Section 7
Original German
Alle die bisher erörterten Kunstprincipien müssen wir jetzt zu Hülfe nehmen, um uns in dem Labyrinth zurecht zu finden, als welches wir den Ursprung der griechischen Tragödie bezeichnen müssen. Ich denke nichts Ungereimtes zu behaupten, wenn ich sage, dass das Problem dieses Ursprungs bis jetzt noch nicht einmal ernsthaft aufgestellt, geschweige denn gelöst ist, so oft auch die zerflatternden Fetzen der antiken Ueberlieferung schon combinatorisch an einander genäht und wieder aus einander gerissen sind. Diese Ueberlieferung sagt uns mit voller Entschiedenheit, dass die Tragödie aus dem tragischen Chore entstanden ist und ursprünglich nur Chor und nichts als Chor war: woher wir die Verpflichtung nehmen, diesem tragischen Chore als dem eigentlichen Urdrama in's Herz zu sehen, ohne uns an den geläufigen Kunstredensarten—dass er der idealische Zuschauer sei oder das Volk gegenüber der fürstlichen Region der Scene zu vertreten habe—irgendwie genügen zu lassen. Jener zuletzt erwähnte, für manchen Politiker erhaben klingende Erläuterungsgedanke—als ob das unwandelbare Sittengesetz von den demokratischen Athenern in dem Volkschore dargestellt sei, der über die leidenschaftlichen Ausschreitungen und Ausschweifungen der Könige hinaus immer Recht behalte—mag noch so sehr durch ein Wort des Aristoteles nahegelegt sein: auf die ursprüngliche Formation der Tragödie ist er ohne Einfluss, da von jenen rein religiösen Ursprüngen der ganze Gegensatz von Volk und Fürst, überhaupt jegliche politisch-sociale Sphäre ausgeschlossen ist; aber wir möchten es auch in Hinsicht auf die uns bekannte classische Form des Chors bei Aeschylus und Sophokles für Blasphemie erachten, hier von der Ahnung einer „constitutionellen Volksvertretung“ zu reden, vor welcher Blasphemie Andere nicht zurückgeschrocken sind. Eine constitutionelle Volksvertretung kennen die antiken Staatsverfassungen in praxi nicht und haben sie hoffentlich auch in ihrer Tragödie nicht einmal „geahnt“.
Viel berühmter als diese politische Erklärung des Chors ist der Gedanke A. W. Schlegel's, der uns den Chor gewissermaassen als den Inbegriff und Extract der Zuschauermenge, als den „idealischen Zuschauer“ zu betrachten anempfiehlt. Diese Ansicht, zusammengehalten mit jener historischen Ueberlieferung, dass ursprünglich die Tragödie nur Chor war, erweist sich als das was sie ist, als eine rohe, unwissenschaftliche, doch glänzende Behauptung, die ihren Glanz aber nur durch ihre concentrirte Form des Ausdrucks, durch die echt germanische Voreingenommenheit für Alles, was „idealisch“ genannt wird und durch unser momentanes Erstauntsein erhalten hat. Wir sind nämlich erstaunt, sobald wir das uns gut bekannte Theaterpublicum mit jenem Chore vergleichen und uns fragen, ob es wohl möglich sei, aus diesem Publicum je etwas dem tragischen Chore Analoges herauszuidealisiren. Wir leugnen dies im Stillen und wundern uns jetzt eben so über die Kühnheit der Schlegel'schen Behauptung wie über die total verschiedene Natur des griechischen Publicums. Wir hatten nämlich doch immer gemeint, dass der rechte Zuschauer, er sei wer er wolle, sich immer bewusst bleiben müsse, ein Kunstwerk vor sich zu haben, nicht eine empirische Realität: während der tragische Chor der Griechen in den Gestalten der Bühne leibhafte Existenzen zu erkennen genöthigt ist. Der Okeanidenchor glaubt wirklich den Titan Prometheus vor sich zu sehen und hält sich selbst für eben so real wie den Gott der Scene. Und das sollte die höchste und reinste Art des Zuschauers sein, gleich den Okeaniden den Prometheus für leiblich vorhanden und real zu halten? Und es wäre das Zeichen des idealischen Zuschauers, auf die Bühne zu laufen und den Gott von seinen Martern zu befreien? Wir hatten an ein aesthetisches Publicum geglaubt und den einzelnen Zuschauer für um so befähigter gehalten, je mehr er im Stande war, das Kunstwerk als Kunst d.h. aesthetisch zu nehmen; und jetzt deutete uns der Schlegel'sche Ausdruck an, dass der vollkommne idealische Zuschauer die Welt der Scene gar nicht aesthetisch, sondern leibhaft empirisch auf sich wirken lasse. O über diese Griechen! seufzen wir; sie werfen uns unsre Aesthetik um! Daran aber gewöhnt, wiederholten wir den Schlegel'schen Spruch, so oft der Chor zur Sprache kam.
