FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
OR
_HELLENISM AND PESSIMISM_
TRANSLATED BY
WM. A. HAUSSMANN, PH.D.
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
Edited by Dr Oscar Levy
Volume One
T.N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1910
CONTENTS.
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
AN ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM
FOREWORD TO RICHARD WAGNER
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
INTRODUCTION.[1]
Frederick Nietzsche was born at Röcken near Lützen, in the Prussian
province of Saxony, on the 15th of October 1844, at 10 a.m. The day
happened to be the anniversary of the birth of Frederick-William IV.,
then King of Prussia, and the peal of the local church-bells which was
intended to celebrate this event, was, by a happy coincidence, just
timed to greet my brother on his entrance into the world. In 1841,
at the time when our father was tutor to the Altenburg Princesses,
Theresa of Saxe-Altenburg, Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Olden-burg, and
Alexandra, Grand Duchess Constantine of Russia, he had had the honour
of being presented to his witty and pious sovereign. The meeting seems
to have impressed both parties very favourably; for, very shortly
after it had taken place, our father received his living at Röcken "by
supreme command." His joy may well be imagined, therefore, when a first
son was born to him on his beloved and august patron's birthday, and
at the christening ceremony he spoke as follows:--"Thou blessed month
of October!--for many years the most decisive events in my life have
occurred within thy thirty-one days, and now I celebrate the greatest
and most glorious of them all by baptising my little boy! O blissful
moment! O exquisite festival! O unspeakably holy duty! In the Lord's
name I bless thee!--With all my heart I utter these words: Bring me
this, my beloved child, that I may consecrate it unto the Lord. My son,
Frederick William, thus shalt thou be named on earth, as a memento of
my royal benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born!"
Our father was thirty-one years of age, and our mother not quite
nineteen, when my brother was born. Our mother, who was the daughter
of a clergyman, was good-looking and healthy, and was one of a very
large family of sons and daughters. Our paternal grandparents, the
Rev. Oehler and his wife, in Pobles, were typically healthy people.
Strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a cheerful outlook on
life, were among the qualities which every one was pleased to observe
in them. Our grandfather Oehler was a bright, clever man, and quite
the old style of comfortable country parson, who thought it no sin to
go hunting. He scarcely had a day's illness in his life, and would
certainly not have met with his end as early as he did--that is to say,
before his seventieth year--if his careless disregard of all caution,
where his health was concerned, had not led to his catching a severe
and fatal cold. In regard to our grand-mother Oehler, who died in her
eighty-second year, all that can be said is, that if all German women
were possessed of the health she enjoyed, the German nation would excel
all others from the standpoint of vitality. She bore our grandfather
eleven children; gave each of them the breast for nearly the whole of
its first year, and reared them all It is said that the sight of these
eleven children, at ages varying from nineteen years to one month, with
their powerful build, rosy cheeks, beaming eyes, and wealth of curly
locks, provoked the admiration of all visitors. Of course, despite
their extraordinarily good health, the life of this family was not
by any means all sunshine. Each of the children was very spirited,
wilful, and obstinate, and it was therefore no simple matter to keep
them in order. Moreover, though they always showed the utmost respect
and most implicit obedience to their parents--even as middle-aged
men and women--misunderstandings between themselves were of constant
occurrence. Our Oehler grandparents were fairly well-to-do; for our
grandmother hailed from a very old family, who had been extensive
land-owners in the neighbourhood of Zeitz for centuries, and her father
owned the baronial estate of Wehlitz and a magnificent seat near Zeitz
in Pacht. When she married, her father gave her carriages and horses,
a coachman, a cook, and a kitchenmaid, which for the wife of a German
minister was then, and is still, something quite exceptional. As a
result of the wars in the beginning of the nineteenth century, however,
our great-grandfather lost the greater part of his property.
Our father's family was also in fairly comfortable circumstances,
and likewise very large. Our grandfather Dr. Nietzsche (D.D. and
Superintendent) married twice, and had in all twelve children, of whom
three died young. Our grandfather on this side, whom I never knew,
must certainly have been a distinguished, dignified, very learned
and reserved man; his second wife--our beloved grandmother--was an
active-minded, intelligent, and exceptionally good-natured woman.
The whole of our father's family, which I only got to know when they
were very advanced in years, were remarkable for their great power of
self-control, their lively interest in intellectual matters, and a
strong sense of family unity, which manifested itself both in their
splendid readiness to help one another and in their very excellent
relations with each other. Our father was the youngest son, and, thanks
to his uncommonly lovable disposition, together with other gifts, which
only tended to become more marked as he grew older, he was quite the
favourite of the family. Blessed with a thoroughly sound constitution,
as all averred who knew him at the convent-school in Rossleben, at
the University, or later at the ducal court of Altenburg, he was tall
and slender, possessed an undoubted gift for poetry and real musical
talent, and was moreover a man of delicate sensibilities, full of
consideration for his whole family, and distinguished in his manners.
