The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism

Frederick Nietzsche was born at Röcken near Lützen, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on the 15th of October 1844, at 10 a.m. The day happened to be the anniversary of the bir...

The most sorrowful figure of the Greek stage, the hapless _Œdipus,_ was understood by Sophocles as the noble man, who in spite of his wisdom was destined to error and misery, bu...

We now approach the real purpose of our investigation, which aims at acquiring a knowledge of the Dionyso-Apollonian genius and his art-work, or at least an anticipatory underst...

In another direction also we see at work the power of this un-Dionysian, myth-opposing spirit, when we turn our eyes to the prevalence of _character representation_ and psycholo...

The most decisive word, however, for this new and unprecedented esteem of knowledge and insight was spoken by Socrates when he found that he was the only one who acknowledged to...

But now science, spurred on by its powerful illusion, hastens irresistibly to its limits, on which its optimism, hidden in the essence of logic, is wrecked. For the periphery of...

My friend, just this is poet's task: His dreams to read and to unmask. Trust me, illusion's truths thrice sealed In dream to man will be revealed. All verse-craft and poetisatio...

But the tradition which is so explicit here speaks against Schlegel: the chorus as such, without the stage,--the primitive form of tragedy,--and the chorus of ideal spectators d...

The features of the opera therefore do not by any means exhibit the elegiac sorrow of an eternal loss, but rather the cheerfulness of eternal rediscovery, the indolent delight i...

We have approached this condition in the most striking manner since the reawakening of the Alexandro--Roman antiquity in the fifteenth century, after a long, not easily describa...

Already in the foreword to Richard Wagner, art---and _not_ morality--is set down as the properly _metaphysical_ activity of man; in the book itself the piquant proposition recur...

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...

Thus does the Apollonian wrest us from Dionysian universality and fill us with rapture for individuals; to these it rivets our sympathetic emotion, through these it satisfies th...

Musing deeply, the worthy councillors and professors walked homeward. What had they just heard? A young scholar discussing the very justification of his own science in a cool an...

While the translator flatters himself that this version of Nietzsche's early work--having been submitted to unsparingly scrutinising eyes--is not altogether unworthy of the orig...