholly banished
from the domain of art—for the will is the
unaesthetic-in-itself;—yet it appears as will. For
in order to express the phenomenon of music in
pictures, the lyrist requires all the stirrings of
passion, from the whispering of infant desire to
the roaring of madness. Under the impulse
to speak of music in Apollonian symbols, he con-
ceives of all nature, and himself therein, only as
the eternally willing, desiring, longing existence.
But in so far as he interprets music by means
of pictures, he himself rests in the quiet calm
tof Apollonian contemplation,^ however much all
around him which he beholds through the medium
of music is in a state of confused and violent
motion. Indeed, when he beholds himself through
'- I this same medium, his own image appears to him
in a state of unsatisfied feeling: his own willing,
longing, moaning and rejoicing are to him symbols
,by which he interprets music. Such is the phenom-
enon of the lyrist:. as Apollonian genius he in-
terprets music through the image of the will, while
he himself, completely released from the avidity
of the will, is the pure, undimmed eye of day.
## p. 55 (#95) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
55
Our whole disquisition insists on this, that
lyric poetry is dependent on the spirit of music
just as music itself in its absolute sovereignty
does not require the picture and the concept, but
only endures them as accompaniments. The
poems of the lyrist can express nothing which has
not already been contained in the vast universality
and absoluteness of the music which compelled
him to use figurative speech. By no means is it
possible for language adequately to render the
cosmic symbolism of music, for the very reason?
that music stands in symbolic relation to the se
primordial contradiction and primordial pain in
the heart of the Primordial Unity, and therefore
symbolises a sphere which is above all appearance
and before all phenomena. Rather should we
say that all phenomena, compared with it, are
but symbols : hence language, as the organ and
symbol of phenomena, cannot at all disclose the
innermost essence of music; language can only
be in superficial contact with music when it
attempts to imitate music; while the profoundest
1 significance of the latter cannot be brought one
v step nearer to us by all the eloquence of lyric
V poetry.
We shall now have to avail ourselves of all the
principles of art hitherto considered, in order to
find our way through the labyrinth, as we must
designate the origin of Greek tragedy. I shall
not be charged with absurdity in saying that the
## p. 56 (#96) ##############################################
56
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
problem of this origin has as yet not even been
seriously stated, not to say solved, however often
the fluttering tatters of ancient tradition have
been sewed together in sundry combinations and
torn asunder again. This tradition tells us in
the most unequivocal terms, that tragedy sprang
from the tragic chorus, and was originally only
chorus and nothing but chorus: and hence we
feel it our duty to look into the heart of this
tragic chorus as being the real proto-drama,
without in the least contenting ourselves with
current art-phraseology—according to which the
chorus is the ideal spectator, or represents the
people in contrast to the regal side of the scene.
The latter explanatory notion, which sounds
sublime to many a politician—that the immutable
moral law was embodied by the democratic
Athenians in the popular chorus, which always
carries its point over the passionate excesses and
extravagances of kings—may be ever so forcibly
suggested by an observation of Aristotle : still
it has no bearing on the original formation of
tragedy, inasmuch as the entire antithesis of king
and people, and, in general, the whole politico-
social sphere, is excluded from the purely religious
beginnings of tragedy; but, considering the well-
known classical form of the chorus in Æschylus
and Sophocles, we should even deem it blasphemy
to speak here of the anticipation of a “constitu-
tional representation of the people,” from which
blasphemy others have not shrunk, however. The
ancient governments knew of no constitutional
representation of the people in praxi, and it is to
## p. 57 (#97) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 57
be hoped that they did not even so much as
"anticipate " it in tragedy.
Much more celebrated than this political ex-
planation of the chorus is the notion of A. W.
Schlegel, who advises us to regard the chorus, in
a manner, as the essence and extract of the crowd
ofspectators,—as the " ideal spectator. " This view
when compared with the historical tradition that
tragedy was originally only chorus, reveals itself
in its true character, as a crude, unscientific, yet
brilliant assertion, which, however, has acquired its
brilliancy only through its concentrated form of
expression, through the truly Germanic bias in
favour of whatever is called "ideal," and through
our momentary astonishment. For we are indeed
astonished the moment we compare our well-known
theatrical public with this chorus, and ask our-
selves if it could ever be possible to idealise some-
thing analogous to the Greek chorus out of such a
public. We tacitly deny this, and now wonder as
much at the boldness of Schlegel's assertion as at
the totally different nature of the Greek public.
