È sempre difficile, per chi non ci è troppo abituato, avvicinarsi a un filosofo e alla filosofia in sé.
Nella sua ambiguità e nei suoi giochi, la letteratura si presta a ben altre immediatezze, talvolta veicolando anche concetti propri di altre discipline, come la Storia o, appunto, la Filosofia, troppo spesso ritenute ostiche da chi non le frequenta assiduamente, preferendo, a torto o a ragione, certe impalpabilità letterarie, cercando la distanza pure dalla logica e dalle scienze.

Conservo della filosofia un sacco di reminiscenze scolastiche, universitarie soltanto di striscio; poi, letture e letturine sparpagliate, sempre per vedere di entrarci dentro a poco a poco, magari affidandomi a coloro che ne sanno, a quegli studiosi capaci di condensare in poche pagine il pensiero di un filosofo tirando grossomodo le somme.
Sempre di introduzioni e interpretazioni si tratta, ovvio: ed è qui che uno deve andare dritto alla fonte, a consultare direttamente l'autore, se davvero si vuole addentrare nella disciplina.

A casa avevo un sacco di testi filosofici che mi scrutavano severi; tra questi, alla fine, ne ho scelto uno di Nietzsche: vuoi perché mi era stato in precedenza consigliato o perché spesso mi era stato indicato come uno dei pensatori più prossimi alla sensibilità letteraria; e dopo aver letto La nascita della tragedia, sento di doverlo confermare anch'io.

Nietzsche nasceva come filologo classico, un ragazzo prodigio con cattedra a Basilea. Studioso e intellettuale dalle infinite conoscenze, i greci e i latini li conosceva a menadito, a partire dalla lingua stessa, senza tuttavia tralasciarne i contenuti, le poetiche e lo spirito.
Ed è ai greci che si rifà in questo suo primo libro, un assurdo concentrato di idee, concetti, arti e, com'è chiaro, filosofia.

Mentirei se dicessi d'aver capito tutte queste densissime pagine: diciamo che ho inteso senza comprendere del tutto. Anche perché, Nietzsche non lascia al lettore - mi riferisco in particolare al novizio - molto spazio di comprensione, sebbene l'assunto di base sia cristallino: bisogna ripartire dai greci, dalla tragedia greca, e di questa far rivivere lo spirito metafisico, Dionisiaco, contrapposto qui a quello socratico, l'Apollineo.

Due concetti, Apollineo e Dionisiaco, che mi fecero fare qualche bella figura al liceo, e che qui ho ritrovato con piacere quasi nostalgico: sono in effetti sviscerati in tutte le loro declinazioni, con rimandi agli autori tragici che fecero grande la cultura greca, nonché ai filosofi a essi coevi.
Inoltre, il Filosofo si concentra anche sull'imprescindibilità della Musica, nella fattispecie quella strumentale, riallacciandosi alle bellissime pagine che Schopenhauer le dedicò nel Mondo come volontà e rappresentazione (finalmente qualcosa che conosco un po' meglio).

La scrittura di Nietzsche è un magma incandescente: fluviale ed evocativa come lo spirito al quale egli si rifa, trovando un filo conduttore che parte dalla grecità e arriva alla cultura tedesca del suo tempo, passando per un pessimismo che permea la disillusa visione dell'età contemporanea.

La nascita della tragedia è un testo che può sembrare semplice rispetto ad altri suoi fratelli e parenti, predecessori o epigoni; ma è un dato solo apparente: questo è un volumetto ricco e complesso, che spalanca portoni e apre inattesi spiragli di luce, a tratti indecifrabili. È l'opera prima di uno dei più grandi filosofi mai nati, dunque quella che darà il là a quello che sarà poi il pensiero nietzschiano.
Insomma, tutto parte da qui.

Die Geburt der Tragödie = The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche

A compelling argument for the necessity for art in life, Nietzsche's first book is fuelled by his enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the philosophy of Schopenhauer and for the music of Wagner, to whom this work was dedicated.

