Section 11
Original German
Die griechische Tragödie ist anders zu Grunde gegangen als sämmtliche ältere schwesterliche Kunstgattungen: sie starb durch Selbstmord, in Folge eines unlösbaren Conflictes, also tragisch, während jene alle in hohem Alter des schönsten und ruhigsten Todes verblichen sind. Wenn es nämlich einem glücklichen Naturzustande gemäss ist, mit schöner Nachkommenschaft und ohne Krampf vom Leben zu scheiden, so zeigt uns das Ende jener älteren Kunstgattungen einen solchen glücklichen Naturzustand: sie tauchen langsam unter, und vor ihren ersterbenden Blicken steht schon ihr schönerer Nachwuchs und reckt mit muthiger Gebärde ungeduldig das Haupt. Mit dem Tode der griechischen Tragödie dagegen entstand eine ungeheure, überall tief empfundene Leere; wie einmal griechische Schiffer zu Zeiten des Tiberius an einem einsamen Eiland den erschütternden Schrei hörten „der grosse Pan ist todt“: so klang es jetzt wie ein schmerzlicher Klageton durch die hellenische Welt: „die Tragödie ist todt! Die Poesie selbst ist mit ihr verloren gegangen! Fort, fort mit euch verkümmerten, abgemagerten Epigonen! Fort in den Hades, damit ihr euch dort an den Brosamen der vormaligen Meister einmal satt essen könnt!“
Als aber nun doch noch eine neue Kunstgattung aufblühte, die in der Tragödie ihre Vorgängerin und Meisterin verehrte, da war mit Schrecken wahrzunehmen, dass sie allerdings die Züge ihrer Mutter trage, aber dieselben, die jene in ihrem langen Todeskampfe gezeigt hatte. Diesen Todeskampf der Tragödie kämpfte Euripides; jene spätere Kunstgattung ist als neuere attische Komödie bekannt. In ihr lebte die entartete Gestalt der Tragödie fort, zum Denkmale ihres überaus mühseligen und gewaltsamen Hinscheidens.
Bei diesem Zusammenhange ist die leidenschaftliche Zuneigung begreiflich, welche die Dichter der neueren Komödie zu Euripides empfanden; so dass der Wunsch des Philemon nicht weiter befremdet, der sich sogleich aufhängen lassen mochte, nur um den Euripides in der Unterwelt aufsuchen zu können: wenn er nur überhaupt überzeugt sein dürfte, dass der Verstorbene auch jetzt noch bei Verstande sei. Will man aber in aller Kürze und ohne den Anspruch, damit etwas Erschöpfendes zu sagen, dasjenige bezeichnen, was Euripides mit Menander und Philemon gemein hat und was für jene so aufregend vorbildlich wirkte: so genügt es zu sagen, dass der Zuschauer von Euripides auf die Bühne gebracht worden ist. Wer erkannt hat, aus welchem Stoffe die prometheischen Tragiker vor Euripides ihre Helden formten und wie ferne ihnen die Absicht lag, die treue Maske der Wirklichkeit auf die Bühne zu bringen, der wird auch über die gänzlich abweichende Tendenz des Euripides im Klaren sein. Der Mensch des alltäglichen Lebens drang durch ihn aus den Zuschauerräumen auf die Scene, der Spiegel, in dem früher nur die grossen und kühnen Züge zum Ausdruck kamen, zeigte jetzt jene peinliche Treue, die auch die misslungenen Linien der Natur gewissenhaft wiedergiebt. Odysseus, der typische Hellene der älteren Kunst, sank jetzt unter den Händen der neueren Dichter zur Figur des Graeculus herab, der von jetzt ab als gutmüthig-verschmitzter Haussclave im Mittelpunkte des dramatischen Interesse's steht. Was Euripides sich in den aristophanischen „Fröschen“ zum Verdienst anrechnet, dass er die tragische Kunst durch seine Hausmittel von ihrer pomphaften Beleibtheit befreit habe, das ist vor allem an seinen tragischen Helden zu spüren. Im Wesentlichen sah und hörte jetzt der Zuschauer seinen Doppelgänger auf der euripideischen Bühne und freute sich, dass jener so