For hitherto we always believed that the true
spectator, be he who he may, had always to re-
main conscious of having before him a work of
art, and not an empiric reality: whereas the tragic
chorus of the Greeks is compelled to recognise
real beings in the figures of the stage. The chorus
of the Oceanides really believes that it sees before
it the Titan Prometheus, and considers itself as
real as the god of the scene. And are we to own
that he is the highest and purest type of spectator,
who, like the Oceanides, regards Prometheus as
## p. 58 (#98) ##############################################
58 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
real and present in body? And is it characteristic
of the ideal spectator that he should run on the
stage and free the god from his torments? We
had believed in an aesthetic public, and considered
. the individual spectator the better qualified the
nTore he was capable of viewing a work of art as
^^h%Lis*,Sesjybsticajly; but now the SchlegeTTan
expression has intimated to us, that the perfect
ideal spectator does not at all suffer the world of
the scenes to act aesthetically on him, but corporeo-
empirically. Oh, these Greeks!
we have sighed;
they will upset our aesthetics! But once accus-
tomed to it, we have reiterated the saying of
Schlegel, as often as the subject of the chorus has
been broached.
But the tradition which is so explicit here speaks
against Schlegel: the chorus as such, without the
stage,—the primitive form of tragedy,—and the
chorus of ideal spectators do not harmonise. What
kind of art would that be which was extracted from
the concept of the spectator, and whereof we are
to regard the "spectator as such" as the true
form? The spectator without the play is some-
thing absurd. We fear that the birth of tragedy
can be explained neither by the high esteem for
the moral intelligence of the multitude nor by the
concept of the spectator without the play; and we
regard the problem as too deep to be even so
much as touched by such superficial modes of
contemplation.
An infinitely more valuable insight into the
signification of the chorus had already been dis-
played by Schiller in the celebrated Preface to his
## p. 59 (#99) ##############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 59
Bride of Messina, where he regarded the chorus-as-
a living wall which tragedy draws round herself to
guard her from contact with the world of reality,
and to preserve her ideal domain and poetical
freedom.
It is with this, his chief weapon, that Schiller
combats the ordinary conception of the natural,
the illusion ordinarily required in dramatic poetry.
He contends that while indeed the day on the stage
is merely artificial, the architecture only sym-
bolical, and the metrical dialogue purely ideal in
character, nevertheless an erroneous view still
prevails in the main : that it is not enough to
tolerate merely as a poetical license that which is
in reality the essence of all poetry. The intro-
duction of the chorus is, he says, the decisive step
by which war is declared openly and honestly
against all naturalism in art. — It is, methinks, for
disparaging this mode of contemplation that our
would-be superior age has coined the disdainful
catchword “pseudo-idealism. " I fear, however,
that we on the other hand with our present worship
of the natural and the real have landed at the
nadir of all idealism, namely in the region of
cabinets of wax-figures. An art indeed exists
also here, as in certain novels much in vogue at
present: but let no one pester us with the claim
that by this art the Schiller-Goethian “Pseudo-
idealism” has been vanquished.
It is indeed an “ideal” domain, as Schiller
rightly perceived, upon which the Greek satyric
chorus, the chorus of primitive tragedy, was wont
to walk, a domain raised far above the actual path
## p. 60 (#100) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
of mortals. The Greek framed for this chorus
the suspended scaffolding of a fictitious natural
state and placed thereon fictitious natural beings.
It is on this foundation that tragedy grew up, and
so it could of course dispense from the very first
with a painful portrayal of reality. Yet it is not an
arbitrary world placed by fancy betwixt heaven
and earth; rather is it a world possessing the same
reality and trustworthiness that Olympus with its
dwellers possessed for the believing Hellene.
The satyr, as being the Dionysian chorist, lives
in a religiously acknowledged reality under the
sanction of the myth and cult. That tragedy
begins with him, that the Dionysian wisdom of
tragedy speaks through him, is just as surprising a
phenomenon to us as, in general, the derivation of
tragedy from the chorus. Perhaps we shall get a
starting-point for our inquiry, if I put forward the
proposition that the satyr, the fictitious natural
being, is to the man of culture what Dionysian
music is to civilisation. Concerning this latter,
Richard Wagner says that it is neutralised by
music even as lamplight by daylight. In like
manner, I believe, the Greek man of culture felt
himself neutralised in the presence of the satyric
chorus: and this is the most immediate effect of
the Dionysian tragedy, that the state and society,
and, in general, the gaps between man and man
give way to an overwhelming feeling of oneness,
which leads back to the heart of nature. The
metaphysical comfort, with which, as I have here
intimated, every true tragedy dismisses us—that,
in spite of the perpetual change of phenomena,
## p. 61 (#101) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
61
walC.
life at bottom is indestructibly powerful and
pleasurable, this comfort appears with corporeal
lucidity as the satyric chorus, as the chorus of
natural beings, who live inerádicable as it were
behind all civilisation, and who, in spite of the
ceaseless change of generations and the history of
nations, remain for ever the same.