Nietzsche outlined a distinction between its two central forces: the Apolline, representing beauty and order, and the Dionysiac, a primal or ecstatic reaction to the sublime.

He believed the combination of these states produced the highest forms of music and tragic drama, which not only reveal the truth about suffering in life, but also provide a consolation for it.

Impassioned and exhilarating in its conviction, The Birth of Tragedy has become a key text in European culture and in literary criticism.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «زای‍ش‌ ت‍راژدی‌ از روح‌ م‍وس‍ی‍ق‍ی‌، ی‍ا ی‍ون‍ان‌ ان‍گ‍اری‌ و ب‍دب‍ی‍ن‍ی‌»؛ «زایش تراژدی»؛ «زایش تراژدی و چند نوشته‌ ی دیگر»؛ نویسنده: ف‍ری‍دری‍ش‌ وی‍ل‍ه‍ل‍م‌ ن‍ی‍چ‍ه‌؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و یکم ماه ژوئن سال 2006میلادی

عنوان: زای‍ش‌ ت‍راژدی‌ از روح‌ م‍وس‍ی‍ق‍ی‌، ی‍ا ی‍ون‍ان‌ ان‍گ‍اری‌ و ب‍دب‍ی‍ن‍ی‌؛ نویسنده: ف‍ری‍دری‍ش‌ وی‍ل‍ه‍ل‍م‌ ن‍ی‍چ‍ه‌؛ م‍ت‍رج‍م: روی‍ا م‍ن‍ج‍م‌؛ آبادان، پرسش، 1384؛ در168ص؛ شابک 9648687056؛ چاپ دوم و سوم 1385؛ چاپ چهارم 1395؛ موضوع نقد تراژدی از نویسندگان آلمان - سده 19م

عنوان: زایش تراژدی؛ نویسنده ف‍ری‍دری‍ش‌وی‍ل‍ه‍ل‍م‌ ن‍ی‍چ‍ه‌؛ مترجم سعید فیروزآبادی؛ تهران: انتشارات جامی، ‏‫1398؛ در 158ص؛ شابک9786001762000؛

عنوان: زایش تراژدی و چند نوشته‌ ی دیگر؛ نویسنده: ف‍ری‍دری‍ش‌ وی‍ل‍ه‍ل‍م‌ ن‍ی‍چ‍ه‌؛ ترجمه از آلمانی به انگلیسی: رونالد اسپیرز؛ ویراستار انگلیسی ریموند گویس؛ مترجم رضا ولی‌یاری؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، چاپ دوم 1396؛ در 233ص؛ شابک 9789642133550؛ چاپ سوم 1397؛

