Nietzsche

catalog

Well-known member
We've no dedicated thread. I'm currently reading "The Birth of Tragedy". It's pretty good so far, better than I thought it was gonna be. He writes in quite an engaging way, like he's telling you a story. I don't understand everything, of course.

He's posed an interesting question, unanswered as yet, about why the Greeks chose the figure of the goat to represent the Satyr.
 

catalog

Well-known member
So I finished the birth of tragedy and it was pretty interesting, although he's already beginning to sound unhinged, and I reject the central theory (that music represents our internal will and is therefore superior to the plastic arts of drawing and sculpture, which always represent the phenomenal world. My q there would be, what about surrealist or abstract art? Although perhaps a bit unfair cos it came later.

He also has this interesting insight about foundational myths... he says that Semitic and Aryan (meaning Greek/Roman) founding myths are very similar, in that they both basically involve Gods as generally benevolent, but also as rule-setting. And the key kick off for any kind of story/drama is that the humans transgress in some way, go beyond what God has proscribed for them.

So the classic examples are the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Evil, and in the Aryan world, Oedipus' solving of the Sphinx's riddle, or Prometheus' stealing of fire.

So this is interesting enough, but Nietzsche also says that there is a key difference between the Semitic/Aryan stories. In the Semitic world, the transgression is coded feminine, involving deception. Whereas the Aryan version codes the transgression as active/brave, masculine.

So even here, you can see how it's but a hop, skip and jump for him to infer Christianity as "weak" etc...
 

catalog

Well-known member
These quotes also struck a chord with me:

"Understanding kills action, action depends on a veil of illusion - this is what Hamlet teaches us."

"The poet becomes a poet only by seeing himself surrounded by characters living and acting before him."

Also, his big thing in that book is this dualism that exists between Apollo and Dionysus.

ApolloDionysus
Redemption through illusionInnermost core
OutsideInside
Plastic arts (sculpture, drawing)Music
Replica of phenomenaReplica of will
IndividualEternal
"Universalia ante Rem""Universalia post Rem"
Outer shell of thingsHeart of things
ImageWill

And then his definition of the tragic flows from this duality:

"Metaphysical delight in the tragic is a translation of the image: the hero, the supreme manifestation of the will, is negated to our gratification, because he is only a phenomenon, and the eternal life of the will is left untouched by his destruction."
 

woops

is not like other people
I reject the central theory (that music represents our internal will and is therefore superior to the plastic arts of drawing and sculpture, which always represent the phenomenal world. My q there would be, what about surrealist or abstract art? Although perhaps a bit unfair cos it came later.
who knows, maybe nietzsche's writing helped to produce the emergence of them art forms.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yeah possibly, kandinsky would be the go to artist, cos it was all about painting as music with him, I think?

Vasily-Kandinsky-Composition-V-1911.jpg
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Thank you for starting a FN thread Catalog !
While no expert, only having gone through Will To Power, Beyond Good And Evil
, Twilight of The Gods, Frederic lived and wrote through extraordinary times and made for some good quotes that ring today - at a minimum.

And for anybody who has heard a whiff about FN, or
'who knows what he was about' knows the times and the man were complex, shifting.
For those who don't know so much his work , how the 1940's Nazi stuff got infused/ fused to his work, read in :
 

catalog

Well-known member
I'm gonna read some more, maybe Zarathustra or daybreak/dawn, those are the ones recc'd by friends. There's a lot there.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
I'm gonna read some more, maybe Zarathustra or daybreak/dawn, those are the ones recc'd by friends. There's a lot there.
Zara i may have leafed through - the language IS sometimes not so easy.
The latter ones, after his rejection of Wagner and so on felt most modern.
Sometimes the FN quotes get straight to his points.

Enjoy any and all
 
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