Aber jene so ausdrückliche Ueberlieferung redet hier gegen Schlegel: der Chor an sich, ohne Bühne, also die primitive Gestalt der Tragödie und jener Chor idealischer Zuschauer vertragen sich nicht mit einander. Was wäre das für eine Kunstgattung, die aus dem Begriff des Zuschauers herausgezogen wäre, als deren eigentliche Form der „Zuschauer an sich“ zu gelten hätte. Der Zuschauer ohne Schauspiel ist ein widersinniger Begriff. Wir fürchten, dass die Geburt der Tragödie weder aus der Hochachtung vor der sittlichen Intelligenz der Masse, noch aus dem Begriff des schauspiellosen Zuschauers zu erklären sei und halten dies Problem für zu tief, um von so flachen Betrachtungsarten auch nur berührt zu werden.
Eine unendlich werthvollere Einsicht über die Bedeutung des Chors hatte bereits Schiller in der berühmten Vorrede zur Braut von Messina verrathen, der den Chor als eine lebendige Mauer betrachtete, die die Tragödie um sich herum zieht, um sich von der wirklichen Welt rein abzuschliessen und sich ihren idealen Boden und ihre poetische Freiheit zu bewahren.
Schiller kämpft mit dieser seiner Hauptwaffe gegen den gemeinen Begriff des Natürlichen, gegen die bei der dramatischen Poesie gemeinhin geheischte Illusion. Während der Tag selbst auf dem Theater nur ein künstlicher, die Architektur nur eine symbolische sei und die metrische Sprache einen idealen Charakter trage, herrsche immer noch der Irrthum im Ganzen: es sei nicht genug, dass man das nur als eine poetische Freiheit dulde, was doch das Wesen aller Poesie sei. Die Einführung des Chores sei der entscheidende Schritt, mit dem jedem Naturalismus in der Kunst offen und ehrlich der Krieg erklärt werde.—Eine solche Betrachtungsart ist es, scheint mir, für die unser sich überlegen wähnendes Zeitalter das wegwerfende Schlagwort „Pseudoidealismus“ gebraucht. Ich fürchte, wir sind dagegen mit unserer jetzigen Verehrung des Natürlichen und Wirklichen am Gegenpol alles Idealismus angelangt, nämlich in der Region der Wachsfigurencabinette. Auch in ihnen giebt es eine Kunst, wie bei gewissen beliebten Romanen der Gegenwart: nur quäle man uns nicht mit dem Anspruch, dass mit dieser Kunst der Schiller-Goethesche „Pseudoidealismus“ überwunden sei.
Freilich ist es ein „idealer“ Boden, auf dem, nach der richtigen Einsicht Schillers, der griechische Satyrchor, der Chor der ursprünglichen Tragödie, zu wandeln pflegt, ein Boden hoch emporgehoben über die wirkliche Wandelbahn der Sterblichen. Der Grieche hat sich für diesen Chor die Schwebegerüste eines fingirten Naturzustandes gezimmert und auf sie hin fingirte Naturwesen gestellt. Die Tragödie ist auf diesem Fundamente emporgewachsen und freilich schon deshalb von Anbeginn an einem peinlichen Abkonterfeien der Wirklichkeit enthoben gewesen. Dabei ist es doch keine willkürlich zwischen Himmel und Erde hineinphantasirte Welt; vielmehr eine Welt von gleicher Realität und Glaubwürdigkeit wie sie der Olymp sammt seinen Insassen für den gläubigen Hellenen besass. Der Satyr als der dionysische Choreut lebt in einer religiös zugestandenen Wirklichkeit unter der Sanction des Mythus und des Cultus. Dass mit ihm die Tragödie beginnt, dass aus ihm die dionysische Weisheit der Tragödie spricht, ist ein hier uns eben so befremdendes Phänomen wie überhaupt die Entstehung der Tragödie aus dem Chore. Vielleicht gewinnen wir einen Ausgangspunkt der Betrachtung, wenn ich die Behauptung hinstelle, dass sich der Satyr, das fingirte Naturwesen, zu dem Culturmenschen in gleicher Weise verhält, wie die dionysische Musik zur Civilisation. Von letzterer sagt Richard Wagner, dass sie von der Musik aufgehoben werde wie der Lampenschein vom Tageslicht. In gleicher Weise, glaube ich, fühlte sich der griechische Culturmensch im Angesicht des Satyrchors aufgehoben: und dies ist die nächste Wirkung der dionysischen Tragödie, dass der Staat und die Gesellschaft, überhaupt die Klüfte zwischen Mensch und Mensch einem übermächtigen Einheitsgefühle weichen, welches an das Herz der Natur zurückführt. Der metaphysische Trost,—mit welchem, wie ich schon hier andeute, uns jede wahre Tragödie entlässt—dass das Leben im Grunde der Dinge, trotz allem Wechsel der Erscheinungen unzerstörbar mächtig und lustvoll sei, dieser Trost erscheint in leibhafter Deutlichkeit als Satyrchor, als Chor von Naturwesen, die gleichsam hinter aller Civilisation unvertilgbar leben und trotz allem Wechsel der Generationen und der Völkergeschichte ewig dieselben bleiben.
