Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message - Essay Example

Attic Tragedy: The Metaphor is the Message If scholars continue to consider The Birth of Tragedy a flawed, contradictory argument it is more a consequence of Nietzsche's sometimes confusing analysis than his passion for the subject of Greek Tragedy; his writing has a breathless quality to it and barrels along with the excitement of an intellectual Whodunnit. In fact, it is a Whodunnit, for Nietzsche's intent is to explain the beginnings of tragedy and then to reveal who killed it. This journey from birth to death may contain some misrepresentations and hyperbole but it never lacks a compelling story-line, fascinating us with an Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy which Nietzsche resolves before introducing his villains: Euripides and Socrates. If, along the way, it is clear that Nietzsche preferrs the voice of Dionysus to Apollo, we should not be surprised; the Greek God of wine and revelry allowed humans a means of accepting that "their entire existence . . . was based on a veiled substratum of suffering and knowledge."(26)1 The Dionysian voice and force expresses what is not apparent but which is elemental. While Apollo represents the rationality of appearance, Dionysus represents a deeper and more revelatory, necessary ingredient of tragedy: metaphor. Birth: Epic and Tragic To overcome their awareness of how tenuous existence was and to draw meaning from chaos, the Greeks imagined Gods that reflected human desires, unlike the Sky-Gods of Judeo-Christianity and Islam. In pre-Attic Greece, Rhapsodists such as Homer created Epics in which the Gods interacted with men. Such Gods, Nietzsche asserted, ". . . provide a justification for the life of man by living it themselves."(23) But because these Gods are, in fact, human creations, their existence is an illusory act which has the quality of dream more than reality. This does not invalidate their necessity but, in Nietzsche's analysis, satisfies only one aspect of the human condition or aesthetic: appearance. Writers of epics employed these Gods to create a world that explained the relationship of men to Gods but not men to men. It strove to be rational, like Apollo ("an ethical deity" of "moderation" and "self-knowledge"),(26) and to make Olympian order out of human chaos: the Wisdom of Apollo absolving Orestes of matricide, for example, although, as Nietzsche wrote, it is "redemption through illusion."(44) This is not to say that Nietzsche is disdainful of the Apollonian voice; he considers it an intrinsic part of the process that culminated in the aesthetic of Tragedy. To accomplish this culmination, Nietzsche argues that the changing role of the Chorus as well as the development of the Satyr in Greek Drama revealed another voice, antithetical to but not dismissive of Apollo: the voice of Dionysus. One could make a case that the voice and force of Dionysus is the irrational, but that would be incomplete, for Nietzsche charts its quite rational development in Parts 7 and 8 of The Birth of Tragedy. In asserting that "tragedy arose from the tragic chorus,"(36) he reminds us that the chorus represented "the populace as against the noble realm of drama proper," (Ibid) i.e. the Apollonian voice: appearance/illusion. He presses on to stress another component of Tragedy's birth: the Satyr. This figure, more to Nietzsche's temperament, is "a product of a longing for the primordial and the natural."(40) It is not Rousseau's Natural Savage but an expression of "the primal relationship between the thing itself ['the core of things'] and the world of appearances."(41) By uniting the ecstasy, the primal 'oneness,' of the Dionysian voice with the rational of the Apollonian, Nietzsche arrives at his (not always apparent) thesis: ". . . it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified."(32) By this he seems to imply that appearance/illusion and ecstasy alone are not enough but that in combination they allow one to construct a valid picture of humanity and, consequently, produce tragedy: human essence cannot be explained by appearance without metaphor. Nietzsche makes this clear when he writes, "For the true poet the metaphor is not a rhetorical figure but a representative image . . . in place of a concept."(42) In the ecstatic force lives the metaphor, and through metaphor what is not apparent can be revealed. Moreover, without the Dionysian component, Nietzsche cannot imagine tragedy; the Apollonian force would never have achieved it. Of the Apollonian Greeks, he writes, ". . . their entire existence, with all its beauty and moderation, was based on . . . suffering and knowledge, revealed to them by the Dionysian. . . Apollo could not live without Dionysus!"(26) In that statement - itself ecstatic - we apprehend Nietzsche's allegiance to Dionysus, his passionate belief in the cathartic good brought about by embracing the irrational/ecstatic elements, a subjectivity that "becomes a complete forgetting of the self."(17) Not until reality has become metaphor can it be Tragedy. Death: The Villains One of Nietzsche's misrepresentations referred to earlier is his depiction of Socrates. While one must have villains in a Whodunnit, by writing that "a profound illusion entered the world in the person of Socrates" and that the philosopher believed "rational thought . . . is capable of . . . correcting being,"(73) Nietzsche does seem to be stacking the deck. Moreover, his judgment of Euripides in considered by some to be excessively harsh.2 Nevertheless, one can understand why Nietzsche considered the two to be villains when he writes, ". . . of aesthetic Socratism, the chief law of which is . . . 'to be beautiful everything must first be intelligible.'"(62) This is a Socratic slap in Dionysus' face, a lopping off of his head, because it denies what Nietzsche believes to be the god's contribution to Tragedy: the subjugation of objectivity. Also, Euripides gives his characters "paradoxical thoughts" rather than "Apollonian contemplations, fiery emotions rather than Dionysiac ecstacies."(62) What Nietzsche seems to object to (his justifications for casting the two Athenians as murderers of tragedy are not always clear, frankly) is an abandonment of the darkness of human existence, its relentless chaos, and its replacement by appeals to "the good" or "virtue." Such is Nietzsche's understanding of the nature of tragedy, willful or not, that he cannot tolerate such simplicities because they are moral and Nietzsche does not see human existence in tragedy as needing a moral justification; it already has a far more profound one: metaphor. As he writes: "[W]e must see Greek tragedy as the Dionysiac chorus, continually discharging itself in an Apolline world of images."(43) It is a sometimes elusive distinction, one must admit, but there it is. In attacks that could be considered ironical coming from a philosopher, what Nietzsche most dislikes about Socrates is his dismissal of art and worship of science, of logic. One senses that the German despises attempts to compartmentalize the human condition, sneers at Socratic pursuits, because the world as Nietzsche sees it is, frankly, messy and should be accepted as messy. Socrates to him is guilty of creating an illusion in his single-minded pursuit of truth and beauty. Nietzsche would agree with Hegel, who asserted in Phenomenology of Mind that "Philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying."(Hegel, 74)3 Finally, Nietzsche dispatches his villain with a most pointed question: "Might art even be a necessary correlative and supplement to science"(71) Requiescat In Pace Though sometimes confusing because passionate, Nietzsche nevertheless makes his case for the need of antithesis in The Birth of Tragedy. The Apollonian voice is required to describe what is apparent, even if its does so by what Nietzsche considers illusion. Without the ecstatic and troubling voice of Dionysus, however, drama - or art - could never have become Tragedy in Attic Greece. In being able to reveal human chaos, the often inchoate angst of the human condition, Dionysus provides us a most valuable tool - metaphor, because it is through metaphor that what is not apparent can be revealed. Works Cited 1. All parenthetical citations (with the exception of Hegel) refer to: Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Putnam, New York, 1993. 2. Tanner, Michael. Introduction. The Birth of Tragedy, By Friedrich Nietzsche. 1872. Penguin Putnam, New York, 1993. xxi. Tanner's analysis of Nietzsche's treatment of Socrates and Euripides is amusing and insightful. 3. The Hegel quotation is taken from the website: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/ToC/Hegel%20Phen%20ToC.htm. Read More