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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2021
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.
The text of Trojan Women is that of Diggle (1981) and all Greek translations are my own. No translations of Nietzsche are my own and the references are to the page number of the relevant edition. I am grateful above all to Tim Whitmarsh for his continual guidance. My thanks must also go to Jim Porter for his generous feedback; to Richard Hunter and Simon Goldhill for their constructive criticism when this piece began its life; and to Tom Hall, Cecily Manson, Felix Schlichter and the audience at a Cambridge conference on Evil in Ancient Philosophy for helping me in their own ways. The comments of the anonymous referee proved more than helpful as well.