Dionysus dithyrambs

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 (photograph by Gustav Adolf Schultze )

The Dionysus Dithyrambs are a cycle of poems by Friedrich Nietzsche and his last work that he intended to print. The collection, completed in 1889, appeared in 1891 as an appendix to the fourth part of his philosophical poem Also sprach Zarathustra .

With the apparently tautological title that was only found later for the collection , Nietzsche refers to the god of affirmation of life and eternal return, Dionysus , who celebrates himself in these songs.

The cycle comprises nine dithyrambs in free rhythms , three of which had already appeared in the first edition of Zarathustra in 1885 and were revised for the collection.

Emergence

In the summer of 1888 Nietzsche prepared the cycle and in doing so also resorted to older fragments that had already been created in 1881.

First he put together some as yet unpublished fragments and used this material to write five poems which, together with the work Last Will, written in 1883, made up the six songs of Zoroaster , which he cited in a preliminary stage of the prologue to Ecce homo . He took the other three songs from the last part of his Zarathustra and edited them.

background

Statue of Dionysus

Nietzsche's poems can be found in all essential periods of his life and mark the beginning and the end of his work history. His first literary attempts at the age of ten were poetry, his last work a cycle of poems. Many of his verses, which today establish his fame as a poet, he did not release for print, so that they were published later and often with certain changes.

Apart from the Idylls from Messina published in 1882, Nietzsche only published poems for architectural reasons, in order to emphasize the artistic lightness within his prose works or to reduce tension.

In ancient Greece , the dithyramb was a stormy, enthusiastic, first strophic , then free rhythm song of praise to the wine god Dionysus , whose nickname was Dithyrambos , a cult song that was sung by the choir to flute music and danced to .

The origins of the dithyramb are thought to be in Asia Minor . After this form had developed into the generally high-pitched price poetry for other heroes and deities, it was generally a poem performed in ecstatic ecstasy , the heightened tone of which exceeded that of the hymn . Compared to this ancient model, Nietzsche's poems avoid the exalted stillage and display a declamatory, sometimes strained pathos. A reference to Dionysus is only visible in the later revised version of Ariadne's lament .

In a later deleted note, Nietzsche characterized the texts as songs of Zarathustra, which he sang to himself in order to endure his loneliness.

One would misunderstand the individual role chants if one only understood them as depicting abstract thoughts. In connection with the main work, his Zarathustra , the cycle can be understood as part of a philosophical reorientation in which his mode of expression and the expressive symbolism of his language intensified. Metaphorical expressions such as “lamb's milk benevolence”, “truth madness” or “cat madness”, which accumulate in his prose and especially in Zarathustra , can be found in the language of the dithyrambs.

Meaning and reception

Nietzsche's name is also associated with his poetry. Occasionally he considered issuing a separate volume of poetry, a plan he did not implement, except for the dithyrambs.

Nietzsche is considered a master of style - his style made epoch. He appears as the teacher of the Germans , Hofmannsthal , in his notorious literary speech, speaking of him as the “spiritual conscience of the nation”. His prose itself is brilliant, virtuoso and playful, in numerous places it slips into the lyrical, is lyrically founded.

The great importance of his work, however, is not determined by the poetry. The poetic work plays a complementary supporting role.

“The sick Nietzsche”, etching by Hans Olde based on the photo series of the same name, 1899

The dithyrambs mark the transition into the dark sphere of illness, of "madness". While he was still working on the manuscript, he was already sending out his insane notes . Against this background it is clear that he no longer wrote the dithyrambs in the days of his waking life , but collected them and made some changes. One should therefore not regard this last work as a lyrical transfiguration and see the closeness to Ecce homo , a work that, with its often overstimulated tone and the exalted view of oneself, is already characterized by pathological aspects.

