Aesthetics of Rausch
Reading Nitsch with Nietzsche
Aesthetics of Rausch
Reading Nitsch with Nietzsche
In its early publication The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Nietzsche formulated his basic theory of ancient tragedy. The moment of Rausch — a term which often translated as “intoxication” but refers not just to states of intoxication caused by the use of intoxicating drugs — is just as fundamental here as it is for Nietzsche's understanding of art in general. Emma Schunack investigates how the Dionysian intoxication of ancient tragedy is reflected in Hermann Nitsch's contemporary art. Between bloody animal pelts on purple, vermilion and lemon-yellow colored sheets + candied white violets.1 To what extent can the concept of Dionysian Rausch in Nitsch's “Orgies Mystery Theatre” be understood as a contemporary continuation of Nietzsche's understanding of art? An attempt to read Nitsch with Nietzsche.
I. The Orgies Mysteries Theatre
Bodies covered in blood and the orgy as the ultimate form of meaning and communion with the deity.2
Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, born 1938, creates cross-border contemporary art with his concept of the “Orgies Mystery Theatre” (hereinafter abbreviated as O.M. Theatre), which had been constantly developed since the early sixties. Based on ancient tragedy, his action art is intended to trigger deep, lasting feelings about the moment of Rausch. In addition to Jesus Christ and Oedipus, the Greek god Dionysus is at the center of the mythological concept of the actions.
The O.M. Theatre has no stage and no actors in the usual sense. Game participants do not fictionalize; rather, the representative element of art is overcome in favor of direct experience. The realisation of the O.M. Theatre is expressed in action work lasting six days and six nights. Sexual and religious taboos and their obscene violations are dramatically staged, while holistic sensory perceptions are intended to culminate in a new experience of reality. Beauty as a singular object of art is negated. The instincts released include the slaughter and removal of animal bodies, their crucifixion and mauling, as well as the baring of the sexual organs of the game participants, rubbing them with blood and entrails of the animal victim. Until his death in 2022, Nitsch carried out O.M. Theatre events every year. Activities continue to be carried out even after his death, most recently from June 7 to 9, 2025 at Prinzendorf Castle in Austria.
In Nietzsche's early writing The Birth of Tragedy (1872; short: BT), he formulates his basic theory of ancient tragedy, at the core of which he locates the tension between the Apollinian (Apollo: God of measure, form, clarity) and Dionysian (Dionysus: god of intoxication or Rausch, ecstasy, dissolution). Nietzsche sees the Apollinian and the Dionysian as forces of nature on the one hand and as aesthetic categories or principles on the other. Art is created between two poles. The Apollinian describes a measured, distant beauty and serenity. The Dionysian describes Rausch as instinctive vitality. In the moment of Dionysian Rausch, Nietzsche recognizes an indispensable physiological requirement for the creation of art. Dionysian gives rise to an art that speaks the truth in its Rausch.3
II. The Cry of Dionysus (ecstatic)
Dionysus is lying naked on the ground, his genitals are pelted with fresh, wet flesh. Accompanied by a screaming choir, sound orchestra and trombone players, he is showered with a bucket of slaughter-warm blood. Dionysus runs ecstatically screaming to a slaughtered ox, eviscerates it and rummages in its intestines.4
During the actions of the O.M. Theatre, Dionysian Rausch rages between extreme affirmation of life and deadly destructive power. Nitsch's Rausch is noticeably torn. In the cry of Dionysus, everything inside tears apart the outside. This is what Nitsch wrote in his book Das Orgien Mysterien Theater (“The Orgies Mysteries Theatre”), published in 1990:
A philosophy of intoxication, ecstasy, delights, as a result of the fact that the innermost part of living is intensely vital, intoxicating excitement, orgiasm, which represents a constellation of existence in which pleasure, torment, death and procreation approach and permeate each other. (P. 8 f.)
