No More Learning

Sils-Maria, Oberbngadin,
August 1886.


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
FROM THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC


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FOREWORD TO RICHARD
WAGNER.
In order to keep at a distance all the possible
scruples, excitements, and misunderstandings to
which the thoughts gathered in this essay will
give occasion, considering the peculiar character
of our aesthetic publicity, and to be able also to
write the introductory remarks with the same
contemplative delight, the impress of which, as
the petrifaction of good and elevating hours, it
bears on every page, I form a conception of the
moment when you, my highly honoured friend,
will receive this essay; how you, say after an
evening walk in the winter snow, will behold the
unbound Prometheus on the title-page, read my
name, and be forthwith convinced that, whatever
this essay may contain, the author has something
earnest and impressive to say, and, moreover, that
in all his meditations he communed with you as
with one present and could thus write only what
befitted your presence. You will thus remember
that it was at the same time as your magnificent
dissertation on Beethoven originated, viz. , amidst


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20 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
the horrors and sublimities of the war which had
just then broken out, that I collected myself for
these thoughts. But those persons would err, to
whom this collection suggests no more perhaps
than the antithesis of patriotic excitement and
aesthetic revelry, of gallant earnestness and
sportive delight. Upon a real perusal of this
essay, such readers will, rather to their surprise,
discover how earnest is the German problem we
have to deal with, which we properly place, as
a vortex and turning-point, in the very midst of
German hopes. Perhaps, however, this same
class of readers will be shocked at seeing an
aesthetic problem taken so seriously, especially if
they can recognise in art no more than a merry
diversion, a readily dispensable court-jester to the
"earnestness of existence ": as if no one were
aware of the real meaning of this confrontation
with the "earnestness of existence. " These
earnest ones may be informed that I am convinced
that art is the highest task and the properly
metaphysical activity of this life, as it is under-
stood by the man, to whom, as my sublime
protagonist on this path, I would now dedicate
this essay.
Basel, end of the year 1871.


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
We shall have gained much for the science of
æsthetics, when once we have perceived not only
by logical inference, but by the immediate certainty
of intuition, that the continuous development of
art is bound up with the duplexity of the Apollonian
and the Dionysian: in like manner as procreation
is dependent on the duality of the sexes, involving
perpetual conflicts with only periodically inter-
vening reconciliations. These names we borrow
from the Greeks, who disclose to the intelligent
observer the profound mysteries of their view of
art, not indeed in concepts, but in the impressively
clear figures of their world of deities. It is in
connection with Apollo and Dionysus, the two art-
deities of the Greeks, that we learn that there
existed in the Grecian world a wide antithesis, in
origin and aims, between the art of the shaper, the
Apollonian, and the non-plastic art of music, that of
Dionysus: both these so heterogeneous tendencies
run parallel to each other, for the most part openly
at variance, and continually inciting each other to
new and more powerful births, to perpetuate in


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22 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
them the strife of this antithesis, which is but
seemingly bridged over by their mutual term
"Art"; till at last, by a metaphysical miracle of
the Hellenic will, they appear paired with each
other, and through this pairing eventually generate
the equally Dionysian and Apollonian art-work
of Attic tragedy.
In order to bring these two tendencies within
closer range, let us conceive them first of all as the
\s f i separate art-worlds of dreamland and drunkenness;
between which physiological phenomena a con-
trast may be observed analogous to that existing
between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. In
dreams, according to the conception of Lucretius,
the glorious divine figures first appeared to the
souls of men, in dreams the great shaper beheld the
charming corporeal structure of superhuman beings,
and the Hellenic poet, if consulted on the mysteries
of poetic inspiration, would likewise have suggested
dreams and would haveofferedan explanation resem-
bling that of Hans Sachs in the Meistersingers :—
Mein Freund, das grad' ist Dichters Werk,
dass er sein Traumen deut' und merk'.
Glaubt mir, des Menschen wahrster VVahn
wird ihm im Traume aufgethan:
all' Dichtkunst und Poeterei
ist nichts als Wahrtraum-Deuterei. *
* My friend, just this is poet's task:
His dreams to read and to unmask.
Trust me, illusion's truths thrice sealed
In dream to man will be revealed.
All verse-craft and poetisation
Is but soothdream interpretation.

