69 results
4 Risk Factor and Biomarker Correlates of FLAIR White Matter Hyperintensities in Former American Football Players
- Monica T Ly, Fatima Tuz-Zahra, Yorghos Tripodis, Charles H Adler, Laura J Balcer, Charles Bernick, Elaine Peskind, Megan L Mariani, Rhoda Au, Sarah J Banks, William B Barr, Jennifer V Wethe, Mark W Bondi, Lisa Delano-Wood, Robert C Cantu, Michael J Coleman, David W Dodick, Michael D McClean, Jesse Mez, Joseph N Palmisano, Brett Martin, Kaitlin Hartlage, Alexander P Lin, Inga K Koerte, Jeffrey L Cummings, Eric M Reiman, Martha E Shenton, Robert A Stern, Sylvain Bouix, Michael L Alosco
-
- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 608-610
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Export citation
-
Objective:
White matter hyperintensity (WMH) burden is greater, has a frontal-temporal distribution, and is associated with proxies of exposure to repetitive head impacts (RHI) in former American football players. These findings suggest that in the context of RHI, WMH might have unique etiologies that extend beyond those of vascular risk factors and normal aging processes. The objective of this study was to evaluate the correlates of WMH in former elite American football players. We examined markers of amyloid, tau, neurodegeneration, inflammation, axonal injury, and vascular health and their relationships to WMH. A group of age-matched asymptomatic men without a history of RHI was included to determine the specificity of the relationships observed in the former football players.
Participants and Methods:240 male participants aged 45-74 (60 unexposed asymptomatic men, 60 male former college football players, 120 male former professional football players) underwent semi-structured clinical interviews, magnetic resonance imaging (structural T1, T2 FLAIR, and diffusion tensor imaging), and lumbar puncture to collect cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers as part of the DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project. Total WMH lesion volumes (TLV) were estimated using the Lesion Prediction Algorithm from the Lesion Segmentation Toolbox. Structural equation modeling, using Full-Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) to account for missing values, examined the associations between log-TLV and the following variables: total cortical thickness, whole-brain average fractional anisotropy (FA), CSF amyloid ß42, CSF p-tau181, CSF sTREM2 (a marker of microglial activation), CSF neurofilament light (NfL), and the modified Framingham stroke risk profile (rFSRP). Covariates included age, race, education, APOE z4 carrier status, and evaluation site. Bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals assessed statistical significance. Models were performed separately for football players (college and professional players pooled; n=180) and the unexposed men (n=60). Due to differences in sample size, estimates were compared and were considered different if the percent change in the estimates exceeded 10%.
Results:In the former football players (mean age=57.2, 34% Black, 29% APOE e4 carrier), reduced cortical thickness (B=-0.25, 95% CI [0.45, -0.08]), lower average FA (B=-0.27, 95% CI [-0.41, -.12]), higher p-tau181 (B=0.17, 95% CI [0.02, 0.43]), and higher rFSRP score (B=0.27, 95% CI [0.08, 0.42]) were associated with greater log-TLV. Compared to the unexposed men, substantial differences in estimates were observed for rFSRP (Bcontrol=0.02, Bfootball=0.27, 994% difference), average FA (Bcontrol=-0.03, Bfootball=-0.27, 802% difference), and p-tau181 (Bcontrol=-0.31, Bfootball=0.17, -155% difference). In the former football players, rFSRP showed a stronger positive association and average FA showed a stronger negative association with WMH compared to unexposed men. The effect of WMH on cortical thickness was similar between the two groups (Bcontrol=-0.27, Bfootball=-0.25, 7% difference).
Conclusions:These results suggest that the risk factor and biological correlates of WMH differ between former American football players and asymptomatic individuals unexposed to RHI. In addition to vascular risk factors, white matter integrity on DTI showed a stronger relationship with WMH burden in the former football players. FLAIR WMH serves as a promising measure to further investigate the late multifactorial pathologies of RHI.
