[LMB] OT: Apollonian/Dionysian (was: Slash)

[James Burbidge]

On 03/01/07, paal at gis.net <paal at gis.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message Follows -----
> > Kirsten, then Lois:
> >
> > > To which I reply (as she no doubt expects me to) that we live in a
> > > Dionysian age, those of us in the West (the rest of you can pipe up
> > > with your local zietgeist, of course) and hence have rather more
> > > use for Apollonian correctives.
>
> Aaaarrrggghhhh!! on Dionysian versus Apollonian... again, this form of
> metaphor/reference just Does Not Work for me. Yes, I know that Dionysus
> was one of the ancient gods of revelation and celebration involving
> being drunk as a skunk and in ritual awe and ecstasy tearing apart those
> those unfortunate animals or males set up as sacrificed, or found
> intruding on the rituals, and there sometimes there were some ritual
> rationalist sorts of things about Apollo BUT it is still dealing with
> -religion- and -belief- and when I think Dionysian, I think of e.g. the
> unknown Elysian Mysteries and the known excesses of celebrants of
> Dionysian revels, and thinking Apollo, there are some at least equally
> gruesome things done, that were at least equally chilling for being done
> NOT in a -drunken- state of altered conscious, but done in cold
> calculating semi-sociopathic or psychopathic calculation....
>

The two terms have become terms of art since Nietzsche's _The Birth of
Tragedy_, where he uses the two in restricted and opposing senses
(although I suspect that many fen picked up the terms, originally,
from _Stranger in a Strange Land_).  Reference back to the rather
messier classical world's cultus patterns is now to misunderstand, the
terms, which now have a life of their own rooted in the Nietzschean
usage.

James