~


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
23
The beauteous appearance of the dream-worlds, 2
in the production of which every man is a perfect
artist, is the presupposition of all plastic art, and
in fact, as we shall see, of an important half of 2
poetry also. We take delight in the immediate
apprehension of form; all forms speak to us; there
is nothing indifferent, nothing superfluous. But,
together with the highest life of this dream-reality
we also have, glimmering through it, the sensation
of its appearance: such at least is my experience,
as to the frequency, ay, normality of which I
could adduce many proofs, as also the sayings of
the poets. Indeed, the man of philosophic turn
has a foreboding that underneath this reality in
which we live and have our being, another and
altogether different reality lies concealed, and that
therefore it is also an appearance; and Schopen-
hauer actually designates the gift of occasionally
regarding men and things as mere phantoms and
dream-pictures as the criterion of philosophical
ability. Accordingly, the man susceptible to art
stands in the same relation to the reality of dreams
as the philosopher to the reality of existence; he
is a close and willing observer, for from these
pictures he reads the meaning of life, and by these
processes he trains himself for life. And it is
perhaps not only the agreeable and friendly
pictures that he realises in himself with such
perfect understanding: the earnest, the troubled,
the dreary, the gloomy, the sudden checks, the
tricks of fortune, the uneasy presentiments, in
short, the whole “ Divine Comedy" of life, and
the Inferno, also pass before him, not merely like


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24
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
pictures on the wall—for he too lives and suffers
in these scenes,—and yet not without that fleeting
sensation of appearance. And perhaps many a
one will, like myself, recollect having sometimes
called out cheeringly and not without success
amid the dangers and terrors of dream-life: “It
is a dream! I will dream on! ” I have likewise
been told of persons capable of continuing the
causality of one and the same dream for three and
even more successive nights : all of which facts
clearly testify that our innermost being, the
common substratum of all of us, experiences our
dreams with deep joy and cheerful acquiescence.
This cheerful acquiescence in the dream-
experience has likewise been embodied by the
Greeks in their Apollo: for Apollo, as the god of
all shaping energies, is also the soothsaying god.
He, who (as the etymology of the name indicates)
is the “shining one,” the deity of light, also rules
over the fair appearance of the inner world of
fantasies. The higher truth, the perfection of
these states in contrast to the only partially
intelligible everyday world, ay, the deep con-
sciousness of nature, healing and helping in sleep
and dream, is at the same time the symbolical
analogue of the faculty of soothsaying and, in
general, of the arts, through which life is made
possible and worth living. But also that delicate
line, which the dream-picture must not overstep
-lest it act pathologically in which case appear-
ance, being reality pure and simple, would impose
upon us)-must not be wanting in the picture of
Apollo: that measured limitation, that freedom



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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
25
from the wilder emotions that philosophical
calmness of the sculptor-god. His eye must be
“sunlike,” according to his origin ; even when it
is angry and looks displeased, the sacredness of
his beauteous appearance is still there. And so
we might apply to Apollo, in an eccentric sense,
what Schopenhauer says of the man wrapt in
the veil of Mâya *: Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,
1. p. 416: “ Just as in a stormy sea, unbounded
in every direction, rising and falling with howling
mountainous waves, a sailor sits in a boat and
trusts in his frail barque : so in the midst of a
world of sorrows the individual sits quietly sup-
ported by and trusting in his principium individu- Ac
ationis. ". Indeed, we might say of Apollo, that
in him the unshaken faith in this principium and
the quiet sitting of the man wrapt therein have
received their sublimest expression; and we might
even designate Apollo as the glorious divine image
of the principium individuationis, from out of
the gestures and looks of which all the joy and
wisdom of “appearance,” together with its beauty,
speak to us.
In the same work Schopenhauer has described
to us the stupendous awe which seizes upon man,
when of a sudden he is at a loss to account for
the cognitive forms of a phenomenon, in that the
principle of reason, in some one of its manifesta-
tions, seems to admit of an exception. Add to
this awe the blissful ecstasy which rises from the

* Cf. World and Will as Idea, 1. 455 ff. , trans. by Haldane
and Kemp.