According to Erich Friedrich Podach , Nietzsche did not write any dithyrambs here in the real sense that he pretended. The actual dithyrambs, inspirations of the orgiastically excited singer, were performed "at wild feasts in honor of Dionysus", while Nietzsche worked with the "sobriety of the great artist ... on individual parts and lines of his Zoroastrian-Dionysian songs", "until he did had achieved the desired conciseness ... "

For Giorgio Colli , the poet Nietzsche is none other than the philosopher. The lack of terminology in his poetry makes it difficult to understand; Anyone who appreciates the brightly shining vehemence and the intuitive moments can, however, also dare to work on this work. The images of his lyrics and the many bitter, ironic, tormenting and dreamlike elements would provide an impressive material.

However, Nietzsche's poems lacked “sufficient definition of form and content”, which appeared to be “frayed on all sides”. As far as formal mastery is concerned, one gets the impression that Nietzsche did not use all his skills. In the improvised material one does not discover - as is usually the case with Nietzsche - "the great struggle for abstraction."

literature

expenditure

• First edition: Thus spoke Zarathustra . A book for everyone and no one. Fourth and last part. Edited by Peter Gast . CG Naumann, Leipzig 1891.
• Complete Works. Critical study edition in 15 volumes. KSA. Volume 6: The Wagner Case. Twilight of the Idols. The antichrist. Ecce homo. Dionysus dithyrambs. Nietzsche versus Wagner. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari . 10th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-30156-5 , pp. 377-410.
• Wolfram Groddeck (Ed.): Friedrich Nietzsche "Dionysus-Dithyramben". Volume 1: Text genetic edition of the preliminary stages and fair copies. (= Monographs and texts on Nietzsche research. Vol. 23, 1). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, a. a. 1991, ISBN 3-11-012195-6 .

Secondary literature

• Wolfram Groddeck: Friedrich Nietzsche “Dionysus Dithyrambs”. Volume 2: The “Dionysus Dithyrambs”: Significance and origin of Nietzsche's last work (= monographs and texts on Nietzsche research. Vol. 23, 2). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, a. a. 1991, ISBN 3-11-012195-6 .
• Michael Skowron: Dionysian Perspectives. A philosophical interpretation of the Dionysus dithyrambs , in: Nietzsche Studies 36 (2007), pp. 296-315.
• Andreas Urs Sommer : Commentary on Nietzsche's Der Antichrist. Ecce homo. Dionysus dithyrambs. Nietzsche contra Wagner (= Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (ed.): Historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works, Vol. 6/2), Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2013. ( ISBN 978-3-11-029277-0 ) (comprehensive standard commentary with poetry-historical classification).
• Rüdiger Ziemann: The poems. In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2000, ISBN 3-476-01330-8 , pp. 150-156.

Web links

Wikisource: Dionysus Dithyrambs  - Sources and Full Texts

• Dionysus dithyrambs in the Digital Critical Complete Edition (eKGWB) on nietzschesource.org.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rüdiger Ziemann: The poems. In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2000, p. 155.
2. ↑ Rüdiger Ziemann: The poems. In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2000, p. 155
3. ↑ Marco Brusotti: Dionysus-Dithyramben (1888/89). In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2000, p. 136.
4. ↑ Rüdiger Ziemann: The poems. In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2000, p. 150.
5. ^ Giorgio Colli , in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung . Critical Study Edition, Volume 6, Ed .: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, dtv, p. 455.
6. ↑ Hans-Horst Henschen , in: Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon , Volume 12, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dionysos-Dithyramben, Munich, 1991, p. 420
7. ↑ Hans-Horst Henschen, in: Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon, Volume 12, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dionysos-Dithyramben, Munich, 1991, p. 421
8. ^ Giorgio Colli, in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung , Critical Study Edition, Vol. 6, Ed .: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, dtv, p. 455
9. ^ Giorgio Colli, in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung , Critical Study Edition, Vol. 6, Ed .: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, dtv, p. 456
10. ↑ Quoted from: Wolfram Groddeck : Friedrich Nietzsche "Dionysus-Dithyramben". Volume 2: The “Dionysus Dithyrambs”: Meaning and origin of Nietzsche's last work. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, et al. 1991, p. XI.
11. ^ Giorgio Colli, in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung , Critical Study Edition, Vol. 6, Ed .: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, dtv, p. 454
12. ^ Giorgio Colli, in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung , Critical Study Edition, Vol. 6, Ed .: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, dtv, p. 458