The Fractured Whole
: On The Birth of Tragedy
Geoffrey Hamilton
December 19, 1994
(The Birth of Tragedy -
Nietzsche's Gospel on Art, "I am a bringer of good tidings such as there has never been... " )
Comedy, like Tragedy and all art for that matter, "releases us from the
ghastly absurdity of existence". But whether it is due to Apollonian need for "illusions
strenuously and zestfully entertained" or whether it is an outcome of the
individuation performed by the "true art" - the Dionysian spirit - is irrelevant.
Unlike
Friedrich Nietzsche's entertaining but self defeating claims to the contrary, he shows that
the whole of art always functions to provide illusions even when it is revealing Dionysian
wisdom.
To Nietzsche the most apt spokesperson of Dionysian wisdom is the legendary
daemon Silenus to whom Nietzsche gives credit for saying, "What would be best for you
(King Midas) is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing.
But the second best is to die soon". This tragic wisdom is terrifying and as Nietzsche
says in a separate work, "Honesty would bring disgust and suicide in its train."
Even so, he wants this dark truth to be told. However, he also mentions that it is
impossible for Dionysos, thus this god's wisdom, to live without its complement, Apollo.
Apollo is an idea of order and illusion and offers redemption from the dark
truth. A need to see the 'whole' emerges from this necessary dualism of Apollo and
Dionysos.
The 'whole' for Nietzsche is indivisible in some ways, "But nothing exists apart
from the whole". He also states". . . that whatever exist is of a piece". Yet
he states in regard to an actual drama that the Apollonian and Dionysian can be seen as
having "two completely separate spheres of expression". However, when "in a
continuous chain of creation(s), each enhancing the other", only then do they fully
exist.
The singular and, paradoxically, complementary relationship of the Dionysian and the
Apollonian, one could deduce, is on the one hand, what keeps the knowledge of the dark
truth from causing everyone aware of it, including Nietzsche, from committing suicide and
is on the other hand what prevents the rest of us from becoming automatons or totally
deluded. But does his distinction between them reveal something useful to us, especially in
regard to Attic Drama?
The Birth of Tragedy elucidates Nietzsche's belief, like Aristotle's, that Tragedy is
the superior expression of poetry. Unlike Aristotle, Nietzsche propagates the idea that it is
superior because it expresses Dionysian wisdom - but it must be true Tragedy: Aeschylean
Tragedy.
The other side of drama, Comedy, is for Nietzsche less of an issue. He mentions
that it was that "Dionysian frenzy which gave rise to tragedy and comedy alike". He
also states "the character of dramatic speech had been determined by the demi god in
tragedy and the drunken satyr in comedy". Therefore the Dionysian wisdom informs
and inspires both forms of drama.
What of it? If Apollonian illusion provides us with the
delusion that life has purpose, when it can't according to Nietzsche "We invented the
concept purpose. . . ", and if the only value to Dionysian wisdom is the dark
truth, how useful can Nietzsche's distinction be? How useful is it to know this distinction
by the vehicle of Attic Drama?
For Nietzsche we should never ask the question of use,
". . . one must never ask whether truth is useful or whether it is a fatality" . But
if he would allow us to ask the question his own words tell us that knowing his truth,
making this distinction, is not useful except as part of one's need for illusion.
Nietzsche leads his reader by the supple logic and explanatory powers he brings to
bear, despite the fact that it is only " illusion that thought, guided by the thread of
causation, might plumb the farthest abysses of being and even correct it". He demands
us to 'know thyself' despite the evil of individuation. He seduces with the same reason
with which he condemns reason. He paraphrases Socrates, as the centre of his attack, with
the axiom, ". . . knowledge alone makes men virtuous", as part of his ridicule of
reason, then claims we must believe his ideas: why should we? Why does he try to make
us know this? It is because he wants us to be virtuous in his light, "Revaluation of all
values: that is my formula for an act of supreme coming-to-oneself on the part of
mankind which in me has become flesh and genius. It is my fate to have become the first
decent human being".