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26
THE PIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
innermost depths of man, ay, of nature, at this
same collapse of the principium individuationis,
and we shall gain an insight into the being of the
Dionysian, which is brought within closest ken
perhaps by the analogy of drunkenness. It is
either under the influence of the narcotic draught,
of which the hymns of all primitive men and
peoples tell us, or by the powerful approach of
spring penetrating all nature with joy, that those
Dionysian emotions awake, in the augmentation
of which the subjective vanishes to complete self-
forgetfulness. So also in the German Middle
Ages singing and dancing crowds, ever increasing
in number, were borne from place to place under
this same Dionysian power. In these St. John's
and St. Vitus's dancers we again perceive the
Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their previous
history in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon
and the orgiastic Sacæa. There are some, who,
from lack of experience or obtuseness, will turn
away from such phenomena as “ folk-diseases”
with a smile of contempt or pity prompted by the
consciousness of their own health : of course, the
poor wretches do not divine what a cadaverous-
looking and ghastly aspect this very “health "
of theirs presents when the glowing life of the
Dionysian revellers rushes past them.
Under the charm of the Dionysian not only
is the covenant between man and man again
established, but also estranged, hostile or sub-
jugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation
with her lost son, man. Of her own accord earth
proffers her gifts, and peacefully the beasts of



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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
27
i
prey approach from the desert and the rocks.
The chariot of Dionysus is bedecked with flowers
and garlands: panthers and tigers pass beneath
his yoke. Change Beethoven's “jubilee-song":
into a painting, and, if your imagination be equal
to the occasion when the awestruck millions sink
into the dust, you will then be able to approach
the Dionysian. Now is the slave a free man,
now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which neces-
sity, caprice, or “shameless fashion” has set up
between man and man, are broken down. Now,
at the evangel of cosmic harmony, each one feels
himself not only united, reconciled, blended with
his neighbour, but as one with him, as if the veil
of Mâyâ had been torn and were now merely
fluttering in tatters before the mysterious
Primordial Unity. In song and in dance man
exhibits himself as a member of a higher com-
munity: he has forgotten how to walk and speak,
and is on the point of taking a dancing Alight
into the air. His gestures bespeak enchantment.
Even as the animals now talk, and as the earth
yields milk and honey, so also something super-
natural sounds forth from him : he feels himself
a god, he himself now walks about enchanted
and elated even as the gods whom he saw
walking about in his dreams. Man is no longer
an artist, he has become a work of art: the
artistic power of all nature here reveals itself
in the tremors of drunkenness to the highest
gratification of the Primordial Unity. The
noblest clay, the costliest marble, namely man,
is here kneaded and cut, and the chisel strokes of



!



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28
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
the Dionysian world-artist are accompanied with
the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries : “ Ihr stürzt
nieder, Millionen ? Ahnest du den Schöpfer,
Welt ? " *
-
2.
Thus far we have considered the Apollonian and
his antithesis, the Dionysian, as artistic powers,
which burst forth from nature herself, without the
mediation of the human artist, and in which her,
art-impulses are satisfied in the most immediate
and direct way: first, as the pictorial world of
dreams, the perfection of which has no connection
whatever with the intellectual height or artistic
culture of the unit man, and again, as drunken
reality, which likewise does not heed the unit
man, but even seeks to destroy the individual
and redeem him by a mystic feeling of Oneness.
Anent these immediate art-states of nature every
artist is either an “imitator," to wit, either an
Apolloniant an artist in dreams, or a Dionysian, an
artist in ecstasies, or finally—as for instance in
Greek tragedy—an artist in both dreams and
ecstasies : so we may perhaps picture him, as in
his Dionysian drunkenness and mystical self-mimet
abnegation, lonesome and apart from the revelling
choruses, he sinks down, and how now, through
Apollonian dream-inspiration, his own state, i. e. ,

* Ye bow in the dust, oh millions ?
Thy maker, mortal, dost divine ?
Cf. Schiller's "Hymn to Joy"; and Beethoven, Ninth
Symphony. -TR.


