i.

whatever may lie at the bottom of this doubtful book must be a question of the first rank and attractiveness, moreover a deeply personal question,—in proof thereof observe the time in which it originated, in spite of which it originated, the exciting period of the franco-german war of 1870-71. while the thunder of the battle of w?rth rolled over europe, the ruminator and riddle-lover, who had to be the parent of this book, sat somewhere in a nook of the alps, lost in riddles and ruminations, consequently very much concerned and unconcerned at the same time, and wrote down his meditations on the greeks,—the kernel of the curious and almost inaccessible book, to which this belated prologue (or epilogue) is to be devoted. a few weeks later: and he found himself under the walls of metz, still wrestling with the notes of interrogation he had set down concerning the alleged "cheerfulness" of the greeks and of greek art; till at last, in that month of[pg 2] deep suspense, when peace was debated at versailles, he too attained to peace with himself, and, slowly recovering from a disease brought home from the field, made up his mind definitely regarding the "birth of tragedy from the spirit of music."—from music? music and tragedy? greeks and tragic music? greeks and the art-work of pessimism? a race of men, well-fashioned, beautiful, envied, life-inspiring, like no other race hitherto, the greeks—indeed? the greeks were in need of tragedy? yea—of art? wherefore—greek art?...

we can thus guess where the great note of interrogation concerning the value of existence had been set. is pessimism necessarily the sign of decline, of decay, of failure, of exhausted and weakened instincts?—as was the case with the indians, as is, to all appearance, the case with us "modern" men and europeans? is there a pessimism of strength? an intellectual predilection for what is hard, awful, evil, problematical in existence, owing to well-being, to exuberant health, to fullness of existence? is there perhaps suffering in overfullness itself? a seductive fortitude with the keenest of glances, which yearns for the terrible, as for the enemy, the worthy enemy, with whom it may try its strength? from whom it is willing to learn what "fear" is? what means tragic myth to the greeks of the best, strongest, bravest era? and the prodigious phenomenon of the dionysian? and that which was born thereof, tragedy?—and again: that of which tragedy died, the socratism of morality, the dialectics,[pg 3] contentedness and cheerfulness of the theoretical man—indeed? might not this very socratism be a sign of decline, of weariness, of disease, of anarchically disintegrating instincts? and the "hellenic cheerfulness" of the later hellenism merely a glowing sunset? the epicurean will counter to pessimism merely a precaution of the sufferer? and science itself, our science—ay, viewed as a symptom of life, what really signifies all science? whither, worse still, whence—all science? well? is scientism perhaps only fear and evasion of pessimism? a subtle defence against—truth! morally speaking, something like falsehood and cowardice? and, unmorally speaking, an artifice? o socrates, socrates, was this perhaps thy secret? oh mysterious ironist, was this perhaps thine—irony?...

2.

what i then laid hands on, something terrible and dangerous, a problem with horns, not necessarily a bull itself, but at all events a new problem: i should say to-day it was the problem of science itself—science conceived for the first time as problematic, as questionable. but the book, in which my youthful ardour and suspicion then discharged themselves—what an impossible book must needs grow out of a task so disagreeable to youth. constructed of nought but precocious, unripened self-experiences, all of which lay close to the threshold of the communicable, based on the groundwork of[pg 4] art—for the problem of science cannot be discerned on the groundwork of science,—a book perhaps for artists, with collateral analytical and retrospective aptitudes (that is, an exceptional kind of artists, for whom one must seek and does not even care to seek ...), full of psychological innovations and artists' secrets, with an artists' metaphysics in the background, a work of youth, full of youth's mettle and youth's melancholy, independent, defiantly self-sufficient even when it seems to bow to some authority and self-veneration; in short, a firstling-work, even in every bad sense of the term; in spite of its senile problem, affected with every fault of youth, above all with youth's prolixity and youth's "storm and stress": on the other hand, in view of the success it had (especially with the great artist to whom it addressed itself, as it were, in a duologue, richard wagner) a demonstrated book, i mean a book which, at any rate, sufficed "for the best of its time." on this account, if for no other reason, it should be treated with some consideration and reserve; yet i shall not altogether conceal how disagreeable it now appears to me, how after sixteen years it stands a total stranger before me,—before an eye which is more mature, and a hundred times more fastidious, but which has by no means grown colder nor lost any of its interest in that self-same task essayed for the first time by this daring book,—to view science through the optics of the artist, and art moreover through the optics of life....

