The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism
Nietzsche · en
Contemplation beaming from wide-open eyes. Here there is presented to
our view, in the highest symbolism of art, that Apollonian world of
beauty and its substratum, the terrible wisdom of Silenus, and we
comprehend, by intuition, their necessary interdependence. Apollo,
however, again appears to us as the apotheosis of the _principium
individuationis,_ in which alone the perpetually attained end of the
Primordial Unity, its redemption through appearance, is consummated: he
shows us, with sublime attitudes, how the entire world of torment is
necessary, that thereby the individual may be impelled to realise the
redeeming vision, and then, sunk in contemplation thereof, quietly sit
in his fluctuating barque, in the midst of the sea.
This apotheosis of individuation, if it be at all conceived as
imperative and laying down precepts, knows but one law--the individual,
_i.e.,_ the observance of the boundaries of the individual,
_measure_ in the Hellenic sense. Apollo, as ethical deity, demands
due proportion of his disciples, and, that this may be observed, he
demands self-knowledge. And thus, parallel to the æsthetic necessity
for beauty, there run the demands "know thyself" and "not too much,"
while presumption and undueness are regarded as the truly hostile
demons of the non-Apollonian sphere, hence as characteristics of the
pre-Apollonian age, that of the Titans, and of the extra-Apollonian
world, that of the barbarians. Because of his Titan-like love for
man, Prometheus had to be torn to pieces by vultures; because of his
excessive wisdom, which solved the riddle of the Sphinx, Œdipus had
to plunge into a bewildering vortex of monstrous crimes: thus did the
Delphic god interpret the Grecian past.