The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 65now," wrote Cosima on February 5, 1870, "namely, not to stir up this
hornets' nest. Do you follow me? Do not mention the Jews, especially
not in passing. Later, when you want to take up the bitter fight, in God's
name, but not from the beginning; you want to avoid having everything
on your path turn confused and chaotic... You do, of course, know
that from the bottom of my soul I agree with your claim" (N/W\$2).
Richard Wagner also applauded Nietzsche's lecture. He concurred
with each of its points, but admitted to reacting with "shock" to the
"boldness" with which Nietzsche "communicates [his] very new ideas"
(N/W 1,50). Wagner, like his wife, counseled caution. "I am worried
about you," he wrote, "and hope from the bottom of my heart that you
do not suffer any consequences." He then offered the suggestion that
Nietzsche develop his ideas in a "large comprehensive work" (N/W
1,50).
There are indications that Nietzsche conceived the plan for The Birth
of Tragedy in response to this suggestion. He began to have a strange pre-
monition of great things to come and of what he would create. In mid-
February 1870, he wrote to Rohde: "Scholarship, art, and philosophy are
now growing together in me so fully that someday I am sure to give birth
to a centaur" (B 3,95).
Early in the summer of 1870, Nietzsche encountered an idea that
would guide his understanding and evaluation not only of the culture of
antiquity but of the dynamism and vividness of culture as a whole. This
idea was the discovery of the interplay of fundamental polar forces of
culture, to which Nietzsche assigned the names of the two gods Apollo
and Dionysus. In 'The Dionysian Worldview," written in the summer of
1870, he began employing the contrastive pair "Apollonian-Dionysian"
to interpret Greek tragedy.
The reflections developed in his first two lectures led him right to the
threshold of this discovery. The first lecture treated the origin of tragedy
in Dionysian festivals; the second discussed the "Apollonian clarity"
(1,544; ST) of Socrates. Now he recognized that tragedy represents a
compromise between these two basic drives. Passions and music are