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Callid Keefe-Perry
Prof. Jason Peck
Nietzsche and the Nietzscheans
20 March 2013
Nietzsche's Illusory Hegelian Odor:
Die Kunsttriebeand Pseudo-Synthesis Overturned inThe Birth of Tragedy
Dissatisfied with contemporary society in general and contemporary art theory in particular,
The Birth of Tragedyis Nietzsche's critique of what ails his peers as well as his explanation of what
made art of the past so great. Specifically, Nietzsche was interested in championing the Classical
Hellenistic plays prior to Euripides, who he said, destroyed the greatness of Greek tragedy. At the
heart of Nietzsche's complaint is a typological claim that all human experience and artistic creation is
a balance between two competing drives and desires: the artistic impulses (Kunsttriebe) of the
Apollonian and the Dionysian. This paper explores Nietzsche's categorizations of those two drives,
and how he understands them to be in tension. Despite the initial appearance of a distinctly
Hegelian synthesis which argues for Nietzsche articulation of Aeschylus'Prometheus Boundas the
resolution and reconciliation of the tensions produced by the Apollonian and the Dionysian artistic
impulses, this paper concludes with a rejection of the claim that Nietzsche was enacting a conclusive
synthetic gesture. Instead, I argue that at the core of his aesthetic typology there is in spite of his
later, general aversion to metaphysics an essentialist claim about the nature of aesthetics, human
purposiveness, and reality.
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Derived from the names of two Greek gods, the Nietzschean categories to be considered are
perhaps best understood by first recalling the nature and purview of their inspiring mythic figures.
Apollo and Dionysus were brothers and both were patrons of artists. However, while Apollo was also
the god of the sun and of reason, Dionysus oversaw wine, madness, and excess. Interestingly, whereas
many sets of opposite siblings become foils for one another in myth, Apollo and Dionysus were
not usually narratively paired as opponents. Given Nietzsche's affinity for classical Greek culture it is
more than likely that he was aware of this dynamic when he wroteThe Birth of Tragedy. Indeed, it
may be precisely because they are in tension but not at war that hedidchoose them. In describing
the two worldviews and artistic impulses, Nietzsche proceeds by means of analogy, equating the
Apollonian with dreaming and the Dionysian with drunkenness. Though they are artistic impulses,
they pre-exist the artist. That is, they are forces which break forth out of nature itself, without the
mediation of the human artist (BoT 2).
In experiencing the Dionysian and Apollonian, humanity especially artists essentially
reflects the ultimate nature of reality, of the eternal primordial unity (des ewigen Ur-einen) and our
sense of separation from it. As Nietzsche writes, there is a unity of all existing things... individuation
is the ultimate foundation of all evil [and] art the joyful hope that the spell of individuation is there
for us to break, as a premonition of a re-established unity. That is, art is that which reminds us that
we are part of something larger than ourselves, preparing us for the possibility of a re-established
unity. Prior to this union however, the Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies appear regardless of
their actual essence to us as in tension. That is, they present themselves to our experience as
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countervailing forces. As such, both will be taken up in turn, exploring how it is that Nietzsche
categorizes each of them.
TENSION
The Dionysian is that which is One, a loss of any sense of individuated personal identity. Via
Dionysius' godly purview, Nietzsche associates this with fertility, intoxication, and orgiastic revelry.
Purely Dionysian art is music, contains no discrete images or forms, and kindles feelings of passion
that encourage the listener to forget their own sense of self and be subsumed by that which is
(primordially) greater. Exposed to the Dionysian through the channel of a piece crafted by an Artistic
genius, for a short time we really are the primordial essence itself and feel its unbridled lust for and
joy in existence... We are transfixed by the raging barbs of this torment in the very moment when we
become, as it were, one with the immeasurable primordial delight in existence and when, in
Dionysian rapture, we sense the indestructible and eternal nature of this joy (BoT 17). We do not
experience the Dionysian as individuals, says Nietzsche, but as the one living being, with whose
creative joy we are united" (BoT 17).
