No More Learning

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


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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


## 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



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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-



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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.
Faust, trans. of Bayard Taylor. —TR.



## p. 80 (#120) #############################################

80 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
/
boundary-lines between them, and by again and
again calling attention thereto, with his require-
ments of self-knowledge and due proportion, as the
holiest laws of the universe. In order, however, to
prevent the form from congealing to Egyptian
rigidity and coldness in consequence of this
Apollonian tendency, in order to prevent the
extinction of the motion of the entire lake in the
effort to prescribe to the individual wave its path and
compass, the high tide of the Dionysian tendency
destroyed from time to time all the little circles in
which the one-sided Apollonian "will" sought to
confine the Hellenic world. The suddenly swelling
tide of the Dionysian then takes the separate little
wave-mountains of individuals on its back, just as
the brother of Prometheus, the Titan Atlas, does
with the earth. This Titanic impulse, to become as
it were the Atlas of all individuals, and to carry them
on broad shoulders higher and higher, farther and
farther, is what the Promethean and the Dionysian
have in common. In this respect the ^Eschylean
Prometheus is a Dionysian mask, while, in the afore-
mentioned profound yearning for justice, ^Eschylus
betrays to the intelligent observer his paternal
descent from Apollo, the god of individuation and
of the boundaries of justice. And so the double-
being of the ^Eschylean Prometheus, his conjoint
Dionysian and Apollonian nature,might be thus ex-
pressed in an abstract formula: " Whatever exists is
alike just and unjust, and equally justified in both. "
Das ist deine Welt! Das heisst eine Welt! *
* This is thy world, and what a world! —Faust.


## p. 81 (#121) #############################################

THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
81
IO.
SHORAIRES DE RESTAURANT
It is an indisputable tradition that Greek
tragedy in its earliest form had for its theme only L-
the sufferings of Dionysus, and that for some
time the only stage-hero therein was simply
Dionysus himself. With the same confidence,
however, we can maintain that not until Euripides
did Dionysus cease to be the tragic hero, and
that in fact all the celebrated figures of the Greek
stage—Prometheus, Edipus, etc. —are but masks
of this original hero, Dionysus. The presence of
a god behind all these masks is the one essential
cause of the typical “ideality," so oft exciting
wonder, of these celebrated figures. Some one,
I know not whom, has maintained that all
individuals are comic as individuals and are
consequently un-tragic: from whence it might be
inferred that the Greeks in general could not
endure individuals on the tragic stage. And
they really seem to have had these sentiments :
as, in general, it is to be observed that the
Platonic discrimination and valuation of the
“idea” in contrast to the “eidolon," the image, is
deeply rooted in the Hellenic being. Availing
ourselves of Plato's terminology, however, we
should have to speak of the tragic figures of the
Hellenic stage somewhat as follows. The one
truly real Dionysus appears in a multiplicity of
forms, in the mask of a fighting hero and entangled,
as it were, in the net of an individual will. As
the visibly appearing god now talks and acts,
he resembles an erring, striving, suffering in-



## p. 82 (#122) #############################################

/
82 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
7
dividual: and that, in general, he appears with
such epic precision and clearness, is due to the
dream-reading Apollo, who reads to the chorus
its Dionysian state through this symbolic appear-
ance. In reality, however, this hero is the
suffering Dionysus of the mysteries, a god
experiencing in himself the sufferings of individu-
ation, of whom wonderful myths tell that as a
boy he was dismembered by the Titans and has
been worshipped in this state as Zagreus : * where-
by is intimated that this dismemberment, the
properly Dionysian suffering, is like a transforma-
tion into air, water, earth, and fire, thaLwsjnust
therefore regard the state of individuation as the
source and primal^ cause of. all sufferirigTas some-
thing obiectionable in itself. From lhfi. ^mile of
this Dionysus sprang the Olympian gods, from
his tears sprang man. In his existence as a
dismembered god, Dionysus has the dual nature
of a cruel barbarised demon, and a mild pacific
ruler. But the hope of the epopts looked for a
new birth of Dionysus, which we have now to
conceive of in anticipation as the end of individua-
tion: it was for this coming third Dionysus that
the stormy jubilation-hymns of the epopts re-
sounded. And it is only this hope that sheds
a ray of joy upon the features of a world torn
asunder and shattered into individuals: as is
symbolised in the myth by Demeter sunk in
eternal sadness, who rejoices again only when told
* See article by Mr. Arthur Symons in The Academy, 30th
August 1902.
^


