James Chester

The Birth of Dionysia James Chester

In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche solved a mystery that had baffled Western philosophers for more than two thousand years. Why did the ancient Greeks celebrate the destruction of magnificent individuals in their tragedies, which was an art form they themselves invented? Something very special lay waiting to be discovered in this mystery, like a jewel atop the crown of ancient wisdom, because the ancients had produced a progeny of extraordinary individuals that marked the only time in all of history when genius was common, not rare. Having cracked that nut, and being the only one who did it, at the end of his life, Nietzsche then wrote his magnum opus, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" - and no one understood a word of it. In fact, Nietzsche's masterpiece is a new art form, which is called the New Dithyramb, and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is the modern world's only dithyrambic tragedy. "The Birth of Dionysia" aims to teach the college student how to read a dithyramb and how to practice dithyrambic drama so that he or she may then experience tragedy as it first appeared at the dawn of civilization and share in the very rare secret that tragedy does not destroy man but rather heals him.