Section 17
Original German
Auch die dionysische Kunst will uns von der ewigen Lust des Daseins überzeugen: nur sollen wir diese Lust nicht in den Erscheinungen, sondern hinter den Erscheinungen suchen. Wir sollen erkennen, wie alles, was entsteht, zum leidvollen Untergange bereit sein muss, wir werden gezwungen in die Schrecken der Individualexistenz hineinzublicken—und sollen doch nicht erstarren: ein metaphysischer Trost reisst uns momentan aus dem Getriebe der Wandelgestalten heraus. Wir sind wirklich in kurzen Augenblicken das Urwesen selbst und fühlen dessen unbändige Daseinsgier und Daseinslust; der Kampf, die Qual, die Vernichtung der Erscheinungen dünkt uns jetzt wie nothwendig, bei dem Uebermaass von unzähligen, sich in's Leben drängenden und stossenden Daseinsformen, bei der überschwänglichen Fruchtbarkeit des Weltwillens; wir werden von dem wüthenden Stachel dieser Qualen in demselben Augenblicke durchbohrt, wo wir gleichsam mit der unermesslichen Urlust am Dasein eins geworden sind und wo wir die Unzerstörbarkeit und Ewigkeit dieser Lust in dionysischer Entzückung ahnen. Trotz Furcht und Mitleid sind wir die glücklich-Lebendigen, nicht als Individuen, sondern als das eine Lebendige, mit dessen Zeugungslust wir verschmolzen sind.
Die Entstehungsgeschichte der griechischen Tragödie sagt uns jetzt mit lichtvoller Bestimmtheit, wie das tragische Kunstwerk der Griechen wirklich aus dem Geiste der Musik herausgeboren ist: durch welchen Gedanken wir zum ersten Male dem ursprünglichen und so erstaunlichen Sinne des Chors gerecht geworden zu sein glauben. Zugleich aber müssen wir zugeben, dass die vorhin aufgestellte Bedeutung des tragischen Mythus den griechischen Dichtern, geschweige den griechischen Philosophen, niemals in begrifflicher Deutlichkeit durchsichtig geworden ist; ihre Helden sprechen gewissermaassen oberflächlicher als sie handeln, der Mythus findet in dem gesprochnen Wort durchaus nicht seine adäquate Objectivation. Das Gefüge der Scenen und die anschaulichen Bilder offenbaren eine tiefere Weisheit, als der Dichter selbst in Worte und Begriffe fassen kann: wie das Gleiche auch bei Shakespeare beobachtet wird, dessen Hamlet z.B. in einem ähnlichen Sinne oberflächlicher redet als er handelt, so dass nicht aus den Worten heraus, sondern aus dem vertieften Anschauen und Ueberschauen des Ganzen jene früher erwähnte Hamletlehre zu entnehmen ist. In Betreff der griechischen Tragödie, die uns freilich nur als Wortdrama entgegentritt, habe ich sogar angedeutet, dass jene Incongruenz zwischen Mythus und Wort uns leicht verführen könnte, sie für flacher und bedeutungsloser zu halten, als sie ist, und demnach auch eine oberflächlichere Wirkung für sie vorauszusetzen, als sie nach den Zeugnissen der Alten gehabt haben muss: denn wie leicht vergisst man, dass, was dem Wortdichter nicht gelungen war, die höchste Vergeistigung und Idealität des Mythus zu erreichen, ihm als schöpferischem Musiker in jedem Augenblick gelingen konnte! Wir freilich müssen uns die Uebermacht der musikalischen Wirkung fast auf gelehrtem Wege reconstruiren, um etwas von jenem unvergleichlichen Troste zu empfangen, der der wahren Tragödie zu eigen sein muss. Selbst diese musikalische Uebermacht aber würden wir nur, wenn wir Griechen wären, als solche empfunden haben: während wir in der ganzen Entfaltung der griechischen Musik—der uns bekannten und vertrauten, so unendlich reicheren gegenüber—nur das in schüchternem Kraftgefühle angestimmte Jünglingslied des musikalischen Genius zu hören glauben. Die Griechen sind, wie die ägyptischen Priester sagen, die ewigen Kinder, und auch in der tragischen Kunst nur die Kinder, welche nicht wissen, welches erhabene Spielzeug unter ihren Händen entstanden ist und—zertrümmert wird.