## p. 83 (#123) #############################################

THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
83
that she may once more give birth to Dionysus,
In the views of things here given we already have
all the elements of a profound and pessimistic
contemplation of the world, and along with these
we have the mystery doctrine of tragedy: the
fundamental knowledge of the oneness of all
existing things, the consideration of individuation
as the primal cause of evil, and art as the joyous
hope that the spell of individuation may be
broken, as the augury of a restored oneness.
It has already been intimated that the Homeric
epos is the poem of Olympian culture, wherewith
this culture has sung its own song of triumph
over the terrors of the war of the Titans. Under
the predominating influence of tragic poetry, these
Homeric myths are now reproduced anew, and
show by this metempsychosis that meantime the
Olympian culture also has been vanquished by a
still deeper view of things. The haughty Titan Pro-
metheus has announced to his Olympian tormentor
that the extremest danger will one day menace
his rule, unless he ally with him betimes. In
Æschylus we perceive the terrified Zeus, appre-
hensive of his end, in alliance with the Titan.
Thus, the former age of the Titans is subsequently
brought from Tartarus once more to the light of
day. The philosophy of wild and naked nature
beholds with the undissembled mien of truth the
myths of the Homeric world as they dance past:
they turn pale, they tremble before the lightning
glance of this goddess—till the powerful fist * of

* Die mächtige Faust. -Cf. Faust, Chorus of Spirits. —TR.


## p. 83 (#124) #############################################

EIS E TRAEDT
Tires Inter he stjears wit
se
a ns is due to the
O S smisaris to the chorus
言 ​會
​三 ​mbolic appear-
ne si this hero is the
suisse James : mysteries, a god
um starings of individu-
E s e dos tel that as a
E S T : Ilans and has
S
U S :* where
= T I isasniement, the
EST S
i ka transforma-
JE GEESI that we must
Si tion as the
as some



## p. 83 (#125) #############################################

THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
that she may once more give birth to Dionysus,
In the views of things here given we already have
all the elements of a profound and pessimistic
contemplation of the world, and along with these
we have the mystery doctrine of tragedy: the
fundamental knowledge of the oneness of all
existing things, the consideration of individuation
as the primal cause of evil, and art as the joyous
hope that the spell of individuation may be
broken, as the augury of a restored oneness.
It has already been intimated that the Homeric
epos is the poem of Olympian culture, wherewith
this culture has sung its own song of triumph
over the terrors of the war of the Titans. Under
dominating influence of tragic poetry, these
myths are now reproduced anew, and
this metempsychosis that meantime the
culture also has been vanquished by a
view of things. The haughty Titan Pro-
announced to his Olympian tormentor
mest danger will one day menace
he ally with him betimes. In
erceive the terrified Zeus, appre-
nd, in alliance with the Titan.
hra nf the Titans is subsequently
more to the light of
d and naked nature
d mien of truth the
as they dance past:
efore the lightning
e powerful fist * of

horus of Spirits. -TR.


## p. 84 (#126) #############################################

84
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
the Dionysian artist forces them into the service
of the new deity. Dionysian truth takes over
the entire domain of myth as symbolism of its
knowledge, which it makes known partly in
the public cult of tragedy and partly in the
secret celebration of the dramatic mysteries,
always, however, in the old mythical garb. What
was the power, which freed Prometheus from his
vultures and transformed the myth into a vehicle
of Dionysian wisdom? It is the Heracleian
power of music: which, having reached its highest
manifestness in tragedy, can invest myths with a
new and most profound significance, which we
have already had occasion to characterise as the
most powerful faculty of music. For it is the
fate of every myth to insinuate itself into the
narrow limits of some alleged historical reality,
and to be treated by some later generation as
a solitary fact with historical claims: and the
Greeks were already fairly on the way to restamp
the whole of their mythical juvenile dream
sagaciously and arbitrarily into a historico-prag-
matical juvenile history. For this is the manner
in which religions are wont to die out: when of
course under the stern, intelligent eyes of an
orthodox dogmatism, the mythical presuppositions
of a religion are systematised as a completed sum
of historical events, and when one begins appre-
hensively to defend the credibility of the myth,
while at the same time opposing all continuation
of their natural vitality and luxuriance; when,
accordingly, the feeling for myth dies out, and its
place is taken by the claim of religion to historical
---
--


