DIONYSUS
Our subject today is Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
Bacchus to the Romans, Dionysus has his own typically complex and even convoluted history. For
our purposes, we'll simply note in passing that he was well known for being
persecuted by those who refused to recognize his deity. And those who
refused to recognize his divinity paid a terrible price for it. The
most famous telling of that part of the story is Euripides' play,
The Bacchae. In that version, King Pentheus of Thebes becomes
outraged by the Dionysian rites taking place in his vicinity and determines to
outlaw them — which is, as we know, pretty much the plot of another
classic work, the 1984 movie Footloose. In that film, an conservative
and uptight minister banishes dancing and rock-n-roll from his small town. A
hip newcomer from the city arrives and convinces the local kids to hold their
own dance outside the town, and everything ends happily: even the uptight
minister loosens up a bit and essentially gives his blessing. Fade to black,
to a catchy, eminently danceable, tune.
Of course, if the filmmakers had stuck closer to the plot of The Bacchae,
things would have gone a little differently. During the climactic dance
set-piece, the minister (played by John Lithgow) would have snuck up and
observed the dance. (Note: in the play, King Pentheus disguises himself as
one of Bacchus's female followers but the picture of John Lithgow in a wig
and dress isn't working for me so we'll lose that part.) The minister thus
creeps through the woods to discover the local high school kids caught up and
whirling in an intoxicated, violent, frenzied mosh-pit — many
half-clothed and all lost in an orgiastic ecstasy. At this point, the true
identity of the hip newcomer (played by Kevin Bacon) would be revealed:
he is the god Dionysus himself. Soon afterward, the dancers notice the
uptight minister spying on them. Without skipping a beat, they turn their
frenzied dance in his direction, catching him up in the mosh-pit and
ripping him limb from bloody limb. Suddenly, they all snap out of their
trance. The minister's daughter (again, an editorial change; in the original,
it's his mother) is now horrified to discover she is carrying in her hands her
father's bleeding, disembodied head. She screams. We fade to black, to a
catchy, eminently danceable tune. The moral of the story (to some) might be
that the uptight minister had been absolutely correct in his concerns,
and so ends up becoming a martyr to the cause of virtue. To the Greeks, the moral
remains what it has always been: Don't insult the god by refusing him his
due: those who refuse to acknowledge Dionysus will pay a terrible price for
their impiety.
Dionysian worship took place in the mountains and woods as described by
Euripides. The god's female followers were called maenads — "mad
women" — who whipped themselves into frenzy of lunatic dancing which
climaxed with a figurative or perhaps even literal ripping apart of the god
in form of animals. We recall the frenzied ritual sacrifice of the ox at the
climax of Apocalypse Now (crosscut with the execution of Colonel
Kurtz, the American officer who disappeared into the jungle and 'went
native'.) The sacrifice of choice for Dionysian worship was a goat.
In fact, Dionysus was generally conceived of as a goat, or half-goat, and his
followers included satyrs — those half-man, half-goat creatures of pagan
mythology. Certainly we can see that popular perception of Satan and Satan
worship over the ages owes much to the myth and religion of Dionysus.
Indeed, Dionysus was associated with the Dark Side: the surging,
uncontrollable forces that lurk below the surface of society and individuals.
He was obviously associated with Nature: with all those wild tendencies of
which restraining or taming has been the fundamental order of business for
establishing a modicum of civilization. Understandably, Dionysus has been
denounced over the years by various kinds of prohibitionists, reformers and
civic leaders. Even amid High Paganism, the Roman Senate tried to ban all
but a very restricted brand of Dionysian worship — though they found
it very hard to stamp out. Thus, on the other hand, we see Dionysus has
been stubbornly championed by other pagans, along with all manner of
wine-bibbers, drunks and Romantics.
Most notoriously, Dionysus is remembered as perhaps the singlemost key figure
in the warped private mythology of German philosopher and self-declared
"anti-Christ," Fredrich Nietzsche.
DIONYSUS vs APOLLO
Nietzche set up a famous and influential opposition. On one side,
representing the dark, uncontrollable, earthy forces — Dionysus. On
the opposite side, another classical deity, Apollo: god of light,
rationality, control and order. Greek tragedy, posited Nietzsche, found a
perfect balance between these two opposing tendencies. Indeed, "tragedy"
means "goat-song" and arose from Dionysian worship — the maenads
became the Chorus. According to Nietzsche, the balance of Dionysian
formlessness within Apollonian form was the secret of that profoundly
innovative civilization we know of as "the Golden Age of Greece." But
something happened to cause that civilization to decline and die. Nietzsche
insisted that the Golden Age was destroyed when the Greeks lost their balance
— when Apollo got the better of Dionysus. Cold rationality killed the
wild, intuitive forces that were the secret source of Classical genius.
