On The Birth of Tragedy - Friedrich Georg Jünger

Part Three

The form in which these ideas emerge is highly inventive. The integration of music in the genesis of tragedy causes great confusion. Nietzsche is completely fascinated by Wagner. He still considers himself a pupil and predecessor of the master and pays homage to him in this book. Such a votive plaque cannot be affixed to Wagner a second time. His music touches Nietzsche with eruptive force. The third act of Tristan and Isolde evokes in him "the convulsive spreading of all the wings of the soul", "the convulsive spreading of all the emotions", this is what this music evokes in him. He puts it in line with Schopenhauer's theory of music and connects it with the Apollonian and the Dionysian. This is a misunderstanding, as Schopenhauer's view of art is based on the doctrine of the negation of the will. An echo of the friendly conversations that took place in the Villa Triebschen can be heard here. For Nietzsche, Wagner's opera - not an opera, but a musical drama - is the climax before which all verbal dramas fail. For him, the addition of words to musical drama is only a temporary measure, for "music is the real idea of the world, drama is only a reflection of this idea, a shadowy image singled out from it." This also seems odd, since Wagner set restrictions against the predominance of music over poetry in opera.

But it was also difficult for the young Nietzsche to praise Wagner as a poet, because his archaic language, his incomprehensible writing, his ignorance of metrical legality, his formation of meaning and words did not dispose him to it. In contrast to Nietzsche, it should be noted that the genesis of Greek tragedy cannot be reconstructed from the musical side, no matter how powerful Dionysian music was. Apollo and Pan also make music. The world of myth cannot be interpreted as a musical phenomenon without violence. For those who undertake it, dance would be the best starting point, for it involves all the Muses, and Terpsichore precedes them with the lyre and plectrum. Greek tragedy cannot be illuminated by Wagner's opera, because it is neither opera, musical drama, nor singspiel. That tragedy "brings music to the fore, both for the Greeks and for us" is a statement that seems surprising today. With the Greeks? With us? What kind of tragedy would it be that was done so well? One need not even think of Shakespeare and English music here. And it would not be an exaggeration to think that language and words also have a field of their own, which develops rhythmically and metrically and which remains poetry in its own right and does not need to be translated into music. This field is not at all hostile to music, but it refuses to be drawn into it, to be disturbed by it or to be completely absorbed by it. When Nietzsche turned his back on Wagnerian music and broke with Wagner himself, he must have felt that the "birth of tragedy" hung in the air, robbed of its supports. In it lay something painful – a fine, never-ending pain. But such enterprises, as has been shown more than once, thrive only through misunderstanding, detours. He paid his debt of gratitude; he was the giver in that friendship, which cast his youth with a strong lustre.

We also have to ask ourselves whether Nietzsche's idea of Greek tragedy as the culmination of all Greek development is sustainable. Isn't it the final act of the great apocatastasis of Dionysus? God creates it, but it is also his final work. Tragedy no longer belongs to the mythical epoch, but is a work of art that completes itself in the historical epoch and must therefore also grapple with the conflict that arises between mythical and historical thinking. In tragedy, the mythical essence is destroyed as in a powerful and glorious flame. Tragedy does not derive from music, but from epic; the latter, in contrast, derives from the original myth. Tragedy and music develop together, and die together as the powerful Dionysian appeal to the Greek man wanes. It is at this point that philosophy and history, ethics and refinement, Euripides, Socrates and the new Attic dithyramb emerge. It is a step from the imaginary and illusory world to the real world, a step which Nietzsche takes again. For this is where his thinking begins, this is where he places himself. It is this step that always occupies him, again, to the very end. Now we shall see how he develops it in "Zarathustra" and in "The Will to Power", and what results he achieves in the process.