"Deep antagonism to Christianity. Why? The degeneration of the Germanic spirit is ascribed to its influence.
"Any justification of the world can only be an æsthetic one. Profound suspicions about morality (—it is part and parcel of the world of appearance).
"The happiness of existence is only possible as the happiness derived from appearance. ('Being' is a fiction invented by those who suffer from becoming.)
"Happiness in becoming is possible only in the annihilation of the real, of the 'existing,' of the beautifully visionary,—in the pessimistic dissipation of illusions:—with the annihilation of the most beautiful phenomena in the world of appearance, Dionysian happiness reaches its zenith."
The Birth of Tragedy is really only a portion of a much greater work on Hellenism, which my brother had always had in view from the time of his student days. But even the portion it represents was originally designed upon a much larger scale than the present one; the reason probably being, that Nietzsche desired only to be of service to Wagner. When a certain portion of the projected work on Hellenism was ready and had received the title Greek Cheerfulness, my brother happened to call upon Wagner at Tribschen in April 1871, and found him very low-spirited in regard to the mission of his life. My brother was very anxious to take some decisive step to help him, and, laying the plans of his great work on Greece aside, he selected a small portion from the already completed manuscript—a portion dealing with one distinct side of Hellenism,—to wit, its tragic art. He then associated Wagner's music with it and the name Dionysos, and thus took the first step towards that world-historical view through which we have since grown accustomed to regard Wagner.
From the dates of the various notes relating to it, The Birth of Tragedy must have been written between the autumn of 1869 and November 1871—a period during which "a mass of æsthetic questions and answers" was fermenting in Nietzsche's mind. It was first published in January 1872 by E. W. Fritsch, in Leipzig, under the title The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Later on the title was changed to The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism.
ELIZABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.
WEIMAR, September 1905.
[1] This Introduction by E. Förster-Nietzsche, which appears in the front of the first volume of Naumann's Pocket Edition of Nietzsche, has been translated and arranged by Mr. A. M. Ludovici.