زایش تراژدی، نخستین اثر «نیچه» بوده است؛ «نیچه» در این اثر، مخالفِ نفیِ «شوپنهاور» از «اراده» است؛ ایشان استدلال می‌کنند، که زندگی ارزش زندگی کردن، با وجودِ دشواریهای‌های بسیارش را دارد؛ «نیچه» جهان زیستن را، جهانی هراس‌آور و وحشت‌زا میبینند، اما بر خلاف «شوپنهاور»، که در نهایت تسلیم‌ شدگی را، واکنش انسان در برابر چنین هجومی، تشخیص می‌دادند، «نیچه» با پی افکندن نیروی اراده، و در واقع تسلیم‌ ناشدگی، فلسفه‌ ای دیگر، در قبال این جهانِ تراژیک، ترسیم می‌کنند: «رازی در جهان هست که زندگی را هراس‌آور و تراژیک می‌سازد»؛ اما «به یاری هنر میتوان از این هراس و سویه ی تراژیک زندگی عبور کرد.»؛ سنت فلسفی «آلمانی»، هماره به جامعه ی «یونان باستان»، همچون تجلی جامعه‌ ای آرمانی، انسانی، و آزاد، می‌نگرد، «نیچه» نیز، در بیان نمونه‌ ای عالی و سرراست، از کار هنری، به دوران «یونان»، و نیروهای آفرینشگر آنها نظر دارند؛ «نیچه» باور دارند، که «یونانیان به نیکویی، از راز آن دنیای پنهان، باخبر بودند؛ بزرگواری روحشان در آن بود، که تسلیم آن جهان نمی‌شدند، بلکه با آن می‌جنگیدند، و همین برای آنان، به معنای آری گفتن به همین جهان بود.» و میافزایند: (نمود این مبارزه‌ طلبی، جسارت و قدرت، «دیونیسوس» است؛ خدایی که اوج حرکت است، «دیونیسوسی» که بی‌پایان است: می‌رقصد، همچون رقصی بی‌پایان، جسم را در فضا نمایان می‌کند؛ مکان را رد می‌کند، و او ذات موسیقی است؛ حالت موسیقایی، حالتی قالبی است، که بر جان هنرمند، در هنگامِ آفرینش هنری، سایه می‌افکند؛ هنرمند با روحی «دیونیسوسی»، جرأت نه گفتن به شرایط موجود، و امّا آری گفتن برای جنگ، با زندگی خشن را نیز دارد؛ در اینجاست که می‌توان هنرمند را برابرنهادی برای جانِ آزاده؛ یا همان جان شیفته؛ دانست)؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 31/03/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Zwar erfrischend systematisch, aber mir hat der polemische Nietzsche gefehlt, der kurz vor dem Wahnsinn noch ein paar Aphorismen niederschreibt. Es war zu viel der Philologe, der noch an Wagner und Vaterland hängt und kulturrevolutionäre Entwicklungen verklärt. Trotz allem ein guter Disstrack an Sokrates eine nice Einführung in seine Philosophie der Tragödie

O Herr Nietzsche, hypocrite lecteur, mon sembable, mon frere! I, too, am fighting hard for the aesthetic, but I find it difficult to extend the same belief as you do. You are fervent, and truly crazy. And you lived before WWII. How, now, can we talk of art? Adorno says that there can be no writing of poetry after Auschwitz...

Also you are truly nutty. It shows in your prose. Not tortured-nutty (which is common, see Kierkegaard), or paranoid-nutty (Philip K. Dick) but manic-nutty. That's kinda rarer.

3.5-4.00 ⭐️

O carte care pornește de la o ipoteză interesantă și abordează două elemente pe care Nietzsche le consideră fundamentul tragediei grecești- apolinicul și dionisiacul. Ca studiu științific/academic mă îndoiesc că are foarte multă valoarea, argumentele fiind construite pur pe opiniile lui Nietzsche cu privire la tragedie, opiniile sale despre cultura germană și anumite legături pe care el le stabilește între propriile idei și alți gânditori importanți (Kant, Schopenhauer, Lessing…). Chiar dacă nu aduce dovezi solide pentru argumentele pe care le înșiră, cartea merită citită, stilul filosofului fiind unul care cucerește și convinge și când nu are un sprijin concret.

I had never read Nietzsche before, but after reading, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, and Freud, I thought I was ready for some Nietzsche. It would also make me look clever if let's say The Birth of Tragedy ever came up in conversation at a dinner party or whilst out dining with friends. Not that that was ever likely to happen, but you just never know. This was everything I would come to expect from a philosopher, and although I was intrigued by what he was getting across, his convoluted writing wasn't easy to grasp at times. I can't say that I loved it, because I didn't, but then it wasn't a waste of time either. I could relate to his notion of art and music in particular, but overall the stimulation this book gave me never really got out of second gear.

Bakkhos boy versin içimizden..!

pensé que el concepto de lo dionisíaco me iba a servir para justificar mi curadera

With his vivid, passionate language, 19th century German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche wrote his books as a way to pry open a space in a reader’s psyche, a space empowering an individual to embark on a journey of inner exploration. This is precisely why I think any attempt, no matter how well intended, to rephrase, paraphrase or synopsize Nietzsche, without including a fair amount of Nietzsche’s actual words, is a terrible injustice committed against one of the greatest literary stylists in the modern world. Thus I have included the below direct quotes from the first section of his book to allow Nietzsche, even in this brief review, to speak for himself. Please take my modest comments coupled with each quote as an invitation to explore this classic work on your own.