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 29
his oneness with the primal source of the universe, \
reveals itself to him in a symbolical dream-picture^
After these general premisings and contrastings,
let us now approach the Greeks in order to learn
in what degree and to what height these art-
impulses of nature were developed in them:
whereby we shall be enabled to understand and
appreciate more deeply the relation of the Greek
artist to his archetypes, or, according to the
Aristotelian expression, " the imitation of nature. "
In spite of all the dream-literature and the]
numerous dream-anecdotes of the Greeks, we can
speak only conjecturally, though with a fair degree j
of certainty, of their dreams. Considering the
incredibly precise and unerring plastic power of
their eyes, as also their manifest and sincere
delight in colours, we can hardly refrain (to the
shame of every one born later) from assuming for
their very dreams a logical causality of lines and
contours, colours and groups, a sequence of scenes
resembling their best reliefs, the perfection of
which would certainly justify us, if a comparison-1
were possible, in designating the dreaming Greeks
as Homers and Homer as a dreaming Greek: in
a deeper sense than when modern man, in respect
to his dreams, ventures to compare himself with
Shakespeare.
On the other hand, we should not have to
speak conjecturally, if asked to disclose the im-
mense gap which separated the Dionysian Greek
from the Dionysian barbarian. From all quarters
of the Ancient World—to say nothing of the
modern—from Rome as far as Babylon, we can
;t j


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30 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
prove the existence of Dionysian festivals, the
type of which bears, at best, the same relation to
the Greek festivals as the bearded satyr, who
borrowed his name and attributes from the goat,
does to Dionysus himself. In nearly every
instance the centre of these festivals lay in extra-
vagant sexual licentiousness, the waves of which
overwhelmed all family lite and its'Terierable
traditions; the very wildest beasts of nature were
let loose here, including that detestable mixture
of lust and cruelty which has always seemed to
me the genuine "witches' draught. " For some
time, however, it would seem that the Greeks
were perfectly secure and guarded against the
feverish agitations of these festivals (—the know-
ledge of which entered Greece by all the channels
of land and sea) by the figure of Apollo himself
rising here in full pride, who could not have held
out the Gorgon's head to a more dangerous power
than this grotesquely uncouth Dionysian. It is
in Doric art that this majestically-rejecting atti-
tude of Apollo perpetuated itself. This opposition
became more precarious and even impossible,
when, from out of the deepest root of the Hellenic
nature, similar impulses finally broke forth and
made way for themselves: the Delphic god, by a
seasonably effected reconciliation, was now con-
tented with taking the destructive arms from the
hands of his powerful antagonist. This reconcilia-
tion marks the most important moment in the
history of the Greek cult: wherever we turn our
eyes we may observe the revolutions resulting from
this event. It was the reconiiliation of two anta-


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THE BIRT
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
OF
RAGE
31
gonists, with the sharp demarcation of the
boundary-lines to be thenceforth observed by
each, and with periodical transmission of testi-
monials ;-in reality, the chasm was not bridged
over. But if we observe how, under the pressure
of this conclusion of peace, the Dionysian power
manifested itself, we shall now recognise in the
Dionysian orgies of the Greeks, as compared with
the Babylonian Sacæa and their retrogression of
man to the tiger and the ape, the significance of
festivals of world-redemption and days of trans-
figuration. Not till then does nature attain her
artistic jubilee; not till then does the rupture of
the principium individuationis become an artistic
phenomenon. That horrible “witches' draught "
of sensuality and cruelty was here powerless: only
the curious blending and duality in the emotions
of the Dionysian revellers reminds one of it just
as medicines remind one of deadly poisons,--that
phenomenon, to wit, that pains beget joy, that
jubilation wrings painful sounds out of the breast.
From the highest joy sounds the cry of horror or
the yearning wail over an irretrievable loss. In
these Greek festivals a sentimental trait, as it were,
breaks forth from nature, as if she must sigh
over her dismemberment into individuals. The
song and pantomime of such dually-minded revel-
lers was something new and unheard-of in the
Homeric-Grecian world : and the Dionysian music
in particular excited awe and horror. If music,
as it would seem, was previously known as an
Apollonian art, it was, strictly speaking, only as
the wave-beat of rhythm, the formative power of 1



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32 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.

