NIETZSCHE AND THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

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2 NIETZSCHE AND THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

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4 Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy Paul Raimond Daniels ROUTLEDGE Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

5 First published in 2013 by Acumen Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Paul Raimond Daniels, 2013 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN: (hardcover) ISBN: (paperback) British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Autumn and Closing Piece from the book of images by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow. Translation copyright 1991 by Edward Snow. Reprinted by permission of North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Part One, 26 and Part Two, 29 from sonnets to orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow. Translation copyright 2005 by Edward Snow. Reprinted by permission of North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Excerpts from Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by David Young by W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Used by Permission from W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Ariadne s Complaint, from Dithyrambs of Dionysus by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by R. J. Hollingdale. R. J. Hollingdale 1984, Used by permission of Anvil Press Poetry. Quotes and passages from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, edited by Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs, translated by Ronald Speirs. Copyright Cambridge University Press, Used by permission of the editors and Cambridge University Press. Excerpts from The Homeric Hymns, translated by Jules Cashford. Translation copyright Jules Cashford, Used by permission of Penguin. Typeset in Minion Pro.

6 For Mrs Holdaway

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8 Contents Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations ix xi xiii 1. Nietzsche and the influences on The Birth of Tragedy 1 2. Apollo and Dionysos in dialectic ( 1 6) The tragic moment ( 7 10) The decline and death of Greek tragedy ( 11 15) Modernity and the rebirth of tragedy ( 16 25) Appraising The Birth of Tragedy: Nietzsche in his later writings 167 Nietzsche s life and works 209 Further reading 219 Bibliography 225 Index 235 vii

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10 Preface Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy aims to situate The Birth of Tragedy as an ideal entry into Nietzsche s philosophy, while also maintaining that the text is integral to any serious reading of Nietzsche s later writings. Accordingly, this book delves into The Birth of Tragedy by way of exploring the relationship between art and truth: a question that confronted Nietzsche in his youthful writings of the 1870s and remained with him until his collapse in The dilemma of art and truth was one that, as Erich Heller reminds us, continued to fill Nietzsche with a holy terror throughout his life. This book is aimed at the newcomer to Nietzsche s philosophy since it is written from the premise that The Birth of Tragedy opens a Pandora s Box of philosophical and aesthetic themes that remain integral to Nietzsche s philosophy until his final writings. Owing to that same premise, this book is also written for the more experienced Nietzsche reader since it situates Nietzsche s mature philosophy as intimately connected to The Birth of Tragedy, if not to its answers then certainly its questions. Here I have striven to provide a positive, affirmative interpretation of The Birth of Tragedy, taking care to expound Nietzsche s ideas clearly and without forgoing the complexities at play throughout the work. There are undoubtedly problematic moments in the text, and I have taken these as an opportunity to deepen the reader s understanding of the philosophical tensions imbued within the text, as well as introduce some of the main positions in the secondary literature. There are several translations of The Birth of Tragedy. I have cited the recent Cambridge University Press edition, translated by Professor Ronald Speirs, owing to its outstanding accuracy and faithfulness to Nietzsche s poetic ability. The scholarship on Nietzsche is immense. I have drawn on sources that help establish an engaging reading of The Birth of Tragedy. While most are selected for their insights into Nietzsche s early philosophy, it is where these ix

11 preface sources conflict with Nietzsche or I with them that they are of value to the present book. The Further reading section lists a selection of the secondary literature as it is relevant to each chapter, and provides accompanying notes to help the reader discern the positions taken up by different authors. The bibliography cites elucidatory literature in addition to representing a more comprehensive array of viewpoints beyond my own discussions. A table of Nietzsche s life and works places The Birth of Tragedy in the broader historical context of Nietzsche s life and his philological and philosophical writings. A preface on a book about Nietzsche s philosophy would not be complete without outlining its regard for the Nachlass (including The Will to Power). The view I have taken is that the Nachlass is of secondary interest to the published and authorized works, and therefore, akin to Nietzsche s letters, is beneficial in supporting any exegetical points of debate but cannot be regarded as decisive in and of itself. Accordingly, my focus throughout this book is on Nietzsche s published works, with care taken to interpret these both philosophically and within the context of the letters and Nachlass. Paul Raimond Daniels The University of Melbourne x

12 Acknowledgements I thank the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne for conferring an honorary fellowship on me and enabling me the use of research space and materials, which was of immense practical support. The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy supported me through lecturing and research opportunities that led to the conception of this book, and its founding Convenor, Dr Jon Roffe, is to be acknowledged for his early and kind encouragement of my involvement with philosophy. I also thank my teachers of German and French philosophy, Dr David Rathbone and Dr Marion Tapper, whose teaching excellence and love of Nietzsche s philosophy has remained with me. Dr Alison Ross provided supportive comments and read early drafts of the book, for which I am very grateful. I am particularly thankful to an unnamed reader for moral support, reading drafts of this book, and for conversations on Nietzsche s ideas in the context of the power of art and poetry, especially the poetry of Rilke. xi