My brother often refers to his Polish descent, and in later years
he even instituted research-work with the view of establishing it,
which met with partial success. I know nothing definite concerning
these investigations, because a large number of valuable documents
were unfortunately destroyed after his breakdown in Turin. The family
tradition was that a certain Polish nobleman Nicki (pronounced Nietzky)
had obtained the special favour of Augustus the Strong, King of
Poland, and had received the rank of Earl from him. When, however,
Stanislas Leszcysski the Pole became king, our supposed ancestor became
involved in a conspiracy in favour of the Saxons and Protestants. He
was sentenced to death; but, taking flight, according to the evidence
of the documents, he was ultimately befriended by a certain Earl of
Brühl, who gave him a small post in an obscure little provincial town.
Occasionally our aged aunts would speak of our great-grandfather
Nietzsche, who was said to have died in his ninety-first year, and
words always seemed to fail them when they attempted to describe his
handsome appearance, good breeding, and vigour. Our ancestors, both on
the Nietzsche and the Oehler side, were very long-lived. Of the four
pairs of great-grandparents, one great-grandfather reached the age of
ninety, five great-grandmothers and-fathers died between eighty-two and
eighty-six years of age, and two only failed to reach their seventieth
year.
The sorrow which hung as a cloud over our branch of the family
was our father's death, as the result of a heavy fall, at the age
of thirty-eight. One night, upon leaving some friends whom he had
accompanied home, he was met at the door of the vicarage by our little
dog. The little animal must have got between his feet, for he stumbled
and fell backwards down seven stone steps on to the paving-stones
of the vicarage courtyard. As a result of this fall, he was laid up
with concussion of the brain, and, after a lingering illness, which
lasted eleven months, he died on the 30th of July 1849. The early
death of our beloved and highly-gifted father spread gloom over
the whole of our childhood. In 1850 our mother withdrew with us to
Naumburg on the Saale, where she took up her abode with our widowed
grandmother Nietzsche; and there she brought us up with Spartan
severity and simplicity, which, besides being typical of the period,
was quite _de rigeur_ in her family. Of course, Grand-mamma Nietzsche
helped somewhat to temper her daughter-in-law's severity, and in this
respect our Oehler grandparents, who were less rigorous with us,
their eldest grandchildren, than with their own children, were also
very influential. Grandfather Oehler was the first who seems to have
recognised the extraordinary talents of his eldest grandchild.
From his earliest childhood upwards, my brother was always strong
and healthy; he often declared that he must have been taken for a
peasant-boy throughout his childhood and youth, as he was so plump,
brown, and rosy. The thick fair hair which fell picturesquely over his
shoulders tended somewhat to modify his robust appearance. Had he not
possessed those wonderfully beautiful, large, and expressive eyes,
however, and had he not been so very ceremonious in his manner, neither
his teachers nor his relatives would ever have noticed anything at all
remarkable about the boy; for he was both modest and reserved.
He received his early schooling at a preparatory school, and later
at a grammar school in Naumburg. In the autumn of 1858, when he was
fourteen years of age, he entered the Pforta school, so famous for the
scholars it has produced. There, too, very severe discipline prevailed,
and much was exacted from the pupils, with the view of inuring them
to great mental and physical exertions. Thus, if my brother seems
to lay particular stress upon the value of rigorous training, free
from all sentimentality, it should be remembered that he speaks from
experience in this respect. At Pforta he followed the regular school
course, and he did not enter a university until the comparatively late
age of twenty. His extraordinary gifts manifested themselves chiefly
in his independent and private studies and artistic efforts. As a boy
his musical talent had already been so noticeable, that he himself
and other competent judges were doubtful as to whether he ought not
perhaps to devote himself altogether to music. It is, however, worth
noting that everything he did in his later years, whether in Latin,
Greek, or German work, bore the stamp of perfection--subject of course
to the limitation imposed upon him by his years. His talents came very
suddenly to the fore, because he had allowed them to grow for such a
long time in concealment. His very first performance in philology,
executed while he was a student under Ritschl, the famous philologist,
was also typical of him in this respect, seeing that it was ordered
to be printed for the _Rheinische Museum._ Of course this was done
amid general and grave expressions of doubt; for, as Dr. Ritschl often
declared, it was an unheard-of occurrence for a student in his third
term to prepare such an excellent treatise.
Being a great lover of out-door exercise, such as swimming, skating,
and walking, he developed into a very sturdy lad. Rohde gives the
following description of him as a student: with his healthy complexion,
his outward and inner cleanliness, his austere chastity and his solemn
aspect, he was the image of that delightful youth described by Adalbert
Stifter.
