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did not constitute tragic drama, for this would place tragedy on the same level as lyric, as a product of the first entry of Dionysus into the representative order of Apollo. What occurs in tragedy is a second sublation of Apollo and Dionysus, but

this time not Apollo in the sense of the capacity to render the world meaningful 4

through representations per se, but in the second sense of the drive to wilfully hide

the world through beautiful forms. It is a classically Hegelian move, since both |

elements are negated and preserved at the same time, though neither is unchanged. Formally the synthesis occurs with the introduction of action into the dithyramb, whereupon it becomes drama for the first time. Nietzsche envisages that the drama occurred when Dionysus appeared on stage rather than being the absent referent of the dithyrambic narrative. This moment represents the first element of the dialectic, for Dionysus now speaks in the language of Apollo: Nietzsche notes ‘as an epic hero, almost in the language of Homer’ (KSA 1 p. 64). Keeping in line

with the philological tradition, Nietzsche observes that originally tragedy was ex- |

clusively concerned with the sufferings of Dionysus, hence its restriction to the cel­ ebrations and festivals in his honour, but moreover adds that while in the extant tragedies the concerns seem to be with other mythical figures such as Heracles, the house of the Atreids, Medea and the like, it is certain ‘that all the famous figures of the Greek stage Prometheus, Oedipus etc. are merely masks of that original hero Dionysus’ (KSA 1 p. 71). In other words they are all symbols of the same phe­ nomenon, namely that beneath the illusory and beautiful forms of the Apollinian, there is another wisdom which recognises the suffering and nausea which acknowledgement of the meaninglessness of the world can engender.

With this conclusion we are brought back to the problematics which I noted earlier, namely the problem of reconciling the need for a meaningful universe with apparent lack of any system of values to offer security or certainty. We see this

dramatically presented in Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone , as well as in Aeschy­

lus’ Prometheus Bound, where the hero suffers punishment for an apparently in­

nocuous transgression of a completely arbitrary law, such that one is led to the conclusion that ‘Everything present at hand is just and unjust and in both cases equally justified’ (ibid.). However although the deceptive and self-satisfied Apollinian wisdom of Oedipus has been shown to be flawed, indeed with disas­ trous consequences, this is not a sufficient response. For were we to rest with the simple admission that our values are flawed, there would be the risk of he descent into Nihilism, a prospect which Nietzsche viewed with horror. The clue to the af­ firmative aspect of tragedy must be sought in section nine, which I shall quote at length. The subject of the passage is Oedipus ‘who is destined to error and misery in spite of his wisdom, but who through his monstrous suffering finally exercises

à 89 a magical beneficent force, which remains potent after his departure. The noble per­

son does not sin, the profound poet intends to say: through his action every law, every natural order, indeed the moral world may well go to ground, yet precisely by virtue of this action a higher magical circle of effects is drawn, which found a new world on the ruins of the old one which has been toppled’ (KSA 1 p. 65).

Later on, when discussing the play Oedipus at Colonus which depicts the old

Oedipus shortly before his death, Nietzsche informs us that ‘the hero performed his highest activity in his purely passive behaviour’ (KSA 1 p. 66).

Here, if anywhere Nietzsche comes closest to the language of more tradi­ tional theories of the sublime in tragedy. Although Oedipus is annihilated by forces beyond human comprehension, his fate is nevertheless not an ignoble one. Through his passivity, through his willing acceptance of his fate he exudes an aura,

and provides the impetus for others to reconstruct the world which has been torn |

apart by the events on stage. Like the Schillerian tragic hero, Oedipus refuses to be daunted by the coming calamity, but instead continues questioning about his own

past, in attempt to save the city he rules. Moreover if one turns to Antigone one *

notes an actual will to self-destruct. Antigone refuses all the opportunities to save her life, and instead defiantly steers the same course into oblivion. So too Prometheus, who also features in the same section of the book, steals the gift of fire fully aware that he will be punished by the gods, thanks to his capacity for foreknowledge.