The GLEAMing of the first supermassive black holes: II. A new sample of high-redshift radio galaxy candidates
- J. W. Broderick, G. Drouart, N. Seymour, T. J. Galvin, N. Wright, A. Carnero Rosell, R. Chhetri, H. Dannerbauer, S. P. Driver, J. S. Morgan, V. A. Moss, S. Prabu, J. M. Afonso, C. De Breuck, B. H. C. Emonts, T. M. O. Franzen, C. M. Gutiérrez, P. J. Hancock, G. H. Heald, N. Hurley-Walker, R. J. Ivison, M. D. Lehnert, G. Noirot, M. Read, S. S. Shabala, D. Stern, W. J. Sutherland, E. Sutorius, R. J. Turner, J. Vernet
-
- Journal:
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia / Volume 39 / 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 November 2022, e061
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
While unobscured and radio-quiet active galactic nuclei are regularly being found at redshifts $z > 6$ , their obscured and radio-loud counterparts remain elusive. We build upon our successful pilot study, presenting a new sample of low-frequency-selected candidate high-redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) over a sky area 20 times larger. We have refined our selection technique, in which we select sources with curved radio spectra between 72–231 MHz from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey. In combination with the requirements that our GLEAM-selected HzRG candidates have compact radio morphologies and be undetected in near-infrared $K_{\rm s}$ -band imaging from the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy (VIKING) survey, we find 51 new candidate HzRGs over a sky area of approximately $1200\ \mathrm{deg}^2$ . Our sample also includes two sources from the pilot study: the second-most distant radio galaxy currently known, at $z=5.55$ , with another source potentially at $z \sim 8$ . We present our refined selection technique and analyse the properties of the sample. We model the broadband radio spectra between 74 MHz and 9 GHz by supplementing the GLEAM data with both publicly available data and new observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array at 5.5 and 9 GHz. In addition, deep $K_{\rm s}$ -band imaging from the High-Acuity Widefield K-band Imager (HAWK-I) on the Very Large Telescope and from the Southern Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey Regions $K_{\rm s}$ -band Survey (SHARKS) is presented for five sources. We discuss the prospects of finding very distant radio galaxies in our sample, potentially within the epoch of reionisation at $z \gtrsim 6.5$ .
Sustaining University Operations During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Benjamin J. Ryan, Michael P. Muehlenbein, Jon Allen, Joshua Been, Kenneth Boyd, Mark Brickhouse, Bryan W. Brooks, Matthew Burchett, C. Kevin Chambliss, Jason D. Cook, Adam Ecklund, Lori Fogleman, Peter Granick, Sharra Hynes, Tonya Hudson, Michelle Huse, Micah Lamb, Tiffany Lowe, Jim Marsh, Niesha Nixon, Dennis Nolan, George Nuñez, Walter “Sparky” Matthews, Sharon Stern, Meaghann Wheelis, Nancy Brickhouse
-
- Journal:
- Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness / Volume 16 / Issue 5 / October 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 March 2021, pp. 1901-1909
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Colleges and universities around the world engaged diverse strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Baylor University, a community of ˜22,700 individuals, was 1 of the institutions which resumed and sustained operations. The key strategy was establishment of multidisciplinary teams to develop mitigation strategies and priority areas for action. This population-based team approach along with implementation of a “Swiss Cheese” risk mitigation model allowed small clusters to be rapidly addressed through testing, surveillance, tracing, isolation, and quarantine. These efforts were supported by health protocols including face coverings, social distancing, and compliance monitoring. As a result, activities were sustained from August 1 to December 8, 2020. There were 62,970 COVID-19 tests conducted with 1435 people testing positive for a positivity rate of 2.28%. A total of 1670 COVID-19 cases were identified with 235 self-reports. The mean number of tests per week was 3500 with approximately 80 of these positive (11/d). More than 60 student tracers were trained with over 120 personnel available to contact trace, at a ratio of 1 per 400 university members. The successes and lessons learned provide a framework and pathway for similar institutions to mitigate the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 and sustain operations during a global pandemic.
