The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche
812 passages indexed from The Birth of Tragedy (Friedrich Nietzsche) — Page 8 of 17
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The Birth of Tragedy, passage 808
I promise a _tragic_ age: the highest art in the yea-saying to life, tragedy, will be born anew, when mankind have behind them the consciousness of the hardest but most necessary wars, _without suffering therefrom._ A psychologist might still add that what I heard in my younger years in Wagnerian music had in general naught to do with Wagner; that when I described Wagnerian music I described what _I_ had heard, that I had instinctively to translate and transfigure all into the new spirit which I bore within myself...."
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 465
Socratism condemns therewith existing art as well as existing ethics; wherever Socratism turns its searching eyes it beholds the lack of insight and the power of illusion; and from this lack infers the inner perversity and objectionableness of existing conditions.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 320
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 Birth of Tragedy, passage 351
It is this intuition which I see imprinted in the awful triad of the destiny of Œdipus: 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 158
Add to this awe the blissful ecstasy which rises from the 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 220
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 _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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 602
Well, we must not be alarmed if the fruits of this optimism ripen,--if society, leavened to the very lowest strata by this kind of culture, gradually begins to tremble through wanton agitations and desires, if the belief in the earthly happiness of all, if the belief in the possibility of such a general intellectual culture is gradually transformed into the threatening demand for such an Alexandrine earthly happiness, into the conjuring of a Euripidean _deus ex machina._ Let us mark this well: the Alexandrine culture requires a slave class, to be able to exist permanently: but, in its optimistic view of life, it denies the necessity of such a class, and consequently, when the effect of its beautifully seductive and tranquillising utterances about the "dignity of man" and the "dignity of labour" is spent, it gradually drifts towards a dreadful destination.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 163
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 has 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 community, has forgotten how to walk and speak, and is on the point of taking a dancing flight into the air. His gestures bespeak enchantment.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 607
While this optimism, resting on apparently unobjectionable _æterna veritates,_ believed in the intelligibility and solvability of all the riddles of the world, and treated space, time, and causality as totally unconditioned laws of the most universal validity, Kant, on the other hand, showed that these served in reality only to elevate the mere phenomenon, the work of Mâyâ, to the sole and highest reality, putting it in place of the innermost and true essence of things, thus making the actual knowledge of this essence impossible, that is, according to the expression of Schopenhauer, to lull the dreamer still more soundly asleep (_Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,_ I.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 51
In October 1868, my brother returned to his studies in Leipzig with double joy. These were his plans: to get his doctor's degree as soon as possible; to proceed to Paris, Italy, and Greece, make a lengthy stay in each place, and then to return to Leipzig in order to settle there as a privat docent. All these plans were, however, suddenly frustrated owing to his premature call to the University of Bale, where he was invited to assume the duties of professor.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 257
From the point of view of the epos, this unequal 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 48
The amount of work my brother succeeded in accomplishing, during his student days, really seems almost incredible. When we examine his record for the years 1865-67, we can scarcely believe it refers to only two years' industry, for at a guess no one would hesitate to suggest four years at least. But in those days, as he himself declares, he still possessed the constitution of a bear. He knew neither what headaches nor indigestion meant, and, despite his short sight, his eyes were able to endure the greatest strain without giving him the smallest trouble. That is why, regardless of seriously interrupting his studies, he was so glad at the thought of becoming a soldier in the forthcoming autumn of 1867; for he was particularly anxious to discover some means of employing his bodily strength.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 480
But then it seemed to Socrates that tragic art did not even "tell the truth": not to mention the fact that it addresses itself to him who "hath but little wit"; consequently not to the philosopher: a twofold reason why it should be avoided.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 467
Here is the extraordinary hesitancy which always seizes upon us with regard to Socrates, and again and again invites us to ascertain the sense and purpose of this most questionable phenomenon of antiquity. Who is it that ventures single-handed to disown the Greek character, which, as Homer, Pindar, and Æschylus, as Phidias, as Pericles, as Pythia and Dionysus, as the deepest abyss and the highest height, is sure of our wondering admiration? What demoniac power is it which would presume to spill this magic draught in the dust? What demigod is it to whom the chorus of spirits of the noblest of mankind must call out: "Weh! Weh! Du hast sie zerstört, die schöne Welt, mit mächtiger Faust; sie stürzt, sie zerfällt!"[17]
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 148
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 Schopenhauer actually designates the gift of occasionally regarding men and things as mere phantoms and dream-pictures as the criterion of philosophical ability.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 134
"Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps: I myself have put on this crown!
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 543
All possible efforts, excitements and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universality of mere form, without the material, always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon,--of which they reproduce the very soul and essence as it were, without the body.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 196
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 Émile also as an artist, and imagined it had found in Homer such an artist Émile, reared at Nature's bosom.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 218
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 the titanic-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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 200
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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 110
Already in the foreword to Richard Wagner, art---and _not_ morality--is set down as the properly _metaphysical_ activity of man; in the book itself the piquant proposition recurs time and again, that the existence of the world is _justified_ only as an æsthetic phenomenon.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 453
So also the divine Plato speaks for the most part only ironically of the creative faculty of the poet, in so far as it is not conscious insight, and places it on a par with the gift of the soothsayer and dream-interpreter; insinuating that the poet is incapable of composing until he has become unconscious and reason has deserted him.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 691
If, however, we felt as purely Dionysian beings, myth as a symbol would stand by us absolutely ineffective and unnoticed, and would never for a moment prevent us from giving ear to the re-echo of the _universalia ante rem._ Here, however, the _Apollonian_ power, with a view to the restoration of the well-nigh shattered individual, bursts forth with the healing balm of a blissful illusion: all of a sudden we imagine we see only Tristan, motionless, with hushed voice saying to himself: "the old tune, why does it wake me?" And what formerly interested us like a hollow sigh from the heart of being, seems now only to tell us how "waste and void is the sea." And when, breathless, we thought to expire by a convulsive distention of all our feelings, and only a slender tie bound us to our present existence, we now hear and see only the hero wounded to death and still not dying, with his despairing cry: "Longing!
