To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I Love You! Ariadne

By Claudia Crawford

Subjects: Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791421505, 308 pages, December 1994
Hardcover : 9780791421499, 308 pages, December 1994

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Table of contents

Love

A Lover's Discourse

Joysong

Catastrophe

Wrenching Madness Loose from Reason

Phantasm

Seduction, Secrets, and Challenge

The Night Song

Ariadne and the Maenads

Roundelay with Chaos: In Answer to the "Night Song" Ariadne, Sa'di, and Dionysus

Drama, Tragedy, and Woman

Drama

Empedocles

The Zarathustra Drama: Parts 1 through 4

The Zarathustra Drama: Part 5

Satyr-Play

Incipit Tragoedia : The Nietzsche/Dionysus Drama or Spectacle and the Gordian Knot

Variations on the Event of Nietzsche's 'Collapse'

The Ecce Homo Scenario

On High Mountains

Ariadne's Lament and Wisdom: Cutting the Gordian Knot

Ariadne's Lament

Reflection on Love: Suffering and Joy

Ariadne's Wisdom

Ariadne to Dionysus

The Golden Bark: Die at the Right Time and in the Right Way

The Golden Bark

Voluntary Death

Culmination and Celebration, Not Martyrdom

Une Seule Condition: Divorçons. ..

Nietzsche Caesar

The Decent Criminal

Noel

No Coincidence!

Madness, Medical Discourse, or Script?

Psychiatric and Medical Discourse

Nietzsche's Ode to and Invocation of Madness

Script for 'Madness'?

The Glad Tidings

Interlude: Fear and Trembling

Silence

The Dionysus Dithyrambs

Epiphany

Sacred Marriage/Satyr-Marriage

Sacred Marriage: Dance!

Satyr-Marriage: Isoline/Isolin

Incipit Parodia : Of Satyrs, Asses, and Festivals

For, I Love You, O Eternity!

Wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne: Dance, Sing, Rejoice!

Laugh, You Higher Ones!

Description

This book explores the possibility that Friedrich Nietzsche simulated his madness as a form of "voluntary death," and thus that his madness functioned as the symbolic culmination of his philosophy.

The book weaves together scholarly, mytho-poetic, literary critical, biographical, and dramatic genres not only to explore specifics of Nietzsche's "madness," but to question the "reason/madness" opposition in nineteenth and twentieth century thinking. A rational and scholarly study of this period of Nietzsche's "breakdown"—presented through his writings, letters, and poetry in combination with relevant historical documents and other critics' writings—is simultaneously disrupted and questioned by several non-traditional discourses or voices that break in on it. Thus, Ariadne's voice frames and unframes the research context and plays alongside it.

Ariadne's voice is poetic, revelatory, rhapsodic, and prophetic, sounding much like Nietzsche's own voice during his "breakdown. " Ariadne's discourse attempts to seduce through a non-rational, mytho-poetic love story which culminates in the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne. Other non-rational discourses, critically developed and based upon the work of Nietzsche, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilles Deleuze, are given voice and work together with Ariadne to counter the usual interpretations of Nietzsche's "madness" and of what "mad" discourse is. These discourses are given the names "catastrophe," "phantasm," and "seduction. " The experiment of the book is not only to offer an entirely different perspective on Nietzche's "madness" but to offer and perform new and challenging forms of affirmative discourse.

Claudia Crawford is the author of The Beginnings of Nietzsche's Theory of Language. She has taught as Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Humanities, and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Macalester College, and Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis.