Chapter 22 The Birth of Tragedy Chapter Eight

birth of tragedy chapter eight Satyr and the shepherd boy in modern pastoral songs are both products of nostalgia for primitive natural factors.Yet how firmly and resolutely the Greek embraced the man of the woods, and how timidly and timidly the modern man teases the flattery of the slow-playing fife-playing, sentimental shepherd boy.What the Greeks saw in the satyrs was a nature untainted by knowledge and uncivilized; but we should not therefore confuse the satyrs with primitive people.On the contrary, Satyr is the true nature of human beings, the embodiment of the highest and strongest passion of human beings, the drinker who is ecstatic because of being close to the gods, the passionate partner who shares the joys and sorrows with the gods, and the wisdom that vents the depths of the soul The prophet is a symbol of the omnipotent love of nature, and the Greeks often regard it with special respect and awe.Satyrs are sublime, godlike beings; especially in the eyes of those in the darkened drunkenness, they must seem so.Our shepherd boy, the imitation of that dress, would turn such a person off.But when he sees the magnificent writing style of the frank and unrestrained spirit, he will be nostalgic for it, and arouse a sublime pleasure.Here, the true nature of human beings has washed away the lead of civilization; here, the real man, the long Husatier, shows his true colors and cheers to the gods.In front of him, the civilized man shrinks into an ugly appearance with a golden appearance and a rotten appearance.Schiller is right about the origin of tragedy: he sees the chorus as a living wall which resists the assault of reality; for it, the satyr chorus, depicts existence more truly than civilized man will, More important and fuller, though the latter usually claims to be the only reality.The realm of poetry is not outside the world, like the castles in the air that some poets imagine.On the contrary, poetry is the unvarnished expression of reality, and therefore it must shed the pretense of reality that civilized man assumes.The difference between the inner reality of spirituality and the hypocrisy of civilization pretending to be the only reality is the same as the difference between the eternal core of things, the thing-in-itself, and the entire phenomenal world.Just as tragedy, with its detached consolation, shows that even though phenomena are constantly being destroyed, the core of existence is everlasting; so, the symbol of the satyr chorus already metaphorically expresses the original relationship between the thing in itself and the phenomenon.The shepherd boy in the idyll of the modern man is but a picture of all the culture which they pretend to be nature; but the Dionysian Greeks, after the strongest truth and nature, see themselves transformed into satyrs.

This group of Dionysus believers who indulge in drinking reveled in such a mood and understanding: the power of alcohol made them change in front of their eyes, so they saw themselves as recreated natural spirits in their fantasies. Tier.Later, the structure of the tragic chorus is to imitate this natural phenomenon in art. Of course, it is necessary to separate the Dionysian audience from the perverted sacrificer.But we must always remember that the Attic spectators rediscover their own face in the chorus, and that the spectators and the chorus are not opposites: for together they are nothing but a great and sublime chorus of satyrs singing and dancing, or they are all let The satyr chorus represents itself only.At this point, Hilleger's insight reveals a deeper meaning: he considers the chorus "the ideal audience" because they are the only spectators, the spectators of the illusion in the play.We know that the ancient Greeks did not have the concept of audience. The Greek theater is a concentric arc-shaped building, and the seats of the audience are stacked on top of each other.so that everyone can indeed ignore the whole civilized world around him and, while feasting his eyes, fantasize that he is a member of the chorus.In this sense, then, we may call the chorus of the earliest phases of primitive tragedy the self-reflection of the drunken man; nowhere is this more evident than in the experience of the actor: an actor, if he is really talented, always You can see the characters he plays vividly before your eyes.The satyr chorus is mainly a phantom seen by the Dionysian crowd, while the stage realm is a phantom seen by the satyr chorus.The phantom is so powerful that it dazzles the eye, blinding the impression of "reality" and the educated people around it.The form of the Greek theater reminds one of a lonely valley, the architecture of the stage is like a brilliant cloud, and the Dionysian worshipers are crowded on the hill, overlooking the scene from a height--a magnificent amphitheater, the image of Dionysus in It appears in the middle.

The primordial phenomenon of art which we are here to illustrate, as described by the tragic chorus, is almost unrefined in comparison with the views of scholars on the initial development of art.Yet it is quite true that the poet is a poet only in the fact that he alone sees vivid forms all around him, and that he alone sees into the mystery of these forms.Owing to a special shortcoming of modern critical talent, we tend to imagine the primitive phenomenon of aesthetics too complex and abstract.For the true poet, a metaphor is not a rhetorical figure, but a mental image that seems to move before him in place of a concept; As for the living, the poet's view differs from the painter's only in that he can only see the continuity of life and action.Why did Homer write more clearly than other poets?Because he has seen more.We talk about poetry too abstractly, because we are bad poets.Aesthetic phenomena are, after all, simple; as long as a man is capable of constantly seeing the active life around him, and living constantly surrounded by a host of spirits, he is a poet; The impulse of the heart to speak, he is the dramatist.

