Interlude XVII. Nietzsche - part 6

Individuation & Dionysus

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude XVI. Nietzsche - part 5

From The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche...

Sec 10 - Dionysus

In truth, however, the hero [in Attic tragedies] is the suffering Dionysus of the Mysteries, the god experiencing in himself the agonies of individuation... Thus it is intimated that this dismemberment, the properly Dionysian suffering, is like a transformation into air, water, earth, and fire, that we are therefore to regard the state of individuation as the origin and primal cause of all suffering, as something objectionable in itself... But the hope of the epopts [initiates into the mysteries] looked toward a rebirth of Dionysus, which we must now dimly conceive as the end of individuation... And it is this hope alone that casts a gleam of joy upon the features of a world torn asunder and shattered into individuals... This view of things already provides us with all the elements of a profound and pessimistic view of the world, together with the mystery doctrine of tragedy: the conception of individuation as the primal cause of evil, and of art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken in augury of a restored oneness [think a rave or Acid Test perhaps].

[Before Euripides, Greek (Attic) tragedy] ...had for its sole theme the sufferings of Dionysius and that for a long time the only stage hero was Dionysius himself. But it may be claimed with equal confidence that until Euripides, Dionysius never ceased to be the tragic hero, that all the celebrated figures of the Greek stage -- Prometheus, Oedipus, etc. -- are mere masks of this original hero, Dionysius.

This talk of suffering is relevant to the character Settembrini in The Magic Mountain, a man dedicated to an (unrealistically) encyclopedic, humanistic work aimed at the elimination of suffering. Here's a very interesting academic article on Plato’s Aesthetics.

Sec 11 - “Greek cheerfulness”

The words of the well-known epitaph, ‘frivolous and eccentric when an old man,’ also suit aging Hellenism. The passing moment, wit, levity, and caprice are its highest deities; the fifth estate, that of the slaves, now comes to power, at least in sentiment; and if we may still speak at all of ‘Greek cheerfulness,’ it is the cheerfulness of the slave who has nothing of consequence to be responsible for, nothing great to strive for, and who does not value anything in the past or future higher than the present.

‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ (It turns out Kris Kristofferson wrote that line, and the song "Me and Bobby McGee" with the scene at the end of La Strada -- when Anthony Quinn's character learn's that Giulietta Masina's character has died -- in mind. I didn't see that coming).

Given that Athenian slaves were mostly previously free persons who had been enslaved by the greed of the Athenian democracy, I’m not sure how surprising what Nietzsche says here about ‘Greek cheerfulness’ and slaves, if true, is. And, once again, he keeps saying "Greek" when he really means "Attic."

To understand what Nietzsche is saying above, you have to know very well the work of the three great Attic tragedians -- which the intended audience for this book would, but which I don't. As a result I have no idea what he sees as deficient in the work of Euripides. And if he was so bad why do so many of his plays survive. And Nietzsche makes it sound like Euripides wasn't that popular which makes it even more puzzling that so many of his works survive.

It sounds like Nietzsche sees Euripides as encouraging the people to assert themselves -- natural enough in possibly the most democratic state ever. No longer having any idealistic illusions about the wisdom of "the people," I can see that this leveling trend can have negative influences both in government and in the arts, but can you really criticize an artist for this? In brief, I have no idea what Nietzsche is talking about here.

Sec 12 - Deus ex machina

Nietzsche criticizes Euripides for putting a prologue before the exposition with a deus ex machina at the end, both to wrap up the story and to reveal the future. Unlike in previous tragedies, which touched the mystic and mysterious unconscious and the underlying Dionysian oneness, for Euripides “To be beautiful everything must be conscious...”

From Wiki about deus ex machina: Horace instructed poets that they should never resort to it to resolve their plots “unless a difficulty worthy of a god’s unraveling should happen.” But more than half of Euripides’s tragedies, while only one of Aeschylus’ (Eumenides), end with a deus ex machina. Aristotle was also critical of the deus ex machina arguing that the resolution must arise internally following previous action.

Rant on living in a residential tower.

For a few years I lived on the 29th floor of an apartment building. The experience was anything but “urban.” The biggest problem is the way you are cut off from the street. The psychological threshold in a situation like this is immense. To go home you have to wait for an elevator that could stop a dozen or more times before you arrive at your floor. Then you walk down a dull hallway with doors on either side and no view or natural light. You are very reluctant to leave once home or to run home once out on the streets. This is like the high-rise equivalent of Newton's 1st and 2nd Laws of Motion: “Bodies on the street tend to remain on the street, while bodies at home tend to remain at home.” The building itself is sterile and uninviting -- altogether a suburban, rather than urban experience. Thinking about all this over the years, I’ve come to wonder why the experience of a vibrant medieval street couldn’t be recreated in a large building. Imagine a hall/street lined with what look almost like three story buildings. The lower two floors can be live/work spaces or living over retail or workshop or all work or a quite large townhouse. Above and below are apartments. Unless you have access to the ADA/freight elevator, everyone enters and leaves this “street” through elevators that open only at “street” level, promoting trade and socializing on the building's internal streets. This also means that the elevators only stop every four floors so you can move around the building much faster and with fewer stops. You can expect to find a market, laundry, cafes, child care, and other services on one street or another within the building. In a 30 story building arranged like this (with two floors of retail/commercial on the bottom) you would have a maximum of seven elevator stops on your way up or down the building -- not perfect but better.

I would go even further and define streets by trades: there might be one devoted to interior design related businesses, another full of bicycle related businesses, or one filled with Cloud computing related start-ups, and another lined by artist's studios and galleries with an art supply store or even a shop dedicated to the manufacture of pre-stretched canvases or wood panels for painting on. In the best of all possible worlds, there would be an equivalent of Charing Cross Road lined with bookshops.

The building would be not just a great place to live but also, as they would say in the developer's hand-out, a "destination" -- a place people from near and far would come to visit.

Next: Interlude XVIII. Nietzsche - part 7.