Okay, I never quite finished reading this book, but I still think about the parts that I have read a lot, like the idea of a Dionysian madness or the idea that tragedy is the reaction of human beings who have seen the Abyss. I really need to finish reading this book... (Clasic lit; 150+ pages)

******SPOILERS*******

As a young man Nietzsche had shown great academic mastery of proven himself to be very academically gifted in philology and the Greek classics. His talents earned him a professorship at the University of Basel while still in his mid-twenties. Because of this, and because his talents were applauded by many of the prominent academics at UB, the publication of this book was highly anticipated. However when it was finally published, no-one knew what to make of it. It wasn't clear if this was supposed to be a philosophical work, a literary criticism, or an analysis of culture? The fact that this work doesn't follow syllogistic reasoning, and often goes against the historical critical method which the academics had become (and still are) so accustomed, this book went right over their heads. And, He wasn't unaware of how it may be perceived, as he asked the first chapter if people would know what he was attempting to do in this book.

Being the first of many works, this in no way is his greatest, but upon reading it, the reader will see some of the ideas which Nietzsche refines in later works in their infancy, and also some of which he abandons. But after having read this book now in two translations, for a total of three times, I can honestly say, that reading this book becomes a lot easier if one knows what to be on the lookout for - if one doesn't it tends to go over one's head also, and takes a few reads to know what is it that he's talking about. For this reason if you are interested in reading this book I will give you a few tools which will increase the probability of you getting the most out of this book.

Fist There are 4 things to keep in mind:
1. German culture copied the Greek culture in very high esteem to the point that much of Greek literature was made a part of German education. Nietzsche sought to answer the question of what had made the Greeks great, and given them the worthiness of emulation to those who look(ed) upon them from the outside.

2. Do not rake your head over some of the ideas if they don't make sense to you right away as they will make more sense if you choose to read some of his other works.

3. Because this book does not follow a method of syllogistic reasoning, ask yourself what questions aside from the overt is he trying to answer.

4. Ask yourselves, if you have read his other works, how the ideas you come across in this book show up in later works.


Secondly, the following are a few things about some of the concepts in this book to consider as you read this book.

1.Apollo: represents the individualistic, calculating, and rational - Apollonian element in man which gives shape to things and makes itself manifest, and makes itself known in:
•Dreams
•Art
•Poetry
•Imagination i.e. daydreams

2.Dionysus: Is the collective. He represents that which can’t be put into words, and though the Dionysian element is equated to the orgiastic and Dionysus is called the god of intoxication and wine – it is only because the impact the Dionysian has on the whole being of man, not should not be understood merely to exist in a visceral reaction which a person may have with a singular aspect of their being. The Dionysian is manifest, and makes itself known in:
•Music
•Dance
•Theatre/ drama

3.Unity: Though it has been said to me by others that unity is gained through the triumph of the Dionysian over the Apollonian, I believe that he is proposing more of a balance – that it is more about the interplay of these two forces. Also, do not think of these forces as definite structure, but simply categories for interpreting… they are not static, and do not have a monopoly in any situation, though one may be dominant than the other… it is more about the interplay which you should seek to understand. Also, the Apollonian and the Dionysian forces are not the only ones at play, only the major one’s he focuses on.

4.Reality: Both the Apollonian and the Dionysian are veils draped over reality, but they are the only way in which we can come to understand it. The better we understand our experience of these elements the better we can come to understand what reality may be.

5.Titans. Olympians, and Prometheus: The Greek gods, in general, are representative of the nature of the Greeks, and are just as flawed as they are. The Titans, pursued pleasure… they tricked each other, had mad affairs, raped humans, etc. but when the war between the Olympians and Titans ended, and the Olympians won out, a hierarchy developed among the gods. Apollo and Dionysus are Olympians. Prometheus, was a Titan, but he gave man the knowledge of fire, and therefore man no longer lived in constant fear of the elements, and as such was not in constant need of the gods. For this reason Prometheus was punished for his crime. A few things about Prometheus:
•Prometheus paid for the redemption of man with his crime and was condemned by the gods.
•Nietzsche replaces the myth of the original sin, with the promethean myth

6.The Chorus: is the part of the play where the actors, in a way, are in dialogue with the audience, and if the part is played right by the actor, the actor is seen as a representative of Dionysus speaking directly to the audience. The purpose of the chorus is to show the audience that whatever the dilemma may be, there isn’t only one situation.

