a people, it would seem that we must think not only of their music,
but just as much of their tragic myth, the second witness of this
capacity. Considering this most intimate relationship between music
and myth, we may now in like manner suppose that a degeneration and
depravation of the one involves a deterioration of the other: if it be
true at all that the weakening of the myth is generally expressive of
a debilitation of the Dionysian capacity. Concerning both, however,
a glance at the development of the German genius should not leave
us in any doubt; in the opera just as in the abstract character of
our myth-less existence, in an art sunk to pastime just as in a life
guided by concepts, the inartistic as well as life-consuming nature
of Socratic optimism had revealed itself to us. Yet there have been
indications to console us that nevertheless in some inaccessible abyss
the German spirit still rests and dreams, undestroyed, in glorious
health, profundity, and Dionysian strength, like a knight sunk in
slumber: from which abyss the Dionysian song rises to us to let us
know that this German knight even still dreams his primitive Dionysian
myth in blissfully earnest visions. Let no one believe that the German
spirit has for ever lost its mythical home when it still understands so
obviously the voices of the birds which tell of that home. Some day it
will find itself awake in all the morning freshness of a deep sleep:
then it will slay the dragons, destroy the malignant dwarfs, and waken
Brünnhilde--and Wotan's spear itself will be unable to obstruct its
course!
My friends, ye who believe in Dionysian music, ye know also what
tragedy means to us. There we have tragic myth, born anew from
music,--and in this latest birth ye can hope for everything and forget
what is most afflicting. What is most afflicting to all of us, however,
is--the prolonged degradation in which the German genius has lived
estranged from house and home in the service of malignant dwarfs. Ye
understand my allusion--as ye will also, in conclusion, understand my
hopes.
25.
Music and tragic myth are equally the expression of the Dionysian
capacity of a people, and are inseparable from each other. Both
originate in an ultra Apollonian sphere of art; both transfigure a
region in the delightful accords of which all dissonance, just like
the terrible picture of the world, dies charmingly away; both play
with the sting of displeasure, trusting to their most potent magic;
both justify thereby the existence even of the "worst world." Here
the Dionysian, as compared with the Apollonian, exhibits itself as
the eternal and original artistic force, which in general calls into
existence the entire world of phenomena: in the midst of which a new
transfiguring appearance becomes necessary, in order to keep alive the
animated world of individuation. If we could conceive an incarnation
of dissonance--and what is man but that?--then, to be able to live
this dissonance would require a glorious illusion which would spread
a veil of beauty over its peculiar nature. This is the true function
of Apollo as deity of art: in whose name we comprise all the countless
manifestations of the fair realm of illusion, which each moment render
life in general worth living and make one impatient for the experience
of the next moment.
At the same time, just as much of this basis of all existence--the
Dionysian substratum of the world--is allowed to enter into the
consciousness of human beings, as can be surmounted again by the
Apollonian transfiguring power, so that these two art-impulses are
constrained to develop their powers in strictly mutual proportion,
according to the law of eternal justice. When the Dionysian powers rise
with such vehemence as we experience at present, there can be no doubt
that, veiled in a cloud, Apollo has already descended to us; whose
grandest beautifying influences a coming generation will perhaps behold.
That this effect is necessary, however, each one would most surely
perceive by intuition, if once he found himself carried back--even in
a dream--into an Old-Hellenic existence. In walking under high Ionic
colonnades, looking upwards to a horizon defined by clear and noble
lines, with reflections of his transfigured form by his side in shining
marble, and around him solemnly marching or quietly moving men, with
harmoniously sounding voices and rhythmical pantomime, would he not in
the presence of this perpetual influx of beauty have to raise his hand
to Apollo and exclaim: "Blessed race of Hellenes! How great Dionysus
must be among you, when the Delian god deems such charms necessary
to cure you of your dithyrambic madness!"--To one in this frame of
mind, however, an aged Athenian, looking up to him with the sublime
eye of Æschylus, might answer: "Say also this, thou curious stranger:
what sufferings this people must have undergone, in order to be able
to become thus beautiful! But now follow me to a tragic play, and
sacrifice with me in the temple of both the deities!"
APPENDIX.
[Late in the year 1888, not long before he was overcome by his sudden
attack of insanity, Nietzsche wrote down a few notes concerning
his early work, the _Birth of Tragedy._ These were printed in his
sister's biography (_Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches,_ vol. ii. pt.
i. pp. 102 ff.), and are here translated as likely to be of interest
to readers of this remarkable work. They also appear in the _Ecce
Homo._--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.]