[pg 5]

3.

i say again, to-day it is an impossible book to me,—i call it badly written, heavy, painful, image-angling and image-entangling, maudlin, sugared at times even to femininism, uneven in tempo, void of the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore rising above the necessity of demonstration, distrustful even of the propriety of demonstration, as being a book for initiates, as "music" for those who are baptised with the name of music, who are united from the beginning of things by common ties of rare experiences in art, as a countersign for blood-relations in artibus.—a haughty and fantastic book, which from the very first withdraws even more from the profanum vulgus of the "cultured" than from the "people," but which also, as its effect has shown and still shows, knows very well how to seek fellow-enthusiasts and lure them to new by-ways and dancing-grounds. here, at any rate—thus much was acknowledged with curiosity as well as with aversion—a strange voice spoke, the disciple of a still "unknown god," who for the time being had hidden himself under the hood of the scholar, under the german's gravity and disinclination for dialectics, even under the bad manners of the wagnerian; here was a spirit with strange and still nameless needs, a memory bristling with questions, experiences and obscurities, beside which stood the name dionysos like one more note of interrogation; here spoke—people said to themselves with misgivings—[pg 6] something like a mystic and almost m?nadic soul, which, undecided whether it should disclose or conceal itself, stammers with an effort and capriciously as in a strange tongue. it should have sung, this "new soul"—and not spoken! what a pity, that i did not dare to say what i then had to say, as a poet: i could have done so perhaps! or at least as a philologist:—for even at the present day well-nigh everything in this domain remains to be discovered and disinterred by the philologist! above all the problem, that here there is a problem before us,—and that, so long as we have no answer to the question "what is dionysian?" the greeks are now as ever wholly unknown and inconceivable....

4.

ay, what is dionysian?—in this book may be found an answer,—a "knowing one" speaks here, the votary and disciple of his god. perhaps i should now speak more guardedly and less eloquently of a psychological question so difficult as the origin of tragedy among the greeks. a fundamental question is the relation of the greek to pain, his degree of sensibility,—did this relation remain constant? or did it veer about?—the question, whether his ever-increasing longing for beauty, for festivals, gaieties, new cults, did really grow out of want, privation, melancholy, pain? for suppose even this to be true—and pericles (or thucydides) intimates as much in the great funeral speech:—whence then the opposite[pg 7] longing, which appeared first in the order of time, the longing for the ugly, the good, resolute desire of the old hellene for pessimism, for tragic myth, for the picture of all that is terrible, evil, enigmatical, destructive, fatal at the basis of existence,—whence then must tragedy have sprung? perhaps from joy, from strength, from exuberant health, from over-fullness. and what then, physiologically speaking, is the meaning of that madness, out of which comic as well as tragic art has grown, the dionysian madness? what? perhaps madness is not necessarily the symptom of degeneration, of decline, of belated culture? perhaps there are—a question for alienists—neuroses of health? of folk-youth and youthfulness? what does that synthesis of god and goat in the satyr point to? what self-experience what "stress," made the greek think of the dionysian reveller and primitive man as a satyr? and as regards the origin of the tragic chorus: perhaps there were endemic ecstasies in the eras when the greek body bloomed and the greek soul brimmed over with life? visions and hallucinations, which took hold of entire communities, entire cult-assemblies? what if the greeks in the very wealth of their youth had the will to be tragic and were pessimists? what if it was madness itself, to use a word of plato's, which brought the greatest blessings upon hellas? and what if, on the other hand and conversely, at the very time of their dissolution and weakness, the greeks became always more optimistic, more superficial, more histrionic, also more ardent for logic and the[pg 8] logicising of the world,—consequently at the same time more "cheerful" and more "scientific"? ay, despite all "modern ideas" and prejudices of the democratic taste, may not the triumph of optimism, the common sense that has gained the upper hand, the practical and theoretical utilitarianism, like democracy itself, with which it is synchronous—be symptomatic of declining vigour, of approaching age, of physiological weariness? and not at all—pessimism? was epicurus an optimist—because a sufferer?... we see it is a whole bundle of weighty questions which this book has taken upon itself,—let us not fail to add its weightiest question! viewed through the optics of life, what is the meaning of—morality?...

5.