In other ways Nietzsche unwittingly mocks his distinctions. For example, if
Dionysian spirit is essentially facing the dark truth, that one's life is second best if it is
short, best if not lived at all, then why does he say that Socrates should be criticized
because "with complete lucidity of mind and in the absence of every natural fear of death,
insisted on it "(death). While in other areas he heaps, in his mind, derision on
weakness in the face of the dark truth: "This womanish escape".
Attic drama, art and life exist as part of a 'whole', the Janus face of Dionysian and
Apollonian forces; and somehow this whole is threatened by two men, Socrates and
Euripides. According to Nietzsche they destroyed the Dionysian and also unintentionally
destroyed the Apollonian to replace them with "cold paradoxical ideas". How useful
then, if we can ask that question, is the distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian
spirits, when talking about Tragedy or Comedy. If it died twenty-four hundred years ago, had
two true exponents in Tragedy, Aeschylus and Sophocles, and everything since
its offspring, New Attic Comedy, has been a counterfeit species. How useful is it? Can any
revival of his dualism, or of the spirits engendered, ever give birth to it again considering
how short and fragile its existence was. If the dark truth must be faced in this case perhaps it would
have been best if Attic Drama had never existed at all. Barring that, a short life was second
best. What is it that Nietzsche is trying to do with all this effort? The key words are
prologue, history and conquest.
He is under the Euripidean delusion that the dark truth in Tragedy, which by his
own account stands without need of explanation, is now in need of The Birth of Tragedy,
which serves for the humble masses, and for those in need of rational explanation, as a
prologue for understanding his idea of true art. But as he condemns Euripides belief that
explaining Tragedy was necessary, he is explaining Tragedy. Perhaps explanation helps him
achieve something.
He states, "The Euripidean prologue may serve to illustrate the efficacy
of that rationalist method". Where is he going with us?
What he does next is to take myth and turn it into historical fact. He takes out of
the realm of myths the trappings of the myths, Dionysian and Apollonian myths to be
exact, and makes this claim, "We have tried to illustrate by this historical example how
tragedy, being a product of the spirit of music, must surely perish by the destruction of
that spirit". Yet turning myth into history is what he despises, "For it is the lot of
every myth to creep gradually into the narrows Of historical fact. . .It is
the sure sign of the death of a (true) religion when its mythic presuppositions become
systematized, under the severe, rational eyes of an orthodox dogmatism, into a ready sum
of historical events. . ." Finally he is ready to reveal his aims.
The conquest he wants to achieve is one of understanding, the one he describes as
Socratic, "Whoever has tasted the delight of a Socratic perception, experienced how it
moves to encompass the whole world of phenomena in ever widening circles, knows no
sharper incentive to life than his desire to complete the conquest, to weave the net
absolutely tight." He knows this kind of understanding and he relishes the idea that he
can not only rationalize the dark truth but that he has the power of a god to enlighten his
reader, "You, my friends, who believe in Dionysian music, also know what tragedy means
to us. In tragedy the tragic myth is reborn from the matrix of music. It inspires
the most extravagant hopes and promises oblivion of the bitterest pain. But for all
of us the most bitter pain has been the long humiliation which German genius has
had to suffer in the vassalage of evil dwarfs. You will understand my meaning, as
you will understand the nature of my hopes".
The whole exercise is an Apollonian delusion to make us understand something
he himself doesn't want to believe, which is that the dark truth is something we should want
to escape from, and ironically it is precisely the Dionysian spirit which he says is the dark
truth that will offer us oblivion from our bitterest fears.
In the end, The Birth of Tragedy and Nietzsche are found to be self defeating. He
does not want to be useful, or helpful, yet he trys to be. He wants to make distinctions
between truth and illusion and ends up, himself, wanting illusion in order to avoid the dark
truth. He wants us to understand him but what we are to understand is that if we don't
believe his ideas on Drama that we will continue to live under the "vassalage of evil
dwarfs". Whether he is trying to explain Comedy, Tragedy, art or the whole of life by his
words, in essence it does not matter. He fails to do anything but create further illusions
for both himself and his audience.
GRH
philosophers
Wikipedia's Nietzsche Overview
