Trustees of Boston University Nietzsche's "Daimonic Force" of Tragedy and Its Ancient Traces Author(s): Stephen Halliwell Source: Arion, Third Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 2003), pp. 103-123 Published by: Trustees of Boston University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163915 . Accessed: 22/06/2014 16:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Trustees of Boston University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arion. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Force55 "Daimonic Nietzsche's of Tragedy and ItsAncient Traces STEPHENHALLIWELL of book 3 of Morgenr?te returns Friedrich Nietzsche a section An und Musik" "Trag?die ject that had been central He to an earlier phase entitled to a sub of his thinking. it as follows: broaches of a fundamentally warlike temper, as for example the Greeks in the time of Aeschylus, are difficult to move to emotion, and when pity does for once defeat their hardness it grips them like an Men then feel themselves un ecstasy and like a 'daimonic force'?they free and excited by a religious shudder. Afterwards they have their reservations about this state so of mind; as long they are undergo and of the ing it, they enjoy the rapture of being-outside-oneself miraculous, mixed together with the bitterest wormwood of suffer ing: that is a drink fit for warriors, something special, dangerous and that bittersweet is not easily granted to a person. It is to souls that experience pity in this way that tragedy is addressed, to hard and warlike souls that are defeated only with difficulty, whether by fear or by pity, but for which it is useful from time to time to grow soft. But what to the is the point of tragedy for those who 'sympathetic had Athenians yet Plato?ah, affections' become how softer far mentality of those who small!?the philosophers fulness of tragedy.1 Here and as sails and more still were they to the winds! the the When in the sensitive, from stand as open time of senti emotional in our own cities, both large and already made complaints about the harm dwell in the remainder an analogous distinction ences of music) Nietzsche of the section between constructs (where he draws and weak audi strong a characteristic coun terpoint of thoughts about the culture of ancient Greece and the decadence of his own day. The idealized Greeks he has in mind belong, as so often, to a pre-Socratic and, more point ARION 11.1 SPRING/SUMMER2OO3 This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions nietzsche's io4 "daimonic force" world: edly, a pre-Platonic they are Greeks of the late ar "the time of Aeschylus," chaic and early classical periods, a came to its final flowering, of culture that representatives as Nietzsche had claimed just four sections earlier in Day break (168), in the era of Sophocles, Pericles, Hippocrates, and, not least, the Sophists. What Thucydides, Democritus, matters about they in the present context is that the audience for perfect supposedly tragedy. did so in virtue of a character that made them difficult these Greeks formed They to stir to emotion yet paradoxically capable, surrender to intense, "daimonic" on occasion, of of surges tragic profound those easily moved pity. Unlike by sympathetic feelings, in cluding the softer, more sensitive Greeks of Plato's time, but so the sentimental much more inhabitants of the modern these warlike Greeks resisted emotion, world, instinctively or at any rate the "unmanly" emotion of pity.2 They were, or not we are to we might say, warriors of the soul, whether to Nietzsche them tends all (as do, for instance in imagine at the start of Die Geburt der Trag?die his depiction, 21, of the Greeks riors who fought the Persian Wars) as physical war too. re to explore here the implications of Nietzsche's on pity and the Greek expe marks in this section of Daybreak rience of tragedy. Iwant to do so by following some of what I I propose shall call the ancient in this passage and by reading these traces. It does not "against" "traces" through and to my argument how far these traces are taken to constitute direct or indirect influences. Nietzsche's thinking is in general so heavily steeped in ancient ideas, though also so in its reworking and adaptation of them, that it is complex Nietzsche much matter to use relevant Greek texts important for my purposes as interpretative bearings and comparanda than to try to pin in down the precise degree of his conscious or unconscious to them. I am equally concerned here, in other debtedness words, with traces both visible and submerged. The section of more in question leaves no doubt that ancient sources Daybreak are active, on some level of Nietzsche's mind, at more than one This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell 105 in his train of thought. For example, the reference to criticisms of tragedy in the age of Plato signals philosophical an unmistakable reminiscence of a passage of book 10 of point Plato's for which Republic Nietzsche some admi expresses to other fourth-century it may also allude elsewhere; in the emotional of Athenian which susceptibility writings not it is is censured. Moreover, inconceivable theatre-audiences ration that these same works cal misfit) ironically, tion of the hard-souled might even, if (given the chronologi to Nietzsche's have contributed concep men in Plato's of Aeschylean Athens: to the text, in particular, we encounter a salient counterpart to resistance pattern?habitual three-stage psychodynamic to it in the theatre, and retrospective to Aeschylean Nietzsche attributes audi misgivings?that ences.3 My aim here, however, is not simply to identify possi pity, ble intense ancient surrender sources beneath the surface of Nietzsche's argument, but to invoke them selectively in order to help open on the striking idea of the "daimonic up a new perspective inDaybreak. force" of tragic pity that he conceptualizes Let us start with The reference to Nietzsche's contrast something basic but nonetheless revealing. to Greeks in the time of Aeschylus is a pointer