 Chapter 5 of the Birth of Tragedy by Fredrich Nietzsche, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. We now approach the real purpose of our investigation, which aims at acquiring a knowledge of the Dionysus Apollonian genius and his artwork, or at least an anticipatory understanding of the mystery of the aforesaid union. Here we shall ask first of all where that new germ, which subsequently developed into tragedy and dramatic dithiram, first makes itself perceptible in the Hellenic world. The ancients themselves supply the answer in symbolic form when they place Homer and Archelechus as the forefathers and torchbearers of Greek poetry side by side on gems, sculptures, etc., in their sure conviction that only these two thoroughly original comperes from whom a stream of fire flows over the whole of Greek posterity should be taken into consideration. Homer the aged dreamer, sunk in himself the type of the Apollonian naive artist, beholds now with astonishment the impassioned genius of the warlike votary of the muses Archelechus, violently tossed to and fro on the billows of existence, and modern aesthetics could only add by way of interpretation, but here the objective artist is confronted by the first subjective artist. But this interpretation is of little service to us because we know the subjective artist only as the poor artist, and in every type and elevation of art we demand especially and first of all the conquest of the subjective, the redemption from the ego, and the cessation of every individual will and desire. Maybe we find it impossible to believe in any truly artistic production, however insignificant, without objectivity, without pure, interested-less contemplation, hence our aesthetics must first solve the problem as to how the lyricist is possible as an artist, he who according to the experience of all ages continually says, I, and sings off to us the entire chromatic scale of his passions and desires. This very Archelechus appalls us alongside of Homer by his cries of hatred and scorn by the drunken outbursts of his desire, he is not just he then who has been called the first subjective artist, the non-artist proper, but whence then the reverence which was shown to him, the poet, in very remarkable utterances by the Delphic oracle itself, the focus of objective art, Schiller has enlightened us concerning his poetic procedure by a psychological observation inexplicable to himself yet not apparently open to any objection, he acknowledges that as the preparatory state to the act of poetizing, he had not perhaps before him or within him a series of pictures with coordinate causalities of thoughts, but rather a musical mood. The perception with me is at first without a clear and definite opti, this forms itself later, a certain musical mood of mine precedes and only after this does the poetical idea follow with me, add to this the most important phenomenon of all ancient lyric poetry, the union regarded everywhere as natural of the lyricist with the musician their very identity indeed, compared with which our modern lyric poetry is like the statue of a god without a head, and we may now on the basis of our metaphysics of aesthetics set forth above interpret the lyricist to ourselves as follows, as Dionysian artist he is in the first place become altogether one with the primordial unity, his pain and contradiction, and he produces the copy of this primordial unity as music granting that music has been correctly termed a repetition and a rebast of the world, but now under the Apollonian dream inspiration this music again becomes visible to him as in a symbolic dream picture, the formless and intangible reflection of the primordial pain in music with its redemption in appearance, then generates a second mirroring as a concrete symbol or example, the artist has already surrendered his subjectivity in the Dionysian process, the picture which now shows to him his oneness with the heart of the world is a dream scene which embodies the primordial contradiction and primordial pain together with the primordial joy of appearance, the eye of the lyricist sounds therefore from the abyss of being its subjectivity in the sense of the modern aesthetics is a fiction, when Archelicus the first lyricist of the Greeks makes known both his mad love and his contempt to the daughters of Cambys, it is not his passion which dances before us in orgiastic frenzy, we see Dionysus and the menace, we see the drunken reveler Archelicus sunk down to sleep as Euripides depicts it in the backy, the sleep on the high alpine pasture in the noonday sun, and now Apollo approaches and touches him with the loyal, the Dionysus musical enchantment of the sleeper now emits as it were picture sparks, lyrical poems which in their highest development are called tragedies and dramatic dithirams, the plastic artist as also the epic poet who is related to him is sunk in the pure contemplation of pictures, the Dionysian musician is without any picture himself just primordial pain and their primordial re-echoing thereof, the lyric genius is conscious of a world of pictures and symbols growing out of the state of mystical self abnegation and oneness which has a coloring causality and velocity quite different from that of the world of the plastic artist and epic poet. While the latter lives in these pictures and only in them with joyful satisfaction and never grows tired of contemplating them with love, even in their minutest characters while even the picture of the angry Achilles is to him but a picture, the angry expression of which he enjoys with the dream joy in appearance so that by this mirror of appearance he is guarded against being unified and blending with his figures, the pictures of the lyrist on the other hand are nothing but his very self and as it were only different projections of himself on account of which he as the moving center of this world is entitled to say I only of course this self is not the same as that of the waking empirically real man but the only barely existent and eternal self resting at the basis of things by means of the images where of the lyric genius sees through even to this basis of things. Now let us suppose that he beholds himself also among these images as non-genius that is his subject the whole throng of subjective passions and impulses of the will directed to a definite object which appears real to him if now it seems as if the lyric genius and the allied non-genius were one and as if the former spoke that little word I of his own accord this appearance will no longer be able to lead us astray as it certainly led those astray who designated the lyrist as the subjective poet in truth archaellicus the passionately inflamed loving and hating man is but a vision of the genius who by this time is no longer archaellicus but a genius of the world who expresses his primordial pain symbolically in the figure of the man archaellicus while the subjectively willing and desiring man archaellicus can never at any time be a poet it is by no means necessary however that the lyrist should see nothing but the phenomenon of the man archaellicus before him as a reflection of eternal being and tragedy shows how far the visionary world of the lyrist may depart from this phenomenon to which of course it is most intimately related. Schopenhauer who did not shut his eyes to the difficulty presented by the lyrist in the philosophical contemplation of art thought he had found a way out of it on which however I cannot accompany him while he alone in his profound metaphysics of music held in his hands the means whereby this difficulty could be definitely removed as I believe I have removed it here in his spirit and to his honor. In contrast to our view he describes the peculiar nature of song as follows. It is the subject of the will that is his own volition which fills the consciousness of the singer often as an unbound and satisfied desire joy but still more often as a restricted desire grief always as an emotion a passion or an agitated frame of mind besides this however and along with it by the sight of surrounding nature the singer becomes conscious of himself as the subject of pure willless knowing the unbroken blissful piece of which now appears in contrast to the stress of desire which is always restricted and always needy the feeling of this contrast this alternation is really what the song as a whole expresses and what principally constitutes the lyrical state of mind in it pure knowing comes to us as a word to deliver us from desire and the stress thereof we follow but only for an instant for desire the remembrance of our personal ends tears us anew from peaceful contemplation yet ever again the next beautiful surrounding in which the pure willless knowledge presents itself to us allures us away from desire therefore in song and in that lyrical mood desire the personal interest of the ends and the pure perception of the surrounding which presents itself are wonderfully mingled with each other connections between them are sought for and imagined the subjective disposition the affection of the will imparts its own hue to the contemplated surrounding and conversely the surroundings communicate the reflex of their color to the world the true song is the expression of a whole of this mingled and divided state of mind who could fail to see in this description that lyric poetry is here characterized as an imperfectly attained art which seldom and only as it were in leaps arrives at its goal indeed as a semi art the essence of which is said to consist in this that desire and pure contemplation that is the unesthetic and the aesthetic condition are wonderfully mingled with each other we maintain rather that this entire antithesis according to which as according to some standard of value chauvin howard two still classifies the arts the antithesis between the subjective and the objective is quite out of place in aesthetics in as much as the subject that is the desiring individual who furthers his own egoistic ends can be conceived only as the adversary not as the origin of art insofar as the subject is the artist however he has already been released from his individual will and has become as it were the medium through which the one barely existent subject celebrates his redemption in appearance for this one thing must above all be clear to us to our humiliation and exaltation that the entire comedy of art is not at all performed say for our betterment and culture and that we are just as little the true authors of this art world rather we may assume with regard to ourselves that its true author uses us as pictures and artistic projections and that we have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art but only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified well of course our consciousness of this our specific significance hardly differs from the kind of consciousness which the soldiers painted on canvas have of the battle represented there on hence all our knowledge of art is at bottom quite illusory because as knowing persons we are not one and identical with