The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner

In 1872, a twenty-seven-year-old Friedrich Nietzsche published his first book and caused a scandal. The Birth of Tragedy argued that the achievement of Greek drama — the greatest art the Western world had produced — depended on a tension between two opposing principles: the Apollonian (order, reason, beautiful form) and the Dionysian (chaos, intoxication, the dissolution of the self in something larger). When the Dionysian was suppressed, as Nietzsche argued it had been ever since Socrates, art died. The only thing that could resurrect it was music — specifically, the music of Richard Wagner.

Sixteen years later, in The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche had changed his mind completely — and his attack on the composer he once worshipped is one of the most devastating pieces of cultural criticism ever written.

Together in Walter Kaufmann’s standard translation, these two essential texts bracket Nietzsche’s entire engagement with art, music, and culture — and provide the indispensable context for everything else he wrote. For anyone who wants to understand Nietzsche: start here. Published by Vintage.