Though as a child he was always rather serious, as a lad and a man he
was ever inclined to see the humorous side of things, while his whole
being, and everything he said or did, was permeated by an extraordinary
harmony. He belonged to the very few who could control even a bad mood
and conceal it from others. All his friends are unanimous in their
praise of his exceptional evenness of temper and behaviour, and his
warm, hearty, and pleasant laugh that seemed to come from the very
depths of his benevolent and affectionate nature. In him it might
therefore be said, nature had produced a being who in body and spirit
was a harmonious whole: his unusual intellect was fully in keeping with
his uncommon bodily strength.
The only abnormal thing about him, and something which we both
inherited from our father, was short-sightedness, and this was
very much aggravated in my brother's case, even in his earliest
schooldays, owing to that indescribable anxiety to learn which always
characterised him. When one listens to accounts given by his friends
and schoolfellows, one is startled by the multiplicity of his studies
even in his schooldays.
In the autumn of 1864, he began his university life in Bonn, and
studied philology and theology; at the end of six months he gave up
theology, and in the autumn of 1865 followed his famous teacher Ritschl
to the University of Leipzig. There he became an ardent philologist,
and diligently sought to acquire a masterly grasp of this branch of
knowledge. But in this respect it would be unfair to forget that the
school of Pforta, with its staff of excellent teachers--scholars
that would have adorned the chairs of any University--had already
afforded the best of preparatory trainings to any one intending to
take up philology as a study, more particularly as it gave all pupils
ample scope to indulge any individual tastes they might have for any
particular branch of ancient history. The last important Latin thesis
which my brother wrote for the Landes-Schule, Pforta, dealt with
the Megarian poet Theognis, and it was in the rôle of a lecturer on
this very subject that, on the 18th January 1866, he made his _first
appearance in public_ before the philological society he had helped to
found in Leipzig. The paper he read disclosed his investigations on
the subject of Theognis the moralist and aristocrat, who, as is well
known, described and dismissed the plebeians of his time in terms of
the heartiest contempt The aristocratic ideal, which was always so
dear to my brother, thus revealed itself for the first time. Moreover,
curiously enough, it was precisely _this_ scientific thesis which was
the cause of Ritschl's recognition of my brother and fondness for him.
The whole of his Leipzig days proved of the utmost importance to my
brother's career. There he was plunged into the very midst of a torrent
of intellectual influences which found an impressionable medium in
the fiery youth, and to which he eagerly made himself accessible.
He did not, however, forget to discriminate among them, but tested
and criticised the currents of thought he encountered, and selected
accordingly. It is certainly of great importance to ascertain what
those influences precisely were to which he yielded, and how long
they maintained their sway over him, and it is likewise necessary to
discover exactly when the matured mind threw off these fetters in order
to work out its own salvation.
The influences that exercised power over him in those days may be
described in the three following terms: Hellenism, Schopenhauer,
Wagner. His love of Hellenism certainly led him to philology; but, as
a matter of fact, what concerned him most was to obtain a wide view
of things in general, and this he hoped to derive from that science;
philology in itself, with his splendid method and thorough way of going
to work, served him only as a means to an end.
If Hellenism was the first strong influence which already in Pforta
obtained a sway over my brother, in the winter of 1865-66, a completely
new, and therefore somewhat subversive, influence was introduced into
his life with Schopenhauer's philosophy. When he reached Leipzig in
the autumn of 1865, he was very downcast; for the experiences that
had befallen him during his one year of student life in Bonn had
deeply depressed him. He had sought at first to adapt himself to his
surroundings there, with the hope of ultimately elevating them to his
lofty views on things; but both these efforts proved vain, and now he
had come to Leipzig with the purpose of framing his own manner of life.
It can easily be imagined how the first reading of Schopenhauer's _The
World as Will and Idea_ worked upon this man, still stinging from the
bitterest experiences and disappointments. He writes: "Here I saw a
mirror in which I espied the world, life, and my own nature depicted
with frightful grandeur." As my brother, from his very earliest
childhood, had always missed both the parent and the educator through
our father's untimely death, he began to regard Schopenhauer with
almost filial love and respect. He did not venerate him quite as other
men did; Schopenhauer's _personality_ was what attracted and enchanted
him. From the first he was never blind to the faults in his master's
system, and in proof of this we have only to refer to an essay he
wrote in the autumn of 1867, which actually contains a criticism of
Schopenhauer's philosophy.