Jenes Ringen des Geistes der Musik nach bildlicher und mythischer Offenbarung, welches von den Anfängen der Lyrik bis zur attischen Tragödie sich steigert, bricht plötzlich, nach eben erst errungener üppiger Entfaltung, ab und verschwindet gleichsam von der Oberfläche der hellenischen Kunst: während die aus diesem Ringen geborne dionysische Weltbetrachtung in den Mysterien weiterlebt und in den wunderbarsten Metamorphosen und Entartungen nicht aufhört, ernstere Naturen an sich zu ziehen Ob sie nicht aus ihrer mystischen Tiefe einst wieder als Kunst emporsteigen wird?
Hier beschäftigt uns die Frage, ob die Macht, an deren Entgegenwirken die Tragödie sich brach, für alle Zeit genug Stärke hat, um das künstlerische Wiedererwachen der Tragödie und der tragischen Weltbetrachtung zu verhindern. Wenn die alte Tragödie durch den dialektischen Trieb zum Wissen und zum Optimismus der Wissenschaft aus ihrem Gleise gedrängt wurde, so wäre aus dieser Thatsache auf einen ewigen Kampf zwischen der theoretischen und der tragischen Weltbetrachtung zu schliessen; und erst nachdem der Geist der Wissenschaft bis an seine Grenze geführt ist, und sein Anspruch auf universale Gültigkeit durch den Nachweis jener Grenzen vernichtet ist dürfte auf eine Wiedergeburt der Tragödie zu hoffen sein: für welche Culturform wir das Symbol des musiktreibenden Sokrates, in dem früher erörterten Sinne, hinzustellen hätten. Bei dieser Gegenüberstellung verstehe ich unter dem Geiste der Wissenschaft jenen zuerst in der Person des Sokrates an's Licht gekommenen Glauben an die Ergründlichkeit der Natur und an die Universalheilkraft des Wissens.
Wer sich an die nächsten Folgen dieses rastlos vorwärtsdringenden Geistes der Wissenschaft erinnert, wird sich sofort vergegenwärtigen, wie durch ihn der Mythus vernichtet wurde und wie durch diese Vernichtung die Poesie aus ihrem natürlichen idealen Boden, als eine nunmehr heimathlose, verdrängt war. Haben wir mit Recht der Musik die Kraft zugesprochen, den Mythus wieder aus sich gebären zu können, so werden wir den Geist der Wissenschaft auch auf der Bahn zu suchen haben, wo er dieser mythenschaffenden Kraft der Musik feindlich entgegentritt. Dies geschieht in der Entfaltung des neueren attischen Dithyrambus, dessen Musik nicht mehr das innere Wesen, den Willen selbst aussprach, sondern nur die Erscheinung ungenügend, in einer durch Begriffe vermittelten Nachahmung wiedergab: von welcher innerlich entarteten Musik sich die wahrhaft musikalischen Naturen mit demselben Widerwillen abwandten, den sie vor der kunstmörderischen Tendenz des Sokrates hatten. Der sicher zugreifende Instinct des Aristophanes hat gewiss das Rechte erfasst, wenn er Sokrates selbst, die Tragödie des Euripides und die Musik der neueren Dithyrambiker in dem gleichen Gefühle des Hasses zusammenfasste und in allen drei Phänomenen die Merkmale einer degenerirten Cultur witterte. Durch jenen neueren Dithyrambus ist die Musik in frevelhafter Weise zum imitatorischen Conterfei der Erscheinung z.B. einer Schlacht, eines Seesturmes gemacht und damit allerdings ihrer mythenschaffenden Kraft gänzlich beraubt worden. Denn wenn sie unsere Ergetzung nur dadurch zu erregen sucht, dass sie uns zwingt, äusserliche Analogien zwischen einem Vorgange des Lebens und der Natur und gewissen rhythmischen Figuren und charakteristischen Klängen der Musik zu suchen, wenn sich unser Verstand an der Erkenntniss dieser Analogien befriedigen soll, so sind wir in eine Stimmung herabgezogen, in der eine Empfängniss