The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music

Title page of the first print

The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music is a book by Friedrich Nietzsche that he published in early 1872. It was Nietzsche's first significant work with which the then 27-year-old professor of philology distanced himself from academic philology . On around 100 book pages and in 25 short chapters, the young scientist develops his cultural worldview from his studies of Greek culture, his love of music and the appreciation of Schopenhauer and Wagner . He presents his theories of the origin and decline of Greek tragedy as well as general cultural-philosophical and aesthetic considerations that were also received in the 20th century.

In the book, "Wagner's closeness is clearly evident". It contained a foreword to Richard Wagner, to whom the book was also dedicated and in whom Nietzsche saw at that time the possible new founder of an art and culture comparable to Greek.

In 1886 Nietzsche had a second edition entitled The Birth of Tragedy. Or: Hellenism and pessimism appear, with the book being preceded by the “attempt at self-criticism”.

The common sigil of the book in Nietzsche research is GT .

History of origin

The book is actually a compilation of several drafts and writings that Nietzsche had put on paper from 1869, including the titles: The Greek Music Drama; Socrates and the Greek Tragedy; The Dionysian worldview; The tragedy and the free spirits, The birth of the tragic thought ; - all essays, some of which were published in the Nietzsche estate much later, but which became essential parts of his book in the summer of 1871. Nietzsche did not attach great importance to the preparation of an outline, but rather had the principle of the " total work of art " in mind.

Nietzsche as an artilleryman, 1868

Nietzsche added a foreword to the second edition from 1886. In it he criticizes his earlier writing style, but not the intention, because with this book he had set a decisive course in his life. In his "self-criticism" in 1886 he wrote:

What an impossible book must have grown out of such a disagreeable task! Built up from sheer premature over-green self-experiences, all of which lay close to the threshold of what can be communicated, placed on the ground of art - because the problem of science cannot be recognized on the ground of science - a book perhaps for artists with the side-effects of analytical and retrospective abilities (that is, for an exceptional type of artist that you have to look for and don't even want to search ...), full of psychological innovations and artist secrets, with an artist's metaphysics in the background, a youth work full of youthful courage and youthful sadness , independent, defiantly independent even where it seems to bow to an authority and its own veneration, in short a first work in every bad sense of the word, in spite of its senile problem, afflicted with every error of the youth, especially with their “much too long ”, their“ Sturm und Drang ”: on the other hand, in terms of the success it had (in Son In the case of the great artist, to whom it turned like a dialogue, Richard Wagner) a proven book, I mean one that has done enough "the best of its time".

content

With his portrayal, the young Nietzsche wanted to correct the view of the "classics" ( Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller ) that the Greeks were a cheerful and happy people. It reveals to the reader a rather tragic attitude towards life of the Hellenes, who found themselves in a world of constant extermination struggles to achieve selfish goals and who needed their bright world of gods in order to be able to endure the gloom and hardship of daily existence. They found their expression in and with their arts, whereby two of their Olympian gods held a key position: Apollo and Dionysus .

The basis of the work, a fundamental aesthetic philosophy which, through Nietzsche's encouragement of "aesthetic science" as the first philosophy, reproduces ontology and epistemology , is philosophically demanding. Nietzsche writes about this:

for existence and the world are eternally justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon

The peculiar ability to transform existential experiences into phenomena of art creates a perspective on the development of religion and science as the shaping of art from the optics of life. For further research, the Attic tragedy is of central importance, which Nietzsche saw as the climax and exemplary character of the life-mastering of Greek culture and art.