## p. 85 (#127) #############################################

THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 85
foundations. This dying myth was now seized
by the new-born genius of Dionysian music, in
whose hands it bloomed once more, with such
colours as it had never yet displayed, with
a fragrance that awakened a longing anticipa-
tion of a metaphysical world. After this final
effulgence it collapses, its leaves wither, and soon
the scoffing Lucians of antiquity catch at the
discoloured and faded flowers which the winds
carry off in every direction. Through tragedy the 1
myth attains its profoundest significance, its most
expressive form; it rises once more like a
wounded hero, and the whole surplus of vitality,
together with the philosophical calmness of the
Dying, burns in its eyes with a last powerful gleam.
What meantest thou, oh impious Euripides, in
seeking once more to enthral this dying one? It
died under thy ruthless hands: and then thou
madest use of counterfeit, masked myth, which
like the ape of Heracles could only trick itself
out in the old finery. And as myth died in thy
hands, so also died the genius of music; though
thou couldst covetously plunder all the gardens
of music—thou didst only realise a counterfeit,
masked music. And because thou hast forsaken
Dionysus, Apollo hath also forsaken thee; rout up
all the passions from their haunts and conjure
them into thy sphere, sharpen and polish a
sophistical dialectics for the speeches of thy
heroes — thy very heroes have only counterfeit,
masked passions, and speak only counterfeit,
masked music.


## p. 86 (#128) #############################################

86
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
11.
Greek tragedy had a fate different from that
of all her older sister arts: she died by suicide,
in consequence of an irreconcilable conflict ;
accordingly she died tragically, while they all
passed away very calmly and beautifully in ripe old
age. For if it be in accordance with a happy state
of things to depart this life without a struggle,
leaving behind a fair posterity, the closing period
of these older arts exhibits such a happy state of
things: slowly they sink out of sight, and before
their dying eyes already stand their fairer pro-
geny, who impatiently lift up their heads with
courageous mien. The death of Greek tragedy,
on the other hand, left an immense void, deeply
felt everywhere. Even as certain Greek sailors
in the time of Tiberius once heard upon a lone-
some island the thrilling cry, "great Pan is
dead”: so now as it were sorrowful wailing
sounded through the Hellenic world : “ Tragedy
is dead! Poetry itself has perished with her!
Begone, begone, ye stunted, emaciated epigones !
Begone to Hades, that ye may for once eat your
fill of the crumbs of your former masters ! ”
But when after all a new Art blossomed forth
which revered tragedy as her ancestress and
mistress, it was observed with horror that she did
indeed bear the features of her mother, but those
very features the latter had exhibited in her long
death-struggle. It was Euripides who fought this
death-struggle of tragedy; the later art is known
as the New Attic Comedy. In it the degenerate




## p. 87 (#129) #############################################

THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 87
form of tragedy lived on as a monument of the
most painful and violent death of tragedy proper.
This connection between the two serves to
explain the passionate attachment to Euripides
evinced by the poets of the New Comedy, and
hence we are no longer surprised at the wish of
Philemon, who would have got himself hanged at
once, with the sole design of being able to visit
Euripides in the lower regions: if only he could
be assured generally that the deceased still had
his wits. But if we desire, as briefly as possible,
and without professing to say aught exhaustive on
the subject, to characterise what Euripides has in
common with Menander and Philemon, and what
appealed to them so strongly as worthy of imita-
tion: it will suffice to say that the_ spectator <
was brought upon the stage by Euripides. He
who has perceived- the material of which the
Promethean tragic writers prior to Euripides
formed their heroes, and how remote from their
jmrpose it was to bring the true mask of j l^
reality on the stage, will also know what to make
of the wholly divergent tendency of Euripides.
Through him the commonplace individual forced
his way Trom~ the spectators' benches to the stage
itself; the mirror in which formerly only great
and bold traits found expression now showed the
painful exactness that conscientiously reproduces
even the abortive lines of nature. Odysseus, the
typical Hellene of the Old Art, sank, in the hands
of the new poets, to the figure of the Graeculus,
who, as the good-naturedly cunning domestic
slave, stands henceforth in the centre of dramatic


