(Originally written July 5, 2007 in Book 15)
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche
Section 20
The Journalist has replaced the professor in matters of culture.
The culture fears art because it is in a feeble state because it has realized its limitations and true art could fully destroy the Socratic-Alexandrian culture in its weakened state.
Schopenhauer was a man without hope but he nonetheless desired truth.
Dare to be tragic. Dare to be Dionysian for the age of the Socratic man is ending. "Prepare yourselves for hard strife, but believe in the miracles of your god" (Nietzsche, 124).
Section 21
We cannot learn from the Greeks without a rebirth of tragedy.
Tragedy is the stitching that held together the paradoxical nature of the Greeks. They were passionate individuals (Apollo) and yet whole-heartedly patriotic (Dionysian). They were their own men and one with the State. Tragedy served to keep these tendencies from tearing each other apart and leaving the Grecian ripped to pieces.
The tragedy produces the giant Dionysian weight of burden but in the same instance lifts it off our shoulders to that of the hero's.
The music creates the myth and yet shields us from its terrible power. The tragedy leads us to the comforting metaphysical illusion and brings about the "highest pleasure" through destruction and negation of the individual. We rejoice in the destruction, not the triumph of the hero and we are then at one, the Dionysian mystical oneness.
Only through music can we comprehend the most universal facts. Through music we hear the world will longing for existence and destruction.
Just as we have been completely destroyed of individuality by the Dionysian we are redeemed by the Apollonian in tragedy.
"The Apollonian tears us out of the Dionysian universality and lets us find delight in individuals" (Nietzsche, 128).
Music compels us to see most profoundly than ever before.
It is the Apollonian illusion that the Dionysian music serves the Apollonian concepts that saves us, but in reality, music is the real idea of the world and drama in the mere reflection of it.
In the total effect of tragedy is predominated by the Dionysians no matter how powerful the Apollonian image and illusion.
Section 22
The apex and climax of the Apollonian art is the justification of the individual through contemplation.
"The tragic myth is to be understood only as a symbolization of Dionysian wisdom through Apollonian artifices" (Nietzsche, 131).
Those who view tragedy as strictly a morality issue have had no experience of tragedy as the supreme art and thus they are not all together aesthetically sensitive.
The deepest pathos can be merely an aesthetic play.
The aesthetic listener is reborn anew with the rebirth of tragedy.
Art, when used as a moral-religious tool of propaganda or as a socio-political tool dupes the audience and fosters emotions that only occur naturally outside of aesthetic scenarios. But, as with all artificial arts there is a rapid degeneration.
The theater is not a place for the moral education of the public.
Section 23
Without myth, "every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity" (Nietzsche, 135). Myth unifies culture.
Myth hayers man to interpret his life and struggles.
The Socratic seeks to destroy myth, but the myth less man stands, "eternally hungry" (Nietzsche, 136).
We must be aware of the necessary connotations of art and man, myth and customs, and tragedy and the state. The demise of one is the demise of all.
Section 24
The aesthetic spectator experiences seeing the myth and transcending all seeing at the same time. The coexistence of these two things is one of the most remarkable effects of tragedy.
Art is not so much an imitation of nature as a "metaphysical supplement of the reality of nature, placed beside it for its overcoming" (Nietzsche, 140).
To define tragedy (and all art) one must primarily seek its pleasure in the purely aesthetic sphere. Whatever further qualities it may have (i.e. moral qualities) are merely secondary.
Existence and the world are justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon.
The rebirth of tragedy will come from music and the German spirit will be born anew and no longer will the German genius live in prolonged degradation, in servitude to 'vicious dwarfs' (Christian Priests).
Section 25
Music and tragic myth are Dionysian and beyond the Apollonian.
The Dionysian and Apollonian must unfold their powers proportionately according to the law of eternal justice.
Fin
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