The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music

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Dedicated to Richard Wagner, this book is rich in Nietzsche's enthusiasms for Greek literature and especially tragedy, for Schopenhauer and Wagner's "Tristan Und Isolde". Its central vision is the idea that "only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world justified". Making his distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian spirit, Nietzsche presses the reader to consider why it is that we derive pleasure from tragic art, and what is the relationship between our experience of suffering in life and in art. "The Birth of Tragedy", first published in 1871, was the author's first book.

Author Bio

Friedrich Nietzsche was born near Leipzig in 1844, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. At 24 he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basle University, where he stayed until forced by his health to retire in 1879. Here, he wrote all his literature, including Thus Spake Zarathustra, and developed his idea of the Superman. He became insane in 1889 and remained so until his death in 1900. Shaun Whiteside has translated widely from French, German and Italian. Michael Tanner is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He is particularly interested in Wagner and Nietzsche.