With this chorus the deep-minded Hellene, who
is so singularly qualified for the most delicate and
severe suffering, consoles himself :-he who has
glanced with piercing eye into the very heart of
the terrible destructive processes of so-called uni-
versal history, as also into the cruelty of nature,
and is in danger of longing for a Buddhistic
negation of the will. Art saves him, and through
art life saves him—for herself.
For we must know that in the rapture of the
Dionysian state, with its annihilation of the
ordinary bounds and limits of existence, there is
à lethargic element, wherein all personal experi-
ences of the past are submerged. It is by this
gulf of oblivion that the everyday world and the
world of Dionysian reality are separated from each
other. But as soon as this everyday reality rises
again in consciousness, it is felt as such, and
nauseates us; an ascetic will-paralysing mood is
the fruit of these states. In this sense the Dio-
nysian man may be said to resemble Hamlet : both
have for once seen into the true nature of things,
—they have perceived, but they are loath to act;
for their action cannot change the eternal nature
of things; they regard it as shameful or ridiculous
that one should require of them to set aright the
## p. 62 (#102) #############################################
62
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
time which is out of joint. Knowledge kills .
action, action requires the veil of illusion—it is
this lesson which Hamlet teaches, and not the
cheap wisdom of John-a-Dreams who from too
much reflection, as it were from a surplus of
possibilities, does not arrive at action at all. Not
reflection, no ! _true knowledge, insight into appal-
ling truth, preponderates over all motives inciting
to action, in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian
man. No comfort avails any longer; his longing
goes beyond a world after death, beyond the gods
themselves; existence with its glittering reflection
in the gods, or in an immortal other world is ab-
jured. In the consciousness of the truth he has
perceived, man now sees everywhere only the
awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now.
understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia,
he now discerns the wisdom of the sylvan god
Silenus: and loathing seizes him.
Here, in this extremest danger of the will, art
approaches, as a saving and healing enchantress;
she alone is able to transform these nauseating
reflections on the awfulness or absurdity of exist-
ence into representations wherewith it is possible
to live: these are the representations of the
sublime as the artistic subjugation of the awful,
and the comic as the artistic delivery from the
nausea of the absurd. The satyric chorus of
dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art; the
paroxysms described above spent their force in
the intermediary world of these Dionysian
followers.
## p. 63 (#103) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 63
8.
The satyr, like the idyllic shepherd of our more
recent time, is the offspring of a longing afterthe
^Primitive and the Natural; but mark with what
firmness and fearlessness the Greek embraced the
man of the woods, and again, how coyly and
mawkishly the modern man dallied with the
flattering picture of a tender, flute-playing, soft-
natured shepherd! Nature, on which as yet no
knowledge has been at work, which maintains
unbroken barriers to culture—this is what the
Greek saw in his satyr, which still was not on
this account supposed to coincide with the ape.
On the contrary: it was the archetype of man,
the embodiment of his ~higheit and strongest
emotions, as the enthusiastic reveller enraptured
by_the proximity of his god, as the fellow-suffering
companion in whom the suffering of the god re-
peats itself, as the herald of wisdom speaking from
the very depths of nature, as the emblem of the
sexual omnipotence of nature, which the Greek
was wont to contemplate with reverential awe.
The satyr was something sublime and godlike: he
could not but appear so, especially to the sad and
wearied eye of the Dionysian man. He would
have been offended by our spurious tricked-up
shepherd, while his eye dwelt with sublime satis-
faction on the naked and unstuntedly magnificent
characters of nature: here the illusion of culture
was brushed away from the archetype of man;
here the true man, the bearded satyr, revealed
himself, who shouts joyfully to his god. Before
## p. 64 (#104) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
him the cultured man shrank to a lying caricature.
