Chapter 14 The Birth of Tragedy 14 Preface

birth of tragedy foreword For Richard Wagner In order, in view of the peculiar nature of our aesthetic public, to keep at arm's length all possible doubts, excitements, and misunderstandings that the thoughts concentrated in this essay might arouse; Pleasure marks every page like a fossil of my exuberant time—to write the preface of this essay; so I imagine you, my dearest friend, the moment you accept this treatise; you , perhaps after a walk on a winter snowy evening, saw Prometheus imprisoned on the title page, read my name, and immediately believed; But if you want to say something touching, besides, he will tell you all his feelings, as if talking face to face, and he can only write down words suitable for talking face to face.Here you will remember that while you were preparing your brilliant Beethoven essay, that is to say, in the midst of the horror and excitement of the outbreak of war, I was simultaneously working on it.But anyone who thinks that my preoccupations are more aesthetic intoxication than patriotic zeal, pleasure games rather than heroic sincerity, is mistaken; You will be amazed to see what an important German question we are discussing, which we have rightly placed at the center of Germany's hopes.Perhaps, however, such readers would find it inappropriate to see an aesthetic issue treated so seriously after all, especially if they consider art to be nothing more than an entertaining trifle attached to the "grandeur of life." No wind chime; no one seems to be able to appreciate the meaning of the opposite of the so-called "grande of life".I should tell my sincere readers, to whom I now dedicate this treatise—my noble comrades-in-arms on this path, that I believe art to be the highest mission of life as man knows it, and its proper detachment.

At the end of 1871.in Basel.