Dionysus Surfing the Waves of Apollo

It’s been many years ago now, perhaps a few decades even, that Nietzsche first introduced the concept to me. Before that, all I understood of Apollo and Dionysus was they were Greek Gods of some sort, which could have meant anything. If I had professed to know anything more than that, rest assured that whatever spewed from my mouth would have been nonsense. Had I heard their names in conversation, for instance, and asked to elaborate, I would have crumbled to the floor from my own ignorance. Fortunately, books offer the most wonderful form of redemption that I know of, so my salvation didn’t have long to wait.

I believe we all know someone who thrives on order, who attempts to imposes some kind of predictability on any given situation. They prefer order and despise chaos. Likewise, we all know people who throw order to the wind and follow their impulses, hate restraints, and are comfortable with unpredictability. In these two camps most of us see nothing more than simple personality differences, but Nietzsche saw an enduring dichotomy, one that emerges from our human nature, but can also be applied to art, ethics, and even politics. But here, my aims rest purely on its implications on art.

I was in my late 20’s when I stumbled across Nietzsche for the first time, and due to my love of art, it was precisely this concept that first caught my attention. Nietzsche was a Philologist early in his career, which is to say that he read extensively, and had come to understand that Greek Tragedy was the supreme example of creative expression in the western world, and from it developed a deep appreciation between the two Greek Gods of  Apollo, and Dionysus, as he appeared to have an intuition that their duality was the foundation for creative inspiration. Many a philosopher have attempted to define the essence of aesthetics, but for me, Nietzsche has been the simplest to understand, much like the deceptive simplicity of the Chinese symbol of “Ying/Yang.” In his first book, “The Birth of Tragedy”, he laid out a convincing and nuanced explanation of aesthetics and the goal it should play in art – and our lives, by extension. Nietzsche uses their duality as the ignition point to the creative process.

To shed some light on his point, Apollo is the Greek god of light, form, and repose, which in Nietzsche’s lexicon of aesthetics meant something close to composition, or the structural foundation of a thing. It is characterized by order, restraint, and a level of emotional detachment and self-control. Rational thinking, with its underpinnings of logic and reason, is also Apollonian. Apollo, therefore, has OCD and prefers things in their proper place.

Dionysus, on the other hand, is the Greek god of wine and music, the gypsy child, in other words, which Nietzsche identifies as a frenzy of self-forgetting in which the “self” gives way to a primal release of passion and emotional inspiration. A Dionysian approach offers an alternative to the rationalism of Apollo and strives to blur the boundaries between the self and the art. In fact, Dionysus attempts to be at one with the creation.

Seen in this light, Apollo then represents the state of “measured restraint,” in which one remains separate from the experience and thus retains a level of mastery over our emotions; Dionysus represents a surrendering of self, where “self” is conceived of as the rational ego. Thus, Dionysus is associated with drunkenness, or the state in which one enters into spontaneity and release from social or artistic constraints.

Although Nietzsche clearly understood the necessity of the Apollonian to give life and art its form and structure, he also felt the Dionysian ideal was crucial to artistic expression. He argued that the Dionysian ideal is not merely a “merry diversion” but is central to the artistic enterprise at its core, which is inextricably bound to this duality. While this clash between form and expression may occasionally be messy, it can also be the source of an enduring, lifelong imperative, which I would argue is a necessity for our mental health and wellbeing.

He even refers to those who would condemn that type of ecstatic release this way:

“Such poor wretches cannot imagine how anemic and ghastly their so-called ‘healthy mindedness’ seems in contrast to the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers rushing past them.“

He gives another interesting description of the Dionysian “release” from a later book by suggesting this.

“Transform Beethoven’s ‘Hymn to Joy’ into a painting; let your imagination conceive of the multitudes bowing to the dust, awestruck – then you will approach the Dionysian.”

A modern example of this Dionysian release would be the Woodstock Festival, which culminated in three days of pure Hedonism, with live music, free love, hallucinogen’s of all varieties, and a collective expression by a few hundred thousand of the rapture at being young and free. A more Dionysian event could hardly be imagined.