des Mythischen unmöglich ist; denn der Mythus will als ein einziges Exempel einer in's Unendliche hinein starrenden Allgemeinheit und Wahrheit anschaulich empfunden werden. Die wahrhaft dionysische Musik tritt uns als ein solcher allgemeiner Spiegel des Weltwillens gegenüber: jenes anschauliche Ereigniss, das sich in diesem Spiegel bricht, erweitert sich sofort für unser Gefühl zum Abbilde einer ewigen Wahrheit. Umgekehrt wird ein solches anschauliches Ereigniss durch die Tonmalerei des neueren Dithyrambus sofort jedes mythischen Charakters entkleidet; jetzt ist die Musik zum dürftigen Abbilde der Erscheinung geworden und darum unendlich ärmer als die Erscheinung selbst: durch welche Armuth sie für unsere Empfindung die Erscheinung selbst noch herabzieht, so dass jetzt z.B. eine derartig musikalisch imitirte Schlacht sich in Marschlärm, Signalklängen u.s.w. erschöpft, und unsere Phantasie gerade bei diesen Oberflächlichkeiten festgehalten wird. Die Tonmalerei ist also in jeder Beziehung das Gegenstück zu der mythenschaffenden Kraft der wahren Musik: durch sie wird die Erscheinung noch ärmer als sie ist, während durch die dionysische Musik die einzelne Erscheinung sich zum Weltbilde bereichert und erweitert. Es war ein mächtiger Sieg des undionysischen Geistes, als er, in der Entfaltung des neueren Dithyrambus, die Musik sich selbst entfremdet und sie zur Sclavin der Erscheinung herabgedrückt hatte. Euripides, der in einem höhern Sinne eine durchaus unmusikalische Natur genannt werden muss, ist aus eben diesem Grunde leidenschaftlicher Anhänger der neueren dithyrambischen Musik und verwendet mit der Freigebigkeit eines Räubers alle ihre Effectstücke und Manieren.
Nach einer anderen Seite sehen wir die Kraft dieses undionysischen, gegen den Mythus gerichteten Geistes in Thätigkeit, wenn wir unsere Blicke auf das Ueberhandnehmen der Charakterdarstellung und des psychologischen Raffinements in der Tragödie von Sophokles ab richten. Der Charakter soll sich nicht mehr zum ewigen Typus erweitern lassen, sondern im Gegentheil so durch künstliche Nebenzüge und Schattirungen, durch feinste Bestimmtheit aller Linien individuell wirken, dass der Zuschauer überhaupt nicht mehr den Mythus, sondern die mächtige Naturwahrheit und die Imitationskraft des Künstlers empfindet. Auch hier gewahren wir den Sieg der Erscheinung über das Allgemeine und die Lust an dem einzelnen gleichsam anatomischen Präparat, wir athmen bereits die Luft einer theoretischen Welt, welcher die wissenschaftliche Erkenntniss höher gilt als die künstlerische Wiederspiegelung einer Weltregel. Die Bewegung auf der Linie des Charakteristischen geht schnell weiter: während noch Sophokles ganze Charactere malt und zu ihrer raffinirten Entfaltung den Mythus ins Joch spannt, malt Euripides bereits nur noch grosse einzelne Charakterzüge, die sich in heftigen Leidenschaften zu äussern wissen; in der neuern attischen Komödie giebt es nur noch Masken mit einem Ausdruck, leichtsinnige Alte, geprellte Kuppler, verschmitzte Sclaven in unermüdlicher Wiederholung. Wohin ist jetzt der mythenbildende Geist der Musik? Was jetzt noch von Musik übrig ist, das ist entweder Aufregungs- oder Erinnerungsmusik d.h. entweder ein Stimulanzmittel für stumpfe und verbrauchte Nerven oder Tonmalerei. Für die erstere kommt es auf den untergelegten Text kaum noch an: schon bei Euripides geht es, wenn seine Helden oder Chöre erst zu singen anfangen, recht lüderlich zu; wohin mag es bei seinen frechen Nachfolgern gekommen sein?
