This book relies so heavily on references to the Greek classics - to the point where it has the risk of being utterly obscure without familiarity with large parts of the canon of Greek literature. But when the thread can be followed, this is a really beautiful meditation on the nature and meaning of the tragic in art.

Fundamentally, Nietzsche poses an opposition between the primordial Dionysian and the the ordered well-formed Appollian. The culture emerges awash in the former, and eventually declines straining under the weight of the latter. Dionysius sits close to music, allowing nature to speak through art, whereas Apollo demands structure and order (and opens the way to more analytical philosophical enquiry).

This book is so abstract that it's hard to make any statement as to whether it is right or wrong. Fundamentally, it asks unanswerable questions, but then meditates on the answer extensively. It's a great read though, because Nietzsche spins a pretty interesting attempt at an answer. It works just as well as literature as it does as philosophy (if not even better!).

I am the Dionysiac excess personified but action repels me. I am the Dionysiac expression of nature, and therefore I am an abominable crime against nature. I belong to the Dionysiac order of the cast of the die. I seek delight behind phenomena.

I am the feeling of myth personified and no, I am not a riddle. I simply immerse myself in the concept of this tragic, persisting, primeval reality

Nietzsche claims that tragedy is born only of the spirit of music. Is it this music that we dance to, weaving our lives together as a collective, cosmic tragedy?

Melodies are an abstraction of reality, so are our senses. Is art the enchantress, an intimation of the horror of life, or a consolation for it, or as Nietzsche claims, both?

I want to be this enchantress personified.

I could say a hundred things in praise of BT and a thousand things against it. But the difference between a person who reads this book and likes it and a person who does not read the book or reads the book and hates it, is about the same as the difference between the Dionysiac and the Apolline.

We should read this book before Death in Venice but it should be read again and again.

Díada Dionisio - Apolo


Citas:

'Mientras en el teatro y en el concierto había implantado su dominio el crítico, en la escuela el periodista, en la sociedad la prensa, el arte degeneraba hasta convertirse en un objeto de entretenimiento de la más baja especie, y la crítica estética era utilizada como aglutinante de una sociedad vanidosa, disipada, egoísta y, además, miserablemente carente de originalidad [...]'


'[...] nosotros no podemos ya gozar como hombres enteros: estamos, por así decirlo, rotos en pedazos por las artes absolutas, y ahora gozamos también como pedazos, unas veces como hombres-oídos, otras veces como hombres-ojos, y así sucesivamente.'


'imagínese una cultura que no tenga una sede primordial fija y sagrada, sino que esté condenada a agotar todas las posibilidades y a nutrirse mezquinamente de todas las culturas – eso es el presente, como resultado de aquel socratismo dirigido a la aniquilación del mito.'


'¿[Y si ocurriera que] fue precisamente en los tiempos de su disolución y debilidad cuando los griegos se volvieron cada vez más optimistas, más superficiales, más comediantes, también más ansiisos de lógica y de logicización del mundo, es decir, a la vez «más joviales» y «más científicos»?


'el valor de un pueblo [...] se mide precisamente por su mayor o menor capacidad de imprimir a sus vivencias el sello de lo eterno: pues, por decirlo así, con esto queda desmundanizado y muetra su convicción inconsciente e íntima de la relatividad del tiempo y del significado verdadero, esto es, metafísico de la vida. Lo contrario de esto acontece cuando un pueblo comienza a concebirse a sí mismo de un modo histórico'


'Todo es uno, nos dice. La vida es como una fuente eterna que constantemente produce individuaciones y que, produciéndolas, se desgarra a sí misma. [...] La vida es, pues, el comienzo de la muerte, pero la muerte es la condición de nuestra vida. La ley eterna de las cosas se cumple en el devenir constante. No hay culpa, ni en consecuencia redención, sino la inocencia del devenir.'


