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NIETZSCHE, Friedrich.
Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik.
First edition of Nietzsche's first book, one of 800 copies printed, the Wagnerian musician Siegmund von Hausegger's copy with his bookplate. Written at the age of 28, the book was a result of several early enthusiasms: the author's academic studies in philology, his excitement at Schopenhauer's philosophy, his acquaintance and intense relationship with Wagner, and his disappointment with the contemporary "official" German culture. Here he distinguished between the "Dionysian", pre-Socratic stage and the traditionally-admired "Apollonian" forces of sober and logical order in ancient Greek culture, and located the possibility of a resurrection of Europe's artistic genius in the synthesis of these qualities in Wagner's music. Nietzsche predicted that "The philologists won't read it on account of the music, the musicians won't read it on account of the philology, and the philosophers won't read it on account of the music and the philology". One philologist, the young Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, did read it, and attacked it savagely and repeatedly, marking its reception among scholars for decades.
Octavo (227 × 140 mm). Contemporary green half cloth, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, marbled sides and edges, plain brown endpapers. 4 pp. publisher's adverts for Wagner's works preceding text. Bookplate of the Austrian composer and conductor, and Wagnerian, Siegmund von Hausegger (1872-1948) dated 1906. Fine copy.
