The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism
Nietzsche · en
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 revellers 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 which was developed to
the representation of Apollonian 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 tone, the uniform
stream of the melos, 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 annihilation of the veil of Mâyâ, Oneness
as genius of the race, ay, of nature. The essence of nature is now
to be expressed symbolically; a new world of symbols is required;
for once the entire symbolism of the body, not only the symbolism of
the lips, face, and speech, but the whole pantomime of dancing which
sets all the members into rhythmical motion. Thereupon the other
symbolic powers, those of music, in rhythmics, dynamics, and harmony,
suddenly become impetuous. To comprehend 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 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?