Mimesi e catarsi : Nietzsche lettore di Aristotele

This contribution is about that traces that Nietzsche’s reading of Aristotle’s Poetics left in his The Birth of Tragedy. Such traces are indirect and nevertheless clear, because Nietzsche, though only marginally referring to Aristotle, adopts essential topics from him. This holds especially true for two Aristotelian key concepts, namely mimesis and catharsis. Nietzsche, like Aristotle, conceives tragedy as mimesis, however not in terms of a representation of human action, but rather as imitation of an original impulse of life as it is immediately present in music. Being such an imitation tragedy also is catharsis, namely the purification of an affect by its imitation. However, conceiving tragedy as manifestation of tragic life Nietzsche distances himself from Aristotle. Instead of understanding art as a particular potential of insight, Nietzsche regards art as process of creation and destruction and thus anticipates the avant-garde position that is haracteristic for early modernity.