The Classical Legacy Take Home Exam Due: December 5, 2002
1. "Madness is superior to temperance (sophrosýne), because the latter has a merely human origin, while the former belongs to  the divine." Plato
Measure (sophrosýne), self-control, and the middle way (médenagon) are dominant values of Classical Greek and neo-classical art and society. Paradoxically, excess in all its forms [passion, Plato's four kinds of madness, "entheos" (possession by a god, demon, or extra human forces)] seems to be the ground from which aesthetics both in visual and literary works have sprung. Some relationships we've observed this quarter include "human/natural" versus "superhuman-divine," Classical versus Hellenistic (and/or Neo-Classic versus Baroque), civilized (Greek) versus non-civilized (non-Greek), and Nietzche's dichotomy of Apollonian and Dionysian forces.
 Through analyses of specific examples of dramatic, visual and musical art we've experienced this quarter, speculate, argue, and draw your own conclusion concerning the necessity of conflict in an aesthetic work. You must deal with more than one medium (e.g. drama and music, or music and visual images) in your argument.

2. The relationships between symbolic 'inside' and symbolic 'outside' are complex and bi-directional. Use an opera, a visual image or a scene from a play or novel to illustrate this idea. Consider the following concepts in your response: ritual space/artistic space, crossing of the threshold (e.g. an outsider being inside or the insider venturing out), miasma, the monstrous, purification/catharsis, and art as a mediator of the inside and outside space (Nietzsche's notion of music fulfilling that function).

3. According to Nietzsche, the tragic hero/ine has only a "black freedom": the freedom to embrace/love one's fate. This he calls 'amor fati'. Consider the relationship between fate, choice and action, and self-knowledge in the light of three of the following quotes:
    1. "Man is condemned to Liberty." (L'homme est condemne a la Liberte.) Camus
    2. "I'm free, Electra. Freedom has crashed down on me like a thunderbolt." Orestes from Sartre's Les Mouches.
    3. "But the remarkable thing, Mother, as I think it over, is that I am willing to die---and die gloriously, after putting
         every petty thing behind me." Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis
    4. "Necessity rules us all---even the gods." Athena's quote from Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians:
    5. Phaedra's monologue in Act II, scene 5 (page 28-29). "Aye, you are cruel . . .etc." From Racine's Phaedra
    6. "Wisdom is a crime against nature." From Nietzsche's, Birth of Tragedy, section 9, page 69. (Be sure and read his entire
         quote to put this part in context.)

EXTRA POINT QUESTION:
1. Write a short dialogue of a scene between Goldmund and Medea.
    a. If the meeting between this two were staged as an opera, who would compose the music and what artist would be in
        charge of set design?