## p. 88 (#130) #############################################

88 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
interest. What Euripides takes credit for in the
Aristophanean "Frogs," namely, that by his
household remedies he freed tragic art from its
pompous corpulency, is apparent above all in his
tragic heroes. The spectator now virtually saw
and heard his double on the Euripidean stage, and
rejoiced that he could talk so well. But this joy
was not all: one even learned of Euripides how
to speak: he prides himself upon this in his
contest with ^Eschylus: how the people have
learned from him how to observe, debate, and
draw conclusions according to the rules of art and
with the cleverest sophistications. In general it
may be said that through this revolution of the
popular language he made the New Comedy
possible. For it was henceforth no longer a
secret, how—and with what saws—the common-
place could represent and express itself on the
stage. Civic mediocrity, on which Euripides
built all his political hopes, was now suffered to
speak, while heretofore the demigod in tragedy
and the drunken satyr, or demiman, in comedy,
had determined the character of the language.
And so the Aristophanean Euripides prides him-
self on having portrayed the common, familiar,
everyday life and dealings of the people, concern-
ing which all are qualified to pass judgment. If
now the entire populace philosophises, manages
land and goods with unheard-of circumspection,
and conducts law-suits, he takes all the credit to
himself, and glories in the splendid results of the
wisdom with which he inoculated the rabble.
It was to a populace prepared and enlightened


## p. 89 (#131) #############################################

THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
in this manner that the New Comedy could now
address itself, of which Euripides had become as
it were the chorus-master; only that in this case
the chorus of spectators had to be trained. As
soon as this chorus was trained to sing in the
Euripidean key, there arose that chesslike variety
of the drama, the New Comedy, with its perpetual
triumphs of cunning and artfulness. But Eurip-
ides — the chorus-master — was praised inces-
santly: indeed, people would have killed them-
selves in order to learn yet more from him, had
they not known that tragic poets were quite as
dead as tragedy. But with it the Hellene had
surrendered the belief in his immortality; not only
the belief in an ideal past, but also the belief in an
ideal future. The saying taken from the well-
known epitaph, “as an old man, frivolous and
capricious," applies also to aged Hellenism. The
passing moment, wit, levity, and caprice, are its
highest deities; the fifth class, that of the slaves,
now attains to power, at least in sentiment: and if
we can still speak at all of “ Greek cheerfulness," it
is the cheerfulness of the slave who has nothing of
consequence to answer for, nothing great to strive
for, and cannot value anything of the past or future
higher than the present. It was this semblance of
“Greek cheerfulness” which so revolted the deep-
minded and formidable natures of the first four
centuries of Christianity: this womanish Alight
from earnestness and terror, this cowardly con.
tentedness with easy pleasure, was not only con-
temptible to them, but seemed to be a specifically
anti-Christian sentiment. And we must ascribe


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90 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
it to its influence that the conception of Greek
antiquity, which lived on for centuries, preserved
with almost enduring persistency that peculiar
hectic colour of cheerfulness—as if there had never
been a Sixth Century with its birth of tragedy, its
Mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heraclitus, indeed
as if the art-works of that great period did not at
all exist, which in fact—each by itself—can in no
wise be explained as having sprung from the soil
of such a decrepit and slavish love of existence
and cheerfulness, and point to an altogether differ-
ent conception of things as their source.
The assertion made a moment ago, that Eurip-
ides introduced the spectator on the stage to
qualify him the better to pass judgment on the
drama^will make It appear as if the old tragic art
was always in a false relation to the spectator:
and one would be tempted to extol the radical
tendency of Euripides to bring about an adequate
relation between art-work and public as an advance
on Sophocles. But, as things are, "public" is
merely a word, and not at all a homogeneous and
constant quantity. Why should the artist be under
obligations to accommodate himself to a power
whose strength is merely in numbers? And if by
virtue of his endowments and aspirations he feels
himself superior to every one of these spectators,
how could he feel greater respect for the collect-
ive expression of all these subordinate capacities
than for the relatively highest-endowed individual
spectator? In truth, if ever a Greek artist treated
his public throughout a long life with presumptuous-
ness and self. sufficiency, it was Euripides, who,