Now, in the autumn of 1865, to these two influences, Hellenism and
Schopenhauer, a third influence was added--one which was to prove
the strongest ever exercised over my brother--and it began with his
personal introduction to Richard Wagner. He was introduced to Wagner by
the latter's sister, Frau Professor Brockhaus, and his description of
their first meeting, contained in a letter to Erwin Rohde, is really
most affecting. For years, that is to say, from the time Billow's
arrangement of _Tristan and Isolde_ for the pianoforte, had appeared,
he had already been a passionate admirer of Wagner's music; but now
that the artist himself entered upon the scene of his life, with the
whole fascinating strength of his strong will, my brother felt that he
was in the presence of a being whom he, of all modern men, resembled
most in regard to force of character.
Again, in the case of Richard Wagner, my brother, from the first, laid
the utmost stress upon the man's personality, and could only regard
his works and views as an expression of the artist's whole being,
despite the fact that he by no means understood every one of those
works at that time. My brother was the first who ever manifested such
enthusiastic affection for Schopenhauer and Wagner, and he was also the
first of that numerous band of young followers who ultimately inscribed
the two great names upon their banner. Whether Schopenhauer and Wagner
ever really corresponded to the glorified pictures my brother painted
of them, both in his letters and other writings, is a question which we
can no longer answer in the affirmative. Perhaps what he saw in them
was only what he himself wished to be some day.
The amount of work my brother succeeded in accomplishing, during his
student days, really seems almost incredible. When we examine his
record for the years 1865-67, we can scarcely believe it refers to only
two years' industry, for at a guess no one would hesitate to suggest
four years at least. But in those days, as he himself declares, he
still possessed the constitution of a bear. He knew neither what
headaches nor indigestion meant, and, despite his short sight, his eyes
were able to endure the greatest strain without giving him the smallest
trouble. That is why, regardless of seriously interrupting his studies,
he was so glad at the thought of becoming a soldier in the forthcoming
autumn of 1867; for he was particularly anxious to discover some means
of employing his bodily strength.
He discharged his duties as a soldier with the utmost mental and
physical freshness, was the crack rider among the recruits of his year,
and was sincerely sorry when, owing to an accident, he was compelled to
leave the colours before the completion of his service. As a result of
this accident he had his first dangerous illness.
While mounting his horse one day, the beast, which was an uncommonly
restive one, suddenly reared, and, causing him to strike his chest
sharply against the pommel of the saddle, threw him to the ground. My
brother then made a second attempt to mount, and succeeded this time,
notwithstanding the fact that he had severely sprained and torn two
muscles in his chest, and had seriously bruised the adjacent ribs. For
a whole day he did his utmost to pay no heed to the injury, and to
overcome the pain it caused him; but in the end he only swooned, and a
dangerously acute inflammation of the injured tissues was the result.
Ultimately he was obliged to consult the famous specialist, Professor
Volkmann, in Halle, who quickly put him right.
In October 1868, my brother returned to his studies in Leipzig with
double joy. These were his plans: to get his doctor's degree as soon as
possible; to proceed to Paris, Italy, and Greece, make a lengthy stay
in each place, and then to return to Leipzig in order to settle there
as a privat docent. All these plans were, however, suddenly frustrated
owing to his premature call to the University of Bale, where he was
invited to assume the duties of professor. Some of the philological
essays he had written in his student days, and which were published
by the _Rheinische Museum,_ had attracted the attention of the
Educational Board at Bale. Ratsherr Wilhelm Vischer, as representing
this body, appealed to Ritschl for fuller information. Now Ritschl,
who had early recognised my brother's extraordinary talents, must have
written a letter of such enthusiastic praise ("Nietzsche is a genius:
he can do whatever he chooses to put his mind to"), that one of the
more cautious members of the council is said to have observed: "If
the proposed candidate be really such a genius, then it were better
did we not appoint him; for, in any case, he would only stay a short
time at the little University of Bale." My brother ultimately accepted
the appointment, and, in view of his published philological works,
he was immediately granted the doctor's degree by the University of
Leipzig. He was twenty-four years and six months old when he took up
his position as professor in Bale,--and it was with a heavy heart that
he proceeded there, for he knew "the golden period of untrammelled
activity" must cease. He was, however, inspired by the deep wish of
being able "to transfer to his pupils some of that Schopenhauerian
earnestness which is stamped on the brow of the sublime man." "I
should like to be something more than a mere trainer of capable
philologists: the present generation of teachers, the care of the
growing broods,--all this is in my mind. If we must live, let us at
least do so in such wise that others may bless our life once we have
been peacefully delivered from its toils."
