Lea's Reviews > Rođenje tragedije

”Tragedy sits in the midst of this superabundance of life, suffering, and delight, in sublime ecstasy, listening to a distant, melancholy singing which tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are delusion, will, woe.”

It is impossible to forget Nietzsche’s philosophy laid out in the Birth of Tragedy. Reading this book there is a great possibility you will go deep down the rabbit hole of Greek tragedy and it is a hell of a place to dwell in.
The Birth of Tragedy was written by young Nietzsche, being only 27 years old. He later critiqued his passionate, idealistic, poet-philosopher writing style but not the core ideas he outlined that massively impacted modern thought. Nietzsche here is verbose but vivid, daring, enthusiastic, in highest exaltation of his Dionysian self, making often abstract, vague arguments in a completely non-linear fashion which makes linear, coherent breaking down of text a demanding task. I will attempt to give my reflection on what would I consider the big overlaying themes.

Helenism and pessimism
Nietzsche makes an argument, similar to Aristotle's in Poetics, that the tragic theatre in Ancient Greece was the highest art form. Here he is specific about the time period - he thinks the early period of Greek art and philosophy is the pinnacle of Greek thought and civilization. As laid out in his also brilliant book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks the decline of Greek culture, as well as the whole Western civilization, started with Socrates who believed that truth can be reached through reason and dialectic, not through art, and caused the shift from mythos to logos. Inherent optimism is the aftermath of Socratic philosophy, reflected also in Christian morality, the tradition of Western rationalism and science where man thinks he can know everything and reign all (the inheritance of Genesis where God said to the man to rule all life) through reason, with faith in its complete omnipotence. Nietzsche thinks that we long waited for the first pessimist philosopher, his great influence, Schopenhauer, who was an original anti-rationalist, one who believed in the primacy of irrational Will. As Schopenhauer, Ancient Greeks were also pessimists, because they acknowledged the horrible and enigmatic character of existence - the pain, suffering and death that are inexplicable. The human mind is finite and the mystery that pervades life through tragedy goes beyond reason and consciousness. Through the invention of tragedy, Greek could go beyond pessimism to the tragic affirmation of life - they were saying yes to life more fully and passionately and descended into the mystery of life more profoundly than anyone.
They could say yes to life because the tragedy is formed by the interplay of two deities, of the two opposite ruling principles of life that Nietzsche named after two Greek gods, making now widely used terms of Apollonian and Dionysian.

The Apollonian
Apollon is the god of Reason and appearance, the Shining one that gives the enlightenment of logic and thrives in order, rules and perfect form whether it is morality, aesthetics, art, or beauty. Apollo is the bearer of the light of consciousness, self-knowledge and memory as his ruling principle is “Know thyself”. He gives the principle of individuation - the formation of finite identity through injection of limitation and measure, faith in the shining of one's own individuality and the unity of the Self. Apollinian art has extraordinary clarity, giving hard edges to what it depicts - painting, sculptures, epics, poetry - exemplifying the principium individuationis which Schopenhauer had located as the major error that we suffer from epistemologically that we perceive and conceive of the world in terms of separate objects, including separate persons. Apollo gives the sublime truth of logic and heals through it (medicine) and his truth shields us from chaos and suffering.

The Dionysian
Dionysus is the twice-born, the god of duality, the enigma and paradox, the god of many forms and inexpressible depth, a raving god whose presence makes man mad and incites him to savagery and lust for blood. He gives a compulsion to frenzy - excessive energy in intoxication and ecstasy. He is deeply rooted in nature, instinctual and animalistic and frees man from his humanity making him descend into passion, sexuality, cruelty and darkness. By bringing destruction, chaos and ugliness he brings a new creation as a new form cannot arise without the obliteration of the old. Opposite to Apollonian memory and self-knowledge, Dionysus is the god of forgetting - forgetting our strengths, our failures and struggles in order to achieve greatness, and forgetting oneself to reach a new state of being. Dionysus brings the annihilation of the principle of individuation as in forgetting one is free to merge into the collective where the boundaries of subjectivity exist no more. In Dionysian celebrations, masquerades and festivals one is transgressing the limits of own individuality in the obliteration of the self-identity where one can become anything he desires, anything at all. Dionysus heals through a creative transfiguration in the experience of both suffering and ecstasy, and in the return to the primordial unity, there is a reconciliation of humanity and nature. Dionysian gives us immediate access to nominal reality (the thing in itself) but bypasses the representing (Apollonian), and gives us feeling (pathos) for what lies beyond our boundary conditions bringing the wisdom of lived experience, not logic, as truth. In the Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche named himself "the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus."

“But how suddenly the wilderness of our tired culture, which we have just painted in such gloomy colours, can be transformed, when it is touched by Dionysiac magic! A storm seizes everything that is worn out, rotten, broken, and withered, wraps it in a whirling cloud of red dust and carries it like an eagle into the sky. Our eyes gaze in confusion after what has disappeared, for what they see is like something that has emerged from a pit into golden light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, so immeasurable and filled with longing. ”

The long-lasting repression of Dionysian in the West as part of our nature can make us idolize and glorify Dionysus, this alluring, but highly dangerous god. As much as it is fun to critique rationality, the Apollonian light of reason is the part that makes us capable of even reflecting on Dionysian - and the borders of our individuation shield us not to experience psychotic disintegration, but mystical unity. As much as Nietzsche critiqued Socrates - he did it by apparatus of classical intellectual - examination and judgment.