Now, Nietzsche's arcane complex of ideas about Dionysus are part of an
ever-more-twisted personal program, which became, ultimately, for him, a war
between his Dionysian philosophy and Christianity — between, as phrased it
during his final breakdown, "Dionysus" and "the Crucified".
Let's try to set Nietzsche aside for a moment if we can (as if his radioactive
questions can ever really be safely stored somewhere). The fact is that many
another thinker besides the Teutonic anti-Christ have found conceptualizing
in his opposing terms to be quite fruitful — and clearly these symbols
are most apt for considering human tendencies undeniably in conflict:
rationality, clarity and order are ever clashing in various guises with
non-rationality, ambiguity, and disorder. Call it what you like. In
his book, The Pilgrim's Regress, C. S. Lewis bisects his allegorical
landscape into a chilly, rational "North" and a warm, emotional "South." This
opposition, under one label or another, has been described as the central
tension of Western philosophy. So many, many debates not only philosophy,
but also in theology and art seem to be at some level battles in this one
never-ending war. Typically, partisans dig in, baptizing their position, then
demonize and assail the opposite front line. The conflict makes for
boilerplate drama, be it Footloose or The Dead Poet's Society
among other populist versions. How it all plays out depends on who is telling
the story: that is to say, people tend to spin the Apollo-Dionysus opposition
according to their own prejudices and taste. "Freedom" vs "Oppression."
"Order" vs "Anarchy." "Nature" vs "Culture." "The Noble Savage" vs "the Lord
of the Flies." "The Indestructible Life Force" versus "the God of Mob
Violence".
Let's face it. Even Footloose stacks the deck. The makers
of that film play footloose indeed with their treatment of our opposition,
sketching the good and bad guys of their story as broad as cartoons,
according to their own agenda. If anyone of contrary inclinations wanted to, they could easily
make a film about a high school dance where everything happened just exactly
as the minister feared — drunken brawls, rapes, violence, accidents,
whatever — not in some light-hearted-and-hilarious teen-hijinks movie
but in a story of catastrophic choices and consequences. It happens.
The point is that everybody seems to have their own take on what a conflict
between Apollo and Dionysus really means or implies, and rigs the fight
accordingly. They draw upon whatever elements and sources make their point
and exclude according to their prejudice or inclination. I
certainly won't assert my take is the objective one, and can only hope any
detractors will aspire to a similar humility. I also understand
that along with reason, experience comes into play here. Those pulled from
Dionysian self-destruction may cling to Apollo for dear life. Those raised
under strict Apollonian rule may do precisely the opposite. As the father of
a teenage daughter, I can well imagine myself going all Apollo on some
Dionysian situation reaching out its claws to her. Yet as
someone still shaking off the effects of a rather Apollonian religious culture,
I'm so grateful to think she'll be carrying less of that baggage and will hopefully be less tempted to compensate by way of an opposite extreme.
 The notion of "extreme" suggests that perhaps what we're looking for here is some kind of balance.
Back in
the Seventies, that bighair band from the Great White North — RUSH
— made a concept album devoted to resolving the conflict between Apollo
and Dionysus. On Hemispheres, the story is told of a romantic,
disillusioned by the endless war of the gods, who steers his starship into a
Black Hole. There he encounter Cygnus — "the god of balance." Thus ends
the ancient conflict between Apollo and Dionysus with Cynus is added to make
classical trinity, bringing peace at last to the universe. (Fade to black,
to a catchy, and classically-influenced but lyrically-inscrutable,
helium-induced scream.)
Deus ex machina: "the god in the machine." When Euripides wanted to
bring his play to a sensational close, he had an actor playing Dionysus
lowered to the stage on a crane. The phrase has come since to be associated
with those embarrassing and mighty convenient last-minute rescues of a plot
in jeopardy — a sort of "bad faith" on the part of the dramatist. It's
highly appropriate that The Bacchae ends with a literal deus ex
machina, because nearly every later variation of the story seems to end
with a figurative one: some sudden miracle of "balance." The vision is
compelling, and inspirational, but its not much practical use. For where we
locate the "balance" always depends on where we plot the extremes — and
people will always disagree about these. Was King Pentheus an uptight
Fundamentalist wanting to outlaw fun? Or was he Eliot Ness, come to clean up
the town? Is Dionysus another Mary Poppins, magically opening a world of
wonder? Or is he the Pied Piper of Hamlin, leading all the innocent children astray?
Stay tuned for another overtime round in the eternal knock-down-drag-out
Prize-fight of the Gods — where Christ, says Nietzsche (the anti-Christ),
fights on the side of Apollo, and against Dionysus.
But doesn't it seem worth asking whether or not he got that part right?
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