by Friedrich Nietzsche
Greek tragedy perished differently than all other ancient genres, her brothers, ended tragically, while they all died a beautiful death. Well if you agree, in effect, with ideal natural state leaving life without cramping, and having a beautiful offspring, the end of those old genres shows an ideal world of that type, go away and leave sinking, while head vigorously and raise their young, more beautiful. With the death of Greek musical drama arose, however, a huge void that was felt everywhere deeply, the people were saying that poetry itself was lost, and sent to Hades mocks the stunted, emaciated followers to there feed on the crumbs from the masters. As Aristophanes says, people felt an intimate nostalgia so hot, the last of the great dead, and when someone gets a sudden and powerful appetite to eat cabbage. But when he really flourished after a new artistic genre that venerated predecessor and teacher tragedy yours could be perceived with horror that certainly had the features of his mother, but those that it had shown in his long agony. The agony of Euripides' tragedy is called the posterior artistic genre is known: e1 name new Attic comedy. It's survived: degenerate figure of tragedy, a memorial of his most arduous and difficult slain. It is known that the extraordinary veneration of Euripides enjoyed among the poets of the new Attic comedy. One of the most notable, Philemon, stated that he would be hanged at once: if you were convinced that the deceased continued to have life and understanding. But what Euripides has in common with Menander and Philemon, and what effect they had on that issue, we summarize very briefly in the formula that they took the audience on stage. Before Euripides, were human beings stylized heroes, which you could see at once that came from the gods and demigods of ancient tragedy. The spectators saw in them an ideal past of Greece and, therefore, the reality of all that, in sublime moments, also lived in his soul. With Euripides burst into the scene the viewer, the man in the rea1idad of everyday life. The mirror had previously played only the big and bold features became more true and thus, more vulgar. The evening gown was made somewhat more transparent, the mask is transformed into half-mask: the forms of everyday life have clearly been to the fore. Typical image that truly Hellenic, the figure of Ulysses, had been elevated by Aeschylus to the character great, smart and noble at the same time, a Prometheus: in the hands of the new poets that figure was reduced to the role of domestic slave, good-natured and mischievous at the same time, which very often is as intriguing reckless in central DE1 whole drama. What, in The Frogs of Aristophanes, Euripides has among its merits, having made thin tragic art through a water cure and have reduced their weight, that is something that applies particularly to the figures of the heroes: in essence, what the viewer saw and heard on stage was his own euripideo double involved, however, in the guise of the rhetoric gala. Ideality has retreated to the word and thought has fled. But just here we touch the bright side and jumping into his eyes, innovation euripidea: here the people have learned to speak: that it exalts himself, in the contest with Aeschylus: By now the people know
the art of using rules, squares to measure the lines, observing, thinking, to see, understand, deceive, and love, to walk, to reveal, to lie, to weigh.
Thanks to him it has released the language to the new comedy, while not known to Euripides to speak appropriately to everyday life on stage. Bourgeois middle class, on which Euripides built all his political hopes, now took the floor after that, until that time, language teachers had been in tragedy the demi-god in the old comedy, the satyr drunk or demigod.
I represented the house and yard, where we live and weave,
and so I have given the trial, because each one, knowing this, has tried my art.
Furthermore, Euripides boasts of the following:
I just inoculated to those around us
such wisdom, to provide
the thought and concept art so far everything here
the world philosophy, and manages the house and say
courtyard, fields and animals
smarter than ever and reflects
continually investigates why?, why?, who? where?, " how?, what?
Where it has come, whom I took that?
In a prepared and enlightened mass thus was born the new comedy, drama that chess with his bright, joyful by the blows of cunning. For this new comedy Euripides somehow became the choirmaster: only this time it was the chorus of listeners who had to be instructed. As soon as they knew how to sing Euripides, began the drama of the debt-ridden young gentlemen of the old good-natured and frivolous, from the way hetairae Kotzebue, the domestic slaves engaged, but Euripides, as chorus master, was praised endlessly, people would have even killed to learn even something more of it, if I had not known that the tragic poets were just as dead as tragedy. A1 abandon it, however, the Hellene had abandoned belief in his own immortality, not only the belief in an ideal past, but also the belief of an ideal future. The words of the famous epitaph, "in old age, whimsical and quirky" can also be applied to Greece senile. The time and ingenuity are the supreme divinities, the fifth state, the slave, is now dominated, at least in terms of mentality.
In a retrospective like this one is easily tempted to make against Euripides, as the alleged seducer of the people unjust indictments, but heated, and serve, for example, in the words of Aeschylus, this conclusion: "What harm does not come from him?" But whatever the harmful influences that derive from it, must always bear in mind that Euripides acted in his best knowledge and belief, and that throughout his entire life, so great sacrifices offered an ideal. In e1 way he fought a great evil that he thought he recognized, in the way is the only one facing this bad with the verve of his talent and his life, revealing once more the heroic spirit of old times Marathon. Moreover, one can say that, in Euripides, the poet has become a demigod, it having been expelled by him of the tragedy. But the enormous evil he thought he recognized, against which it fought so heroically, was the decline of musical drama. Where Euripides discovered, however, the decline of musical drama? In the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles, his older contemporary. This is a very strange thing. Do not you be wrong? Is there not been unfair to Aeschylus and Sophocles? Is your reaction to the alleged decline was not just the beginning of the end? All these questions raise their voices at this moment within us.
Euripides was a solitary thinker in any way the taste of the then dominant mass, which gave rise to reservations, as a grumpy eccentric. Luck was as inauspicious as the mass, and as a tragic poet of that time the mass was just luck, it is understandable why life so rarely achieved the honor of a tragic victory. What was it that drove this gifted poet to go so much against the mainstream? What did you depart from a path that had been traversed by men as Aeschylus and Sophocles and the sun shining popular favor? One thing, just that belief in the decline of musical drama. And that belief had gained seats in the theater audience. For a long time he watched with the greatest acuity what an abyss opened between tragedy and the Athenian public. What the poet had been as high and difficult in any way was not felt as such by the spectator, but as something indifferent. Many things casual, not underlined at all by the poet, mass produced in a sudden effect. Reflecting on this incongruity between the poetic purpose and the effect that, Euripides came slowly to a poetic form whose capital law said, "everything has to be understandable, so that everything can be understood." Before the court this rationalist aesthetic was now led each of the components, primarily the myth, the main character, dramatic structure, choral music, and finally, and with maximum decision language. That we have to feel so often in Euripides as a defect and a poetic retreat compared to the Sophocles tragedy is the result of that strong critical process of that reckless rationality. Arguably, here is an example of how the recensionante can become a poet. Only, to hear the word "recensionante" is not lawful left the impression determine those weaklings, impertinent that no longer allow our audience at all today have their say in matters of art, what Euripides was precisely tried to do things better than the poets tried by him, and who can not make, as he put it, the act after a word, has little right to stop their criticism heard in public. I want or I can argue here that a single example of productive criticism, even when properly be necessary to demonstrate that point of view to list all the differences euripideo drama .. Nothing can be more contrary to our stagecraft that the foreword that appears in Euripides. The fact that an individual character, a god or a hero, this at the beginning of the piece and tell who he is, what precedes the action, what has happened up until then, even more so, what will happen in the course of the play, that a poet as modern theater rate no more than petulant resignation to the effect of stress. Do you know, in fact, everything that has happened, what will happen? Who will wait until the end? Completely different was the thought that Euripides did. The effect of ancient tragedy never rested not in tension, in the delightful uncertainty about what will happen now rather large and wide in those scenes of pathos in returning to resonate with the basic musical character dithyramb Dionysian. But what most strongly impair the enjoyment of such scenes is a missing link, a hole in the fabric of the story above: while the listener has to continue to calculate what is the meaning behind this and that character, this and that action , it will be impossible to completely immerse themselves in the 1st passion and action of the main heroes, tragic pity become impossible. In the shear-Sophocles tragedy was almost always very artistically arranged that, in the early scenes, somewhat casually, was brought to the spectator's hands all those wires for understanding, and also this feature will show only those noble artistry masking, so to speak, the formal necessary. Anyway, Euripides believed noted that during aque1las opening scenes, the viewer was in a peculiar concern, wanting to solve the mathematical problem of calculation was the back story, and that he lost the poetic beauty of the exhibition. So he wrote a foreword and pro gram and did recite a trustworthy character, a deity. Now he could also be configured with more freedom to the myth, since, thanks to the prologue, could remove any doubt about his own myth. Full sense of his dramatic advantage, Euripides criticizes Aeschylus in Aristophanes' Frogs:
So I will go immediately to your prologues,
for, thus criticizing
start the first part of this great tragedy spirit!
is unclear when states the facts.
But what of the prologue we can also say the very famous deus ex machina: it traces the program's future, as the prologue of the past. Among the epic look at the past and that look to the future are epic reality and this lyrical drama.
is the first playwright Euripides followed by a conscious aesthetic. Intentionally seeks the most understandable: their heroes are really just as they talk. But they say all they are, while the shears and sofoc1eos characters are much deeper and find out that his words properly only babble about himself. Euripides creates the characters while at the same time the dissected: its anatomy before there is nothing hidden in them. Sophocles said about Aeschylus If it does the right thing, but unconsciously, Euripides may have had of the opinion that he does wrong, because he does consciously. I knew more than Sophocles, compared with Aeschylus, and boasted what was nothing that was outside the field of technical resources, to Euripides, no poet of antiquity had been able to defend him with truly the best cosmetic reasons. Fully as the miraculous of all this development of Greek art is that the concept of consciousness, the theory had not taken even the word, and that all that the disciple could learn from the teacher was referring to the technique. And also what gives, for example, that a Thorwaldsen Old brightness is that it reflected and spoke and wrote little wrong, in that genuine artistic wisdom had not penetrated his consciousness.
Around Euripides is, however, refracted glow, peculiar of modern artists: his character almost non-Greek art can be summed up with all speed on the concept of Socrates. "Everything must be conscious to be beautiful ', is the thesis of the Socratic parallel euripidea" everything must be conscious to be good. " Euripides is the poet of Socratic rationalism in Greek antiquity had a feeling of unity of both names, Socrates and Euripides. Athens was a widespread view that Socrates helped Euripides to write his works, which it can infer how great was the refinement of hearing people perceived the Socratic euripidea in tragedy. Supporters of the 'good old days "used together to pronounce the name of Socrates and Euripides as they perverted the people. There is also the tradition that Socrates refrained from attending the tragedy, and only took his seat among the espectadotes when it represented a new play by Euripides. Neighbors in a deeper sense both names appear on the famous dictum of the Delphic oracle, who served as a determinant inf1ujo design over the entire life of Socrates. The sentence of the Delphic god that Socrates is the wisest of men once contained the trial that Euripides was assigned the second prize in the contest of wisdom.
is known that Socrates was initially very suspicious against the sentence of God. To see if successful, treated with statesmen, with speakers, poets and artists, trying to find someone who is wiser than he. Everywhere is justified the word of God: go to the most famous men of his time have a false idea about themselves and finds that do not even have accurate awareness of their profession, but the exercise only by instinct. "Only by instinct", that is the motto of Socrates. Rationalism is not so naive as ever shown in this vital trend of Socrates. Never had this doubt about the correctness the whole approach to the problem. "Wisdom is knowing" and "do not know anything that can not be expressed and what you can not convince another." This is more or less the norm of this strange missionary activity of Socrates, which had to gather around him a very black cloud of anger, because no one was able to attack it making it the standard against Socrates: as for that would have required further that which in no way possessed that superiority in the Socratic art of conversation, in the dialectic. Seen from the Germanic consciousness infinitely deepened, the Socratic appears as a world completely upside down, but is also assume that the poets and artists of that time had Socrates seem now, at least, very boring and ridiculous, especially when, as unproductive eristic, continued to assert the seriousness and dignity of a divine vocation. Supporters of logic are unbearable, like wasps. Now, imagine a huge desire behind so one-sided understanding, the personal collection of primordial energy of strong character, along with a fantastically attractive external ugliness, and you will understand that even a talent as big as Euripides, given precisely the seriousness and depth of his thinking, had to be dragged so much more inevitable the rugged path of a conscious artistic creation. The decline of the tragedy, as Euripides believed her, was a phantasmagoria Socratic: as no one knew enough to turn the old concepts and words artistic technique, Socrates denied that wisdom, and denied he seduced Euripides. In this "wisdom" now contrasted unsubstantiated Euripides Socratic works of art, but under the envelope of numerous accommodations to the prevailing artwork. A generation later realized exactly what was and what was core wrapper: removed the first, and the fruit of the Socratic art proved to be the game chess as spectacle, the piece of intrigue. The Socratic contempt
instinct and, hence, art. Denies the full wisdom wherever the kingdom itself of it. In one case Socrates himself acknowledged the power of instinctive wisdom and this precisely in a very characteristic. In special situations doubted his understanding, Socrates was a strong support through a demonic voice that was heard miraculously. When that voice is always discouraged. In this man at all abnormal instinctive wisdom raises his voice to face here and there to the conscious, putting obstacles. Also here is done Socrates shows that actually belongs to a world upside down and put his head down. In all natures fully productive unconscious produces an effect operator and so, while consciousness behaves in a critical deterrent. In it, the instinct becomes a critical consciousness, a creator.
At a second critical as well as Euripides, Socratic contempt instinct urged him also to undertake the reform of art, and, of course, a more radical reform. Plato was also the divine victim here Socrates: that in the prior art saw only apparent imitation of images, was also "the sublime and alabadísima 'tragedy - that's how it is expressed - from the arts flattery, which typically represent only what is pleasant, 1st flattering to the sensitive nature, not unpleasant, but still useful. So tragic art purposely listed next to the art of cleaning and kitchen. A sound mind makes you queasy, says an art as heterogeneous and varied, so excitable and sensitive mind that art is a dangerous match: reason enough to banish the ideal state to the tragic poets. In general, he says, the artists are part of the unnecessary extensions of the state, along with the nurses, dressmakers, barbers and confectioners. In Plato this sentence intentionally acre and inconsiderate of art has something pathological: he who had risen to such a vision only rage against his own flesh, he who, for the benefit of Socrates, had trampled with his feet deeply artistic nature reveals the bitterness of such judgments that the deepest wound of his being is not healed yet. The true creative power of the poet is almost always treated by Plato only with irony, because that power is not, say, a conscious insight of the essence of things, and equates to the talent of the soothsayers and interpreters of signs. The poet says, is not capable of making poetry until it has been excited and unconscious, and no intellect and dwells on it. These artists 'irrational' Plato contrasts the image of a true poet, philosophical, and clearly implies that he is the only one who has reached that ideal and whose dialogue is allowed to read in the ideal state. The essence of Plato's work of art, the dialogue is, however, lack of form and style, produced by the mixture of all existing forms and styles 1as. Above all, the new artwork is not what you should object, according to the Platonic conception, was the fundamental flaw of the 1st old: it should be apparent imitation of an image is say, according to the usual concept: for the Platonic dialogue should not have any natural-real would have been imitated. Thus, the dialogue is balanced between all artistic genres, between prose and poetry, storytelling, poetry, drama, of igua1 so old and has broken the law that strictly linguistic-stylistic form is unitary. A further disfigurement still carry the Socratic writers cynical: the maximum heap style, in the range from prosaic forms and metrics, they seek to reflect, so to speak, the silence be the end of Socrates, his eyes crab and thick lips pendulous belly. In view of the artistic effects of Socrates, who arrive here very deep and have only been touched, who will not reason Aristophanes, when you sing this in the chorus:
Health
the one who does not like
Socrates sit and talk with him, who does not condemn
art of the Muses
and not looks down with contempt
the highest of the tragedy! Well
vain folly is idle zeal
apply to empty speeches and chimeras
abstract.