What one notes instantiated in all these examples is not a disclosure of some immortal soul which will survive, but simply the capacity to remained undaunted by the overwhelming powers of the world. Echoing Schiller, there is implicit in Nietzsche the belief that one can only truly render life bearable by confronting its most nauseating aspects. Schiller had emphasised the responsibility of moral culture to present a mimesis of nature at its worst in order to achieve genuine moral

enlightenment. So too in The Birth of Tragedy the annihilation of the tragic hero is

a necessary process. By actually willing his or her downfall, the tragic hero can make light of the human existential predicament, in an act of sublime mockery of all that threatens to disrupt human life. For this reason too, though it remains undeclared, Nietzsche associates the sublime with the comic. Unlike Schopenhauer, who discourages laughter as a foolish affirmation of the will-to- live, Nietzsche sees the comic as a companion of the sublime, in its refusal to submit to the nausea of existence. Later in the text Nietzsche concludes in the same note that ‘Dionysian art too intends to convince us of the eternal joy of existence: only we are to seek it not in appearances, but behind them’ (KSA 1 p. 109), also repeating Schiller's reservations about attaching too much significance to the

beautiful form. Hence we should express no surprise that Nietzsche should choose 4

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- the absurdly comic figure of the satyr as the archetypal Dionysian symbol, nor that

historically during the festival of Dionysus the tragic poet was always required to submit, in addition to three tragedies, a comic satyr play. Not as light relief after the draining effect of watching a trilogy of tragic dramas, but rather as an indication of the double aspect of the Dionysian. As Nietzsche says ‘The Olympian gods grew out of the smile of Dionysus, and humans out of his tears’ (KSA 1 p. 72).

With Nietzsche’s assertion of the internal unity of the tragic and the comic we are reminded of the theme of laughter which recurs throughout Nietzsche’s œu­

vre. One finds the theme announced in the very title oî Die Frohliche Wissenschaft

, variously translated as the Gay or Joyful Science , and one finds it repeated

within the text of that work, where Nietzsche speaks of the eternal comedy of exis­ tence’ (KSA 3 p. 372), commenting that the moralist ‘does not at all want us to laugh at existence, neither at ourselves nor at him’ (ibid. p. 371). One finds the

theme prominent, too, in Thus Spake Zarathustra , as John Lippitt has recently

shown.20 For the parable of the metamorphosis from camel to lion to child, with

which Nietzsche opens the first book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is supplemented I

with Zarathustra’s declaration in the fourth book that ‘higher, stronger, more victo­

rious, more joyful men, such as are square-built in body and soul: laughing lions

must come’ (KSA 4 p. 351) as a prelude to the advent of the child-like Übermen- 4

sch. Zarathustra asks, for example, ‘Who of you can both laugh and be elevated at Fi_■Ï

the same time ? Whoever climbs onto the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies’ 4

(ibid. p. 49).

Nietzsche’s allusion to the theme of the comic in The Birth of Tragedy , a

theme which will have so much significance for his later thinking, once again re­ minds us of the debt his thinking owes to the theory of the sublime. Raimonda Modiano has pointed out^i the importance to the Romantics and to philosophers including Hegel and Vischer, of seeing the unity of the comic and the sublime, noting, for example, that ‘the comic needs the sublime for its survival, for other­ wise it would lose the very contrast between ideality and mundane existence which defines its special dialectical character’ (p. 241). So too in Nietzsche, the theme of laughter stems from the problematics of sublimity thrown up by the tragic world view, and is paradoxically invested with special significance. For Nietzsche com­ edy is a matter of great seriousness.

If we chose to rest with the above account, however, we would be entitled to regard Nietzsche as in some sense merely continuing the project bequeathed by Kant, Idealism, Romanticism and perhaps even Vischer (whom he mentions in the

first Untimely Meditation ) albeit denuded of the Christian moral sentiment of those

predecessors. Yet this would be solely to heed the Dionysian side of the equation. The Apollinian side, which has been both negated and preserved, remains under-

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