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The Birth of Dionysia

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The Birth of Dionysia The Birth of Dionysia THE BIRTH OF DIONYSIA Out of the New Dithyramb by James Chester James Chester Publishing Copyright © 2020 James Chester All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at the address below. Published in the United States by James Chester Publishing, Boston Massachusetts All inquiries may be made at https://www.JamesChester.org Library of Congress Control Number: 2020915920 Front cover image by Gerard Dou, Astronomer by Candlelight c. 1665. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program. Book design by James Chester. ISBN: 978-1-7350167-2-6 (Paperback) Second edition September 2020 Printed in the United States of America FOR THE COLLEGE STUDENT “The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies. —Virgil, Virgil’s Aeneid … I had undertaken something which could not have been done by everybody: I went down into the deepest depths; I tunneled to the very bottom…. [Now] I have come back, and — I have escaped. —Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak Who would have guessed that the way out of the abyss was to descend into it more deeply? Apparently, just one person, who then went on to teach us everything he learned with the creation of the first dithyrambic tragedy — Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Table of Contents Preface ......................................................................................... ix Introduction ............................................................................... xv PART 1: HERMENEUTICS ...................................................... 1 Nietzsche Founds a New Culture: Dionysia .............................. 3 A Definition of Culture .............................................................. 7 The Bad Conscience .................................................................. 13 A Journey into the Subconscious ............................................. 29 Genius as the Aim of Culture ................................................... 37 The New Dithyramb ................................................................. 45 Theory of the Will to Power .................................................... 49 Human Being and Sub-Individuation ...................................... 57 The Dithyramb and Dithyrambic Drama ................................ 67 The Use of Metaphor in the New Dithyramb ....................... 115 Tragedy and Musical Dissonance ........................................... 127 Theory of Übermensch ........................................................... 133 On the Redemption of Human Suffering .............................. 145 The Meaning of Human Suffering ......................................... 161 Definition of Mysticism .......................................................... 173 The Meaning of Life ............................................................... 183 Re-Evaluation of Values ......................................................... 189 PART II: EXEGESES ............................................................. 197 Zarathustra’s Prologue ............................................................ 199 The Academic Chairs of Virtue .............................................. 235 The Three Metamorphoses .................................................... 239 Backworldsmen ....................................................................... 241 The Despisers of the Body ...................................................... 247 Joys and Passions ..................................................................... 249 The Pale Criminal ................................................................... 255 Reading and Writing .............................................................. 261 The Tree on the Hill................................................................ 265 The Preachers of Death ........................................................... 269 The New Idol ........................................................................... 273 The Flies in the Marketplace .................................................. 277 Chastity..................................................................................... 281 The Thousand and One Goals ................................................ 285 Neighbor-Love ........................................................................ 295 The Bite of the Adder .............................................................. 297 Child and Marriage .................................................................. 301 Voluntary Death ...................................................................... 303 The Bestowing Virtue ............................................................. 307 The Sublime Ones ................................................................... 313 Immaculate Perception ........................................................... 317 Great Events ............................................................................. 319 The Soothsayer ........................................................................ 329 The Stillest Hour ..................................................................... 337 The Wanderer ......................................................................... 341 The Vision and the Enigma .................................................... 347 The Spirit of Gravity ............................................................... 361 The Convalescent .................................................................... 365 The Great Longing .................................................................. 375 The Cry of Distress .................................................................. 381 Among Daughters of the Desert ............................................ 383 The Sign ................................................................................... 389 Bibliography ............................................................................. 397 Notes ......................................................................................... 401 Afterword ................................................................................. 417 Acknowledgements Nietzsche, F. Wilhelm., Common, T. (1917). Thus Spake Zarathustra. New York: Modern Library. On Moods. Translated by Graham Parkes, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies: Mood, Music, and the Subject. Autumn ed., vol. 2, Penn State University Press, 1991, pp. 5-10. Copyright © 1991 Penn State University Press. This article is used by permission of The Pennsylvania State University Press. The New Dithyramb Thus Spoke Zarathustra is Nietzsche’s new dithyrambic drama, and it is a new art form with which the world is completely unfamiliar. Keep in mind that Nietzsche wrote it toward the end of his life. Though he knew he needed to leave some instruction in the manner of its interpretation and practice, he simply ran out of time and did not do so. [My] work would not have been complete had [I] handed it to the world only in the form of silent manuscript. [I] must make known to the world what it could not guess in regard to [my] productions, what was [mine] alone to reveal—the new style for the execution and presentation of [my] works, so that [I] might set that example which nobody else could set, and thus establish a tradition of style, not on paper, not by means of signs, but through impressions made upon the very 33 souls of men. A new dithyramb is comprised of a multitude of idioms. For instance, consider the following idiom, which can be found in the dithyramb entitled Of the Tree on the Mountainside: 45 THE NEW DITHYRAMB Zarathustra came to understand that a youth was avoiding him. And as he was walking alone one evening upon the mountains surrounding the town called “the Cow of Many Conflicting Appearances,” lo and behold, he found the youth sitting and leaning against a tree and gazing with a wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra took hold of the tree beside which the youth was sitting and spoke thus: “If I wanted to shake this tree with my hands, I would not be able to do it. “But the wind that we do not see troubles and bends it wherever it blows. We are swayed and troubled the worst by invisible hands.” Then the young man stood up in dismay and said: “I hear Zarathustra and I was just thinking about him.” Zarathustra replied: “Why are you startled? – But it is with men as with this tree. The more it wants to go up and up, the more his roots strive downwards, downwards, into 34 darkness, deepness, into evil.” Clearly, this passage appears to be telling a story. And there appear to be two characters in this part of the story: the main character named Zarathustra and a young man. But 46 DIONYSIA METAPHYSICA there is no story in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and there are no characters, not one. Each of the above statements is an idiom. Some people call them aphorisms, but “idiom” is a more accurate description because an idiom is not meant to convey a literal meaning. And none of Nietzsche’s dithyrambs contain anything that is meant to be taken literally. If I wrote a simple sentence, like “the dog ran up the stairs,” you would
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