gut zu reden verstehe. Bei dieser Freude blieb es aber nicht: man lernte selbst bei Euripides sprechen, und dessen rühmt er sich selbst im Wettkampfe mit Aeschylus: wie durch ihn jetzt das Volk kunstmässig und mit den schlausten Sophisticationen zu beobachten, zu verhandeln und Folgerungen zu ziehen gelernt habe. Durch diesen Umschwung der öffentlichen Sprache hat er überhaupt die neuere Komödie möglich gemacht. Denn von jetzt ab war es kein Geheimniss mehr, wie und mit welchen Sentenzen die Alltäglichkeit sich auf der Bühne vertreten könne. Die bürgerliche Mittelmässigkeit, auf die Euripides alle seine politischen Hoffnungen aufbaute, kam jetzt zu Wort, nachdem bis dahin in der Tragödie der Halbgott, in der Komödie der betrunkene Satyr oder der Halbmensch den Sprachcharakter bestimmt hatten. Und so hebt der aristophanische Euripides zu seinem Preise hervor, wie er das allgemeine, allbekannte, alltägliche Leben und Treiben dargestellt habe, über das ein Jeder zu urtheilen befähigt sei. Wenn jetzt die ganze Masse philosophiere, mit unerhörter Klugheit Land und Gut verwalte und ihre Prozesse führe, so sei dies sein Verdienst und der Erfolg der von ihm dem Volke eingeimpften Weisheit.
An eine derartig zubereitete und aufgeklärte Masse durfte sich jetzt die neuere Komödie wenden, für die Euripides gewissermaassen der Chorlehrer geworden ist; nur dass diesmal der Chor der Zuschauer eingeübt werden musste. Sobald dieser in der euripideischen Tonart zu singen geübt war, erhob sich jene schachspielartige Gattung des Schauspiels, die neuere Komödie mit ihrem fortwährenden Triumphe der Schlauheit und Verschlagenheit. Euripides aber — der Chorlehrer — wurde unaufhörlich gepriesen: ja man würde sich getödtet haben, um noch mehr von ihm zu lernen, wenn man nicht gewusst hätte, dass die tragischen Dichter eben so todt seien wie die Tragödie. Mit ihr aber hatte der Hellene den Glauben an seine Unsterblichkeit aufgegeben, nicht nur den Glauben an eine ideale Vergangenheit, sondern auch den Glauben an eine ideale Zukunft. Das Wort aus der bekannten Grabschrift „als Greis leichtsinnig und grillig“ gilt auch vom greisen Hellenenthume. Der Augenblick, der Witz, der Leichtsinn, die Laune sind seine höchsten Gottheiten; der fünfte Stand, der des Sclaven, kommt, wenigstens der Gesinnung nach, jetzt zur Herrschaft: und wenn jetzt überhaupt noch von „griechischer Heiterkeit“ die Rede sein darf, so ist es die Heiterkeit des Sclaven, der nichts Schweres zu verantworten, nichts Grosses zu erstreben, nichts Vergangenes oder Zukünftiges höher zu schätzen weiss als das Gegenwärtige. Dieser Schein der „griechischen Heiterkeit“ war es, der die tiefsinnigen und furchtbaren Naturen der vier ersten Jahrhunderte des Christenthums so empörte: ihnen erschien diese weibische Flucht vor dem Ernst und dem Schrecken, dieses feige Sichgenügenlassen am bequemen Genuss nicht nur verächtlich, sondern als die eigentlich antichristliche Gesinnung. Und ihrem Einfluss ist es zuzuschreiben, dass die durch Jahrhunderte fortlebende Anschauung des griechischen Alterthums mit fast unüberwindlicher Zähigkeit jene blassrothe Heiterkeitsfarbe festhielt — als ob es nie ein sechstes Jahrhundert mit seiner Geburt der Tragödie, seinen Mysterien, seinen Pythagoras und Heraklit gegeben hätte, ja als ob die Kunstwerke der grossen Zeit gar nicht vorhanden wären, die doch — jedes für sich — aus dem Boden einer solchen greisenhaften und sclavenmässigen Daseinslust und Heiterkeit gar nicht zu erklären sind und auf eine völlig andere Weltbetrachtung als ihren Existenzgrund hinweisen.
