The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 7.5arship, and art. Here again, Nietzsche brought up the subject of
Oedipus. Oedipus had ventured forth too far, answering the questions
of the sphinx and solving the "riddle of nature" (1,67; BT% 9). However,
this solver of riddles was also the murderer of his father and the hus-
band of his mother, thereby violating the "holiest order of nature."
According to Nietzsche, "myth seems be whispering to us that...
Dionysian wisdom is an abomination of nature, and that those who
plunge nature into the abyss of annihilation by dint of their knowledge
must themselves also suffer the disintegration of nature" (1,67). With
his subsequent citation from the myth that "the edge of wisdom turns
against the wise" (1,67), Nietzsche took the problem of truth to its log-
ical extreme. How much truth can a person endure without being
destroyed by it? Do we not also need the knowledge that allows us to dis-
cern how much life is in knowledge? If The Birth of Tragedy could be sum-
marized in one sentence, it would read roughly as follows: it is better to
approach the enormity of life with art, and best of all with music.
Nietzsche sought to achieve a paradox with The Birth of Tragedy. He
shifted the Dionysian into the light of knowledge and at the same time
undid the sobering effects of knowledge, later claiming that the book
was composed for a singing voice. Perhaps his colleagues' harsh indict-
ments stemmed from his attempt to pass off this book as classical
philology. In any case, the philological establishment never quite forgave
its pampered prodigy. Professor Ritschl, Nietzsche's former teacher and
mentor, called the book "witty carousing." Ulrich Wilamowitz-
Moellendorf, who later became the pope of classical philology, pub-
lished a devastating critique in 1873, which closed with these words:
"Let Mr. Ν keep his word, let him take up the thyrsus and move from
India to Greece, but he should step down from the podium from which
he is supposed to be teaching scholarship; let him gather tigers and pan-
thers at his knees, but not Germany's young generation of philologists"
(Janz 1,469).
Overnight Nietzsche had forfeited his philological reputation.
Philologists do not get off lighdy when they lure us onto secluded