“We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics, once we perceive not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of vision, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollonian and Dionysian duality – just as procreation depending on the duality of the sexes.”

Nietzsche saw Greek tragedy as a prime example of how those ancient Greeks actually got it right; those ancients developed an accurate picture of the world as irrational, chaotic, primal Dionysian energy, energy that had to be softened, sweetened and otherwise contained by the Apollonian illusion of order, pattern and predictability (in a tragic play, such things as plot and character) to develop an art form acceptable to the public. The combination and balance of these two forces – chaotic Dionysian and orderly Apollonian – resulted in the Greek tragedy.

“In order to grasp these two tendencies, let us first conceive of them as the separate art worlds of dreams and intoxication.”

The two tendencies are the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The nature of the Apollonian is the dream that the world follows an ordered, harmonious, rational law; the nature of the Dionysian is the world as in the grip of chaotic, dark, vile, irrational forces. The type of art associated with the Apollonian would be Greek sculpture, such as marble statues of gods and goddesses portrayed as beings of great harmony, serenity and proportion. On the other hand, an example of the Dionysian would be a wild intoxicated nocturnal dance where the dancers are goaded into a frenzied swirl by a cacophony of deafening drums and flutes.

“The beautiful illusion of the dream worlds, in the creation of which every man is truly an artist, is the prerequisite of all plastic art.”

As frequently acknowledged, every child is an artist. Indeed, we all in our own way, beginning as children, create a picture world in our minds, featuring beautiful, fantastic illusions: breathtaking glass mountains, carefree, winged creatures soaring in the sky, elaborate castles, worlds of adventure and pleasure free of those irksome burdens such as sickness, hunger, disease, intense pain. It is these very marvelous, fanciful dreams that serve as the foundation for visual artworks created with paints and stone. Sidebar: It is this same artistic, imaginative tendency we all have that enables us to easily construct inner visual pictures as we read a work of fiction. Nietzsche would like us to extend our imaginative capacity, urging us to bring real style to our character and view ourselves as a work of art.

“Philosophical men even have a presentiment that the reality in which we live and have our being is also mere appearance, and that another, quite different reality lies beneath it. Schopenhauer actually indicates as the criterion of philosophical ability the occasional ability to view men and things are mere phantoms or dream images.”

Here Nietzsche is hinting at how philosophy beginning with Socrates and Plato, pushed the chaotic irrational forces of the universe to one side, even calling them phantoms or dream images. What truly matters in this view of the universe is reason. Reason is king. And since reason is at the heart of this philosophic conception of the universe, the very heartbeat of reality, why continue to have tragedy performed, an art form claiming chaos is at the heart of the universe? Nietzsche goes into great detail on how Socratic philosophy brought about the death of Greek tragedy.

“Function of art: to give us a hint of a truth, a truth that the world was chaotic and meaningless but, equally, art had to shield us from this dark, dreadful reality.”

This line of thinking is at the very core of why Nietzsche loved Greek tragedy: the tragic performance would give an audience a glimpse of the true nature of the world’s dark chaos but do it in a way via the dramatic art of plot, character and other theatrical devices to protect, to buffer and safeguard the audience so they could continue living and managing life in their society.

“Thus the aesthetically sensitive man stands in the same relation to the reality of dreams as the philosopher does to the reality of existence; he is a close and willing observer, for these images afford him an interpretation of life, and by reflecting on these processes he trains himself for life.”

As the philosopher uses logic, reason and analysis, so the aesthetically attuned person uses the dream-worlds of sleep, hallucinogens, the arts and creative imagination to explore different dimensions of experience. Nietzsche perceived the dark, chaotic forces of the universe as prominent, at the heart of the heart of life. He could see how these irrational forces could energize human experience rather than driving people down into hopeless despair and renunciation.