A data mining approach to investigate food groups related to incidence of bladder cancer in the BLadder cancer Epidemiology and Nutritional Determinants International Study
- Evan Y. W. Yu, Anke Wesselius, Christoph Sinhart, Alicja Wolk, Mariana Carla Stern, Xuejuan Jiang, Li Tang, James Marshall, Eliane Kellen, Piet van den Brandt, Chih-Ming Lu, Hermann Pohlabeln, Gunnar Steineck, Mohamed Farouk Allam, Margaret R. Karagas, Carlo La Vecchia, Stefano Porru, Angela Carta, Klaus Golka, Kenneth C. Johnson, Simone Benhamou, Zuo-Feng Zhang, Cristina Bosetti, Jack A. Taylor, Elisabete Weiderpass, Eric J. Grant, Emily White, Jerry Polesel, Maurice P. A. Zeegers
-
- Journal:
- British Journal of Nutrition / Volume 124 / Issue 6 / 28 September 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 April 2020, pp. 611-619
- Print publication:
- 28 September 2020
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
At present, analysis of diet and bladder cancer (BC) is mostly based on the intake of individual foods. The examination of food combinations provides a scope to deal with the complexity and unpredictability of the diet and aims to overcome the limitations of the study of nutrients and foods in isolation. This article aims to demonstrate the usability of supervised data mining methods to extract the food groups related to BC. In order to derive key food groups associated with BC risk, we applied the data mining technique C5.0 with 10-fold cross-validation in the BLadder cancer Epidemiology and Nutritional Determinants study, including data from eighteen case–control and one nested case–cohort study, compromising 8320 BC cases out of 31 551 participants. Dietary data, on the eleven main food groups of the Eurocode 2 Core classification codebook, and relevant non-diet data (i.e. sex, age and smoking status) were available. Primarily, five key food groups were extracted; in order of importance, beverages (non-milk); grains and grain products; vegetables and vegetable products; fats, oils and their products; meats and meat products were associated with BC risk. Since these food groups are corresponded with previously proposed BC-related dietary factors, data mining seems to be a promising technique in the field of nutritional epidemiology and deserves further examination.
Kuiper Belt object 2014MU69, Pluto and Phoebe as windows on the composition of the early solar nebula
- Y. J. Pendleton, D. P. Cruikshank, S. A. Stern, C. M. Dalle Ore, W. Grundy, C. Materese, S. Protopapa, B. Schmitt, C. Lisse
-
- Journal:
- Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union / Volume 15 / Issue S350 / April 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 October 2020, pp. 91-95
- Print publication:
- April 2019
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Export citation
-
The initial chemical composition of a proto-planetary nebula depends upon the degree to which 1) organic and ice components form on dust grains, 2) organic and molecular species form in the gas phase, 3) organics and ices are exchanged between the gas and solid state, and 4) the precursor and newly formed (more complex) materials survive and are modified in the developing planetary system. Infrared and radio observations of star-forming regions reveal that complex chemistry occurs on icy grains, often before stars even form. Additional processing, through the proto-planetary disk (PPD) further modifies most, but not all, of the initial materials. In fact, the modern Solar System still carries a fraction of its interstellar inheritance (Alexander et al.2017). Here we focus on three examples of small bodies in our Solar System, each containing chemical and dynamical clues to its origin and evolution: the small-cold classical Kuiper Belt object (KBO) 2014 MU69, Pluto, and Saturn’s moon, Phoebe. The New Horizons flyby of 2014 MU69 has given the first view of an unaltered body composed of material originally in the solar nebula at ~45 AU. The spectrum of MU69 reveals methanol ice (not commonly found), a possible detection of water ice, and the noteworthy absence of methane ice (Stern et al. 2019). Pluto’s internal and surface inventory of volatiles and complex organics, together with active geological processes including cryo-volcanism, indicate a surprising level of activity on a body in the outermost region of the Solar System, and the fluid that emerges from subsurface reservoirs may contain material inherited from the solar nebula (Cruikshank et al.2019a,b). Meanwhile, Saturn’s captured moon, Phoebe, carries high D/H in H2O (Clark et al. 2019) and complex organics (Cruikshank et al. 2008), both consistent with its formation in, and inheritance from, the outer region of the solar nebula. Together, these objects provide windows on the origin and evolution of our Solar System and constraints to be considered in future chemical and physical models of PPDs.
