Art That Works: Nietzsche’s Figures of Suffering

Abstract: Forms of life produce ways of suffering through the figuration of the experience of suffering within aesthetic contexts. Aesthetic experiences give “figure” to embodied experiences of suffering. Figures are not clearly outlined shapes but rather are gestural indications that are dynamically influential. Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy , deploys several “figures” of suffering, through the characters of Dionysus, Apollo, and Silenus. This article is organized into three parts. Section one articulates Nietzsche’s interpretation of Dionysus and Apollo, with a focus on their connection to the problem of suffering. Section two argues that these figures do not sufficiently reply to the problem of suffering, thereby creating a new problem of suffering, which challenges traditional theodicy. Section three explores Nietzsche’s interpretation of the wisdom of Silenus. From these analyses, I argue that aesthetic contexts produce interpretations of suffering that potentially yield affective reorientation toward the meaninglessness of suffering and its challenge to a flourishing, life-affirming life. It achieves this by interpreting suffering within the space not of argument against life’s inherent goodness, but as, terribly, a part of it.