ABSTRACT
By most accounts The Birth of Tragedy is Nietzsche's most immature and least successful book. One reason for the widespread acceptance of this judgment is the enormous influence which Nietzsche's own retrospective evaluation has exercised on the interpretation of the text. The Birth of Tragedy is often taken to be Nietzsche's most unified and metaphysical book. As Lacoue-Labarthe writes, "It would be in the final analysis Nietzsche's only 'Book'." The relationship of music to image is illuminated by attending to a parallel distinction which Nietzsche draws between symbolic and allegorical modes of signification. Language can never adequately render the cosmic symbolism of music, because music stands in symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial pain in the heart of the primal unity, and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is beyond and prior to all appearance.
