Читать книгу Thus Spoke Zarathustra - FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Friedrich Nietzsche - Страница 10

All roads did not lead to Zarathustra. Nietzsche's early career as a student of philology paved the way for a future vocation as a professor. By all accounts, he was a promising scholar of antiquity. He received a position at the University of Basel, in 1869, at the precocious age of twenty‐four, solely based on a recommendation from his mentor. His academic future was set.

Then the unexpected happened: Nietzsche published a controversial interpretation of the ancient world, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). This text turned the mainstream views of the Hellenic age on their head. It was an ambitious reconfiguration influenced by his friendship with Richard Wagner. Nietzsche had met Wagner as a student in Leipzig, in 1868, and the composer enlisted him in his project of cultural rejuvenation.

In trying to establish an intellectual grounding for Wagner's enterprise, Nietzsche challenged the consensus verdict on ancient Greece. The traditional view was that the culture was the product of noble, ethically superior individuals. He suggested instead a darker undercurrent. He uncovered two conflicting forces at work: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. While the Apollonian reflected the sober and rational side of Greek life, the Dionysian flipside of their being tended toward irrational excess. The result of that productive tension was Attic tragedy, the cultural height of ancient Greece.

Two insights here were of great importance connected to Nietzsche's later Zarathustra. One was the study's focus on the Greek god Dionysus and his profound significance for the ancient world. The other was Nietzsche's suggestion that ancient Greek tragedy was at its highest point when it was killed off by Socrates. He could not grasp the deeper significance of the tragic worldview, and his rationalism undermined the basis for tragic art.

Despite its undisputed brilliance, The Birth of Tragedy elicited a fierce backlash among academic colleagues. They criticized it for its overarching speculations and its lack of scholarly grounding. An academic review by a young, up‐and‐coming scholar damaged Nietzsche's reputation. It led him to distance himself from his profession and ultimately to retire from it completely.

The disappointment with the opposition to his first work, along with recurring ill health, were the main factors that led him to relinquish his position at Basel. But another overriding factor was the cooling of his relationship with Wagner and his disenchantment with their shared cultural ideal. Nietzsche now regarded his earlier commitments, both to his profession and to Wagner, as a false start and a distraction from his own preoccupations and concerns.