|
|
Article: The Promethean artist: from thief, via metaphysical rebel, to cliche.(The Birth of Tragedy)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Traffic
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
It has become a commonplace to call a great artist 'Promethean'. But how did we get from Hesiod's wily thief, via Aeschylus' founder of all human culture, to Goethe and the Romantics' creative genius with a distinctly metaphysical and rebellious edge, to Nietzsche's necessary sacrilege, then finally to cliche where the symbolic credentials of the Promethean artist empty out into a (Romantic) commonplace? This article traces the genealogy of the transformation of Prometheus from a quasi-comic thief to creative genius and rebel, and argues that Nietzsche's use of the inherently metaphysical Prometheus in The Birth of Tragedy paradoxically
'[H]e was praising your ...