AESTHETICS Tragedy (1872) Nietzsche likewise bases his aesthetic theory on Schopenhauer’s pessimistic view of life, taking as his text the Greek myth of King Midas’ quest for the satyr Silenus When Silenus was finally in his power, the king asked him what was the best and most desirable thing for mankind The daemon stood in silence, stiff and motionless, but when the king insisted he broke out into a shrill laugh and said ‘Wretched, ephemeral race, children of misery and chance, why you force me to say what it would be more expedient for you not to hear? The best of all things is quite beyond your reach: it is not to have been born, not to be at all, to be nothing The next best thing is to die as soon as may be.’ (BT 22) Schopenhauer had held out art as the most accessible escape from the tyranny of life Nietzsche, too, sees the origin of art in humans’ need to mask life’s misery from themselves The ancient Greeks, he tells us, in order to be able to live at all ‘had to interpose the radiant dream-birth of the Olympian gods between themselves and the horrors of existence’ (BT 22) There are two kinds of escape from reality: dreaming and intoxication In Greek mythology, according to Nietzsche, these two forms of illusion are personified in two different gods: Apollo, the god of light, and Dionysus, the god of wine ‘The development and progress of Art originates from the duality of the Apolline and the Dionysiac, just as reproduction depends on the duality of the sexes’ (BT 14) The prototype of the Apolline artist is Homer, the founder of epic poetry; he is the creator of the resplendent dream-world of the Olympic deities Apollo is an ethical deity, imposing measure and order on his followers in the interests of beauty But the Apolline magnificence is soon engulfed in a Dionysiac flood, the stream of life that breaks down barriers and constraints The followers of Dionysus sing and dance in rapturous ecstasy, enjoying life to excess Music is the supreme expression of the Dionysiac spirit, as epic is of the Apolline The glory of Greek culture is Athenian tragedy, and this is the offspring of both Apollo and Dionysus, combining music with poetry The choruses in Greek tragedy represent the world of Dionysus, while the dialogue plays itself out in a lucid Apolline world of images The Greek spirit found its supreme expression in the plays of Aeschylus (especially Prometheus Vinctus) and Sophocles (especially Oedipus Rex) But with the plays of the third 261