Attempt at self-criticism

Entirely influenced by his role models Wagner and Schopenhauer, the classical philologist describes human life as a dream from which a new person reveals himself after a " Dionysian awakening":

Singing and dancing, humans express themselves as a member of a higher commonality: they have forgotten how to walk and speak and are on their way to fly up into the air while dancing. Enchantment speaks from his gestures. Just as the animals talk now, and the earth gives milk and honey, something supernatural also sounds out of him: he feels himself as God, he himself now walks as ecstatic and exalted as he saw the gods walking in dreams. Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: the artistic power of the whole of nature, for the greatest satisfaction of the primordial one, reveals itself here under the showers of intoxication. The noblest clay, the most precious marble, is kneaded and hewn here, man, and to the chisel blows of the Dionysian world artist, the Eleusinian mystery call sounds: “You fall down, millions? Do you suspect the Creator, world? "

Richard Wagner around 1864

The theories and ideas of Nietzsche taken different; fans of Wagner and Schopenhauer were enthusiastic, while other experts criticized the work. Based on the criticism of the professional world, Nietzsche wrote:

She should have been singing, this "new soul" - and not talking!

Chapters 1-6

The Greeks found expression in their arts, with two of their Olympian gods holding key positions: Apollo and Dionysus.

Nietzsche sees two important poles in Greek life, the Dionysian and the Apollonian , not as the artistic faculty of a fixed and abstract contrast, but rather as the productive interaction of a faculty that already begins as a duplicity. The Dionysian, the intoxicating and the natural ( expressionistic ) is the primal will that shows itself to the point of licentiousness, as it is also expressed in music. The Apollonian is the creative (classical) force of harmony and the fine arts. The Apollonian is moderately limited and representative of processes of experience and design that are established and stabilized by structures . In the interaction of the two antipodes , Nietzsche recognizes the human situation in itself:

Our knowledge is linked to their two art deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that in the Greek world there is a tremendous contrast, in terms of origin and goals, between the art of the sculptor, the Apollonian, and the non-image art of music, such as that of Dionysus : Both instincts, which are so different, go side by side, mostly in open conflict with each other and mutually stimulating ever new stronger births in order to perpetuate the struggle of that antithesis in them that the common word “art” only apparently bridges; until they finally appear paired with each other through a metaphysical miracle act of the Hellenic “will” and in this pairing finally produce the equally Dionysian and Apollonian work of art of Attic tragedy

On the other hand, there is not the Dionysian as a transition leading into the amorphous and limitless, but an ecstatic moment emerging from this form, which has a delimiting effect on corresponding modes of experience and offers possibilities for new, unknown forms of expression.

Instead of heroes (in masks), “the people” came on stage, instead of ritual “celebrations” there were comedies for entertainment. And similar to Richard Wagner in his Zurich art writings The Artwork of the Future and Opera and Drama, Nietzsche castigates the degeneration of the once noble Greek art and culture up to the futile attempts at revival in the Renaissance, which only resulted in an “operatic imitation” of Greek tragedies and, like Schopenhauer, laments the impoverishment of Western art through a purely scientifically determined worldview :

But now science, spurred on by its powerful delusion, hurries inexorably to its limits, at which its optimism hidden in the essence of logic fails. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points, and while it is still impossible to foresee how the circle could ever be completely measured, the noble and gifted person, even before the middle of his existence and inevitably, encounters such limit points the periphery, where he stares into the unbrightened. When he sees to his horror how logic curls around itself at these limits and finally bites its tail - then the new form of knowledge breaks through, the tragic knowledge that, just to be endured, serves as protection and remedies that art needs.

Chapters 7-10

Embedded in the speculative overall balance sheet, Nietzsche interprets the Greek tragedy as a culture of violent Titanic origin that emerged from an Apollonian civilization . Despite the introduction of the vital Olympic pantheon as the Apollonian culture and the horrors of their existence , they managed to expose their culture once more to the threat of the chaos of the Dionysian experience. Thanks to its integrative revolution, the unknown Dionysus cult shaped the distinctive character of Greek culture. A classical text-oriented theory of drama , which had been in use since Aristotle , contradicted an aesthetic of interpretation that reconstructed the tragic as a specified idea . Nietzsche rehabilitates the classical Greek tragedy with a more precise perspective on multimedia actions with the Dionysian choir as the focus, whereby Dionysus' suffering is ritually reproduced through symbolism and ecstasy . Beyond the boundaries of synesthesia , the audience is enraptured by the tragic task of the individual . Nietzsche calls this sensualization of one's own self-image “Dionysian wisdom”. The choir with music, dance , facial expressions and gestures represents the invasion of nature . Now the media counterpart brings about the recovery of the Apollonian culture. The plot and the language of a dramatic production bring to mind the separation of the Dionysian and Apollonian state. For Nietzsche, the phenomenon of tragedy prevails here.