"To be just to the _Birth of Tragedy_(1872), one will have to forget
some few things. It has _wrought effects,_ it even fascinated through
that wherein it was amiss--through its application to _Wagnerism,_
just as if this Wagnerism were symptomatic of _a rise and going up._
And just on that account was the book an event in Wagner's life: from
thence and only from thence were great hopes linked to the name of
Wagner. Even to-day people remind me, sometimes right in the midst of
a talk on _Parsifal,_ that _I_ and none other have it on my conscience
that such a high opinion of the _cultural value_ of this movement came
to the top. More than once have I found the book referred to as 'the
_Re_-birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music': one only had an ear
for a new formula of _Wagner's_ art, aim, task,--and failed to hear
withal what was at bottom valuable therein. 'Hellenism and Pessimism'
had been a more unequivocal title: namely, as a first lesson on the
way in which the Greeks got the better of pessimism,--on the means
whereby they _overcame_ it. Tragedy simply proves that the Greeks were
_no_ pessimists: Schopenhauer was mistaken here as he was mistaken
in all other things. Considered with some neutrality, the _Birth of
Tragedy_ appears very unseasonable: one would not even dream that
it was _begun_ amid the thunders of the battle of Wörth. I thought
these problems through and through before the walls of Metz in cold
September nights, in the midst of the work of nursing the sick; one
might even believe the book to be fifty years older. It is politically
indifferent--un-German one will say to-day,--it smells shockingly
Hegelian, in but a few formulæ does it scent of Schopenhauer's
funereal perfume. An 'idea'--the antithesis of 'Dionysian _versus_
Apollonian'--translated into metaphysics; history itself as the
evolution of this 'idea'; the antithesis dissolved into oneness
in Tragedy; through this optics things that had never yet looked
into one another's face, confronted of a sudden, and illumined and
_comprehended_ through one another: for instance, Opera and Revolution.
The two decisive _innovations_ of the book are, on the one hand, the
comprehension of the _Dionysian_ phenomenon among the Greeks (it gives
the first psychology thereof, it sees therein the One root of all
Grecian art); on the other, the comprehension of Socratism: Socrates
diagnosed for the first time as the tool of Grecian dissolution, as
a typical decadent. 'Rationality' _against_ instinct! 'Rationality'
at any price as a dangerous, as a life-undermining force! Throughout
the whole book a deep hostile silence on Christianity: it is neither
Apollonian nor Dionysian; it _negatives_ all _æsthetic_ values (the
only values recognised by the _Birth of Tragedy),_ it is in the widest
sense nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian symbol the utmost limit
of _affirmation_ is reached. Once or twice the Christian priests are
alluded to as a 'malignant kind of dwarfs,' as 'subterraneans.'"
2.
"This beginning is singular beyond measure. I had for my own inmost
experience _discovered_ the only symbol and counterpart of history,--I
had just thereby been the first to grasp the wonderful phenomenon
of the Dionysian. And again, through my diagnosing Socrates as a
decadent, I had given a wholly unequivocal proof of how little risk
the trustworthiness of my psychological grasp would run of being
weakened by some moralistic idiosyncrasy--to view morality itself as a
symptom of decadence is an innovation, a novelty of the first rank in
the history of knowledge. How far I had leaped in either case beyond
the smug shallow-pate-gossip of optimism _contra_ pessimism! I was
the first to see the intrinsic antithesis: here, the _degenerating_
instinct which, with subterranean vindictiveness, turns against life
(Christianity, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, in a certain sense
already the philosophy of Plato, all idealistic systems as typical
forms), and there, a formula of _highest affirmation,_ born of fullness
and overfullness, a yea-saying without reserve to suffering's self,
to guilt's self, to all that is questionable and strange in existence
itself. This final, cheerfullest, exuberantly mad-and-merriest Yea to
life is not only the highest insight, it is also the _deepest,_ it
is that which is most rigorously confirmed and upheld by truth and
science. Naught that is, is to be deducted, naught is dispensable; the
phases of existence rejected by the Christians and other nihilists are
even of an infinitely higher order in the hierarchy of values than
that which the instinct of decadence sanctions, yea durst _sanction._
To comprehend this _courage_ is needed, and, as a condition thereof, a
surplus of _strength_: for precisely in degree as courage _dares_ to
thrust forward, precisely according to the measure of strength, does
one approach truth. Perception, the yea-saying to reality, is as much
a necessity to the strong as to the weak, under the inspiration of
weakness, cowardly shrinking, and _flight_ from reality--the 'ideal.'