In scream, a celebration of existence that drives itself into torment. It is possible that the body of Dionysus in the O.M. Theatre lets exactly that penetrating cry come out, which Nietzsche had described as the height of pleasure and suffering as well as an insight into the excess of nature.5
In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche describes the ancient Dionysus festivals (those festivals in honor of the god Dionysus and the origins of Greek tragedy) as a “hideous mixture of lust and cruelty.”6 Art is created between two poles. In the O.M. Theatre between the pleasant scent of roses, the sweet taste of red wine, and the abysmal sight of blood and slime. In Nietzsche's words: An artistic game which, even in ugly and disharmonious ways, plays with itself in the eternal fullness of its pleasure.7 Nitsch's intoxication is noticeably torn. Nietzsche describes the power of Rausch with its inherent duality particularly clearly in Twilight of the Idols:
For there to be art, so that there is some kind of aesthetic doing and looking, a physiological precondition is essential: Rausch. Rausch must first have increased the excitability of the entire machine: sooner there will be no art. All types of Rausch, however different, have the power to do so: in particular the Rausch of sexual stimulation, this oldest and most original form of Rausch. Similarly, the Rausch that comes in the wake of all great desires, all strong affects; the Rausch of celebration, competition, bravura, victory, all extreme movement; the Rausch of cruelty; the Rausch of destruction; the Rausch under certain meteorological influences, for example the Rausch of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; finally, the Rausch of will, the Rausch of an overwhelmed and swollen will.8
III. The Abreaction
No. 0 grabs the genitals of No. 6 (reach out) several times, No. 6 screams almost parodically like a pig to be slaughtered. (castration [pubic fury]). At the moment when No. 0 touches the genitals of No. 6, penetrative noise from the orchestra sets in, and the screaming of the choir increases with every new touch to an extreme cheer of ecstasy.9
Between theatre and festival, Nitsch equates the Dionysian with his instinct for abstinence. Since its beginnings, theatre has been characterized by a collective need for reaction. Nitsch is not just about overcoming it, but rather about generating energy through the reaction of the unconscious mind. Nietzsche recognizes in the tragedy both a purifying as well as an unloading force and writes of that pathological discharge of Aristotle's catharsis,10 on which Nitsch's concept of abreaction is also based. Using the moment of violence, Nitsch aims to ensure that participants experience catharsis within the protected frame of the theatre and that the person is cleansed of affects that would otherwise uncontrollably and violently discharge in everyday life.
The next level of Rausch, then. And so, on the third day of the action, the Rausch of the Dionysian orgy is intended to complete the reaction which, for Nitsch, represents the fulfillment of sublimated instinct satisfaction. According to Nitsch, the reaction reaches its peak here, “reaches sado-masochistic excess, turns into destructive, to destroy the body.”11 The resulting ecstatic sensory experience should function as a medium for breaking through instincts and enable the release and awareness of repressed psychological content. Cleaning and unloading.
The tearing side of the Rausch develops its inner potential in a reaction that wants to purify and discharge. The moment of violence is not only important as a pole in the duality of Rausch, but also stands for the regenerating claim of action art. BLOOD IS SPILLED FROM THE CASTLE WINDOWS. Sperm, as warm as the body, is spread over the bodies.12
IV. The Sense of Unity
At night, his mouth opened like a red fruit.13
The sun rises and falls six times as the festival progresses. Rausch requires participants in the O.M. Theatre to dissolve the limits of their own body, to relinquish control over themselves — to step out of themselves. A sense of unity. You feel yourself in everything, you are a stone, grass, tree, animal, fellow human being. A feeling of being absorbed within the whole. Divinity, be absorbed in God.14
The mystical sense of unity in Rausch that seeks to destroy and redeem the individual15 is also recognized by Nietzsche as the “next effect of the Dionysian tragedy,” in which “state and society, in general the gap between man and man gives way to an overwhelming sense of unity, which leads back to the heart of nature.”16 Nietzsche goes so far as to talk about “breaking the individual apart and becoming one with the original being.”17 The mystery theory of tragedy is “the basic knowledge of the unity of everything that exists, the consideration of individuation as the root cause of evil, art as a joyful hope that the spell of individuation should be broken, as the idea of a restored unity.”18
Unity means resolution of opposites. In theatre, Nitsch wants to reveal that everything is interdependent; that everything is one. Eating and drinking together, incorporating, all sensory experiences (smells, sounds, colors) penetrate from outside to inside, become part. In the interexchange of Rausch penetration takes place in all directions — we remember the cry of Dionysus (from the inside towards the outside).