Mit diesem Chore tröstet sich der tiefsinnige und zum zartesten und schwersten Leiden einzig befähigte Hellene, der mit schneidigem Blicke mitten in das furchtbare Vernichtungstreiben der sogenannten Weltgeschichte, eben so wie in die Grausamkeit der Natur geschaut hat und in Gefahr ist, sich nach einer buddhaistischen Verneinung des Willens zu sehnen. Ihn rettet die Kunst, und durch die Kunst rettet ihn sich—das Leben.
Die Verzückung des dionysischen Zustandes mit seiner Vernichtung der gewöhnlichen Schranken und Grenzen des Daseins enthält nämlich während seiner Dauer ein lethargisches Element, in das sich alles persönlich in der Vergangenheit Erlebte eintaucht. So scheidet sich durch diese Kluft der Vergessenheit die Welt der alltäglichen und der dionysischen Wirklichkeit von einander ab. Sobald aber jene alltägliche Wirklichkeit wieder ins Bewusstsein tritt, wird sie mit Ekel als solche empfunden; eine asketische, willenverneinende Stimmung ist die Frucht jener Zustände. In diesem Sinne hat der dionysische Mensch Aehnlichkeit mit Hamlet: beide haben einmal einen wahren Blick in das Wesen der Dinge gethan, sie haben erkannt, und es ekelt sie zu handeln; denn ihre Handlung kann nichts am ewigen Wesen der Dinge ändern, sie empfinden es als lächerlich oder schmachvoll, dass ihnen zugemuthet wird, die Welt, die aus den Fugen ist, wieder einzurichten. Die Erkenntniss tödtet das Handeln, zum Handeln gehört das Umschleiertsein durch die Illusion—das ist die Hamletlehre, nicht jene wohlfeile Weisheit von Hans dem Träumer, der aus zu viel Reflexion, gleichsam aus einem Ueberschuss von Möglichkeiten nicht zum Handeln kommt; nicht das Reflectiren, nein!—die wahre Erkenntniss, der Einblick in die grauenhafte Wahrheit überwiegt jedes zum Handeln antreibende Motiv, bei Hamlet sowohl als bei dem dionysischen Menschen. Jetzt verfängt kein Trost mehr, die Sehnsucht geht über eine Welt nach dem Tode, über die Götter selbst hinaus, das Dasein wird, sammt seiner gleissenden Wiederspiegelung in den Göttern oder in einem unsterblichen Jenseits, verneint. In der Bewusstheit der einmal geschauten Wahrheit sieht jetzt der Mensch überall nur das Entsetzliche oder Absurde des Seins, jetzt versteht er das Symbolische im Schicksal der Ophelia, jetzt erkennt er die Weisheit des Waldgottes Silen: es ekelt ihn.
