1. The Birth of Tragedy-Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism and
nihilism of a fundamentally meaningless world. The Greek spectators, by looking into the
abyss of human suffering and affirming it, passionately and joyously affirmed the meaning
of their own existence. They knew themselves to be infinitely more than petty individuals,
finding self-affirmation not in another life, not in a world to come, but in the terror and
ecstasy alike celebrated in the performance of tragedies.
Originally educated as a philologist, Nietzsche discusses the history of the tragic form and
introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (very loosely:
reality undifferentiated by forms versus reality as differentiated by forms). Nietzsche claims life
always involves a struggle between these two elements, each battling for control over the
existence of humanity. In Nietzsche's words, "Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian
was checked and destroyed.... wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully
withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god Apollo exhibited itself as more rigid and
menacing than ever." Yet neither side ever prevails due to each containing the other in an
eternal, natural check, or balance.
Nietzsche argues that the tragedy of Ancient Greece was the highest form of art due to its mixture
of both Apollonian and Dionysian elements into one seamless whole, allowing the spectator to
experience the full spectrum of the human condition. The Dionysian element was to be found in
the music of the chorus, while the Apollonian element was found in the dialogue which gave a
concrete symbolism that balanced the Dionysiac revelry. Basically, the Apollonian spirit was able
to give form to the abstract Dionysian.
Before the tragedy, there was an era of static, idealized plastic art in the form of sculpture
that represented the Apollonian view of the world. The Dionysian element was to be found
in the wild revelry of festivals and drunkenness, but, most importantly, in music. The
combination of these elements in one art form gave birth to tragedy. He theorizes that the
chorus was originally always satyrs, goat-men. (This is speculative, although the word ―tragedy‖
τραγωδία is contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song" from tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to
sing".) Thus, he argues, ―the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man‖
for the audience; they participated with and as the chorus empathetically, ―so that they imagined
themselves as restored natural geniuses, as satyrs.‖ But in this state, they have an Apollonian
dream vision of themselves, of the energy they're embodying. It’s a vision of the god, of
Dionysus, who appears before the chorus on the stage. And the actors and the plot are the
development of that dream vision, the essence of which is the ecstatic dismembering of the god
and of the Bacchantes' rituals, of the inseparable ecstasy and suffering of human existence…
After the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles, there was an age where tragedy died.
Nietzsche ties this to the influence of writers like Euripides and the coming of rationality,
represented by Socrates. Euripides reduced the use of the chorus and was more naturalistic in
his representation of human drama, making it more reflective of the realities of daily life. Socrates
emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human

2. knowledge. For Nietzsche, these two intellectuals helped drain the ability of the individual
to participate in forms of art, because they saw things too soberly and rationally. The
participation mystique aspect of art and myth was lost, and along with it, much of man's ability to
live creatively in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life. Nietzsche concludes that it may be
possible to reattain the balance of Dionysian and Apollonian in modern art through the operas of
Richard Wagner, in a rebirth of tragedy.
Apollonian and Dionysian
In contrast to the typical Enlightenment view of ancient Greek culture as noble, simple, elegant
and grandiose, Nietzsche believed the Greeks were grappling with pessimism. The universe
in which we live is the product of great interacting forces; but we neither observe nor
know these as such. What we put together as our conceptions of the world, Nietzsche
thought, never actually addresses the underlying realities. It is human destiny to be
controlled by the darkest universal realities and, at the same time, to live life in a human-
dreamt world of illusions.
It was precisely this human-dreamt world that the Greeks had developed into perfection from the
Homeric legends onward. The Olympian complex of deities, combined with all the details of their
heroic lives and their numerous interactions with men and women of earth, formed a world picture
in which individual people can live. This picture literally rendered humans as individuals, capable
of greatness, always of significance. There is, in this world, objective clarity. The beings are
almost sculpted. Hence, Athenians mature within the illusions of a world and life that is under
control and that has clear models of personal significance and greatness. It is a beautiful creation.
But it is, as Nietzsche observes, an Apollonian aesthetics, Apollo being the god who most typifies
the Olympian complex in this regard. (BT, 1, p. 36) Apollo is the god of plastic arts and of illusion.
The problem—and it is a problem for all times and all human life—is that the dark side of
existence makes itself apparent and forces us to confront whatever we have tried to shut
out of our nice, tidy livable world. Thus, for Nietzsche, while the Greeks, and the Athenians in
particular, had developed a rich world view based on Apollo and the other Olympian gods, they
had rendered themselves largely ignorant of reality's dark side, as represented in the god
Dionysus. Only in the distant past, and largely outside of Athens, had Dionysian festivals paved
the way to direct (and destructive) experience of life's darkest sides—intoxication, sexual license,
absorption by the primal horde, in short, dissolution of the individual (occasionally, actual
dismemberment) and re-immersion into a common organic whole. (BT, 2, pp. 39–40)
The issue, then, or so Nietzsche thought, is how to experience and understand the Dionysian
side of life without destroying the obvious values of the Apollonian side. It is not healthy for an
individual, or for a whole society, to become entirely absorbed in the rule of one or the other. The
soundest (healthiest) foothold is in both. Nietzsche's theory of Athenian tragic drama suggests
exactly how, before Euripides and Socrates, the Dionysian and Apollonian elements of life were
artistically woven together. The Greek spectator became healthy through direct experience of the
Dionysian within the protective spirit-of-tragedy on the Apollonian stage.