the being who as the so often spectator of this comedy of art prepares a perpetual entertainment for himself only in so far as the genius in the act of artistic production coalesces with this primordial artist of the world does he get a glimpse of the eternal essence of art for in this state he is in a marvelous manner like the weird picture of the fairy tale which can it will turn its eyes and behold itself he is now at once subject and object at once poet actor and spectator end of chapter five chapter six of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this Lieberbach's recording is in the public domain chapter six with reference to archelicus it has been established by critical research that he introduced the folk song into literature and on account thereof deserved according to the general estimate of the greeks his unique position alongside of Homer but what is this popular folk song in contrast to the holy apollonian epos what else but the perpetual west digium of a union of the apollonian and the Dionysian its enormous diffusion among all people still further enhanced by ever new birds testifies to the power of this artistic double impulse of nature which leaves its vestiges in the popular song in like manner as the orgiastic movements of a people perpetuate themselves and its music indeed one might also furnish historical proofs that every period which is highly productive in popular songs has been most violently stirred by Dionysian currents which we must always regard as the substratum and prerequisite of the popular song first of all however we regard the popular song as the musical mirror of the world as the original melody which now seeks for itself a parallel dream phenomenon and expresses it in poetry melody is therefore primary and universal and as such may admit of several objectivations in several texts likewise in the naive estimation of the people it is regarded as by far the more important and necessary melody generates the poem out of itself by an ever recurring process the strophic form of the popular song points to the same phenomenon which i always beheld with astonishment till at last i found this explanation anyone who in accordance with this theory examines the collection of popular songs such as des nabin vunder horn will find innumerable instances of the perpetually productive melody scattering picture sparks all around which in their very agatian their abrupt change their mad precipitants manifest a power quite unknown to the epic appearance and its steady flow from the point of view of the epos this unequal and irregular pictorial world of lyric poetry must be simply condemned and the solemn epic rhapsodists of the apollonian festivals in the age of terpander have certainly done so accordingly we observe that in the poetizing of the popular song language is strained to its utmost to imitate music and hence a new world of poetry begins with archelicus which is fundamentally opposed to the Homeric and in saying this we have pointed out the only possible relation between poetry and music between word and tone the word the picture the concept here seeks an expression analogous to music and now experiences in itself the power of music in this sense we may discriminate between two main currents in the history of the language of the greek people according as their language imitated either the world of phenomena and of pictures or the world of music one has only to reflect seriously on the linguistic difference with regard to color syntactical structure and vocabulary in Homer and Pindar in order to comprehend the significance of this contrast indeed it becomes palpably clear to us that in the period between Homer and Pindar the orgiastic flute tones of Olympus must have sounded forth which in an age as late as Aristotle's when music was infinitely more developed transported people to drunken enthusiasm and which when their influence was first felt undoubtedly incited all the poetic means of expression of contemporaneous man to imitation I hear call attention to a familiar phenomenon of our own times against which our aesthetics raised as many objections we again and again have occasion to observe how a symphony of Beethoven compels the individual hearers to use figurative speech though the appearance presented by a collocation of the different pictorial world generated by a piece of music may be never so fantastically diversified and even contradictory to practice its small wit on such compositions and to overlook a phenomenon which is certainly worth explaining is quite in keeping with this aesthetics indeed even if the tone poet has spoken in pictures concerning a composition when for instance he designates a certain symphony as the pastoral symphony or a passage therein as those seen by the brook or another as the merry gathering of rustics these are likewise only symbolical representations born out of music and not perhaps the imitated objects of music representations which can give us no information whatever concerning the Dionysian content of music and which in fact have no distinctive value of their own alongside of other pictorial expressions this process of a discharge of music in pictures we have now to transfer to some youthful linguistically productive people to get a notion as to how the strophic popular song originates now the entire faculty of speech is stimulated by this new principle of imitation of music if therefore we may regard lyric poetry as the a fall duration of music in pictures and concepts we can now ask how does music appear in the mirror of symbolism and conception it appears as will taking the word in the Schopenhauer e.m. sense that is as the antithesis of the aesthetic purely contemplative and passive frame of mind here however we must discriminate as sharply as possible between the concept of the sensuality and the concept of phenomenality for music according to its essence cannot be will because as such it would have to be wholly banished from the domain of art for the will is the unesthetic in itself yet it appears as will for in order to express the phenomenon of music in pictures the lyricist requires all the stirrings of passion from the whispering of infant desire to the roaring of madness under the impulse to speak of music and apollonian symbols he conceives of all nature and himself therein only as the eternally willing desiring longing existence but in so far as he interprets music by means of pictures he himself rests in the quiet calm of apollonian contemplation however much all around him which he beholds through the medium of music is in a state of confused and violent motion indeed when he beholds himself through this same medium his own image appears to him in a state of unsatisfied feeling his own willing longing moaning and rejoicing are to him symbols by which he interprets music such as the phenomenon of the lyricist as apollonian genius he interprets music through the image of the will while he himself completely released from the avidity of the will is the pure undimmed eye of day our whole disquisition insists on this the lyric poetry is dependent on the spirit of music just as music itself in its absolute sovereignty does not require the picture and the concept but only endures them as accompaniments the poems of the lyricist can express nothing which has not already been contained in the vast universality and absoluteness of the music which compelled him to use figurative speech by no means is it possible for language adequately to render the cosmic symbolism of music for the very reason that music stands in symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial pain in the heart of the primordial unity and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is above all appearance and before all phenomena rather should we say that all phenomena compared with it are but symbols hence language as the organ and symbol of phenomena cannot at all disclose the innermost essence of music language can only be in superficial contact with music when it attempts to imitate music while the profoundest significance of the latter cannot be brought one step nearer to us by all the eloquence of lyric poetry end of chapter six chapter seven of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter seven we shall now have to avail ourselves of all the principles of art hither to consider in order to find our way through the labyrinth as we must designate the origin of greek tragedy i shall not be charged with absurdity in saying that the problem of this origin has as yet not even been seriously stated not to say solved however often the fluttering tatters of ancient tradition have been sewed together in sundry combinations and torn asunder again this tradition tells us in the most unequivocal terms that tragedy sprang from the tragic chorus and was originally only chorus and nothing but chorus and hence we feel it our duty to look into the heart of this tragic chorus as being the real proto drama without in the least contending ourselves with current art phraseology according to which the chorus is the ideal spectator or represents the people in contrast to the regal side of the scene the latter explanatory notion which sounds sublime to many a politician that the immutable moral law was embodied by the democratic ethanians in the popular chorus which always carries its point over the passionate excesses and extravagances of kings may be ever so forcibly suggested by an observation of Aristotle still it has no bearing on the original formation of tragedy in as much as the entire antithesis of king and people and in general the whole political social sphere is excluded from the purely religious beginnings of tragedy but considering the well-known classical form of the chorus in easkolas and self-release we should even deem it blasphemy to speak here of the anticipation of a constitutional representation of the people from which blasphemy others have not shrunk however the ancient governments knew of no constitutional representation of the people in proxy and it is to be hoped that they did not even so much as anticipated in tragedy much more celebrated than this political explanation of the course is the notion of aw schlegel who advises us to regard the course in a manner as the essence and extract of the crowd of spectators as the ideal spectator this view when compared with the historical tradition that tragedy was originally only course reveals itself in its true character as a crude unscientific yet brilliant assertion which however has acquired its brilliancy only through its concentrated form of expression through the truly dramatic bias in favor of whatever is called ideal and through our momentary astonishment for we are indeed astonished the moment we compare our well-known theatrical public with this course and ask ourselves if it could ever be possible to idealize something analogous to the Greek course out of such a public we tacitly deny this and now wonder as much at the boldness of slagals assertion as at the totally different nature of the Greek public for hitherto we