The excitement of the Dionysian festival can bring a whole company to this artistic talent.Let them see that they are surrounded by a group of elves, and know that they are connected with each other.This experience of the tragic chorus is a primitive phenomenon of the theater; you see yourself transformed before your eyes, and you act as if you really possessed another person's body and character.This experience occurs at the beginning of the development of the play.In this case, the chorus and the poetry reciters are different. The reciters do not merge with his image, but observe them from outside the matter with a quiet eye like a painter.In this case the individual has indeed renounced the self into an alien nature.Moreover, the phenomenon is apparently contagious; the change is felt by a whole group of people.Therefore, the Dionysian carol is essentially different from various choral songs.The virgins marching solemnly to the Temple of Apollo with cinnamon sticks in their hands, and marching, remain unchanged in their normality, and keep their civic names; Their parentage and social status have been completely forgotten, and they have become God's servants who transcend time and live outside all societies.All the rest of the Greek chorus is nothing but an extreme intensification of the Apollonian soloist, but in the Dionysian it is a group of unconscious actors who each see themselves changing in each other.

This magic is the prerequisite of all dramatic art.Under this spell, the Dionysian drinker sees himself transformed into a satyr.Moreover, he contemplates God from the position of a satyr, that is to say, he sees a new phantom outside his body when he changes, which means that his mood has reached the peak of a dream.With this new vision the drama is over. From this point of view, we must regard Greek tragedy as the constant mutation of the Dionysian chorus in dream visions.Therefore, those chorus parts intertwined in the tragedy seem to be the womb of all the so-called dialogues—that is, the entire stage realm, the opera itself.In successive catastrophes, this tragic source radiates a dramatic phantasm, a phantasm entirely dreamlike, and as such it is epic.On the other hand, however, it is the incarnation of the intoxicated mood, not the semblance of the dream; on the contrary, it shows the destruction of the individual and the union of the individual with the source of all.Tragedy, then, is the realization and influence of intoxication concretized in the dream, and so there is an abyss between tragedy and epic.

The chorus of Greek tragedy, the symbol of the excited Dionysian crowd, is fully elucidated according to our interpretation, but since we are accustomed to the function of the chorus of the modern stage and especially of the opera, we cannot understand; why, according to tradition Is it true that the chorus of Greek tragedy is more ancient and fundamental than the "drama" itself?Moreover, since the chorus is but the role of lowly servants, indeed, at first composed of satyrs dressed as goats, we cannot agree with the tradition of the superiority and antiquity of the chorus.Besides, the song pool in Jingqian is still a mystery to us.Nevertheless, we have at last come to the realization that scenery and action are regarded as mere illusions, and that the only "reality" is the chorus, which automatically produces this fantasy, and which is represented by all symbolic means of dance, music, language, etc. sing about it.The chorus saw their king and master Dionysus in hallucinations, so they were always the chorus of servants. They saw how this god suffered and how he was praised, so they themselves did not act.However, although their attitude towards God is always a servant attitude, they still express the highest and intoxicated emotions of the soul; therefore, like the soul, they uttered the parables and wise words of God when their hearts were in a trance. .They are God's friends in trouble, and at the same time they are wise men who tell the truth from the mind of the universe.From this arises this fanciful, seemingly unrefined image of the wise and inspired satyr.Satyr can be said to be "dumb horn" compared with Dionysus; he is the portrayal of the soul and its strongest impulses, the symbol of the soul itself, and at the same time the herald of art and fantasy emanating from the soul; For musicians, poets, dancers and dreamers.

According to this understanding, according to the tradition, although Dionysus is the real protagonist and the focus of the illusion, at first, in the ancient times of tragedy, he did not really appear on the scene, but only assumed to be there, that is to say, tragedy is only "" "chorus" rather than "drama," and it was only later that attempts were made to represent the god as a real person, so that this phantasy image and his radiant atmosphere could be seen by all.So the narrow sense of "drama" began to take shape.Now, the Dionysian chorus has another task. They want to excite the audience to the point of drunken frenzy, so that when the tragic hero appears on the stage, the audience does not regard him as an ugly figure with a mask. And as a phantom they saw in a trance.Just imagine: Admetus was meditating on his newly deceased wife, Aloestis, so that his body was like a dead tree and his heart was ashes; suddenly, a masked young woman asked him Walking, her body and figure resembled his wife; just imagine: he suddenly trembled with anxiety, compared her shape excitedly, and finally concluded instinctively that she was his dead wife;—then you will experience a similar The emotion of the Dionysian festival: that is the emotion that the audience of Dionysus festivals feel when they see the god walking on the stage and feel as if they share the joys and sorrows with the god.He is compelled to ascribe to the masked actor before him the whole image of Dionysus that is inseparable in his mind, thereby reducing the actor's reality to a supernatural unreality.This reaches the dream-state that conceals the real world, and a new world, a world clearer, clearer, more touching, and more phantom than the old, is born before our eyes, and is born again, and goes on and on. Variety.Thus we see in tragedy two diametrically opposed styles; language, mood, vivacity and fluency of speech, divided into two diametrically opposed spheres of expression.On the one hand the lyrics of the Dionysian chorus, on the other the visions of the Oneiroi drama.Now that the Dionysian passion has materialized into the Oneiroi visions, these visions are no longer "an eternal sea, a changing existence, a red-hot life" like the music of the chorus (Goethe's " Faust").They are no longer the powers that can be felt but not seen, as the inspired Dionysian foresees when the god is about to come.Now, the scenes in the play appear as clear and defined as epic.Now Dionysus no longer speaks by inspiration, but, like the epic hero, talks almost in the words of Homer.

①According to Greek mythology, King Admet of Ferra did not live long, and his wife Archisti died on his behalf to prolong his life. Afterwards, Hercules fought with death, took back the queen, and brought her back to the underworld.Euripides wrote a play based on this myth.