Am allerdeutlichsten aber offenbart sich der neue undionysische Geist in den Schlüssen der neueren Dramen. In der alten Tragödie war der metaphysische Trost am Ende zu spüren gewesen, ohne den die Lust an der Tragödie überhaupt nicht zu erklären ist; am reinsten tönt vielleicht im Oedipus auf Kolonos der versöhnende Klang aus einer anderen Welt. Jetzt, als der Genius der Musik aus der Tragödie entflohen war, ist, im strengen Sinne, die Tragödie todt: denn woher sollte man jetzt jenen metaphysischen Trost schöpfen können? Man suchte daher nach einer irdischen Lösung der tragischen Dissonanz; der Held, nachdem er durch das Schicksal hinreichend gemartert war, erntete in einer stattlichen Heirat, in göttlichen Ehrenbezeugungen einen wohlverdienten Lohn. Der Held war zum Gladiator geworden, dem man, nachdem er tüchtig geschunden und mit Wunden überdeckt war, gelegentlich die Freiheit schenkte. Der deus ex machina ist an Stelle des metaphysischen Trostes getreten. Ich will nicht sagen, dass die tragische Weltbetrachtung überall und völlig durch den andrängenden Geist des Undionysischen zerstört wurde: wir wissen nur, dass sie sich aus der Kunst gleichsam in die Unterwelt, in einer Entartung zum Geheimcult, flüchten musste. Aber auf dem weitesten Gebiete der Oberfläche des hellenischen Wesens wüthete der verzehrende Hauch jenes Geistes, welcher sich in jener Form der „griechischen Heiterkeit“ kundgiebt, von der bereits früher, als von einer greisenhaft unproductiven Daseinslust, die Rede war; diese Heiterkeit ist ein Gegenstück zu der herrlichen „Naivetät“ der älteren Griechen, wie sie, nach der gegebenen Charakteristik, zu fassen ist als die aus einem düsteren Abgrunde hervorwachsende Blüthe der apollinischen Cultur, als der Sieg, den der hellenische Wille durch seine Schönheitsspiegelung über das Leiden und die Weisheit des Leidens davonträgt. Die edelste Form jener anderen Form der „griechischen Heiterkeit“, der alexandrinischen, ist die Heiterkeit des theoretischen Menschen: sie zeigt dieselben charakteristischen Merkmale, die ich soeben aus dem Geiste des Undionysischen ableitete—dass sie die dionysische Weisheit und Kunst bekämpft, dass sie den Mythus aufzulösen trachtet, dass sie an Stelle eines metaphysischen Trostes eine irdische Consonanz, ja einen eigenen deus ex machina setzt, nämlich den Gott der Maschinen und Schmelztiegel, d.h. die im Dienste des höheren Egoismus erkannten und verwendeten Kräfte der Naturgeister, dass sie an eine Correctur der Welt durch das Wissen, an ein durch die Wissenschaft geleitetes Leben glaubt und auch wirklich im Stande ist, den einzelnen Menschen in einen allerengsten Kreis von lösbaren Aufgaben zu bannen, innerhalb dessen er heiter zum Leben sagt: „Ich will dich: du bist werth erkannt zu werden“.
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.
Dionysian art, too, seeks to convince us of the eternal joy of existence; only we are to seek this joy not in appearances but behind them. We are to recognize that everything that comes into being must be prepared for a painful downfall; we are compelled to look into the terrors of individual existence—and yet are not to freeze in horror: a metaphysical consolation tears us momentarily out of the machinery of changing forms. For brief moments we really are the primordial being itself and feel its unbridled thirst for existence and joy in existence. The struggle, the torment, the annihilation of appearances now seem necessary, as it were, given the excess of countless forms of existence pressing and jostling their way into life, given the exuberant fertility of the world-will. We are pierced by the raging sting of these torments at the very moment when we have, as it were, become one with the immeasurable primordial joy in existence, and when in Dionysian rapture we divine the indestructibility and eternity of this joy. Despite fear and pity, we are the happily living—not as individuals, but as the one living being, with whose joy in procreation we have merged.