but well attested reliance on the questionable and Euripidean (and partly Aeschylean contest in of values the "Socratic") poets in the sec presented It is in ond half of Aristophanes' hard, fact, not to be Frogs. between as especially of Frogs 1013-27, where Aeschylus serts that his own plays produced Athenians who positively valor by "breathed" militarism and were stirred to warlike reminded such as his Seven Against Thebes (a tragedy "full of has not Ares," 1021) and his Persians. Of course, Nietzsche built of "in his Greeks time the conception straightforwardly works on this or related passages of Frogs, but we of Aeschylus" know from The Birth of Tragedy and other writings that his views on the evolution of Greek culture, not least on tragedy itself, were affected by the grand antithesis between Aeschy lean and Euripidean personae, with all their attendant poetic as dramatized in Aristophanes' principles, play.4 It is partie This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions io6 nietzsche's that Nietzsche germane ularly force" "daimonic could have an observed in the Frogs, where Aeschy Aeschylus-Dionysus at one point (line 1259). lus is called "the Bacchic master" connection issue in the though pity as such is hardly a major owes to Nietzsche surely something comedy, Aristophanes' "hard" ethos of the great polarity between the militaristically Besides, and the sentimental, pathos-driven older playwright preoccu one to of the and reference the younger: pity in pations only occurs in that Euripides dressed Aeschylus' complaint Frogs in rags in order his kings to make them seem blatantly pitiful the alleges, that promoted mannerism, (1063)?a Aeschylus of fake pathos by members cultivation of Euripides' own public (1065-66). it is incontestable While of Frogs stands that the Aeschylus of in the background of the paradigm Aeschylean tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy, and thus forms a shadowy presence be hind the Aeschylean audiences of Daybreak 172, we need a more complex argument to do justice to the latter's remark able but neglected force" of pity suggestion of a "daimonic men who are normally immune to that affects hard-souled to this force, placed by Nietzsche ("einer 'd?monischen Gewali"), Aeschylean men do for once succumb to pity. Just after his reference himself in inverted commas we learn that when "von (Mitleiden) pity or compassion they feel themselves a einem religi?sen Schauder (excited by erregt" religious should Nietzsche choose to describe this ex shudder). Why as specific as a shudder? terms in of something perience that he displays some fondness Without the fact overlooking to quasi elsewhere for applying the language of shuddering to read it is and experiences, religious metaphysical possible Nietzsche's sciously or texts Greek needs cient con it in this place as echoing, whether a notion of found in a number subliminally, use of known to him. The "shudder" of tragic pity as part of a nexus of an than one Greek source is to be understood, Imaintain, traces in this passage. More likely to have Iwill mention resonated in Nietzsche's three, starting with mind at this moment. the latest, Aristotle's This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Poet Stephen Halliwell 107 ics, which represents a partial (though critically independent) of the dynamics of classical audience-responses codification to tragic drama; then moving back to Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, which prefigures some of the ideas codified by Aristo tle and at the same time reflects motifs present within tragedy itself; and finally looking at a passage of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus where we find not only, as in Aristotle and Gorgias, the "shudder" of a response to tragedy, but also a connection between this response and the Greek concept of a dairnon. Having glanced at these three texts, we will be better placed to interpret, though also to probe certain problems that arise "daimonic force" of tragic pity. from, Nietzsche's Aristotle's Poetics poses perhaps can be detected is the most obvious, but also for my pur traces the least far-reaching, Greek text whose in Nietzsche's remarks. Its relevance stems from the fact that it had long been the canonical, though not, as we shall see, the earliest source for the idea of "pity and fear" as the central emotional components of an appropriate as to in noted Nietzsche's audience-response tragedy, phrase "sei es durch Furcht, sei es durch Mitleid" (whether by fear or by pity) inDaybreak 172 itself. Now, at one point in chap ter 14 of the Poetics Aristotle denotes the experience of tragic to "shudder" His fear by the verb phrittein, (i4.i453b5). of the two verbs phrittein kai eleein, "to shudder conjunction and to pity," gives the prima facie impression that phrittein to the sensation of fear, though we here refers principally in which for a compound experience tragic (not ordinary) fear overlaps and converges with pity.5 Niet to the Poetics, as my later remarks on his zsche's relationship need to allow attitude often to catharsis will ismore complex than demonstrate, I do not want to make anything special of appreciated. 