Chapter 15 - Strokes and Neurosarcoidosis
- from Section 2 - Inflammatory Conditions
- Edited by Louis Caplan, José Biller
-
- Book:
- Uncommon Causes of Stroke
- Published online:
- 15 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 05 July 2018, pp 111-118
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Diagnostic utility of brain activity flow patterns analysis in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- J. Biederman, P. Hammerness, B. Sadeh, Z. Peremen, A. Amit, H. Or-ly, Y. Stern, A. Reches, A. Geva, S. V. Faraone
-
- Journal:
- Psychological Medicine / Volume 47 / Issue 7 / May 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 January 2017, pp. 1259-1270
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Background
A previous small study suggested that Brain Network Activation (BNA), a novel ERP-based brain network analysis, may have diagnostic utility in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this study we examined the diagnostic capability of a new advanced version of the BNA methodology on a larger population of adults with and without ADHD.
MethodSubjects were unmedicated right-handed 18- to 55-year-old adults of both sexes with and without a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD. We collected EEG while the subjects were performing a response inhibition task (Go/NoGo) and then applied a spatio-temporal Brain Network Activation (BNA) analysis of the EEG data. This analysis produced a display of qualitative measures of brain states (BNA scores) providing information on cortical connectivity. This complex set of scores was then fed into a machine learning algorithm.
ResultsThe BNA analysis of the EEG data recorded during the Go/NoGo task demonstrated a high discriminative capacity between ADHD patients and controls (AUC = 0.92, specificity = 0.95, sensitivity = 0.86 for the Go condition; AUC = 0.84, specificity = 0.91, sensitivity = 0.76 for the NoGo condition).
ConclusionsBNA methodology can help differentiate between ADHD and healthy controls based on functional brain connectivity. The data support the utility of the tool to augment clinical examinations by objective evaluation of electrophysiological changes associated with ADHD. Results also support a network-based approach to the study of ADHD.
2 - Biographical background I: Nietzsche and his early interests
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 17-35
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Life and classical career
The main external events in Nietzsche's life that concern us here are easily summarized. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in 1844 into a pious Protestant family at Röcken in Saxony. His father, the local parson, died in 1849, leaving, in all, three children, one of whom died shortly afterwards. The survivors were Nietzsche himself and a younger sister. This sister, Elisabeth, was to count for a good deal in Nietzsche's later life, favourably and otherwise: she eventually became the custodian of all his surviving works during the long period of incapacity that preceded his death and continued in that influential rôle, which she executed in a highly questionable way, for thirty-five years afterwards.
In 1850, with his mother, sister and – to add to the regiment of women – two aunts and a grandmother, Nietzsche moved to nearby Naumburg. He soon showed academic promise and in 1858, at the age of fourteen, went to the famous boarding school of Pforta, not far from Naumburg, where he excelled in most subjects, the chief exceptions being art and mathematics. The standing of this school, established in 1543 and before that a Cistercian Abbey, was considerable. Its distinguished pupils over the years had included such famous names in German cultural life as Klopstock, Fichte, Ranke, and Friedrich Schlegel; and not the least of its products was a series of remarkable classical scholars, beginning with Ernesti in the early eighteenth century and proceeding through Böttiger, Thiersch, Doederlein, Dissen, Meineke, Otto Jahn, Nauck, Breitenbach, Bonitz and Wachsmuth to the illustrious Wilamowitz, four years Nietzsche's junior.