which was developed to the representation of Apol-
lonian conditions. The music of Apollo was
Doric architectonics in tones, but in merely
suggested tones, such as those of the cithara.
The very element which forms the essence of
Dionysian music (and hence of music in general)
is carefully excluded as un-Apollonian; namely,
the thrilling power of the fane, thejiniform stream
of the irielos^ and the thoroughly incomparable
world_of harmony. In the Dionysian dithyramb
man is incited to the highest exaltation of all
his symbolic faculties; something never before
experienced struggles for utterance—the annihila-
tion of the veil of Maya. . Oneness as genius of the
. race, ay. of nature. The essence of nature is now
to be expressed symbolically; a peat ""irlfl ftf
symbols, is required; for once the entire symbolism
oiUhe body,-not only the symbolism of the lips,
face, and speech, but the whole pantomime of
dancing which sets all the members into rhyth-
mical motion. Thereupon the other symbolic
powers, those of music, in rhythmics, dynamics,
and harmony, suddenly become impetuous. To
Ccomprehend this collective discharge of all the
symbolic powers, a man must have already attained
that height of self-abnegation, which wills to
express itself symbolically through these powers:
the Dithyrambic votary of Dionysus is therefore
understood only by those like himself! With
what astonishment must the Apollonian Greek
have beheld him! With an astonishment, which
was all the greater the more it was mingled with
the shuddering suspicion that all this was in


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
33
reality not so very foreign to him, yea, that, like
unto a veil, his Apollonian consciousness only hid
this Dionysian world from his view.
3.
In order to comprehend this, we must take
down the artistic structure of the Apollonian
culture, as it were, stone by stone, till we behold
the foundations on which it rests. Here we
observe first of all the glorious Olympian figures of
the gods, standing on the gables of this structure,
whose deeds, represented in far-shining reliefs,
adorn its friezes. Though Apollo stands among
them as an individual deity, side by side with
others, and without claim to priority of rank, we
must not suffer this fact to mislead us. The
same impulse which embodied itself in Apollo has,
in general, given birth to this whole Olympian
world, and in this sense we may regard Apollo as/
the father thereof. What was the enormous need
from which proceeded such an illustrious group of
Olympian beings ?
Whosoever, with another religion in his heart,
approaches these Qlympians and seeks among
them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for
incorporeal spiritualisation, for sympathetic looks
of love, will soon be obliged to turn his back
on them, discouraged and disappointed. Here
nothing suggests asceticism, spirituality, or duty:
here only an exuberant, even triumphant life
speaks to use in which everything existing is
deified, whether good or bad. And so the


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34
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
-
-
-
-
spectator will perhaps stand quite bewildered
before this fantastic exuberance of life, and ask
himself what magic potion these madly merry
men could have used for enjoying life, so that,
wherever they turned their eyes, Helena, the ideal
image of their own existence “floating in sweet
sensuality," smiled upon them. But to this
spectator, already turning backwards, we must
call out: “depart not hence, but hear rather what
Greek folk-wisdom says of this same life, which
with such inexplicable cheerfulness spreads out
before thee. There is an ancient story that king
Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the
wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without
capturing him. When at last he fell into his
hands, the king asked what was best of all and
most desirable for man. Fixed and immovable,
the demon remained silent; till at last, forced by
the king, he broke out with shrill laughter into
these words: “Oh, wretched race of a day,
children of chance and misery, why do ye compel
me to say to you what it were most expedient for
you not to hear? What is best of all is for ever
beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to
be nothing. The second best for you, however,
is soon to die. ". .
How is the Olympian world of deities related
to this folk-wisdom? Even as the rapturous
vision of the tortured martyr to his sufferings.
Now the Olympian magic mountain opens, as
it were, to our view and shows to us its roots.
The Greek knew and felt the terrors and horrors
of existence: to be able to live at all, he had to


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
35
interpose the shining dream-birth of the Olympian
world between himself and them. The excessive
distrust of the titanic powers of nature, the Moira
throning inexorably over' all knowledge, the
vulture of the great philanthropist Prometheus,
the terrible fate of the wise Edipus, the family
curse of the Atridæ which drove Orestes to
matricide; in short, that entire philosophy of the
sylvan god, with its mythical exemplars, which
wrought the ruin of the melancholy Etruscans—
was again and again surmounted anew by the
Greeks through the artistic middle world of the
Olympians, or at least veiled and withdrawn from
sight. To be able to live, the Greeks had, from
direst necessity, to create these gods: which
process we may perhaps picture to ourselves in
this manner: that out of the original Titan
thearchy of terror the Olympian thearchy of joy
was evolved, by slow transitions, through the
Apollonian impulse to beauty, even as roses break
forth from thorny bushes. How else could this
so sensitive people, so vehement in its desires, so
singularly qualified for suffering, have endured
existence, if it had not been exhibited to them
in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory?
The same impulse which calls art into being, as
the complement and consummation of existence,
seducing to a continuation of life, caused also the
Olympian world to arise, in which the Hellenic
"will" held up before itself a transfiguring mirror.
Thus do the gods justify the life of man, in that
they themselves live it—the only satisfactory
Theodicy! Existence under the bright sunshine