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14 Abbreviations Nietzsche ASC Attempt at Self- Criticism, in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, R. Speirs (trans.), R. Geuss & R. Speirs (eds), 3 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) BGE Beyond Good and Evil, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990) BT The Birth of Tragedy, in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, R. Speirs (trans.), R. Geuss & R. Speirs (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) D Daybreak, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.), M. Clark & B. Leiter (eds) DD (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Dithyrambs of Dionysus, new edn, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.) (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2001) EH Ecce Homo, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992) EN Writings from the Early Notebooks, L. Löb (trans.), R. Geuss & A. Nehemas (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) GM GS HAH LN MW PTG On the Genealogy of Morality, C. Diethe (trans.), K. Ansell- Pearson (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) The Gay Science, J. Nauckhoff & A. del Caro (trans.), B. Williams (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Human, All Too Human, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Writings from the Late Notebooks, K. Sturge (trans.), R. Bittner (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) On Music and Words, in C. Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, M. Whittall (trans.), (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980) Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, M. Cowan (trans.) (Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1962) xiii

15 abbreviations TI Twilight of the Idols, in Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990) TL On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, R. Speirs (trans.), R. Geuss & R. Speirs (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) UM I IV Untimely Meditations, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.), D. Breazeale (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) WP The Will to Power, W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale (trans.), W. Kaufmann (ed.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) Nietzsche in German KSA I XV Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, G. Colli & M. Montinari (eds) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005) KSB I VIII Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Bänden, G. Colli & M. Montinari (eds) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003) Ancient Poetry HH The Homeric Hymns, J. Cashford (trans.) (London: Penguin, 2003) Aeschylus A PB Agamemnon, in Aeschylus, vol. 2, H. Weir Smyth (trans.), H. Lloyd- Jones (ed.) (London: William Heinemann, 1926) Prometheus Bound, in Prometheus Bound and Other Plays, P. Vellacott (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961) Sophocles OC OK Oedipus at Colonus, in The Three Theban Plays, R. Fagles (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984) Oedipus the King, in The Three Theban Plays, R. Fagles (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984) Euripides M Medea, in Medea and Other Plays, P. Vellacott (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963) xiv

16 abbreviations Aristophanes C F The Clouds, in Lysistrata and Other Plays, rev. edn, A. H. Sommerstein (trans.) (London: Penguin, 2002) The Frogs in Frogs and Other Plays, D. Barrett & S. Dutta (trans.) (London: Penguin, 2007) Schopenhauer FR PP I PP II MR I V WWR I WWR II On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, E. F. J. Payne (trans. and ed.) (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1974) Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 1, E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) Manuscript Remains, vols 1 4, E. F. J. Payne (trans.), A. Hübscher (ed.) (Oxford: Berg, 1988) The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (New York: Dover, 1966) The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2, E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (New York: Dover, 1966) Rilke BI The Book of Images, rev. edn, E. Snow (trans.) (New York: North Point Press, 1994) DE Duino Elegies, bilingual edition, D. Young (trans.) (New York: W. W. LYP Norton, 2006) Letters to a Young Poet & The Letter from the Young Worker, C. Louth (trans. and ed.) (London: Penguin, 2011) RW I IV Rainer Maria Rilke: Werke, M. Engel, U. Fülleborn, H. Nalewski & A. Stahl (eds) (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1996) SO Sonnets to Orpheus, E. Snow (trans.) (New York: North Point Press, 2004) xv

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18 one Nietzsche and the influences on The Birth of Tragedy This beginning is remarkable beyond all measure. I had discovered the only likeness and parallel to my own innermost experience which history possesses I had therewith become the first to comprehend the wonderful phenomenon of the dionysian. (EH, 49) The Birth of Tragedy remains an enigma. As a tract on the history of Greek art it aims to draw out the philosophical motives and consequences of tragedy, and proposes that the tragic culture of the Greeks provides to us an imperative for understanding and interpreting our contemporary world. Yet while this may sound straightforward enough, the book is laden with philosophical difficulties and historical complications: for one, it is a book that censures the theoretical mode of philosophizing while at times also employing a similarly troubled mode; also, where Nietzsche calls for a revaluation of modernity, he simultaneously seems to rely on the metaphysical vocabulary and grammar of his predecessor Schopenhauer; and where scholarly certainty fears to tread, Nietzsche colours his pages with poetical accounts of the ancients, and accords this a seemingly equal weighting to established philological research. The Birth of Tragedy presents us with a Gordian knot of sorts, one that entangles antiquity and modernity, philosophy and art, and the human subject with its cultural horizons. However, the real difficulty with understanding the text, especially in the context of Nietzsche s wider oeuvre, is that Nietzsche himself reflected on it with such diverse and conflicting appraisals and over so many years. For instance, some fourteen years after The Birth of Tragedy appeared, Nietzsche commissioned a second, almost entirely unaltered edition of the work, which also included a new preface entitled An Attempt at Self- Criticism. Here Nietzsche deems The Birth of Tragedy an impossible and questionable 1