When I look back upon that month of May 1869, and ask both of friends
and of myself, what the figure of this youthful University professor
of four-and-twenty meant to the world at that time, the reply is
naturally, in the first place: that he was one of Ritschl's best
pupils; secondly, that he was an exceptionally capable exponent of
classical antiquity with a brilliant career before him; and thirdly,
that he was a passionate adorer of Wagner and Schopenhauer. But no one
has any idea of my brother's independent attitude to the science he
had selected, to his teachers and to his ideals, and he deceived both
himself and us when he passed as a "disciple" who really shared all the
views of his respected master.
On the 28th May 1869, my brother delivered his inaugural address
at Bale University, and it is said to have deeply impressed the
authorities. The subject of the address was "Homer and Classical
Philology."
Musing deeply, the worthy councillors and professors walked homeward.
What had they just heard? A young scholar discussing the very
justification of his own science in a cool and philosophically critical
spirit! A man able to impart so much artistic glamour to his subject,
that the once stale and arid study of philology suddenly struck
them--and they were certainly not impressionable men--as the messenger
of the gods: "and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and
tormented Boeotian peasants, so philology comes into a world full of
gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes,
and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and brilliant godlike
figure of a distant, blue, and happy fairyland."
"We have indeed got hold of a rare bird, Herr Ratsherr," said one of
these gentlemen to his companion, and the latter heartily agreed, for
my brother's appointment had been chiefly his doing.
Even in Leipzig, it was reported that Jacob Burckhardt had said:
"Nietzsche is as much an artist as a scholar." Privy-Councillor
Ritschl told me of this himself, and then he added, with a smile: "I
always said so; he can make his scientific discourses as palpitatingly
interesting as a French novelist his novels."
"Homer and Classical Philology"--my brother's inaugural address at
the University--was by no means the first literary attempt he had
made; for we have already seen that he had had papers published by the
_Rheinische Museum_; still, this particular discourse is important,
seeing that it practically contains the programme of many other
subsequent essays. I must, however, emphasise this fact here, that
neither "Homer and Classical Philology," nor _The Birth of Tragedy,_
represents a beginning in my brother's career. It is really surprising
to see how very soon he actually began grappling with the questions
which were to prove the problems of his life. If a beginning to his
intellectual development be sought at all, then it must be traced
to the years 1865-67 in Leipzig. _The Birth of Tragedy,_ his maiden
attempt at book-writing, with which he began his twenty-eighth year,
is the last link of a long chain of developments, and the first fruit
that was a long time coming to maturity. Nietzsche's was a polyphonic
nature, in which the most different and apparently most antagonistic
talents had come together. Philosophy, art, and science--in the form
of philology, then--each certainly possessed a part of him. The
most wonderful feature--perhaps it might even be called the real
Nietzschean feature--of this versatile creature, was the fact that
no eternal strife resulted from the juxtaposition of these inimical
traits, that not one of them strove to dislodge, or to get the upper
hand of, the others. When Nietzsche renounced the musical career, in
order to devote himself to philology, and gave himself up to the most
strenuous study, he did not find it essential completely to suppress
his other tendencies: as before, he continued both to compose and
derive pleasure from music, and even studied counterpoint somewhat
seriously. Moreover, during his years at Leipzig, when he consciously
gave himself up to philological research, he began to engross himself
in Schopenhauer, and was thereby won by philosophy for ever. Everything
that could find room took up its abode in him, and these juxtaposed
factors, far from interfering with one another's existence, were rather
mutually fertilising and stimulating. All those who have read the first
volume of the biography with attention must have been struck with the
perfect way in which the various impulses in his nature combined in
the end to form one general torrent, and how this flowed with ever
greater force in the direction of _a single goal._ Thus science, art,
and philosophy developed and became ever more closely related in him,
until, in _The Birth of Tragedy,_ they brought forth a "centaur," that
is to say, a work which would have been an impossible achievement to
a man with only a single, special talent. This polyphony of different
talents, all coming to utterance together and producing the richest
and boldest of harmonies, is the fundamental feature not only of
Nietzsche's early days, but of his whole development. It is once again
the artist, philosopher, and man of science, who as one man in later
years, after many wanderings, recantations, and revulsions of feeling,
produces that other and rarer Centaur of highest rank--_Zarathustra_.
_The Birth of Tragedy_ requires perhaps a little explaining--more
particularly as we have now ceased to use either Schopenhauerian or
Wagnerian terms of expression. And it was for this reason that five
years after its appearance, my brother wrote an introduction to it,
in which he very plainly expresses his doubts concerning the views it
contains, and the manner in which they are presented. The kernel of its
thought he always recognised as perfectly correct; and all he deplored
in later days was that he had spoiled the grand problem of Hellenism,
as he understood it, by adulterating it with ingredients taken from the
world of most modern ideas. As time went on, he grew ever more and more
anxious to define the deep meaning of this book with greater precision
and clearness. A very good elucidation of its aims, which unfortunately
was never published, appears among his notes of the year 1886, and is
as follows:--
"Concerning _The Birth of Tragedy._--A book consisting of mere
experiences relating to pleasurable and unpleasurable æsthetic states,
with a metaphysico-artistic background. At the same time the confession
of a romanticist _the sufferer feels the deepest longing for beauty--he
begets it_; finally, a product of youth, full of youthful courage and
melancholy.