'El pensamiento trágico es la intuición de la unidad de todas las cosas y su afirmación consiguiente: afirmación de la vida y de la muerte, de la unidad y de la separación. Mas no una afirmación heroica o patética, no una afirmación titánica o divina, sino la afirmación del niño de Heráclito, que juega junto al mar.'


'La tragedia, surgida de la profunda fuente de la compasión, es pesimista por esencia. La existencia es en ella algo muy horrible, el ser humano, algo muy insensato. El héroe de la tragedia no se evidencia, como cree la estética moderna, en la lucha con el destino, tampoco sufre lo que merece. Antes bien, se precipita a su desgracia ciego y con la cabeza tapada'


'no [son] capaces de reconocer en el arte nada más que un acesorio divertido, nada más que un tintineo, del que sin duda se puede prescindir, añadido a la «seriedad de la existencia»: como si nadie supiese qué es lo que significa semejante «seriedad de la existencia» cuando se hace esa contraposición.
[...] el arte es [la actividad propiamente metafísica de esta vida [...].'


'Eurípides se propuso mostrar al mundo, como se lo propuso también Platón, el reverso del poeta “irrazonable”; su axioma estético “todo tiene que ser consciente para ser bello” es, como he dicho, la tesis paralela a la socrática, “todo tiene que ser consciente para ser bueno”. De acuerdo con esto, nos es lícito considerar a Eurípides como el poeta del socratismo estético. Sócrates era, pues, aquel segundo espectador que no comprendía la tragedia antigua y que, por ello, no la estimaba; aliado con él, Eurípides se atrevió a ser el heraldo de una nueva forma de creación artística. Si la tragedia antigua pereció a causa de él, entonces el socratismo estético es el principio asesino; y puesto que la lucha estaba dirigida contra lo dionisíaco del arte anterior, en Sócrates reconocemos el adversario de Dioniso.'

'Basta con recordar las consecuencias de las tesis socráticas: «la virtud es el saber; se peca sólo por ignorancia; el virtuoso es el feliz»; en estas tres formas básicas del optimismo está la muerte de la tragedia.'


'El presupuesto de la ópera es una creencia falsa acerca del procesi artístico, a saber, la creencia idílica de que propiamente todo hombre sensible es un artista.'


'En la consciencia del despertar de la embriaguez ve por todas partes lo espantoso o absurdo del ser hombre: esto le produce náusea.[...]

Aquí ha sido alcanzado el límite más peligroso que la voluntad helénica, con su principio básico optimista-apolíneo, podía permitir. Aquí esa voluntad intervino [...] con su fuerza curativa natural, para dar la vuelta a ese estado de ánimo negador: el medio de que se sirve es la obra de arte trágica y la idea trágica.'


'Sobre todo se trataba de transformar aquellos pensamientos de náusea sobre lo espantoso y lo absurdo de la existencia en representaciones con las que se pueda vivir: esas representaciones son lo sublime, sometiendo artístico de lo espantoso, y lo ridiculo, descarga artística de la náusea de lo absurdo. Estos 2 elementos [se unen] para formar una obra de arte que recuerda la embriaguez, que juega con la embriaguez.'



Leer más:
La rebelión de las masas
Mes idées politiques
Discours de Suède
The Human Crisis
L’été
L'Homme révolté

Berserk, Vol. 1
Citadelle
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Apologie de Socrate/Criton
The Republic
L'univers, les dieux, les hommes



Otras obras por Nietzsche:
On the Genealogy of Morals
Beyond Good and Evil
Thus Spoke Zarathustra




Música:
Algo por Paco de Lucía o Camarón de la Isla

Another '10%' book for me: I think I understood about 10% of what Nietzsche was trying to say - so here is my 10% review: the dichotomy between (A)pollonian (rational) and (D)ionysian (irrational) impulses is a constant 'tug-of-war' that seems to go on for the soul of a nation; indeed this is the singular impulse that must be addressed if one is to talk of creativity and the 'Primordial Unity' that underlines all such endeavors. Nietzsche then turns his focus to Greek tragedy to 'flesh' out both A and D as concepts that help to define spiritual 'maps' a nation will follow. I am going to steer clear of the Greek playwrights and his analysis of the Socratic Dialectic - sorry, but 10% is all I can offer.

