New Philosopher – July 2019

NewPhilosopher

science – hadprevailed, resulting in

thetrajectoryof westernphilosophy

eversince,fromSocrates,Plato,and

Aristotleallthewaytoourmodern,

rational scientific worldview. Ni-

etzscheargued that the suppression

• andlosstoourcollectivememory


• of the Dionysian tradition had
  causedustolosesomethingprecious
  andnecessaryfora balancedculture.
  TheDionysianscelebrateda noless
  importanthalfofourhumanity:that
  ofourwild,unbridled,sensualselves.
  TheDionysiansdelightedinsexual-
  ity,passion, emotion, and imagina-
  tion, and Nietzsche believed that
  Wagner,withhismusicandapproach
  tolife,personifiedthisaspectofour-
  selvesthatwedesperatelyneedtore -
  claim.(It’snotdifficultto seewhere
  Sigmund Freud, who wrote a few
  decadesafterNietzsche,mighthave
  gotsomeofhisideas.)

WINNER

WRITERS’ AWARD XXIII:
BEING HUMAN

Writers’ Award XXIII: being human

The first person to read The Birth

of Tragedy was Cosima Wagner. Two

years before its publication, Ni-

etzsche had given Cosima an earlier

version of the manuscript for her

33rd birthday.

Over the next few weeks, Cosima

and Wagner read the manuscript, ac-

cording to Cosima’s diary, “with solemn

feelings and ever-increasing pleasure”.

The two libertines were fascinated, and

no doubt titillated, by its detailed ac-

counts of the Dionysians’ participation

in secret orgiastic rites. Another entry

in Cosima’s diary records that her hus-

band was “happy to have lived to have

read it... He calls me his priestess of

Apollo – he says I am the Apollonian

element, he is the Dionysian.”

On finishing the book, Wagner

turned to Cosima and said:

“This is the book I have been long-

ing for.”

Unfortunately for Nietzsche, the

academy didn’t share his friends’ en-

thusiasm. When The Birth of Trag-

edy was finally published, it received

damning critiques and sold only a

handful of copies.

In the wake of this disastrous de-

but, Nietzsche’s fortunes fell into a de-

cline from which they would never re-

cover. His health rapidly deteriorated,

with no doctors able to pinpoint the

cause of excruciating headaches and

shooting pains up and down his limbs.

He resigned his post at Basel Univer-

sity due to poor health and increasing

ostracism from his peers. At around

this time, he also started to become

disillusioned with Wagner. This de-

velopment was inevitable in a way, as

Nietzsche was finding his own philo-

sophical voice, and Wagner, like most

narcissists, did not tolerate the emer-

gence of another point of view under

Richard and Cosima Wagner, by Fritz Luckhardt