"Fundamental psychological experiences: the word 'Apollonian' stands
for that state of rapt repose in the presence of a visionary world,
in the presence of the world of _beautiful appearance_ designed as a
deliverance from _becoming_; the word _Dionysos,_ on the other hand,
stands for strenuous becoming, grown self-conscious, in the form
of the rampant voluptuousness of the creator, who is also perfectly
conscious of the violent anger of the destroyer.
"The antagonism of these two attitudes and the _desires_ that underlie
them. The first-named would have the vision it conjures up _eternal_:
in its light man must be quiescent, apathetic, peaceful, healed, and
on friendly terms with himself and all existence; the second strives
after creation, after the voluptuousness of wilful creation, _i.e._
constructing and destroying. Creation felt and explained as an instinct
would be merely the unremitting inventive action of a dissatisfied
being, overflowing with wealth and living at high tension and high
pressure,--of a God who would overcome the sorrows of existence by
means only of continual changes and transformations,--appearance as a
transient and momentary deliverance; the world as an apparent sequence
of godlike visions and deliverances.
"This metaphysico-artistic attitude is opposed to Schopenhauer's
one-sided view which values art, not from the artist's standpoint but
from the spectator's, because it brings salvation and deliverance
by means of the joy produced by unreal as opposed to the existing
or the real (the experience only of him who is suffering and is in
despair owing to himself and everything existing).--Deliverance in
the _form_ and its eternity (just as Plato may have pictured it, save
that he rejoiced in a complete subordination of all too excitable
sensibilities, even in the idea itself). To this is opposed the second
point of view--art regarded as a phenomenon of the artist, above all
of the musician; the torture of being obliged to create, as a Dionysian
instinct.
"Tragic art, rich in both attitudes, represents the reconciliation of
Apollo and Dionysos. Appearance is given the greatest importance by
Dionysos; and yet it will be denied and cheerfully denied. This is
directed against Schopenhauer's teaching of _Resignation_ as the tragic
attitude towards the world.
"Against Wagner's theory that music is a means and drama an end.
"A desire for tragic myth (for religion and even pessimistic religion)
as for a forcing frame in which certain plants flourish.
"Mistrust of science, although its ephemerally soothing optimism be
strongly felt; the 'serenity' of the theoretical man.
"Deep antagonism to Christianity. Why? The degeneration of the Germanic
spirit is ascribed to its influence.
"Any justification of the world can only be an _æsthetic_ one. Profound
suspicions about morality (--it is part and parcel of the world of
appearance).
"The happiness of existence is only possible as the happiness derived
from appearance. (_'Being' is a fiction invented by those who suffer
from becoming_.)
"Happiness in becoming is possible only in the _annihilation_ of
the real, of the 'existing,' of the beautifully visionary,--in the
pessimistic dissipation of illusions:--with the annihilation of
the most beautiful phenomena in the world of appearance, Dionysian
happiness reaches its zenith."
_The Birth of Tragedy_ is really only a portion of a much greater work
on Hellenism, which my brother had always had in view from the time of
his student days. But even the portion it represents was originally
designed upon a much larger scale than the present one; the reason
probably being, that Nietzsche desired only to be of service to Wagner.
When a certain portion of the projected work on Hellenism was ready
and had received the title _Greek Cheerfulness,_ my brother happened
to call upon Wagner at Tribschen in April 1871, and found him very
low-spirited in regard to the mission of his life. My brother was very
anxious to take some decisive step to help him, and, laying the plans
of his great work on Greece aside, he selected a small portion from
the already completed manuscript--a portion dealing with one distinct
side of Hellenism,--to wit, its tragic art. He then associated Wagner's
music with it and the name Dionysos, and thus took the first step
towards that world-historical view through which we have since grown
accustomed to regard Wagner.
From the dates of the various notes relating to it, _The Birth of
Tragedy_ must have been written between the autumn of 1869 and November
1871--a period during which "a mass of æsthetic questions and answers"
was fermenting in Nietzsche's mind. It was first published in January
1872 by E. W. Fritsch, in Leipzig, under the title _The Birth of
Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music._ Later on the title was changed to
_The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism._
ELIZABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.
WEIMAR, _September_ 1905.
[1] This Introduction by E. Förster-Nietzsche, which appears
in the front of the first volume of Naumann's Pocket Edition of
Nietzsche, has been translated and arranged by Mr. A. M. Ludovici.
