 Nietzsche’s first book was published in 1872 and was entitled The Birth of Tragedy, Out of the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik). Overall, it sets forth a more visceral and existential alternative to the late 18th/early 19th century understanding of Greek culture—an understanding largely inspired by Johann Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art (1764)—which, grounded on the aesthetics of classical sculpture, hailed ancient Greece as the epitome of noble simplicity, calm grandeur, clear blue skies, and rational serenity. In 1886, Nietzsche’s book was reissued with a revised title, The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus), along with a lucid and revealing prefatory essay—“An Attempt at Self-Criticism”—which expresses Nietzsche’s own critical reflections on the book, looking back fourteen years. Although he remained proud of the work, Nietzsche also describes it as questionable, strange and almost inaccessible, filled with Kantian and Schopenhauerian formulas that were inherently at odds with the new valuations he was trying to express.