“Either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the songs of all primitive men and peoples speak, or with the potent coming of spring that penetrates all nature with joy, these Dionysian emotions awake, or as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness.”

Here Nietzsche is alluding to our willing surrender of our sense of separate individuality to the swirl of joyful, ecstatic unity with the universe. In our modern world, one could think of a rave concert. Drugs and the ecstatic state, anyone?

“In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying into the air, dancing. His very gestures express enchantment.”

Taking the raw, primal energy and filtering it through Apollonian illusion. Here Nietzsche is suggesting art gives shape, form and color; art peddles a certain untruth since ultimately there is only the dark, irrational chaos. But this artistic untruth is completely necessary; otherwise, we couldn’t face the chaos.

“The noblest clay, the most costly marble, man, is here kneaded and cut, and to the sound of the chisel strokes of the Dionysian world-artist rings out the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries: “Do you prostrate yourselves, millions? Do you sense your Maker, world?”

A question worthy of consideration: Is tragedy a method and approach to life that actually works? Perhaps it is time for us modern people to reclaim the power and beauty of tragedy.

*I would like to thank a number of contemporary British philosophers for their podcasts and books on Nietzsche’s philosophy of art and tragedy. Listened to their podcasts repeatedly and reading several of their books over the last few years has really deepened and enriched my understanding and appreciation for this exciting subject. They are: Aaron Ridley, Christopher Janaway, Alex Neill, Simon May and Ken Gemes.

باز هم ترجمه‌ی بی‌نظیری از خانم منجم که در عین روان بودن از بار ژرف موضوع نکاهید. نیچه در این کتاب، با انگیزه‌های مختلفی که به‌نظرم مهم‌ترینش، بحران فرهنگی‌ای بود که غرب را مورد گزند خویش قرار می‌داد، با بررسی تعادل و تضادی که میان عنصر دیونزیوسی و آپولوییِ یونان باستان قرار دارد، روح موسیقی را واکاوی می‌کند و از خلال موسیقی که از نظر نیچه‌ی فیلسوف، والاترین شکل هنر است، به‌دنبال راهی برای جلوگیری از انحطاط فرهنگی می‌گردد. یکی از مهم‌ترین آثار نیچه که حتما باید خوانده شود.

It's Nietzsche, so there is the nihilistic worldview to deal with, but this work still has many great passages on the relation between art and culture. The whole book centers on his classification of two types of Greek art: the Apollonian and Dionysian. These two streams of Greek drama, he argues, united to form Greek tragedy. And he argues that both are necessary for good art: "It is in connection with Apollo and Dionysus, the two art-deities of the Greeks, that we learn that there existed in the Grecian world a wide antithesis, in origin and aims, between the art of the shaper, the Apollonian, and the non-plastic art of music, that of Dionysus: both these so heterogeneous tendencies run parallel to each other, for the most part openly at variance, and continually inciting each other to new and more powerful births, to perpetuate in them the strife of this antithesis, which is but seemingly bridged over by their mutual term "Art"; till at last, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic will, they appear paired with each other, and through this pairing eventually generate the equally Dionysian and Apollonian art-work of Attic tragedy. The Appollian stands for the "illusion" (the rational and the individuation of things) whereas the Dionysian stands for "intoxicaton” (the irrational, primordial urge and the unity of all things).

Other insightful passages:

Three cultures of illusion: (1) Socratic, (2) Artistic and (3) Tragic: “One is chained by the Socratic love of knowledge and the vain hope of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art's seductive veil of beauty fluttering before his eyes; still another by the metaphysical comfort that eternal life flows on indestructibly beneath the whirl of phenomena: or, if historical exemplifications are wanted, there is either an Alexandrian or a Hellenic or a Buddhistic culture.”

