“Ah, if only art was the tempestuous genie in a bottle!! And, Nietzsche’s frequent exclamations and exclamatory marks themselves push against the reader’s expectations for coherence.“

I remember when I first read the 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy that I was grateful, at least, that he had come to think of the book I was to read as immature: “arrogant,” “uneven,” “badly written,” and “saccharine” are among his descriptions. And it’s true that the book–his first real work of philosophy—nearly ended his career, so poorly was it received.

Even so, my problems with Nietzsche’s arguments are less about German traditional views of the classical world than the author’s own passions-over-propriety and proof.  In brief, Nietzsche calls for a return to the ways of the artist, the anarchic soul of the Dionysian subjective, the dynamic will, and the affirmation of life. This, he argues, has been ruined–from about Socrates afterwards, by the imbalancing weight of Apollonian thought, of order and beauty and calm clarity. All of the best art, he suggests, is a fusion of the two, the Dionysian chaos of emotion “made comprehensible” through Apollonian forms.  

Ah, if only art was the tempestuous genie in a bottle!!  And, Nietzsche’s frequent exclamations and exclamatory marks themselves push against the reader’s expectations for coherence. With all of the intuited conclusions and inspired images, the rhetoric of passion I guess, it is as easy to get swept up in his threads of idea as it is to be lost in their unexamined, incongruous conditions.

On what basis do we suppose that the main of earlier Greek society (or at least its art) was comprised of the interaction between just these two oppositional yet entwined principles? And on what historical examinations do we describe Socrates as a “new-born demon?” We are, as it seems with most of Nietzsche’s works I’ve encountered, to accept his declarations as truisms. Art, he claims, has at its core a healing principle, that is the Dionysian celebration of life, that we meet in the experience of its Apollonian form. All of these may have their merits as arguments, but we do not discover such merits in this argument as much as we find what some call poetry–must we read all of Nietzsche to believe we may comment on any part of it? 

And while I will not doubt art’s ability to heal, for its profound power, Nietzsche’s diagnosis that this power has been stripped or sterilized from art by an overwhelming oppression by Apollonian modes is equally not merited by any presented symptoms. He is, of course of course of course, describing the imminent fall of German culture (a favorite theme) that might only be preserved in artists like Wagner who have not lost the Dionysian spirit.

It’s easy to nod. Far too easy. Yes, I nod, I love Wagner’s work and I consider him an artist far above many others in Western civilization. Is it because he has somehow recalled a concept inherent to pre-Socratic Greek theater? I’m a bit more dubious. After all, I kind of like Childish Gambino, too. 

And yes, I nod, I can see the contests which are ever waged in the natural world (but I do not assign them to his simple binary). And yes, I agree, I am drawn to concepts like “eternal recurrence” and the “will to truth,” but I do not see these developed or even much argued here, much less connected firmly to his main thesis. 

Most of his contemporaries accosted him for sloppy academic work, which may or may not be true, but they seemed more offended that he would suggest any errors (or dynamism) to Greek history and society; and at least here Nietzsche is right to challenge the status quo.  Nietzsche may be right, but his arguments do not support his rightness, but often strike as bombast, sentences of desperation rather than enlightenment. And Nietzsche’s critics may have been right to critique him, but not to defend a romanticized status quo narrative of the Greek idyll. 

Nietzsche’s later condemnation of his own work may have been a face-saving gesture, however, for two years after writing the preface, he defends The Birth of Tragedy all over again. Ah, vanity! But let’s not claim, ah, reason!