Page 27 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

fraternal reunion of Apollo and Dionysus,38 the very thing that Comus desires: to meet Apollo in the temple of Delphi.
This is why Nietzsche believes Aristotle misunderstood tragedy. He thought that tragic emotions were depressing. If this were the case, says Nietzsche, then tragedy would be indeed foreign to life and it would need, as Aristotle proposed in his Poetics,39 to exalt tragic emotions to cathart or be liberated from them. As a result, resignation instead of one’s courageous acceptance of one’s destiny 3⁄4 amor fati40 (proud of its own courage) 3⁄4 would be their consequence. For Nietzsche, tragedy is not purgation, but a vital, luxuriant, ardent tonic drunk and loved by all strong eras and all heroic characters. Only in this manner, Nietzsche proclaims, tragic heroes are able to feel pain as pleasure. One of the most powerful aspects of an
38 In fact, Dionysus and Apollo, half-brothers by Zeus, were known to share the same Temple at Delphi in antiquity at different times: Dionysus in the winter and Apollo in the summer. Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Ed. Edmund Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
39 Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Malcolm Heath. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
40 To Nietzsche, Amor Fati is love of one s destiny, fatum or fate. Hence, the Dionysian being, accepting and embracing necessity cheerfully, expresses the true greatness of human beings. He does not wish for anything to be different, neither in the past nor in the future, or for all eternity. He not only endures necessity, but also loves it. He does not deny or dissimulate it since any idealism is a menace to necessity. Nietzsche. Ecce Homo. “Why I am so Clever.” How One Becomes What One Is. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. 10. 37-38
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