When one is confronted with the experience of the Dionysian it strikes with a kind of terror
and immensity: the reality of existence is that each of us is but achild of accident and toil, and the
best that we can hope for is not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing, or, barring that
(since we have already been born), at least to die soon (BoT 3). Nietzsche says that this is
artistically speaking best epitomized in the dithyramb, a form of odic Greek poem honoring
Dionysius himself. In hearing dithyramb, writes Nietzsche, there is a kind of transcendent or
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perhaps descendent break with one's self of individuality and reason.
Man is aroused to the highest intensity of all his symbolic capabilities; something
never felt forces itself into expression... the sense of oneness as the presiding genius of
form, in fact, of nature itself... not just the symbolism of the mouth, of the face, and
of the words, but the full gestures of the dance, all the limbs moving to the rhythm.
And then the other symbolic powers grow, those of the music, in rhythm, dynamics,
and harmony with sudden violence (BoT 3).
The Dionysian is the fully-fleshed rhythmic pulse of a darkened dance club where the lights are kept
so low that faces cannot be seen, but bodies can be felt, all moving together with sexual, pounding,
power. Therefore the Dionysian artist produces work that induces or invites a state of intoxication
which has both a dangerousness to it with inhibitions gone, something might happen that would
be regretted in the morning and a sense of relief at least for tonight there is only this music and
movement. That is, Nietzsche has a dual emphasis: the individual not only forgets about self-hood,
but also celebrates such forgetting as the (temporary) defeat of anxiety and suffering. It is as if for
the duration of the Dionysian exposure an individual's individuality ceases to exist and becomes
nothing, which Nietzsche thought was the best we could hope for. The Apollonian impulse, in
contrast, is about life and light, about discreteness and distancing. Or, to be more Nietzschean, it is
about theillusionof those things, since primordial reality is undifferentiated.
The Apollonian is marked by restraint, reason, and harmony. Whereas the Dionysian impulse
is towards unification and the production of a sense of ease (and terror) from the lack of
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fragmentation, the Apollonian impulse is characterized by movement toward personal individuation
and the production of the beautiful. The Apollonian artist produces work that highlights contrast
and suggests a meaningfulness to life beyond the caprice claimed by the Dionysian assertion that we
are all but children of accident and toil. Nietzsche refers to Apollo as the interpreter of dreams
(BoT 4), suggesting that the Apollonian drive is towards that which explains the purpose or
meaning to the chaotic reality claimed by Dionysianism.
Apollo confronts us... as the divine manifestation of theprincipii individuationis, the
only thing through which the eternally attained goal of the primordial oneness, its
redemption through illusion, takes place: he shows us, with awe-inspiring gestures,
how the entire world of torment is necessary, so that through it the individual is
pushed to the creation of the redemptive vision and then, absorbed in contemplation
of that vision, sits quietly in his rowboat, tossing around in the middle of the ocean
(BoT 4).
That is, Nietzsche's Apollo tells us to keep pressing on, over-encouragingly pushing us with the
reminder No pain. No gain. The Apollonian illusion is that thereisan all-encompassing,
satisfactorily-explanatory, redemptive vision which we could each understand if we would just put in
a couple more sets and reps at the gym of life. This Apollonian dream, then, is not an emphasis on
an unconscious, vague, Freudian urge, but instead on a kind of focused, imagistic, fixed, series of
explanations as to why how reality is the way it is. Nietzsche writes that the purest Apollonian form
of expression are the plastic arts since sculpture is exactly fixed and solely about form and
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representation. Its effect, says Nietzsche, arises because of its image not any originary (that is,
Dionysian) impulse.
The plastic artist, as well as his relation, the epic poet, is absorbed in the pure
contemplation of images. The Dionysian musician totally lacks every image and is in
himself only and entirely the original pain and original reverberation of that image.
The lyrical genius feels a world of images and metaphors grow up out of the
mysterious state of unity and of renunciation of the self. These have a color, causality,
and speed entirely different from that world of the plastic artist and of the writer of
epics (BoT 5).