I'm sure it's amazing but I couldn't understand at all what Friedrich was saying.

És un pesat però és un tt perquè el pavo et justifica en 200 pàgines k cal viure, encara k les mares de tots nosaltres siguin sempre la il•lusió, la voluntat i la pena i engendrin una dissonància, com la música!!!!

"But how suddenly this gloomily depicted wilderness of our exhausted culture changes when the Dionysian magic touches it! A hurricane seizes everything decrepit, decaying, collapsed, and stunted; wraps it whirlingly into a red cloud of dust; and carries it like a vulture into the air. Confused thereby, our glances seek for what has vanished: for what they see is something risen to the golden light as from a depression, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, so ardently infinite. Tragedy sits in the midst of this exuberance of life, sorrow and joy, in sublime ecstasy; she listens to a distant doleful song—it tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are: Delusion, Will, Woe" (98).

Nietzsche's early work doesn't really gel with me as much as his later work does. Whilst I think much of the self criticism at the start is quite extreme, I understand that Nietzsche's goal of getting past metaphysics and moving from aesthetics and world-rejecting idealism into a world-embracing individualism clearly leaves this work looking out of place. Here we get a Nietzsche obsessed with classicism, dualism, and looking out at the world through an almost fascistic lens, staring into the abyss of and trying to pull something beautiful from it. He clearly has more respect for philosophy in this book than volumes which he later published, but his self-absorbed goal of becoming a Great Thinker is consistent throughout his career...

As n  The Birth of Tragedyn was Nietzsche's first published book, it is a rather awkwardly written representation of his early ideas. Nietzsche lamented as much in a supplementary preface, which he wrote fifteen years later in 1886. The older Nietzsche looks back, as we all do, with embarrassment on his younger self. He writes, "Today I find it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates…" (section three). Writing with the benefit of hindsight and with many great philosophical successes at his back, the older Nietzsche can afford to laugh at himself. However, he also clearly shows in this later preface that the questions he dared to pose inThe Birth of Tragedy are still entirely relevant to him, as is the importance of Schopenhauer, under whose influence he wrote the book. The ideas contained in this small first treatise persisted in his more sophisticated works.

The Birth of Tragedy is divided into twenty-five chapters and a forward. The first fifteen chapters deal with the nature of Greek Tragedy, which Nietzsche claims was born when the Apollonian worldview met the Dionysian. The last ten chapters use the Greek model to understand the state of modern culture, both its decline and its possible rebirth. The tone of the text is inspirational. Nietzsche often addresses the reader directly, saying at the end of chapter twenty, "Dare now to be tragic men, for ye shall be redeemed!" These kinds of exclamations make it more difficult to take his text seriously. However, if we look beyond the flowery words, we find some very interesting ideas. At the same time we confront Nietzsche's enormous bias, particularly when deciding when something is or is not "art." Nietzsche forms a very strict definition of art that excludes such things as subjective self-expression and the opera. Despite his criticisms of human culture, however, Nietzsche has great faith in the human soul and urges us to drop our Socratic pretenses and accept the culture of Dionysus again.

Nietzsche describes the state of Greek art before the influence of Dionysus as being naive, and concerned only with appearances. In this art conception, the observer was never truly united with art, as he remained always in quiet contemplation with it, never immersing himself. The appearances of Apollo were designed to shield man from the innate suffering of the world, and thus provide some relief and comfort.