always believe that the true spectator be he who he may that always to remain conscious of having before him a work of art and not an empiric reality whereas the tragic course of the Greeks is compelled to recognize real beings and the figures of the stage the course of the oceanities really believes that it sees before the art the titan prometheus and considers itself as real as the god of the scene and are we to own that he is the highest and purest type of a spectator who like the oceanities regards prometheus as real and present in body and is it characteristic of the ideal spectator that he should run on the stage and free the god from his dormants we had believed in an aesthetic public and consider the individual spectator the better qualified the more he was capable of viewing a work of art as art that is aesthetically but now the slagallion expression has intimated to us that the perfect ideal spectator does not at all suffer the world of the scenes to act aesthetically on him but corporeo empirically oh these Greeks we have side they will upset our aesthetics but once accustomed to it we have reiterated the saying of slagal as often as the subject of the course has been broached but the tradition which is so explicit here speaks against slagal the course as such without the stage the primitive form of tragedy and the course of ideal spectators do not harmonize what kind of art would that be which was extracted from the concept of the spectator and wherever we are to regard the spectator as such as the true form the spectator without the play is something absurd we fear that the birth of tragedy can be explained neither by the high esteem for the moral intelligence of the multitude nor by the concept of the spectator without the play and we regard the problem as too deep to be even so much as touched by such superficial modes of contemplation and infinitely more valuable insight into the signification of the course had already been displayed by Schiller in the celebrated preface to his bride of messina where he regarded the course as a living wall which tragedy draws round herself to guard her from contact with the world of reality and to preserve her ideal domain and political freedom it is with this his chief weapon that Schiller combats the ordinary conception of the natural the illusion ordinarily required in dramatic poetry he contends that while indeed the day on that stage is merely artificial the architecture only symbolical and the meftical dialogue purely ideal and character nevertheless an erroneous view still prevails in the main that it is not enough to tolerate merely as a political license that which is in reality the essence of all poetry the introduction of the course is he says the decisive step by which war is declared openly and honestly against all naturalism and art it is me thanks for disparaging this mode of contemplation that our would be superior age has coined the disdainful catchword pseudo idealism i fear however that we on the other hand with our present worship of the natural and the real have landed at the nadir of all idealism namely in the region of cabinets of wax figures an art indeed exists also here as in certain novels much in vogue at present but let no one pester us with the claim that by this art the schiller curtean pseudo idealism has been vanquished it is indeed an ideal domain as schiller rightly perceived upon which the greek satiric course the course of primitive tragedy was want to walk a domain raised far above the actual path of mortals the greek frame for this course the suspended scaffolding about fictitious natural state and place their own fictitious natural beings it is on this foundation that tragedy grew up and so it could of course dispense from the very first without painful portrayal of reality yet it is not an arbitrary world placed by fancy betwixt heaven and earth rather is it a world possessing the same reality and trustworthiness that olympus with his dwellers possessed for the believing haleem the satir as being the downesey and chorus lives in a religiously acknowledged reality under the sanction of a myth and cult that tragedy begins with him that the downesey and wisdom of tragedy speaks through him is just a surprising a phenomenon to us as in general the derivation of tragedy from the chorus perhaps we shall get a starting point for our inquiry if i put forward the proposition that the satir the fictitious natural being is to the man of culture what downesey and music is to civilization concerning this letter rickard vagner says that it is neutralized by music even as lamp light by daylight in like manner i believe the greek man of culture felt himself neutralized in the presence of the satiric chorus and this is the most immediate effect of the downesey and tragedy that the state and society and in general the gaps between man and man give way to an overwhelming feeling of oneness which leads back to the heart of nature the metaphysical comfort with which as i have here intimated every true tragedy dismisses us that in spite of the perpetual change of phenomena life at bottom is indestructibly powerful and pleasurable this comfort appears with corporeal lucidity as the satiric chorus as the chorus of natural beings who live in irradicable as it were behind all civilization and who in spite of the ceaseless change of generations and the history of nations remain forever the same with this chorus the deep-minded helene who is so singularly qualified for the most delicate and severe suffering consoles himself he who has glanced with piercing eye into the very heart of the terrible destructive processes of so-called universal history as also into the cruelty of nature and is in danger of longing for a budistic negation of the will art saves him and through art life saves him for herself where we must know that in that rapture of the Dionysian state with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence there is a lethargic element where in all personal experiences of the past are submerged it is by this gulf of oblivion that the everyday world and the world of Dionysian reality are separated from each other but as soon as this everyday reality rises again in consciousness it is felt as such and nauseates us an aesthetic will a paralyzing mood is the fruit of these states in this sense the Dionysian man may be said to resemble Hamlet both have for once seen into the true nature of things they have perceived but they are loved to act for their action cannot change the eternal nature of things they regarded as shameful or ridiculous that one should require of them to set a right the time which is out of joint knowledge kills action action requires the veil of illusion it is this lesson which Hamlet teaches and not the cheap wisdom of jonah dreams who from too much reflection as it were from a surplus of possibilities does not arrive at action at all not reflection no true knowledge insight into appalling truth preponderates over all motives inciting to action in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian man no comfort avails any longer his longing goes beyond the world after death beyond the gods themselves existence with its glittering reflection in the gods or in an immortal other world is abjured in the consciousness of the truth he has perceived man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence he now understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia he now discerns the wisdom of the sylvan god sylenus and loathing seizes him here in this extremist danger of the will art approaches as a saving and healing enchantress she alone is able to transform these nauseating reflections on the awfulness or absurdity of existence into representations wherewith it is possible to live these are the representations of the sublime as the artistic subjugation of the awful and the comic as the artistic delivery from the nausea of the absurd the satiric course of dithiram is the saving deed of greek art the paroxysms described above spent their force in the intermediary world of these Dionysian followers into chapter seven chapter eight of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this live of ox recording is in the public domain chapter eight the satir like the idyllic shepherd of a more recent time is the offspring of a longing after the primitive and the natural but mark with what firmness and fearlessness the greek embrace the man of the woods and again how coyly and malchishly the modern man dalled with the flattering picture of a tender flute playing soft nature shepherd nature on which is yet no knowledge has been at work which maintains unbroken barriers to culture this is what the greek saw in his satir which still was not on this account supposed to coincide with the ape on the contrary it was the archetype of man the embodiment of his highest and strongest emotions as the enthusiastic reveler enraptured by the proximity of his god as the fellow suffering companion in whom the suffering of the god repeats itself as the herald of wisdom speaking from the very depths of nature as the emblem of the sexual omnipotence of nature which the greek was want to contemplate with reverential awe the satir was something sublime and godlike he could not but appear so especially to the sad and wearied eye of the Dionysian man he would have been offended by our spurious tricked up shepherd while his eye dwelt with sublime satisfaction on the naked and unstuntedly magnificent characters of nature here the illusion of culture was brushed away from the archetype of man here the true man the bearded satir revealed himself who shouts joyfully to his god before him the cultured man shrank to a lying caricature shillers right also with reference to these beginnings of tragic art the chorus is a living bulwark against the onsets of reality because it the satiric chorus portrays existence more truthfully more realistically more perfectly than the cultured man who ordinarily considers himself as the only reality this fear of poetry does not lie outside the world like some fantastic impossibility of a poet's imagination it seeks to be the very opposite the unvarnished expression of truth and must for this very reason cast aside the false binary of that supposed reality of the cultured man the contrast between this intrinsic truth of nature and the falsehood of culture which poses as the only reality is similar to that existing between the eternal kernel of things the thing in itself and the collective world of phenomena and even as tragedy with its metaphysical comfort points to the eternal lights of this kernel of existence notwithstanding the perpetual dissolution of phenomena so the symbolism of the satiric chorus already expresses figuratively this primordial relation between the thing in itself and phenomenon the idyllic shepherd of the modern man is but a copy of a sum of the illusions of culture which he calls nature the Dionysian Greek desires truth and nature in their most potent form he sees himself metamorphosed into the satir the reveling crowd of the votaries