14 in this context, but its reference der" must count as one layer inNietzsche's Poetics to a tragic "shud reconstruction of the psychology of ancient audiences. Another layer is furnished, I believe, formula ipates the Poetics' from the sophist Gorgias' by a work that antic of "pity and fear." In a passage Encomium concerned of Helen This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions io8 nietzsche's "daimonic force" the capacity of language or speech (logos) to bring about "the most divine things" (theiotata erga), logos is said to be able to manipulate the emotions of its hearers both with and negatively (and thus, among other things, to positively to "end fear" but also "enhance pity"). Gorgias applies his the power of poetry, one of Greek cul thesis by describing ture's supremely potent forms of logos, as follows: listen to poetry are overcome by a shudder that is full of fear, a pity that brings with itmuch weeping, and a longing that Those who craves lives, perience At for grief. the soul of the successes undergoes, through and the failures force of others' of logoi, affairs an intense and ex its own.6 his own early interest in Greek rhetoric, Nietzsche have been familiar with Gorgias' text, though I am not aware of any direct reference to it in his writings. Gorgias' Given must words cover poetry in general, but their slant suits including the Homeric epics (which were read ostensibly tragic works, to tragic drama), especially ily thought of as antecedents well. Gorgias may indeed be reflecting a more fully fledged his own (we know, independ theory of tragedy, whether on the subject) or one more views that he held ently, explicit widely would shared help in the quoted sketches the combination Plato's that later fifth century?something sense of the fact that the passage just a model of audience psychology, including to make of pity and fear, that then reappears in both treatments of the genre.7 Whatever de and Aristotle's gree of originality we ascribe to Gorgias in this area (and on the issue have been divided), his Helen of tragedy that locates a fear conception scholarly opinions attests a potential ful "shudder" at the heart of the audience's If I experience. was am right in supposing that Gorgias' present at language inNietzsche's mind when composing Day least subliminally to register that just before break 172, it is highly pertinent the extract from Helen logos as a "powerful already quoted Gorgias master," while just after characterizes it he refers to This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell 109 a language which "be language of magic, The whole and the soul."8 pas witches, changes persuades, in evokes a quasi-religious sage, in other words, experience the "divine" and possessed by psycholog the audience ismastered All makes irresistible forces. this the Gorgianic model ically even more illuminating for Daybreak 172. can be A perhaps less direct but equally rich connection which text and the words uttered by posited between Nietzsche's the chorus of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus at the moment of the self when by the appearance they are confronted terrible thing they Oedipus: they call it the most a ever have dairnon (an idea echoed seen, posit the agency of at to the terrible "shud himself and refer by Oedipus 1311), blinded causes the encounter them to feel (phrik?) which The chorus's experience here is a sort of fu (1297-1306). sion of pity and fear. The messenger who had forewarned der" them of Oedipus' had said they would witness self-blinding a sight that would fill them with pity at the same time as re vulsion The chorus twice use the adjective (1295-96). "terrible" which is fundamentally associ deinos, (1297-98), ated with fear, though also sometimes with pity; and they in its Doric dustanos (1303, himself up by Oedipus picked immediately af In the chorus of Theban elders short, (1307). call Oedipus form), a word terwards mark a mixture of appalled horror and profound at the spectacle of a man whose torment seems to and manifest the work of a more-than-human "shudder" sorrow with "wretched," a god or destructive here signifying daimon, "spirit," perhaps to be identified with Apollo himself.9 Their a sharply unstable shudder accompanies reaction, and one agency?a is heightened poignancy by the symbolism itself. They simultaneously feel unable blinding whose of the self to look at yet full of desire to do so; their impulse is to turn Oedipus, but also to question and understand away, (1303-5)?a to suggest, that may have inspired Niet I want dilemma, zsche's own formulation of the of the position haunting as one in The Birth in which tragic spectator, of Tragedy 22, This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions no nietzsche's "daimonic force" "er schaut mehr und at work from view. They are aware of it only in the invites but also repels suffering which sich doch tiefer als je und w?nscht more more and erblindet" (he looks deeply than ever, yet wishes himself blind).10 The dairnon that the chorus discern is hidden exhibition of a human a pitying gaze. The motif of a shudder of fear occurs in other passages of I think, Greek tragedy which I leave aside here, but nowhere, re the of chorus's with the overwhelming Theban intensity to the of of the blinded Nietzsche sponse sight Oedipus. an course knew the Oedipus Tyrannus well; he had written still at school, lectured on it in Basel, and essay on it while in the ninth section of The Birth of cited it prominently play can therefore count as at least a Tragedy. Sophocles' significant "daimonic how a number section what echo behind the "religious shudder" and the But of Daybreak 172. having seen of ancient texts have left their traces on this force" motifs it is time now to attend more closely to of the work, has made of them. A point of great conse can best be made by way of contrast with the Sopho Nietzsche quence clean material of Oedipus The chorus just considered. at the with horror and shudder pity Tyrannus sight of Oedi or in his a the daimon discern behind of pus; they operations to Their response self-blinding. Oedipus' tragedy therefore has a markedly a fully human religious dimension to it, but it is nonetheless in the sense, which they response, grounded when the king's parricide and incest had been a "par that Oedipus' sufferings constitute finally disclosed, a cause of about destruction and of pessimism adigm" tragic had expressed But the the possibilities of human life in general (1186-95). souls in pity, as well as the fear, felt by strong "Aeschylean" a more this. It of is is than kind ecstasy, Daybreak something or even frenzy ("Taumel"), an irresistible "daimonic force." the "daimonic" in other words, has transferred Nietzsche, and "religious" element from the plane of the tragic event it of the ideal tragic audience. While self to the experience Sophoclean pity is a response to an awareness