Then came Dionysus, whose ecstatic revels first shocked the Apollonian man of Greek culture. In the end, however, it was only through one's immersion in the Dionysian essence of Primordial Unity that redemption from the suffering of the world could be achieved. In Dionysus, man found that his existence was not limited to his individual experiences alone, and thus a way was found to escape the fate of all men, which is death. As the Dionysian essence is eternal, one who connects with this essence finds a new source of life and hope. Nietzsche thus shows Dionysus to be an uplifting alternative to the salvation offered by Christianity, which demands that man renounce life on earth altogether and focus only on heaven. For, in order to achieve salvation through Dionysus, one must immerse oneself in life now.

However, while man can only find salvation in Dionysus, he requires Apollo to reveal the essence of Dionysus through his appearances. The chorus and actors of tragedy were representations, through which the essence of Dionysus was given voice to speak. Through them, man was able to experience the joys of redemption from worldly suffering. These Apollonian appearances also stood as a bulwark against the chaos of Dionysus, so that the viewer would be completely lost in Dionysian ecstasy. Nietzsche emphasizes that in real tragic art, the elements of Dionysus and Apollo were inextricably entwined. As words could never hope to delve into the depths of the Dionysian essence, music was the life of the tragic art form.

Music exists in the realm beyond language, and so allows us to rise beyond consciousness and experience our connection to the Primordial Unity. Music is superior to all other arts in that it does not represent a phenomenon, but rather the "world will" itself.

Nietzsche sees Euripides as the murderer of art, he who introduced the Socratic obsession with knowledge and ultimate trust in human thought into the theater. By focusing entirely on the individual, Euripides eliminated the musical element that is crucial to the Dionysian experience. Euripides threw Dionysus out of tragedy, and in doing so he destroyed the delicate balance between Dionysus and Apollo that is fundamental to art. In the second half of his essay, Nietzsche explores the modern ramifications of this shift in Greek thought. He argues that we are still living in the Alexandrian age of culture, which is now on its last legs. Science cannot explain the mysteries of the universe, he writes, and thanks to the work of Kant and Schopenhauer, we must now recognize this fact. The time is ripe for a rebirth of tragedy that will sweep away the dusty remains of Socratic culture. Nietzsche sees German music, Wagner in particular, as the beginning of this transformation. While German culture is decrepit, the German character is going strong, for it has an inkling of the primordial vitality flowing in its veins. Nietzsche has great hope for the coming age and has written this book to prepare us for it.

10/10.

This is where it all begins. No one will understand the roots of Nietzsche's thought if he does not understand Nietzsche's view on Ancient Greece. In it lies the art of health, the art of decadence, and Nietzsche's favored god, Dionysius. Who is this Dionysius? Why is Nietzsche so enamored with him?

Dionysius is the god of wild ecstasies and the source of one of the two healthy forms of Grecian art. To define Dionysian art most simply, we will say that it puts one in a trance — a primeval trance. This trance puts one in a pre-rational, pre-civilizational oneness with one's surroundings, a state that had been shrouded in the mists of time after the coming into being of the individual. Whether in Bacchic orgies, Delphic oracles, drunken Renaissance festivals, or modern EDM raves, the Dionysian destroys the individuality of its participants and makes them feel at-one with the prime source of the Dionysian — music.

Before we investigate the other healthy art form of Greece, the Apollonian, we must inquire into music. What does music express? Why can it convey such strong emotions — complete struggle, complete joy, complete yearning — with mere vibratory tones? How do notes on a piece of paper and frequencies of sound translate into the purest expression of the whole swath of human emotions? Wrong question — too materialistic. Music is a universal — just as "red" is a universal — and can be applied to any particular phenomenon to express the phenomenon. It is inexhaustable. But unlike universal concepts, such as "red", music is not an ephemeral, derivative form of its particulars. It encompasses all particular situations and emotions. Even one piece of music, when put to an emotionally correct scene or event, is inexhaustible in its ability to provide meaning.