The healing function of Apollonianism, then, is in its solely provisional nature. That is,
the highest task of art, the one we should truly call serious... [is] saving the eye from a glimpse into
the horror of the night and through the healing balm of illusion rescuing the subject from the spasms
brought about by the stirring of the will (BoT 19). The illusory nature of Apollonian art, the fact
that itisjust a mimetic representation of the original pain and original reverberation of that image
is precisely what is healing: it stops us from going over the edge.But!...we must be wary lest we
come to believe that the illusions of the Apollonian images are complete and full, that they are
actually a fully conveyed version of the world-as-it-is. When that happens as is the case with light
German opera art has degenerated merely into a tendency to empty and scattered diversion, a
metamorphosis of Aeschylean man into the Alexandrian cheerful man (BoT 19). This begets the
question central to the next section: what about Aeschylus was so great?
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APPARENT SYNTHESIS
These two very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in
open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking eachother all the time to new and more powerful offspring, in order to
perpetuate in them the contest of that opposition, which the common
word Art only seems to bridge, until at last, through a marvelous
metaphysical act of the Greek will, they appear paired up with each
other and, as this pair, finally produce Attic tragedy, as much a
Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art (BoT 1).
At first glace, it appears that Nietzsche's argument is that Attic tragedies, as best exemplified by
Aeschylus'Prometheus Bound, are the ultimate culmination of art because they weave together both
impulses. That is, while it is the case that the Aeschylean Prometheus is a Dionysian mask, it is also
nevertheless the case that because of the deep desire for justice present in the play Aeschylus betrays,
to the one who understands, [Prometheus'] paternal descent from Apollo, the god of individuation
and just boundaries (BoT 9). Because, says this argument, Nietzsche describes at length how it is
that the Attic chorus functions as a stand-in for cultic excess opposite, and tied, to the solitary,
individuated hero, he believes that they are both the culmination and ideal model of artistry.
This perspective is further supported by Nietzsche's claim that we must always remind
ourselves that the public for Attic tragedy rediscovered itself in the chorus, and that everything is
only a huge sublime chorus of dancing and singing satyrs or of those people who permit themselves
to be represented by these satyrs (BoT 8). Put another way, it appears that the Aristotelian mark of
poetic genius is also a mark of the artistic ideal: the familiar seen in the strange and vice versa,
Dionysianism and Apollonianism mixed. Thus, Nietzsche writes that he can imagine that a man
wandering under high Ionic colonnades, glancing upwards to a horizon marked off with pure and
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noble lines, with reflections of his transfigured form beside him in shining marble, around him
people solemnly striding or moving delicately, with harmoniously resounding sounds and a speech of
rhythmic gestures... [would have to] extend his hand to Apollo and cry out: 'Blessed Hellenic people!
How great Dionysus must be among you, if the Delphic god thinks such magic necessary to heal
your dithyrambic madness!'...andtothis man's cry of Apollonian praise an old Athenian, looking
at him with the noble eye of Aeschylus, might reply: 'But, you strange foreigner, say this as well:
How much these people must have suffered in order to be able to become so beautiful! But now
follow me to the tragedy and sacrifice with me in the temple of both divinities' (BoT 25).
Contained in the closing section ofThe Birth of Tragedy, the passage above seems to highlight
mutuality and give credence to the perspective that this is Nietzsche's sense of the pinnacle of human
artistry. Indeed, given that the text closes with an invitation to sacrifice at the temple of both
divinities, it is easy to understand the reading by which simultaneously dual, melded worship and
sacrifice is lifted up as Nietzsche's ideal. In fact, at the end of his writing career, inEcce Homo, even
Nietzsche claims thatThe Birth of Tragedysmells offensively Hegelian (EH in BoT 1), that is, too
full of a claims to synthesis and resolution. While I understand how it is that it can seem (even to
later Nietzsche!) that Nietzsche is trying to put forth the Attic tragedies as a synthetic resolution to
the tensions of our primary artistic impulses, I believe appropriating from Mikhail Bakhtin that
all texts are dialogical enterprises. Put another way, even though there may actually be synthetic
gestures inThe Birth of Tragedy, I want to suggest that there are also other, non-Hegelian,
conversations taking place. That is, what Nietzsche himself detected as an offensively Hegelian
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odor may itself just be the illusion of a Hegelian odor, brought to rise by Apollo himself, so as to
distract from an exploration that might well plunge us back into the primordial.