Schiller is right also with reference to these
beginnings of tragic art: the chorus is a living
bulwark against the onsets of reality, because it
—the satyric chorus-portrays existence more
truthfully, more realistically, more perfectly than
the cultured man who ordinarily considers him-
self as the only reality. The sphere of poetry
does not lie outside the world, like some fantastic
impossibility of a poet's imagination : it seeks to
be the very opposite, the unvarnished expression
of truth, and must for this very reason cast aside
the false finery of that supposed reality of the
cultured man. The contrast between this intrinsic
truth of nature and the falsehood of culture, which
poses as the only reality, is similar to that existing
between the eternal kernel of things, the thing in
itself, and the collective world of phenomena.
And even as tragedy, with its metaphysical com-
fort, points to the eternal life of this kernel of
existence, notwithstanding the perpetual dissolu-
tion of phenomena, so the symbolism of the
satyric chorus already expresses figuratively this
primordial relation between the thing in itself
and phenomenon. The idyllic shepherd of the
modern man is but a copy of the sum of the
illusions of culture which he calls nature; the
Dionysian Greek desires truth and nature in their
most potent form ;-he sees himself metamor-
phosed into the satyr.
The revelling crowd of the votaries of Dionysus
rejoices, swayed by such moods and perceptions,
the power of which transforms them before their
## p. 65 (#105) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 65
own eyes, so that they imagine they behold them-
selves as reconstituted genii of nature, as satyrs.
The later constitution of the tragic chorus is the
artistic imitation of this natural phenomenon, which
of course required a separation of the Dionysian
spectators from the enchanted Dionysians. How-
ever, we must never lose sight of the fact that
the public of the Attic tragedy rediscovered itself
in the chorus of the orchestra, that there was in
reality no antithesis of public and chorus: for all
was but one great sublime chorus of dancing and
singing satyrs, or of such as allowed themselves
to be represented by the satyrs. The Schlegelian
observation must here reveal itself to us in a
deeper sense. The chorus is the "ideal spectator"*
in so far as it is the only beholderyf the beholder
of the visionary world of the scene. A public of
spectators, as known to us, was unknown to the
Greeks. In their theatres the terraced structure
of the spectators' space rising in concentric arcs
enabled every one, in the strictest sense, to overlook
the entire world of culture around him, and in
surfeited contemplation to imagine himself a
chorist. According to this view, then, we may
call the. chorus in its primitive stage in proto-
tragedy, a self-mirroring of the Dionysian man:
a phenomenon which may be best exemplified
by the process of the actor, who, if he be truly
gifted, sees hovering before his eyes with almost
tangible perceptibility the character he is to
represent. The satyric chorus is first of all a
* Zuschauer. . t Schauer.
## p. 66 (#106) #############################################
66 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
vision of the Dionysian throng, just as the world
of the stage is, in turn, a vision of the satyric
chorus: the power of this vision is great enough
to render the eye dull and insensible to the
impression of "reality," to the presence of the
cultured men occupying the tiers of seats on every
side. The form of the Greek theatre reminds one
of a lonesome mountain-valley: the architecture
of the scene appears like a luminous cloud-picture
which the Bacchants swarming on the mountains
behold from the heights, as the splendid encircle-
ment in the midst of which the image of Dionysus
is revealed to them.
Owing to our learned conception of the ele-
mentary artistic processes, this artistic proto-
phenomenon, which is here introduced to explain
the tragic chorus, is almost shocking: while
nothing can be more certain than that the poet
is a poet only in that he beholds himself sur-
rounded by forms which live and act before him,
into the innermost being of which his glance
penetrates. By reason of a strange defeat in our
capacities, we modern men are apt to represent
to ourselves the aesthetic proto-phenomenon as
too complex and abstract. For the true poet
the metaphor is not a rhetorical figure, but a
vicarious image which actually hovers before him
in place of a concept. The character is not for
him an aggregate composed of a studied collection
of particular traits, but an irrepressibly live person
appearing before his eyes, and differing only from
the corresponding vision of the painter by its
ever continued life and action. Why is it that
## p. 67 (#107) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 67
Homer sketches much more vividly * than all the
other poets ? Because he contemplatest much
more. We talk so abstractly about poetry,
because we are all wont to be bad poets. At
bottom the æsthetic phenomenon is simple: let a
man but have the faculty of perpetually seeing a
lively play and of constantly living surrounded
by hosts of spirits, then he is a poet: let him but
feel the impulse to transform himself and to talk
from out the bodies and souls of others, then he
is a dramatist.