Classics was also to be Nietzsche's chosen profession and his rise in it was rapid. From Pforta in 1864 he went to the University of Bonn to read classical philology and theology, but he stayed only for a single year. A bitter personal feud had developed there between the two eminent classics professors, Otto Jahn (like Nietzsche from Pforta) and Friedrich Ritschl; and in 1865 Ritschl left, followed by some of his students, to take up a post at the University of Leipzig. Nietzsche was among those who went with Ritschl; and under Ritschl at Leipzig his career blossomed.
1 - Germany and Greece
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 1-16
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Theories of tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche's book, The Birth of Tragedy, appeared in 1872. It is a book that can be related closely to the age in which it was written, and especially the personal circumstances of its author, then a young classical scholar. It can be related, again, to the mature philosophy of its author's later years. It must, obviously, be considered in relation to the actual matters it is concerned with, of which Greek tragedy is the most specifiable. And in respect of this main concern, it is also to be related to a particular tradition within German thought, which provides us with our starting point: a tradition of theoretical enquiry into the nature of tragedy – Greek tragedy, above all. This tradition goes back at least to Herder and Lessing in the eighteenth century; and it continues beyond Nietzsche to Johannes Volkelt and Bertolt Brecht in our own time. Common to all the contributors, up to and including Nietzsche, is their profound interest in the literature of ancient Greece. They all take issue, in a variety of different ways, with the classic theory of tragedy propounded in Aristotle's Poetics; they all, in the wake of Herder, make some attempt to relate the achievements of the Greek tragedians to the religious or social facts of Greek life; and they all consider the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to form one of the summits of world literature. About the other summit there is less agreement: it is not always Shakespeare. But while the reasons for ‘the tyranny of Greece over Germany’ are many, the belief in the paramount value of these Greek plays as in some sense forming one of humanity's fundamental documents is always present.
Why the interest in theory? It is true that preoccupation with theoretical accounts of phenomena of all kinds is characteristic of German culture at least since the day of Leibnitz at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but in this instance there is a more specific reason.
9 - Nietzsche and earlier German theories of tragedy
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 356-395
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Lessing
An ironist might observe that the unbroken sequence of German theories of tragedy from Lessing to Brecht and beyond constitutes a body of writing at least as interesting, and possibly more interesting, than the German tragedies which were written during that time. And even though the statement is unfair and an exaggeration, it does reflect a tenacious preoccupation with the theory of drama and the idea of ‘the tragic’ which has no parallel in any other literature. Nietzsche's own theory must be assessed, as we have tried to assess it, as a contribution to the understanding of tragedy in its own right. At the same time, consideration of the German theoretical tradition to which he belongs provides a necessarý perspective. In the first place it helps to explain the extra-literary character of his interest in the tragic stage. The particular existential slant of his theory may be his own, but throughout this long line of theories tragedy is anything but a narrowly literary concern. Correspondingly, the theorists tend tacitly to agree with Nietzsche that detailed technical analyses of an Aristotelian kind are not their business. Nietzsche, once again, may have a special aversion to technicalities, but the German theorists as a whole are not given to them. It may sound paradoxical, but their theories are more philosophically far-ranging than Aristotle's, while his is more detached, more ‘aesthetic’ in the Kantian sense; but then, the Kantian critical mode of thought is closer to Aristotle than to the speculative theoreticians of the post-Kantian era.
Lessing's observations in Hamburg Dramaturgy II (1759), our first case in point, reflect that multiplicity of interests, or rather cares, of which Nietzsche remarked that they squandered Lessing's finest gifts. Dramatic critic and dramatist, cosmopolitan and patriot, theologian and enlightened moralist, savant and popularizer – Lessing pursues all these callings and uses his theorizing about drama in each of them. We may summarize his thinking – to the extent that it is relevant to our historical sketch – under three headings, all of which really point in the same direction:
(i) The theatre is an inculcator of virtues.
(ii) The theatre – or rather the taste for it – is a matter of national culture, and consequently the virtues (that is, a people's sense of values) are at least co-determined by historical and national considerations.
