Chapter 31 The Birth of Tragedy Chapter Seventeen

birth of tragedy Chapter Seventeen Drunken Art also convinces us of the eternal joy of existence: but we should seek this joy not in the appearance, but behind it.We should know that all that exists must be prepared for a tragic downfall; that we have to look into the horrors of our individual existence, but we should not be desensitized by them.A kind of detached solace allows us to temporarily escape the disturbance of vicissitudes of life.In this brief moment, we really become the "source of all things" itself, feeling its passionate desire to live and the joy of living.These struggles, these sufferings, these destructions, seem to us now to be inevitable, because innumerable ways of life clash with each other in the struggle for existence, and because the universal will grows like the weeds in the wilderness.Just when we seem to be one with the infinite joy of existence, just when we look forward to the immortality of this joy in the ecstasy of ecstasy, at that very moment we feel the prick of the sharp edge of pain.For all our fear and pity, we are happy beings, not as individuals but as one, and we are in communion with the joy of the creation of our Self.

Now, the history of the origin of Greek tragedy tells us very clearly: Greek tragic art was indeed born from the spirit of music.For the first time, we believe, we have fairly asserted the original, uncanny meaning of the chorus with this thought.At the same time, however, we must admit that the Greek poets, let alone the Greek philosophers, never had a clear idea of ​​the significance of the above-mentioned tragic myths or plots.The language of the tragic heroes seems to be more superficial than their actions, and their words do not fully reflect the meaning of the plot properly.However, the structure of the plot and the intuitive image show a deeper wisdom than the words and concepts of the poets: the same situation can be seen in Shakespeare's works, for example, Hamlet's words are more superficial than his actions ; Therefore, as mentioned above, Hamlet's lessons cannot be understood from his language, but can only be understood from in-depth meditation and comprehensive observation of the whole play.As for Greek tragedies—of course we have only the script today—I even pointed out that since the plot does not exactly correspond to the lines, we can easily be mistaken for tragedies as frivolous, which they are not; Its effect is shallower than the ancients testify.For we tend to forget that the highest purification and ideal of myth, which the poet cannot attain in language, is always within his reach as a creative musician!Of course, we must painstakingly restore the original appeal of tragic musical effects, in order to experience some of the incomparable comfort that is characteristic of true tragedy.However, even the appeal of this tragic music cannot be experienced unless we become ancient Greeks: for ancient Greek music, in its entire history, compares with the infinite richness of modern music that we love to hear and listen to. I believe that to us, it sounds like a song of a young and shy musical genius showing his talents.The Egyptian priests said: The ancient Greeks were always children, and they were only children in the art of tragedy. They did not know what a sublime toy they had created with their own hands, and so—were destroyed.

The efforts of the musical spirit to symbolize and mythify, from the lyric poetry to the age of Attic tragedy, have been continuously intensified, and once they reached their peak, they suddenly stopped, as if they had disappeared from the field of Greek art; but at the same time this The drunken worldview produced by the effort is immortalized in the mysteries, and though it has been changed and deteriorated, it still attracts serious people.Will it one day rise from this mysterious abyss to become an art? At this point, we want to answer a question, whether that power, which tragedy has perished because of its resistance, has sufficient power at any time to prevent the resurrection of tragic art and tragic world outlook?If ancient tragedy was derailed by the influence of dialectical curiosity and scientific optimism, this fact leads us to conclude that there is a perpetual struggle between the theoretical worldview and the tragic worldview; The spirit is at the end of its days, and when its presumed universal validity proves to be limited after all, we can hope for the rebirth of tragedy.In this sense we can symbolize the culture of tragedy by Socrates who studied music.On the contrary, what we call scientific spirit refers to the kind of belief that first appeared in Socrates—the belief in the knowability of nature and the omnipotence of knowledge.