The Dionysian excitement is able to impart to
a whole mass of men this artistic faculty of seeing
themselves surrounded by such a host of spirits,
with whom they know themselves to be inwardly
one. This function of the tragic chorus is the
dramatic proto-phenomenon: to see one's self trans-
formed before one's self, and then to act as if one
had really entered into another body, into another
character. This function stands at the beginning
of the development of the drama. Here we have
something different from the rhapsodist, who does
not blend with his pictures, but only sees them,
like the painter, with contemplative eye outside
of him; here we actually have a surrender of the
individual by his entering into another nature.
Moreover this phenomenon appears in the form
of an epidemic: a whole throng feels itself
metamorphosed in this wise. Hence it is that the
dithyramb is essentially different from every other
variety of the choric song. The virgins, who with
* Anschaulicher.
+ Anschaut.
## p. 68 (#108) #############################################
68
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
laurel twigs in their hands solemnly proceed to
the temple of Apollo and sing a processional
hymn, remain what they are and retain their
civic names: the dithyrambic chorus is a chorus
of transformed beings, whose civic past and social
rank are totally forgotten : they have become the
timeless servants of their god that live aloof from
all the spheres of society. Every other variety
of the choric lyric of the Hellenes is but an
enormous enhancement of the Apollonian unit-
singer: while in the dithyramb we have before us
a community of unconscious actors, who mutually
regard themselves as transformed among one
another.
This enchantment is the prerequisite of all
dramatic art. In this enchantment the Dionysian
reveller sees himself as a satyr, and as satyr he in
turn beholds the god, that is, in his transformation
he sees a new vision outside him as the Apollonian
consummation of his state. With this new vision
the drama is complete.
According to this view, we must understand
Greek tragedy as the Dionysian chorus, which
always disburdens itself anew in an Apollonian
world of pictures. The choric parts, therefore,
with which tragedy is interlaced, are in a manner
the mother-womb of the entire so-called dialogue,
that is, of the whole stage-world, of the drama
proper. In several successive outbursts does this
primordial basis of tragedy beam forth the vision
of the drama, which is a dream-phenomenon
throughout, and, as such, epic in character: on
the other hand, however, as objectivation of a
## p. 69 (#109) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 69
Dionysian state, it does not represent the Apol-
lonian redemption in appearance, but, conversely,
the dissolution of the individual and his unifica-
tion with primordial existence. Accordingly, the
drama is the Apollonian embodiment of Dionysian
perceptions and influences, and is thereby separated
from the epic as by an immense gap.
The chorus of Greek tragedy, the symbol of the
mass of the people moved by Dionysian excite-
ment, is thus fully explained by our conception of
it as here set forth. Whereas, being accustomed
to the position of a chorus on the modern stage,
especially an operatic chorus, we could never
comprehend why the tragic chorus of the Greeks
should be older, more primitive, indeed, more
important than the " action " proper,—as has been
so plainly declared by the voice of tradition;
whereas, furthermore, we could not reconcile with
this traditional paramount importance and primi-
tiveness the fact of the chorus' being composed
only of humble, ministering beings; indeed, at
first only of goatlike satyrs j whereas, finally, the
orchestra before the scene was always a riddle to
us; we have learned to comprehend at length that
the scene, together with the action, was funda-
mentally and originally conceived only as a vision,
that the only reality is just the chorus, which of
itself generates the vision and speaks thereof with
the entire symbolism of dancing, tone, and word^
This chorus beholds in the vision its lord and
master Dionysus, and is thus for ever the serving
chorus: it sees how he, the god, suffers and
glorifies himself, and therefore does not itself act.
## p. 70 (#110) #############################################
70
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
-
But though its attitude towards the god is through-
out the attitude of ministration, this is never-
theless, the highest expression, the Dionysian
expression of Nature, and therefore, like Nature
herself, the chorus utters oracles and wise sayings
when transported with enthusiasm : as fellow-
sufferer it is also the sage proclaiming truth from
out the heart of Nature. Thus, then, originates
the fantastic figure, which seems so shocking,
of the wise and enthusiastic satyr, who is at
the same time “the dumb man” in contrast to
the god : the image of Nature and her strongest
impulses, yea, the symbol of Nature, and at the
same time the herald of her art and wisdom :
musician, poet, dancer, and visionary in one
person.