TRANSVALUATION OF DIE KUNSTTRIEBE
Presumably, the normative value of understanding the essential artistic impulses of humanity would
rest in their capacity to shed light on human nature and our place and function in the world. What I
am suggesting is that inThe Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche subverts this perspective, pointing the way
towards an understanding ofDie Kunsttriebenot as valuable for their capacity to shed light on
human nature and our place and function in the world, butas human nature and our place and
function in the world. That is, the aesthetic phenomena which appear as Dionysianism and
Apollonianism are not merely regulative principles of artistic human being, but constitutive ones:
the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon" (BoT 24 + 25). To
demonstrate that this might be the case I will show that what at first appears to be Nietzsche's claim
of synthesis is actually not a fully synthetic move at all, going on to suggest what, then, is happening
that makes it seem that this is the case.
There are at least two ways to show that what seems to be a synthesis is, in fact, not that.
First would be to claim that rather than a synthesis, Nietzsche is positing a direct parallel to Kant's
Ding-an-sichand the mere appearance of the thing-in-itself. Seen this way,The Birth of Tragedyis
merely replicating a kind of Kantian dualistic split between the thing-in-itself which is essentially
monadic and undifferentiated, and humanity'sexperienceof that nature, which appears to us as only
fragmented and individuated. That is, reality is actually, truly, just purely Dionysian and the
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Apollonian impulse is actually, truly, just purely an illusory appearance which rises as a self-
preservationist response to the capriciousness of the world-as-it-is. A number of passages inThe Birth
of Tragedyseem to suggest this:
In the Dionysian dithyramb man is aroused to the highest intensity of all his
symbolic capabilities; something never felt forces itself into expression, the
destruction of the veil of Maja, the sense of oneness as the presiding genius of form,
in fact, of nature itself (BoT 2).
Only to the extent that the [Dionysian] genius in the act of artistic creation is fused
with that primordial artist of the world does he know anything about the eternal
nature of art (BoT 5).
In Dionysian art and in its tragic symbolism this same nature speaks to us with its
true, undisguised voice: Be as I am! Under the incessant changes in phenomena, the
eternally creative primordial mother, eternally forcing things into existence, eternally
satisfied with the changing nature of appearances!(BoT 16 )
These passages could indeed work to suggest thatThe Birth of Tragedydoes not need to be read as a
synthetic gesture, and is instead a kind of Kantian play of appearances over the face of the-world-as-
it-is, the eternally changing ground to all being. However, as tempting as this method is, I do not
think that rebuking synthesis by asserting the dominance of the Dionysian is the way to proceed.
There is a significant problem that stands in the way of this version of balking the synthetic
argument: Dionysiansim also gets categorized as illusory and/or temporary!
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Throughout TheBirth of Tragedy, Nietzsche refers to Dionysianism as a form of drunkenness,
or as something with similar effects, and though we might think the night will continue forever at
last call when we are still ordering drinks, come the morning (and the credit card statement for
paying the tab) we harshly crash back into sobriety. Drunkenness is not our natural (or ground)
state, and yet Nietzsche made this comparison regardless. It suggests that the primordial unity
found in the Dionysian is not the truth of the-world-as-it-is, in any ultimate or eternal way.
Furthermore, beyond the temporal problems with drunkenness, there is also the fact that the
Dionysian is itself repeatedly referred to as a form of enchantment (Verzauberung):
The enchantment speaks out in his gestures... he himself now moves in as lofty and
ecstatic a way as he saw the gods move in his dream. The man is no longer an artist;
he has become a work of art: the artistic power of all of nature, to the highest
rhapsodic satisfaction of the primordial unity, reveals itself here in the transports of
intoxication.(BoT 1)
In the dramatic process there is already a surrender of individuality by the entry into
a strange nature. And, in fact, this phenomenon breaks out like an epidemic; an
entire horde feels itself enchanted in this way (BoT 8).