The history of the origin of Greek tragedy now tells us with luminous certainty how the Greeks’ tragic artwork was truly born from the spirit of music. Through this thought we believe we have, for the first time, done justice to the original and so astonishing meaning of the chorus. At the same time, however, we must admit that the significance of tragic myth proposed above never became transparent in conceptual clarity to the Greek poets, let alone the Greek philosophers. Their heroes speak, in a sense, more superficially than they act; myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible images reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself can grasp in words and concepts. The same can also be observed in Shakespeare, whose Hamlet, for example, in a similar sense speaks more superficially than he acts, so that the lesson of Hamlet mentioned earlier must be drawn not from the words but from a deepened contemplation and survey of the whole. As for Greek tragedy, which admittedly comes before us only as spoken drama, I have even suggested that this incongruity between myth and word could easily tempt us to consider it shallower and less significant than it is, and accordingly to assume that its effect was more superficial than, according to ancient testimony, it must have been. For how easily we forget that what the poet of words had failed to do—attain the highest spiritualization and ideality of myth—he could accomplish at any moment as a creative musician! We, of course, must reconstruct the overwhelming power of the musical effect almost by scholarly means in order to receive something of that incomparable consolation which must belong to true tragedy. Yet even this musical predominance could have been felt by us as such only if we were Greeks, whereas in the whole development of Greek music—set against the infinitely richer music we know and are familiar with—we believe we hear only the youthful song of musical genius, struck up in a shy sense of its own strength. The Greeks are, as the Egyptian priests say, the eternal children, and in tragic art too they are only children who do not know what sublime toy has come into being under their hands and—is being shattered.
That struggle of the spirit of music toward revelation in image and myth, intensifying from the beginnings of lyric poetry to Attic tragedy, suddenly breaks off just after achieving its luxuriant flowering, and vanishes, as it were, from the surface of Hellenic art. Meanwhile the Dionysian view of the world born of that struggle lives on in the mysteries and, through the most wondrous metamorphoses and degenerations, never ceases to attract more serious natures. Might it not one day rise again from its mystical depths as art?
Here we are concerned with the question whether the power against whose resistance tragedy shattered is strong enough for all time to prevent the artistic reawakening of tragedy and the tragic view of the world. If ancient tragedy was driven from its course by the dialectical drive toward knowledge and the optimism of science, we would have to infer from this fact an eternal struggle between the theoretical and the tragic view of the world. Only after the spirit of science has been led to its limits, and its claim to universal validity destroyed by the demonstration of those limits, might we hope for a rebirth of tragedy. For this form of culture we would have to establish the symbol of the music-practicing Socrates, in the sense discussed earlier. In this contrast, by the spirit of science I mean that faith, first brought to light in the person of Socrates, in the fathomability of nature and the universal healing power of knowledge.
Anyone who recalls the immediate consequences of this restlessly advancing spirit of science will at once bring to mind how it annihilated myth, and how this annihilation drove poetry from its natural, ideal soil, leaving it homeless. If we have rightly credited music with the power to give birth to myth anew from within itself, then we must also seek the spirit of science along the path where it confronts this myth-creating power of music as an enemy. This happens in the development of the newer Attic dithyramb, whose music no longer expressed the inner essence, the will itself, but merely reproduced appearance inadequately, in an imitation mediated by concepts. Truly musical natures turned away from this inwardly degenerate music with the same revulsion they felt toward Socrates’ art-murdering tendency. Aristophanes’ sure-seizing instinct certainly grasped the truth when it embraced Socrates himself, Euripides’ tragedy, and the music of the newer dithyrambic poets in the same feeling of hatred, scenting the marks of a degenerate culture in all three phenomena. Through that newer dithyramb, music was sacrilegiously made into an imitative portrait of appearance—of a battle, for example, or a storm at sea—and thereby wholly robbed of its myth-creating power. For if it seeks to arouse our delight only by compelling us to look for external analogies between an event in life or nature and certain rhythmic figures and characteristic sounds in music, if our understanding is to find satisfaction in recognizing these analogies, then we are dragged down into a mood in which receiving the mythical is impossible. For myth seeks to be felt in a vivid vision as a single example of a universality and truth gazing into infinity. Truly Dionysian music confronts us as just such a universal mirror of the world-will: the visible event refracted in this mirror immediately expands for our feeling into the image of an eternal truth. Conversely, the tone painting of the newer dithyramb immediately strips such a visible event of every mythical quality. Music has now become a meager image of appearance, and is therefore infinitely poorer than appearance itself; through this poverty it even diminishes appearance itself in our feeling, so that, for example, a battle musically imitated in this way is exhausted in the din of marching, signal calls, and the like, and our imagination is held fast precisely at these superficialities. Tone painting is thus in every respect the opposite of the myth-creating power of true music: through it appearance becomes poorer than it is, whereas through Dionysian music the individual appearance is enriched and expanded into an image of the world. It was a mighty victory for the non-Dionysian spirit when, in the development of the newer dithyramb, it estranged music from itself and degraded it into the slave of appearance. Euripides, who in a higher sense must be called an utterly unmusical nature, is for precisely this reason a passionate adherent of the newer dithyrambic music, and employs all its showpieces and mannerisms with a robber’s generosity.
