Title: "The Birth of Tragedy" Endless amounts of philosophical analyses have been made about the
Greek tragedy and why it came to be. Modern attempts have for the most
part failed, as they've approached the works from a purely scientific
realm, thus disregarding the inherent artistic qualities to
masterpieces such as "King Oedipus" and "Medea." During a time when
Germany saw geniuses like Wagner emerge from the depths of the darkest
corners of German culture, a lonely romantic soul named Friedrich
Nietzsche released a work called "The Birth of Tragedy."
Drawing influences from renown pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, the
astounding composers Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann
Sebastian Bach, and of course the brilliant poets by the name of
Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nietzsche
systematically builds up a philosophical-aesthetic manifesto to
counter the modern materialistic soul. His focus is on the Greek
culture and in specific the Greek tragedy, describing both its very
origins and historical development up till the Greek comedies.
The basis for his assumptions is the balance between two different
ways of artistically portraying life, symbolized by two Greek gods;
Dionysus and Apollon. Dionysus being the fierce, uncontrollable,
emotional god of wine and excess, and Apollon being the harmonic,
curing, self-controlled god of reason and rationality, Nietzsche
effectively connect these two deities to the basic two forms of art;
music and poetry. Backed up by Schopenhauer's conception of "the world
as will and representation," he claims that music is the highest
abstraction in art since it portrays the will of life "objectively,"
while poetry (including painting and sculpturing) relies on
representations of the will, thus concluding that music is the purest
form of art as well as the foundation to the poetic art form.
Nietzsche affirms this by connecting music to Dionysus and dreaming
poetry to Apollon, claiming that art is a balance between the two
gods, even though Dionysus remains as its underlying force. He then
applies this conception of art to the Greek tragedy and explains how
the Greeks successfully managed to celebrate the most inner secrets of
life, by worshipping tragedy, suffering and will power. Following the
development of the Greek culture into the era of Socrates and his
belief in human reason, Nietzsche sees a culture disintegrating from
within due to the force of Apollon growing too strong and killing the
tragic myths of Dionysus.
The despairing conclusion gradually evolves into an angry attack at
modern religious belief in the virtues of science; the limits of
rationality and causal logicality give birth to new myths within the
scientific culture, which Nietzsche seems to be using as a proof of
the power and inevitable presence of myth, at the same time declaring
its universal legitimacy; the more we believe we "know" about life
through science, the more we understand how little we actually know
about life as a phenonemon. Without myth we lose our roots and fail to
understand life as an organic process, instead - like the dissatisfied
Faust - locking us into our study chambers to categorize life instead
of living it.
As always, Nietzsche proves to be a provocative but enduring reading
experience. While magnificently and with an admiring passionate
defense of past wisdom, studying the Greek tragedy from an artist's
perspective, "The Birth of Tragedy" leaves us with a remarkably sharp
analysis of why our Western civilization is in decline, and like a
sheep in a wolf's clothing, pointing its aim right at the very basics
of philosophy and the metaphysics of existence. Controversial and
problematic but at the same time promising and heroic, Nietzsche
uncovers the secrets of the depths of art while dreaming of a new era
where the tragic myth may be reborn and achieve a raging, idealistic
artistic expression of the beauty that lies within the German folk
soul. Irrevocable and uncompromising as ever, this is a must-read to
understand myth and art in their mystic but proper context. - Alexis
-=-
Title: "American Gods" "This is a bad place for Gods." America, it is posited, has forever
made it difficult for the survival of the Old Ones of any tradition.
The sprites, faeries, and leprechauns of the British Isles were
incapable of crossing the pond with the simple country peasant folk
and petty city criminals who came to the New World in search of new
life or in indentured servitude. Where remnants of pagan heritage
survived for the Northern European immigrants of the 19th century,
America has leveled their memory to mere tales of fancy fit for
children's stories. For those who continue to come, the demons of
lore from their respective homelands are forced undercover, weakening
as their demands for appeasement go increasingly unheralded. The old
Gods, however, are far from dead, though many may believe it, or want
it to be so, including the new Gods -- those Gods to whom Americans
pay homage by toil and sacrifice so that they may be looked upon
favorably by them: the Internet, Television, Media. There is no
place for both, nor does either side wish there to be. What seems
inevitable is a final conflict -- a Ragnarokian collision of Old and
New to determine the fate of the otherworldly on this continent.
