Introduction Note on the TranslationSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Friedrich NietzscheTHE BIRTH OF TRAGEDYExplanatory NotesIndex
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ATTEMPT AT A SELF-CRITICISM1Whatever may lie at the bottom of this questionable book: it must have been a question of the greatest interest and appeal, as well as a deeply personal question—as witnessed by the time in which it was written, In Spite of which it was written, the exciting time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. While the thunder of the battle of W?rth died away over Europe, the exasperated friend of perplexing puzzles who “as to father this hook sat in some corner or other of the Alps, very perplexed and puzzled, at once very careworn and carefree, and wrote down his thoughts on the Greeks—the core of this wonderful and dif?cult book to which this belated foreword or afterword is to he added. Some weeks later: he found himself beneath the walls of Metz, still pursued by the question marks which he had added to the alleged ‘serenity’* of the Greeks and of Greek art; until ?nally in that month of the greatest tension, as peace was being negotiated in Versailles,* he made his peace with himself and, during a slow convalescence from an illness brought home from the ?eld of battle, completed the de?nitive version of the ‘Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music’.—From music? Music and tragedy? The Greeks and the music of tragedy? The Greeks and the pessimistic work of art? The most accomplished, most beautiful, most envied type of men so far, the most persuasive of life’s seductions, the Greeks —what? they were the very people who needed tragedy? Even more—art? To what end—Greek art? …One may surmise where all this places the great question mark of the value of existence Is pessimism necessarily the sign of decline, decay, of the failure of the exhausted and weakened instincts?—Is it was for the Indians,* as it is to all appearances for us ‘modern’ men and Europeans? is there such a thing as a strong pessimism? An intellectual preference for the hard, horri?c, evil, problematic aspects of existence which stems from well-being, from overflowing health, from an abundance of existence? Might it even be possible to suffer from this over-abundance? A tempting courage of the most intense gaze, which yearns for the fearful as for the enemy, the worthy enemy, 0n whom it can test it strength? from whom it wants to learn what ‘fear’* is? What is the meaning, for the Greeks of the best, strongest, bravest period in particular, of the tragic myth? Ant of the tremendous phenomenon of the Dionysian? What, tragedy born of that? —And on the other hand: that which killed tragedy, the Socratism* of morality, the dialectic, the modesty and serenity of the theoretical man—what? might this very Socratism itself not be it sign of decline, of exhaustion, of ailing health, of the anarchic dissolution of the instincts? So the ‘Greek serenity’ of the late Hellenic period would be nothing more than a sunset? The l‘Epicurean* will against pessimism only a precaution on the part of the suffering man? And science itself, our science—yes, what is the meaning of all science anyway, viewed as a symptom of life? To what end, even worse, from what source—does all science proceed? What? Is the scienti?c approach perhaps only a fear and an evasion of pessimism? A re?ned means of self-defence against—the truth? And, in moral term, something like faint-heartedness and falsehood? In amoral terms, a sly move? O Socrates, Socrates, might this have been your secret? O most secret ironist, might this have been your—irony?— 2What I began to grapple with at that time was something fearful and dangerous, a problem with horns, not necessarily a bull exactly, but in any case a new problem: today I would call it the problem of science itself—science grasped for the ?rst time as problematic, as questionable. But the book in which my youthful courage and suspicion found expression at that time—what an impossible book had to grow out of a task so uncongenial to youth! Constructed from nothing but precocious and under-ripe personal experiences, all of which bordered on the inexpressible, and erected on the ground of art—since the problem of science cannot he recognized on its own ground—it is a hook perhaps for artists with an inclination to retrospection and analysis that is, for an exceptional kind of artist, who is not easy to ?nd and whom one would not Care to seek out . . ., full of psychological innovations and artistic furtiveness, with a background of artistic metaphysics, a youthful work full of the exuberance and melancholy of youth, independent, de?antly Self-reliant even where it seems to defer to an authority and personal reverence, in short a ?rst work also in the had sense of the term, a work af?icted, in spite of the ancient nature of its problem, with the pen of youth, above all with its ‘excessive length’, its ‘Storm and Stress’:* on the other hand, with respect to the success it enjoyed particularly with the great artist to whom it was addressed as in a dialogue, Richard Wagner*, a book witch has proven itself, I mean one which has in any ease measured up to the ‘best of its time''.*As a result, it should he handled with some consideration and discretion; nevertheless, I have no desire to suppress entirely how disagreeable it appears to me now, how unfamiliar it looks to me now after sixteen years to—an older eye, an eye grown a hundred times more discriminating, hut an eye grown no colder, no less familiar with the audacious task ?rst undertaken by this daring book—that of viewing science through the optic of the artist, and art through the optic of life. . . 3To say it once again, today I ?nd it an impossible book—l ?nd it badly written, clumsy, embarrassing, furious and frenzied in its imagery, emotional, in places saccharine to an effeminate degree, uneven in pace, lacking in a will to logical hygiene,* a book of such utter conviction as to disdain proof, and even to doubt the propriety of proof as such, a book fur initiates, ‘music’ for such as are baptized in music, for those who are from the very beginning bound together in a strange shared experience of art, a password by means of which blood relations in artibus* can recognize one another—an arrogant and infatuated book which from the outset sought to exclude the profanum vulgus* of the ‘educated’ even more than the ‘people’, but which, as its in?uence proved and continues to prove, must be capable enough of seeking out its fellow infatuated enthusiasts and of luring them in a dance along new secret paths. What found expression here in any case—and this was conceded With as much curiosity as aversion —was an unfamiliar voice, the disciple of a still ‘unknown god’,* who concealed himself under the cap of the scholar the ponderousness and dialectical ill humour of the German. and even under the bad manners of the Wagnerian; what was encountered here was a spirit with unfamiliar needs, as yet unnamed, it memory of bursting with questions, experiences, hidden reaches, to which the name Dionysus* was added as another question mark; what spoke here—as one remarked suspiciously—resembled the soul of a mystic or a Maenad* almost, stammering as it were randomly and with great effort in an unfamiliar tongue, almost uncertain whether to communicate or conceal itself. It should have sung, this ‘new soul’—rather than spoken!* What a pity that I did not dare to say what I had to say then as a poet: I might have managed it! Or at least as a philologist:*—even today; almost everything has yet to be discovered and excavated by the philologist! Above all, the problem that here is a problem here—and that the Greeks, as long as we have to answer to the question ‘what is Dionysian?’ still remain completely unknown and unimaginable. . . 4Yes, what is Dionysian? —This book provides an answer —‘a man who knows‘ speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his gods Nowadays, perhaps, I would choose my words more carefully and speak less eloquently about such a difficult psychological question as the origin of tragedy among the Greeks. A fundamental question is the Greek’s relationship to pain, his degree of sensitivity —does this relationship remain constant?
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