19 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy book, whereas in his later writings (as quoted above) he describes it as a beginning remarkable beyond all measure, alongside a number of other praises. This leads us to the plausible conclusion that not only is The Birth of Tragedy a riddle for us to unravel, but also that it was a riddle to its author. In response to this it might be proposed that a dynamic interpretation of the text is more apt: that is, we may understand Nietzsche s inconsistent estimations of the text as the product of the period when he wrote them. Yet this hermeneutic is limited in its ability to explain how it is that, beyond Nietzsche s authorship, so many interpretations arise from this single text and the treatment of the themes therein. The Birth of Tragedy is a philosophical chameleon whose true colour is still unseen, and whose purpose and intent may very well lie in this fact. It is an amazing work, bold, vast and ambitious; it overwhelmed its author, who could only write of it with differing feelings of pride, curiosity, caution and embarrassment but never contempt suggesting that the book is hardly the tame animal that Nietzsche would at times have us believe. With these considerations in mind we can see that The Birth of Tragedy is a book that is alive for us in a quite unusual way, as it continues to offer us the chance to read Nietzsche anew and reassess the grounds for his later philosophy. The Birth of Tragedy remained important for Nietzsche owing to the themes its philosophical landscape comprises, and the way these themes are entangled and play into one another enable us to appreciate the complexities and philosophical fundamentality of work. As with a landscape, these themes are best grasped first from a distance, which calls for a consideration of the text itself in overview: what is it in The Birth of Tragedy that led Nietzsche to deem it a beginning remarkable beyond all measure? What is the importance behind his lifelong fascination with the Greeks, with tragedy, the Dionysiac, and the philosophical conflicts between modern culture and the Presocratics? What is The Birth of Tragedy about? The Birth of Tragedy: an overview Written in the years leading up to 1872, The Birth of Tragedy is foremost a philosophical narrative voiced over the history of Greek art, from the earliest mythologies to the last of the tragedians. Nietzsche reads the evolution of Greek art and by extension, Greek civilization as the story of the Greeks evolving existential relationship with suffering and the world. What Nietzsche proposes to us in this study is that we can see Greek tragedy arising out of a long struggle between different art forms, a struggle that has its artistic, philosophical, psychological and historical dimensions. This struggle is defined in terms of the two chief art deities of Greek mythology, Apollo 2

20 the influences on the birth of tragedy and Dionysos. The Apolline and Dionysiac are foremost artistic forces, or drives that manifest as different forms of art: so that Apolline art, such as epic poetry and sculpture, is beautiful, calming and sunlike in its charm, just like the figure of Apollo himself; the art of Dionysos, on the other hand music, dance and lyric poetry is transfixing, orgiastic and intoxicating, delivering an effect akin to that which bewitched the Dionysiac revellers. However, in their philosophical dimensions Nietzsche s characterizations of these two gods are a response to the Schopenhauerian distinction between the world as will and as representation, and are seen as aestheticized forces of nature unmediated by the human subject. This lends a curious, quasi- ontological air to this dialectical pair of gods, and opens the door to understanding Nietzsche s response to the wider German philosophical tradition. In their psychological aspects, Nietzsche reads Apollo and Dionysos variously as states of consciousness (in creating as well as encountering their respective art forms), and also as psychological interactions of one with the other in the dialectical movement presented to us as the precursor to Attic tragedy. Lastly, in so far as the history and fate of Greek art has been determined by the Apolline and Dionysiac forces, the wider Greek cultural spirit can be seen to divide into Apolline and Dionysiac ages. To spell this situation out a little more is to see the fundamentality of Nietzsche s claims in The Birth of Tragedy and why he remained attached to the themes of this first book. In its philosophical aspect which is certainly the dominant aspect of the work The Birth of Tragedy attempts to understand how Greek culture functioned and, specifically, how Greek art was a response to the fundamental pessimism the Greeks so honestly opened themselves to and confronted. This pessimism received its philosophical articulation most acutely and much later with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, but, by Nietzsche s reckoning, the Greeks suffered the brutalities of life and knew this suffering intimately. 1 What we see in Nietzsche s philosophical interpretation of the history of Greek culture is that the two art patrons, Apollo and Dionysos, work against one another in a kind of natural dialectic, a struggle whereby each drive becomes more powerful and elevated each time it supersedes its opposite. This dialectic occurs until the advent of tragedy, where these two forces, articulated through an exquisite abundance of aesthetic drive, work in concert with one another, reconciling by combining the best elements of each to produce the tragic plays. The philosophical importance of these tragic 1. There is a paradigmatic difference between pessimism as separately articulated by the ancient Greeks and Schopenhauer, and for Nietzsche this is integral to the innovation of his philosophical thesis in The Birth of Tragedy. I cover this specific point in detail in Chapters