Now the dithyrambic chorus takes on the task of stimulating the mood of the
listeners right up to the Dionysian level, so that when the tragic hero appears on the
stage, they do not see something like an awkward masked person but a visionary
shape born, as it were, out of their own enchantment (BoT 8).
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The most sensible opponentlike Pentheus in the Bacchaeis unexpectedly
charmed by Dionysus and later runs in this enchanted state to his own destruction
(BoT 12).
IfThe Birth of Tragedyneither posits that Dionysianism and Apollonianism are joined in synthesis via
Aeschylean Attic tragedy (though it seems like it does occasionally posit this), nor argues for a
Kantian distancing of Dionysian reality asDing-an-sichand Apollonian reality as mere appearance
(though it seems like it also occasionally posits this), there must be another explanation that rebukes
the claim that Nietzsche was simply enacting a synthesis. Indeed.
The issue is that when we start looking for the best type of art for representing reality,
hunting and pecking among the categories of Apollonian, Dionysian, or Both-at-Once-ian for the
one that gets it right, we have fallen into a trap. That is, it is not the Subject subsumed by the
Object (Dionysianism), the Subject mastering the Object (Apollonianism), or some mix of the two
(as found in Aeschylean Attic tragedy), that is ideal. In fact, the ideal it is not about categories at all,
but about action!Nietzsche overturns the apparent Kantian-esque duality between appearances and
the-world-as-it-is, not with Aeschylean Attic tragedy functioning as a Hegelian synthesis of
Dionysiusism and Apollonianism, but by positing something else entirely:humanity exists to create
and to continue creating. In Nietzsche's own words, the metaphysical consolation with which, as I
* Nietzsche later returns to this theme inOn the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Lifewhere he writes
thatWe need [history] for life and for action, not for a comfortable turning away from life and from action or
for merely glossing over the egotistical life and the cowardly bad act. We wish to serve history only insofar as it
serves living. Here he seems to be making a similar claim for art: it is not worth pursuing if it does not serve
life.
It should be noted that I think that however you cut it, I do not believe later Nietzsche would have been pleased
withThe Birth of Tragedy. I am merely trying to suggest that there are traces of an argument in the text itself
with lend themselves to an alternate (non-Hegelian) reading even though Nietzsche distanced himself from it.
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am immediately indicating here, every true tragedy leaves us, that, in spite of all the transformations
in phenomena, at the bottom of everything life is indestructibly powerful and delightful... Art saves
him, and through art, life saves him (BoT 7).
In this conception both Apollonian and Dionysian drives,bothof theKunsttriebe, are either
(a) real but ephemeral or (b) illusory. Or, perhaps better than another either A or B, it can be said
that they arebothrealandillusory: Nietzsche understands language itself to be arbitrary, and
anything said aboutanyprimal impulse cannot beultimately true (in a positivist sense) because
language itself does not have the capacity to communicate knowledge in a pure register.
If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the
standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still
dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us,
and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate things according to
gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary
assignments! How far this oversteps the canons of certainty!.. The different languages,
set side by side, show that what matters with words is never the truth, never an
adequate expression; else there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself"
(for that is what pure truth, without consequences, would be) is quite
incomprehensible to the creators of language and not at all worth aiming for (TaL
1).
TheKunsttriebeare illusory in the sense that they are mythic and do not directly correspond to
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concrete, observable phenomenon. They are true in the sense that Nietzsche's grounds for truth are
not epistemological but ethical and cultural.
Nietzsche writes dissatisfied with contemporary society in general and contemporary art
theory in particular, taking issue with the shallow operatic forms of theatre that were passing as art.
In that context he wroteThe Birth of Tragedy, claiming that thedownfall of tragedy was at the same
time the downfall of myth and thatwithout myth every culture forfeits its healthy creative natural
power: only a horizon surrounded with myth completes the unity of an entire cultural movement...