Hier, in dieser höchsten Gefahr des Willens, naht sich, als rettende, heilkundige Zauberin, die Kunst; sie allein vermag jene Ekelgedanken über das Entsetzliche oder Absurde des Daseins in Vorstellungen umzubiegen, mit denen sich leben lässt: diese sind das Erhabene als die künstlerische Bändigung des Entsetzlichen und das Komische als die künstlerische Entladung vom Ekel des Absurden. Der Satyrchor des Dithyrambus ist die rettende That der griechischen Kunst; an der Mittelwelt dieser dionysischen Begleiter erschöpften sich jene vorhin beschriebenen Anwandlungen.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the 1886 issue, with the Attempt at Self-Criticism and the Preface to Richard Wagner, made directly from the German of the Fritzsch Neue Ausgabe and read against its page images; reviewed against the German before publication.
We must now call to our aid all the artistic principles discussed so far, in order to find our way in the labyrinth that we have to call the origin of Greek tragedy. I do not think I assert anything absurd when I say that the problem of this origin has not even been seriously posed so far, let alone solved, however often the fluttering shreds of ancient tradition have already been sewn together by conjecture and torn apart again. This tradition tells us with complete decisiveness that tragedy arose out of the tragic chorus, and that originally it was only chorus and nothing but chorus; which obliges us to look into the heart of this tragic chorus as the true primal drama, without letting ourselves be satisfied in any way by the current art-phrases—that the chorus is the ideal spectator, or that it is meant to represent the people over against the princely region of the stage. That last-mentioned explanatory idea, which sounds sublime to many a politician—as if the immutable moral law had been represented by the democratic Athenians in the people’s chorus, which beyond the passionate excesses and extravagances of kings always remains in the right—may be suggested ever so strongly by a remark of Aristotle’s: it has no influence on the original formation of tragedy, since from those purely religious origins the whole opposition of people and prince, indeed every political and social sphere, is excluded. But even with regard to the classical form of the chorus in Aeschylus and Sophocles that we know, we would consider it blasphemy to speak here of an intimation of a “constitutional popular representation”—a blasphemy from which others have not shrunk. The ancient constitutions of state knew no constitutional popular representation in practice, and in their tragedy, one hopes, they never even “intimated” it.
Far more famous than this political explanation of the chorus is the idea of A. W. Schlegel, who recommends that we regard the chorus in a certain sense as the epitome and extract of the mass of spectators, as the “ideal spectator.” This view, set beside the historical tradition that tragedy was originally only chorus, proves to be what it is: a crude, unscientific, yet brilliant assertion, which has gained its brilliance only from its concentrated form of expression, from the genuinely Germanic bias in favor of everything called “ideal,” and from our momentary astonishment. For we are astonished as soon as we compare the theater public so well known to us with that chorus and ask ourselves whether it could ever be possible to idealize out of this public something analogous to the tragic chorus. We deny it silently, and now marvel as much at the boldness of Schlegel’s assertion as at the wholly different nature of the Greek public. For we had always supposed that the true spectator, whoever that may be, must always remain aware that a work of art is before them and not an empirical reality, whereas the tragic chorus of the Greeks is compelled to recognize embodied existences in the figures on the stage. The chorus of Oceanids truly believes it sees the Titan Prometheus before it, and takes itself to be just as real as the god of the scene. And that is supposed to be the highest and purest kind of spectator, to hold Prometheus, like the Oceanids, to be bodily present and real? And it would be the mark of the ideal spectator to run onto the stage and free the god from his torments? We had believed in an aesthetic public, and had held the individual spectator all the more capable the more that spectator was able to take the work of art as art, that is, aesthetically; and now Schlegel’s expression suggested to us that the perfect ideal spectator lets the world of the stage have its effect not aesthetically at all, but bodily and empirically. Oh, those Greeks! we sigh; they overturn our aesthetics! But grown accustomed to this, we repeated Schlegel’s dictum whenever the chorus came up.
But that tradition, so explicit, speaks against Schlegel here: the chorus in itself, without a stage—that is, the primitive form of tragedy—and that chorus of ideal spectators cannot be reconciled with each other. What kind of art would it be that was drawn out of the concept of the spectator, whose proper form would have to be the “spectator in itself”? The spectator without a spectacle is an absurd concept. We fear that the birth of tragedy can be explained neither from high regard for the moral intelligence of the masses nor from the concept of the spectator without a play, and we consider this problem too deep to be even touched by such shallow ways of looking at it.
An infinitely more valuable insight into the significance of the chorus had already been revealed by Schiller in the famous preface to Die Braut von Messina, where he regarded the chorus as a living wall that tragedy draws around itself in order to shut itself off completely from the real world and to preserve its ideal ground and its poetic freedom.
