“The best of all things is something entirely out of your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you - is to die soon” 

‘The Birth of Tragedy’ was one difficult read. It is Nietzsche’s philosophical explanation of the founding of Greek Tragedy, its demise and then its rebirth among his contemporary German Tragedians. Nietzsche explores the realms of the Apolline and the Dionysiac and how they are connected in art and music, working in tandem to define tragedy as a genre. In places it was long and confusing, but generally interesting despite taking an awful lot of mental power to absorb and attempt to understand, hence my rating being on the lower side. It also somehow despite looking a lot at the artistic relationships that make up tragedy did not seem to give a definitive suggestion or theory on the birth of tragedy, contrary to the title itself. Nietzsche offered many a clever suggestion, perhaps overemphasised the idea of a rebirth among the German Tragedians, but it was ultimately a Herculean effort to read a not-so-large book.