The Birth of Tragedy

“Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and talk, and is about to fly dancing into the heavens.”

Nietzsche describes the effects that the Dionysian spirit has on human beings: It makes them forget their individuality and joins them together in a joyous collective revelry. The passage typifies his rapturous, poetic style in the book while also invoking The Redemptive Power of Art in human society.

“How else could life have been borne by a race so sensitive, so impetuous in its desires, so uniquely capable of suffering, if it had not been revealed to them, haloed in a higher glory, in their gods?”

Nietzsche theorizes here that the Greeks used the Olympian gods, with their glorious power and joyous myths, as a sort of buffer between themselves and the horrific tragedy of life: a foreshadowing of how they would later use Apolline values to erase Dionysian ones.

“And behold! Apollo could not live without Dionysus!”

The Greeks came to realize that both Apolline values (moderation, restraint, artistic illusion) and Dionysian values (redemptive suffering, wild unrestrained passion) were necessary in life. Although initially favoring Apollo, they realized that Dionysus expressed the fuller reality of life as tragedy and suffering that had to be faced. This quote expresses the overall thesis of the book, that the Apolline and Dionysiac work in harmony in art and life.

“[I]t is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”

Nietzsche exalts art to the level beyond being merely an imitation, interpretation, or commentary on life. Rather, art adds something to reality itself, affecting our experience of life and how we face primal reality. In a sense, reality exists to be transformed by us into art. This idea has the strong flavor of aestheticism, or the “art for art’s sake” movement of the late 19th century which influenced Nietzsche.

“The introduction of the chorus is the crucial step towards the open and honest declaration of war on all naturalism in art.”

Nietzsche sees the Greek chorus as a nonrealistic, even anti-realistic element in Greek tragedy, because it represents a collective or symbolic commentary on the actual action of the play. For this reason, Nietzsche sees the chorus as expressive of the true spiritual and symbolic meaning of tragedy. Nietzsche’s obvious preference for non-naturalistic art suggests an affinity with the “symbolist” artistic movement of his day, which rejected realistic depiction in favor of the expression of spiritual ideas and moods.

“Enchantment is the precondition of all dramatic art.”

Nietzsche sees “enchantment” as the spell cast by the Dionysian element of tragedy on the audience. This enchantment is principally enacted by the Greek chorus, which unites the audience members among themselves and with the chorus in a profound sympathy of interest and understanding. Through this enchantment, the audience believes that the tragedy being enacted on stage is real and involves them.

“It was the Herculean force of music—which, supremely manifested in tragedy, was able to interpret myth with a new and most profound eloquence.”

This quote shows the centrality of music in Nietzsche’s aesthetics, reflecting the theme of The Primordial Power of Music. Of all the arts, music best expresses the Dionysian and the tragic because it gives direct access to human feelings and passions. Music expresses tragedy through the chanting of the Greek chorus and, in modern times, in Wagner’s operas where it interprets tragic and mythic stories.

“It is through tragedy that myth attains its most profound content, its most expressive form.”

According to Nietzsche’s analysis, Greek tragedy took its inspiration and subject matter from the traditional myths. Thus, mythology found its fullest and deepest artistic expression in the great tragedies. However, as time went on, philosophical skepticism destroyed the credibility of the myths among the Greek people. As the myths went, so went tragedy, reflecting Reason as Decline, Not Progress.

“Thus the Euripidean tragedy is at once cool and fiery, capable both of freezing and of burning.”

Here Nietzsche describes the unique mixture of Apolline and Dionysian elements in Euripides’s art. He combined cool logic in the plot and dialogue with fiery emotions for the characters. This quote demonstrates Nietzsche’s ambivalent attitude toward Euripides, whom he regards as having destroyed traditional tragedy even as he achieved a new synthesis of the Apolline and Dionysian elements.

“[T]o be beautiful everything must first be intelligible.”

According to Nietzsche, this is the essence of Socrates’s philosophy of aesthetics, which emphasizes the importance of reason and logic as applied to the creation of artworks. Nietzsche believes this is wrong because it ignores the importance of the irrational, Dionysiac elements in art. In fact, the entire book is an argument for the priority of the latter, while presenting Reason as Decline, Not Progress.

“The Platonic dialogue might be described as the lifeboat in which the shipwrecked older poetry and all its children escaped.”

In Nietzsche’s analysis, Plato’s philosophical dialogs (e.g., The Republic) with their play-like format and poetic language, helped perpetuate the essence of Greek poetry. Nietzsche goes on to credit Plato with providing the basis for the development of the novel as well. Thus, Plato’s legacy for Nietzsche is mixed: Although he preserved the spirit of poetry, he forced it to obey rationalist standards, usually involving parable-like moralizing.

