Attic Tragedy Nietzsche

It is nietzsche s dithyrambic drama thus spoke zarathustra that provides the apprehension he writes about in the very first sentence of the birth of tragedy.

Attic tragedy nietzsche.

In the birth of tragedy nietzsche expounds on the origins of greek tragedy and its relevance to the german culture of its time. Nietzsche stressed the importance of living with a tragic awareness of life and asserted that only through the cultivation of such a state could genuine growth creativity greatness and the capacity to truly affirm life be attained. The first was the setting the second was a dream and the third was a rather cheap pun stolen from nietzsche s first book. Firstly the dionysian the passion that overwhelms the character and the apollonian the purely pictorial imagery of the theatrical spectacle.

Euripides founded new attic comedy and was nietzsche claims the first to bring the spectator onto the stage. Nietzsche believed that attic tragedy was the synthesis of these forces. In order to justify his relentless quest to find dionysus at the heart of attic tragedy nietzsche writes that we must not trust what we find on the surface of sophoclean and aeschylean dialogue. His plays in contrast to that of achilles or sophocles focused not on great tragic heroes but the common man dramatic reinterpretations of everyday occurrences similar to modern day soaps.

The attic tragedy was born from three separate inanimate ideas that rattled around inside me for two or three years before striking together and sparking a story. Friedrich nietzsche at the end of the 19th century highlighted the contrast between the two main elements of tragedy. We have emphasized apollo for so long that it is very difficult for us to embrace dionysus especially if we have been brought up in christianity truly an apollonian religion if there ever was one.