But the right piece of music not only provides meaning, but discloses the true meaning of any event. Who has not experienced this revelatory feeling in a movie or a television show? But where does feeling come from? It comes from the will. Striving, pitying, lusting, desiring, the will is the emotional center of our being. For example, joy comes after the will's desires are satisfied, and frustration when the will's desires are blocked. How does music relate to the will if it does not resemble the phenomena (e.g. lovers breaking up) itself? Music is "an immediate copy of the will itself" (Schopenhauer). Music perfectly expresses all variations of the will, thus allowing for a listener of a symphony to experience all possible events of life. This experience is pre-rational, in neurological terms right-brain, and is destroyed when the subject-object distinction appears in the mind. As soon as you think, "what does this mean?", you lose the essence of music. You lose the mystical Dionysian unity.

Thus we have discovered that music is the universalis ante rem (universal before reality), as opposed to the universalia post rem (universal after reality) of general concepts. "Music . . . gives the inmost kernel which precedes all forms, or the heart of things" (Schopenhauer). And from the same mystical unity with the "inmost kernel", from the primordial unity, comes the creation of all art. Natural artists, healthy artists, as opposed to kitsch-makers, have a fully-formed vision of what they want to create. All that is left is for the brush strokes, the keyboard clicks, or the chisel hits to be made. Degenerate art is rational: its details are thought of before and come out one after another. It turns into non-art by becoming non-organic, a copycat of past forms and schools. It turns into a farce.

What is the great art farce of the 19th century? The opera. This form was birthed in the attempt to reach "primordial man", when he was so innocent that he would sing out his feelings and conversations. What more ludicrous Rousseanism could there be than this! The "noble savage" doesn't even reach close to the absurdity of this concept! Furthermore, the music of the opera is wholly un-Dionysian. Opera music forces you to verbally comprehend the songs and music, for they convey the meaning of the story and help you follow along. But if you start thinking of the meaning of the words, then the Dionysian trance-like state is utterly destroyed. The opera has a solution! It has many musical sections where a few verses are repeated over and over, thus allowing you that temporary respite from un-aesthetic thought. Alas, none of it is natural! Singing savages, contrived music, and neurotic rationalism make the opera a fundamentally degenerate form of art.

A similar development happened in late Athens, but we will get to that soon. Now to the Apollonian in art. The Apollonian is rooted in the image, the ideal form with all defections subtracted. Some examples of the Apollonian include Grecian statues and Homeric poems. The Apollonian experience is the purely contemplative experience. It is holding the ideal form — of strength, of beauty, of courage — in one's mind. As opposed to Dionysian excess and ecstasy, the Apollonian values proportion: a just balance of features and "nothing in excess". The Apollonian image has all extraneous features removed and the essential ones kept in proper, ideal balance. Through Apollonian contemplation, man removes himself from the vicissitudes of life and gains strength through the concordance of a more pure, aesthetic world with his own.

From the Apollonian and the Dionysian we get Grecian tragedy, which has a form of Dionysius struggling against hardship after hardship, until he eventually falls down (e.g. Prometheus, Oedipus). Grecian tragedy began with the chorus, which was originally the whole "drama". This chorus is made up of undifferentiated satyrs (i.e. goat-men). The function of this chorus is to get man into a trance-like state, to peel away his individuality and make him unified with the characters on stage. The chorus "was assigned the task of exciting the mood of the listeners to such a Dionysian degree that, when the tragic hero appeared on the stage, they did not see the awkwardly masked human being but rather a visionary figure, born as it were from their own rapture". The satyrs' singing puts viewers into a Dionysian trance.

What about the Apollonian aspect of tragedy? This aspect is revealed in the individual form of Dionysius. Apollo individuates, and Dionysius lets out his fury and his overfulness through the individual. The trance-like Dionysian music is made personal through a manifestation of Dionysius.