Chapters 11-17

Socrates' logical optimism , coupled with myth-creating competence and the downfall of tragedy as well as the erroneously Socrates- inspired works of Euripides , forms the tenor of this chapter. Euripides' productions are rational , imitation-oriented and psychologized functions (aesthetic Socratism). The theory of the critical historical mind is used in place of affective participation and symbols of mysticism, which are deprived of distinctive properties due to the distancing efforts. In Europe , so Nietzsche, there is a change in cultural forms. The original symbolism of aesthetic consciousness gives way to the historical reification , which causes a decline in ritual practice towards self-awareness compared to the new focus, the confrontation with texts (Alexandrian canonization).

Chapters 18-25

Chapters 18 to 25 deal with the displacement of the cultural-historical into the present-day interpretation. The opera , as the counterpart of Alexandrian culture, forms an aesthetic of word and musical art that Nietzsche sees as a visionary resurrection in Wagner's tragedies and mythical wisdom. Art is the indispensable consolation against the tragedy that Kant and Schopenhauer have worked out with their achievements in the field of reason and will . Naive tone paintings of German music, as used by Bach and Beethoven in their works, are overcome in Wagner's operas. Stage myth, the visualization of symphonic violence as well as protection from it brings back Dionysian music as the "primordial" of will ( Tristan und Isolde ). Music and tragic myth are equally an expression of the Dionysian ability of a people and are inseparable from each other. This is realized in Wagner's musical dramas and true culture is reborn as a new German culture that emerged from Greek culture.

Nobody believe that the German spirit has lost its mythical homeland forever if it can still clearly understand the bird calls that tell of that homeland. One day he will find himself awake in all the morning freshness of an immense sleep: then he will kill dragons, destroy the treacherous dwarfs and awaken Brünnhilde - and Wotan's spear itself will not be able to hinder his way!

The decline of this original culture was initiated by Socrates and Euripides. By intellectual “cultivation” of the tragedies, they had set the course for an enlightening, rational philosophy and had become pioneers of the “scientist” and thus the gravediggers of the ancient arts.

It is the Dionysian music, the "shocking force of sound, the unified flow of melos and the incomparable world of harmony", through which the human being is stimulated to the highest increase of his abilities, so that previously "something he has never felt presses to express itself". From the ritual choral dances and cult songs the dithyrambs and tragedies arose, explains Nietzsche and concludes that the music thus also has its origin in the Greek tragedies (or vice versa). Based on Schopenhauer, he describes music as the metaphysical expression of the “will to live” and the actual breeding ground on which not only the tragedies grew, but the entire Greek culture.

Impact history

With the birth of tragedy , Nietzsche broke with traditional ideas of ancient philosophy . His philological colleagues initially kept silent about the book. Even Friedrich Ritschl , who had patronized Nietzsche as a philologist, only sent a letter after Nietzsche's urgent inquiry in which he informed him of his fundamental objections. In private circles he expressed himself more sharply, noted Nietzsche's “megalomania” in his diary and wrote Wilhelm Vischer-Bilfinger :

“It is wonderful how two souls live side by side in [Nietzsche]. On the one hand the strictest method of trained scientific research [...] on the other hand this fantastic, exuberant, over-spiritual in the incomprehensible, Wagner-Schopenhauerische art mystery religion enthusiasm! [...] The end of the song is, of course, that we lack mutual understanding for one another; it is too dizzy for me, I creep too caterpillar-like for it. "

Most philologists are likely to have felt the same way. The first and only one who also publicly reprimanded the script was Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff , who was at the beginning of his career, with his pamphlet Zukunftsphilologie , published in May 1872 ! :

"Mr. Nietzsche does not appear as a scientific researcher: the wisdom gained on the path of intuition is presented partly in the office style, partly in a raisonnement that is only too related to the journalist [...]. […] But I ask one thing: keep HR's word, take hold of the thyrsos, move from India to Greece, but step down from the chair on which he is supposed to teach science; He collects tigers and panthers on his knees, but not Germany's philological youth, who should learn in the askese of self-denying work to look for the truth alone everywhere "