Agreeably to this view, and agreeably to
tradition, Dionysus, the proper stage-hero and
focus of vision, is not at first actually present in
the oldest period of tragedy, but is only imagined
as present: i. e. , tragedy is originally only “chorus"
and not "drama. " Later on the attempt is made
to exhibit the god as real and to display the
visionary figure together with its glorifying, en-
circlement before the eyes of all; it is here that
the “drama” in the narrow sense of the term
begins. To the dithyrambic chorus is. now as-
signed the task of exciting the minds of the
hearers to such a pitch of Dionysian frenzy, that,
when the tragic hero appears on the stage, they
do not behold in him, say, the unshapely masked
man, but a visionary figure, born as it were of
their own ecstasy. Let us picture Admetes think-
## p. 71 (#111) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 71
ing in profound meditation of his lately departed
wife Alcestis, and quite consuming himself in
spiritual contemplation thereof—when suddenly
the veiled figure of a woman resembling her in
form and gait is led towards him: let us picture
his sudden trembling anxiety, his agitated com-
parisons, his instinctive conviction—and we shall
have an analogon to the sensation with which the
spectator, excited to Dionysian frenzy, saw the
god approaching on the stage, a god with whose
sufferings he had already become identified. He
involuntarily transferred the entire picture of the
god, fluttering magically before his soul, to this
masked figure and resolved its reality as it were
into a phantasmal unreality. This is the
Apollonian dream-state, in which the wprlH of
day is veiled, and a new wprld, clearer, more
intelligible, more striking than Jjyp former, and
nevertheless more shadowy, is ever born anew in
perpetual change before our eyes. We accordingly
recognise in tragedy a thorough-going stylistic
contrast: the language, colour, flexibility and
dynamics of the dialogue fall apart in the
Dionysian lyrics of the chorus on the one hand,
and in the Apollonian dream-world of the scene
on the other, into entirely separate spheres of
expression. The Apollonian appearances, in
which Dionysus objectifies himself, are no longer
"ein ewiges Meer, ein wechselnd Weben, ein
gliihend Leben," * as is the music of the chorus,
* An eternal sea, A weaving, flowing, Life, all glowing.
Faust, trans, of Bayard Taylor. —Tr.
## p. 72 (#112) #############################################
73 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
they are no longer the forces merely felt, but not
condensed into a picture, by which the inspired
rotary of Dionysus divines the proximity of his
god: the clearness and firmness of epic form now
speak to him from the scene, Dionysus now no
longer speaks through forces, but as an epic hero,
almost in the language of Homer.
Whatever rises to the surface in the dialogue of
the Apollonian part of Greek tragedy, appears
simple, transparent, beautiful. In this sense the
dialogue is a copy of the Hellene, whose nature
reveals itself in the dance, because in the dance
the greatest energy is merely potential, but betrays
itself nevertheless in flexible and vivacious move-
ments. The language of the Sophoclean heroes,
for instance, surprises us by its Apollonian pre-
cision and clearness, so that we at once imagine we
see into the innermost recesses of their being, and
marvel not a little that the way to these recesses
is so short. But if for the moment we disregard
the character of the hero which rises to the surface
and grows visible—and which at bottom is nothing
but the light-picture cast on a dark wall, that is,
appearance through and through,—if rather we
enter into the myth which projects itself in these
bright mirrorings, we shall of a sudden experience
a phenomenon which bears a reverse relation to
one familiar in optics. When, after a vigorous
effort to gaze into the sun, we turn away blinded,
## p. 73 (#113) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 73
we have dark-coloured spots before our eyes as
restoratives, so to speak; while, on the contrary,
those, lipfrr-picture ph. e,pnmpna of the Sophoclean
hero,—in short, the Apollonian of the mask,—are
the necessary productions of a glance into the
secret and terrible things of nature, as it were
shining spots. . to_ heal the eye which dire night
has seared. Only in this sense can we hope to be
able to grasp the true meaning of the serious and
significant notion of " Greek cheerfulness "; while
of course we encounter the misunderstood notion
of this cheerfulness, as resulting from a state of
unendangered comfort, on all the ways and paths
of the present time.
The most sorrowful figure of the Greek stage, the
hapless CEdipus, was understood by Sophocles as
the noble man, who in spite of his wisdom was
destined to error and misery, but nevertheless
through his extraordinary sufferings ultimately
exerted a magical, wholesome influence on all
around him, which continues effective even after
his death. The noble man does not sinj. this is
what the thoughtful poet wishes to tell us:. all
laws, all natural order, yea, the moral world itself,
may be destroyed through his action, but through
this very action a higher magic circle of influences
is brought into play, which establish a new world
on the ruins of the old that has been overthrown.