AN ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM.
I.
Whatever may lie at the bottom of this doubtful book must be a
question of the first rank and attractiveness, moreover a deeply
personal question,--in proof thereof observe the time in which it
originated, _in spite_ of which it originated, the exciting period
of the Franco-German war of 1870-71. While the thunder of the battle
of Wörth rolled over Europe, the ruminator and riddle-lover, who had
to be the parent of this book, sat somewhere in a nook of the Alps,
lost in riddles and ruminations, consequently very much concerned and
unconcerned at the same time, and wrote down his meditations on the
_Greeks,_--the kernel of the curious and almost inaccessible book, to
which this belated prologue (or epilogue) is to be devoted. A few weeks
later: and he found himself under the walls of Metz, still wrestling
with the notes of interrogation he had set down concerning the alleged
"cheerfulness" of the Greeks and of Greek art; till at last, in that
month of deep suspense, when peace was debated at Versailles, he too
attained to peace with himself, and, slowly recovering from a disease
brought home from the field, made up his mind definitely regarding the
"Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of _Music."_--From music? Music and
Tragedy? Greeks and tragic music? Greeks and the Art-work of pessimism?
A race of men, well-fashioned, beautiful, envied, life-inspiring, like
no other race hitherto, the Greeks--indeed? The Greeks were _in need_
of tragedy? Yea--of art? Wherefore--Greek art?...
We can thus guess where the great note of interrogation concerning the
value of existence had been set. Is pessimism _necessarily_ the sign of
decline, of decay, of failure, of exhausted and weakened instincts?--as
was the case with the Indians, as is, to all appearance, the case with
us "modern" men and Europeans? Is there a pessimism of _strength_? An
intellectual predilection for what is hard, awful, evil, problematical
in existence, owing to well-being, to exuberant health, to _fullness_
of existence? Is there perhaps suffering in overfullness itself? A
seductive fortitude with the keenest of glances, which _yearns_ for
the terrible, as for the enemy, the worthy enemy, with whom it may try
its strength? from whom it is willing to learn what "fear" is? What
means _tragic_ myth to the Greeks of the best, strongest, bravest era?
And the prodigious phenomenon of the Dionysian? And that which was
born thereof, tragedy?--And again: that of which tragedy died, the
Socratism of morality, the dialectics, contentedness and cheerfulness
of the theoretical man--indeed? might not this very Socratism
be a sign of decline, of weariness, of disease, of anarchically
disintegrating instincts? And the "Hellenic cheerfulness" of the later
Hellenism merely a glowing sunset? The Epicurean will _counter_ to
pessimism merely a precaution of the sufferer? And science itself,
our science--ay, viewed as a symptom of life, what really signifies
all science? Whither, worse still, _whence_--all science? Well? Is
scientism perhaps only fear and evasion of pessimism? A subtle defence
against--_truth!_ Morally speaking, something like falsehood and
cowardice? And, unmorally speaking, an artifice? O Socrates, Socrates,
was this perhaps _thy_ secret? Oh mysterious ironist, was this perhaps
thine--irony?...
2.
What I then laid hands on, something terrible and dangerous, a
problem with horns, not necessarily a bull itself, but at all events
a _new_ problem: I should say to-day it was the _problem of science_
itself--science conceived for the first time as problematic, as
questionable. But the book, in which my youthful ardour and suspicion
then discharged themselves--what an _impossible_ book must needs
grow out of a task so disagreeable to youth. Constructed of nought
but precocious, unripened self-experiences, all of which lay close
to the threshold of the communicable, based on the groundwork of
_art_--for the problem of science cannot be discerned on the groundwork
of science,--a book perhaps for artists, with collateral analytical
and retrospective aptitudes (that is, an exceptional kind of artists,
for whom one must seek and does not even care to seek ...), full of
psychological innovations and artists' secrets, with an artists'
metaphysics in the background, a work of youth, full of youth's mettle
and youth's melancholy, independent, defiantly self-sufficient even
when it seems to bow to some authority and self-veneration; in short,
a firstling-work, even in every bad sense of the term; in spite of its
senile problem, affected with every fault of youth, above all with
youth's prolixity and youth's "storm and stress": on the other hand,
in view of the success it had (especially with the great artist to
whom it addressed itself, as it were, in a duologue, Richard Wagner) a
_demonstrated_ book, I mean a book which, at any rate, sufficed "for
the best of its time." On this account, if for no other reason, it
should be treated with some consideration and reserve; yet I shall not
altogether conceal how disagreeable it now appears to me, how after
sixteen years it stands a total stranger before me,--before an eye
which is more mature, and a hundred times more fastidious, but which
has by no means grown colder nor lost any of its interest in that
self-same task essayed for the first time by this daring book,--_to
view science through the optics of the artist, and art moreover through
the optics of life...._
3.