Wenn zuletzt behauptet wurde, dass Euripides den Zuschauer auf die Bühne gebracht habe, um zugleich damit den Zuschauer zum Urtheil über das Drama erst wahrhaft zu befähigen, so entsteht der Schein, als ob die ältere tragische Kunst aus einem Missverhältniss zum Zuschauer nicht herausgekommen sei: und man möchte versucht sein, die radicale Tendenz des Euripides, ein entsprechendes Verhältniss zwischen Kunstwerk und Publicum zu erzielen, als einen Fortschritt über Sophokles hinaus zu preisen. Nun aber ist „Publicum“ nur ein Wort und durchaus keine gleichartige und in sich verharrende Grösse. Woher soll dem Künstler die Verpflichtung kommen, sich einer Kraft zu accommodieren, die ihre Stärke nur in der Zahl hat? Und wenn er sich, seiner Begabung und seinen Absichten nach, über jeden einzelnen dieser Zuschauer erhaben fühlt, wie dürfte er vor dem gemeinsamen Ausdruck aller dieser ihm untergeordneten Capacitäten mehr Achtung empfinden als vor dem relativ am höchsten begabten einzelnen Zuschauer? In Wahrheit hat kein griechischer Künstler mit grösserer Verwegenheit und Selbstgenugsamkeit sein Publicum durch ein langes Leben hindurch behandelt als gerade Euripides: er, der selbst da noch, als die Masse sich ihm zu Füssen warf, in erhabenem Trotze seiner eigenen Tendenz öffentlich in's Gesicht schlug, derselben Tendenz, mit der er über die Masse gesiegt hatte. Wenn dieser Genius die geringste Ehrfurcht vor dem Pandämonium des Publicums gehabt hätte, so wäre er unter den Keulenschlägen seiner Misserfolge längst vor der Mitte seiner Laufbahn zusammengebrochen. Wir sehen bei dieser Erwägung, dass unser Ausdruck, Euripides habe den Zuschauer auf die Bühne gebracht, um den Zuschauer wahrhaft urtheilsfähig zu machen, nur ein provisorischer war, und dass wir nach einem tieferen Verständniss seiner Tendenz zu suchen haben. Umgekehrt ist es ja allerseits bekannt, wie Aeschylus und Sophokles Zeit ihres Lebens, ja weit über dasselbe hinaus, im Vollbesitze der Volksgunst standen, wie also bei diesen Vorgängern des Euripides keineswegs von einem Missverhältniss zwischen Kunstwerk und Publicum die Rede sein kann. Was trieb den reichbegabten und unablässig zum Schaffen gedrängten Künstler so gewaltsam von dem Wege ab, über dem die Sonne der grössten Dichternamen und der unbewölkte Himmel der Volksgunst leuchteten? Welche sonderbare Rücksicht auf den Zuschauer führte ihn dem Zuschauer entgegen? Wie konnte er aus zu hoher Achtung vor seinem Publicum — sein Publicum missachten?
Euripides fühlte sich — das ist die Lösung des eben dargestellten Räthsels — als Dichter wohl über die Masse, nicht aber über zwei seiner Zuschauer erhaben: die Masse brachte er auf die Bühne, jene beiden Zuschauer verehrte er als die allein urtheilsfähigen Richter und Meister aller seiner Kunst: ihren Weisungen und Mahnungen folgend übertrug er die ganze Welt von Empfindungen, Leidenschaften und Erfahrungen, die bis jetzt auf den Zuschauerbänken als unsichtbarer Chor zu jeder Festvorstellung sich einstellten, in die Seelen seiner Bühnenhelden, ihren Forderungen gab er nach, als er für diese neuen Charaktere auch das neue Wort und den neuen Ton suchte, in ihren Stimmen allein hörte er die gültigen Richtersprüche seines Schaffens eben so wie die siegverheissende Ermuthigung, wenn er von der Justiz des Publicums sich wieder einmal verurtheilt sah.