This is what the poet, in so far as he is at the
same time a religious thinker, wishes to tell us:
as poet, he shows us first of all a wonderfully
complicated legal mystery, which the judge slowly
unravels, link by link, to his own destruction,
## p. 74 (#114) #############################################
74 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
The truly Hellenic delight at this dialectical loosen.
ing is so great, that a touch of surpassing cheer-
fulness is thereby communicated to the entire
play, which everywhere blunts the edge of the
horrible presuppositions of the procedure. In the
"GEdipus at Colonus" we find the same cheerfulness,
elevated, however, to an infinite transfiguration: in
contrast to the aged king, subjected to an excess
of misery, and exposed solely as a sufferer to all
that befalls him, we have here a supermundane
cheerfulness, which descends from a divine sphere
and intimates to us that in his purely passive atti-
tude the hero attains his highest activity, the influ-
ence of which extends far beyond his life, while his
earlier conscious musing and striving led him only
to passivity. Thus, then, the legal knot of the fable
of CEdipus, which to mortal eyes appears indis-
solubly entangled, is slowly unravelled—and the
profoundest human joy comes upon us in the
presence of this divine counterpart of dialectics. If
this explanation does justice to the poet, it may
still be asked whether the substance of the myth
is thereby exhausted; and here it turns out that
the entire conception of the poet is nothing but the
light-picture which healing nature holds up to us
after a glance into the abyss. CEdipus, the murderer
of his father, the husband of his mother, CEdipus,
the interpreter of the riddle of the Sphinx! What
does the mysterious triad of these deeds of destiny
tell us? There is a primitive popular belief, especi-
ally in Persia, that a wise Magian can be born only
of incest: which we have forthwith to interpret
to ourselves with reference to the riddle-solving
## p. 75 (#115) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
75
and mother-marrying Edipus, to the effect that
when the boundary of the present and future, the
rigid law of individuation and, in general, the
intrinsic spell of nature, are broken by prophetic
and magical powers, an extraordinary counter-
naturalness—as, in this case, incest-must have
preceded as a cause; for how else could one force
nature to surrender her secrets but by victoriously
opposing her, i. e. , by means of the Unnatural? It
is this intuition which I see imprinted in the awful
triad of the destiny of Edipus: the very man who
solves the riddle of nature—that double-constituted
Sphinx—must also, as the murderer of his father
and husband of his mother, break the holiest laws
of nature. Indeed, it seems as if the myth sought
to whisper into our ears that wisdom, especially
Dionysian wisdom, is an unnatural abomination,
and that whoever, through his knowledge, plunges
nature into an abyss of annihilation, must also
experience the dissolution of nature in himself.
“The sharpness of wisdom turns round upon the
sage: wisdom is a crime against nature”: such
terrible expressions does the myth call out to us :
but the Hellenic poet touches like a sunbeam the
sublime and formidable Memnonian statue of the
myth, so that it suddenly begins to sound—in
Sophoclean melodies.