of Dionysus rejoices swayed by such moods and perceptions the power of which transforms them before their own eyes so that they imagine they behold themselves as reconstituted genii of nature as satyrs the later constitution of the tragic course is the artistic imitation of this natural phenomenon which of course required a separation of the Dionysian spectators from the enchanted Dionysians however we must never lose sight of the fact that the public of the attic tragedy rediscovered itself in the chorus of the orchestra that there was in reality no antithesis of public and chorus for all was but one great sublime chorus of dancing and singing satyrs or of such as allowed themselves to be represented by the satyrs the shlagellian observation must here reveal itself to us in a deeper sense the chorus is the ideal spectator in so far as it is the only beholder the beholder of the visionary world of the scene a public of spectators as known to us was unknown to the Greeks and their theaters the terrorist structure of the spectator space rising in concentric arcs enabled everyone in the strictest sense to overlook the entire world of culture around him and in surfeited contemplation to imagine himself a chorus according to this view then we may call the chorus in its primitive stage in proto tragedy a self-mirroring of the Dionysian man a phenomenon which may be best exemplified by the process of the actor who if he be truly gifted sees hovering before his eyes with almost tangible perceptibility the character he is to represent the satiric course is first of all a vision of the Dionysian throne just as the world of the stage is in turn a vision of the satiric course the power of this vision is great enough to render the eye dull and insensible to the impression of reality to the presence of the culture men occupying the tiers of seats on every side the form of the Greek theater reminds one of a lonesome mountain valley the architecture of the scene appears like a luminous cloud picture which the pecans swarming on the mountains behold from the heights as the splendid encirclement in the midst of which the image of Dionysus is revealed to them owing to our learned conception of the elementary artistic processes this artistic proto phenomenon which is here introduced to explain the tragic chorus is almost shocking while nothing can be more certain than that the poet is a poet only in that he beholds himself surrounded by forms which live and act before him into the innermost being of which his glance penetrates the reason of our strange defeat in our capacities we modern men are apt to represent to ourselves the aesthetic proto phenomenon as too complex and abstract for the true poet the metaphor is not a rhetorical figure but a vicarious image which actually hovers before him in place of a concept the character is not for him an aggregate composed of a studied collection of particular traits but an irrepressibly live person appearing before his eyes and differing only from the corresponding vision of the painter by its ever continued life and action why is it that Homer sketches much more vividly than all the other poets because he contemplates much more we talk so abstractly about poetry because we are all want to be bad poets at bottom the aesthetic phenomenon is simple let a man but have the faculty of perpetually seeing a lively play and have constantly living surrounded by hosts of spirits then he is a poet let him but feel the impulse to transform himself and to talk from out the bodies and souls of others then he is a dramatist the Dionysian excitement is able to impart to a whole mass of men this artistic faculty of seeing themselves surrounded by such a host of spirits with whom they know themselves to be inwardly one this function of the tragic course is the dramatic proto phenomenon to see oneself transform before oneself and then to act as if one had really entered into another body into another character this function stands at the beginning of the development of the drama here we have something different from the rhapsodist who does not blend with his pictures but only sees them like the painter with contemplative eye outside of him here we actually have a surrender of the individual by his entering into another nature moreover this phenomenon appears in the form of an epidemic a whole long feels itself metamorphosed in this wise hence it is that the different is essentially different from every other variety of the corrig song the virgins who with laurel twigs in their hands solemnly proceed to the temple of Apollo and sing a processional hymn remain what they are and retain their civic names the Dithorambic course is a course of transformed beings whose civic past and social rank are totally forgotten they have become the timeless servants of their god that live aloof from all the spheres of society every other variety of the corrig lyric of the Helene's is but an enormous enhancement of the apollonian unit singer well in the Dithoramb we have before us a community of unconscious actors who mutually regard themselves as transformed among one another this enchantment is the prerequisite of all dramatic art in this enchantment the Dionysian reveler sees himself as a satyr and as satyr he in turn beholds the god that is in his transformation he sees a new vision outside him as the apollonian consummation of his state with this new vision the drama is complete according to this view he must understand greek tragedy as the Dionysian course which always disperse itself a new in an apollonian world of pictures the corrig parts therefore with which tragedy is interlaced are in a manner the mother womb of the entire so-called dialogue that is of the whole stage world of the drama proper in several successive outbursts does this primordial basis of tragedy beam forth the vision of the drama which is a dream phenomenon throughout and as such epic in character on the other hand however as objectivation of a Dionysian state it does not represent the apollonian redemption in appearance but conversely the dissolution of the individual and his unification with primordial existence accordingly the drama is the apollonian embodiment of Dionysian perceptions and influences and is thereby separated from the epic as by an immense gap the chorus of greek tragedy the symbol of the mass of the people moved by Dionysian excitement is thus fully explained by our conception of it as here set for it whereas being accustomed to the position of a course on the modern stage especially an operatic course we could never comprehend why the tragic course of the greeks should be older more permitted indeed more important than the action proper as has been so plainly declared by the voice of tradition whereas furthermore we could not reconcile with this traditional paramount importance and primitiveness the fact of the course being composed only of humble ministering beings indeed at first only of goat like saders whereas finally the orchestra before the scene was always a riddle to us we have learned to comprehend it linked at the scene together with the action was fundamentally and originally conceived only as a vision that the only reality is just the chorus which of itself generates the vision and speaks thereof with the entire symbolism of dancing tone and word this course beholds in the vision its lord and master Dionysus and is thus forever the serving chorus it sees how he the god suffers and glorifies himself and therefore does not itself act but though its attitude towards the god is throughout the attitude of ministration this is nevertheless the highest expression the Dionysian expression of nature and therefore like nature herself the chorus utters oracles and wise sayings when transported with enthusiasm as fellow sufferer it is also the sage proclaiming truth from out the heart of nature thus then originates the fantastic figure which seems so shocking of the wise and enthusiastic sader who is at the same time the dumb man in contrast to the god the image of nature and her strongest impulses yay the symbol of nature and at the same time the herald of her art and wisdom musician poet dancer and visionary in one person agreeably to this view and agreeably to tradition the Dionysus the proper stage hero and focus of vision is not at first actually present in the oldest period of tragedy but is only imagined as present that is tragedy is originally only chorus and not drama later on the attempt is made to exhibit the god as real and to display the visionary figure together with its glorifying encirclement before the eyes of all it is here that the drama in the narrow sense of the term begins to the ditherambic chorus is now assigned the task of exciting the minds of the hearers to such a pitch of Dionysian frenzy that when the tragic hero appears on those stage they do not behold in him say the unshapely masked man but a visionary figure born as it were of their own ecstasy let us picture admitees thinking in profound meditation of his lately departed wife Alcestus and quite consuming himself in spiritual contemplation thereof when suddenly the veiled figure of a woman resembling her in form and gait is led towards him let us picture his sudden trembling anxiety his agitated comparisons his instinctive conviction and we shall have an analogon to the sensation with which the spectator excited to Dionysian frenzy saw the god approaching on the stage a god with whose sufferings he had already become identified he involuntarily transferred the entire picture of a god fluttering magically before his soul to this masked figure and resolved its reality as it were into a phantasmal unreality this is the apollonian dream state in which the world of day is veiled and a new world clearer more intelligible more striking than the former and nevertheless more shadowy is ever born anew in perpetual change before our eyes we accordingly recognize in tragedy a thorough going stylistic contrast the language color flexibility and dynamics of the dialogue fall apart in the Dionysian lyrics of the chorus on the one hand and in the apollonian dream world of the scene on the other into entirely separate spheres of expression the apollonian appearances in which Dionysus objectifies himself are no longer I'm a vigus mere I'm vex shown the weapon I'm glue hand leban as is the music of the chorus they are no longer the forces merely felt but not consensed into a picture by which the inspired rotary of Dionysus divides the proximity of his god the clearness and firmness of epic form now speak to him from the scene Dionysus now no longer speaks through forces but as an epic hero almost in the language of Homer end of chapter eight chapter nine of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this Lieberbach's recording is in the public domain chapter nine whatever rises to the surface in the dialogue of the apollonian part of Greek tragedy appears simple transparent beautiful in this sense the dialogue is a copy of the Halene whose nature reveals itself in the dance because in the dance the greatest