The Birth of Tragedy

“Attempt at a Self-Criticism” was added by Nietzsche to a later edition of The Birth of Tragedy. In it, he recalls the “deeply personal” circumstances that gave rise to the book, written while he was convalescing from illnesses contracted in the Franco-Prussian War (See: Background). Nietzsche recalls the paradoxical question that prompted him to write the book: how the ancient Greeks, although a “cheerful” and “optimistic” people (according to the popular image), nevertheless were the ones who invented tragedy, thus showing an apparent need for a pessimistic outlook on life.

Nietzsche acknowledges that this “problem” was “terrible and dangerous” and that his book was bound to be controversial and to upset accepted ideas about ancient Greek culture. Nietzsche quotes from his own poem Thus Spake Zarathustra to illustrate his call for “young romantics” to learn “this-worldly consolation” through laughter, rejecting the “metaphysical consolation” offered by Christianity.

“Preface to Richard Wagner” was part of the book’s original edition. Nietzsche addresses the composer Richard Wagner as an “honoured friend” and declares that the book was written directly to and for him, as if he were a “real presence” standing before him. Although written during a time of war, the book urges readers to take an “aesthetic problem” as seriously as practical affairs which are falsely seen as the “seriousness of life” (Preface).