21 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy plays, though, does not lie in the mere fact of the two drives resolving in a dialectical synthesis. The importance of tragedy is understood by what it achieves for the suffering Greek. Rather than resign from life and perish, as is the temptation of the weaker individual in the face of pessimistic despair, the Greeks elevated the abhorrent side of the world and human nature in the figure of the Dionysiac tragic hero and his fall yet this Dionysiac fervour is supported by the splendid, calming and seductive Apolline imagery that presents to us this terrible truth of the world. Here Nietzsche believes history to have reached an unequivocal apex: for at this moment an entire culture had transfigured suffering and the looming threat of pessimism into a joyous affirmation of existence. With this moment, we have the leitmotif of The Birth of Tragedy, that only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified (BT, 33). For Nietzsche, what the Greeks had discovered at the height of their aesthetic powers was that existence is not to be resigned from or negated, but affirmed as it is in its suffering and beauty alike. Whereas the truth of the world was capable of destroying a man completely, the mode of the tragic play could reveal such a truth as a Dionysiac phenomenon but present it in the seductive, soothing language of Apolline art. This accomplishment is no mere historical phenomenon, or some archaic interpretation worth noting among the many ideas in the history of civilization: this is the greatest example of a culturally prosperous people, and one that bears urgent philosophical lessons to the present. Thence we have the second half of The Birth of Tragedy. The key to understanding how The Birth of Tragedy links with nineteenthcentury Europe for Nietzsche is to grant that contemporary culture is inherited from Socrates, who in turn was the great anti- tragedian, the great anti- aesthete, and the catalyst (along with Euripides) for the decline and death of tragedy. So to understand our contemporary culture we need to turn back to the tensions between Socrates and tragedy, and how the rise and dominance of the Socratic spelled the decline and dormancy of the aesthetic revaluation of existence that the Greeks perfected with tragedy. Socrates is an ambiguous character for Nietzsche s wider philosophy on many counts, but in The Birth of Tragedy his role is as the villain of our philosophical story. 2 At base Socrates represents a type not encountered before, a human with limited capacity for creativity and little receptivity to art and certainly not the Dionysiac. But since even a Socrates must put up some pretence in the face of the trials of suffering and the abyss of existence, 2. In Chapter 4 I discuss the ambiguity of Socrates in The Birth of Tragedy in more detail, including his contentious status as a villain. 4

22 the influences on the birth of tragedy Socrates wields reason in order to live. With Socrates we have the birth of scientific optimism. Science for Nietzsche, 3 synonymous with Socratism, is the notion that the depths of nature can be fathomed and that knowledge can heal all ills (BT, 82). This is simply incomprehensible to the Dionysiac Greek, whose natural world is understood as a miraculous manifestation of the gods, and whose ills are a yoke to be shouldered at the behest of divine will and mandate. Socrates, however, abets the decline of an aesthetic engagement with existence by promising that the rational understanding of the world can reveal a better way to live. Partly Socratism proposes that there are rational strategies for meeting the suffering of existence, such as morality and a scientific comprehension of the world; yet we also see that it is the very search for rational comprehension and the moral good that is a diversion away from the tragic truth of our existence. The revelation for modern culture, whose Socratism is evident in various Enlightenment projects ranging from natural science to philosophical endeavour itself, is that this scientific optimism is at bottom a flawed illusion. Admittedly, the tragic plays are also illusions (they are certainly not real, factual or historical), but since tragedy meets the absurdity of suffering directly it is and will always be the most honest the most authentic of illusions. Socratic optimism begins to erode with the Kantian epistemology, whereby (on Nietzsche s reading) the unknowability of the thing- in- itself destroys the notion that science can fathom the depths of nature. Science really collapses, however, with the Schopenhauerian expression of pessimism: the rational, metaphysical understanding that life is not worth living. With Schopenhauer the Socratic hermeneutic comes full circle and undermines itself, so that the ultimate value of science the optimistic enterprise of rational discovery for the betterment of life reaches its own fallacy and turns into a pure, pessimistic negation of existence. With this diagnosis of the relationship between modern culture and the recent pessimism of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche believed that Europe was destined to recognize that its Socratic foundations were erroneous and inauthentic. Therefore, faced once again with the bare truth about existence, humanity would find itself at the cusp of a new tragic existence, with freedoms and possibilities not dreamt of since the Greeks. A rebirth of trag- 3. Science is the translation for the German Wissenschaft, which has no directly corresponding word in English. Wissenschaft is not restricted to natural science (Natur wissenschaft in German), but has the broader meaning that science can have in the English language. In this sense, it is associated with the English word systematicity. 5