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 recurs time and again, that the existence of the world is justified only as an ?sthetic phenomenon. indeed, the entire book recognises only an artist-thought and artist-after-thought behind all occurrences,—a "god," if you will, but certainly only an altogether thoughtless and unmoral artist-god, who, in construction as in destruction, in good as in evil, desires to become conscious of his own equable joy and sovereign glory; who, in creating worlds, frees himself from the anguish of fullness and overfullness, from the suffering of the contradictions[pg 9] concentrated within him. the world, that is, the redemption of god attained at every moment, as the perpetually changing, perpetually new vision of the most suffering, most antithetical, most contradictory being, who contrives to redeem himself only in appearance: this entire artist-metaphysics, call it arbitrary, idle, fantastic, if you will,—the point is, that it already betrays a spirit, which is determined some day, at all hazards, to make a stand against the moral interpretation and significance of life. here, perhaps for the first time, a pessimism "beyond good and evil" announces itself, here that "perverseness of disposition" obtains expression and formulation, against which schopenhauer never grew tired of hurling beforehand his angriest imprecations and thunderbolts,—a philosophy which dares to put, derogatorily put, morality itself in the world of phenomena, and not only among "phenomena" (in the sense of the idealistic terminus technicus), but among the "illusions," as appearance, semblance, error, interpretation, accommodation, art. perhaps the depth of this antimoral tendency may be best estimated from the guarded and hostile silence with which christianity is treated throughout this book,—christianity, as being the most extravagant burlesque of the moral theme to which mankind has hitherto been obliged to listen. in fact, to the purely ?sthetic world-interpretation and justification taught in this book, there is no greater antithesis than the christian dogma, which is only and will be only moral, and which, with its absolute standards, for instance, its truthfulness[pg 10] of god, relegates—that is, disowns, convicts, condemns—art, all art, to the realm of falsehood. behind such a mode of thought and valuation, which, if at all genuine, must be hostile to art, i always experienced what was hostile to life, the wrathful, vindictive counterwill to life itself: for all life rests on appearance, art, illusion, optics, necessity of perspective and error. from the very first christianity was, essentially and thoroughly, the nausea and surfeit of life for life, which only disguised, concealed and decked itself out under the belief in "another" or "better" life. the hatred of the "world," the curse on the affections, the fear of beauty and sensuality, another world, invented for the purpose of slandering this world the more, at bottom a longing for. nothingness, for the end, for rest, for the "sabbath of sabbaths"—all this, as also the unconditional will of christianity to recognise only moral values, has always appeared to me as the most dangerous and ominous of all possible forms of a "will to perish"; at the least, as the symptom of a most fatal disease, of profoundest weariness, despondency, exhaustion, impoverishment of life,—for before the tribunal of morality (especially christian, that is, unconditional morality) life must constantly and inevitably be the loser, because life is something essentially unmoral,—indeed, oppressed with the weight of contempt and the everlasting no, life must finally be regarded as unworthy of desire, as in itself unworthy. morality itself what?—may not morality be a "will to disown life," a secret instinct for annihilation, a principle[pg 11] of decay, of depreciation, of slander, a beginning of the end? and, consequently, the danger of dangers?... it was against morality, therefore, that my instinct, as an intercessory-instinct for life, turned in this questionable book, inventing for itself a fundamental counter—dogma and counter-valuation of life, purely artistic, purely anti-christian. what should i call it? as a philologist and man of words i baptised it, not without some liberty—for who could be sure of the proper name of the antichrist?—with the name of a greek god: i called it dionysian.

6.

you see which problem i ventured to touch upon in this early work?... how i now regret, that i had not then the courage (or immodesty?) to allow myself, in all respects, the use of an individual language for such individual contemplations and ventures in the field of thought—that i laboured to express, in kantian and schopenhauerian formul?, strange and new valuations, which ran fundamentally counter to the spirit of kant and schopenhauer, as well as to their taste! what, forsooth, were schopenhauer's views on tragedy? "what gives"—he says in welt als wille und vorstellung, ii. 495—"to all tragedy that singular swing towards elevation, is the awakening of the knowledge that the world, that life, cannot satisfy us thoroughly, and consequently is not worthy of our attachment in this consists the tragic spirit: it therefore leads to resignation." oh, how[pg 12] differently dionysos spoke to me! oh how far from me then was just this entire resignationism!—but there is something far worse in this book, which i now regret even more than having obscured and spoiled dionysian anticipations with schopenhauerian formul?: to wit, that, in general, i spoiled the grand hellenic problem, as it had opened up before me, by the admixture of the most modern things! that i entertained hopes, where nothing was to be hoped for, where everything pointed all-too-clearly to an approaching end! that, on the basis of our latter-day german music, i began to fable about the "spirit of teutonism," as if it were on the point of discovering and returning to itself,—ay, at the very time that the german spirit which not so very long before had had the will to the lordship over europe, the strength to lead and govern europe, testamentarily and conclusively resigned and, under the pompous pretence of empire-founding, effected its transition to mediocritisation, democracy, and "modern ideas." in very fact, i have since learned to regard this "spirit of teutonism" as something to be despaired of and unsparingly treated, as also our present german music, which is romanticism through and through and the most un-grecian of all possible forms of art: and moreover a first-rate nerve-destroyer, doubly dangerous for a people given to drinking and revering the unclear as a virtue, namely, in its twofold capacity of an intoxicating and stupefying narcotic. of course, apart from all precipitate hopes and faulty applications[pg 13] to matters specially modern, with which i then spoiled my first book, the great dionysian note of interrogation, as set down therein, continues standing on and on, even with reference to music: how must we conceive of a music, which is no longer of romantic origin, like the german; but of dionysian?...

7.