of metaphysi This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell and cal forces to the human cost they exact, Nietzschean are concerned, is itself a we in the passage with which moment in the experience metaphysical pity, ment overtones whose m of tragic art?a mo accentuates by and loss of individ Nietzsche religious of it as a temporary possession of a kind familiar from some of the ecstatic speaking uation, "mys of cults antiquity. tery" to ex Ifwe ask why this should be so, it seems reasonable amine Daybreak 172 in the light of parts of The Birth of The of doing so, however, are not straight results Tragedy. indeed, I want to claim, they are deeply paradoxi are clear enough. one level the lines of connection forward: cal. At I noted earlier that near the start of BT 21 obviously, Nietzsche identifies the Greeks of the era of the Persian Wars, as possessing the most appro i.e., "the time of Aeschylus," Most for the true experience of tragedy: in both in the same (vague) way in relation places tragedy to a larger historical and political setting. More specifically priate disposition is situated still, but also more problematically, contain occurrences of the same monic" and the tragic "shudder" In BT 21 Nietzsche of Daybreak. the later chapters o? BT of the "dai two motifs as reappear characterizes in our section the impact of over a in terms several Greek of generations, tragedy, period of "den st?rksten Zuckungen des dionysischen D?mon" (the In the fol of the Dionysiac daimon).11 we are told that the of spectator tragedy lowing chapter, shudders at the prospect of the sufferings ("schaudert vor den Leiden") which are going to afflict the tragic hero, yet at the strongest convulsions of a sufferings give him a presentiment we more at if Here once, overpowering pleasure.12 higher, 21-22 we can BT with discern 172, juxtapose Daybreak use of the ideas I have fore in Nietzsche's complexities same time that those grounded. The "daimonic" connection between the two texts in the direction of Dionysus, but that unmistakably us to regard pity itself as at least a dimension of Dionysiac the same chapters o? BT experience, whereas points would prompt apparently indicate that pity (aswell as the "shudder" of fear This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 112 nietzsche's in 22) "daimonic force" terms: in in essentially Apollonian tells us explicitly that pity or compas sense "saves" the tragic spectator from the is to be construed 21 Nietzsche chapter sion in a certain ("in einem gewissen Sinne ret primal suffering of theWorld vor dem Urleiden der Welt"), tet uns doch das Mitleiden and he adds, shortly afterwards, that the Apollonian pulls us our away from the Dionysiac rapt at precisely by focussing tention on individual characters and fastening our pity to them.13 One might well gain the impression here that pity falls on the Apollonian side of Nietzsche's great aesthetic dis one act if of takes the tinction, particularly feeling with or for to someone else's sufferings not a loss of entail ("mitleiden") self but an awareness of difference between one's own and himself often does, not least identity, as Nietzsche a with moral-cum-Aristotelian response to by bracketing pity as 22. seems in BT Yet it clear that the configu just tragedy the other's ration force," outside ideas in Daybreak ecstasy, "daimonic 172?pity, a religious shudder, and the audience's sense of being the BVs characterization of the themselves?echoes of realm. Is there any way of resolving this tension? Dionysiac scattered remarks on the place of pity in the Nietzsche's in of experience tragedy give rise to a number of problems, part because his attitudes to pity tout court are so intricate. It is a sign of just how troubled and unsure he was about the relevance of pity (and fear) to tragedy that he could produce on the subject. In one section such disparate pronouncements he goes so far as to deny that of Die fr?hliche Wissenschaft or audiences wanted pity and fear at all playwrights re from tragedy; it was not just that they were consciously sistant to it, a claim one could reconcile with Daybreak 172, of the genre. but that they had quite different requirements Greek takes the tragic status of these emo even the experience of them, as tions for granted, depicting as inescapably Dionysiac we have seen in Daybreak, in sta Yet elsewhere Nietzsche tus, at any rate on the part of ideal audiences.x4 Even within in oscillates The Birth of Tragedy itself, pity's significance irreducible to any pure interpreta ways that are, Imaintain, This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell 113 In chapter 21, for example, as already observed, pity of the looks essential to at least the Apollonian component 22 seems to and in chapters 24 Nietzsche genre, whereas tion. sever it from authentically "aesthetic" pleasure in tragedy.15 one pursues Nietzsche's thoughts on pity, widely or in of tragedy, the connection with whether independently The more it becomes to avoid the conclusion that his perspective area this of his thinking is ineliminably ambiguous: although nuances over of individual texts time, the may have evolved harder to a merely developmental Every explanation. on of is what kind understood exactly by thing depends thing in each context. It is a case, to borrow a pity, "Mitleid(en)," from Beyond Good and Evil 225, of the differ formulation will not yield "higher" and "lower" forms of pity: pity ver sus pity, "Mitleid gegen Mitleid."16 After all, in the very in which we are interested pity is ex section of Daybreak two distinct ways?if not as two dif in of conceived pressly ence between ferent emotions at any then rate as experienced and the hard-souled divergent groups of people, mental. The difficulties of elucidating nouncements by two the senti Nietzsche's diverse pro on pity derive in part from the fact that he does in what he under fully spell out these variables not always stands by "Mitleiden." But without allowing, where tragedy in his perspective, is concerned, for a basic ambiguity