Greek Tragedy
“The metaphysical solace which, I wish to suggest, we derive from every true tragedy, the solace that in the ground of things, and despite all changing appearances, life is indestructibly mighty and pleasurable, this solace appears with palpable clarity in the chorus of satyrs, a chorus of natural beings whose life goes on ineradicably behind and beyond all civilization, as it were, and who remain eternally the same despite all the changes of generations and in the history of nations.“

Giving examples, Nietzsche makes an argument that Apollonian without the Dionysian is stale and restraining and Dionysian without the Apollonian is menacing and chaotic. The Greek Tragedy is the most perfect form because it represents the holy marriage of Apollonian and Dionysian, art that merges two sides, the mystical unity of life. In Ancient form Greek tragedy contained acting on stage as well as music and dance, and what Nietzsche finds vital for the catharsis of the audience - chorus. His thesis is that in the peaks of the tragedy the chorus dominates so that the audience sees on stage its own reflection, raised to overpowering heights of suffering and transfiguration. Nietzsche admired Aeschylus and Sophocles (and offers a great analysis of the characters in their plays, especially Oedipus as well as Prometheus), whereas with Euripides he thinks that the decline of Greek tragedy began. Euripides' plays acted out in theater had no longer dance, music, or choir within them, just pure forms of images, making his tragedies Apollonian, condensed philosophical thought with the accent on a psychological drama of individual, which represents the triumph of Socratic rationalism and asceticism. Euripides manifested an interest in an individual, in psychology, and worst of all, in the beneficial effects of rationality, or as Nietzsche tends to call it, ‘dialectic’, making him the poet of aesthetic Socratism (for something to be beautiful it must be reasonable).

Existential implication
Greek Tragedy gave Greeks “great health” as they not only could endure but worship as divine the contrast embedded in the nature of reality, pain and suffering as part of the primordial essence of being, of all forms of life and creation. Dionysian gives a justification of pain and tragedy on both a personal level as well on a cosmic level - suffering is an intrinsic part of all things and to remove it would be to remove life itself. An important part of Nietzsche's philosophy is the complete affirmation of life in the totality of being - he criticized the Christian morality for acknowledging solely moral aspects of life - and therefore rejecting the inherent immorality of existence, which is almost the same as hatred for life. Nietzschean tragic affirmation of life is saying yes to life even in its strangest, hardest, most nefarious problems - having a Will to live, truly Dionysian quality - to join together peak and abyss, horrors of darkness and heights of bliss. The great health in not only accepting the horrible, evil, problematic aspects of existence as necessary but affirming them as a desirable part of the whole. To know the good as well as the bad is to know the wholeness of life and only by knowing the wholeness can one say a complete YES to life. To experience the most painful thoughts and the most extreme form of nihilism, and yet be able to emerge from such depths and affirm life in its totality is undoubtedly the highest state of being.

Theory of Art
”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.”

Nietzsche believed that when artists transfigure the world aesthetically it produces profound existential satisfaction - the world and suffering are justified by art and creativity, what he called the ”only satisfactory theodicy”. Art gives us both healing and redemption through illusion, and saves us from the horrors of existence, giving the affirmation, the blessing, the deification of existence itself. Therefore, art is “the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life”.
In a large sense, Nietzsche is a philosopher of self-realization, and the question he posed in the subtitle of Ecce Homo; “How one becomes who he is?” is central to his philosophy. How does a human become great? The Apollonian aspect of art, from the god of plastic energies, makes us dream beautiful illusions and create them in reality. The Dionysian aspect, makes us embody art in ourselves. Nietzsche believed that in the matrimony of Apollonian and Dionysian we are both the artists and the art form. Nietzsche believes that the Dionysian incites us to make ourselves into the work of art, an embodiment of art itself - one of the most beautiful thoughts that philosophy ever produced.

“Man is no longer an artist [as he had been in creating the gods], he has become a work of art: the artistic power of the whole of nature reveals itself to the supreme gratification of the primal Oneness amidst the paroxysms of intoxication.“

The Nietzschean, but also universal truth is we need both Apollonian and Dionysian, self-knowledge and self-forgetfulness, order and chaos, construction and destruction, pessimism and tragic affirmation - to be in unity of the opposite and to love life in the fullness of human experience.
Read Birth of Tragedy to gain more understanding of Greek tragedy on the journey of mythical inner exploration.

”Yes, my friends, believe as I do in Dionysiac life and in the rebirth of tragedy. The time of Socratic man is past. Put on wreaths of ivy, take up the thyrsus and do not be surprised if tigers and panthers lie down, purring and curling round your legs. Now you must only dare to be tragic human beings, for you will be released and redeemed. You will accompany the festive procession of Dionysos from India to Greece! Put on your armour for a hard fight, but believe in the miracles of your god!”