—but, my dear sir, if your book is not romanticism, what in the world is? can the deep hatred of the present, of "reality" and "modern ideas" be pushed farther than has been done in your artist-metaphysics?—which would rather believe in nothing, or in the devil, than in the "now"? does not a radical bass of wrath and annihilative pleasure growl on beneath all your contrapuntal vocal art and aural seduction, a mad determination to oppose all that "now" is, a will which is not so very far removed from practical nihilism and which seems to say: "rather let nothing be true, than that you should be in the right, than that your truth should prevail!" hear, yourself, my dear sir pessimist and art-deifier, with ever so unlocked ears, a single select passage of your own book, that not ineloquent dragon-slayer passage, which may sound insidiously rat-charming to young ears and hearts. what? is not that the true blue romanticist-confession of 1830 under the mask of the pessimism of 1850? after which, of course, the usual romanticist finale at once strikes up,—rupture, collapse, return and prostration before an old belief, before the old god....[pg 14] what? is not your pessimist book itself a piece of anti-hellenism and romanticism, something "equally intoxicating and befogging," a narcotic at all events, ay, a piece of music, of german music? but listen:

let us imagine a rising generation with this undauntedness of vision, with this heroic impulse towards the prodigious, let us imagine the bold step of these dragon-slayers, the proud daring with which they turn their backs on all the effeminate doctrines of optimism, in order "to live resolutely" in the whole and in the full: would it not be necessary for the tragic man of this culture, with his self-discipline to earnestness and terror, to desire a new art, the art of metaphysical comfort, tragedy as the helena belonging to him, and that he should exclaim with faust:

"und sollt ich nicht, sehnsüchtigster gewalt,

in's leben ziehn die einzigste gestalt?"[1]

"would it not be necessary?" ... no, thrice no! ye young romanticists: it would not be necessary! but it is very probable, that things may end thus, that ye may end thus, namely "comforted," as it is written, in spite of all self-discipline to earnestness and terror; metaphysically comforted, in short, as romanticists are wont to end, as christians.... no! ye should first of all learn the art of earthly comfort, ye should learn to laugh, my young friends, if ye are at all determined to remain pessimists: if so, you[pg 15] will perhaps, as laughing ones, eventually send all metaphysical comfortism to the devil—and metaphysics first of all! or, to say it in the language of that dionysian ogre, called zarathustra:

"lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! and do not forget your legs! lift up also your legs, ye good dancers—and better still if ye stand also on your heads!

"this crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown—i myself have put on this crown; i myself have consecrated my laughter. no one else have i found to-day strong enough for this.

"zarathustra the dancer, zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:—

"zarathustra the soothsayer, zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps: i myself have put on this crown!

"this crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown—to you my brethren do i cast this crown! laughing have i consecrated: ye higher men, learn, i pray you—to laugh!"

thus spake zarathustra, lxxiii. 17, 18, and 20.

sils-maria, oberengadin, august 1886.

[1]

and shall not i, by mightiest desire,

in living shape that sole fair form acquire?

swanwick, trans. of faust.

[pg 18]

the birth of tragedy

from the spirit of music

[pg 19]

foreword to richard wagner.

in order to keep at a distance all the possible scruples, excitements, and misunderstandings to which the thoughts gathered in this essay will give occasion, considering the peculiar character of our ?sthetic publicity, and to be able also co write the introductory remarks with the same contemplative delight, the impress of which, as the petrifaction of good and elevating hours, it bears on every page, i form a conception of the moment when you, my highly honoured friend, will receive this essay; how you, say after an evening walk in the winter snow, will behold the unbound prometheus on the title-page, read my name, and be forthwith convinced that, whatever this essay may contain, the author has something earnest and impressive to say, and, moreover, that in all his meditations he communed with you as with one present and could thus write only what befitted your presence. you will thus remember that it was at the same time as your magnificent dissertation on beethoven originated, viz., amidst[pg 20] the horrors and sublimities of the war which had just then broken out, that i collected myself for these thoughts. but those persons would err, to whom this collection suggests no more perhaps than the antithesis of patriotic excitement and ?sthetic revelry, of gallant earnestness and sportive delight. upon a real perusal of this essay, such readers will, rather to their surprise, discover how earnest is the german problem we have to deal with, which we properly place, as a vortex and turning-point, in the very midst of german hopes. perhaps, however, this same class of readers will be shocked at seeing an ?sthetic problem taken so seriously, especially if they can recognise in art no more than a merry diversion, a readily dispensable court-jester to the "earnestness of existence": as if no one were aware of the real meaning of this confrontation with the "earnestness of existence." these earnest ones may be informed that i am convinced that art is the highest task and the properly metaphysical activity of this life, as it is understood by the man, to whom, as my sublime protagonist on this path, i would now dedicate this essay.

basel, end of the year 1871.