Contents
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp vii-viii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
3 - Biographical background II: the genesis of The Birth of Tragedy
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 36-78
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Basle, Tribschen, and the first plans for a book
Up to this point in our narrative, it has been possible, with some difficulty, to keep the three main strands of Nietzsche's life apart. With the beginning of his Basle period, it is virtually impossible to separate these or any aspects of his life or work, including the complicated genesis of BT. Everything converges – and Nietzsche himself does everything possible to ensure that it should. The convergence, in fact, reflects his first full-scale, and characteristically self-conscious, attempt to oppose fragmentation in favour of a whole response to experience. As he puts it, with a certain dispassionate irony, in a letter of early 1870: ‘I observe how my philosophical, moral and scholarly endeavours strive towards a single goal and that I may perhaps become the first philologist ever to achieve wholeness.’ And how should he achieve it? Throughout this early period, ‘Schopenhauer’ is the device behind which Nietzsche is mustering his increasingly independent thinking. And so he can still express his aspiration towards that ‘wholeness’ in terms of a unifying Schopenhauerianism. In September 1869 he writes: ‘I really do stand now at a centre from which Schopenhauerian threads reach out into all parts of the world’; and it was in April, on the eve of his departure for Basle, that he had expressed the ambition to infuse his own philological discipline with ‘that Schopenhauerian seriousness…; I should like to be something more than a drill-master for competent philologists – the generation of present-day teachers, the care of the growing younger generation, this is what I have in mind.’
Despite these protestations, however, it can hardly be denied that Nietzsche's main enthusiasm, and the main stimulus to his enthusiasms in general, was no longer Schopenhauer, but the composer whose devotee he was and whose intimate friend he shortly became. ‘Intimate’ is not, perhaps, the right word. There is a case for saying that Nietzsche's relationships, though often intense, hardly ever permitted the degree of self-revelation, at least on his side, that true intimacy presupposes. His friendship with Rohde might be an exception here; his relationship with Wagner was probably not. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this relationship flourished.
Frontmatter
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp i-iv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
8 - Tragedy, music and aesthetics
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 273-355
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The Birth of Tragedy and Aristotle's Poetics
The Birth of Tragedy represents Nietzsche's most sustained attempt at a theory of art. Apart from the late essay, The Wagner Case, and its companion piece, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, it is his only book in which art occupies a central place, even though musical and literary criticism and aesthetic speculations abound in all his writings. Those who discuss Nietzsche's views on art often treat his books as if they were separate chapters of one continuous work. The coherence of this œuvre is sometimes strongly affirmed, sometimes denied, but the whole sequence is taken to be a single work in the sense that excerpts from different parts of it may be played together, like cards from a single pack, without further ado. Allowance is usually made for Nietzsche's revaluation of Wagner, which is too obvious a reversal to be ignored; this apart, the question of development or changes of mind is hardly raised.
This procedure is unacceptable. Whatever may be said of Nietzsche's thought as a whole, the fact is that, despite continuities, his view of art does develop and change, and nowhere is the development more marked than between BT and the work of the later 1870s and 1880s. That development proceeds in conjunction with the revaluation of Wagner, but is not restricted to it. In opposition to the thesis put forward in BT, the later Nietzsche will espouse the ideals of classicism, partly with reference to French culture; he will express hostility to the theatre; he will be able to see convention as ‘the condition of great art, not an obstacle to it’ and art itself as ‘the cult of the untrue’ – and insofar as these two propositions are relatable to his earlier conception of art, it can only be to his conception of Apolline art. A further important change, implicit in this last pair of instances, will be the tendency to equate all forms of art at the expense of those distinctions to which BT is devoted. In this development tragedy must forfeit much of its special status – and so too will music, which, as far as the post-Wagnerian Nietzsche is concerned, is no longer ‘a universal language for all time’ or a language with a unique, metaphysical power.