7.The Ideal spectator: comes ready to enjoy the play and have an experience. Ideally, they are made to feel smarter than the characters on stage.

8.The Opera: is the worst kind of drama. It subordinates music to an idealized story with flowery characters who are shown to have ideal personalities. The music is cut up to create novel aesthetic effects in the audience. It has no understanding of life or tragedy. It is a perversion of what drama is supposed to be. As a note, keep in mind that Nietzsche thinks that modern music also isn’t what music is supposed to be as it relies merely on the excitation of emotions or memory.

9.Pre-Socratic Poets: Were the masters of tragedy. They had the capacity to dream, and to imagine worlds and values that their heroes possessed, and shared those dreams with the spectators of their plays

10.Post-Socratic poets: were mainly masters of comedy (which is the child of tragedy) and had no understanding of what tragedy really was. They used tragedy and irony to represent the lives of common people for comedic effect. Drama and theatre became a mirror in which the audience could see themselves and instead of true art, comedy seeks novelty by which to produce novel effects in the audience… it has in essence, subordinated itself to the crowd.

11.Socrates: marks a shift in western thought, and introduces the method for inquiry and rational self-reflection into western culture. Many cults of rationality would spring up after him, and they would all emphasize the importance of rationality and logic above everything else. Also keep these things in mind:
•Socrates hated tragedy… he thought it was irrational and not indicative of reality
•Socratic mentality falsely assumes that everything can be analyzed
•Socratic enquiry begins in optimism and ends in pessimism
•The Socratic method rips the cultural roots from under one who uses the method for inquiry
12.The Theoretical Man: is the modern child of the Socratic. He too believes that everything can be analyzed, and his methods also begin in Socratic optimism and end in pessimism. He has reduced the Apollonian to merely the logical, and the Dionysian to the emotional.

Overall this was an enjoyable book, and even though, as previously stated, this is nowhere near as impactful as some of his other works, I really do recommend that you take the time to read it if you can. I hope you find these tools to be helpful if you do.


p.s. I have a Nietzsche blog on Tumblr which you can check out for a bunch of quotes and such if you’d like: http://thusspokefriedrichnietzsche.tu...

This is wild but his writing is very persuasive.

Pretty conflicted about this one. Very provocative, very problematic. It's an important intervention against Schiller's tendency to view the Greek poets/tragedians as a homogeneous group of naive artists directly portraying nature. Although Schiller doesn't always identify this nature as idyllic, he tends to. Nietzsche is absolutely correct to focus instead on the recurrent theme of the Olympian Gods banishing the Old Gods, and while the identification of the Old Gods with Dionysus/Nature seems fraught, as they're often more about lawless revenge contrasted with Athenian lawfulness (eg. in Aeschylus' "Eumenides") it's nonetheless pretty compelling.

There's surely a tradition of mythological interpretation Nietzsche's drawing on here - I wonder how much can be found in Vico, and the way that Apollonian art develops out of Dionysian is very reminiscent of Schelling's development of the God of Light, the Ground of Reason, out of the darkness of the irrational, natural Unground. Schelling's 1809 Freedom Essay talks about this and makes the analogy with the New/Old Gods, although he's rooting for a Christian victory where men, by their free will, lock away the old forces and reject egotism. Schelling's late philosophy apparently makes the Apollonian/Dionysian distinction explicit, and it seems like Nietzsche may have picked up this terminology from Bachofen, who took classes with Schelling in university. It also seems likely that The Birth of Tragedy was an influence on Freud's theories of sublimation, especially "Civilization and its Discontents", due to the way that an Apollonian locking away of the old gods forces them to re-merge in Dionysian form as art.

