[BOOKCLUB]

[SYMPOSIUM] BOOK CLUB
Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy

Friday, 12 April 2019, 6:30pm – 9pm
LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES
Closest stations: Whitechapel / Aldgate East
Facilitated by Nat Pimlott
Suggested donation £2, booking via Eventbrite

DOWNLOAD Friedrich Nietzsche (2003/1872). The Birth of Tragedy. Blackmask Online. Chapters 1, 16, 17, 23 and 24 (please note this starts from Chapter 1 after the introduction by Nietzsche titled an ‘Attempt at self criticism’ (1886) further down on the PDF under the title the Birth of tragedy).

Markus Lüpertz [1965] Schuhabdruck—dithyrambisch (Shoe print—Dithyrambic). Ströher Collection, Darmstadt, Germany.
Markus Lüpertz [1965] Schuhabdruck—dithyrambisch (Shoe print—Dithyrambic). Ströher Collection, Darmstadt, Germany.

The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s first book, published in 1872 when he was 28, is both a historical study of the origins of Greek tragedy and a complex and compelling argument for the necessity for art in life.

Markus Lüpertz [1965] Schuhabdruck—dithyrambisch (Shoe print—Dithyrambic). Ströher Collection, Darmstadt, Germany.
Markus Lüpertz [1965] Schuhabdruck—dithyrambisch (Shoe print—Dithyrambic). Ströher Collection, Darmstadt, Germany.

In the Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche describes two competing impulses in Greek culture – the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

Apollo as the god of the plastic or representational arts of painting and sculpture, is associated with beauty and order.

Dionysus in contrast is the god of the non-representational art of music, and associated with flux, mysticism and excess. Through music man is given a true glimpse into the nature of life, and the dissolution of individual identity in communion with nature.

While the Apollonian artist is associated with light and clarity, the Dionysian offers an insight into the darker side of life, a confrontation with the pain and destruction of existence.

Nietzsche argues that these forces and artistic tendencies which were in conflict were merged in Attic tragedy with the combination of the musical chorus and poetry. He believed the combination of these states produced the highest forms of music and tragic drama, which not only reveal the truth about suffering in life, but also provide a consolation for it.

While this mixture of competing forces was richly realised in  Attic tragedy Nietzsche traces how the arrival of Socratic culture which prioritised the purely intellectual and rational led to the destruction of myth and the art of the tragedy.

In the second half of the Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche uses this framework as the basis of a critique of the rationalism of late nineteenth-century German culture.

In its wide-ranging discussion of the nature of art, science and religion, Nietzsche’s argument raises questions about the vitality and nature of culture in a secular, rationalist modern world.

It contains themes that will remain important in Nietzsche’s later work – including the ‘will’ (an ultimate force which determines human life which will become in his later work the ‘will to power’) and, as he sets out in his preface to the second edition, a critique of Christianity and modern science as forms of belief that he argues do not bring man close to the real meaning of life.

It also contains the roots of arguments that have proven to be some of Nietzsche’s most influential. It’s critique of rationalism in western culture links it to modernism; in it’s focus on dreams and the origins underlying latent content it also seems to have links to psychoanalysis; and in his search for the unknown origin behind avowed or accepted ones it also presages the work of post-structuralists such as Derrida, whose own work depends on disputing of accepted interpretations and origins.

The birth of tragedy has become one of Nietzsche’s best known and most influential books and a source of a challenging rich argument for how aesthetic experience relates to the meaning of life and other questions that remain central to the practice of art and criticism today.

Questions

  • What is the Apollonian and Dionysian? Is this opposition the right one?
  • Are there other forces that need to be considered? and is it relevant in interpreting art today?
  • How does rationalism and science shape modern culture?
  • What role can myth play in culture now?
  • Is aesthetic experience the only truth in a secular world?
  • Where is the Apollonian and Dionysian in modern culture? Does the Dionysian need revival?

Suggested further reading