Von diesen beiden Zuschauern ist der eine — Euripides selbst, Euripides als Denker, nicht als Dichter. Von ihm könnte man sagen, dass die ausserordentliche Fülle seines kritischen Talentes, ähnlich wie bei Lessing, einen productiv künstlerischen Nebentrieb wenn nicht erzeugt, so doch fortwährend befruchtet habe. Mit dieser Begabung, mit aller Helligkeit und Behendigkeit seines kritischen Denkens hatte Euripides im Theater gesessen und sich angestrengt, an den Meisterwerken seiner grossen Vorgänger wie an dunkelgewordenen Gemälden Zug um Zug, Linie um Linie wiederzuerkennen. Und hier nun war ihm begegnet, was dem in die tieferen Geheimnisse der aeschyleischen Tragödie Eingeweihten nicht unerwartet sein darf: er gewahrte etwas Incommensurables in jedem Zug und in jeder Linie, eine gewisse täuschende Bestimmtheit und zugleich eine räthselhafte Tiefe, ja Unendlichkeit des Hintergrundes. Die klarste Figur hatte immer noch einen Kometenschweif an sich, der in's Ungewisse, Unaufhellbare zu deuten schien. Dasselbe Zwielicht lag über dem Bau des Drama's, zumal über der Bedeutung des Chors. Und wie zweifelhaft blieb ihm die Lösung der ethischen Probleme! Wie fragwürdig die Behandlung der Mythen! Wie ungleichmässig die Vertheilung von Glück und Unglück! Selbst in der Sprache der älteren Tragödie war ihm vieles anstössig, mindestens räthselhaft; besonders fand er zu viel Pomp für einfache Verhältnisse, zu viel Tropen und Ungeheuerlichkeiten für die Schlichtheit der Charaktere. So sass er, unruhig grübelnd, im Theater, und er, der Zuschauer, gestand sich, dass er seine grossen Vorgänger nicht verstehe. Galt ihm aber der Verstand als die eigentliche Wurzel alles Geniessens und Schaffens, so musste er fragen und um sich schauen, ob denn Niemand so denke wie er und sich gleichfalls jene Incommensurabilität eingestehe. Aber die Vielen und mit ihnen die besten Einzelnen hatten nur ein misstrauisches Lächeln für ihn; erklären aber konnte ihm Keiner, warum seinen Bedenken und Einwendungen gegenüber die grossen Meister doch im Rechte seien. Und in diesem qualvollen Zustande fand er den anderen Zuschauer, der die Tragödie nicht begriff und deshalb nicht achtete. Mit diesem im Bunde durfte er es wagen, aus seiner Vereinsamung heraus den ungeheuren Kampf gegen die Kunstwerke des Aeschylus und Sophokles zu beginnen — nicht mit Streitschriften, sondern als dramatischer Dichter, der seine Vorstellung von der Tragödie der überlieferten entgegenstellt. —
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.
Greek tragedy perished differently from all the older sister art forms: it died by suicide, as the result of an insoluble conflict, that is, tragically, whereas all those others passed away at an advanced age in the most beautiful and peaceful death. For if it accords with a happy natural condition to depart from life with fair offspring and without convulsion, then the end of those older art forms shows us such a happy natural condition: they sink slowly, and before their dying eyes stands already their more beautiful progeny, impatiently raising its head with a bold gesture. With the death of Greek tragedy, by contrast, there arose an immense void, felt deeply everywhere; just as Greek sailors once, in the time of Tiberius, heard on a lonely island the shattering cry “the great Pan is dead,” so now a painful note of lamentation sounded through the Hellenic world: “Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself has been lost with it! Away, away with you, stunted, emaciated epigones! Away to Hades, so that you can for once eat your fill there on the crumbs of the former masters!”
But when yet another new art form did blossom, one that revered tragedy as its predecessor and mentor, it was perceived with horror that it did indeed bear its mother’s features, but the very ones she had shown in her long death agony. This death agony of tragedy was fought by Euripides; that later art form is known as newer Attic comedy. In it the degenerate form of tragedy lived on, as a monument to its exceedingly laborious and violent passing.