23 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy edy was imminent, by Nietzsche s judgement, and both he and its musical champion Richard Wagner were set to usher in this new age. This is where The Birth of Tragedy leaves us, at the watershed of two modes of existence and a future full of Dionysiac promise. Now, if you sense a certain naivety about the direction of the second half of The Birth of Tragedy (especially in the last few sections), then you are met with wide agreement. Nietzsche s first foray into philosophy has since often attracted the criticism (including from Nietzsche himself) that the second half of the book was a hasty Wagnerian postlude to an otherwise considered work 4 (with harsher critics adding that the first half is merely an epigraph to the Schopenhauerian philosophy). Fortunately, these sorts of judgements do not invalidate the text, and can instead help us to see genuine philosophical problems with The Birth of Tragedy and therefore a pathway into Nietzsche s mature philosophy of the 1880s. The Birth of Tragedy is not merely Wagnerian or Schopenhauerian, but the product of a precocious mind and youthful exuberance in the face of bold, new philosophical ideas. The thesis of the rebirth of tragedy, flawed though it may be, is nevertheless brilliant, if not telling. When speaking of the naivety of Nietzsche s thesis we should be reminded of his remarks in section 3 that the Greeks of the Homeric era were naive with regard to their Apolline victory over suffering with the articulation of the Olympian gods. This opens up an understanding that, in the context of Nietzsche s own philosophical development, The Birth of Tragedy was for him a certain overcoming within the context of his wider philosophy and that naive as it may be it nevertheless finds its value for its role in Nietzsche s philosophical becoming. The Birth of Tragedy was a remarkable beginning for Nietzsche because of the depth and scope of what he had revealed. As he says, it was with that work that he discovered and explored the new philosophical phenomenon of the Dionysiac, which would come to be the centrepiece of his mature philosophy. He also made other incredible advances: he posited creativity rather than reason as the essence of the subject, which led him to propose that metaphor is more truthful than truth; and he began his lifelong duel with Socrates. Most importantly, Nietzsche brought to life the meaning of philosophy when he undertook a critical appraisal of existence and culture in order to challenge his own existing ideals and values and by his example he challenges the same of his readers. To a great degree this was a reinvention of the path of critical philosophy, giving precedent for Nietzsche s own later work as much as twentieth- century philosophy at large. 4. See, for instance, Kaufmann s comments in a footnote to his translation of The Birth of Tragedy: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (trans. and ed.) (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 98 9, n

24 the influences on the birth of tragedy In order to better understand this enigmatic work, we are entitled to ask the question How did this beginning remarkable beyond all measure begin? How was it that this young scholar and lecturer came to write The Birth of Tragedy? The story of Nietzsche s early years reveals an amazing intersection of personality, intelligence, opportunity, academic cultivation and friendship. Importantly, it allows us to take stock of the influences philosophical, literary and historical that coalesced into this tract on the philosophical history of the Greeks. The Birth of Tragedy draws on a number of philosophies, but with novel and at times idiosyncratic interpretations of those philosophies; it harks back to Greek mythology but treats the Greek understanding of the deities in ways hitherto unseen in philology; and it fuses his sensitivity for the misdirection of modernity with a fresh interpretation of the ancients. Nietzsche s Bildung: from Schulpforta to Leipzig When exploring the biographical influences that had a bearing upon its creation, an important thing to appreciate about The Birth of Tragedy is that it is not a standalone work. It speaks to us from a confluence of historical, literary, personal and philosophical forces that for Nietzsche crystallized during the few years leading up to The Birth of Tragedy is predominantly a philosophical text, meaning that we need to pay homage to the greats whom Nietzsche read so closely in his transition from philology to philosophy: giants like Kant and Schopenhauer, Socrates and Plato, and the Presocratic philosophers. We need to understand that Nietzsche is responding to these philosophers, and that he is entering into a dialogue with the history of philosophy. As a historical account of the birth and decline of Greek tragedy, we need to read Nietzsche with an awareness of his own exposure to Greek antiquity: that as a philologist his fluency in ancient Greek was legendary among his contemporaries, that his knowledge of the Greek tragic plays was intimate, and that the works of the Greek poets from Homer to Pindar were always at his fingertips. And in so far as the text was written by Nietzsche, we understand it to have arisen out of some electric relationships, both academic and personal, ranging from the cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt to the monumental and controversial composer Richard Wagner. The larger components that play out in The Birth of Tragedy, namely music, history, tragedy and philosophy, developed for Nietzsche throughout his adolescence and into early adulthood. Nietzsche s Bildung his cultural education, development and formation, to use a German term began with his birth in 1844 into a family of proud Christian heritage, then blossomed with his formal, classical education at Schulpforta, and matured with his university days under the guidance of leading academics in the humanities. 7

