Greek tragedy in Friedrich Nietzsche’s view

Abstract

This study aims at presenting some considerations about Greek tragedy in the view of Friedrich Nietzsche. In The Birth of Tragedy, his first book, the German philosopher interprets Greek tragedy and art in general as the product of the union of two antithetical but complementary artistic tendencies: the Apollonian (form) and the Dionysian (drunkenness). His interpretation focuses exclusively on the religious root of tragedy. In his approach, Nietzsche pays special attention to the archaic form of the Greek theatre and sees the origin of tragedy in the dithyrambic chorus, which he considers as the reflected image of the Dionysian man. According to him, Greek tragedy is the manifestation of dionysism, i. e., the complete and enthusiastic approval of life as it presents itself; the rupture of all the barriers that involve men; their reintegration with nature and their return to a kind of Golden Age, like the one illustrated in The Bacchae, by Euripides.