Given this connection, the passionate affection that the poets of the newer comedy felt for Euripides is understandable; so that the wish of Philemon, who was willing to be hanged on the spot just to be able to seek out Euripides in the underworld, no longer seems strange—if only he could be convinced that the deceased was still in his right mind even now. If one wants to designate, as briefly as possible and without claiming to say anything exhaustive, what Euripides has in common with Menander and Philemon and what acted as such an exciting model for them, it is enough to say that the spectator was brought onto the stage by Euripides. Whoever has recognized from what material the Promethean tragedians before Euripides shaped their heroes, and how far from them lay the intention of bringing the faithful mask of reality onto the stage, will also be clear about the entirely divergent tendency of Euripides. Through him the man of everyday life pushed from the auditorium onto the stage; the mirror in which formerly only the great and bold features found expression now showed that painful fidelity that conscientiously reproduces even nature’s botched lines. Odysseus, the typical Hellene of the older art, now sank under the hands of the newer poets to the figure of the Graeculus, who from now on stands at the center of dramatic interest as the good-natured, sly household slave. What Euripides credits himself with in the Aristophanic “Frogs”—that by his home remedies he freed tragic art of its pompous corpulence—is above all to be felt in his tragic heroes. In essence the spectator now saw and heard his double on the Euripidean stage and was delighted that the double knew how to talk so well. But it did not stop at this delight: people themselves learned to speak from Euripides, and he himself boasts of this in his contest with Aeschylus: that through him the people had now learned to observe, to negotiate, and to draw conclusions artfully and with the shrewdest sophistications. Through this revolution in public speech he made the newer comedy possible at all. For from now on it was no secret any more how, and with what maxims, everyday life could represent itself on the stage. Bourgeois mediocrity, on which Euripides built all his political hopes, now came to speak, whereas until then the demigod in tragedy and the drunken satyr or half-man in comedy had set the character of the language. And so the Aristophanic Euripides stresses, in his own praise, how he portrayed the common, universally known, everyday life and bustle, about which anyone is capable of judging. If now the whole mass philosophized, managed land and property with unheard-of shrewdness, and conducted its lawsuits, that, he claims, was his merit and the result of the wisdom he had inoculated into the people.
To a mass prepared and enlightened in this way the newer comedy could now turn, for which Euripides had in a sense become the chorus master; only this time the chorus of spectators had to be trained. As soon as this chorus was practiced in singing in the Euripidean key, there arose that chess-game-like genre of drama, the newer comedy with its perpetual triumph of cleverness and cunning. But Euripides—the chorus master—was praised without end: indeed people would have killed themselves in order to learn still more from him, had they not known that the tragic poets were just as dead as tragedy. With tragedy, however, the Hellene had given up the belief in his own immortality, not only the belief in an ideal past but also the belief in an ideal future. The phrase from the well-known epitaph, “as an old man frivolous and whimsical,” applies also to aged Hellenism. The moment, wit, levity, whim are its highest deities; the fifth estate, that of the slave, now comes to power, at least in attitude: and if one may still speak at all of “Greek cheerfulness,” it is the cheerfulness of the slave, who has nothing heavy to answer for, nothing great to strive for, and knows how to value nothing of the past or the future more highly than the present. It was this semblance of “Greek cheerfulness” that so outraged the profound and formidable natures of the first four centuries of Christianity: to them this effeminate flight from seriousness and terror, this cowardly contentment with comfortable enjoyment, appeared not merely contemptible but as the truly anti-Christian disposition. And it is to their influence that we must ascribe the fact that the view of Greek antiquity, living on through centuries, held fast with almost insuperable tenacity to that pale pink hue of cheerfulness—as if there had never been a sixth century with its birth of tragedy, its mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heraclitus, indeed as if the works of art of the great age did not exist at all, which yet—each taken by itself—cannot be explained at all from the soil of such senile, slavish delight in existence and cheerfulness and point to an entirely different view of the world as their ground of existence.