A public controversy arose in which Erwin Rohde defended Nietzsche with a counter-written reply and Richard Wagner with an open letter . With a subsequent reply from Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in February 1873, the dispute ended without an agreement. In his memoirs he wrote much later that his writing was presumptuous and boyish, but that he was right in saying that Nietzsche did not belong to a philological chair, but had become a "prophet [...] for an irreligious religion and an unphilosophical philosophy" be.

The few reviews of the birth , probably caused by the sensational argument , were consistently critical. Nietzsche lost his reputation as a philologist, which was reflected in the drop in student numbers for him. For philology he was "scientifically dead". In contrast, the book was received positively by some artists. Richard and Cosima Wagner were enthusiastic, as were Hans von Bülow and, with some reservations, Franz Liszt .

Nietzsche's writing was increasingly successful in artistic and intellectual circles. Soon, however, the terms “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” became independent and were used like “classical” and “expressionistic”. This lost the reciprocal relationship between the two drives that was so important to Nietzsche.

expenditure

• Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music. Fritzsch, Leipzig 1872. (Original edition, digitized version and full text in the German text archive ).
• Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek belief and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874].
• Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy. (= B. 1). Rauman Verlag, Leipzig 1906.

Comments

• Jochen Schmidt : Commentary on Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy . (= Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): Historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works , volume 1/1). Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2012, (excerpt online) .
• Barbara von Reibnitz : A Commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” (Chapters 1–12) . Metzler, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-476-00832-0 (Considered an outstanding commentary, but only discusses the first half of the work.)
• Michael S. Silk , Joseph P. Stern : Nietzsche on tragedy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, (online) .

literature

• Dieter Borchmeyer , Jörg Salaquarda: Nietzsche and Wagner, stations of an epochal encounter. Frankfurt 1994.
• William Musgrave Calder III : The Wilamowitz - Nietzsche struggle: new documents and a reappraisal. In: Nietzsche Studies. 12: 214-254 (1983).
• Christian Einsiedel: Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. A contemporary view. Grin, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-638-13640-X .
• Enrico Müller: The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon . Volume 12, 3rd completely revised edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , pp. 103-105.
• Karlfried founder (ed.): The dispute over Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy". The writings of E. Rohde, R. Wagner, U. v. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff. Olms, Hildesheim 1969 (reprint 1989), ISBN 3-487-02599-X . (Compilation of the publications mentioned).
• Robert Maschka: Wagner. Tristan and Isolde. Henschel, Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-89487-924-2 .
• James I. Porter : The Invention of Dionysus. An Essay on The Birth of Tragedy . Stanford 2000, ISBN 0-8047-3699-5 .
• James I. Porter: Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future . Stanford 2000, ISBN 0-8047-3667-7 .
• Wiebrecht Ries : Nietzsche for beginners. Birth of a tragedy. An introduction to reading. dtv, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-30637-8 .
• Claus Zittel: "Like the uncanny picture of the fairy tale". Reflections on a poetological key point in Nietzsche's “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” In: Orbis Litterarum. 2014 (69/1), pp. 57-78.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Enrico Müller: The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon . Volume 12, 3rd completely revised edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , pp. 103-105.
2. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy (= B. 1). Raumann Verlag, Leipzig 1906 .
3. ↑ Maschka, p. 105.
4. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 2, lines 4-14.
5. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 5, lines 95f.
6. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 1, lines 85-92.
7. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 4, line 15.
8. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 1, lines 6-13.
9. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 15, lines 61-67.
10. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of the tragedy or: Greek culture and pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p. 24, lines 75f.

Web links

• The birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music in Project Gutenberg ( currently not available to users from Germany )
• The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music at Zeno.org .
• Literature on the birth of tragedy , directory of the Weimar Nietzsche bibliography
• The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music on Nietzschesource (DIGITAL CRITICAL EDITION), a digital, citable and critical edition of the complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche