The Birth of Tragedy

Published in 1872 when Nietzsche was 27 and still a classics professor at Basel, *The Birth of Tragedy* recasts ancient drama as the highest art form: the Apollonian principle of form, dream, and individuation in productive tension with the Dionysian principle of music, intoxication, and dissolution. Socratic rationalism, Nietzsche argues, killed tragedy; Wagner's music-drama promises its rebirth. The 1886 "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" added 14 years later is itself a major Nietzsche text — Nietzsche reading the early Nietzsche with mature severity.