Note
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp xiii-xiv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
5 - The aftermath
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 108-156
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
First reactions, Wilamowitz, Rohde
The advance copies of BT appeared in the last days of 1871. On 2 January 1872 Nietzsche sent one to Wagner at Tribschen. In his covering letter he stressed, with extreme deference, the close relation of his book and its theories to Wagner's creative achievements: ‘if I myself think that in essence I am right, then that only means that you with your art must be eternally right… I feel proud that… now people will always link my name with yours.’ At the same time, in the lofty tone appropriate to communication with the Master on such an occasion, he alluded to his misgivings about the public's response: ‘God have mercy on my philologists if they insist on learning nothing now.’ To Rohde, we recall, only a few weeks earlier, he had expressed the more general concern that the book's multifariousness would alienate all his prospective specialist readers, but the philologists above all. On that occasion he had, in fact, put it to his friend that, as far as the philological fraternity was concerned, his book (the central part of which Rohde had now seen) would be in dire need of some ‘higher advertising’ (‘höhere Reklame‘– Nietzsche's inverted commas), and he had suggested that the solution might be an open letter about the book from Rohde, preferably in some scholarly journal. Rohde gladly offered his services: the idea had already occurred to him, although his inclination was to try a less specialized journal, the Litterarische Centralblatt.
Bypassing any such anxieties for the moment, Tribschen responded in tones of ecstasy. Here was its supreme vindication. Wagner wrote by return: ‘I have never read a finer book than yours. It is utterly magnificent.’ And Cosima: ‘How beautiful your book is! How beautiful and how profound – how profound and how daring!… You have conjured up spirits I thought only the Master had at his service.’ As her diary records, she and Wagner spent several days on the book, reading it, discussing it, and enthusing over it. In addition, she indicates that they too were privately uneasy about the public reaction, albeit not quite for Nietzsche's reasons.
Bibliography
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 453-456
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
7 - Mode and originality
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 226-272
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The mixed mode of The Birth of Tragedy
‘Scholarship, art and philosophy’, Nietzsche had written in 1871, ‘are now growing together inside me so much that I'll be giving birth to centaurs one day.’ It is not some incidental flaw or quirk but the essential condition of BT that it is, as Nietzsche had predicted, a hybrid: a work of mixed mode between literature and ‘science’, between art and thought. It was this hybridity that prompted Rohde to call it a ‘didactic poem’ (Lehrgedicht) and Cosima Wagner to explain that she felt obliged to ‘read it as a poem’, even though it dealt with ‘the most profound problems’ – and finally Nietzsche himself to disown the book in his Self-Criticism of 1886 as neither one thing nor the other: ‘What spoke here…was something like a mystical, almost maenadic soul…that stammered with difficulty…as if in a strange tongue…It should have sung, not spoken, this new soul. What I had to say then – what a pity that I did not dare to say it as a poet: perhaps I had the ability. Or at least as a philologist: even today practically everything in this field remains to be unearthed and discovered by philologists!’ Here as elsewhere, however, Nietzsche's afterthoughts are not to be taken as definitive. We must define the hybridity more closely.
Although Nietzsche does not write as a philologist, he remains unmistakably a Hellenist. Despite his intense admiration for Schopenhauer and Wagner, and notwithstanding his own testimony to the stature or representative importance of the ‘entire Aryan community’ (§9), of Buddhism (§§18, 21), of Shakespeare (§2), of Rome (§21), he assumes that, within man's entire cultural experience, Greece (in its creative rise or its Socratic fall) comes first, ‘that the Greeks, as charioteers, hold in their hands the reins of our own and every other culture’ (§15). This unargued assumption – for assertion, however majestic, does not constitute an argument – Nietzsche shares with a hundred years of German Hellenism before him. From the time of Winckelmann, however, the quest for Greece is generally pursued in the spirit of historical method. Nietzsche's tendency is in a different direction.