and for we tacit switches of viewpoint, sometimes have, I think, no sense of much of what he writes about pity, hope of making shortly see, some of his shifting as issue of tragic catharsis. sumptions to one interpretation Nietzsche's of tragic pity, objection the interpretation he associates with the name of Aristotle, is including, at a certain in a note as we shall about the key level evident. He from early 1888 states it perhaps most succinctly in which he speaks of Aristotle's of "great misunderstanding" two with negative, tragedy identifying the experience of terror emotions, depressive (Schrecken) and pity (Mitleiden), when tragedy, like all real art, is a great stimulant of/to life ("das gro?e Stimulans des a life-affirming "tonic": if Aristotle were right, he Lebens"), This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 114 nietzsche's "daimonic force" says, tragedy would actually be both a denial of life and a art Similar views occur inDer Antichrist 7, of itself.^ negation where the psychology of pity as a life-sapping weakness and as "the practice is stressed, as well as in G?tzen ich den Alten verdanke" 5, where again to an Aristotelian "misunderstanding," of nihilism" "Was D?mmerung, there is reference idea of the Dionysiac alongside a restatement of Nietzsche's as taking joy even in the destruction of life's "highest types." All this looks consistent and decisive, even if we notice that in these passages nor anywhere else, I think, does Ni ever mention, let alone attempt to explain, how Aris totle himself links pity and fear to a peculiarly tragic form of neither etzsche and not to a psychology of pessimism (for which, of real source and target is Schopenhauer). once again start to emerge when one looks pleasure course, Nietzsche's But complications a little more closely. The note of 1888 appears to claim that it is entirely wrong to link tragedy to pity and fear; certainly it states flatly that "to suppose that through the arousal of these emotions one is seems to believe, is simply from them, as Aristotle In the passage from Twilight of the Idols, however, as Nietzsche's words have an extra layer to them. Having 'purged' false."18 serted that the essential, of tragedy Dionysiac experience is not a matter of being freed from ("das tragische Gef?hl") terror and pity, not a matter of "being purified from a dan gerous emotion by means of its vehement discharge, as Aris totle understood adds that its point lies rather it," Nietzsche beyond aus") terror and pity in the realization hin ("?ber Schrecken und Mitleid in oneself of the eternal joy of be to the unpublished note, the "?ber . . . coming.1? Contrary hinaus" locution implies that fear and pity are at any rate one factor in the experience of tragedy, though not its essence or its deepest level. Differently again, though equally signifi 7 actually seems to enlist Aristotle cantly, Antichrist and morbidity port of its critique of the weakness "Aristotle, as we know," writes Nietzsche, and dangerous condition which one would in sup of pity. "saw in pity a sick do well to get the This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell better of from time to time with zsche in mind has Politics a purgative." Even 115 ifNiet com (where Aristotle 8.1342a on the possibility of a morbid terms in general to pity) rather than anything said about tragedy susceptibility seems to suggest in the Poetics itself, the remark nonetheless in the supposed after all be some point that there might ments purgative of tragic catharsis.20 It is certainly not far-fetched on Nietzsche's to detect some ambivalence part as regards the de idea of catharsis. In a note of 1871, he cites Aristotle's in the Politics) as posi scription of catharsis (by implication with which music was tive evidence of the seriousness in another, of 1875, we find among the Greeks; law of the "necessity" of catharsis a fundamental experienced him calling nature der Entladung, der ("die Notwendigkeit ein Grundgesetz des griechischen and katharsis, Wesens") whether this could explain asking, enigmatically, tragedy; he generalizes and in Human, All-too-Human the idea of Greek catharsis to cover a whole in which "bad" human range of Greek cults and festivals rather passions could be discharged I shall return below to two other, crucial than suppressed.21 invocations Nietzschean of catharsis in the Nietzschean passages Nothing us with a straightforwardly positive them they reinforce but between in The Birth of Tragedy. so far adduced leaves treatment the of tragic pity, that his impression stance on this subject is irreducibly complex and equivocal. he sets out to dislodge pity from its canonical in the theory of tragedy, and offers trenchant criticisms place Even when of its psychological dangers, he leaves space for it to retain some weight in his account of the genre. If, against this back now we return to Daybreak 172, itmay be easier to ground, see that this section compatible with difficult ment between all the more with is attempting something special but still it attempts, the role of pity in BT. What as a be described compression, may rapproche with pity and the Dionysiac, telling by Nietzsche's the Apollonian. for regarding I indicated pity here a rapprochement made to align pity inclination earlier the principal as itself Dionysiac, namely grounds the link This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions n6 NIETZSCHE'S between "DAIMONIC the "daimonic of BT "daim?n" FORCE" force" of tragedy and the Dionysiac as the ethos of quasi-divine as well 21, to the experience in and ecstasy attaching described an status of which ethos reflects the the Dionysiac Daybreak, in BT as kindred with the domain of "mystery" religion.22 To frenzy these considerations should now be added the wider thought elaborated concept by him partly from a Goethean prototype, partly from ancient is associated with the very much religious mythology, that Nietzsche's Dionysiac nature.23 of the "daimonic," itself and with comparably deep, dark forces of and general reasons, then, it is im specific to dissolve tie be the "daimonic" and undesirable For both possible tween pity and Dionysus in Daybreak 172. in Nietzsche's varied elsewhere thoughts on pity Nothing of a version of the actually rules out the special possibility that plays an integral part in the Dionysiac experi ence undergone by the ideal audience of tragedy. But what more can be said about the character of such pity? In the first in shows that it is an emotion experienced place, Daybreak emotion and in (at any rate at the time of its occurrence) voluntarily a more an of of ecstatic the form the upsurge "possession," ismarked force whose presence than-human by a "religious shudder." It is also a kind of medicine, both "the bitterest wormwood" of but suffering combination a sort of also "miraculous" of religious and medical imagery pleasure. The in book 8 is reminiscent of Aristotelian catharsis as presented the alleviation of emotional drives of the Politics, where through their heightened which "sacred melodies" arousal is illustrated from certain bring with them, for certain hear were a "as it ers, therapy and catharsis."24 The likelihood, has the model of Aris that Nietzsche however paradoxical, totelian catharsis creased by his somewhere in mind that in Daybreak 172 is in the warlike Greeks who suggestion tragedy in the time of Aeschylus grow soft from time to time ("von Zeit of catharsis akin to the characterization watched beneficial "hier und da." Despite found it useful to a detail zu Zeit"), in Antichrist 7 as the existence of several Ni This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell of the idea of catharsis, I have shown to it fluctuates. This claim can now be etzschean above deprecations that his attitude reinforced Tragedy doctrines etzsche to The Birth of reference deepened with a at BT in li itself, 22, passage where he associates and of catharsis with rejects discharge as the genuine fecten") includes 117 a moral approach to tragedy, Ni von Af of emotion ("Entladung of he purpose tragedy, elsewhere in the quintessential value of the genre the opportu the "discharge" of Dionysiac for precisely an Apollonian framework.25 Equally, in BT nity it provides emotion within 21 he refers without force of charging ladenden Gewalt to the purifying compunction tragedy ("der der Trag?die"), . . . reinigenden which he also and dis und calls ent the remedies."26 Two details are "epitome of all prophylactic this last worth about passage: first, that tragedy's noting on function operates the entire life of the peo quasi-cathartic not on individuals as such; sec "das ganze Volksleben," as it is that rather than a ondly, presented "prophylactic" cure for those already sick.27 These may be two further clues ple, as to how the pity of Daybreak 172 might count as one ele in a Dionysiac-cum-cathartic experience. We seem to be a not with for the negatively construed medicine dealing here ment morbid, but a force that, for all the bitterness psychologically to the collective health of its "wormwood" taste, contributes of a culture. A symptom a sign of strength. of sickness has been converted into taste of wormwood is the taste of suffering ("Lei us it after strike At this fundamental level should, all, den"). as intelligible can forge a connec that pity, "Mitleid(en)," tion with albeit a fraught connection that the Dionysiac, The causes Nietzsche the relationship to wrestle between repeatedly, as we have seen, with pity and the tragic. In one of the most necessary prem (but also unexplained) metaphysical ises of The Birth of Tragedy, suffering, "Leiden," is emphat ically said to be part of the primal, eternal ground of reality, "das Ur-Eine": should therefore to make contact with that reality Dionysiac be in some degree to share that suffering, This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions n8 "daimonic Nietzsche's "mitleiden," as force" indeed Nietzsche chorus tragic "original" tragedy too.28 As BT and says of specifically of the audience suggests the of 18 proclaims, the goal of a tragic cul is to grasp eternal suffering ture's wisdom ("das ewige Lei a as own.29 its So is there den") assuredly Dionysiac pity, this must be experienced below the though by definition of "moral," cognitive pity that attaches to the of the hero and myth. Dionysiac forms pity must Apollonian as in its object the suffering that somehow therefore have consciousness in primordial reality itself, rather than the specific suf to a realm and must belong of tragic individuals, ferings a oneness man of with man, as where tragic ecstasy entails heres as of man with nature.3? Nietzsche's residual problem, a to of Dio is accommodate see, recognition to it slip into the traditional nysiac pity without allowing of tragedy. The Aristotelian definition of the fear^1 (and pity well we can now about where Apollonian is a lingering indeterminacy of self and other, ends, and pity, with its critical demarcation of the I/not-I distinction, with its dissolution pity, Dionysiac result at the start of BT 17 we are told that Dio begins. When art convinces its audience of the eternal joy of exis nysiac tence by forcing it "to look into the terrors of individual this experience existence" but transforming through an ex sense of with indeed "ecstatic," unity primal be hilarating, writes fear and that Nietzsche (trotz pity ing, "despite und Mitleid) we are the happy-living ones, not as in but as the one living thing, with whose creative joy are fused."32 The concessive phrase "despite fear and Furcht dividuals we pity" admits what Nietzsche the legitimacy of the orthodox the experience the pity whether tions within certain elsewhere sometimes of these denies, two emo coupling of tragedy, but it also leaves un is separate involved from or a aspect of the Dionysiac transfigured Given the severity of his oscillations response to tragedy.33 about the status of both to ascribe to it is impossible and its catharsis, a transparent or finally clear-cut position on pity, to accept that part of the tragic "brother and necessary the emotion