energy is merely potential but betrays itself nevertheless inflexible and vivacious movements the language of the Sophoclean heroes for instance surprises us by its apollonian precision and clearness so that we at once imagine we see into the innermost recesses of their being and marvel not a little that the way to these recesses is so short but if for the moment we disregard the character of the hero which rises to the surface and grows visible and which at bottom is nothing but the light picture cast on a dark wall that is appearance through and through if rather we enter into the myth which projects itself in these bright mirror rings we shall have a sudden experience a phenomenon which bears a reverse relation to one familiar in optics when after vigorous effort to gaze into the sun we turn away blinded we have dark colored spots before our eyes as restoratives so to speak well on the contrary those light picture phenomena of the Sophoclean hero in short the apollonian of the mask are the necessary productions of a glance into the secret and terrible things of nature as it were shining spots to heal the eye which dire night has seared only in this sense can we hope to be able to grasp the true meaning of the serious and significant notion of Greek cheerfulness while of course we encounter the misunderstood notion of this cheerfulness as resulting from a state of unendangered comfort on all the ways and paths of the present time the most sorrowful figure of the Greek state the hapless Oedipus was understood by Sophocles as the noble man who in spite of his wisdom was destined to error and misery but nevertheless through his extraordinary sufferings ultimately exerted a magical wholesome influence on all around him which continues effective even after his death the noble man does not sin this is what the thoughtful poet wishes to tell us all laws all natural order yay the moral world itself may be destroyed through his action but through this very action a higher magic circle of influences is brought into play which establish a new world on the ruins of the old that has been overthrown this is what the poet in so far as he is at the same time a religious thinker wishes to tell us as poet he shows us first of all a wonderfully complicated legal mystery which the judge slowly unravels link by link to his own destruction the truly Hellenic delight at this dialectical loosening is so great that a touch of surpassing cheerfulness is thereby communicated to the entire play which everywhere blunts the edge of the horrible pre-is oppositions of the procedure in the edopus at colonis we find the same cheerfulness elevated however to an infinite transfiguration in contrast to the aged king subjected to an excess of misery and exposed solely as a sufferer to all that befalls him we have here a super mundane cheerfulness which descends from a divine sphere and intimates to us that in his purely passive attitude the hero attains his highest activity the influence of which extends far beyond his life while his earlier conscious musing and striving let him only to passivity thus then the legal knot of the fable of edopus which to mortal eyes appears indisciably entangled is slowly unraveled and the profoundest human joy comes upon us in the presence of this divine counterpart of dialectics if this explanation does justice to the poet it may still be asked whether the substance of the myth is thereby exhausted and here it turns out that the entire conception of the poet is nothing but the light picture which healing nature holds up to us after a glance into the abyss edopus the murderer of his father the husband of his mother edopus the interpreter of the riddle of the Sphinx what does the mysterious triad of these deeds of destiny tell us there is a primitive popular belief especially in persia that a wise magian can be born only of incest which we have forthwith to interpret to ourselves with reference to the riddle solving and mother marrying edopus to the effect that when the boundary of the present and future the rigid law of individuation and in general the intrinsic spell of nature are broken by prophetic and magical powers an extraordinary counter naturalness as in this case incest must have preceded as a cause for how else could one force nature to surrender her secrets but by victoriously opposing her that is by means of the unnatural it is this intuition which i see imprinted in the awful triad of the destiny of edopus the very man who solves the riddle of nature that double constituted Sphinx must also as the murderer of his father and husband of his mother break the holiest laws of nature indeed it seems as if the myth sought to whisper into our ears that wisdom especially that omniscient wisdom is an unnatural abomination and that whoever through his knowledge plunges nature into an abyss of annihilation must also experience the dissolution of nature in himself the sharpness of wisdom turns round upon the sage wisdom is a crime against nature such terrible expressions does the myth call out to us but the Hellenic poet touches like a sunbeam the sublime and formidable Memnonian statue of the myth so that it suddenly begins to sound in Sophoclean melodies with the glory of passivity I now contrast the glory of activity which illuminates the Prometheus of Aeschylus that which Aeschylus the thinker had to tell us here for which as a poet he only allows us to surmise by his symbolic picture the youthful Goethe succeeded in disclosing to us in the daring words of his Prometheus higher Zittic former mention knock mine and build it I'm gershlect das mirk like sigh zoo lighten zoo binen zoo genessen and und zoo frown sick und I next zoo octon the ick here sit I forming mankind in my image a race resembling me to sorrow and to weep to taste the whole to enjoy and not have need of thee as I man elevating himself to the rank of the titans acquires his culture by his own efforts and compels the gods to unite with him because in his self-sufficient wisdom he has their existence and their limits in his hand what is most wonderful however in this Promethean form which according to its fundamental conception is the specific hymn of impiety is the profound Aeschylean yearning for justice the unto sorrow of the bold single-handed being on the one hand and the divine need I the foreboding of a twilight of the gods on the other the power of these two worlds of suffering constraining to reconciliation to metaphysical oneness all this suggest most forcibly the central and main position of the Aeschylean view of things which sees Mariah as eternal justice enthroned above gods and men in view of the astonishing boldness with which Aeschylus places the Olympian world on his scales of justice it must be remembered that the deep minded Greek had an immovably firm substratum of metaphysical thought in his mysteries and that all his skeptical paroxysms could be discharged upon the Olympians with reference to these deities the Greek artist in particular had an obscure feeling as to mutual dependency and it is just in the Prometheus of Aeschylus that this feeling is symbolized the titanic artist found in himself the daring belief that he could create men and at least destroy Olympian deities namely by his superior wisdom for which to be sure he had to atone by eternal suffering the splendid canning of the great genius bought too cheaply even at the price of eternal suffering the stern pride of the artist this is the essence and soul of Aeschylean poetry while Sotheclis and his Oedipus prelooting strikes up the victory song of the saint but even this interpretation which Aeschylus has given to the myth does not fathom its astounding depth of terror the fact is rather that the artist's delight in unfolding the cheerfulness of artistic creating bidding defines to all calamity is but a shining stellar and nebular image reflected in a black sea of sadness the tale of Prometheus is an original possession of the entire Arian family of races and documentary evidence of their capacity for the profoundly tragic indeed it is not improbable that this myth has the same characteristic significance for the Arian race that the myth of the fall of man has for the Semitic and that there is a relationship between the two myths like that of brother and sister the presupposition of the Promethean myth is the transcendent value which a naive humanity attached to fire as the true palladium of every ascending culture that man however should dispose at will of this fire and should not receive it only as a gift from heaven as the igniting lightning or the warming solar flame appeared to the contemplative primordial men as crime and robbery of the divine nature and thus the first philosophical problem at once causes a painful irreconcilable antagonism between man and god inputs as it were a mass of rock at the gate of every culture the best and highest that men can acquire they obtained by a crime and must now in their turn take upon themselves its consequences namely the whole flood of sufferings and sorrows with which the offended celestials must visit the nobly aspiring race of man a bitter reflection which by the dignity it confers on crime contrasts strangely with the Semitic myth of the fall of man in which curiosity big element seducibility wantonness in short a whole series of preeminently feminine passions were regarded as the origin of evil what distinguishes the Aryan representation is the sublime view of active sin as the properly pro-methian virtue which suggests at the same time the ethical basis of pessimistic tragedy as the justification of human evil of human guilt as well as of the suffering incurred thereby the misery in the essence of things which the contemplative Aryan is not disposed to explain away the antagonism in the heart of the world manifests itself to him as a medley of different worlds for instance a divine and a human world each of which is in the right individually but as a separate existence alongside of another has to suffer for its individuation with the heroic effort made by the individual for universality in his attempt to pass beyond the bounds of individuation and become the one universal being he experiences in himself the primordial contradiction concealed in the essence of things that is he trespasses and suffers accordingly crime is understood by the Aryans to be a man sin by the semites a woman as also the original crime is committed by man the original sin by woman besides the witch's chorus says we do not measure with such care woman in thousand steps is there but howsoever she hasten may man in one leap has cleared the way he who understands this innermost core of the tale of Prometheus namely the necessity of crime imposed on the titanically striving individual will it once be conscious of the un-Apollonian nature of this pessimistic representation for Apollo seeks to pacify individual beings precisely by drawing boundary lines between them and by again and again calling attention thereto with his requirements of self-knowledge and due proportion as the holiest laws of