ABSTRACT
I shall be concerned with a figure, one that is different from most, perhaps from almost all, others; a figure drawn, or rather withdrawn, in such a manner that it can have no direct image, even though, on the other hand, it can become, in its way, manifest. This figure could be considered the most perfectly metaphysical, the original an sich, so compactly an original, so thoroughly an sich, as to withhold itself from direct disclosure in an image. And yet by virtue of this very withdrawing it can instead be considered a transgressive figure, a figure which veers off toward the limit of metaphysics, that exceeds metaphysics, a figure in excess of metaphysics. The name of the figure is Dionysus. The text in which the figure is drawn: Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.1