Our world is trapped in the net of Alexandrian culture: “Our whole modern world is entangled in the meshes of Alexandrian culture, and recognises as its ideal the theorist equipped with the most potent means of knowledge, and labouring in the service of science . . . How unintelligible must Faust, the modern cultured man, who is in himself intelligible, have appeared to a true Greek,—Faust, storming discontentedly through all the faculties, devoted to magic and the devil from a desire for knowledge, whom we have only to place alongside of Socrates for the purpose of comparison, in order to see that modern man begins to divine the boundaries of this Socratic love of perception and longs for a coast in the wide waste of the ocean of knowledge.

Results of Alexandrian culture: “Well, we must not be alarmed if the fruits of this optimism ripen,—if society, leavened to the very lowest strata by this kind of culture, gradually begins to tremble through wanton agitations and desires, if the belief in the earthly happiness of all, if the belief in the possibility of such a general intellectual culture is gradually transformed into the threatening demand for such an Alexandrine earthly happiness, into the conjuring of a Euripidean deus ex machina. Let us mark this well: the Alexandrian culture requires a slave class, to be able to exist permanently: but, in its optimistic view of life, it denies the necessity of such a class, and consequently, when the effect of its beautifully seductive and tranquillising utterances about the "dignity of man" and the "dignity of labour" is spent, it gradually drifts towards a dreadful destination. There is nothing more terrible than a barbaric slave class, who have learned to regard their existence as an injustice, and now prepare to take vengeance, not only for themselves, but for all generations. In the face of such threatening storms, who dares to appeal with confident spirit to our pale and exhausted religions, which even in their foundations have degenerated into scholastic religions?—so that myth, the necessary prerequisite of every religion, is already paralysed everywhere, and even in this domain the optimistic spirit—which we have just designated as the annihilating germ of society—has attained the mastery.”

Tragedy reminds us of a greater myth: Tragedy "is able by means of this same tragic myth, in the person of the tragic hero, to deliver us from the intense longing for this existence, and reminds us with warning hand of another existence and a higher joy, for which the struggling hero prepares himself presentiently by his destruction, not by his victories."

Ill-fatedeness of our "abstract" age: "Let us now place alongside thereof the abstract man proceeding independently of myth, the abstract education, the abstract usage, the abstract right, the abstract state: let us picture to ourselves the lawless roving of the artistic imagination, not bridled by any native myth: let us imagine a culture which has no fixed and sacred primitive seat, but is doomed to exhaust all its possibilities, and has to nourish itself wretchedly from the other cultures—such is the Present, as the result of Socratism, which is bent on the destruction of myth. And now the myth-less man remains eternally hungering among all the bygones, and digs and grubs for roots, though he have to dig for them even among the remotest antiquities. The stupendous historical exigency of the unsatisfied modern culture, the gathering around one of countless other cultures, the consuming desire for knowledge—what does all this point to, if not to the loss of myth, the loss of the mythical home, the mythical source?"

Nietzsche's first book is an exploration on various ways the ancient Greeks sought wholeness of the psyche. Perhaps this is the simplest way to explain and relate the most basic goal of religion, psychology, philosophy and spirituality: to become whole. It's not a phrase used by Nietzsche in this book but I am unsure how else to explain the motivating reason for anyone to nurture any kind of inner world or value piety or to cherish and re-tell myth. The ancient Greeks used myths of the gods in particular to better understand man and his world (perhaps even to symbolize aspects of the psyche), and the worship of some gods in particular satisfied this need. The worship of the god Dionysus was characterized by losing oneself in sensation, achieving ecstasy through identifying with music and through the tragedy and sufferings of the sacrificial god. The worship of Apollo appealed to man's sense of classical ordered beauty & proportion, moderation, and coming into self-knowledge. The philosophical pursuits that emerged in the 5th century BCE though evolved through Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others to birth a sort beginning of rational, logical, reasoning. I know I'm grossly over-simplifying these three "taos", but it is because they cannot be so simply stated that an entire book was devoted to understanding them. The Birth of Tragedy is Nietzsche's attempt to name them, describe them, and bring his readers along on his attempt to know each of them.