We see the power of this non-Dionysian spirit, directed against myth, at work from another side when we turn our gaze to the growing predominance of character portrayal and psychological refinement in tragedy from Sophocles onward. Character is no longer to be allowed to expand into an eternal type; on the contrary, through artful secondary traits and shadings, through the most delicate definition of every line, it is to seem so individual that the spectator no longer feels myth at all, but rather the powerful fidelity to nature and the artist’s imitative power. Here too we perceive the victory of appearance over the universal and the pleasure in the individual specimen, as though it were an anatomical preparation; we are already breathing the air of a theoretical world that prizes scientific knowledge above the artistic reflection of a universal law. The movement along the line of characterization advances swiftly: while Sophocles still paints whole characters and harnesses myth to their refined development, Euripides already paints only great individual character traits that know how to express themselves in violent passions. In the newer Attic comedy there are only masks with one expression: frivolous old men, cheated pimps, cunning slaves, in tireless repetition. Where is the myth-forming spirit of music now? What remains of music is either music of excitation or music of recollection—that is, either a stimulant for dulled, worn-out nerves or tone painting. For the former, the accompanying text scarcely matters anymore: even in Euripides things become quite slovenly once his heroes or choruses begin to sing. What can they have come to in his brazen successors?
But the new non-Dionysian spirit reveals itself most clearly of all in the endings of the newer dramas. In ancient tragedy, the metaphysical consolation without which pleasure in tragedy cannot be explained at all could be felt at the end; perhaps the reconciling sound from another world rings out most purely in Oedipus at Colonus. Now that the genius of music has fled from tragedy, tragedy is, strictly speaking, dead: for where could that metaphysical consolation now be drawn from? So an earthly resolution of tragic dissonance was sought. After being sufficiently tortured by fate, the hero reaped his well-earned reward in a splendid marriage, in divine tributes of honor. The hero had become a gladiator who, after being thoroughly flayed and covered in wounds, was occasionally granted his freedom. The god from the machine has taken the place of metaphysical consolation. I do not mean to say that the tragic view of the world was everywhere and entirely destroyed by the advancing spirit of the non-Dionysian: we know only that it had to flee from art, as it were into the underworld, degenerating into a secret cult. But across the broadest expanse of the surface of the Hellenic spirit raged the consuming breath of that spirit which manifests itself in the form of “Greek cheerfulness” already discussed as a senile, unproductive joy in existence. This cheerfulness is the opposite of the magnificent “naivety” of the older Greeks, which, according to the characterization given, must be understood as the blossom of Apollonian culture growing from a dark abyss, as the victory the Hellenic will wins over suffering and the wisdom of suffering through its mirroring of beauty. The noblest expression of that other form of “Greek cheerfulness,” the Alexandrian form, is the cheerfulness of the theoretical human being. It displays the same characteristic features I have just derived from the spirit of the non-Dionysian: it fights Dionysian wisdom and art; it strives to dissolve myth; it replaces metaphysical consolation with an earthly consonance, indeed with a god from the machine of its own, namely the god of machines and crucibles—that is, the forces of the spirits of nature known and employed in the service of a higher egoism. It believes in a correction of the world through knowledge, in a life guided by science, and is actually capable of confining the individual within the very narrowest circle of solvable tasks, within which he cheerfully says to life: “I want you: you are worth knowing.”
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.
Dionysian art too wants to convince us of the eternal joy of existence. But we are to seek this joy not in appearances, but behind them. We are to recognize that everything that comes into being must be ready for a painful end. We are forced to look into the terrors of individual existence—and yet we are not to freeze in horror. Metaphysical comfort momentarily pulls us out of the machinery of changing forms. For brief moments we really are the primal being itself and feel its unrestrained hunger and joy in existence. The struggle, torment, and destruction of appearances now seem necessary to us, given the excess of countless forms of existence pushing and shoving their way into life, given the overflowing fertility of the world-will. The raging sting of these torments pierces us at the very moment when we have, as it were, become one with the immeasurable primal joy in existence, and when, in Dionysian rapture, we sense that this joy is indestructible and eternal. Despite fear and pity, we are happily alive—not as individuals, but as the one living being with whose joy in procreation we have merged.