Neil Gaiman tells of this through the tale of Shadow, a mostly
simple-minded jailbird who is released after serving a short time for
a crime of violent passion. Almost immediately Shadow meets the
mysterious Wednesday, becomes his gainful bodyguard after a quick
series of incidents of personal tragedy, and finds himself entrenched
in an escalating war between mythic past and ubiquitous, technological
present. The caricatures of the New Gods are amusing and not without
insight: the first encounter with a representative is with a fat,
pimple-faced teenager swigging diet Coke in a fiber-optic illuminated
limo; the thug agents have generic, interchangeable names like Mr.
Town and Mr. Stone. On the other side are a series of entities from
every conceivable background: Nordic, West African, Slavic -- with
looks and mannerisms befitting of their legends, though nearly always
modern and human in form. For even more divine subtext, tales of
American settlers and their encounters with these Gods are
interspersed with the story, all of which carry with them a
sacrificial theme, which offsets the more light-hearted nature of the
Gods presented in the main narrative.
Outside of these occasional forays, the plot moves quickly as Shadow
and Wednesday work on securing the allegiances of Gods in various
parts of the country as the war approaches. Gaiman spends a lot of
time developing a thorough sense of place, which is integral to his
assertions of the importance of it in American identity. Manifest
Destiny, the Interstate system -- these are but two outward signs of
the American desire to make subservient their geography which, unlike
the Gods, at one time presented a concrete threat to American
livelihood and, also unlike the Gods, have continued to receive blood
sacrifice to the present day. So alluring are some places that they
approach the Divine by their nature, and serve as the gathering places
for the Gods in the story. An early meeting occurs at House on the
Rock in Wisconsin, one of those places where unnamed inspiration
possessed someone to build a monument to nothing-in-particular that
inspires travelers to abandon the Interstate to find it, just because.
Eventually, Shadow is stashed in Lakeside, Wisconsin, an idyllic
Northwoods town in every imaginable conception. Again, the primacy of
place in the story asserts itself; this is the town everyone in
America wishes could exist everywhere: picturesque, close-knit, and
for the most part immune to typical small town troubles.
For most of the book, Gaiman paints a picture somewhere this side of
that ideal. Cheap motels, fast food joints, and the nameless towns
and dirty cities along the highway are there still there for our
contemplation, but we are constantly reminded of the presence of
greater things around and among them. The divinities themselves work
their magic throughout, their idiosyncrasies keeping the story amusing
and enlightening. Indeed, this book is at its finest when their
wisdom flows. There are many instances of well-played, everyday
dialogue that reveal truth, as well as play on, sometimes too
"cleverly," the mythological history of the Gods involved. There is a
sense at one point of a thorough distaste for modernity, specifically
American-styled modernity; later, a similar distaste for the Old
multi-faceted Gods is apparent, the reaction one would expect from a
detached, modern rendering of them as Gods of merciless bloodthirst
and death. Unfortunately, the story falls apart as it nears
resolution by having an identity crisis, drawing itself out far too
long, and concluding ludicrously by pandering to cheap expectations of
plot manipulation and gratuitous action. What had developed into a
Shamanstic journey for Shadow at that point ends up becoming little
more than post-script to the finale. Without the final 100 pages or
so, this is still thoughtful commentary in pop-novel form, but even
with the unsatisfying ending the idea that the Old Gods remain among
us is a powerful one; we may only need to look more closely to realize
it. - Kontinual
exponentiation ezine: issue [6.0:culture]
[ music | books | film]
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Publisher: NuVision Publications (April 19, 2007)
Language: English
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Torch (2001)