The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism
Nietzsche · en
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. 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 overthrow some Titanic empire and
slay monsters, and which, through powerful dazzling representations
and pleasurable illusions, must have triumphed over a terrible depth
of world-contemplation and a 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
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 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.
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