And perhaps Nietzsche's poles will eventually dissolve when he writes: “Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo, but Apollo finally the language of Dionysus: with which the highest goal of tragedy and art is achieved in the first place.”19 Unity means resolution of opposites: pleasure and suffering. The human and the other animal. Me and You. Me and God. Being and nothing. Apollo and Dionysus.
V. Epilogue. Or: The Rebirth of the Dionysian Spirit
The last morning, 5:30 a.m. Expect sunrise, players hug and kiss each other, drink wine and eat bread.20
Have we experienced the reawakening of the Dionysian spirit and the rebirth of tragedy in the spirit of Nietzsche? Nitsch follows Nietzsche in an understanding of art that combines Rausch, dream, play, and celebration. They both see art as part of life, in terror and pain, in beauty and joy. In Nitsch's O.M. Theater, participants experience the Dionysian Rausch as a complex act of contemplation and reaction. In this sense, the O.M. Theatre can be regarded as the scene of the rebirth of the Dionysian spirit. Nitsch wants to revive that spirit of tragedy and keep it alive, even after his own death. Perhaps Nitsch's radicalism consists in taking Nietzsche literally. Because Nitsch does not radically develop Nietzsche further, the excess has already been written down— Nitsch implements it performatively. And this is how Nietzsche's voice permeates the O.M. Theatre:
I want to be happy, I want to race ecstatically with happiness, I want an exceptional state of being, I don't want to vegetate, I don't want to be afraid of living and dying, I want to be there and even look into the abyss of existence when you want and even step into it. That is something extremely important. For me, art is about intoxicating yourself, realizing intensity and realizing creation.21
In the O.M. Theater, participants experience the Dionysian Rausch in scream, in reaction, in unity. Art abolishes two poles.
Article Image
100th action, 1998. Photo: Cibulka-Frey Archive
Literature
Martin Poltrum im Gespräch mit Hermann Nitsch. In: Hermann Nitsch zu Gast im Salon Philosophique des Anton-Proksch-Instituts, Spectrum Psychiatrie 3/2010, S. 70.
Nitsch, Hermann: Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Manifeste, Aufsätze, Vorträge. Salzburg 1990.
Idem: Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Partituren aller aufgeführten Aktionen. Band 10: Das 2-Tage-Spiel des Orgien-Mysterien-Theaters. Prinzendorf a. d. Zaya 2004.
Idem: O.M. Theater-Lesebuch. Vienna 1983.
Footnotes
1: Cf. Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, p. 85. All translations are our own unless stated otherwise.
2: Cf. Nitsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 240.
3: Cf. BT, § 4.
4: Cf. Nitsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 398.
5: Cf. BT, § 4.
6: BT, § 2.
7: Cf. BT, § 24.
8: Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes, § 8.
9: Nitzsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 567.
10: Cf. BT, § 22.
11: Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, p. 37.
12: Nitzsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 549.
13: Georg Trakl, Poems.
14: Nitzsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, p. 55.
15: Cf. BT, § 2.
16: BT, § 7.
17: BT, § 8.
18: BT, § 10.
19: BT, § 21.
20: Cf. Nitzsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Partituren aller aufgeführten Aktionen. Band 10, p. 207.
21: Martin Poltrum im Gespräch mit Hermann Nitsch, p. 70.