With the glory of passivity I now contrast
the glory of activity which illuminates the
Prometheus of Æschylus. That which Æschylus
the thinker had to tell us here, but which as
a poet he only allows us to surmise by his
symbolic picture, the youthful Goethe succeeded
**
## p. 76 (#116) #############################################
76
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
S
\
in disclosing to us in the daring words of his
Prometheus:—
"Hier sitz' ich, forme Menschen
Nach meinem Bilde,
Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei,
Zu leiden, zu weinen,
Zu geniessen und zu freuen sich,
Und dein nicht zu achten,
Wie ich! " *
Man, elevating himself to the rank of the Titans,
acquires his culture by his own efforts, and com-
pels the gods to unite with him, because in his
self-sufficient wisdom he has their existence and
their limits in his hand. What is most wonderful,
however, in this Promethean form, which accord-
ing to its fundamental conception is the specific
hymn of impiety, is the profound ^Eschylean
yearning {ox justice: the untold sorrow of the bold
"single-handed being" on the one hand, and the
divine need, ay, the foreboding of a twilight of the
gods, on the other, the power of these two worlds
of suffering constraining to reconciliation, to meta-
physical oneness—all this suggests most forcibly
the central and main position of the ^Eschylean
* " Here sit I, forming mankind
In my image,
A race resembling me,—
To sorrow and to weep,
To taste, to hold, to enjoy,
And not have need of thee,
As I! "
(Translation in Hseckel's History of the Evolution of Man. )
## p. 77 (#117) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. JJ
N>
view of things, which sees Moira as eternal justice
enthroned above gods and men. In view of the
astonishing boldness with which ^Eschylus places
the Olympian world on his scales of justice, it
must be remembered that the deep-minded Greek
had an immovably firm substratum of meta-
physical thought in his mysteries, and that all his
sceptical paroxysms could be discharged upon the
Olympians. With reference to these deities, the
Greek artist, in particular, had an obscure feeling
as to mutual dependency: and it is just in the
Prometheus of ^Eschylus that this feeling is sym-
bolised. The Titanic artist found in himself the
daring belief that he could create men and at least
destroy Olympian deities: namely, by his superior
wisdom, for which, to be sure, he had to atone by
eternal suffering. The splendid "can-ing" of the
great genius, bought too cheaply even at the price
of eternal suffering, the stern pride of the artist:
this is the essence and soul of ^Eschylean poetry,
while Sophocles in his Qidipus preludingly strikes
up the victory-song of the saint. But even this
interpretation which ^Eschylus has given to the
myth does not fathom its astounding depth of
terror; the fact is rather that the artist's delight
in unfolding, the cheerfulness of artistic creating
bidding defiance to all calamity, is but a shining
stellar and nebular image reflected in a black sea
of sadness. The tale of Prometheus is an original
possession of the entire Aryan family of races, and
documentary evidence of their capacity for the
profoundly tragic; indeed, it is not improbable
that this myth has the same characteristic signifi-
## p. 78 (#118) #############################################
78
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
cance for the Aryan race that the myth of the fall
of man has for the Semitic, and that there is a
relationship between the two myths like that of
brother and sister. The presupposition of the
Promethean myth is the transcendent value which
a naïve humanity attach to fire as the true palla-
dium of every ascending culture: that man, how-
ever, should dispose at will of this fire, and should
not receive it only as a gift from heaven, as the
igniting lightning or the warming solar flame,
appeared to the contemplative primordial men as
crime and robbery of the divine nature. And thus
the first philosophical problem at once causes a
painful, irreconcilable antagonism between man
and God, and puts as it were a mass of rock at
the gate of every culture. The best and highest
that men can acquire they obtain by a crime, and
must now in their turn take upon themselves its
consequences, namely the whole flood of sufferings
and sorrows with which the offended celestials
must visit the nobly aspiring race of man: a bitter
reflection, which, by the dignity it confers on crime,
contrasts strangely with the Semitic myth of the
fall of man, in which curiosity, beguilement, sedu-
cibility, wantonness,—in short, a whole series of
pre-eminently feminine passions,—were regarded as
the origin of evil. What distinguishes the Aryan
representation is the sublime view of active sin as
the properly Promethean virtue, which suggests at
the same time the ethical basis of pessimistic
tragedy as the justification of human evil of human
guilt as well as of the suffering incurred thereby.
The misery in the essence of things—which
## p. 79 (#119) #############################################
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
79
the contemplative Aryan is not disposed to explain
away—the antagonism in the heart of the world,
manifests itself to him as a medley of different
worlds, for instance, a Divine and a human world,
each of which is in the right individually, but as
a separate existence alongside of another has to
suffer for its individuation. With the heroic effort
made by the individual for universality, in his
attempt to pass beyond the bounds of individuation
and become the one universal being, he experiences
in himself the primordial contradiction concealed in
the essence of things, i. e. , he trespasses and suffers.
Accordingly crime* is understood by the Aryans to
be a man, sin t by the Semites a woman; as also,
the original crime is committed by man, the original
sin by woman. Besides, the witches' chorus says:
“ Wir nehmen das nicht so genau:
Mit tausend Schritten macht's die Frau;
Doch wie sie auch sich eilen kann
Mit einem Sprunge macht's der Mann. " I
He who understands this innermost core of the
tale of Prometheus-namely, the necessity of crime į
imposed on the titanically striving individual—will
at once be conscious of the un-Apollonian nature -
of this pessimistic representation : for Apollo seeks
to pacify individual beings precisely by drawing
* Der Frevel.
+ Die Sünde.
I We do not measure with such care :
Woman in thousand steps is there,
But howsoe'er she hasten may,
Man in one leap has cleared the way.