But deeper than could be said against Socrates told him a figure who appeared to him in dreams. Too often, she says Socrates in jail to his friends, he had one and the same dream, telling him the same thing: 'Socrates, cultivate it!. " But until his last days Socrates was relieved with the view that his philosophy was the ultimate music. Finally, in prison, to download the entire decídese to cultivate their awareness that music too "vulgar." And really put into verse some fables in prose that were known, but I do not think that with these exercises metric has placated the Muses. In Socrates materialized one aspect of the Hellenic, that Apollonian clarity, unmixed with anything strange: it appears that a ray of pure light, transparent, as a precursor and herald of science, which also was born in Greece. But science and art are excluded, from this point of view it is significant that Socrates is the first great Hellene who was ugly, just as properly it's all symbolic. He is the father of logic, which represents maximum sharpness the character of pure science: it is the annihilator of the musical drama, which had concentrated itself all the rays of ancient art.
latter it is in a much deeper sense than we have been able to suggest so far. The Socratic is older than Socrates, his art solvent influence is felt long before. The element of dialectic peculiar to him, sneaked into the musical drama and long before Socrates, and was in her beautiful body to devastating effect. Evil had its starting point in the dialogue. As you know, the dialogue was not originally in the tragedy, the dialogue was developed only from the time that there were two actors, ie mind later on. Previously he had something similar, in a speech alternating between the hero and the Coryphaeus, but here, however, given the subordination of one another, the dialectical dispute impossible. But as soon as they found themselves face to face two main actors, endowed with equal rights, arose, according to an instinct deeply Hellenistic, rivalry, and, indeed, the rivalry in words and arguments, while dialogue remained always love away from Greek tragedy. With that rivalry was appealed to an element that existed in the listener's chest and that until then, regarded as hostile to art and hated by the muses, had been banished from the solemn field of performing arts: the eRide "evil." The eRide good prevailed, in fact, since ancient times in all activities of the Muses, and the tragedy led to three rival poets in the court of people gathered to judge. But when the imitation of verbal complaint had also infiltrated the tragedy from the courtroom, then emerged for the first time a dualism in the nature and effect of musical drama. From that point there were parts of the tragedy that compassion gave way to joy at the tournament light grating of dialectics. It was not lawful for the hero of the drama succumbed, and, therefore, now had to make himself a hero of the word. The process, which had its start in esticomitia called, continued and was also introduced in the longer speeches of major players. Little by little all the characters speak with such waste of wisdom, clarity and transparency, actually reading a Sophocles tragedy get an overall impression disconcerting. For us it is as if all these figures do not perish because of the tragic, but because of what 1ógico viviparous. Just a comparison with the very different mode Dialectizer Shakespeare's heroes: the whole think, assume and infer from them is involved in some musical beauty and internalization, whereas in the late Greek tragedy dominated by a dualism of style sobering: on the one hand, the power of music, on the other, the dialectic. The latter is increasingly emphasized, until it is she who says the key word in the structure of the whole drama. The process culminates in the piece of intrigue: it is only completely overcome this dualism, as a result of the total annihilation of one of the rivals, the music.
This point is very significant that this process ends in comedy, having begun, however, in the tragedy. The tragedy, which emerged from the deep well of compassion, is pessimistic by nature. Existence is in it something very horrible, man, a very foolish thing. The hero of tragedy is not evident, as he believes modern aesthetics in the struggle with fate, does not suffer what he deserves. Rather, it rushes to his misery blind, with his head covered: and the bereaved but noble gesture that stops at the world of horror that has just met, is stuck like a thorn in our soul. The dialectic, however, is optimistic from the depths of his being: it believes in the cause and effect and, therefore, a necessary relationship to guilt and punishment, virtue and happiness: the examples of mathematical calculation must not let rest: it negates everything that can not be analyzed conceptually. The dialectic continually reaches its goal: each conclusion is a feast of joy for her clarity and conscience are the only air they breathe. When this element infiltrates the tragedy comes as a dualism between night and day, music and mathematics. The hero who must defend their actions with arguments and counterarguments in danger of losing our compassion for the misfortune that, despite everything, we reached then the only thing that shows exactly is that, somewhere, he has been wrong in the calculation. But unfortunately caused by a lack of calculation is now more a source of comedy. When pleasure was dissolved by the dialectic of tragedy, emerged the new comedy with constant triumph of cunning and trickery.