4 - The argument of The Birth of Tragedy
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 79-107
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The argument of BT is large, complicated, allusive and often elusive as well. In this chapter we provide a detailed summary as a practical aid, to help the reader to see precisely what Nietzsche is saying. The summary follows its original uniformly, section by section (§§), except in the following ways: (i) Nietzsche frequently alludes, without explaining the allusions, to more or less well-known features of Greek tragedy or the Greek world; he gives virtually no dates for artists, thinkers, or events, ancient or modern; and he sometimes makes points that rest, clearly enough, on unstated presuppositions, but points that cannot readily be summarized without reconstructing each presupposition and making it fully explicit. In all these cases we have supplied explanatory or factual material within square brackets: [] We have also supplied headings and subheadings (Nietzsche provides none), likewise within square brackets. (ii) Nietzsche sometimes alludes to a topic without explanation in one section, but adds the necessary explanatory matter in another (or in more than one other). In such cases, we have transposed the explanatory matter out of its proper section to the main discussion that presupposes it, but have enclosed it inside pointed brackets: < >. We have then indicated in the margin ad loc. from which section or sections such matter actually derives, using the symbol <, so that (e.g.) ‘<§10’ means ‘this matter comes from §10’. (iii) Where necessary, we have provided footnotes, containing explanatory editorial comments. However, editorial additions of all kinds are kept to a minimum. In particular, it is not our business in this chapter to pass judgements on Nietzsche's suppositions, arguments or conclusions. (iv) In many sections, Nietzsche's points are not presented in what one might take to be their natural order. Within sections, therefore, we have reordered his material, without warning, in the interests of the argument. (v) All unattributed quotations are from BT, but in this chapter and thereafter all quotations from the book follow the standard (1874) text.
Preface to Richard Wagner The aesthetic problem considered in this book is central to the hopes for Germany today.
10 - Style and philosophy
- M. S. Silk, J. P. Stern
-
- Book:
- Nietzsche on Tragedy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2016, pp 396-452
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
§1
The opening paragraph of Nietzsche's book is rich in substance yet succinct; self-confident yet provocative. So characteristic is it of his style and form of argument, and so full of anticipations, that we may use it as a pattern for the book as a whole:
Wir werden viel für die ästhetische Wissenschaft gewonnen haben, wenn wir nicht nur zur logischen Einsicht, sondern zur unmittelbaren Sicherheit der Anschauung gekommen sind, dass die Fortentwickelung der Kunst an die Duplizität des Apollinischen und des Dionysischen gebunden ist: in ähnlicher Weise, wie die Generation von der Zweiheit der Geschlechter, bei fortwährendem Kampfe und nur periodisch eintretender Versöhnung, abhängt. Diese Namen entlehnen wir von den Griechen, welche die tiefsinnigen Geheimlehren ihrer Kunstanschauung zwar nicht in Begriffen, aber in den eindringlich deutlichen Gestalten ihrer Götterwelt dem Einsichtigen vernehmbar machen. An ihre beiden Kunstgottheiten, Apollo und Dionysus, knüpft sich unsere Erkenntnis, dass in der griechischen Welt ein ungeheurer Gegensatz, nach Ursprung und Zielen, zwischen der Kunst des Bildners, der apollinischen, und der unbildlichen Kunst der Musik, als der des Dionysus, besteht: beide so verschiedne Triebe gehen nebeneinander her, zumeist im offnen Zwiespalt miteinander und sich gegenseitig zu immer neuen kräftigeren Geburten reizend, um in ihnen den Kampf jenes Gegensatzes zu perpetuieren, den das gemeinsame Wort ‘Kunst’ nur scheinbar überbrückt; bis sie endlich, durch einen metaphysischen Wunderakt des hellenischen ‘Willens’, miteinander gepaart erscheinen und in dieser Paarung zuletzt das ebenso dionysische als apollinische Kunstwerk der attischen Tragödie erzeugen.
We shall have greatly advanced the science of aesthetics once we have established not only through the perspective of logic but also by intuitive certainty that continuity in the development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apolline and the Dionysiac in a similar way as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving them in perpetual strife and only intermittent reconciliation. These names we borrow from the Greeks, who intimate the profound mysteries of their vision of art to the discerning mind not through concepts but through the arrestingly clear figures of their gods.