VOLUME VII, ISSUE I, SPRING 2014
Abstract
Like all great books, The Birth of Tragedy is many things-different things to different readers: an amateur investigation into certain literary, aesthetic, and psychological trajectories in ancient Greek culture, Nietzsche’s first book, historical revisionism, a rough sketch of his future projects, philosophical fantasy, dubious scholarship (I am thinking here of Ulrich von Willamowitz-Moellendorff’s infamous rejection of the BT) and possibly an embarrassment to its writer. In the essay An Attempt at Self-Criticism that prefaces the 1886 edition, I find Nietzsche’s self-deprecating ‘criticisms’ above to be rhetorical and philosophical virtues rather than histrionic imperfections, but that is an argument for another day. The title of my paper is taken from section 8 of the BT where Nietzsche engages in a lengthy discussion of the role of the satyr, or goat song, in Greek culture. Following his brief, but superb and often quoted analysis of Hamlet. Nietzsche writes: “Faced with the satyr, cultured man shriveled to a mendacious caricature” (41) and later in the same section: “The idyllic shepherd of modern man is merely a counterfeit of the sum of educated illusions which modern man takes to be nature; the Dionysian Greek wants truth and nature at full strength” (43).
…a lie is told which causes pain to disappear from the features of nature – Nietzsche (BT 80)
We shall never comprehend the supreme value of tragedy until like the Greeks,
we experience it as the essence of all prophylactic healing energies… – Nietzsche (BT 99)
At the beginning of Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea – after a centaur has instructed Jason, son of Aeson in agriculture and philosophy, we witness a Dionysian sacrifice both exhilarating and terrifying. A young Colchian boy is lead (possibly drugged) to a primitive crucifix of bleached, loosely girdled driftwood atop a hill where he is choked to death and his body hacked into pieces with a stone ax. His organs and entrails are distributed to eager peasants by a shaman/animistic priest who then blesses their spring harvest by rubbing bloody chunks of liver, heart, and lung on sun scorched wheat shoot and olive branches. This scene is photographed ceremoniously with a combination of long tracking shots and quick cuts absent any dialogue or narration. We watch the grotesque ritual while a haunting score of North African tribal screams, chants and crude, tortured string instruments scratch our ears.
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