Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Ibsen's Ghosts and the Rejection of the Tragic
- 2 Anti-Tragic Drama after Ibsen
- 3 Chekhov and the Tragic
- 4 The Return of the Tragic in Fiction
- 5 Nietzsche and the Redefining of the Tragic
- 6 The ‘Tragico-Dionysian’ and D. H. Lawrence
- 7 The Theatre of the Absurd and the Tragic
- 8 The Tragic, Pragmatism and the Postmodern
- Index
5 - Nietzsche and the Redefining of the Tragic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Ibsen's Ghosts and the Rejection of the Tragic
- 2 Anti-Tragic Drama after Ibsen
- 3 Chekhov and the Tragic
- 4 The Return of the Tragic in Fiction
- 5 Nietzsche and the Redefining of the Tragic
- 6 The ‘Tragico-Dionysian’ and D. H. Lawrence
- 7 The Theatre of the Absurd and the Tragic
- 8 The Tragic, Pragmatism and the Postmodern
- Index
Summary
In Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, first published in 1872, he contrasts Apollo and Dionysus as deities:
Apollo, as an ethical deity, demands moderation from his followers and, in order to maintain it, self-knowledge. And thus the admonitions ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing to excess!’ coexist with the aesthetic necessity of beauty, while hubris and excess are considered the truly hostile spirits of the non-Apolline realm, and hence qualities of the pre-Apolline age, the age of the Titans, and the world beyond the Apolline, the world of the barbarians …
The Apolline Greeks also saw the effect of the Dionysiac as ‘Titanic’ and ‘barbaric’, unable to conceal from themselves the fact that they were also inwardly akin to those fallen Titans and heroes … And behold! Apollo could not live without Dionysus! … The individual, with all his restraints and moderations, was submerged in the self-oblivion of the Dionysiac state and forgot the Apolline dictates. Excess was revealed as truth, contradiction; the bliss born of pain spoke from the heart of nature. And consequently, whenever the Dionysiac invasion was successful, the Apollonian was negated and destroyed.
It does not require great ingenuity to see a link with Conrad's Heart of Darkness, with Marlow tending to the Apollonian and Kurtz to the Dionysiac, though he returns to the Apollonian at the end. Nietzsche is the major counter-force to modern versions of the tragic, such as those discussed in the previous chapter, that are grounded in a pessimism drawn from Schopenhauer and Darwinism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modern Literature and the Tragic , pp. 97 - 120Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008