Page 26 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

Dionysus37 reinstates humans in the real after understanding the limitations of science and of Socrates, its founder. Thus, to drink from Comus’ ardent tonic brings delight ‘beyond the bliss of dreams’ (813) reinstating Lady Chastity to be, not to flee the human (685-690). Moreover, the Grecian tragic sense, for Nietzsche, can be defined as the hunger to submerge again in the original fountains of reality to be purgated from the great sin of existence: individuality, in the manner of Lady Chastity. Humankind then accepts its tragic destiny and abandons joy, with which it attains something superior to it: the sensation of plenitude. The tragic hero, what Lady Chastity denies, by carrying the whole world on his shoulders, resembles Atlas in that he relieves humans from the burden of existence. It is true that Dionysus’ art is not, according to Nietzsche, the only representation of the tragic; in fact, Apollo already speaks the tragic language (just as Socrates speaks of his daemon and wants, in jail, to play the flute) in a way that tragedy is the
Writings. Ed. Edmund Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Chapter 16.
37 Nietzsche claims tragedy, the art of Dionysus, is born from the limitation of science and from the Satyr, not the chorus. The Satyr, the idyllic shepherd 3⁄4 half-animal, half-human 3⁄4 follower of Dionysus, musician, poet and dancer mirrors nature or phusis and is equally motivated by dithyramb, wisdom and visionary ecstasy. Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Ed. Edmund Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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