Apollonian and Dionysian in Euripides’ “Bacchae” Essay

The opposition between Apollonian and Dionysian can be described to be in the center of modern literary analysis since literary work is a difficult interrelation between form and contents, norm and abnormality, which can be described as a great confrontation between rational and irrational, order and measure and immeasurability. This paradox can’t be best described implementing Nietzsche’s concept of ‘Dionysian’ vs. ‘Apollonian’ elements in Greek culture in particular and in world culture in general that he presented in his early work ‘Birth of Tragedy Out the Spirit of Music’ (Nietzsche, 1994).

This essay will show that Dionysian and Apollonian elements in Nietzsche’s sense can be found in Euripides’ Bacchae. It is a good play to realize our analysis since its main protagonist is Dionysius himself, and the author is Euripides, whom Nietzsche considers to be the first representative of Apollonian origin in literary and theatrical art. Hence, this famous ancient play can be regarded as a fruitful object for analyzing the interplay of Apollonian and Dionysian.

But what is, in fact, Apollonian and Dionysian? The meaning of these concepts can be best understood by defining their main referents. Nietzsche tries Apollonian with rationalization, order, measure, and strict balance of reason and folly. All that refers to the limitation of vital powers, and divine madness is Apollonian. The aesthetic beauty that ‘Apollonian’ produces is stable and imperial – this technique is characteristic of Euripides: ‘Apollonian intoxication alerts above all the eye so that it acquires the power of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are visionaries par excellence’ (Nietzsche, 1994, p.34). In contrast, Dionysian is about mad to rejoice of life; it is an emotional state of life celebration: ‘In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the entire emotional system is alerted and intensified: so that it discharges all its powers of representation, imitation, transfiguration, transmutation, every kind of mimicry and play-acting, conjointly’ (Nietzsche, 1994, p.35).

Our main theoretical assumption about Euripides’ play is that his literary and aesthetic methodology and its accomplishments go opposite to Dionysian and is strictly Apollonian as he seeks to show that Dionysian origin makes life unstable and destructive. But what makes this play have Apollonian elements is Euripides’s vision itself which tries to find a counterbalance of Dionysian by introducing ‘reasonable’ protagonists and showing the absurdity of those people who worship Dionysius.

The role of Dionysus in Greek culture, notwithstanding the fact that it was already established and institutionalized in the Greek pantheon, was contested by different representatives of Greek art, Euripides one of them. The main question that Euripides seeks to answer in his drama is a connection between well-structured social order (Greek or, in his case, Athenian society) and irrational forces represented in the character of Dionysus. This move was characteristic of Euripides as the first representative of Greek tragic theatre tradition who created theater and aesthetic techniques characteristic of the modern theatre. In his analysis of tragedy Nietzsche particularly points to the fact that Euripides created premises for moving over classical ‘Dionysian’ tragic tradition creating ration theatre with well-weighted opposition and rational balancing between natural forces (Nietzsche 1994, p.23). Understanding Dionysius as he is presented in Greek culture thus relies on its opposition to ‘Apollonian’ origin, which is characterized by cold beauty, rationality, and other traits of settled and stable civilization.

Following these general premises, the Bacchae depicts the longstanding struggle between two opposing forces of order and unrestrained freedom (or release), the latter represented by the character of Dionysius. Dionysius himself provides the answer to this question. This God’s message to the people is that only in irrationality does the solidarity with heaven and god occurs, and space for irrational should be allowed in society through performing rites of tragic unity between all people in Bacchae rituals. Dionysus is described as the god of mask, who office to his worshippers a possibility of becoming somebody else and achieve religious ecstasy through a theatric performance. Those who gather in the theatrical circle of Dionysius immediately lose their identity as in the case of Pentheus, who was reluctant and skeptical while watching Dionysian rites but when was asked Dionysius to join the circle lost control and his identity as rational personal and fully exposed his being to the drama and those consequences it has – namely the death. Thus, Dionysius rites present the destruction of all stable and social and celebration of life as it is seen in the unity with God, people, and soil. It is rebirth through death, and this is fully explicated by the character of Dionysius. In the character of Dionysius, the duality of destructiveness and creativity is preserved.

The plot of Euripides’ play unfolds irregularly as Pentheus, who represents Apollonian virtues of morality, social order, and law, locks Dionysus for his negative impact on people who become crazy engaging in his rituals. However, Bacchae breaks free and creates havoc, destroying Pentheus’s palace. Bacchants become crazy, putting snakes in their hair, worshiping their god, suckling wild gazelles and wolves, and make water, honey, wine, milk spring from the ground. They are ruining everything. Guards are trying to capture Bacchant women who are killed by them with bare hands and sticks. All these descriptions made by Euripides help to reveal Dionysian connotations of these images as Nietzsche understood them: ‘not so as to get rid of pity and terror, not so as to purify oneself of a dangerous emotion through its vehement discharge…but, beyond pity and terror, to realize in oneself the eternal joy of becoming – the joy which also encompasses joy in destruction” (Nietzsche, 1994).

But Euripides tries to depict all this as deeply opposed to normal being, societal norms, and justice by showing the ugly sides of Dionysian. Bacchae decides to kill Pentheus for not worshiping and hating him by ‘intoxicating’ him by Dionysian. He makes him want to see ecstatic women fulfilling Bacchant rituals and tells him that he must dress as a woman: ‘Stranger: Ah! Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?/ Pentheus: Very much. Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure/ Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire?/Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-/Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all’ (Euripides, 1998, p. 156). In fact, it was a trap, and Pentheus was forced to climb the tree where he was caught by Bacchant women who tore his body in pieces. Another example of Euripides ‘Apollonian’ approach’ to Dionysian is a depiction of Agave, Pentheus’s mother arriving home with her son’s head and being possessed by Bacchant madness, tells that it is a lion head. Cadmus, Pentheus’s grandfather, finds himself trembling in terrific horror. The family is ruined, but Bacchae’s revenge is not finished – Harmonia and Cadmus are transformed into snakes, and Tiresias is the only one who survives. There is no denying the importance of the fact that Euripides tried to counterbalance ‘Dionysian’ origin by showing that it is destructive and immoral. This proves that Euripides was fully ‘intoxicated’ by the ‘Apollonian’ vision.

In Bacchae, the denying of the irrational as Pentheus did leads to the demise of personality and society since denying the irrational is denying life itself and encircling it in the ‘second nature,’ which leads to complete alienation of people (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1979). But as this analysis proved, Euripides seems to compromise the opposition between ‘Dionysian’ and ‘Apollonian,’ showing the need for restraint and self-control, moderation and rationality in the characters of Pentheus and Thebes, realizing it both through the plot and through expressive literary means. Thus, Nietzsche’s account of Euripides as the first not-Dionysian person in Greek theatre may be regarded as justified.

References

1. 1. Adorno, Theodore and Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1979
   2. Euripides. Bacchae: Translation, Introduction and Notes.Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company, 1998
   3. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. New York: Penguin Classics, 1994.