68 Nietzsche
fields. He witnessed the dead being gathered from the fields, and he
accompanied a transport of the wounded. In the process, he contracted
both dysentery and diphtheria. He wrote to Richard Wagner on
September 11,1870: "So, after a brief run of four weeks, working on the
world at large, I am already thrown back upon myself" (Β 3,143). He was
unable to shake off the "ghasdy images" {B 3,146) of dying and mutila-
tion on the fields of corps es. When he called the "Dionysian worldview"
a "glorification and transfiguration of the horrific and dreadful aspects
of existence as remedies of existence" (1,570; DW), he knew the feeling
from personal experience. In a draft of a preface to The Birth of Tragedy,
addressed to Richard Wagner in February 1871, he declared: "I have
hopes as well, which enabled me, while the earth trembled under the
thudding strides of Ares, to remain aloof and engaged with my theme
even in the midst of the terrible direct effects of the war; indeed, I recall
lying together with wounded men in the freight car in the lonely night,
and although I was charged with their care, my thoughts turned to the
three abysses of tragedy: their names are 'delusion, will, woe'" (7,354).
Nietzsche pinned his hopes on a revival of culture, which had
become blunted in the "sunset glow of peace" (Β 3,130) and had dis-
lodged the Dionysian-Heraclitean solemnity of life. Chances for a
revival would be good because "military genius" had invaded bourgeois
reality as a Dionysian force.
The role of war as a life force was more prominent in the original plan
for The Birth of Tragedy than in its final version. Nietzsche opted not to
include a lengthy passage about war and slavery in Greece, but instead
reworked this passage into a preface to a book he planned to write called
"The Greek State." In this text, the Dionysian world and the world of
Heraclitus merge. The Dionysian life force is identified with war as the
father of all things. A similar train of thought is manifest in "Homer's
Contest," an essay written at the same time. The world of the will, seen
in Schopenhauerian terms, which Nietzsche identified with the
Dionysian facet of life, had a military dimension. Schopenhauer had
conceived of the world will as a unity of mutually hostile embodiments