The Birth of Tragedy (Chap. 20)

At some point under the eyes of an incorruptible judge we may determine in what age and in which men up to now the German spirit has struggled most powerfully to learn from the Greeks, and if we can assume with confidence that this extraordinary praise must be awarded to the noblest cultural struggles of Goethe, Schiller, and Winckelmann, then we would certainly have to add that, since that time and the most recent developments of that battle, the attempt to attain a culture and to reach the Greeks by the same route has become incomprehensibly weaker and weaker.2

In order to avoid being forced into total despair about the German spirit, should we not conclude from all this that in some important point or other even those fighters could not succeed in penetrating into the core of the Hellenic spirit and creating a lasting bond of love between German and Greek culture? Perhaps an unconscious recognition of this failure even gives rise in more serious natures to the enervating doubt whether, after such predecessors, they could go even further than those men had along this cultural path and reach their goal at all. For that reason since that time we’ve seen the judgment about the cultural value of the Greeks degenerate in the most disturbing way. We can hear expressions of sympathetic condescension in the most varied encampments of the mind and of pernicious ideology [des Geistes und des Ungeistes] . In other places a completely ineffectual sweet talk flirts with “Greek harmony,” “Greek beauty,” and “Greek cheerfulness.”

And precisely in the circles which could dignify themselves by drawing tirelessly from the Greek river bed in order to benefit German culture — in the circles of teachers in the institutes of higher education — people have learned best to come to terms with the Greeks early and in a comfortable manner, not rarely to the point of sceptically abandoning the Hellenic ideal and totally reversing the real purpose of classical studies. In general, anyone in those circles who has not completely exhausted himself in the effort to be a dependable corrector of old texts or a microscopic studier of language, like some natural historian, may perhaps even seek to acquire Greek antiquity “historically,” alongside other antiquities, but in any case following the methods of our present academic historical writing, along with its supercilious expressions.

If, as a result, the real cultural power of the institutions of higher learning has certainly never before been lower and weaker than at present, if the “journalist,” the paper slave of the day, has won his victory over the professors in every respect, so far as culture is concerned, and the only thing still left for the latter is the by-now frequently experienced metamorphosis which has them also moving around these days, to speak in the style of a journalist, with the “light elegance” of this sphere, like cheerful, well-educated butterflies — then how awkward and confusing it must be for those educated in this manner and living in such a present to stare at something which may only be understood by an analogy to the most profound principles of the as yet unintelligible Hellenic genius, the revival of the Dionysian spirit and the rebirth of tragedy.

There is no other artistic period in which so-called culture and true art have stood more alienated from and averse to each other than what we witness with our own eyes nowadays. We understand why such a weak culture despises true art, for it fears such art will destroy it. But surely after being able to taper off into such a delicate and slight point as our contemporary culture, a complete cultural style, that is, the Socratic- Alexandrian, must have run its full life.

When heroes like Schiller and Goethe could not succeed in breaking down that enchanted door which leads to the Hellenic magic mountain, when for all their most courageous struggles they reached no further than that yearning gaze which Goethe’s Iphigeneia sent from barbaric Tauris over the sea towards her home, what is left for the imitators of such heroes to hope for, unless from some totally different side, untouched by all the efforts of previous culture, the door might suddenly open for them on its own — to the accompaniment of the mysterious sound of the reawakened music of tragedy.

Let no one try to detract from our belief in a still imminent rebirth of Hellenic antiquity, for that is the only place where we find our hope for a renewal and reformation of the German spirit through the fiery magic of music. What would we otherwise know to name which amid the desolation and weariness of contemporary culture could awaken some comforting expectation for the future? We peer in vain for a single, powerful, branching root, for a spot of fertile and healthy soil: everywhere dust, sand, ossification, decay. Here a desperate, isolated man could not choose a better symbol than the knight with Death and the Devil, as Dürer has drawn him for us, the knight in armour with the hard iron gaze, who knows how to make his way along his terrible path, without being dismayed at his horrific companions, and yet without any hope, alone with his horse and hound. Such a Dürer knight was our Schopenhauer: he lacked all hope, but he wanted the truth. There is no one like him.1

But how suddenly that wilderness of our exhausted culture I have just so gloomily sketched out changes when the Dionysian magic touches it! A tempest seizes everything worn out, rotten, broken apart, and stunted, wraps it in a red whirling cloud of dust, and, like a vulture, lifts it up into the air. In our bewilderment, our eyes seek out what has disappeared, for what they see has risen up, as if from oblivion, into golden light, so full and green, so richly alive, so immeasurable and full of longing. Tragedy sits in the midst of this superfluity of life, suffering, and joy; with awe-inspiring delight it listens to a distant melancholy song, which tells of the mothers of being whose names sound out: Delusion, Will, Woe.

Yes, my friends, believe with me in the Dionysian life and in the re-birth of tragedy. The age of the Socratic man is over: crown yourselves with ivy, take the thyrsus stalk in your hand, and don’t be amazed when tigers and panthers lie down fawning at your feet. Only now you must dare to be tragic men, for you are to be redeemed. You are to lead the Dionysian celebratory procession from India to Greece! Arm yourselves for a hard battle, but have faith in the miracles of your god!

Footnotes:

2Winckelmann: Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717 to 1768), German art historian and archaeologist, an important figure in the study of the classical Greeks.