Tragedy after Nietzsche : rapturous superabundance /

At the core of Nietzsche's conception of tragedy lies a "rapturous superabundance of spirit that can and will affirm the worst that life has to offer." So writes Gordon in this perceptive study that explores the exuberant excess, the supreme joy, inherent in the perpetually recurring Nietzschean confrontation between finite humanity and the inexorable forces of nature arrayed against it. According to the author, Nietzsche attributes the paradoxical pleasure afforded by tragedy's spectacle of death and destruction to a creative tension suffusing his bedrock Apollonian and Dionysian principles: the one embodying orderly boundaries and individuation, the other the ecstatic rupturing of all boundaries and the accompanying sensation of oceanic oneness with the universe. At the same time, Gordon discerns this ultimately redemptive dynamic embedded in the ideas of Longinus, Kant, Yeats, Freud, and Camus. It is also foundational in blues music, in all enduring art, and in Nietzsche's own pivotal notion of the "eternal return." And, says Gordon, it can even help one come to terms with the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. Accessible and instructive, this fine work--complete with notes--belongs in every academic library. H. I. Einsohn Middlesex Community-Technical College