The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~52,800 words · 251 passages
Cite this work
- APANietzsche. (n.d.). The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-birth-of-tragedy-or-hellenism-and-pessimism
- MLANietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-birth-of-tragedy-or-hellenism-and-pessimism.
- ChicagoNietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-birth-of-tragedy-or-hellenism-and-pessimism.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Birth of Tragedy (1872): his first book, and the one that cost him his academic career.
Context and history
The thesis — that Greek tragedy is born of the tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and that Socrates killed it with the optimism of reason — was unacceptable philology to the philologists and too new a philosophy for the philosophers. They tore it apart; at twenty-seven he held a chair, at thirty nobody would take his classes. The Apollonian/Dionysian distinction has outlived everything. English translation from the complete edition edited by Oscar Levy (1909-1913), the one in the public domain. It is over a century old and it shows. The original is GERMAN, and citation should follow the original, which is also in the catalogue: Die Geburt der Tragödie.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
with joy, that those Dionysian emotions awake, in the augmentation of which the subjective vanishes to complete self-forgetfulness. So also in the German Middle Ages singing and dancing crowds, ever increasing in number, were borne from place to place under this same Dionysian power. In these St. John's and St. Vitus's dancers we again perceive the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their previous history in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacæa. There are some, who, from lack of experience or obtuseness, will turn away from such phenomena as "folk-diseases" with a smile of contempt or pity prompted by the consciousness of their own health: of course, the poor wretches do not divine what a cadaverous-looking and ghastly aspect this very "health" of theirs presents when the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers rushes past them. Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the covenant between man and man again established, but also estranged, hostile or subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her lost son, man. Of her own accord earth proffers her gifts, and peacefully the beasts of prey approach from the desert and the rocks. The chariot of Dionysus is bedecked with flowers and garlands: panthers and tigers pass beneath his yoke. Change Beethoven's "jubilee-song" into a painting, and, if your imagination be equal to the occasion when the awestruck millions sink into the dust, you will then be able to approach the Dionysian. Now is the slave a free man, now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice, or "shameless fashion" has set up between man and man, are broken down. Now, at the evangel of cosmic harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbour, but as one with him, as if the veil of Mâyâ has been torn and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the mysterious Primordial Unity.…