Interpreting Hamlet’s Pregnant Silences: Nietzsche and Benjamin

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the protagonist frequently and eloquently refers to his own taciturnity and to the fundamental insights into the ways of the world that this silence conceals from his interlocutors. It is partly due to this emphasis on a pivotal inaccessibilty that the play has provoked numerous philosophical interpretations. For example, Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy and Walter Benjamin in Origin of the German Trauerspiel have dealt with Hamlet’s loquacious refusal to communicate, and their interpretations, while problematic in some respects, can contribute to a better understanding of the drama, especially when they are placed in relation to one another. While Nietzsche’s somewhat forced interpretation traces Hamlet’s silence to the Dionysian experience of ancient tragedy, Benjamin’s counter-interpretation construes this silence as the expression of a specifically Protestant, melancholic conception of history, as well as of its dialectical overcoming. Although Origin of the German Trauerspiel convincingly demonstrates that Hamlet transforms his relationship to society and its language in the course of the play by reinterpreting the contingency of historical events as manifestations of eternal providence, a closer reading of the drama shows that this reinterpretation is not, as Benjamin claims, unfolding a genuinely Christian dialectic, at the endpoint of which stands the blissful silence of assured salvation. Rather, this reinterpretation appears as the expression of an amor fati that in many respects prefigures Nietzsche’s categorical affirmation of blind necessity; Hamlet’s interpretation of the course of the world as a circulus vitiosus resembles the idea of the eternal return, embracing this figure of thought in its most hopeless and most seminal form: as an apotheosis of endless annihilation.

Dramatising Solidarity and Unification in Divided Palestine: The Chorus and the Ghost in Kamel EL-Basha’s Following the Footsteps of Hamlet (2013)

This essay explores how Kamel EL-Basha’s theatre production Following the Footsteps of Hamlet (2013) preaches unity and resistance in a post-2006 divided Palestine. After giving a brief historical account of the causes of the internal Palestinian political divisions that distract Palestinians from achieving liberation, the article traces how El-Basha uses theatrical devices such as the chorus and the ghost to materialise a sense of unification in the theatrical space. The analysis draws on other international theatrical practices like Einar Schleef’s (1980) ‘Choric Theatre’ and cites critical works such as Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872) to locate El-Basha’s theatrical practice in a broader context regarding the significance of the chorus in dramatising unity. The essay also traces how the performance of traditional Palestinian songs, ululation, dances like dabke and other rituals in the play, help foster Palestinian identity and shape their sumud (steadfastness) in facing the occupation. Finally, the essay focuses on the role of the ghost in evoking nostalgia in the audience for the days of unity and collective resistance promoted by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before his death.

Andre Bogart Szabo Art Images

see art images. My works on canvas celebrate concepts presented in Nietzsche's ‘The Birth of Tragedy,’ particularly the duality between Apollo and Dionysus (order/disorder, rational logic/amorous frenzy...consider Dionysus as presented in Euripedes’ The Bacchae). In addition, my work is inspired in part by the ‘excremental philosophy’ of Georges Bataille, a philosopher who wrote extensively on Nietzsche.

Book review: Nietzsche’s Culture War: The Unity of the Untimely Meditations

Shilo Brooks’ study on Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations (UM) (1873-76) is one of the few scholarly works that examines all four of these early essays in combination. Even taken separately, there are fewer independent studies of the UM compared with The Birth of Tragedy (BT) (1872) and the middle works (1878-82), except for “The Use and Disadvantage of History for Life” (HL) (1874), which has garnered the most critical attention. Brooks suggests a compelling reason to investigate all four works together. His organizing principle is reflected in his title: the four essays were individual constituents of a large-scale “culture war”—a philosophical Kulturkampf (p. 12)—that the young Nietzsche waged against Bismarck and the political, social, and cultural conditions in his newly established Reich. Brooks’ decision to treat all four pieces in a single monograph makes eminent sense, and the fact that Nietzsche assembled the essays under the title UM suggests he saw them as part of a common endeavor—or at least as reflective of a certain prevailing mindset at the time: “[W]hen viewed from the perspective of his later works, the critique of German culture featured in the Untimely Meditations and the plan Nietzsche sketches to revitalize it provide a holistic if early blueprint for his later attempt at a revaluation of values” (p. 15).

WHAT'S NIETZSCHE TO EURIPIDES? THE AESTHETICS OF SUFFERING IN NIETZSCHE'S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES’ TROJAN WOMEN

This article reads Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy in dialogue with Euripides’ Trojan Women, synthesising a Nietzschean reading of Euripides’ tragedy with, as it were, a Euripidean reading of Nietzsche's theorisation of the tragic. It focuses on the way in which both texts confront the threat of nihilism in the face of human suffering and attempt to redeem or transfigure it. This is manifested internally and self- consciously in Euripides’ play through the actions of Hecuba and the chorus, who seem both to exhibit what Nietzsche might call a ‘pessimism of strength’, and to express Nietzsche's fundamental claim that ‘only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified’. Yet Trojan Women ultimately resists Nietzschean theorising – a form of critical resistance which, as it will turn out, is already anticipated by Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. More than a close study of two texts, this dialogic reading also has some big implications for thinking through the relationship between philosophy and tragedy in general.

Aristotelian and/or Nietzschean narratology

Over the years, narratologists have established a unitary view of narrative structure based on the principles of Aristotle’s Poetics. I propose in this essay to describe the general features of an alternative epistemological framework based on a renewed interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Through this analysis, I wish to show how the adoption of the Aristotelian model as a framework for narratological research could have led to neglecting certain fundamental aspects of narrativity that the adoption of a Nietzschean perspective, conversely, would highlight. In particular, I want to emphasize that the abandonment of the Aristotelian perspective in favor of a Nietzschean approach can be extremely useful in order to highlight the über-natural character of so-called “unnatural narratives”. I will test my hypotheses through the analysis of David Foster Wallace’s short story “Mister Squishy” (2004), which represents an emblematic case of “Nietzschean narrative”.

F. NIETZSCHE’S «BIRTH OF TRAGEDY» IN THE CONTEXT OF MEDICAL DISCOURSE

Как об утрате древними греками веры в богов Аполлона и Диониса. С точки зрения автора статьи, Ницше пришел к выводу, что последствия этой «смерти Бога» привели к необходимости психологического оздоровления людей. Автор статьи утверждает, что можно говорить об оригинальности философии Ницше как автора «Рождения трагедии» и причастности этой философии медицинскому дискурсу The author of the article argues that in «The Birth of Tragedy» F. Nietzsche expresses his reflection on the «death of God» discussing the loss of faith in Apollo and Dionysus by the ancient Greeks. In his opinion, Nietzsche came to the conclusion that the consequences of this «death of God» led to the need for psychological recovery of people. The author of the article claims that it is possible to speak about the originality of Nietzsche's philosophy in the «Birth of Tragedy» and the involvement of his thought in medical discourse