With this, his chief weapon, Schiller fights against the common concept of the natural, against the illusion commonly demanded in dramatic poetry. Although the day itself on the stage is only an artificial one, the architecture only symbolic, and the metrical language bears an ideal character, Schiller argues, error still reigns in the whole: it is not enough that one tolerates merely as a poetic license what is nonetheless the essence of all poetry. The introduction of the chorus is the decisive step by which war is openly and honestly declared on every naturalism in art.—It is a way of thinking such as this, it seems to me, for which our age, imagining itself superior, uses the dismissive catchword “pseudo-idealism.” I fear that we, with our present veneration of the natural and the real, have by contrast arrived at the opposite pole of all idealism, namely in the region of the wax museums. There, too, there is an art, as in certain popular novels of the present day; only let no one torment us with the claim that this art has overcome the Schiller-Goethean “pseudo-idealism.”
To be sure, it is an “ideal” ground on which, according to Schiller’s correct insight, the Greek satyr chorus, the chorus of original tragedy, is accustomed to walk, a ground raised high above the real path of mortals. For this chorus the Greek built the suspended scaffolding of a fictitious state of nature, and set fictitious natural beings upon it. Tragedy grew up on this foundation and, for that reason alone, of course, has been relieved from the very beginning of any painstaking portrayal of reality. Yet it is no world fantasized arbitrarily into the space between heaven and earth; rather it is a world of the same reality and credibility that Olympus, together with its inhabitants, possessed for the believing Hellene. The satyr, as the Dionysian chorist, lives in a reality religiously acknowledged, under the sanction of myth and cult. That tragedy begins with him, that the Dionysian wisdom of tragedy speaks out of him, is a phenomenon just as strange to us here as the origin of tragedy from the chorus altogether. Perhaps we gain a starting point for our reflection if I put forward the claim that the satyr, the fictitious natural being, stands to the human being of culture in the same relation as Dionysian music to civilization. Of the latter Richard Wagner says that it is superseded by music as lamplight is by daylight. In the same way, I believe, the Greek human being of culture felt superseded in the face of the satyr chorus: and this is the most immediate effect of Dionysian tragedy, that state and society, indeed the chasms between one human being and another, give way to an overpowering feeling of unity that leads back to the heart of nature. The metaphysical consolation—with which, as I already hint here, every true tragedy sends us away—that life at the ground of things is, despite all change of appearances, indestructibly powerful and full of joy: this consolation appears in bodily distinctness as the satyr chorus, as a chorus of natural beings who live on indestructibly, as it were, behind all civilization, and who, despite all change of generations and of the history of peoples, remain eternally the same.
With this chorus the profound Hellene, uniquely capable of the most delicate and the heaviest suffering, finds consolation: the Hellene who has looked with a keen, cutting gaze into the midst of the terrible destructive turmoil of so-called world history, and likewise into the cruelty of nature, and who is in danger of longing for a Buddhistic negation of the will. Art saves him, and through art—life saves him for itself.
The rapture of the Dionysian state, with its annihilation of the ordinary barriers and limits of existence, contains, for as long as it lasts, a lethargic element, into which everything personally experienced in the past is submerged. Thus, through this chasm of oblivion, the world of everyday reality and the world of Dionysian reality are sundered from each other. But as soon as that everyday reality enters consciousness again, it is felt as such with disgust; an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fruit of those states. In this sense the Dionysian human being resembles Hamlet: both have once taken a true look into the essence of things, they have come to know, and it disgusts them to act; for their action can change nothing in the eternal essence of things, and they feel it to be ridiculous or shameful that they should be expected to set right again the world that is out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires being veiled in illusion—that is the lesson of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Hans the Dreamer, who from too much reflection, as it were from a surplus of possibilities, never gets around to acting; not reflection, no!—true knowledge, insight into the horrifying truth, outweighs every motive that drives toward action, in Hamlet as in the Dionysian human being. Now no consolation avails any longer; longing reaches out beyond a world after death, beyond the gods themselves; existence, together with its gleaming reflection in the gods or in an immortal beyond, is negated. In the awareness of the truth once beheld, the human being now sees everywhere only the dreadful or absurd in being, now understands what is symbolic in Ophelia’s fate, now recognizes the wisdom of the forest god Silenus: it sickens them.
Here, in this supreme danger to the will, art approaches as a saving, healing sorceress; she alone is able to bend those thoughts of disgust at the dreadful or absurd nature of existence into representations with which one can live: these are the sublime, as the artistic taming of the dreadful, and the comic, as the artistic discharge of the disgust at the absurd. The satyr chorus of the dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art; on the intermediate world of these Dionysian attendants those fits just described spent themselves.