Let's take an example: Prometheus. This story, "an original possession of the entire Aryan community of peoples and [proof of] their gift for the profoundly tragic", will illuminate the Dionysian drive for excess and power. As opposed to the respectful, balanced Apollonian, the Dionysian Prometheus wants to break all boundaries and steal fire from the gods — an active sacrilege. This contrasts with "the Semitic myth of the fall in which curiosity, mendacious deception, susceptibility to seduction, lust — in short, a series of pre-eminently feminine affects was considered the origin of evil. What distinguishes the Aryan notion is the sublime view of active sin as the characteristically Promethean virtue". Active sin is masculine, and so it is committed by a man (Prometheus) for the Indo-Europeans; passive sin is feminine, and so it is committed by a woman (Eve) for the Semites. What does this teach us? For the Greeks — Indo-European — the individual striving for the apex of life must commit sacrilege against the gods. Is this not the root of all of Nietzsche's philosophy?

And so too it is the root of his love of tragedy, the meaning of which is as follows. The Apollonian form of the hero is given intuitive meaning and reaches its highest significance only through Dionysian music. And through the music, through the ecstatic destruction of the hero, we get the triumph of the primordial, ever-creating, ever-destroying Will over the individual subject. The eternal will of Nature triumphs over the hero's will. Thus man is at-oned with eternal life, eternal nourishment. Nature cries: "Be as I am! Amid the ceaseless flux of phenomena I am the eternally creative primordial mother, eternally impelling to existence, eternally finding satisfaction in the change of phenomena!"

But, unfortunately, tragedy did not last long. A certain philosopher— a walking philosopher, a haughty philosopher, a disdainful philosopher — and his fellows destroyed it. "Who?", you ask. Well, it was my dear Socrates! Socrates had a large presumption that he knew nothing — and that no one else did either. No, everything was to be doubted — the gods, the myths, music, poetry, and all the other hallowed trainers of the Greeks. What? "Who is it that may dare single-handed to negate the Greek genius that, as Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus, as Phidias, as Pericles, as Pythia and Dionysus, as the deepest abyss and the highest height, is sure of our astonished veneration? What demonic power is this that dares to spill this magic potion into dust?"

Oh, that demonic power, that Socrates! Instincts flipped upside down, he decided to flip Athens upside down too. In normal men, instinct and will drive them forward, charging ahead at life, while their critical rationality holds back the reigns when needed. But Socrates? Whenever his critical mind wavered, a voice came in dissuading him. His instincts: inhibitory! His instinct defective and his reason hypertrophied, Socrates went about destroying the healthy instincts of the Greeks. Tragedy was not saved, for what did Socrates see in it? "Something rather unreasonable, full of causes apparently without effects, and effects apparently without causes; the whole, moreover, so motley and manifold that it could not but be repugnant to a sober mind, and a dangerous tinder for sensitive and susceptible souls". Uh oh! Dionysian delight? An aesthetic appetite? "What use are those?" thought Socrates. He had one and only art form: the Aesopian moral fable. Now that was understandable!

So Socrates and his fellow traveler Euripedes (who was widely believed to have been helped by Socrates in his play-writing) went about rationalizing the Greek drama. The first step? Let everyone know what is going on. Euripedes sends out a god (thus giving authority) before his plays, who explicitly tells his audience what has gone on, what is happening, and what will happen during the entire drama. What in the world has gone on in Euripedes' head? He has become Socratized. If "virtue is knowledge", "man sins only from ignorance", and "he who is virtuous is happy" (the three Socratic principles), then we must inform everyone what is to happen! Anyone who does not understand will be lost — information is key! So died Dionysius. So died instinct. Art becomes dialectic, for now (according to the Socratic doctrine) the "virtuous hero must be a dialectician". Socrates starts having children in the drama!

Thus the Grecian nobles start yearning to be dialecticians instead of warriors. "The old Marathonian stalwart fitness of body and soul was being sacrificed more and more to a dubious enlightenment that involved the progressive degeneration of the powers of body and soul". And not only that. Socrates is the birth of a new ideal man: the theoretical man. In no other society before Athens did we have such a "hero". But now he comes into being, delighting in knowledge in and of itself, being in a blissful state due to learning new knowledge. Thus, from Socrates, we get the "man of science", he who is perenially searching for knowledge — not finding "the truth", but eternally on the hunt. He has a faith, nigh a creed: "thought, using the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abysses of being . . . thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it".

