82 Nietzsche
beauty out of shocking elements. Greek culture is strong in this sense.
We should not be misled by the cheerfulness of the Greeks; their pre-
vailing sentiment was tragic and pessimistic When Greek life awakened
to consciousness, it gazed into the abyss. Horror was the precursor of
the advance of the mind Nietzsche cited the wise Silenus, the compan-
ion of Dionysus, who, according to an old story, replied to Midas s ques-
tion of what would be the very best and most desirable for people: "You
wretched species, children of chance and drudgery, why do you force me
to tell you what you would gready benefit from not hearing? The very
best is far beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing.
The second best for you, however, is to die soon" (1,35; BT§ 3).
The undedying tragic sentiment of Greek culture went along these
lines. Apollonian affirmation was based on a bold, vital "nonetheless."
The Olympians owed their genesis to the same "drive that inspires art, as
the completion and consummation of existence, enticing us to go on
with our existence" (1,36; BT§ 3); this artistic sphere resembled the
ecstatic visions of a tortured martyr. The Apollonian will to culture
erected a shield or, to use military terminology, a "perpetual military
encampment" (1,41 ;2ΕΓ§ 4) against the elemental life forces. In the fore-
ground or in the interior of the fortress, it situated the theater of life with
all of its local gods, laws, virtues, artworks, tales, and political shrewdness.
The Dionysian, however, as expressed in orgiastic cults and festivals, sac-
rificial rites, music and exhilaration, was perched far closer to the horren-
dous abyss of life, even though it also represented sublimation and
cultivation. In short, the Dionysian life forces of pain and pleasure and
"expire and expand" were still manifest in ancient art. Nietzsche's Birth of
Tragedy closes with this rhetorical declaration: "How much must these
people have suffered to achieve such beauty!" (1,156; BT% 25).
Nietzsche circled around the Dionysian and left its fundamental
ambiguity in place. He regarded it as the absolute reality in which the
individual enthusiastically disintegrates or goes down in horror, and
considered it a grave error to approach the overpowering force of life
without protective devices, namely the intermediaries of religion, schol-