If it was claimed just now that Euripides brought the spectator onto the stage in order thereby to enable the spectator truly, for the first time, to judge drama, then there arises the semblance that the older tragic art never got out of a mismatch between itself and the spectator: and one might be tempted to praise the radical tendency of Euripides to achieve a corresponding relation between work of art and public as progress beyond Sophocles. But now “public” is only a word and by no means a homogeneous quantity that stays constant within itself. Where is the artist supposed to get an obligation to accommodate himself to a force whose strength lies only in numbers? And if, by his gift and his aims, he feels himself superior to each single one of these spectators, how could he feel more respect for the collective expression of all these capacities subordinate to him than for the single spectator who is relatively the most gifted? In truth no Greek artist treated his public through a long life with greater audacity and self-sufficiency than Euripides did: he who, even when the mass threw itself at his feet, in sublime defiance publicly struck his own tendency in the face, that same tendency with which he had triumphed over the mass. If this genius had felt the slightest reverence for the pandemonium of the public, he would have collapsed under the club blows of his failures long before the middle of his career. We see from this consideration that our statement, that Euripides brought the spectator onto the stage in order to make the spectator truly capable of judgment, was only a provisional one, and that we have to seek a deeper understanding of his tendency. Conversely, it is of course universally known that Aeschylus and Sophocles throughout their lives, indeed far beyond them, stood in full possession of popular favor, so that in the case of these predecessors of Euripides there can by no means be talk of a mismatch between work of art and public. What drove the richly gifted artist, urged ceaselessly to create, so violently from the road over which the sun of the greatest poetic names and the cloudless sky of popular favor shone? What strange regard for the spectator set him against the spectator? How could he—out of too high a respect for his public—despise his public?
Euripides felt himself—this is the solution to the riddle just presented—as a poet superior to the mass, to be sure, but not to two of his spectators: the mass he brought onto the stage, those two spectators he revered as the only competent judges and masters of all his art: following their directions and admonitions he transferred the whole world of feelings, passions, and experiences, which until now had joined every festival performance on the spectators’ benches as an invisible chorus, into the souls of his stage heroes; he yielded to their demands when he sought for these new characters also the new word and the new tone; in their voices alone he heard the valid verdicts on his creative work, just as he heard the victory-promising encouragement whenever he saw himself condemned once more by the justice of the public.
Of these two spectators, one is Euripides himself, Euripides as thinker, not as poet. Of him one could say that the extraordinary abundance of his critical talent, similar to Lessing’s, if it did not generate, at least continually fertilized a productive artistic secondary drive. With this gift, with all the brightness and nimbleness of his critical thinking, Euripides had sat in the theater and strained to make out again, in the masterpieces of his great predecessors, as in paintings gone dark, feature by feature, line by line. And here now he encountered what must not be unexpected to anyone initiated into the deeper mysteries of Aeschylean tragedy: he perceived something incommensurable in every feature and every line, a certain deceptive definiteness and at the same time an enigmatic depth, indeed infinity, of background. The clearest figure still had a comet’s tail about it that seemed to point into the uncertain, the unilluminable. The same twilight lay over the structure of the drama, especially over the meaning of the chorus. And how doubtful the solution of the ethical problems remained to him! How questionable the treatment of the myths! How uneven the distribution of fortune and misfortune! Even in the language of the older tragedy much offended him, or at least puzzled him; in particular he found too much pomp for simple circumstances, too many tropes and monstrosities for the plainness of the characters. So he sat in the theater, restlessly brooding, and he, the spectator, admitted to himself that he did not understand his great predecessors. But if the intellect counted for him as the real root of all enjoying and creating, then he had to ask and look around whether no one at all thought as he did and likewise admitted that incommensurability. But the many, and with them the best individuals, had only a distrustful smile for him; yet no one could explain to him why, in the face of his misgivings and objections, the great masters were nonetheless in the right. And in this tormented condition he found the other spectator, who did not comprehend tragedy and therefore did not respect it. Allied with this one, he could dare, out of his isolation, to begin the immense struggle against the works of art of Aeschylus and Sophocles—not with polemics, but as a dramatic poet who sets his conception of tragedy against the traditional one.—
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.
Greek tragedy died differently from all the older arts related to it. It died by suicide, as a result of an insoluble conflict—in other words, tragically. All the others faded away in old age, dying the most beautiful and peaceful of deaths. If a happy natural state means leaving life without convulsions and with beautiful descendants, then the end of those older arts shows us such a state. They slowly sink away, and before their dying eyes their more beautiful offspring already stand, impatiently lifting their heads with a bold gesture. The death of Greek tragedy, in contrast, left an enormous emptiness, deeply felt everywhere. Once, in the time of Tiberius, Greek sailors at a lonely island heard the shattering cry, “Great Pan is dead.” Now a painful lament seemed to sound through the Greek world: “Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself has been lost with it! Away, away with you stunted, skinny latecomers! Away to Hades, so that for once you can eat your fill of the crumbs left by the old masters!”