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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 91
even when the masses threw themselves at his feet,
with sublime defiance made an open assault on his
own tendency, the very tendency with which he
had triumphed over the masses. If this genius
had had the slightest reverence for the pande-
monium of the public, he would have broken down
long before the middle of his career beneath the
weighty blows of his own failures. These con-
siderations here make it obvious that our formula
—namely, that Euripides brought the spectator
upon the stage in order to make him truly com-
petent to pass judgment—was but a provisional
one, and that we must seek for a deeper under-
standing of his tendency. Conversely, it is un-
doubtedly well known that. /Eschylus and Sophocles
during all their lives, indeed, far beyond their
lives, enjoyed the full favour of the people, and
that therefore in the case of these predecessors of
Euripides the idea of a false relation between art-
work and public was altogether excluded. What
was it that thus forcibly diverted this highly gifted
artist, so incessantly impelled to production, from
the path over which shone the sun of the greatest
names in poetry and the cloudless heaven of
popular favour? What strange consideration for
the spectator led him to defy the spectator? How
could he, owing to too much respect for the public
—dis-respect the public?
. Euripjdes—and this is the solution of the riddle
just propounded—felt himself, as a poet, un- 1
flnnhtprHy si]pprinr tr» \hp masses, but not to two /
of his spectators: he brought the masses upon
the stage; these two spectators he revered as the


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92 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
only competent judges and masters of his art: in
compliance with their directions and admonitions,
he transferred the entire world of sentiments,
passions, and experiences, hitherto present at every
festival representation as the invisible chorus on
the spectators' benches, into the souls of his stage-
heroes; he yielded to their demands when he also
sought for these new characters the new word and
the new tone; in their voices alone he heard the
conclusive verdict on his work, as also the cheering
promise of triumph when he found himself con-
demned as usual by the justice of the public.
Of these two spectators the one is—Euripides
himself, Euripides as thinker, not as poet. It
might be said of him, that his unusually large fund
of critical ability, as in the case of Lessing, if it did
not create, at least constantly fructified a product-
ively artistic collateral impulse. With this faculty,
with all the clearness and dexterity of his critical
thought, Euripides had sat in the theatre and
striven to recognise in the masterpieces of his great
predecessors, as in faded paintings, feature and
feature, line and line. And here had happened to
him what one initiated in the deeper arcana of
^Eschylean tragedy must needs have expected:
he observed something incommensurable in every
feature and in every line, a certain deceptive dis-
tinctness and at the same time an enigmatic pro-
fundity, yea an infinitude, of background. Even
the clearest figure had always a comet's tail attached
to it, which seemed to suggest the uncertain and
the inexplicable. The same twilight shrouded the
structure of the drama, especially the significance


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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY. 93
of the chorus. And how doubtful seemed the
solution of the ethical problems to his mind!
How questionable the treatment of the myths!
How unequal the distribution of happiness and
misfortune! Even in the language of the Old
Tragedy there was much that was objectionable to
him, or at least enigmatical; he found especially
too much pomp for simple affairs, too many tropes
and immense things for the plainness of the
characters. Thus he sat restlessly pondering in
the theatre, and as a spectator he acknowledged
to himself that he did not understand his great
predecessors. If, however, he thought the under-
standing the root proper of all enjoyment and
productivity, he had to inquire and look about to
see whether any one else thought as he did, and
also acknowledged this incommensurability. But
most people, and among them the best individuals,
had only a distrustful smile for him, while none
could explain why the great masters were still in
the right in face of his scruples and objections.
And in this painful condition he found that other
spectator, who did not comprehend, and therefore
did not esteem, tragedy. In alliance with him he
could venture, from amid his lonesomeness, to begin
the prodigious struggle against the art of ^Eschylus
and Sophocles—not with polemic writings, but as
a dramatic poet, who opposed his own conception
of tragedy to the traditional one.



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THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.
12.
Before we name this other spectator, let us
pause here a moment in order to recall our own
impression, as previously described, of the dis-
cordant and incommensurable elements in the
nature of Æschylean tragedy. Let us think of
our own astonishment at the chorus and the tragic
hero of that type of tragedy, neither of which
we could reconcile with our practices any more
than with tradition — till we rediscovered this
duplexity itself as the origin and essence of Greek
tragedy, as the expression of two interwoven artistic
impulses, the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
To separate this primitive and all-powerful
Dionysian element from tragedy, and to build up
a new and purified form of tragedy on the basis
of a non-Dionysian art, morality, and conception
of things—such is the tendency of Euripides
which now reveals itself to us in a clear light.
In a myth composed in the eve of his life,
Euripides himself most urgently propounded to
his contemporaries the question as to the value
and signification of this tendency. Is the
Dionysian entitled to exist at all ? Should it not
be forcibly rooted out of the Hellenic soil ?