the universe in order however to prevent the form from congealing to egyptian rigidity and coldness in consequence of this apollonian tendency in order to prevent the extinction of that motion of the entire lake in the effort to prescribe to the individual wave its path and compass the high tide of the Dionysian tendency destroyed from time to time all the little circles in which the one-sided apollonian will sought to confine the Hellenic world the suddenly swelling tide of the Dionysian then takes the separate little wave mountains of individuals on its back just as the brother of Prometheus the titan atlas does with the earth this titanic impulse to become as it were the atlas of all individuals and to carry them on broad shoulders higher and higher farther and farther is what their Promethean and the Dionysian have in common in this respect the East Lian Prometheus is a Dionysian mask while in the aforementioned profound yearning for justice eastless portrays to the intelligent observer his paternal descent from Apollo the god of individuation and of the boundaries of justice and so the double being of the East Lian Prometheus is conjoint Dionysian and apollonian nature might be thus expressed in an abstract formula whatever exists is alike just and unjust and equally justified in both Das is dine out belt Das heist I not felt this is thy world and what a world end of chapter nine chapter 10 of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 10 it is an indisputable tradition that Greek tragedy in its earliest form had for its theme only the sufferings of Dionysus and that for some time the only stage hero therein was simply Dionysus himself with the same confidence however we can maintain that not until Euripides the Dionysus seems to be the tragic hero and that in fact all the celebrated figures of the Greek stage Prometheus Oedipus etc are but masks of this original hero Dionysus the presence of a God behind all these masks is the one essential cause of the typical ideality so oft exciting wonder of these celebrated figures someone I know not whom has maintained that all individuals are comic as individuals and are consequently untragic from whence it might be inferred that the Greeks in general could not endure individuals on the tragic stage and they really seem to have had these sentiments as in general it is to be observed that the Platonic discrimination and valuation of the idea in contrast to the Adalon the image is deeply rooted in the Hellenic being availing ourselves of Plato's terminology however we should have to speak of the tragic figures of the Hellenic stage somewhat as follows the one truly real Dionysus appears in a multiplicity of forms in the mask of a fighting hero and entangled as it were in the net of an individual will as the visibly appearing God now talks in acts he resembles an earrings driving suffering individual and that in general he appears with such epic precision and clearness is due to the dream reading Apollo who reads to the core since Dionysian state through this symbolic appearance in reality however this hero is the suffering Dionysus of the mysteries a God experiencing in himself the sufferings of individuation of whom wonderful myths tell that as a boy he was dismembered by the Titans and has been worshiped in this state as Zagrias whereby is intimated that this dismemberment the properly Dionysian suffering is like a transformation into air water earth and fire that we must therefore regard the state of individuation as the source and primal cause of all suffering as something objectionable in itself from the smile of this Dionysus spraying the Olympian gods from his tears spraying man in his existence as a dismembered God Dionysus has the dual nature of a cruel barbarized demon and a mild pacific ruler but the hope of the e pops looked for a new birth of Dionysus as we have now to conceive of in anticipation as the end of individuation it was for this coming third Dionysus that the stormy jubilation hymns of the a pops resounded and it is only this hope that sheds array of joy upon the features of a world torn asunder and shattered into individuals as is symbolized in the myth by Demeter sunk in eternal sadness who rejoices again only when told that she may once more give birth to Dionysus in the views of things here given we already have all the elements of our profound and pessimistic contemplation of the world and along with these we have the mystery doctrine of tragedy the fundamental knowledge of the oneness of all existing things the consideration of individuation as the primal cause of evil and art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken as the augury of a restored oneness it has already been intimated that the Homeric e-pose is the poem of Olympian culture wherewith this culture has sung its own song of triumph over the tears of the war of the Titans under the predominating influence of tragic poetry these Homeric myths are now reproduced anew and show by this metam psychosis that meantime the Olympian culture also has been vanquished by a still deeper view of things the haughty Titan Prometheus has announced to his Olympian tormentor that the extremist danger will one day menace his rule unless he lie with him betimes in Eastless we perceive the terrified Zeus apprehensive of his end in alliance with the Titan thus the former age of the Titans is subsequently brought from Tartarus once more to the light of day the philosophy of wild and naked nature beholds with the undissembled mean of truth the myths of the Homeric world as they dance past they turn pale they tremble before the lightning glance of this goddess till the powerful fist of the Dionysian artist forces them into the service of the new deity Dionysian truth takes over the entire domain of myth as symbolism of its knowledge which it makes known partly in the public cult of tragedy and partly in the secret celebration of the dramatic mysteries always however in the old mythical garb what was the power which freed Prometheus from his vultures and transformed the myth into a vehicle of Dionysian wisdom it is the heraclian power of music which having reached its highest manifestness in tragedy can invest myths with the new and most profound significance which we have already had occasion to characterize as the most powerful faculty of music for it is the fate of every myth to insinuate itself into the narrow limits of some alleged historical reality and to be treated by some later generation as a solitary fact with historical claims and the Greeks were already fairly on the way to restamp the whole of their mythical juvenile dream sagaciously and arbitrarily into a historical pragmatical juvenile history for this is the manner in which religions are want to die out when of course under the stern intelligent eyes of an orthodox dogmatism the mythical presuppositions of a religion are systematized as a completed sum of historical events and when one begins apprehensively to defend the credibility of the myth well at the same time opposing all continuation of their natural vitality and luxuriance when accordingly the feeling for myth dies out and its place is taken by the claim of religion to historical foundations this dying myth was now seized by the newborn genius of Dionysian music and whose hands it bloomed once more with such colors as it had never yet displayed with a fragrance that awakened a longing anticipation of a metaphysical world after this final effulgence it collapses its leaves wither and soon the scoffing lucians of antiquity catch at the discolored and faded flowers which the winds carry off in every direction through tragedy the myth attains its profoundest significance its most expressive form it rises once more like a wounded hero and the whole surplus of vitality together with the philosophical calmness of the dying burns in its eyes with that last powerful gleam what meanest thou oh impious euripides and seeking once more to enthrall this dying one it died under thy ruthless hands and then about made use of counterfeit mass myth which like the ape of Heracles could only trick itself out in the old finery and as myth died in thy hands so also died the genius of music though thou couldst covetously plunder all the gardens of music thou didst only realize the counterfeit masked music and because thou hast forsaken Dionysus Apollo hath also forsaken thee route up all the passions from their haunts and conjure them into thy sphere sharpen and polish a sophistical dialectics for the speeches of thy heroes thy very heroes have only counterfeit masked passions and speak only counterfeit masked music end of chapter 10 chapter 11 of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 11 Greek tragedy had a fate different from that of all her older sister art she died by suicide in consequence of an irreconcilable conflict accordingly she died tragically while they all passed away very calmly and beautifully in ripe old age for if it be in accordance with a happy state of things to depart this life without a struggle leaving behind a fair posterity the closing period of these older arts exhibits such a happy state of things slowly they sink out of sight and before their dying eyes already stand their fairer progeny who impatiently lift up their heads with courageous mean the death of Greek tragedy on the other hand left an immense void deeply felt everywhere even as certain Greek sailors in the time of Tiberius once heard upon a lonesome island the thrilling cry great pan is dead so now as it were sorrowful wailing sounded through the Hellenic world tragedy is dead poetry itself has perished with her begone begone ye stunted emaciated epigenes begone the Hades that ye may for once eat your fill of the crumbs of your former masters but when after all a new art blossomed forth which revered tragedy as their ancestors and mistress it was observed with horror that she did indeed bear the features of her mother but those very features the latter had exhibited in her long death struggle it was Euripides who fought this death struggle of tragedy the later art is known as the new attic comedy in it the degenerate form of tragedy lived on as a monument of the most painful and violent death of tragedy proper this connection between the two serves to explain the passionate attachment to Euripides events by the poets of the new comedy and hence we are no longer surprised at the wish of the Lehman who would have got himself hanged at once with the sole design of being able to visit Euripides in the lower regions if only he could be assured generally that the deceased still had his wits but if we desire as briefly as possible and without professing to say art exhaustive on the subject to characterize what Euripides has in common with Menander and the Lehman and what appealed to them so strongly as worthy of imitation it will suffice to say that this spectator was brought upon the stage by Euripides he who has perceived the material of which the Promethean tragic writers prior to Euripides form their heroes and how remote from their