“Virtue is knowledge, all sins arise from ignorance, the virtuous man is the happy man.”

This is Nietzsche’s summation of the Socratic view of things, in which reason is supreme and the organizing force in the universe. According to Nietzsche, by contrast, it is an irrational will that lies behind all things, and art must mirror this Dionysian reality. Accordingly, Nietzsche argues that Socrates was a negative influence on art and specifically tragedy, leading to Reason as Decline, Not Progress.

“Practically all eras and stages of civilization have tried, with profound displeasure, to free themselves from the Greeks.”

This quote suggests the overwhelming influence of ancient Greece on later Western civilization, up to and including Nietzsche’s own era. All subsequent eras have felt a sense of inadequacy and a need to measure up to the ancient Greeks, and thus Greece has been both an inspiring cultural touchstone and a source of frustration and envy.

“Might there be a realm of wisdom from which the logician is excluded? Might art even be a necessary correlative and supplement to science?”

Nietszche’s thesis questions the supremacy of reason in Western culture after the triumph of Socratic philosophy. Nietzsche argues that art, intuition, and myth should have at least an equal place with science and reason. However, Nietzsche goes beyond this to suggest that the nonrational elements of reality are in fact supreme and more powerful than reason.

“Dionysiac art […] wishes to acknowledge that everything that comes into being must be prepared to face a sorrowful end.”

This, according to Nietzsche, is the tragic nature of reality embodied by the Dionysian element: the inevitability of death. Dionysiac art (e.g., the Greek tragedies) helps us acknowledge and come to terms with the death and destruction of the individual, a reality we all must face.

“For all our pity and terror, we are happy to be alive, not as individuals but as the single living thing, merged with its creative delight.”

Elaborating on the previous quote, Nietzsche argues that we find consolation by understanding that death is necessary to make way for the many life forms that must find existence, proceeding from the universal will. In Nietzsche’s worldview, human happiness thus consists not in individual existence but in being part of a vast cosmic collective existence.

“I want you. You are worth knowing.”

Nietzsche here characterizes the rationalist mentality. This mentality is one of intellectual curiosity about the world around one, seeking knowledge as a form of possessing nature. However, it rejects myth as a source of insight and confines knowledge to the solving of technical problems; for this reason, it is deeply flawed in Nietzsche’s view.

“Opera is based on a fallacious belief concerning the artistic process, the idyllic belief that anyone capable of emotion is an artist.”

Nietzsche criticizes opera as a flawed art form that, despite its intentions, fails to reflect the spirit of Greek tragedy and The Primordial Power of Music. The flaws of opera for Nietzsche involve artificiality and an aesthetic in which the simple expression of emotion through singing replaces deeper philosophical reflection on the tragic nature of existence.

“In the weary exhaustion of contemporary culture, what else could we name that might lead us to expect consolation from the future?”

Nietzsche looks to the rebirth of tragedy as the answer to what he sees as Western cultural decline, due mainly to rationalism. He believes that an adoption of the Dionysian spirit and acknowledgment of the tragic dimension of life have the power to revive the dead or exhausted parts of contemporary culture, reflecting The Redemptive Power of Art.

“Yes, my friends, join me in my faith in this Dionysiac life and the rebirth of tragedy.”

Nietzsche’s exhorting statement here illustrates the strongly inspirational and polemical tone that Nietzsche adopts, particularly in the concluding chapters of the book. Instead of a merely speculative philosophical work, The Birth of Tragedy is intended as a work of criticism that will initiate change in culture and society through the power of art instead of through politics or morality.

“Tragedy absorbs the highest musical ecstasies, and thus brings music to a state of true perfection.”

Nietzsche suggests that tragedy and music exist in a mutually beneficial relationship thanks to The Primordial Power of Music. Music expresses tragedy to the fullest degree, and tragedy allows music to reach its highest state of expression, as seen in the works of Wagner.

“We can understand the tragic myth only as a visualization of Dionysiac wisdom by means of Apolline artifices.”

This passage sums up Nietzsche’s view of how the Dionysiac and Apolline relate to each other. Apolline elements—expressing reason and order within the craftsmanship of the play and its presentation—help us to visualize the Dionysian core of the tragedy. The statement helps to solve the riddle of how we derive pleasure from tragedy, a form of drama which is inherently painful and sorrowful.

“But they should never believe that such battles can be fought without the domestic gods, without the mythic homeland, without a ‘recovery’ of all things German!”

This rapturous plea illustrates the nationalistic intent of the book: Nietzsche wants to awaken his (German-speaking) readers to use his ideas about tragedy and art to shape a vital cultural future for Germany through The Redemptive Power of Art.