Allow me to frame this once more; the Dionysian principle abandons self-concern whereas Apollo strives to control it. Nietzsche understood that both are necessary elements when creating high art and emphasized that for a work of art to reach its full potential there must be a balance between the two. For instance, without the Apollonian constraints of form and structure, Dionysian passion will lack the foundation that can give it coherence. And likewise, without the Dionysian, the Apollonian ideal will fail to deliver anything close to an emotional experience.

We can witness this in modern Pop music, in fact, by noticing how a drummer establishes a particular time signature that must be followed, while a guitarist plays only specific notes and chords from a recognized scale of proper tones. Even singers, regardless of how passionate they may sound, are hitting specific notes and pitches. If any part of that formal structure fails, the expression that is riding on it will suffer.

So, let me pause here and redirect my intent, because this note was never meant to be a deep dive into Nietzschean aesthetics. Not at all. All this mental chatter ignited the moment I listening to an “On Being” podcast with the late Irish poet, John O’Donohue, in which he described seeing a moving performance by a world class violinist. Here is O’Donohue describing it, which is fairly lengthy, but is critical to understanding my point here (emphasis mine).

O’Donohue: “That’s why I find the aesthetic things, like poetry, fiction, good film, theater, drama, dance, and music, actually awaken that inside you and remind you that there is a huge interiority within us. Like for instance, when I came to New York last Thursday evening and checked into the hotel, I found out that there was a Tchaikovsky concert at the Lincoln Center. And I went over there, and I got a ticket, one of the last tickets, which was two rows in the front. And I’ve never been so near an orchestra, and I said, “My God, I’m too near.”

But I knew why I was given the ticket then, at the end, because it was Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, and Loren Maazel came out to conduct it. And then this beautiful violinist, Janine Jansen, a Dutch violinist, it was her debut in New York, and she played this. It was just unbelievable. I cried. After the first movement, people spontaneously stood up and wanted to give her a standing ovation, and she just held it, and we all went back again into our seats.

And then, at the end, people were just blown away, because an event, an aesthetic event had happened. This is a complicated piece of music. Everywhere — she was playing a Stradivarius from 1727 — everywhere she went on this violin, she got exactly what she was looking for. She held it. And Maazel was so sovereign and so — like a huge patriarch. And three or four times — I was up close enough to see them — he looked at her with the wistful, proud gentleness of a grandfather. And there was this woman, this beautiful, slim body, and you could almost see the music hurting her, even when she wasn’t playing. So, it was a huge — everybody, and there were hardened New York critics there, but everybody was so touched.

And I think that that’s the power of beauty, that even in landscapes of control, corrugated categories, that you can be swept off your feet by just beauty.”

“…even in landscapes of control…..you can be swept off your feet by just beauty”. And that was precisely Nietzsche’s point. The ecstasy the audience felt was only possible because of the structure of the composition, the one supports the other and when both find in each other their proper balance, the resulting duet can often be sublime, just as O’Donohue described. Too much control and the spark will flicker out, too much passion and it will consume itself in a frenzy.

It should surprise no one at this point that after hearing O’Donohue description of Jansen’s performance, I immediately searched for it on-line, or one comparable. A spark had been ignited in me and my obsession to learn more took over. I eventually found one of her playing a shorter version of this exact piece, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, but with a different conductor. This clip lasts only three minutes, so it doesn’t represent the full concerto mentioned by O’Donohue, but that is irrelevant to my purpose here. I’m including it because there is a moment that beautifully captures my whole intent with this note and exposes the explicit relationship between our two Greeks Gods. One being the exquisite control and form that Classical music demands (just watch the conductor keeping the orchestra on point), which is then exploited by Jansen.

In the first minute of the clip, Jansen displays some incredible technical skills with the bow, as it hops and skips playfully across the strings like a young colt. Then at the 1:08 mark, she has a short break while the orchestra continues. It’s at that point, while waiting for her queue to rejoin the company that the camera captures her unconstrained passion to jump back in. It’s a priceless moment for a beauty junkie like myself.

When she jumps back in, it is with full submission to Dionysus, as she completely gives herself to the experience and plays with emotional abandon. Nietzsche’s imperative to surrender, a self-forgetting, is beautifully captured throughout the remaining piece as Jansen immerses herself in Tchaikovsky’s composition; an exquisite example of Dionysus surfing the waves of Apollo.  

Click on her photo to play this stunning clip.