Plain English translation
Complete machine-assisted Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same German text, without reference to the Musean edition or to any English translation.
We must now call on all the artistic principles discussed so far to find our way through the labyrinth that we have to name the origin of Greek tragedy. I do not think I am saying anything absurd when I say that the problem of this origin has not even been seriously posed so far, let alone solved. This is true however often the scattered scraps of ancient tradition have been stitched together by clever combination and torn apart again. This tradition tells us with complete decisiveness that tragedy arose from the tragic chorus, and that originally it was only chorus and nothing but chorus. That gives us the duty to look into the heart of this tragic chorus as the real original drama. We must not let ourselves be satisfied in any way by the usual stock phrases about art—that the chorus is the ideal spectator, or that it has to represent the people over against the princely region of the stage. That last explanation sounds lofty to many a politician. It suggests that the unchanging moral law was presented by the democratic Athenians in the people’s chorus, which always turns out to be right over against the passionate excesses and extravagances of kings. A remark of Aristotle’s may suggest this idea ever so strongly. Still, it has no influence on the original formation of tragedy, because the whole opposition of people and prince, indeed every political and social sphere, is excluded from those purely religious origins. But even with regard to the classical form of the chorus that we know from Aeschylus and Sophocles, we would consider it blasphemy to speak here of a presentiment of a “constitutional popular representation.” Others have not shrunk from this blasphemy. The ancient constitutions of states did not know a constitutional popular representation in practice, and I hope they did not even “have a presentiment” of one in their tragedy.
Much more famous than this political explanation of the chorus is the idea of A. W. Schlegel. He recommends that we regard the chorus in a way as the sum and extract of the crowd of spectators, as the “ideal spectator.” Held up against that historical tradition that tragedy was originally only chorus, this view shows itself for what it is: a crude, unscientific, yet brilliant claim. It got its brilliance only from its concentrated form of expression, from the truly German bias for everything called “ideal,” and from our momentary astonishment. For we are astonished as soon as we compare the theater audience we know so well with that chorus, and ask ourselves whether it could ever be possible to idealize out of this audience anything analogous to the tragic chorus. We quietly deny this, and now we wonder just as much at the boldness of Schlegel’s claim as at the totally different nature of the Greek audience. For we had always thought that the right spectator, whoever they may be, must always stay aware that they have a work of art before them and not an empirical reality. The tragic chorus of the Greeks, however, is compelled to recognize real beings in the flesh in the figures on the stage. The chorus of Oceanids really believes it sees the Titan Prometheus before it, and takes itself to be just as real as the god of the stage. And that is supposed to be the highest and purest kind of spectator, to hold Prometheus to be bodily present and real, as the Oceanids do? And it would be the sign of the ideal spectator to run onto the stage and free the god from his tortures? We had believed in an aesthetic audience. We had considered the individual spectator more capable the better able they were to take the work of art as art, that is, aesthetically. And now Schlegel’s expression suggested to us that the perfect ideal spectator lets the world of the stage act on them not aesthetically at all, but bodily and empirically. “Oh, these Greeks!” we sigh; “they overturn our aesthetics!” But since we were used to it, we repeated Schlegel’s saying whenever the chorus came up.
But that very explicit tradition speaks against Schlegel here. The chorus by itself, without a stage—that is, the primitive form of tragedy—and that chorus of ideal spectators do not fit together. What kind of art form would that be, one drawn out of the concept of the spectator, whose real form would have to be the “spectator as such”? The spectator without a spectacle is a nonsensical concept. We fear that tragedy’s birth can be explained neither from respect for the moral intelligence of the masses nor from the concept of the spectator without a play. We consider this problem too deep to be even touched by such shallow ways of looking at it.
Schiller had already shown a far more valuable insight into the meaning of the chorus in his famous preface to The Bride of Messina. He regarded the chorus as a living wall that tragedy draws around itself, to shut itself off cleanly from the real world and to preserve its ideal ground and its poetic freedom.