(BoT 23). What Nietzsche wants is a strong, reality-addressing Germany, not a populace sated by
gaudy and vain light opera. He believes that myth must return with power and truth for that kind of
healthy creative natural power to return as well, and so he embodies the very kind of mythic
reasoning he hopes to see: he tries to jumpstart a Germanic reclamation of mythic power by
reconfiguring aesthetic theory.
CONCLUSION
InThe Birth of TragedyNietzsche is performing a kind of Ouroboros dance, an enactment of the
myths he is discussing: just as the Greeks gave a clear voice to the profound secret teachings of their
contemplative art, not in ideas, but in the powerfully clear forms of their divine world (BoT1),
Nietzsche invites a mythic reading of his work not by propositionally demanding a certain response,
but by providing a polyphonic and varied discourse which itself contains dissonant perspectives as
well as holistic harmonies. My reading suggests that the reason for Nietzcshe writingThe Birth of
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Tragedyand detailing the nature(s) of theKunsttriebeis because myth itself wants to be vividly felt as
a single instance of universality and truth staring into the infinite (BoT 17). That is, in Nietzsche's
text myth exerts itself through Nietzche to promulgate itself. Or, perhaps rather than myth, it is the
Will which is to blame.
Its an eternal phenomenon: the voracious Will always finds a way to keep its
creatures alive and to force them on to further living by an illusion spread over things.
One man is fascinated by the Socratic desire for knowledge and the delusion that
with it he will be able to heal the eternal wound of existence. Another is caught up by
the seductive veil of artistic beauty fluttering before his eyes, still another by the
metaphysical consolation that underneath the hurly-burly of appearances eternal life
flows on indestructibly, to say nothing of the more common and almost even more
powerful illusions which the Will holds ready at all times (BoT18).
Myth, Will, or Nietzsche, whoever or whatever is to blame, has produced a text that plays with its
own goals, undermining the possibility that it can accomplish the thing it claimed to set out to do:
to bring those two drives closer to us(BoT1) so that we might more fully understand them and
ourselves. Under scrutiny, those two drives do not become clearer or closer to us at all! In fact, just
the opposite seems to happen: what seemed relatively clear-cut and binary becomes murkier and less
distinct upon closer examination and reflection. As might a dream...
I think thatThe Birth of Tragedyshows an early Nietzsche exploring the relationship between
language, myth, ontology, and metaphysics. In it, myth via the hugely detailed descriptions of the
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differences between Dionysianism and Apollonianism is championed as a necessary component to
healthy culture, art, and life. Or rather, since art does not present itself for us in order to make us,
for example, better or to educate us(BoT 5), perhaps it is not that myth leads to art, which leads to
a healthy society and a strong man, but rather, that a healthy societyismyth leading to art, and the
strong man is he who is saved by art. Being healthy is merely to realize that only as an aesthetic
phenomenon are existence and the world eternally justified, and that our greatest human task is not
to identify with the Dionysian chorus or with the Apollonian hero; or with the Artist or the
Spectator; but to accept that the very ground of possibility by which Art is possible is humanity's
self-reflection.
Only to the extent that the genius in the act of artistic creation is fused with that
primordial artist of the world [that is, himself] does he know anything about the
eternal nature of art, for in that state he is, in a miraculous way, like the weird picture
of fairy tales, which can turn its eyes and contemplate itself. Now he is
simultaneously subject and object, simultaneously poet, actor, and spectator (BoT 5;
edit and emphasis added).
Art is life and the Will mythically revealing themselves in human action and interpretation,
and we should accept that artistic action and interpretation are endless and sufficient. Being human
isbeing an artistic actor and interpreter.
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Works Cited
Nietzsche, Friedrich.The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music.
Ian Johnston (trans.) Nanaimo, BC: Vancouver Island Univ. 2012. Web. 18 March 2013http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/tragedy_all.htm
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/tragedy_all.htmhttp://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/tragedy_all.htm