Socratic conscience and his optimistic belief in the necessary union between virtue and knowledge, between happiness and virtue, had, in many parts Euripides, the effect of that in conclusion, it opens a perspective to a very enjoyable later life, usually with a marriage. As soon as it appears the god of the machine, we noticed that whoever is behind the mask is Socrates, who tries to balance on its balance of happiness and virtue. Everyone knows the Socratic thesis "Virtue is knowledge: the only sin out of ignorance. The virtuoso is happy. " In these three basic forms of optimism is the death of the tragedy, which is pessimistic. Euripides long before these concepts worked and to dissolve the tragedy. If virtue is knowledge, then the virtuous hero must be a dialectic. Given the extraordinary shallowness and destitution of ethical thought, which is not too developed, too often the ethical Dialectizer hero appears as a harbinger of triviality and ethical philistinism. All we need is the courage to confess this, we need to confess, to say nothing of Euripides, which is also the most beautiful figures of the Sophocles tragedy, an Antigone, an Electra, an Oedipus, they sometimes occur trivial ideas completely unbearable, that in general loa dramatic characters are more beautiful and grander than its manifestation in words. From this point of view, our view on the early shear tragedy has to be much more favorable, as Aeschylus also created his best works unconsciously. In the language and the drawing of Shakespeare's characters have the firmware point of support for such comparisons. In Shakespeare you can find an ethical wisdom such that, before it, the Socratic appears as something irrelevant and wiseacre. Intentionally
my last lecture I spoke very little about the boundaries of music in the Greek musical drama: in the context of this analysis will be understood that I said that the boundaries of music in the musical drama are the danger points which began its process of disintegration. The tragedy perished as a result of a dialectic and ethics optimistic : This is to say, the musical drama died because of a lack of music. The Socratic infiltrated the tragedy stopped the music blends into the dialogue, or monó1ogo: Despite the tragedy shear, it began it with great success. Another consequence was that the music, becoming increasingly restricted, tucked inside borders ever closer, he was not already in the tragedy at home, but was developed more freely and boldly out of the, same as absolute art. It is ridiculous to appear: a spirit over lunch: it is ridiculous to ask a muse so mysterious, with an enthusiasm so serious, as is the muse tragic music, sing in a courtroom in the middle pauses between dialectical skirmishes. Having a sense of the ridiculous, the music was silent on the tragedy, frightened, as it were, its unprecedented desecration, sometimes becoming less afraid to speak out, and finally bungle, sing things that come to mind are totally ashamed and flee from the areas of theater. To put it bluntly: 1st flowering and the climax of musical drama Greek is Aeschylus in his first major period, before being influenced by Sophocles, it begins to decline gradually, until finally Euripides, with his conscious reaction against the tragedy shear, causing the end to a stormy quickly. This view contradicts
only an aesthetic released today: indeed, for he can claim nothing less than the testimony of Aristophanes, which has, like any other genius, an elective affinity with Aeschylus. But as is well known only to him. In conclusion, one question. Are you really dead the musical drama, dead for all time? Would not you really be permissible to Germany to put next to artwork that disappeared in the past, nothing but the "grand opera" so much as, with Hercules, usually appears a monkey? This is it, more serious question of our art, and who does not understand how Germany's commitment to that question is a victim of modern-day Socratic, which, of course, neither is able to produce martyrs, nor was the language of ' the wisest of the Greeks, "who certainly does not boast of knowing anything, but really knows nothing. The press today is that Socratic: do not say a word.
Translation A. Friedrich Nietzsche Sánchez Pascual. Alianza Editorial
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