25 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy Less formally, but more forcefully, the two great influences on Nietzsche in the years immediately preceding The Birth of Tragedy include his chance discovery of Schopenhauer s philosophy in a second- hand bookshop and his friendship with Wagner. By the time Nietzsche assumed the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel at the astonishing age of twenty- four (he completed The Birth of Tragedy when he was twenty- six), he had developed into a fine gentleman as much as a fine intellectual. The most revealing account of Nietzsche in these regards comes to us from the reference written by his Leipzig University professor, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, recommending him for a university post. Its tone as much as its content tells us that an encounter with Nietzsche was both a privilege and a delight, and so the picture we have of Nietzsche as a young academic is one in which the established elders of the humanities felt as graced by his company as his peers: However many young talents I have seen develop under my eyes for thirty- nine years now, never yet have I known a young man, or tried to help one along in my field as best I could, who was so mature as early and as young as this Nietzsche If God grant he lives long enough, I prophesy that he will one day stand in the front rank of German philology. He is now twenty- four years old: strong, vigorous, healthy, courageous physically and morally, so constituted as to impress those of a similar nature. On top of that, he possesses the enviable gift of presenting ideas, talking freely, as calmly as he speaks skillfully and clearly. He is the idol and, without wishing it, the leader of the whole younger generation of philologists here in Leipzig who and they are rather numerous cannot wait to hear him as a lecturer. You will say, I describe a phenomenon. Well, that is just what he is and at the same time pleasant and modest. Also a gifted musician, which is irrelevant here What more am I to say? His studies so far have been weighted toward the history of Greek literature (of course, including critical and exegetical treatment of the authors), with special emphasis, it seems to me, on the history of Greek philosophy. But I have not the least doubt that, if confronted by a practical demand, with his great gifts he will work in other fields with the best of success. He will simply be able to do anything he wants to do Quoted in Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (ed. and trans.) (New York: Penguin, 1976),

26 the influences on the birth of tragedy Such highly attuned and effortless scholars as Nietzsche give the appearance of some miraculous rise, but, of course, behind that ease were years of hard work and perseverance. Peering into his past we see the steady growth of this philosophical and philological prodigy whose modest mien belied a voracious appetite for art, poetry, music, antiquity, history and scholarly discussion. This appetite was fed by intelligent peers, excellent (if regimented) schooling, and friendships with future pre- eminent academics of Germany. The personality of Nietzsche in his early twenties could be said to have been shaped by any number of influences, but arguably the greatest influence affecting his development and academic attitude was his schooling at the prestigious Schulpforta, which he attended from the age of fourteen, in 1858, until It was the disciplined life at Pforta, which at times for Nietzsche made for a crushing schedule, that produced the scholarly discipline and attention to detail that propelled him to his early intellectual stardom. The school s emphasis was squarely on the humanities, music and languages, and it was here that Nietzsche began to master ancient Greek (and Latin, for that matter). His work in other areas of school life, though, was less than desirable. In fact, while he excelled in the sorts of areas pertinent to The Birth of Tragedy, his mathematical work was dismal to the point of failure. As the anecdote goes, his teachers had to debate whether or not he should graduate given his poor maths results, until one teacher passionately remarked, but, meine Herren, are we really going to fail the best pupil Pforta has ever had?! 6 Given that Pforta had also schooled diverse German luminaries such as the dramatist Klopstock, the philosopher Fichte and the mathematician Möbius, the comment certainly has force to it. When Nietzsche graduated, he moved on to the University of Bonn, where by his own opinion he squandered a few months before following the philologist Ritschl to the University of Leipzig. The opinion that his time there was idle is probably true for a student coming from the strict Schulpforta, and for Nietzsche, university life was not what it promised. He desired a more fruitful and engaged study of the Greeks. He imagined that his colleagues would be as dedicated as he and his Pforta friends were to the discipline of philology. This is not, of course, what Nietzsche found. He dabbled in drinking, and there are various and conflicting accounts of his visiting a brothel. As the sharp insights of R. J. Hollingdale have it, his disappointment there most likely fits the profile of a young man who attempted to deny that he was a lone wolf to the very degree that he recognized it and for that reason lying down with the lambs made for a somewhat awkward 6. R. J. Hollingdale, Chronology of Nietzsche s Life, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), xxi. 9

27 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy dissonance. The exception to all of this was his continuing friendship with fellow Schulpforta alumnus Paul Deussen, which encompassed both the intellectual and light- hearted moments of their student days. Nietzsche s estimation that his time at Bonn was a waste is probably outwardly true. But what he did accomplish he did so in a negative sense. That is, he abandoned theology, having for some time lost his faith in Christianity (but the act is greater than the thought); and, along with a number of other dedicated students, he left Bonn and followed his teacher Ritschl to Leipzig and thus began a more focussed attempt to specialize in the philology and philosophy of Greek antiquity. By this time in his life the young Nietzsche was consolidating his energies and lifestyle towards becoming a master of his field. So it was at Leipzig, when Nietzsche was in his early twenties, that his mature studies came to completion, and it was under Ritschl that his talents began to shine. Ritschl s fame was growing and, being the exacting sort of individual and scholar that he was, he held only a few friends and still fewer students close to his heart. Nietzsche was one such student to whom Ritschl entrusted his faith. This was no accident or happy coincidence of personalities (although the two got on extremely well), as it was after Ritschl heard Nietzsche s paper on the Greek poet Theognis of Megara that his esteem for the gifted student heightened. Ritschl immediately suggested that the lecture ought to be published, and this became a reality in Following that success, Nietzsche in subsequent years published on Diogenes Laertius, based on an award- winning essay he had written in What Ritschl appreciated was the breadth and specificity of Nietzsche s knowledge of philology. Ritschl s own view of the discipline affected Nietzsche s approach, where an understanding of history was sought not merely by understanding how people lived and what happened; instead, philology was better suited to seeking an understanding of the language and how it was employed, and what the various art forms reveal to us about the life and culture of the times in question. In this regard Nietzsche and Ritschl shared a methodological kinship, although through the influence of Burckhardt and others (to be recounted in a moment) Nietzsche pushed this approach to an extreme and proponents of the more traditional approaches to philology and history would tear him down for it. At the philological society where Nietzsche delivered his paper on the Theognidea, he met and befriended a contemporary scholar, Erwin Rohde (whose philological study was also fondly overseen by Ritschl). Rohde and Nietzsche had a tight friendship, full of collegiality, shared confidences, reciprocated respect and most importantly a love of Wagner s music. Rohde was possibly Nietzsche s most ardent supporter (along with Wagner) in the early days of The Birth of Tragedy, although the two later grew apart academically. Rohde was Nietzsche s intellectual peer during their time at Leipzig, 10