I say again, to-day it is an impossible book to me,--I call it badly
written, heavy, painful, image-angling and image-entangling, maudlin,
sugared at times even to femininism, uneven in tempo, void of the will
to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore rising above the
necessity of demonstration, distrustful even of the _propriety_ of
demonstration, as being a book for initiates, as "music" for those who
are baptised with the name of Music, who are united from the beginning
of things by common ties of rare experiences in art, as a countersign
for blood-relations _in artibus._--a haughty and fantastic book,
which from the very first withdraws even more from the _profanum
vulgus_ of the "cultured" than from the "people," but which also, as
its effect has shown and still shows, knows very well how to seek
fellow-enthusiasts and lure them to new by-ways and dancing-grounds.
Here, at any rate--thus much was acknowledged with curiosity as well
as with aversion--a _strange_ voice spoke, the disciple of a still
"unknown God," who for the time being had hidden himself under the
hood of the scholar, under the German's gravity and disinclination for
dialectics, even under the bad manners of the Wagnerian; here was a
spirit with strange and still nameless needs, a memory bristling with
questions, experiences and obscurities, beside which stood the name
Dionysos like one more note of interrogation; here spoke--people said
to themselves with misgivings--something like a mystic and almost
mænadic soul, which, undecided whether it should disclose or conceal
itself, stammers with an effort and capriciously as in a strange
tongue. It should have _sung,_ this "new soul"--and not spoken! What
a pity, that I did not dare to say what I then had to say, as a poet:
I could have done so perhaps! Or at least as a philologist:--for even
at the present day well-nigh everything in this domain remains to be
discovered and disinterred by the philologist! Above all the problem,
_that_ here there _is_ a problem before us,--and that, so long as we
have no answer to the question "what is Dionysian?" the Greeks are now
as ever wholly unknown and inconceivable....
4.
Ay, what is Dionysian?--In this book may be found an answer,--a
"knowing one" speaks here, the votary and disciple of his god.
Perhaps I should now speak more guardedly and less eloquently of a
psychological question so difficult as the origin of tragedy among the
Greeks. A fundamental question is the relation of the Greek to pain,
his degree of sensibility,--did this relation remain constant? or did
it veer about?--the question, whether his ever-increasing _longing
for beauty,_ for festivals, gaieties, new cults, did really grow out
of want, privation, melancholy, pain? For suppose even this to be
true--and Pericles (or Thucydides) intimates as much in the great
Funeral Speech:--whence then the opposite longing, which appeared
first in the order of time, the _longing for the ugly_, the good,
resolute desire of the Old Hellene for pessimism, for tragic myth, for
the picture of all that is terrible, evil, enigmatical, destructive,
fatal at the basis of existence,--whence then must tragedy have
sprung? Perhaps from _joy,_ from strength, from exuberant health, from
over-fullness. And what then, physiologically speaking, is the meaning
of that madness, out of which comic as well as tragic art has grown,
the Dionysian madness? What? perhaps madness is not necessarily the
symptom of degeneration, of decline, of belated culture? Perhaps there
are--a question for alienists--neuroses of _health_? of folk-youth
and youthfulness? What does that synthesis of god and goat in the
Satyr point to? What self-experience what "stress," made the Greek
think of the Dionysian reveller and primitive man as a satyr? And as
regards the origin of the tragic chorus: perhaps there were endemic
ecstasies in the eras when the Greek body bloomed and the Greek soul
brimmed over with life? Visions and hallucinations, which took hold
of entire communities, entire cult-assemblies? What if the Greeks
in the very wealth of their youth had the will _to be_ tragic and
were pessimists? What if it was madness itself, to use a word of
Plato's, which brought the _greatest_ blessings upon Hellas? And
what if, on the other hand and conversely, at the very time of their
dissolution and weakness, the Greeks became always more optimistic,
more superficial, more histrionic, also more ardent for logic and
the logicising of the world,--consequently at the same time more
"cheerful" and more "scientific"? Ay, despite all "modern ideas" and
prejudices of the democratic taste, may not the triumph of _optimism,_
the _common sense_ that has gained the upper hand, the practical and
theoretical _utilitarianism,_ like democracy itself, with which it is
synchronous--be symptomatic of declining vigour, of approaching age,
of physiological weariness? And _not_ at all--pessimism? Was Epicurus
an optimist--because a _sufferer_?... We see it is a whole bundle of
weighty questions which this book has taken upon itself,--let us not
fail to add its weightiest question! Viewed through the optics of
_life,_ what is the meaning of--morality?...
5.