Some problems with Nietzsche's interpretation:
- extreme German chauvinism, especially in the final sections about Wagner.
- orientalism that identifies Asia/Buddhism with lethargy/denial of self. This bleeds into his understanding of Dionysus due to the idea (apparently discredited by scholars but clearly stated in Euripides' Bacchants) that Dionysus was a new god associated with Asiatic hordes. Thus he can't decide whether nature is violent and active (as he'd prefer) or harmonious (the view of Schiller's he's attempting to reject)
- idea that aesthetic contemplation is about a disinterested attitude, a merging with the Schopenhauer's World-Will. Seems like this was common to a lot of aesthetic discourse of the period, but it means that his Apollo gets strangely conflated with the Dionysian/Oriental calmness at times.
- pretty confused reading of the Prometheus myth, as he wants to make it the "Aryan" analog of the "Semitic" original sin, while also ignoring the relation of Prometheus to technology/scientific reason.
- he's pretty selective about when he takes the contents of the myths seriously, and his tendency to equate all politics with Athenian democracy makes him resistant to the clear political and patriotic aspects of a number of the tragedies
- he blames Socrates for all of the flaws in Euripides plays (eg. the prologue, the deus ex machina), while also projecting an image of liberal, democratic science back on Socrates. This seems unjustified, as surely Socrates is more closely connected with the elite, anti-democratic reaction. There do seem to be some quotes from Greek sources that make this Socrates/Euripides connection, but the whole section seems corrupted by his anti-democratic & anti-scientific bile.
- pretty wacky ideas about the special metaphysical nature of music, and his mockery of opera seems like it ought to implicate Wagner's work as well.

The Birth of Tragedy is written in an over-the-top style and is nowhere nearly as well-written, engaging or as powerful as his later writings. Having said that, this book is invaluable for understanding Nietzschean thought as many of his most famous concepts find their genesis in these pages.

A book which seemingly is dedicated to a rather narrow topic of Greek Tragedy and its origins, but what Nietzsche achieves in this book with his new way of looking at the culture, art, society with his radical Apolline/Dionysiac distinction is remarkable. You could argue the whole of Spengler's metaphysics of "decline of the west" are already here, or the following centuries "traditionalism" with its radical critique of positivism is already in this book. His visionary analysis of modern "socratic" world view and it's consequences will feel like a prophetic call from beyond. Either way this book will change you in some way, either how you look at Greek tragedy, it's culture and world view and their Olympic Gods or your outlook on the "present time".

ترجمهٔ کتاب بسیار عالیست و قدرت زبان نیچه را تا حد زیادی به خواننده منتقل می‌کند. چه احاطهٔ نیچه بر مسئلهٔ زبان در زمینه و زمانهٔ تألیف این اثر موضوعیت ویژه‌ای دارد. تبیین ایدئولوژی «فرهنگ تراژیک» و نقد آثار آیسخولوس و سوفوکل بر اساس آن برای علاقه‌مندان به تراژدی‌های یونان باستان بسیار جالب توجه خواهد بود.
ترجمهٔ حاضر متشکل از سه متن: «زایش تراژدی از روح موسیقی»،«جهان بینی دیونوسوسی» و «درباره ی حقیقت و دروغ گویی به معنایی نااخلاقی» است. که در متن آخر نیچه ی جوان به همان سبک اغراق آمیز و رگباری خودش به عقل گرایی و اعتماد گونهٔ بشر به کارکرد دانش و آگاهی حمله می‌کند. و مرزهای عالم مفاهیم و استمداد از عقل را به چالش می‌کشد.

I repeat: I find it an impossible book today. I declare that it is badly written, clumsy, embarrassing, with a rage for imagery and confused in its imagery, emotional, here and there sugary to the point of effeminacy, uneven in pace, lacing the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore too arrogant to prove its assertions, mistrustful even of the propriety of proving things, a book for the initiated, ‘music’ for those who baptised in the name of music, who, from the very beginning, are linked to one another by shared, rare experiences of art, a sign by which blood-relations in artibus could recognise one another—an arrogant and wildly enthusiastic book which, from the outset, shuts itself off from the profane vulgus of the ‘educated’ even more than from the ‘common people’, how also one which, as its effect proved and continues to prove, knows well enough how to seek out its fellow-enthusiasts and to entice them on to new, secret paths and places to dance. —An Attempt at Self-Criticism

__________
Introduction - Raymond Geuss

. . . life in the modern world lacks a kind of unity, coherence, and meaningfulness that life in previous societies possessed. Modern individuals have developed their talents and powers in an overspecialised, one-sided way; their lives and personalities are fragmented, not integrated, and they lack the ability to identify with their society in a natural way and play the roles assigned to them in the world wholeheartedly.