The history of Greek tragedy’s origin now tells us with luminous certainty how the Greeks’ tragic artwork really was born from the spirit of music. Through this idea, we believe we have for the first time done justice to the chorus’ original and so astonishing meaning. At the same time, however, we must admit that the meaning of tragic myth set out earlier never became conceptually clear to Greek poets, let alone Greek philosophers. In a sense, their heroes speak more superficially than they act. Myth by no means finds its adequate objective expression in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible images reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself can put into words and concepts. The same thing is observed in Shakespeare. His Hamlet, for example, speaks more superficially than he acts in a similar sense. The lesson of Hamlet mentioned earlier must therefore be drawn not from the words, but from a deepened view and overview of the whole. Of course, Greek tragedy reaches us only as spoken drama. I have even suggested that this mismatch between myth and word could easily tempt us to think it shallower and less meaningful than it is. We might therefore also assume it had a more superficial effect than ancient testimony says it must have had. How easily we forget that what the poet of words failed to achieve—the highest spiritualization and ideality of myth—he could achieve at every moment as a creative musician! We, admittedly, must reconstruct the overwhelming power of the musical effect almost by scholarly means if we are to receive anything of that incomparable comfort that must belong to true tragedy. Yet we would have felt even this overwhelming musical power as such only if we had been Greeks. Compared with the infinitely richer music we know and are familiar with, we believe we hear in the entire development of Greek music only the youthful song of musical genius, sung with a timid awareness of its strength. As the Egyptian priests say, the Greeks are eternal children. In tragic art too, they are only children who do not know what a sublime toy has come into being under their hands—and is being smashed to pieces.
The spirit of music struggles toward revelation in images and myth, with increasing intensity from the beginnings of lyric poetry to Attic tragedy. Then, just after achieving a rich flowering, this struggle suddenly breaks off and seems to disappear from the surface of Greek art. Meanwhile, the Dionysian view of the world born from this struggle lives on in the mysteries. Through the strangest transformations and degenerations, it never stops attracting more serious natures. Might it not one day rise again from its mystical depths as art?
The question that concerns us here is whether the opposing power against which tragedy broke has enough strength for all time to prevent the artistic reawakening of tragedy and the tragic view of the world. Ancient tragedy was pushed off its course by the dialectical drive toward knowledge and the optimism of science. If so, this fact would imply an eternal struggle between the theoretical and the tragic view of the world. Only after the spirit of science has been led to its limits, and the demonstration of those limits has destroyed its claim to universal validity, could we hope for a rebirth of tragedy. As the symbol of that form of culture, we would have to set up Socrates practicing music, in the sense discussed earlier. In this contrast, by the spirit of science I mean the belief that first came to light in the person of Socrates: that nature can be fully understood and knowledge can cure everything.
Anyone who remembers the immediate consequences of this restlessly advancing spirit of science will at once recall how it destroyed myth. Through that destruction, poetry was driven from its natural, ideal ground and became homeless. If we were right to credit music with the power to give birth to myth again from within itself, we must also look for the spirit of science along the path where it opposes this myth-creating power of music. This happens in the development of the newer Attic dithyramb. Its music no longer expressed the inner nature, the will itself, but reproduced appearance inadequately through an imitation mediated by concepts. Truly musical natures turned away from this inwardly degenerate music with the same disgust they felt toward Socrates’ art-killing tendency. Aristophanes’ sure instinct certainly grasped the truth when he included Socrates himself, Euripides’ tragedy, and the music of the newer dithyrambic poets in the same feeling of hatred, sensing the signs of a degenerate culture in all three phenomena. Through this newer dithyramb, music was sacrilegiously made into an imitative portrait of appearance—for example, of a battle or a storm at sea—and so was completely robbed of its myth-creating power. Suppose music tries to excite our pleasure only by forcing us to look for external similarities between an event in life or nature and certain rhythmic figures and characteristic musical sounds. Suppose our understanding is to find satisfaction in recognizing these similarities. Then we are dragged down into a state of mind in which receiving myth is impossible. For myth asks to be felt and seen as a single example of a universality and truth gazing into infinity. Truly Dionysian music confronts us as just such a universal mirror of the world-will. The visible event reflected in this mirror immediately expands, for our feeling, into the image of an eternal truth. Conversely, the tone painting of the newer dithyramb immediately strips such a visible event of every mythical quality. Now music has become a poor copy of appearance, and is therefore infinitely poorer than appearance itself. Through this poverty, it even degrades appearance itself in our feelings. Thus, for example, a battle imitated musically in this way is exhausted in marching noise, signal calls, and the like, and our imagination is held fast to precisely these superficial details. Tone painting is therefore the opposite in every respect of the myth-creating power of true music. Through it, appearance becomes still poorer than it is, whereas through Dionysian music the individual appearance is enriched and expanded into an image of the world. It was a powerful victory for the un-Dionysian spirit when, in the development of the newer dithyramb, it alienated music from itself and degraded it into a slave of appearance. Euripides, who in a higher sense must be called thoroughly unmusical by nature, is for this very reason a passionate supporter of the newer dithyrambic music. With a robber’s lavishness, he uses all its showpieces and mannerisms.