From this, we get the modern rationalistic mindset. The faith that knowledge is a pure good and that eternally searching for the "Truth" will actually help us reach a destination. And, oh, how I have that faith! "Anyone who has ever experienced the pleasure of Socratic insight and felt how, spreading in ever-widening circles, it seeks to embrace the whole world of appearances, will never again find any stimulus toward existence more violent than the craving to complete this conquest and to weave the net impenetrably tight". Is this not what many of us here crave? We crave finality. We crave Socrates's peace in knowledge that came even while he took his cup of hemlock.

Do we keep the faith? How can we keep it when there are multitudes of philosophical systems, scores of ethical doctrines, centuries of philosophers with a staunch belief in their own theory, and continual storm and stress in the realm of thought? If "rationality" leads everyone to such differing beliefs, how can we actually believe in its abstract powers? I don't believe it can be done.

Where is there to go, what to grasp onto after the fall of the Socratic faith? First, we need Dionysius and tragedy. Only through them can we grasp the primordial limits of the human, the all-too-human, and reconcile ourselves with the ever-creative Will of primordial Being. We triumph in going back to our roots, unifying ourselves with our true source while forgetting of our fickle individuality. Secondly, we must recognize ourselves as embodied creatures. The embodiment is not to be shunned, but to be embraced! That means that one accepts one's body, one's family, and one's race as things to be fought for. It also means that the mind should be nudged in the direction of biological adaptiveness. It should not explore thought in abstracto, but should explore and adopt its own traditions, its own heritage, and its own historical religion. Discernment must still be made with regards to beliefs, but within boundaries.

To conclude, this is probably the most difficult book of Nietzsche's. But the effort it takes to comprehend it is assuredly worth the effort for any intelligent person. A rhetorician, a philologist, a devotee of Dionysius, and an anti-modern par excellence, Nietzsche shines like a glowing star above his era. A truly awe-inspiring book!

ΝΙΤΣΕ :-"Μακαριε λαε της Ελλάδας! Πόσο μεγάλος πρέπει να είναι ανάμεσα σας ο Διόνυσος, αν ο Θεός της Δήλου θεωρεί απαραίτητα τέτοια μάγια για να γιατρεψει την διθυραμβικη τρελα σας! "


ΑΙΣΧΥΛΟΣ :-" Μα πες και τούτο όμως παραξενε ξένε : πόσο θα υπέφερε αυτός ο λαός για να μπόρεσει να γίνει τόσο ωραίος! "


Περισσότερη Ελλάδα απ όση μπορούμε να σηκώσουμε...

Nietzsche. Years ago, all I knew about him was that overused quote that says “Without music, life would be a mistake”. A couple of days ago, I found a funny picture that reminded of that.



Ha! Ok, maybe not funny ha-ha. If you speak Spanish...

Anyway. The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first work. I read it years ago (the great Schopenhauer led me to him) but I didn't remember much. Since I want (or wanted, I don't know) to start with Thus spoke Zarathustra, I figured I should begin with something shorter --I was going to write simpler, but... (?)
So, this book contains interesting thoughts about the dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. It was inspired by other ideas about two different things that conforms a constant struggle for us.
We have Apollo, god of the sun, reason, prophecy, healing, etc. and Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy. When these two forces combine, they form art, tragedies. They were last seen in Ancient Greece, because, according to Nietzsche, Euripides (and the ones that followed) deformed the concept of tragedy by using Socratic rationalism. That excess of rationality, that loss of the Dionysian ingredient made tragedy (the highest form of art) disappear.
This wasn't an easy read for me, but it was time well spent. This complex, impressive man deserves more time. He had interesting points of view and a strong, passionate writing style.
I know it's going to take a while, you know, the reading and the actually understanding part... However, this is an author whose outstanding work I need to get to know.