In an attempt to understand the worship of Apollo, the worship of Dionysus, and the philosophical pursuits of the sophists, Nietzsche spends much of the book contrasting them against each other. Sometimes he writes as if he favors one and is scorning the other, but this melts away throughout the book and they are seen then as arising from and because of one another. This study is not necessarily to argue for one particular way over the others, but to understand each as he understands them and how they mutually inform and create one another. In particular, he explores the world of the Greek playwrights and the progression of tastes from the earliest of them to the latest. Since the Apollo and Dionysus worship is already well in place by the time of the first of the popular Greek playwrights, those two are explored early on in the book and the divergence to comparing the different playwrights is to then introduce the rise of Socratic philosophy and the birth of the rational western scientific mind.

It should be noted that this is a highly opinionated work that fell under heavy criticism by Greek scholars of the day when it was published. The way he profiles the playwrights, the philosophers, and the cults devoted to the particular gods is not always accurate. It sometimes seems like a projection of the stereotypes of Nietzsche's 19th century European culture onto figures in ancient Greece who he feels match up. As such this shouldn't be read with the mind that you are being completely and accurately educated on the culture of ancient Greece. The editor's introduction, the translator's notes, and Nietzsche's own "attempt at self criticism" he included on the later re-issue of this book all help the reader to separate the young, starry-eyed idealizations from the accepted scholarly interpretations and to better understand the real purpose of the book.

Whether it be for the sake of comparing Nietzsche's statements against traditional beliefs of Greek scholars or simply to have a better connection with the ideas he puts forth, some pre-reading is necessary. This is not the type of book to go into without having read any of the Greek playwrights or the writings of Plato on Socrates. In some of Nietzsche's books he may make a passing reference to Kant or Goethe and the reader can still appreciate it with even a Wikipedia-quality biographical knowledge of the figure. That is not the case in this book with the reference he makes to the playwrights and to Socrates. He is developing a kind of language whose building blocks are the works of the Greek playwrights, poets, and deities, and the structure of that language will not appear as beautiful to those without the familiarity with those pieces.

There are a combined 33 surviving plays by the Greek tragic playwrights Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, but if reading that collection is impractical I would recommend the following out of those: (1) Euripides - Bacchae (this one is essential), Medea, Alcestis, Electra (all three playwrights have surviving plays on Electra & Orestes, so it's good to contrast the three), Iphigenia in Tauris (also about Orestes), (2) Aeschylus - Agamemnon (essential), Libation Bearers (essential), Eumenides (essential), and Prometheus Bound, (3) Sophocles - Oedipus Rex (essential), Oedipus at Colonus (essential), Electra (again, just to compare the three playwrights' versions), and Ajax.

In addition to those three tragic playwrights, reading two plays by the comic playwright Aristophanes is also important: The Clouds and The Frogs (absolutely essential). One work by Aristotle that Nietzsche makes a few references to and sheds some light on this whole exposition of Greek theater and poetry is Poetics, which is a fairly short work. Just as important as understanding the playwrights is understanding Socrates and his rhetorical mischievous. The Socratic dialogues of Plato's which seem most relevant are probably The Apology, Protagoras, Symposium, and Phaedo (perhaps in that order, with the latter being optional). While some of the plays and dialogues listed can provide some familiarity with the Greek gods Dionysus and Apollo, it might be useful to refresh a little on them through the Homeric Hymns and/or a couple online or textbook-quality bits of general information would suffice.

Nietzsche brings some fresh perspective in his commentary on Dionysic, Apolline, and Socratic worldviews and his prose is quite beautiful at times. He builds an idea over the course of a certain section and wraps up each one with the same wit, cleverness, and poignancy we're used to seeing in his short aphorisms. While I often felt that his Socrates or his Euripides or his Apollo may have been different than the impression I had of those figures, the pictures he paints are vivid and if detached from their appended names would be some insightful thoughts and profiling on specific modes of thinking. This is the type of book I can see myself re-reading a couple times in the future not so much because it sheds light on the ancient Greeks but because it seems to brilliantly capture certain archetypal forces of the human psyche, detail them and release them back into the stream of consciousness in memorable philosophical prose.