Nietzsche This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell he posits between Apollo a matter of emotional arousal bond" which and Dionysus 119 is pre to take Daybreak that in a certain But I ("Erregung")J4 that it does make good sense 172 as providing important confirmation frame of mind Nietzsche could allow him self to conceive of one kind cisely have nonetheless tried to show of pity as authentically Dio in its own right. of this essay I have taken a number of leads from Daybreak 172 and pursued them through Nietzsche's I have done so in thinking about tragic emotion. complex nysiac In the course some of by following lines of Greek criss-crossing part neath overtly the surface ancient those "traces," so that lie often ideas, just be even when and which, of his writing those become acknowledged, caught up in a dialectic that about influence or affinity. rarely permits easy conclusions The purpose of the exercise has not been to diminish in any own of Nietzsche's way the distinctiveness arguments. On the contrary, to watch Nietzsche and adapting reshaping an cient materials ferent the increasingly aware of how dif from the sources which percolate one In Daybreak Nietzsche makes 172 is to be made results are through his writing. of his most remarkable efforts to reconcile the canonical idea of tragic pity, an idea from which he had often struggled to break on his own Dionysiac free, with perspective so a He does from by transmuting pity tragedy. consciously social emotion, focussed on the individual Apollon moral, ian figures of the drama, into a mysterious visitation of the a visitation daimon Dionysus, which hard "war during so resistant to pity, temporarily lose their riors," normally own grasp of self and are miraculously to the suf exposed In the of the souls of world. that respect, fering tragedy's ideal audience turn into mirrors of Dionysus himself. This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions i2o nietzsche's "daimonic force" NOTES An version Italian this of in Arte appears I am grateful Carchia, 189-205. criticism. 1. Daybreak 172, dedicated article, e Daimon, D. Angelucci, to Arion's anonymous on based edd. G. Colli Studienausgabe, is abbreviated 3.152-53. (This edition from Nietzsche translations the original; Nietzsche's in English. thereafter text the German tische and M. to the memory of Gianni ed. (Macerata 2003), for constructive referee in Friedrich Montinari Kri Nietzsche: (Munich 1988), as KSA.) All notes in subsequent are my own; to emphasis italics correspond in in German titles are cited at their first occurrence I prefer "pity" to "compassion" for Throughout, to preserve Greek "daimonic" is meant timbre. etc.; the spelling on Daybreak to Nietzsche's view of Cf. the brief comments 172, in relation Ancient Texts and Mod of Mimesis: tragic pity, in my book The Aesthetics a more ern Problems the present essay develops (Princeton 2002), 230-33; and Mitleiden sustained detailed, argument. can consider pity "unmanly" is indicated for example to indignation earlier in Daybreak (78), as ("Emp?rung"), Bruder des Mitlei brother of pity ("diesen m?nnlicheren 2. That Nietzsche by his reference the more manly KSA dens"), 3.77. 3. See especially Republic 1.212 schliches (KSA 2.173-74), with io.6o5C-e, for Nietzsche's Allzumen Menschliches, of the Platonic admiration Nietzsche the criti may be recalling critique of tragedy. More subliminally at Isocrates 4.168 cisms of tragic theatre-audiences and Andocides (see 4.23 to tragic pity is where my Aesthetics 213-14), of Mimesis, susceptibility with coupled hard-heartedness outside not Aeschylean fourth-century the theatre, though with to reference Athens. is exhibited above all in the tendentious reliance on Frogs 4. Nietzsche's 11: for the influence of Frogs in The Birth of Tragedy of Euripides depiction on Tragedy in this area see M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche (Cambridge 1981), 207. 36-37, with nn. 29 and 32 there, and 5. See my Aesthetics 216-18, of Mimesis, for a fuller state 2nd ed. (London 168-201, my Aristotle's Poetics, 1998), ment of Aristotle's in this respect. Shuddering and fear are asso psychology ciated as Homer as early 6. Gorgias fr. 11.9, 6th ed. Vorsokratiker, 7. For Aesthetics attested reference of Mimesis, in his fr. 23 and W. Kranz, edd., Die Fragmente der 1951). see my in Plato, Aristotle, and others, psychology views on tragedy are separately 77, 218-19. Gorgias' (from Plutarch Mor alia 348c). Helen, noun daimon frs. 11.8 (Olympian) has a vaguer see especially and is used to the it sometimes agencies: (Dublin 24.775. 11.383, Diels links to audience 8. Gorgias 9. The Iliad in H. 828, 11.10. several gods: reference, 1193, times see 34, in the Oedipus Tyrannus with 886, 912, 1378. Elsewhere with less easily identified compatible eventu the chorus 1479. When 1258, 244, This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 121 Stephen Halliwell the question ally pose he blinding, of which immediately 10. KSA Different 1.141. daim?n answers but statement that the tragic spectator looking, BT 24 (KSA 1.150, yond n. KSA 1.132. 12. KSA 1.141. had "Apollo" brought Oedipus to his self (1328-29). is Nietzsche's related perhaps to look but also feels compelled repeated to go be 153). even here, though, a possible in Ni 13. KSA 1.13 6-3 7. Note ambiguity to say that the Apollonian "fastens" etzsche's position: (fesselt) our pity to is not to assert that it is (only) these Apollonian the individuals of the myth that pity in the first place. In fact BT 21 is compatible with a glimpse that the Dionysiac, of "primal suf by divulging to excite a pity that then becomes to the Apollonian attached that cause forms the supposition fering," helps of the drama. images 14. Denials The Gay Science 2.80 fear as tragic emotions: 1888 in KSA that take 13.409-11. Passages as tragic emotion(s), include Human, All-too of pity and the note of and (KSA 3.436), for granted of Aristotelian the criticism catharsis (KSA 2.173), despite and BT 17 and 21 (see my text). Other variations in Ni (cf. n. 17 below), on pity include his view of etzsche's position is criticized for Euripides, who a pathos a "breathless" that aims to arouse pity and fear (BT 12, KSA (and fear) pity 1.212 Human dialectical 1.86), but whose our tragic pity (BT 14, KSA speeches are equally faulted for jeopardizing 1.94). on Tragedy, on oscilla comment 15. Silk and Stern, Nietzsche 270-71, tion in the treatment of pity in BT, but their conclusion that pity is exclu is too simple; cf. my nn. 13, 28. sively Apollonian 16. KSA refers ther 5.161. to so-called indication Just a few sections later, in 229 (KSA 5.166), Nietzsche a fur tragic pity ("im sogennanten tragischen Mitleid"), to distance of his attempt himself from conventional ver sions of the concept. to the canoni references 17. KSA 13.409-11. (Note that in his various cal/Aristotelian and in his designa fear of Nietzsche fluctuates pairing pity tion of the latter between "Furcht" and "Schrecken.") Part of Nietzsche's over basic point here is a fundamental dynam disagreement psychological 1.212 ics: as Human, All-too-Human (KSA 2.173), shows, Nietzsche agrees with that to exercise Plato increase, not diminish, a drive susceptibility (emotional to it. or otherwise) ismore likely to 18. KSA 13.410. Nietzsche here voices only a superficial element of un over whether of catharsis Aristotle's should be construed concept certainty as a matter of "purgation"; he takes this for granted at the end of the same as note, as often elsewhere, though he also sometimes speaks of catharsis vel sim.: see the passages in my (the verb "reinigen" "purification" quoted over whether text), and in BT 22 (KSA 1.142) he acknowledges dispute or moral. I do not have space here to follow Aristotle's concept was medical all the ramifications views on catharsis. of Nietzsche's 19. KSA 6.160. This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 122 NIETZSCHE'S "DAIMONIC 20. Daybreak 134 (KSA 3.127-28) from pity not to Aristotle purgation FORCE" ascribes but the same view to the Greeks of the need for in general. 21. See, respectively, KSA 7.285, All-too-Human 2.1, 220 8.79, Human, are regularly and other passages These in state overlooked (KSA 2.473). ments to catharsis, about Nietzsche's attitude Ni e.g., by W. J. Dannhauser, 116. etzsche's View of Socrates (Ithaca 1974), 22. See e.g., BT 10 (KSA 1.72-73), 16 (KSA 1.103), and 17 (KSA i.ni), to "the tragic Mysteries" the last a reference (KSA 1.13 2), shortly before daimon. of the Dionysiac the mention 21 or of "das D?monische" is specifically linked 23. The motif of a "D?mon" in BT 4 (KSA 1.41), 10 (KSA 1.72), and 21 (see my text), as to the Dionysiac ex well in the notebooks 594, 620, and 7.177). Nietzsche's (e.g., KSA 1.565, tensive for this idea would fondness treatment; separate require broadly daimonic the Nietzschean forces of represents powerful speaking, underlying at KSA 1.822), which may man nature worldview (see e.g., the Heracleitean as in exceptional ifest themselves humans, including figures as different Betrach (BT 12-14, KSA I-83, 9?, 94)> and Wagner (Unzeitgem??e KSA 1.466,485,498, and, e.g., KSA 8.227). The Goethean tungen 4.7,9,10, itself a "daimonic" career, at KSA 7.74), early in Nietzsche's (acknowledged in Dichtung is to be found kind of amoral und Wahrheit 4.20. life-force, Socrates sources it is quite conceivable, ancient given his general familiarity Among knew Plutarch Mor alia 996c, where the that Nietzsche with the author, "Titans" BT 4, KSA 1.40) are understood (cf. especially Nietzsche allegori to the irrational daimonikon inside human beings. cally as equivalent It does not follow that Aristotelian 24. Politics 8.7, I342a4-n. as either religious or medical: count sis should straightforwardly Aristotle's Poetics, 184-201. cathar see my of the lan other adaptations 25. BT 24 (KSA 1.150). Among Nietzsche's note BT 8 (KSA 1.62): the chorus of of discharge ("Entladung"), it "sich . . . in einer apollinischen Bilderwelt entladet" tragedy (discharges guage self in an Apollonian image-world). two passages 26. The are in KSA 1.142, 134. are strengthened by the fact that in a as of the of tragedy of Socrates opponent fragment en Instinkte and the one who dissolved "jener d?monisch-prophylaktisch instincts of the art), KSA 13.228. der Kunst" (those daimonic-prophylactic I am making 1888 Nietzsche speaks connections 27. The as part of the primal see especially BT 4 (KSA unity: Suffering 6 (KSA 1.51). The chorus is "der mitleidende" with Dionysus Voice 153, is there (BT 8, KSA 1.63): H. Staten, Nietzsche's (Ithaca 1990), reserves to say that Nietzsche for Apollon the term "Mitleid" fore wrong 28. 1.38-40), ian feelings; with Dionysus' 29. KSA cf.* n. 15 above. The audience of tragedy BT 8 (KSA 1.64). sufferings: one 1.118. 30. BT 7 (KSA 1.56). 31. My argument distinctively too can become Dionysiac for Dionysiac pity could be extrapolated fear see, e.g., BT 2 (KSA 1.32). to fear: for a This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Halliwell 123 stance one takes in this connection, that whatever Note, to Schopenhauer, issue of BTs overall my relationship that one cannot argument suggests simply equate Dionysiac pity (let alone pity tout court in BT) with Schopenhauerian pity: the latter, unlike the for 32. KSA 1.109. the contentious on mer, Wille does und awareness not consistently Vorstellung of one's own tion of Mitleid 4.67, involve where Die Welt als self; see especially for others it pity always brings with concep (Tensions within Schopenhauer's loss of suffering. are a subject in their own right.) I from Twilight with "What the passage 3 3. Comparison of the Idols, owe to the Ancients" I cited earlier, where Nietzsche locates the 5, which essence of the tragic beyond terror and pity ("?ber Schrecken und Mitleid in oneself in the realization of the eternal of hinaus"), (KSA joy becoming is suggestive 6.160), here, but it does not supply definitive interpretative guidance. 34. BT 22 (KSA 1.141). This content downloaded from 89.243.195.65 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions