Birth and Rebirth in Nietzsche's Die Geburt der Tragödie

There's no simple way to talk about The Birth of Tragedy. As many note, it's "a young man's work;" Nietzsche felt compelled to write it, and equally compelled, many years later, to take it apart, regretting especially sections 16 - 25 which foretell a German cultural rebirth, thanks to the midwifely exertions of Richard Wagner in the wake of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer.

What's clear is that in writing it, Nietzsche was committing professional suicide, as Marianne Cowan notes in her intro to Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks:

The Birth of Tragedy presented a view of the Greeks so alien to the spirit of the time and to the ideals of its scholarship that it blighted Nietzsche's entire academic career. It provoked pamphlets and counter-pamphlets attacking him on the grounds of common sense, scholarship and sanity. For a time, Nietzsche, then a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, had no students in his field. His lectures were sabotaged by German philosophy professors who advised their students not to show up for Nietzsche's courses. WP

It seems fair to say that Nietzsche wrote under the pressure of several enthusiasms: for Greek culture (especially early tragedy); for music (especially that of Wagner); for epistemological questions (represented mainly by Kant); as well as by several critical obsessions -- a detestation of his contemporary German world of newspapers, politics, "Alexandrian" music and decadent sensibility.

So he tells us a story of the birth of an art form - tragedy - out of the spirit of another art form - music. What follows is merely an effort to describe and summarize his argument.

Nietzsche referred to the nature of the relation of Apollo and Dionysus as "the capital question" (die Hauptfrage). In Nietzsche's story, they tend to be associated with a variety of artistic and cultural polarities, e.g., painting vs. music, verbal differentiation vs. harmonic unity, the power of statement vs. the power of voice, culture vs. nature, science vs. art, prose vs. poetry, classic vs. romantic, spatial vs. temporal, eye vs. ear, stillness vs. motion, recognition vs. revelation, contemplation vs. action, figurative vs. proper* meaning, and the like.

The Apollonian dream is an unavoidable, uncontrolled response (it holds out "the head of Medusa" (sect. 2))  that shelters us from the sheer annihilative power of Dionysus. At the heart of Greek tragedy is the chorus of dancing satyrs -- not optimistic middle-class cafe goers -- who are rapt in an apprehension of the God who dissolves all that is, and because that apprehension is intolerable, a dreamlike realm of extraordinary beauty is thrown up as a shield -- the tragic hero and his tale, on the stage.

So we have the originary progenitor, Dionysus, only apprehended through music, who fathers, or causes, the counterblow of the plastic, visual realm of the Apollonian. In tragedy these two art forms, or modes, strike a balance that is perfect in Aeschylus, already slipping in Sophocles, and, by the time of Euripides, whom Nietzsche accuses along with Socrates of destroying music, is thoroughly debased.

Just as Euripides reduced the gods and heroes from mythic stature to characters not unlike ourselves in his plays, Socrates placed the word, the intellect, the logic and method of scientific inquiry above the wild dance of the satyrs, and has led us on a voyage of discovery unlike anything that came before. Socrates is the major articulation in Nietzsche's "history," since he at once ends the glory days of Dionysus and Apollo, and begins the voyage of the scientific mind.

Science gives us the world made over in an image the human mind can fathom. But look around us, Nietzsche says -- do we see a culture that nourishes Homeric visions and Aeschylean magic? Something important has been left out -- ignored, suppressed, or destroyed -- along the way. In section 15, the original ending of the book, the good ship Socrates runs into trouble:

But science, spurred by its powerful illusion, speeds irresistibly toward its limits where its optimism, concealed in the essence of logic, suffers shipwreck. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points; and while there is no telling how this circle could ever be surveyed completely, noble and gifted men nevertheless reach, e'er half their time and inevitably, such boundary points (Grenzpunkte) on the periphery from which one gazes into what defies illumination. When they see to their horror how logic coils up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail -- suddenly the new form of insight breaks through, tragic insight which, merely to be endured, needs art as a protection and remedy. (Kaufmann trans. p. 97-98).

Nun aber eilt die Wissenschaft, von ihrem kräftigen Wahne angespornt, unaufhaltsam bis zu ihren Grenzen, an denen ihr im Wesen der Logik verborgener Optimismus scheitert. Denn die Peripherie des Kreises der Wissenschaft hat unendlich viele Punkte, und während noch gar nicht abzusehen ist, wie jemals der Kreis völlig ausgemessen werden könnte, so trifft doch der edle und begabte Mensch, noch vor der Mitte seines Daseins und unvermeidlich, auf solche Grenzpunkte der Peripherie, wo er in das Unaufhellbare starrt. Wenn er hier zu seinem Schrecken sieht, wie die Logik sich an diesen Grenzen um sich selbst ringelt und endlich sich in den Schwanz beisst - da bricht die neue Form der Erkenntniss durch, die tragische Erkenntniss, die, um nur ertragen zu werden, als Schutz und Heilmittel die Kunst braucht. Project Gutenberg EBook.

A few interpretive comments: Nietzsche tells a story of origin which becomes a story of destiny. The logic of his narrative presents Apollo, Dionysus, and Socrates as three interrelated entities who are necessary to each other even as they remain,  in various and not simple ways, antagonists. Smiling Socrates ended the tragic Dionysian era, and at the end of his scientific quest, inevitably (unvermeidlich), lies the horror that lay behind the glorious culture he killed, auguring a new tragic culture on the horizon.

In the sections following 15 we hear strains of another Nietzsche -- not the cool analytic philologist or gifted philosopher of aesthetics, but Nietzsche the scathing critic of contemporary society. A prophetic note enters as he foresees a new beginning in which Germany is to play a central role. We may sense that the book founders at this point, but it seems doomed to do by the structure of its argument. Like the head of the ourobouros, the seeds of that future rebirth are there from the beginning of his tale.

*This particular polarity is made much of by Paul de Man.

Blind poets and prophets

In addition to Thamyris, Milton mentions Homer, Phineas, and Tiresias in his invocation to Book III:

Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, [ 35 ]

And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.

The common thread is that all were blind. At least three were blinded by the gods as a form of punishment, or limitation. Thamyris, as we've seen, lost his sight for his hubris in challenging the muses.

Phineas

Phineas features in the story of Jason and the Argonauts: [He] was said to be a son of Poseidon, or of Phoenix, and had the gift of prophecy. Zeus, angry that Phineas revealed too much of the plans of the gods, punished him by blinding him and setting him on an island with a buffet of food. However, he could eat none of it because the harpies, vicious, winged women, stole the food out of his hands right before he could eat.^[1] This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts. They sent the winged heroes, the Boreads, after the harpies. They succeeded in driving the monsters away but did not kill them, as a request from the goddess of the rainbow, Iris, who promised that Phineas would not be bothered by the harpies again. It is said that the Boreads were turned back by Iris at the Strophades.[2]As thanks, Phineas told the Argonauts how to pass the Symplegades.

Tiresias

Tiresias was a prophet of Apollo. According to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke,^[3] different stories were told of the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. An alternate story told by the poet Pherecydes was followed in Callimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas"; in it, Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked.^[4] His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged Athena to undo her curse, but the goddess could not; instead, she cleaned his ears,^[3] giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury.

Homer

The poet's name is homophonous with ὅμερος (hómēros), meaning, generally, "hostage" (or "surety"), long understood as "he who accompanies; he who is forced to follow", or, in some dialects, "blind".^[19] The assonance itself generated many tales relating the person to the functions of a hostage or of a blind man. In regard to the latter, traditions holding that he was blind may have arisen from the meaning of the word both in Ionic, where the verbal form ὁμηρεύω (homēreúō) has the specialized meaning of "guide the blind",^[20] and in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme, where ὅμηρος (hómēros) was synonymous with standard Greek τυφλός (tuphlós), meaning 'blind'.^[21]

It should be noted that the names of these famous Greek poets and prophets come after the description of the poet's chief haunt:

Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath

That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,

and before the evocation of the nightingale, whose bloody tale has been evoked by Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Eliot and many others:

Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move

Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird

Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid

Tunes her nocturnal Note.

Thamyris

Yet not the more

Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt

Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill,

Smit with the love of sacred Song; but chief

Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath [ 30 ]

That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,

Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget

Those other two equal'd with me in Fate,

So were I equal'd with them in renown,

Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, [ 35 ]

And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old Milton's allusion to Thamyris in the Book III invocation is usually traced back to Homer's passing mention of the bard amid the catalog in Iliad II:

and Dorium, [595] where the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian and made an end of his singing, even as he was journeying from Oechalia, from the house of Eurytus the Oechalian: for he vaunted with boasting that he would conquer, were the Muses themselves to sing against him, the daughters of Zeus that beareth the aegis; but they in their wrath maimed him, [600] and took from him his wondrous song, and made him forget his minstrelsy; 

There's a somewhat richer locus classicus in Apollodorus (actually Pseudo-Apollodorus)'s Library 1.3, which offers not just a genealogy of the great singers beginning from Zeus, but also the incidental fact that he was the lover of Hyacinth (remember him from The Wasteland?}:

Now Zeus wedded Hera and begat Hebe, Ilithyia, and Ares,¹ but he had intercourse with many women, both mortals and immortals. By Themis, daughter of Sky, he had daughters, the Seasons, to wit, Peace, Order, and Justice; also the Fates, to wit, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropus;² by Dione he had Aphrodite;³ by Eurynome, daughter of Ocean, he had the Graces, to wit, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia;⁴ by Styx he had Persephone;⁵ and by Memory（Mnemosyne）he had the Muses, first Calliope, then Clio, Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Urania, Thalia, and Polymnia.⁶ [2]

Now Calliope bore to Oeagrus or, nominally, to Apollo, a son Linus,⁷ whom Hercules slew; and another son, Orpheus,⁸ who practised minstrelsy and by his songs moved stones and trees. And when his wife Eurydice died, bitten by a snake, he went down to Hades, being fain to bring her up,⁹ and he persuaded Pluto to send her up. The god promised to do so, if on the way Orpheus would not turn round until he should be come to his own house. But he disobeyed and turning round beheld his wife; so she turned back. Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus,¹⁰ and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads¹¹ he is buried in Pieria. [3] Clio fell in love with Pierus, son of Magnes, in consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, whom she had twitted with her love of Adonis; and having met him she bore him a son Hyacinth, for whom Thamyris the son of Philammon and a nymph Argiope, conceived a passion, he being the first to become enamored of males. But afterwards Apollo loved Hyacinth and killed him involuntarily by the cast of a quoit.¹² And Thamyris who excelled in beauty and in minstrelsy, engaged in a musical contest with the Muses, the agreement being that, if he won, he should enjoy them all, but that if he should be vanquished he should be bereft of what they would. So the Muses got the better of him and bereft him both of his eyes and of his minstrelsy.¹³ [4] Euterpe had by the river Strymon a son Rhesus, whom Diomedes slew at Troy;¹⁴ but some say his mother was Calliope. Thalia had by Apollo the Corybantes;¹⁵ and Melpomene had by Achelous the Sirens, of whom we shall speak in treating of Ulysses.¹⁶ [5]

Pausanias describes a painting of the defeated Thamyris:

 In this part of the painting is Schedius, who led the Phocians to Troy, and after him is Pelias, sitting on a chair, with grey hair and grey beard, and looking at Orpheus. Schedius holds a dagger and is crowned with grass. Thamyris is sitting near Pelias. He has lost the sight of his eyes; his attitude is one of utter dejection; his hair and beard are long; at his feet lies thrown a lyre with its horns and strings broken.


 Interestingly, in his invocation to Apollo in Paradiso I, Dante alludes to another challenger of divine poetic power - Marsyas the satyr, who was skinned for his hubris.

O buono Appollo, a l'ultimo lavoro
fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso,
come dimandi a dar l'amato alloro.

O good Apollo, for this final task
make me the vessel of your excellence,
what you, to merit your loved laurel, ask.

Infino a qui l'un giogo di Parnaso
assai mi fu; ma or con amendue
m'è uopo intrar ne l'aringo rimaso.

Until this point, one of Parnassus' peaks
sufficed for me; but now I face the test
the agon that is left; I need both crests.

Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue
sì come quando Marsia traesti
de la vagina de le membra sue.

Enter into my breast; within me breathe
the very power you made manifest
when you drew Marsyas out from his limbs' sheath.