The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche's first book, written in 1872 while he was a young classics professor at Basel — and the work that ended his academic career. He argues that Greek tragedy was born from the collision of two artistic drives: the Apollonian, which gives form, dream, and the beautiful illusion of individual life; and the Dionysian, which dissolves the individual into ecstasy, chaos, and the terrible truth of existence. Modernity, he contends, has lost the Dionysian altogether and is sicker for it. The book is rough, brilliant, sometimes embarrassing, and contains the seeds of nearly everything Nietzsche would later write. Translated by William A. Haussmann.