Those wondering about the current status of some of the problems raised by Nietzsche may be referred to Else’s work. But it is noteworthy that, in spite of his radical disagreement with Nietzsche, Else should say, “The Birth of Tragedy is a great book, by whatever standard one cares to measure it” (p. 10). And he adds: “The Birth of Tragedy has cast a spell on almost everybody who has dealt with the subject since 1871.”

3

What is of lasting importance is not the contrast of the Apollinian9 and Dionysian as such: that smacks of Schopenhauer’s contrast of the world as representation and the world as will; and playing off two concepts against each other like that is rarely very fruitful, though it has been a popular pastime among German scholars.

When The Birth appeared, the prevalent conception of the Greeks was still that pioneered by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) and adopted by Goethe (1749–1832): edle Einfalt, stille Grösse, “noble simplicity, calm grandeur.” Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), utterly unable as a critic to maintain the level of his poem “Dover Beach,” had only recently led this view to the absurd with his famous formulation: “sweetness and light.”10 Nietzsche used Apollo as a symbol for this aspect of Greek culture which found superb expression in classical Greek temples and sculptures: the genius of restraint, measure, and harmony. Far from depreciating what he called “the Apollinian,” he argued that one could not appreciate it sufficiently until one became aware of another side of Greek culture that was barbarous by comparison and found expression in the Dionysian festivals. Surely, The Bacchae of Euripides shows us passions that are worlds removed from the Greece of Winckelmann, Goethe, and Arnold; and Nietzsche claimed that the same boundless and cruel longing to exceed all norms is also occasionally encountered in the Iliad11 and in subsequent Greek poetry—and “the birth of tragedy” cannot be understood apart from it.

A careful reading of The Birth shows that Nietzsche, far from glorifying “the Dionysian,” argues that the achievements of the Greeks generally, and their tragedies in particular, cannot be understood adequately so long as we do not realize what potentially destructive forces had to be harnessed to make them possible. On this central point Nietzsche was surely right. If one wants a single well-written book which abounds in quotations and references that document this “dark” side of ancient Greece, there is probably none better than E. R. Dodds’s superb study of The Greeks and the Irrational,12 which also abounds in references to other recent literature on this subject.

The Birth of Tragedy reaches its first great climax in section 7, which is of interest also in connection with French existentialism. Then the book moves on to suggestions about the death of tragedy. For over forty years the ridiculous claims of Richard Oehler, in Friedrich Nietzsche und die Vorsokratiker (1904),13 were repeated by one interpreter after another—even after Oehler had thoroughly discredited himself with one of the most unscrupulous books ever to have come from a writer with some scholarly pretensions, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Deutsche Zukunft (1935),14 an attempt to identify Nietzsche with the aspirations of the Nazis, who had come to power in 1933. In the interim, Oehler had compiled two huge indices for the two most complete editions of Nietzsche’s works, the latter index (for the so-called Musarion edition) comprising two and a half volumes. This did not prevent him—on the contrary, it enabled him to stud his book of 1935 with utterly misleading quotations that seem to say the opposite of what Nietzsche actually says on the pages from which they are taken. At best the earlier volume shows that Oehler’s stunning lack of intellectual integrity was fused with a limited intelligence and an appalling inability to understand Nietzsche. But this man was one of the pillars of the Nietzsche Archive, established by the philosopher’s sister, and one of the editors of the works.15

Neither Oehler nor his early book would deserve mention here if that book had not been used and echoed uncritically by A. H. J. Knight in the only English full-length study of Nietzsche’s relation to the Greeks,16 and if Knight had not been relied on uncritically by Ernest Newman, Crane Brinton, and Erich Podach.17 To catalogue Oehler’s mistakes here would be pointless; but two of them have been repeated so often that it seems necessary to repudiate them specifically.

First, the young Oehler claimed that the early Nietzsche “was completely under the influence of Schopenhauer,” and a pessimist (p. 28). In fact, however, Nietzsche’s very first book, The Birth, constitutes a declaration of independence from Schopenhauer: while Nietzsche admires him for honestly facing up to the terrors of existence, Nietzsche himself celebrates Greek tragedy as a superior alternative to Schopenhauer’s “Buddhistic negation of the will.” From tragedy Nietzsche learns that one can affirm life as sublime, beautiful, and joyous in spite of all suffering and cruelty.

Second, Oehler understood The Birth as a manifesto against Socrates and Socratism. In fact, Nietzsche is no more against (or for) Socrates than he is against (or for) Apollo or Dionysus. His whole way of thinking is far removed from such crudities. And Nietzsche was as right as most of his interpreters, following Oehler, have been wrong when he said in 1888, in Ecce Homo, in the first section of his own analysis of The Birth: “It smells offensively Hegelian, and the cadaverous perfume of Schopenhauer sticks only to a few formulas.”

Socrates is introduced in The Birth with the reverence befitting a god, the equal of Apollo and Dionysus. Of course, Nietzsche’s critical powers do not spare even gods, and he finds Socrates deeply problematic. He always approached Socrates in this manner, stressing now his admiration, now his objections, and sometimes, as here, both at once.18 Indeed, the two sections (14 and 15) in which the discussion of the death of tragedy reaches its climax—the second great highpoint of the book—suggest that but for Socrates Greek culture might have perished altogether; also that “the influence of Socrates necessitates ever again the regeneration of art;” and finally even that we need an “artistic Socrates.”

Apollo and Dionysus reached a synthesis in tragedy; this synthesis was negated by Socrates; and now another synthesis is wanted, an artistic Socrates. Could Plato be meant? On the contrary. Those who feel that Nietzsche is unfair to Socrates and that Socratism is not opposed to tragedy should reconsider Plato’s resolve, in the Republic, to tolerate no tragic poets in his ideal city, as well as the older Plato’s remarks on tragedy in The Laws. The “artistic Socrates” is Nietzsche himself. He looks forward to a philosophy that admits the tragic aspect of life, as the Greek poets did, but does not sacrifice the critical intellect; a philosophy that denies Socrates’ optimistic faith that knowledge and virtue and happiness are, as it were, Siamese triplets; a philosophy as sharply critical as Socrates’ but able and willing to avail itself of the visions and resources of art.

For all that, one need not accept Nietzsche’s view of the death of tragedy, though it has been served up to us again and again in the twentieth century.