But when a new kind of art did bloom after all, honoring tragedy as its predecessor and teacher, people were horrified to see that it really did bear its mother’s features—but the very features she had shown in her long death struggle. Euripides fought this death struggle of tragedy. The later art form is known as New Attic Comedy. In it, tragedy’s degenerate form lived on, a memorial to its extremely painful and violent passing.
This connection makes the passionate affection that the poets of New Comedy felt for Euripides understandable. So Philemon’s wish is no longer surprising: he was willing to have himself hanged at once, just to visit Euripides in the underworld—if only he could be sure that the dead man still had his wits about him. If we want to identify very briefly, without claiming to give an exhaustive account, what Euripides shares with Menander and Philemon, and what made him such an exciting model for them, it is enough to say that Euripides brought the spectator onto the stage. Anyone who has recognized the material from which the Promethean tragedians before Euripides shaped their heroes, and how far they were from intending to put a faithful mask of reality onstage, will also understand Euripides’ completely different aim. Through him, the person of everyday life came out of the audience and onto the stage. The mirror that had previously shown only great, bold features now displayed that painstaking accuracy which conscientiously reproduces even nature’s unsuccessful lines. Odysseus, the typical Greek of the older art, now sank in the hands of the newer poets to the figure of the little Greek, who from now on stands at the center of dramatic interest as the good-natured, sly household slave. In Aristophanes’ “Frogs,” Euripides takes credit for using his home remedies to free tragic art from its pompous bulk. This is felt above all in his tragic heroes. Essentially, the spectator now saw and heard his own double on Euripides’ stage, and was delighted that this double knew how to speak so well. But it did not stop at delight: people learned to speak from Euripides themselves. He boasts of this himself in his contest with Aeschylus: through him, the people have now learned how to observe, conduct discussions, and draw conclusions skillfully and with the cleverest sophistical arguments. This transformation of public speech is what made New Comedy possible in the first place. From now on, it was no longer a secret how, and with what sayings, everyday life could be represented onstage. Ordinary middle-class mediocrity, on which Euripides based all his political hopes, now got its say. Until then, demigods had determined the character of speech in tragedy, and drunken satyrs or half-human beings in comedy. So Aristophanes’ Euripides praises himself for presenting common, familiar, everyday life and activity, which everyone is qualified to judge. If the whole crowd now philosophizes, manages its land and property, and conducts its lawsuits with unheard-of cleverness, this is his achievement and the result of the wisdom he has instilled in the people.
New Comedy could now address a crowd prepared and enlightened in this way. Euripides had, in a sense, become its chorus trainer, except that this time it was the chorus of spectators that had to be trained. As soon as it had learned to sing in Euripides’ key, that chess-like form of drama arose: New Comedy, with its constant triumph of cunning and deviousness. Meanwhile Euripides—the chorus trainer—was praised without end. People would even have killed themselves to learn more from him, if they had not known that tragic poets were just as dead as tragedy. With tragedy, though, the Greek had given up his belief in his own immortality: not only belief in an ideal past, but also belief in an ideal future. The words from the familiar epitaph, “frivolous and cranky in old age,” also apply to the aging Greek world. The moment, the joke, frivolity, and whim are its highest gods. The fifth class, the slaves, now comes to power, at least in outlook. If we can still speak of “Greek cheerfulness” at all, it is the cheerfulness of the slave, who has no serious responsibilities, no great goals to strive for, and knows nothing in the past or future to value more highly than the present. It was this semblance of “Greek cheerfulness” that so outraged the profound and formidable people of the first four centuries of Christianity. To them, this effeminate flight from seriousness and terror, this cowardly satisfaction with comfortable pleasure, seemed not only contemptible but the truly anti-Christian outlook. Their influence accounts for the fact that the view of ancient Greece which lived on for centuries clung with almost invincible stubbornness to that pale pink shade of cheerfulness. It was as though there had never been a sixth century with its birth of tragedy, its mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heraclitus. Indeed, it was as though the artworks of the great age did not exist at all. Yet not one of them can be explained as growing out of such a senile, slavish pleasure in existence and cheerfulness. Each points to an entirely different view of the world as the basis of its existence.