28 the influences on the birth of tragedy and he too went on to assume a professorial chair, at the University of Kiel, also at an impressively early age, twenty- seven. The focus and attention that Nietzsche applied to philology allowed him to remain somewhat oblivious to his amazing success and just how radical his various theses about the Greeks were, resulting in a certain eccentric aloofness about academia (he almost considered turning down the post at Basel in order to study science); in contrast, the young Rohde was more grounded, and went on at Kiel to undertake more conventional, but hardly mundane, philological research into ancient Greek religious practices. Among the pillars of Rohde and Nietzsche s friendship were a mutual love of Wagner s music and the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and it happens that these are the two chief influences outside Nietzsche s formal education that contribute to the themes of The Birth of Tragedy. It is the influence of Schopenhauer (and, by default, Kant) that marked the crux of Nietzsche s development in his early years, and Schopenhauer s philosophy is somewhat of a precondition for understanding The Birth of Tragedy in its intellectual context, as well as its influence being the subject of contemporary scholarly debate. For these reasons it is appropriate to pause and turn to a brief account of the Schopenhauerian philosophy, in order to read The Birth of Tragedy with a better knowledge of the mindset that wrote it. The Schopenhauerian encounter At age twenty- one it was Nietzsche s chance venture into a second- hand bookstore that altered the course of his philosophical development most markedly: it was here that he discovered a copy of Schopenhauer s magnum opus, the two- volume work entitled The World as Will and Representation. Nietzsche realized the affinity he had with the work after reading a number of pages, whereupon he promptly bought it and went home to devote his entire energies to its content. The work had such an effect on Nietzsche as to turn him into an instant devotee of the Schopenhauerian philosophy. Schopenhauer lived two generations prior to Nietzsche, and died when Nietzsche was almost sixteen. Like Nietzsche he developed his philosophy in his mid- twenties, and published The World as Will and Representation, remembered mostly for its pessimistic outlook, in 1818 at the age of thirty. 7 Reflecting on Schopenhauer s physical appearance, Christopher Janaway 7. The work appeared in December 1818, though the edition itself is dated 1819 by the publisher, given the proximity of the release date to the New Year (a custom among publishers at the time). 11

29 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy aptly describes him as unconventional and grimly determined, but the sparkle in his eye is that of someone vigilant, incisive, and capable of mischief not altogether different from the persona which emerges from his writings. 8 With this impression, let us delve a little more into who Schopenhauer was and why his philosophy seemed such an astounding feat of intellect and insight to the young Nietzsche. For both in a positive and negative sense, and both in his early writings and late philosophy, Schopenhauer remained for Nietzsche a force to be reckoned with. Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788, the same year as Kant published the Critique of Practical Reason and was reaching the heights of his career. His early formal education took place in Germany, England and France, locations that were largely determined by his father s prosperous shipping business, and his schooling, like Nietzsche s, was both strict and excellent. His father, Heinrich Schopenhauer, groomed him to assume the reigns of the family business even naming him Arthur for its identical spelling in German, English and French although his education, where he excelled both in the humanities and sciences, had fuelled Schopenhauer s intellectual imagination, and he was destined to seek further study. Heinrich Schopenhauer committed suicide in 1805, when the young Schopenhauer was in his late teens, leaving enough wealth to his mother, sister and him so that their long- term finances were secured. This was an emotionally intense period in Schopenhauer s life. His father s death affected Schopenhauer and his younger sister, Adele, deeply. He tried his hand at the family business, in part from a pledge to his late father, but could summon no lasting enthusiasm. His mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, was now free from the bonds of her lacklustre marriage and in control of the family estate. To her son s dismay she soon moved to Weimar, established a literary circle, and appeared to be frittering away the family wealth when the young Schopenhauer and his sister were still several years away from being awarded their percentages of whatever then remained. In 1809 Schopenhauer gained his financial independence and promptly enrolled in medicine at the University of Göttingen. However, it was not long before his full attention turned to philosophy. Famously, he was instructed by the philosopher G. E. Schulze to confine his studies to Kant and Plato, and his resultant philosophical work came to embody key tenets of both these thinkers. In the early nineteenth century, though, Berlin was the epicentre of philosophy, and Schopenhauer moved there to hear lecturers such as Fichte and Schleiermacher, both of whom, in his philosophical obstinacy, he denounced as frauds. As Napoleon approached Berlin, Schopenhauer 8. Christopher Janaway, Schopenhauer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 1. 12