... They are not free to perceive: the decadents have _need_ of the
lie,--it is one of their conditions of self-preservation. Whoso not
only comprehends the word Dionysian, but also grasps his _self_ in
this word, requires no refutation of Plato or of Christianity or of
Schopenhauer--_he smells the putrefaction._"
3.
"To what extent I had just thereby found the concept 'tragic,' the
definitive perception of the psychology of tragedy, I have but lately
stated in the _Twilight of the Idols,_ page 139 (1st edit.): 'The
affirmation of life, even in its most unfamiliar and severe problems,
the will to life, enjoying its own inexhaustibility in the sacrifice
of its highest types,--_that_ is what I called Dionysian, that is
what I divined as the bridge to a psychology of the _tragic_ poet.
Not in order to get rid of terror and pity, not to purify from a
dangerous passion by its vehement discharge (it was thus that Aristotle
misunderstood it); but, beyond terror and pity, _to realise in fact_
the eternal delight of becoming, that delight which even involves in
itself the _joy of annihilating!_[1] In this sense I have the right
to understand myself to be the first _tragic philosopher_--that is,
the utmost antithesis and antipode to a pessimistic philosopher. Prior
to myself there is no such translation of the Dionysian into the
philosophic pathos: there lacks the _tragic wisdom,_--I have sought
in vain for an indication thereof even among the _great_ Greeks of
philosophy, the thinkers of the two centuries _before_ Socrates. A
doubt still possessed me as touching _Heraclitus,_ in whose proximity
I in general begin to feel warmer and better than anywhere else. The
affirmation of transiency _and annihilation,_ to wit the decisive
factor in a Dionysian _philosophy,_ the yea-saying to antithesis
and war, to _becoming,_ with radical rejection even of the concept
'_being,_'--that I must directly acknowledge as, of all thinking
hitherto, the nearest to my own. The doctrine of 'eternal recurrence,'
that is, of the unconditioned and infinitely repeated cycle of all
things--this doctrine of Zarathustra's _might_ after all have been
already taught by Heraclitus. At any rate the portico[2] which
inherited well-nigh all its fundamental conceptions from Heraclitus,
shows traces thereof."
[Illustration: _Facsimile of Nietzsches handwriting._]
4.
"In this book speaks a prodigious hope. In fine, I see no reason
whatever for taking back my hope of a Dionysian future for music. Let
us cast a glance a century ahead, let us suppose my assault upon two
millenniums of anti-nature and man-vilification succeeds! That new
party of life which will take in hand the greatest of all tasks, the
upbreeding of mankind to something higher,--add thereto the relentless
annihilation of all things degenerating and parasitic, will again make
possible on earth that _too-much of life,_ from which there also must
needs grow again the Dionysian state. I promise a _tragic_ age: the
highest art in the yea-saying to life, tragedy, will be born anew, when
mankind have behind them the consciousness of the hardest but most
necessary wars, _without suffering therefrom._ A psychologist might
still add that what I heard in my younger years in Wagnerian music had
in general naught to do with Wagner; that when I described Wagnerian
music I described what _I_ had heard, that I had instinctively to
translate and transfigure all into the new spirit which I bore within
myself...."
[1] Mr. Common's translation, pp. 227-28.
[2] Greek: στοά.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
While the translator flatters himself that this version of Nietzsche's
early work--having been submitted to unsparingly scrutinising eyes--is
not altogether unworthy of the original, he begs to state that he
holds twentieth-century English to be a rather unsatisfactory vehicle
for philosophical thought. Accordingly, in conjunction with his
friend Dr. Ernest Lacy, he has prepared a second, more unconventional
translation,--in brief, a translation which will enable one whose
knowledge of English extends to, say, the period of Elizabeth, to
appreciate Nietzsche in more forcible language, because the language of
a stronger age. It is proposed to provide this second translation with
an appendix, containing many references to the translated writings of
Wagner and Schopenhauer; to the works of Pater, Browning, Burckhardt,
Rohde, and others, and a summmary and index.
For help in preparing the present translation, the translator wishes
to express his thanks to his friends Dr. Ernest Lacy, Litt.D.; Dr.
James Waddell Tupper, Ph.D.; Prof. Harry Max Ferren; Mr. James M'Kirdy,
Pittsburg; and Mr. Thomas Common, Edinburgh.
WILLIAM AUGUST HAUSSMANN, A.B., Ph.D.