We see the power of this un-Dionysian, anti-mythical spirit operating in another direction when we look at the growing predominance of character portrayal and psychological refinement in tragedy from Sophocles onward. A character is no longer to be allowed to expand into an eternal type. On the contrary, artfully added minor traits and shadings, and the most delicate definition of every line, are to make the character seem so individual that the spectator no longer feels the myth at all. Instead, the spectator feels the artist’s powerful truth to nature and ability to imitate. Here too we see the victory of appearance over the universal, and pleasure in the individual specimen, as though it were an anatomical preparation. We are already breathing the air of a theoretical world that values scientific knowledge more highly than the artistic reflection of a universal rule. The movement toward the characteristic advances quickly. Sophocles still paints whole characters and harnesses myth to unfold them with refinement. Euripides already paints only large individual character traits that find expression in violent passions. In the newer Attic comedy, only masks with one expression remain: frivolous old men, cheated pimps, cunning slaves, endlessly repeated. Where has the myth-making spirit of music gone now? What remains of music is either music of excitement or music of recollection: either a stimulant for dulled, worn-out nerves, or tone painting. For the former, the words set to it hardly matter anymore. Already in Euripides, things become quite sloppy as soon as his heroes or choruses begin to sing. How far might this have gone with his brazen successors?
But the new un-Dionysian spirit reveals itself most clearly in the endings of the newer dramas. At the end of the old tragedy, one could feel the metaphysical comfort without which pleasure in tragedy cannot be explained at all. Perhaps the reconciling sound from another world rings out most purely in Oedipus at Colonus. Now that the spirit of music has fled from tragedy, tragedy is, strictly speaking, dead. For where could that metaphysical comfort now be found? People therefore sought an earthly resolution of the tragic dissonance. After fate had tortured the hero sufficiently, he reaped his well-deserved reward in a splendid marriage or honors from the gods. The hero had become a gladiator who, after being thoroughly mauled and covered with wounds, was occasionally granted his freedom. The god from the machine has replaced metaphysical comfort. I do not mean that the advancing un-Dionysian spirit destroyed the tragic view of the world everywhere and completely. We know only that this view had to flee out of art into a kind of underworld, degenerating into a secret cult. But over the broadest surface of the Greek world raged the consuming breath of that spirit. It reveals itself in the form of “Greek cheerfulness” discussed earlier as a senile, unproductive joy in existence. This cheerfulness is the opposite of the magnificent “naivety” of the older Greeks. As we have described it, that naivety must be understood as the blossom of Apollonian culture growing from a dark abyss, as the victory the Greek will wins over suffering and the wisdom of suffering by reflecting itself in beauty. The noblest form of that other, Alexandrian “Greek cheerfulness” is the cheerfulness of the theoretical person. It shows the very characteristics I have just derived from the un-Dionysian spirit. It fights Dionysian wisdom and art. It tries to dissolve myth. Instead of metaphysical comfort, it offers an earthly harmony, indeed a god from the machine of its own: the god of machines and melting pots. In other words, it offers the powers of nature’s spirits, understood and used in the service of a higher selfishness. It believes in correcting the world through knowledge, in a life guided by science. And it really can confine an individual within a very narrow circle of solvable tasks, inside which he cheerfully says to life: “I want you: you are worth knowing.”
About this section
Section 17 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 25 of 33 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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