30 the influences on the birth of tragedy took refuge back in Weimar, where he completed his doctoral thesis, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and was awarded the degree in absentia in 1813 by the University of Jena. Schopenhauer s gift for clear thinking was already apparent in his doctoral thesis, and his more elaborate philosophy is a linear expansion of the epistemological principles in this early work. Among the young Schopenhauer s minuscule readership was none other than the great Goethe, who upon reading the work described him as a genius to his mother to which she replied that this was not possible: there could only ever be one genius in a family, namely, herself. Goethe, suitably impressed with Schopenhauer, collaborated with him on the study of colour, resulting in Schopenhauer publishing On Vision and Colours in Goethe supervised Schopenhauer s work but ultimately presented a competing thesis on the topic. The two had an amicable and enriching relationship, but at the time when Schopenhauer presented Goethe with a copy of The World as Will and Representation in 1819 the two parted company. Like Nietzsche s philosophy, Schopenhauer s work fell largely on deaf ears until his twilight years. It has unfortunately earned its reputation as a gloomy and questionable philosophy of pessimism, sometimes regarded as more revealing of its author s personal anxieties than any love of wisdom. These sorts of appraisals stem from poor or incomplete readings of his philosophy, 9 though, as Schopenhauer s intention was indeed manifestly the opposite: he declared that a good understanding of his philosophy would result in a lasting peace and consolation. His philosophy was inspiration not only to Nietzsche but to figures as diverse as Wagner, Wittgenstein, Mahler, Einstein and Schrödinger. At the very beginning of The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer tantalizes our intellectual appetite by communicating that his philosophy is in essence a single thought (WWR I, xii). Setting aside the initial irony of the weighty tome in hand, we are directed to understand that what Schopenhauer is aiming to accomplish with his masterwork is to persuade us, via a metaphysical framework, to adopt a certain attitude towards ourselves, the world and our existence. So Schopenhauer s thought has two parts: first, a metaphysical position, which is developed from Kant s transcendental idealism, and second, a philosophy of pessimism and redemption (through his ethics and aesthetics), which Schopenhauer argues is bound to this metaphysic. It is fair to say that, from the evidence in both 9. The reading I develop here is also incomplete, simply for matters of expediency. Along with his study of Kant and Plato, Schopenhauer devoted a great deal of time to studying Eastern thought ranging from Sufism to various schools of Indian philosophy and Buddhism. This exerted a large influence on his work. 13

31 nietzsche and the birth of tragedy his notebooks and published writings, the early Nietzsche of The Birth of Tragedy was deeply attracted to although certainly not uncritical of both of these aspects. Approaching Schopenhauer from the metaphysical aspect we see that his starting point is the assertion that the world and our own existence present themselves to us necessarily as a riddle (WWR I, 427). What Schopenhauer means when he says this, is that the world is an inherent unknown, and in contending this he is honing in on the most prominent feature of the Kantian philosophy: the idea that, given human subjectivity itself, the world as it appears to us versus as it is in itself are to be distinguished epistemologically. Kant s philosophy, from the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) onwards, held that the experience of empirical objects in the world was mediated by the subject. The consequence of this is that the world can never be experienced as it is in itself: the subject stands between the object in reality and the object as it is perceived. We need to note here that there are not two objects, one of the real world, and one that is perceived whereby we would then have to provide some account of causality between the two but one object we perceive in a particular way and that we also must concede is known only from our limited standpoint. So, beyond our spatiotemporal cognition is the world as it is in itself; we can only ever know, by the definition of what it is to be a human subject, the world of appearances, the world as my subjectivity represents it to myself. We cannot know the things as they are in themselves, only our transcendental cognitive framework and the representations it makes possible. So when Schopenhauer states that the world is my representation (WWR I, 3), he is preparing to summon to us the core of Kant s position. 10 He elaborates: This is a truth valid with reference to every living and knowing being, although man alone can bring it into reflective, abstract consciousness. If he really does so, philosophical discernment has dawned on him. It then becomes clear and certain to him that he does not know a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world around him is there only as representation. (WWR I, 3) 10. While Schopenhauer indeed draws on Kant s position, his epistemology and ontology differ markedly. This is seen in the Appendix to volume 1 of The World as Will and Representation, entitled Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy. There Schopenhauer addresses several weaknesses of Kant s account and demonstrates how his own insights can accommodate the Kantian core and avoid the pitfalls of the extended rationalism of transcendental idealism. 14