When you think of the immediate consequences of this restless scientific spirit, you immediately think that myth has been destroyed by it; by its destruction poetry has been expelled from her natural ideal and made homeless.If we are not mistaken, that music has the power to reproduce mythology out of itself, we shall find that the scientific spirit is also on the way to rebel against the mythic creativity of music.This happened in the course of the development of the Neo-Attic Dionysus, whose music no longer expressed the inner essence, no longer expressed the will itself, but only directly imitated the phenomenon with concepts, roughly outlining its outline.The true musical genius loathes this essentially degenerate music, just as he loathes the Socratic tendencies that destroy art.Aristophanes' intuitive ability to tell right from wrong is pertinent: he had the same distaste for Socrates himself, for the tragedy of Euripides, and for the music of the new Dionysians, and in all three phenomena he saw To the mark of a depraved culture.This new Dionysian brutalizes music into a picture of simulated phenomena, such as war or the sound of a storm at sea, so that, of course, music is completely deprived of its mythological creativity.For if music arouses our pleasure only by compelling us to look for external resemblances between scenes of life or natural events and certain melodies or particular sounds; if our understanding is content to recognize these resemblances; One falls into a state of inability to accept the appeal of mythology, which is a special, infinitely profound universality and truth whose meaning must be obvious.The real drunken music is such a common mirror of the will of the world. Once everything remarkable is refracted in this mirror, we immediately feel it unfolded and become a reflection of eternal truth; would at once deprive such remarkable things of their mythic meaning, and the music would then become a crude imitation of the phenomenon, and thus poorer than the phenomenon itself; and because of its poverty we feel that it belittles the phenomenon, e.g. Music is at best marches, bugles, and so on, and our imagination is bound by such frivolities.Music that writes sound is thus, in any relation, in opposition to the mythic creativity of true music: it makes impoverished phenomena still poorer, but intoxicating music enriches individual phenomena, enlarging them into reflections. world picture.The great triumph of the non-Dionysian spirit, however, consists in this: through the development of the new Dionysian, it alienates music more and more and reduces it to the slavery of phenomena.Euripides, who may be called, in a higher sense, a wholly non-musical character, was therefore an ardent supporter of the new Dionysian music, a brigand with a penchant for profligacy, and abusing all its effects and styles. .

If, on the other hand, we turn our attention to the characterization and psychological descriptions which have been prevalent in tragedy since Sophocles, we see this anti-mythological, non-Dionysian spirit at work.Now, character is no longer a typical model expanded into eternity; on the contrary, character must be described individually, and through artistic understatement, the shades and shades are distinct, making all lines extremely clear, so the audience generally no longer thinks this is a myth, but feels the description. Artist's ability to imitate.Here, too, we see the triumph of the individual over the general and the poet's penchant for individual description, which is almost anatomical; we have breathed in the atmosphere of a theoretical world where scientific knowledge is placed above the artistic reflection of general laws.The movement along the line of characterization has rapidly continued, and while Sophocles was still describing the full character and developing it in detail with mythology, Euripides had already described only the salient traits of personality expressed in the outbursts of passion. ; in the New Comedy of Attica there is only one expression of the face: the reckless old man, the deceived bastard, the cunning house slave, the same and repeated.Where is the mythical creative spirit of music today?The music that remains after the catastrophe is either music of excitement or music of memories, in other words, it is either a stimulant for dull and weak nerves, or a picture of sound.As for the former, the words to which it was given hardly mattered; the heroes and chorus of Euripides, when they began to sing, were already dissolute, much less his impudent successors.

However, this new non-Dionysian spirit is most evident in the ending of the new tragedy.There is always a kind of detached consolation you feel in the ending of old tragedies; without this the thrill of tragedy would be inexplicable.Perhaps in "Oedipus at Colonus" you hear the purest harmony from beyond.Now that the musical genius has escaped tragedy, tragedy is, strictly speaking, dead; for from what source can one draw the consolation of such detachment?Therefore, people have to look to the earth for a solution to the tragic imbalance. After the hero suffers from fate, he finally gets a good reward, a happy marriage, or the blessing of the emperor.The hero becomes a fighting slave, and after he is beaten and bruised, the master may set him free. "Great calculations" take the place of the consolation of detachment.I do not mean that the tragic world-view has been shattered on every occasion by this invading non-Dionysian spirit, we only know that it has escaped from the sphere of art, dived as if into the underworld, and become a degenerate mystery.Yet this devastating storm of the spirit sweeps over the widest spheres of Greek nationality, and it appears in the form of "Greek optimism."As already stated, this is nothing more than an old, unproductive desire to survive.This optimism is the antithesis of the solemn "naiveness" of the ancient Greeks.As far as the above-mentioned characteristics are concerned, it should be understood as the flower of Oneiroi culture growing out of the dark abyss, the victory of the Greek will over pain and suffering wisdom because of the reflection of beauty.Another noblest form of "Greek optimism," the Alexandrian optimism, is that of the theorists; struggle, it endeavors to dissolve the myth, and to replace the solace of detachment by worldly conciliation, in fact, by a kind of "magic calculation" of its own, that is to say, the god who uses magic medicine, that is to say, known as highly The power of the natural spirit at the service of egoism, which believes that it can transform the world with knowledge and guide life with science, can confine the individual within the narrowest range of problems that can be solved, so people happily say to life: " I adore you, you are a man worth getting acquainted with."