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 213
So also the effects wrought by the _Dionysian_ appeared "titanic" and "barbaric" to the Apollonian 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 moderation, rested on a hidden substratum of suffering and of knowledge, which was again disclosed to him by the Dionysian. And lo!
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 167
Ye bow in the dust, oh millions? Thy maker, mortal, dost divine? Cf. Schiller's "Hymn to Joy"; and Beethoven, Ninth Symphony.--TR.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 775
Concerning both, however, a glance at the development of the German genius should not leave us in any doubt; in the opera just as in the abstract character of our myth-less existence, in an art sunk to pastime just as in a life guided by concepts, the inartistic as well as life-consuming nature of Socratic optimism had revealed itself to us.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 797
This final, cheerfullest, exuberantly mad-and-merriest Yea to life is not only the highest insight, it is also the _deepest,_ it is that which is most rigorously confirmed and upheld by truth and science.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 153
The higher truth, the perfection of these states in contrast to the only partially intelligible everyday world, ay, the deep consciousness 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 724
Thus with the re-birth of tragedy the _æsthetic hearer_ is also born anew, in whose place in the theatre a curious _quid pro quo_ was wont to sit with half-moral and half-learned pretensions,--the "critic." In his sphere hitherto everything has been artificial and merely glossed over with a semblance of life.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 751
We have approached this condition in the most striking manner since the reawakening of the Alexandro--Roman antiquity in the fifteenth century, after a long, not easily describable, interlude.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 10
Each of the children was very spirited, wilful, and obstinate, and it was therefore no simple matter to keep them in order. Moreover, though they always showed the utmost respect and most implicit obedience to their parents--even as middle-aged men and women--misunderstandings between themselves were of constant occurrence.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 759
Of course, the Apollonian light-picture did not, precisely with this inner illumination through music, attain the peculiar effect of the weaker grades of Apollonian art. What the epos and the animated stone can do--constrain the contemplating eye to calm delight in the world of the _individuatio_--could not be realised here, notwithstanding the greater animation and distinctness.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 198
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 comprehended 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 Birth of Tragedy, passage 237
It is by no means necessary, however, that the lyrist should see nothing but the phenomenon of the man Archilochus 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 59
"We have indeed got hold of a rare bird, Herr Ratsherr," said one of these gentlemen to his companion, and the latter heartily agreed, for my brother's appointment had been chiefly his doing.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 807
That new party of life which will take in hand the greatest of all tasks, the upbreeding of mankind to something higher,--add thereto the relentless annihilation of all things degenerating and parasitic, will again make possible on earth that _too-much of life,_ from which there also must needs grow again the Dionysian state.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 41
He had sought at first to adapt himself to his surroundings there, with the hope of ultimately elevating them to his lofty views on things; but both these efforts proved vain, and now he had come to Leipzig with the purpose of framing his own manner of life. It can easily be imagined how the first reading of Schopenhauer's _The World as Will and Idea_ worked upon this man, still stinging from the bitterest experiences and disappointments.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 125
--But, my dear Sir, if _your_ book is not Romanticism, what in the world is? Can the deep hatred of the present, of "reality" and "modern ideas" be pushed farther than has been done in your artist-metaphysics?--which would rather believe in Nothing, or in the devil, than in the "Now"?
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 697
What can the healing magic of Apollo not accomplish when it can even excite in us the illusion that the Dionysian is actually in the service of the Apollonian, the effects of which it is capable of enhancing; yea, that music is essentially the representative art for an Apollonian substance?
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 710
Let the attentive friend picture to himself purely and simply, according to his experiences, the effect of a true musical tragedy. I think I have so portrayed the phenomenon of this effect in both its phases that he will now be able to interpret his own experiences.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 449
Thus Euripides as a poet echoes above all his own conscious knowledge; and it is precisely on this account that he occupies such a notable position in the history of Greek art.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 8
In regard to our grand-mother Oehler, who died in her eighty-second year, all that can be said is, that if all German women were possessed of the health she enjoyed, the German nation would excel all others from the standpoint of vitality.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 388
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 anticipation 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 455
Socrates, however, was that _second spectator_ who did not comprehend and therefore did not esteem the Old Tragedy; in alliance with him Euripides ventured to be the herald of a new artistic activity.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 334
Let us picture Admetes thinking 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 comparisons, 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.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 716
In des Wonnemeeres wogendem Schwall, in der Duft-Wellen tönendem Schall, in des Weltathems wehendem All-- ertrinken--versinken unbewusst--höchste Lust![24]
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 701
How can the word-poet furnish anything analogous, who strives to attain this internal expansion and illumination of the visible stage-world by a much more imperfect mechanism and an indirect path, proceeding as he does from word and concept? Albeit musical tragedy likewise avails itself of the word, it is at the same time able to place alongside thereof its basis and source, and can make the unfolding of the word, from within outwards, obvious to us.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 673
Who would have imagined that there was still such a uniformly powerful effusion of the simplest political sentiments, the most natural domestic instincts and the primitive manly delight in strife in this very people after it had been shaken to its foundations for several generations by the most violent convulsions of the Dionysian demon?
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 452
What Sophocles said of Æschylus, that he did what was right, though unconsciously, was surely not in the mind of Euripides: who would have admitted only thus much, that Æschylus, _because_ he wrought unconsciously, did what was wrong.
The Birth of Tragedy, passage 290
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.