The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music (Penguin Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), Michael Tanner (Editor), Shaun Whiteside (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: January 1, 1995

A compelling argument for the necessity for art in life, Nietzsche's first book is fuelled by his enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the philosophy of Schopenhauer and for the music of Wagner, to whom this work was dedicated. Nietzsche outlined a distinction between its two central forces: the Apolline, representing beauty and order, and the Dionysiac, a primal or ecstatic reaction to the sublime. 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. Impassioned and exhilarating in its conviction, "The Birth of Tragedy" has become a key text in European culture and in literary criticism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

(in full The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music) Book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1872 as Die Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik. A speculative rather than exegetical work, The Birth of Tragedy examines the origins and development of poetry, specifically Greek tragedy. Nietzsche argues that Greek tragedy arose out of the fusion of what he termed Apollonian and Dionysian elements--the former representing measure, restraint, harmony, and the latter unbridled passion--and that Socratic rationalism and optimism spelled the death of Greek tragedy. The final part of the book is a rhapsody on the rebirth of tragedy from the spirit of Wagner's music. Greeted by stony silence at first, the book became the object of heated controversy for those who mistook it for a conventional work of classical scholarship. It remains a classic in the history of aesthetics. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140433392
• ISBN-13: 978-0140433395
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dialectic model of Art, January 13, 2000

By 

Chris Coulter "dionysiac" (Hollywood, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Since the only other review is fairly obtuse about this book, it seems necessary to write another. If you consider yourself a creative entity, an artist, a musician, a filmmaker, a writer; then this book should be required reading. It describes two opposing "forces", Apollo and Dionysus, who are in perpetual conflict. From this conflict, all great art is born.

It is a dialectic, Thesis meets Antithesis to beget Synthesis.

The real point is though, after reading the book, you look for these opposing forces in everyday life and find them everywhere. Man and woman, religion and science, good and evil (for rudimentary examples). After reading the book it was apparent how much of this world is constructed out of, and centered on, opposition. It's like Matt Modine's helmet in Full Metal Jacket, man is a creature with inherent duality.

The Birth of Tragedy touches on something so essential and instinctually true to our existence that it can only vaguely be explained in words. Nietszche knows this and presents the concept as eloquently and clearly as it allows. It is up to the reader to take this knowledge as a starting point and explore deeper into their own individual experience and perspective.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Existence and the world seem justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon, May 3, 2010

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

F. Nietzsche expresses in a raging and delirious style loudly his vision on life, through his interpretation of the Attic tragedy and its history. He exposes himself as an anti-rational, anti-scientific, amoral romanticist, for whom art is the only truly metaphysical activity of man.

Apollo v. Dionysus
The gods Apollo and Dionysus represent two completely antagonistic lifestyles.
The Apollinian one stands for measured restraint and freedom from wild emotions. It is based on the principium individuationis (the individual). Its main art form is sculpture; in literature the epic form (Homeros).
The Dionysian one stands for ecstasy, intoxication, orgiastic frenzy, sexual licentiousness, savage natural instincts. It is the life of the bearded satyr, a symbol of the sexual omnipotence of nature, of the abolition of the individual man. Its art form is music, song and dance; in literature, it is the poetry of an Archilochus with its cries of hatred and scorn, with his drunken outburst of desire.

Socrates
For Nietzsche, Socrates has the profound illusion that thought, using the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abyss of being. He is guided by the instinct of science, which for Nietzsche is a chain for humanity. Socrates stands for morality with its dictum: `knowledge is virtue; man sins only from ignorance; he who is virtuous is happy.' Socratism stands for morality, for `the anarchical dissolution of the instincts.'

The Attic tragedy
For Nietzsche, the Attic tragedy is born out of the Dionysian. It arose from the tragic chorus, the mirror image in which the Dionysian man contemplated himself. It was a chorus of natural beings who were (are) living ineradicably behind all civilization. It represents the rapture of the Dionysian state.
The choral parts gave birth to a dialogue. Drama began with the attempt to show the god in real. The earliest forms of the Greek tragedy had the sufferings of the tragic hero, Dionysus, (the agony of individuation) as sole theme.
The decline began with Sophocles who portrays complete characters and the Attic tragedy ended with Euripides, who draws prominent individual traits of character. Euripides is the exponent of the degenerate culture of Socratism and its morality. For him, `to be beautiful, everything must be conscious.'
Only after the spirit of science and its claim to universal validity is destroyed may we hope for a rebirth of tragedy.

Art, Hellenism and pessimism
The Hellene lost his Dionysian instincts. He became an individual confronted with the horror and absurdity of life. But art was (is) a saving sorceress. She alone knew (knows) how to turn the nauseous thoughts about life into the sublime which tamed the horrible and into the comic which discharged absurdity.

Of course, this book is not Nietzsche's best one. It constitutes a highly personal interpretation of the Greek tragedy. But, its overall vision of art as the savior and the solace of the ex-Dionysians will strongly appeal to many.
Not to be missed.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The celebration of Irrational Energy, November 1, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Prior to Nietzsche the Greeks had been celebrated for their great calm and rationality. Nietzsche pointed to the irrational,passionate , energetic elements, the Dionysian force which contended with life and death as central element of the Greek Reality. The 'Birth of Tragedy (1872) is his first book but already present are his tremendous power to shock, his aphoristic brilliance, his effort to ' turn the tables' and break the mold of our ordinary thinking.
He himself says in describing the Birth of Tragedy" connects us with that which counters the Periclean desire for the beautiful and the good. He sees a desire preceding the desire for the good and the beautiful, " namely, the desire for the ugly or the good strong willing of the ancient Hellenes for pessimism, for tragic myth, for pictures of everything fearful, angry, enigmatic, destructive, and fateful as the basis of existence? Where must tragedy come from? Perhaps out of desire, out of power, out of overflowing health, out of overwhelming fullness of life?"

In his enthusiasm Nietzsche condemns the Socratic caution which will come afterwards,and which he claims will come to dominate the thought of the Christian West.