As Nietzsche himself points out in the introduction to the second edition, The Birth of Tragedy is a work of Romanticism. It is concerned with the description of a highly idealised past which is analysed so as to highlight its contrast with and superiority to the ‘modern’ world.

Archaic Greek society, Nitzsche claims, is different from and superior to the modern world because archaic Greece was an artistic culture, whereas modern culture is centred on cognition (‘science’) and ‘morality’.

The truth about himself which Oedipus pursues so keenly throughout most of the play, is utterly intolerable to him when he attains it—that is why he blinds himself. That knowledge itself is, as Nietzsche puts it, an ‘enormous offence against nature’ which nature itself will avenge is the basic mythic truth which tragedy transmits and Oedipus instantiates. This is what makes tragedy literally incomprehensible to the optimistic Socrates with his faith in ‘knowledge’.
__________
. . . feels himself to be a god, now moves in such ecstasy and sublimity as once he saw the gods move in his dreams . . . no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: all nature’s artistic power reveals itself here, amidst shivers of intoxication, to the highest, most blissful satisfaction . . . (1)

Both have gazed into the true essence of things, they have acquired knowledge and they find action repulsive, for their actions can do nothing to change the eternal essence of things; they regard it as laughable or shameful that they should be expected to set to rights a world so out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires one to be shrouded in a veil of illusion—this is the lesson of Hamlet . . . it is not reflection, it is true knowledge, insight into the terrible truth, which outweighs every motive for action, both in the case of Hamlet and in that of Dionysiac man. Now no solace has any effect, there is longing for a world beyond death, beyond the gods themselves. (7)

Why should the artist be obliged to accommodate himself to a force which is strong only by virtue of its numbers? And if his talent and intentions make him feel superior to each individual spectator, why should he feel more respect for the joint expression of all these inferior capabilities than for the most talented individual spectator? (11)

Almost every age and stage of culture has attempted at some point to free itself, with deep feelings of anger, from the Greeks, because, in comparison with them, all one's own achievements, although apparently completely original and quire sincerely admired, suddenly seemed to lose colour and life and to shrivel into an unsuccessful copy or even a caricature . . . Thus people feel shame and fear in the face of the Greeks—unless there be one individual who reveres truth above all else and is therefore able to admit even this truth to himself: that the Greeks are the chariot-drivers who hold the reins of our culture, and every other culture, in their hands . . . (15)

One only needs to examine closely and in person these patrons . . . with their untiring cries of ‘Beauty! Beauty!’, and ask oneself if they give the impression of being Nature’s most favoured children, of having been nurtured and cosseted in the womb of the beautiful, or whether they are not in fact seeking a deceitful cover for their own coarseness, or an aesthetic pretext for their own sober-sided, impoverished sensibility. (19)

. . . he felt himself elevated to a kind of omniscience . . . as if he could dive down into the most delicate secrets of unconscious stirrings. (22)

On the other hand, there are those whom nature has equipped with nobler and more delicate faculties . . . (22)

I know that I must now lead the friend who is following these arguments sympathetically to a high place of lonely contemplation where he will have but a few companions, and I call out to encourage him that we must hold fast fo our radiant leaders, the Greeks. (23)

Years after the initial publication of this work, Nietzsche admitted that it is rather romantic in its tone, but I'd argue that its ideas are not. Extremely thought-provoking and actually clarifying - the world seems a little more vivid after closing this book.

the quasihistorical metaphysical elucidation of my own muddled conceptions on art, on representation/realism versus experimentation and viscerality, on the Truth In (Pop) Music, on balance balance balance, on being a Youth Against Satan/Reason/Science/Affectation/Insincerity into some of the most beautiful philisophical prose ive ever read. insanely good