With this chief weapon of his, Schiller fights against the common idea of the natural, against the illusion that is usually demanded in dramatic poetry. The day itself on the stage is only artificial, he says, the architecture only symbolic, and metrical language ideal in character. Even so, the error still prevails overall: it is not enough to tolerate merely as a poetic freedom what is in fact the essence of all poetry. The introduction of the chorus, he says, is the decisive step by which war is openly and honestly declared on every naturalism in art.—It is this kind of view, it seems to me, for which our age, which fancies itself superior, uses the dismissive slogan “pseudo-idealism.” I fear that, with our present worship of the natural and the real, we have arrived at the opposite pole of all idealism, namely the region of the waxworks. There is art in these too, as in certain popular novels of the present day. Only let no one torment us with the claim that this art has overcome the “pseudo-idealism” of Schiller and Goethe.
Of course it is an “ideal” ground on which, according to Schiller’s correct insight, the Greek satyr chorus, the chorus of original tragedy, walks: a ground raised high above the real walking path of mortals. For this chorus the Greek built the floating scaffolding of a fictional state of nature and placed fictional beings of nature on it. Tragedy grew up on this foundation, and for that reason alone it was, of course, relieved from the beginning of any painstaking copying of reality. Still, this is not a world fancifully dreamed up at random between heaven and earth. It is rather a world with the same reality and credibility that Olympus and its inhabitants had for the believing Greek. The satyr, as the Dionysian chorus member, lives in a reality granted by religion, under the sanction of myth and cult. That tragedy begins with him, and that the Dionysian wisdom of tragedy speaks out of him, is a phenomenon as strange to us as the origin of tragedy from the chorus altogether. Perhaps we can gain a starting point for our reflection if I put forward this claim: the satyr, the fictional being of nature, stands to the cultured person in the same relation as Dionysian music stands to civilization. Of civilization Richard Wagner says that music cancels it out as daylight cancels out lamplight. In the same way, I believe, the cultured Greek felt himself canceled out in the face of the satyr chorus. And this is the immediate effect of Dionysian tragedy: the state and society, indeed the gulfs between one person and another, give way to an overpowering feeling of unity that leads back to the heart of nature. The metaphysical comfort—with which, as I already hint here, every true tragedy sends us away—is that life at the foundation of things, despite all change of appearances, is indestructibly powerful and full of joy. This comfort appears with bodily clarity as the satyr chorus, as a chorus of beings of nature who live on indestructibly, so to speak, behind all civilization, and who remain eternally the same despite all change of generations and all the history of peoples.
With this chorus the deep-thinking Greek comforts himself. This Greek is uniquely capable of the most delicate and the heaviest suffering. With a sharp gaze he has looked into the terrible work of destruction in so-called world history, as well as into the cruelty of nature, and he is in danger of longing for a Buddhist denial of the will. Art saves him, and through art—life saves him for itself.
The rapture of the Dionysian state, with its destruction of the usual barriers and limits of existence, contains during its duration a lethargic element, in which everything personally experienced in the past is submerged. In this way, through this gulf of forgetting, the world of everyday reality and the world of Dionysian reality are separated from each other. But as soon as that everyday reality returns to consciousness, it is felt as such with disgust. An ascetic, will-denying mood is the fruit of those states. In this sense the Dionysian person resembles Hamlet. Both have once looked truly into the essence of things. They have understood, and acting disgusts them. For their action can change nothing in the eternal essence of things. They feel it as ridiculous or shameful that they are expected to set right again a world that is out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires being veiled in illusion—that is the lesson of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Hans the Dreamer, who from too much reflection, from an excess of possibilities, so to speak, never gets to act. Not reflection, no!—true knowledge, insight into the terrifying truth, outweighs every motive that drives toward action, in Hamlet as in the Dionysian person. Now no comfort has any hold. The longing reaches beyond a world after death, beyond the gods themselves. Existence, together with its glittering reflection in the gods or in an immortal beyond, is denied. Aware of the truth once seen, the human being now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of being. Now they understand what is symbolic in the fate of Ophelia. Now they recognize the wisdom of the forest god Silenus. It disgusts them.
Here, in this greatest danger to the will, art approaches as a saving, healing sorceress. Only art can bend those disgusted thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into ideas that one can live with. These ideas are the sublime, as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic, as the artistic discharge of the disgust at the absurd. The satyr chorus of the dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art. In the middle world of these Dionysian companions, those fits of disgust described just now were spent.
About this section
Section 7 is part of The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 15 of 33 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
Open the work page for the full contents, every edition, and the download links, or go back to Explore to browse other complete works in the European tradition. The reader keeps your place when you are signed in and lets you compare the original with each translation, one edition at a time.