We just claimed that Euripides brought the spectator onto the stage in order, at the same time, to make the spectator truly capable of judging drama in the first place. This makes it seem that the older tragic art had never escaped a mismatch with its audience. We might be tempted to praise Euripides’ radical aim of achieving a fitting relationship between artwork and audience as an advance beyond Sophocles. But “audience” is only a word, not at all a uniform, unchanging entity. Where would an artist’s obligation to accommodate a force whose strength lies only in numbers come from? And if, in his gifts and intentions, he feels above each individual spectator, how could he feel more respect for the collective expression of all these abilities, inferior to his own, than for the comparatively most gifted individual spectator? In truth, no Greek artist treated his audience with greater boldness and self-sufficiency over a long life than Euripides himself. Even when the crowd threw itself at his feet, he still had the defiance to slap his own tendency in the face in public—the same tendency through which he had won over the crowd. If this genius had felt the slightest reverence for the audience’s pandemonium, he would have collapsed under the club blows of his failures long before the middle of his career. This reflection shows us that our statement was only provisional: Euripides brought the spectator onto the stage to make the spectator truly capable of judgment. We must look for a deeper understanding of his aim. Conversely, everyone knows that Aeschylus and Sophocles fully enjoyed public favor throughout their lives and long afterward. So there can be no question of a mismatch between artwork and audience in these predecessors of Euripides. What drove this richly gifted artist, constantly urged to create, so violently off the path over which the sun of the greatest poets’ names and the cloudless sky of public favor shone? What strange consideration for the spectator drove him toward the spectator? How could he, out of too much respect for his audience—disrespect his audience?
Here is the solution to the riddle just presented: as a poet, Euripides felt above the crowd, but not above two of his spectators. He brought the crowd onto the stage. But he revered those two spectators as the only competent judges and masters of all his art. Following their directions and warnings, he transferred into the souls of his stage heroes the whole world of feelings, passions, and experiences that had previously gathered on the audience benches as an invisible chorus at every festival performance. He yielded to their demands when he looked for new words and a new tone for these new characters. In their voices alone he heard valid judgments of his work, as well as encouragement promising victory whenever he found himself condemned once again by the court of the audience.
One of these two spectators is—Euripides himself, Euripides as a thinker, not as a poet. We could say of him that, as with Lessing, the extraordinary abundance of his critical talent continually nourished a secondary impulse toward artistic creation, even if it did not produce that impulse. With this gift, with all the clarity and agility of his critical thinking, Euripides had sat in the theater and worked to make out the masterpieces of his great predecessors, feature by feature, line by line, as though they were paintings that had darkened. Here he met with something that should not surprise anyone initiated into the deeper secrets of Aeschylean tragedy. In every feature and every line, he noticed something that would not fit any measure: a certain deceptive precision, together with a mysterious depth, even infinity, in the background. Even the clearest figure still had a comet’s tail that seemed to point into the uncertain, into what could not be made clear. The same twilight lay over the structure of the drama, especially the meaning of the chorus. And how doubtful the solutions to the ethical problems remained to him! How questionable the treatment of the myths! How uneven the distribution of good and bad fortune! Even in the language of older tragedy, much offended him, or at least puzzled him. In particular, he found too much pomp for simple situations, too many figures of speech and monstrous expressions for the characters’ simplicity. So he sat in the theater, restlessly brooding, and admitted to himself, as a spectator, that he did not understand his great predecessors. But since he considered understanding the true root of all enjoyment and creation, he had to ask and look around to see whether anyone thought as he did and likewise admitted that these works could not be measured. But the crowd, along with its best individuals, had only a suspicious smile for him. Yet no one could explain to him why, despite his doubts and objections, the great masters were still right. In this agonizing state, he found the other spectator, who did not understand tragedy and therefore did not value it. Allied with him, he could dare to leave his isolation and begin the tremendous fight against the artworks of Aeschylus and Sophocles—not with polemical writings, but as a dramatist setting his idea of tragedy against the traditional one.—
About this section
Section 11 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 19 of 33 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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