purpose it was to bring the true mask of reality on the stage will also know what to make of the holy divergent tendency of Euripides through him the commonplace individual forced his way from the spectator's benches to the stage itself the mirror in which formally only great and bold traits found expression now showed the painful exactness that conscientiously reproduces even the abortive lines of nature Odysseus the typical haleen of the old art sank in the hands of the new poets to the figure of the Greichelists who as the good-natured lee cunning domestic slave stands sense forth in the center of dramatic interest what Euripides takes credit for in the Aristophanian frogs namely that by his household remedies he freed tragic art from its pompous corpulency is apparent above all in his tragic heroes the spectator now virtually saw and heard his double on the european stage and rejoiced that he could talk so well but this joy was not all one even learned of Euripides how to speak he prides himself upon this in his contest with Euskalus how the people have learned from him how to observe debate and draw conclusions according to the rules of art and with the cleverest sophistications in general it may be said that through this revolution of the popular language he made the new comedy possible for it was henceforth no longer a secret how and with what saws the commonplace could represent and express itself on the stage civic mediocrity on which Euripides built all his political hopes was now suffered to speak while here to for the demigod in tragedy and the drunken satyr or demi man in comedy had determined the character of the language and so the Aristophanian Euripides prides himself on having portrayed the common familiar everyday life and dealings of the people concerning which all are qualified to pass judgment if now the entire populace philosophizes manages land and goods with unheard of circumspection and conducts lawsuits he takes all the credit to himself and glories and thus blended results of the wisdom with which he inoculated the rabble it was to a populace prepared and enlightened in this manner that the new comedy could now address itself of which Euripides had become as it were the chorus master only that in this case the chorus of spectators had to be trained as soon as this chorus was trained to sing in the Euripidean key there arose that just like variety of the drama the new comedy with its perpetual triumphs of cunning and artfulness but Euripides the chorus master was praised incessantly indeed people would have killed themselves in order to learn yet more from him had they not known that tragic poets were quite as dead as tragedy but with it the Helene had surrendered the belief in his immortality not only the belief in an ideal past but also the belief in an ideal future the saying taken from the well-known epitaph as an old man frivolous and capricious applies also to aged helenism the passing moment wit levity and caprice are its highest deities the fifth class that of the slaves now attains to power at least in sentiment and if we can still speak at all of Greek cheerfulness it is the cheerfulness of the slave who has nothing of consequence to answer for nothing great to strive for and cannot value anything of the past or future higher than the present it was this semblance of Greek cheerfulness which so revolted the deep-minded and formidable natures of the first four centuries of Christianity this womanish flight from earnestness and terror this cowardly contentedness with easy pleasure was not only contemptible to them but seemed to be a specifically anti-christian sentiment and we must describe it to its influence that the conception of Greek antiquity which lived on for centuries preserved with almost enduring persistency that peculiar hectic color 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 artworks of that great period did not at all exist which in fact each by itself can and no wise be explained as having sprung from the soil of such a decrepit and slavish love of existence and cheerfulness and point to an altogether different conception of things as their source the assertion made a moment ago that Euripides introduced the spectator on the stage to qualify him the better to pass judgment on the drama will make it appear as if the old tragic art was always in a false relation to the spectator and one would be tempted to extol the radical tendency of Euripides to bring about inadequate relation between artwork and public as an advance on Sophocles but as things are public is merely a word and not at all a homogenous and constant quantity why should the artist be under obligations to accommodate himself to a power whose strength is merely in numbers and if by virtue of his endowments and aspirations he feels himself superior to every one of these spectators how could he feel greater respect for the collective expression of all these subordinate capacities than for the relatively highest endowed individual spectator in truth if ever a Greek artist treated his public throughout a long life with presumptuousness and self-sufficiency it was Euripides who even when the masses threw themselves at his feet with sublime defiance made an open assault on his own tendency the very tendency with which he had triumphed over the masses if this genius had had the slightest reverence for the pandemonium of the public he would have broken down long before the middle of his career beneath the weight he blows of his own failures these considerations here make it obvious that art formula namely that Euripides brought the spectator upon the stage in order to make him truly competent to pass judgment was but a provisional one and that we must seek for a deeper understanding of his tendency conversely it is undoubtedly well known that east glistens South Leclis during all their lives indeed far beyond their lives enjoyed the full favor of the people and that therefore in the case of these predecessors of Euripides the idea of a false relation between artwork and public was altogether excluded what was it that thus forcibly diverted this highly gifted artist so incessantly impelled true production from the path over which shown the son of the greatest names in poetry and the cloudless heaven of popular favor what strange consideration for the spectator led him to defy the spectator how could he owing to too much respect for the public disrespect the public Euripides and this is the solution of the riddle just propounded felt himself as a poet undoubtedly superior to the masses but not the two of his spectators he brought the masses upon the stage these two spectators he revered as the only competent judges and masters of his art in compliance with their directions and admonitions he transferred the entire world of sentiments passions and experiences he the true president at every festival representation as the invisible course on the spectators benches into the souls of his stage heroes he yielded to their demands when he also sought for these new characters the new word and the new tone in their voices alone he heard the conclusive verdict on his work as also the cheering promise of triumph when he found himself condemned as usual by the justice of the public of these two spectators the one is Euripides himself Euripides as thinker not as poet it might be said of him that his unusually large fund of critical ability as in the case of blessing if it did not create at least constantly fructify a productively artistic collateral impulse with this faculty with all the clearness and dexterity of his critical thought Euripides had sat in the theater and striven to recognize in the masterpiece as of his great predecessors as in faded paintings feature and feature line and line and here had happened to him what one initiated in the deeper arcana of easterly and tragedy must needs have expected he observed something incommensurable in every feature and in every line a certain deceptive distinctness and at the same time an enigmatic profundity yay and infinitude of background even the clearest figure had always a comet's tail attached to it would seem to suggest the uncertain and the inexplicable the same twilight shrouded the structure of the drama especially the significance of the chorus and how doubtful seemed the solution of the ethical problems to his mind how questionable the treatment of the myths how unequal the distribution of happiness and misfortune even in the language of the old tragedy there was much that was objectionable to him for at least enigmatic he found especially too much pomp for simple affairs too many tropes and immense things for the plainness of the characters thus he sat restlessly pondering in the theater does a spectator he acknowledged to himself that he did not understand his great predecessors if however he thought the understanding the root proper of all enjoyment and productivity he had to inquire and look about to see whether anyone else thought was he did and also acknowledged this incommensurability but most people and among them the best individuals had only a distrustful smile for him while none could explain why the great masters were still in the right in face of his scruples and objections and in this painful condition he found that other spectator who did not comprehend and therefore did not esteem tragedy in alliance with him he could venture from amid his lonesomeness to begin the prodigious struggle against the art of eastless and south the cleaves not with polemic writings but as a dramatic poet who opposed his own conception of tragedy through the traditional one end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of the birth of tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche this liberal box recording is in the public domain chapter 12 before we name this other spectator let us pause here a moment in order to recall our own impression as previously described of the discordant and incommensurable elements in the nature of easkily and tragedy let us think of our own astonishment at the chorus and the tragic hero of that type of tragedy neither of which we could reconcile with our practices any more than with tradition till we rediscovered this duplexity itself as the origin and essence of greek tragedy as the expression of two interwoven artistic impulses the apollonian and the daonisian to separate this primitive and all powerful daonisian element from tragedy and to build up a new and purified form of tragedy on the basis of a non-daonisian art morality and conception of things such as the tendency of euripides which now reveals itself to us in a clear light in a myth composed in the eve of his life euripides himself most urgently propounded to his contemporaries the question as to the value and signification of this tendency is the daonisian entitled to exist at all should it not be forcibly rooted out of the Hellenic soil certainly the poet tells us if only it were possible but the god daonisus is too powerful his most intelligent adversary like pentheus in the backy is unwittingly