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36
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
of such gods is regarded as that which is desirable
in itself, and the real grief of the Homeric men
has reference to parting from it, especially to
early parting: so that we might now say of them,
with a reversion of the Silenian wisdom, that " to
die early is worst of all for them, the second
worst is—some day to die at all. ” If once the
lamentation is heard, it will ring out again, of the
short-lived Achilles, of the leaf-like change and
vicissitude of the human race, of the decay of the
heroic age. It is not unworthy of the greatest
hero to long for a continuation of life, ay, even as
a day-labourer. So vehemently does the “will,”
at the Apollonian stage of development, long for
this existence, so completely at one does the
Homeric man feel himself with it, that the very
lamentation becomes its song of praise.
Here we must observe that this harmony which
is so eagerly contemplated by modern man, in
fact, this oneness of man with nature, to express
which Schiller introduced the technical term
“ naïve," is by no means such a simple, naturally
resulting and, as it were, inevitable condition,
which must be found at the gate of every culture
leading to a paradise of man: this could be
believed only by an age which sought to picture
to itself Rousseau's Emile also as an artist, and
imagined it had found in Homer such an artist
Émile, reared at Nature's bosom. Wherever we
meet with the "naïve" in art, it behoves us to
recognise the highest effect of the Apollonian
culture, which in the first place has always to over-
throw some Titanic empire and slay monsters, and



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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
37
which, through powerful dazzling representations
and pleasurable illusions, must have triumphed
over a terrible depth of world-contemplation and
La most keen susceptibility to suffering. But how
seldom is the naïve—that complete absorption in
the beauty of appearance-attained ! And hence
how inexpressibly sublime is Homer, who, as unit
being, bears the same relation to this Apollonian
folk-culture as the unit dream-artist does to the
dream-faculty of the people and of Nature in
general. The Homeric "naïveté” can be com-
prehended only as the complete triumph of the
Apollonian illusion: it is the same kind of
illusion as Nature so frequently employs to
compass her ends. The true goal is veiled by a
phantasm : we stretch out our hands for the latter,
while Nature attains the former through our
illusion. In the Greeks the “will” desired to
contemplate itself in the transfiguration of the
genius and the world of art; in order to glorify
themselves, its creatures had to feel themselves
worthy of glory; they had to behold themselves
again in a higher sphere, without this consummate
world of contemplation acting as an imperative or
reproach. Such is the sphere of beauty, in which,
as in a mirror, they saw their images, the
Olympians. With this mirroring of beauty the
Hellenic will combated its talent-correlative to
the artistic—for suffering and for the wisdom of
suffering: and, as a monument of its victory,
Homer, the naïve artist, stands before us.






## p. 38 (#78) ##############################################

38
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
Drir
4.
Concerning this naïve artist the analogy of
dreams will enlighten us to some extent. When
we realise to ourselves the dreamer, as, in the
midst of the illusion of the dream-world and with-
out disturbing it, he calls out to himself: “it is a
dream, I will dream on”; when we must thence
infer a deep inner joy in dream-contemplation ;
when, on the other hand, to be at all able to dream
with this inner joy in contemplation, we must have
completely forgotten the day and its terrible ob-
trusiveness, we may, under the direction of the
dream-reading Apollo, interpret all these phe-
nomena to ourselves somewhat as follows. Though
it is certain that of the two halves of life, the
waking and the dreaming, the former appeals to
us as by far the more preferred, important, ex-
cellent and worthy of being lived, indeed, as that
which alone is lived : yet, with reference to that
mysterious ground of our being of which we are
the phenomenon, I should, paradoxical as it may
seem, be inclined to maintain the very opposite
estimate of the value of dream life. For the more
clearly I perceive in nature. those_all-powerful
art impulses, and in them a fervent longing for
appearance, for redemption through appearance,
the more I feel myself driven to the metaphysical
assumption that the Verily-Existent and Prim-
ordial Unity, as the Eternally Suffering and Self-
. Contradictory, requires the rapturous vision, the
joyful appearance, for its continuous salvation :
which appearance we, who are completely wrapt


## p. 39 (#79) ##############################################

THE 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.



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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


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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


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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


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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


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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.