enchanted by him and in this enchantment meets his fate the judgment of the two old sages cadmus and heresia seems to be also the judgment of the aged poet that the reflection of the wisest individuals does not overthrow old popular traditions nor the perpetually propagating worship of daonisus that in fact it behooves us to display at least a diplomatically cautious concern in the presence of such strange forces where however it is always possible that the god may take offense at such lukewarm participation and finally change the diplomat in this case cadmus into a dragon this is what a poet tells us who opposed daonisus with heroic valor throughout a long life in order finally to wind up his career with a glorification of his adversary and with suicide like one staggering from giddiness who in order to escape the horrible vertigo he can no longer endure casts himself from a tower this tragedy the backy is a protest against the practicability of his own tendency alas and it has already been put into practice the surprising thing had happened when the poet recanted his tendency had already conquered daonisus had already been scared from the tragic stage and in fact by a demonic power which spoke through euripides even euripides was in a certain sense only a mask the deity that spoke through him was neither daonisus nor apollo but an altogether newborn demon called socrates this is the new antithesis the daonisian and the socratic and the artwork of greek tragedy was wrecked on it what if even euripides now seeks to comfort us by his recantation it is of no avail the most magnificent temple lies in ruins what avails the lamentation of the destroyer and his confession that it was the most beautiful of all temples and even that euripides has been changed into a dragon as a punishment by the art critics of all ages who could be content with this wretched compensation let us now approach this socratic tendency with which euripides combated and vanquished east galean tragedy we must now ask ourselves what could be the ulterior aim of the euripidian design which in the highest ideality of its execution would found drama exclusively on the non daonisian what other form of drama could there be if it was not to be born of the womb of music in the mysterious twilight of the daonisian only the dramatized epos in which apollonian domain of art the tragic effect is of course unattainable it does not depend on the subject matter of the events here represented indeed i venture to assert that it would have been impossible for Gerta and his projected nonsika to have rendered tragically effective the suicide of the idyllic being with which he intended to complete the fifth act so extraordinary is the power of the epic apollonian representation that it charms before our eyes the most terrible things by the joy in appearance and in redemption through appearance the poet of the dramatized depose cannot completely blend with his pictures anymore than the epic rhapsodist he is still just the calm unmoved embodiment of contemplation whose wide eyes see the picture before them the actor in this dramatized depose still remains intrinsically rhapsodist the consecration of inner dreaming is on all his actions so that he is never holy an actor how then is the euripa dn play related to this idyll of the apollonian drama just as the younger rhapsodist is related to the solemn rhapsodist of the old time the former describes his own character in the platonic ion as follows when i'm saying anything sad my eyes fill with tears when however what i am saying is awful and terrible then my hair stands on end through fear and my heart leaps here we no longer observe anything of the epic absorption in appearance or of the unemotional coolness of the true actor who precisely in his highest activity is holy appearance and joy in appearance euripides is the actor with leaping heart with hair standing on end as socratic thinker he designs the plan as passionate actor he executes it neither in the designing nor in the execution is he an artist pure and simple and so the euripa dn drama is a thing both cool and fiery equally capable of freezing and burning it is impossible for it to attain the apollonian effect of the e-posts while on the other hand it has severed itself as much as possible from Dionysian elements and now in order to act at all it requires new stimulants which can no longer lie within the sphere of the two unique art impulses the apollonian and the Dionysian the stimulants are cool paradoxical thoughts in place of apollonian intuitions and fiery passions in place of Dionysian ecstasies and in fact thoughts and passions very realistically copied and not at all steeped in the ether of art accordingly if we have perceived this much that euripides did not succeed in establishing the drama exclusively on the apollonian but that rather his non-Dionysian inclinations deviated into a naturalistic and in artistic tendency we shall now be able to approach nearer to the character aesthetic socraticism supreme law of which reads about as follows to be beautiful everything must be intelligible as the parallel to the socratic proposition only the knowing is one virtuous with his canon in his hands euripides measured all the separate elements of the drama and rectified them according to his principle the language the characters the dramaturgic structure and the choric music the poetic deficiency and retrogression which we are so often want to impute to euripides in comparison with salvaclean tragedy is for the most part the product of this penetrating critical process this daring intelligibility the euripidean prologue may serve us as an example of the productivity of this rationalistic method nothing could be more opposed to the technique of our stage than the prologue in the drama of euripides for a single person to appear at the outset of the play telling us who he is what precedes the action what has happened thus far yay what will happen in the course of the play would be designated by a modern playwright as a wanton and unpardonable abandonment of the effect of suspense everything that is about to happen is known beforehand who then cares to wait for it actually to happen considering more over that here there is not by any means the exciting relation of our predicting dream to a reality taking place later on euripides speculated quite differently the effect of tragedy never depended on epic suspense on the fascinating uncertainty as to what is to happen now and afterwards but rather on the great retro lyric scenes in which the passion and dialectics of the chief hero swelled to a broad and mighty stream everything was arranged for pathos not for action and whatever was not arranged for pathos was regarded as objectionable but what interferes most with the hero's pleasurable satisfaction in such scenes is a missing link a gap in the texture of the previous history so long as the spectator has to divine the meaning of this or that person or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and intentions is complete absorption in the doings and sufferings of the chief persons is impossible as is likewise breathless fellow feeling and fellow fearing the escholiosophically in tragedy employed the most ingenious devices in the first scenes to place in the hands of the spectator as if by chance all the threads requisite for understanding the whole a trait in which that noble artistry is approved which as it were masks the inevitably formal and causes it to appear as something accidental but nevertheless euripides thought he observed that during these first scenes the spectator was in a strange state of anxiety to make out the problem of the previous history so that the poetic beauties and pathos of the exposition were lost to him accordingly he placed the prologue even before the exposition and put it in the mouth of a person who could be trusted some deity head off and as it were to guarantee the particulars of the tragedy to the public and remove every doubt as to the reality of the myth as in the case of Descartes who could only prove the reality of the empiric world by an appeal to the truthfulness of God and his inability to utter falsehood euripides makes use of the same divine truthfulness once more at the close of his drama in order to ensure to the public the future of his heroes this is the task of the notorious deus ex machina between the preliminary and the additional epics spectacle there is the dramatico lyric present the drama proper thus euripides as a poet echoes above all his own conscious knowledge and it is precisely on this account that he occupies such a notable position in the history of Greek art with reference to his critical productive activity he must often have felt that he ought to actualize in the drama the words at the beginning of the essay of Anaxagoras in the beginning all things were mixed together then came the understanding and created order and if Anaxagoras with his news seemed like the first sober person among nothing but drunken philosophers euripides may also have conceived his relation to the other tragic poets under a similar figure as long as the sole ruler and disposer of the universe the news was still excluded from artistic activity things were all mixed together in a chaotic primitive mess it is thus euripides was obliged to think it is thus he was obliged to condemn the drunken poets as the first sober one among them what south the cleast set of eastless that he did what was right though unconsciously was surely not in the mind of euripides who would have admitted only thus much that eastless because he wrought unconsciously did what was wrong so also the divine Plato speaks for the most part only ironically of the creative faculty of the poet insofar as it is not conscious insight and places it on a par with the gift of the sooth saver and dream interpreter insinuating that the poet is incapable of composing until he has become unconscious and reason has deserted him like Plato euripides undertook to show to the world the reverse of the unintelligent poet is aesthetic principle that to be beautiful everything must be known is as I have said the parallel to the Socratic to be good everything must be known accordingly we may regard euripides as the poet of aesthetic Socraticism Socrates however was that second spectator who did not comprehend and therefore did not esteem the old tragedy in alliance with him euripides ventured to be the herald of a new artistic activity if then the old tragedy was here destroyed it follows that aesthetic Socrates was the murderous principle but insofar as the struggle is directed against the Dionysian element in the old art we recognize in Socrates the opponent of Dionysus the new Orpheus who rebels against Dionysus and although destined to be torn to pieces by the menads of the Athenian court he had puts to flight the overpowerful god himself who when he fled from Kurgis the king of Edonai sought refuge in the depths of the ocean namely in the mystical flood of a secret cult which gradually overspread the earth end of chapter 12