CHRIST & DIONYSUS
Is Christianity more of an Apollonian, or a Dionysian, religion?
Despite the difficulty in nailing down objectively what the symbols
"Dionysus" and "Apollo" stand for, it seems reasonable to assume that many
Christians throughout history have instinctively agreed with Nietzsche that the
conflict is between Dionysus and "the Crucified". That view would seemingly
leave Christ on the side of Apollo, if only by default. Of course, when it
comes to stacking the deck, you won't find an easier game in which to do just
that. After all, Dionysus is the goat — the one with the horns
and hooves. Apollo, it is well known, is the god of light. Perhaps somewhat
less well known is the warning in Scripture that Satan himself may come
disguised as an angel of light. Still, these would seem Christian virtues:
Order, Clarity, Restraint, Enlightenment — especially when contrasted
with Disorder, Ambiguity, Sensuality, and Darkness. Apollo is the god of
Truth with a capital "T", unchanging universals, heavenly ideals. Dionysus is
the god of subjectivity, particularity, the flesh, and the earth. Apollo is
control and domination. Dionysus is surrender and self-abandonment. Apollo
stands for immortality. Dionysus is the god who dies and is resurrected,
whose blood his followers drink, and thus become one with him. I begin to
tip my hand. Perhaps you think I'm stacking the deck, but it does seem to me
a very interesting pattern shows through here...
Indeed, Dionysus clearly finds himself reflected in the Christian revelation
in ways that Apollo cannot. In pagan days, Dionysian worship was one of the
Mystery Religions. These often had such striking similarities to later
Christian belief and practice that, depending on your perspective, they're
inevitably seen as a) the real sources of Christianity; b) diabolical
imitations; or c) precursors to the true faith (and I guess "d" would be
"really, incredibly amazing coincidences"). Pagan myths, according to G. K.
Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, were dreams sent by God to prepare humankind for
the reality. Lewis puts it this way: "unfocussed gleams of divine truth
falling upon the imagination." In this view, the story of Dionysus is just
one of many similar tales of "dying and resurrected gods" found scattered
throughout primitive religion and so, some say, pagan intimations of Christ.
Dionysus was a goat, to be sure, but a literal scapegoat, with all the
usual Christological inflections of that notion. He was torn apart and eaten
by his followers — and drank. He wasn't only the god of wine, he
was wine and drinking him was the sacrament: his worship consisted in
taking the god into yourself bodily and being possessed by the god. The goal
of Dionysian worship was breaking down barriers to create unity —
between god and man, humanity and nature, and among human beings: "oneness,"
by any other name, utter self-abandonment, the transcendence of the self to
share in a blessed unity.
It should come as no surprise to most people by this point to learn that
Dionysus was among the pagan symbols expropriated as a type of Christ by
Renaissance and other Christian writers throughout the ages — including
Erasmus, Rabelais and that thinker whose skirts I am so wont to hide behind
(I'm thinking of those quintessential English academic gowns here), C. S.
Lewis.
DIONYSUS & NARNIA
Which brings us — unexpectedly, and that may indeed
be the best way to get here — to Narnia. Narnia, oh Narnia: you
blessed land of somewhat troubling geopolitics! You who are forever being
taken over by wicked outsiders and yearning for the Western Europeans to come
to your aid! (Be that as it may.) In the first book of C. S. Lewis's
series, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the land of Narnia is
frozen into a perpetual Winter with no Christmas. In the next book,
Prince Caspian, the foreign invaders are the Telmarines, who have
driven out the Old Narnians and assumed power. It's interesting to consider
what exactly Lewis was trying to get out of his system here. Both of these
invaders supress the life of Narnia — the Talking Animals, the spirits
in the rivers and trees. They drive the fauns and satyrs (both half-man,
half-beasts) into hiding. The Telmarines, in fact, are insistant in their
denial that such creatures ever even existed, that it was all just an ugly
rumor.
The nightmare Lewis was apparently frequently troubled by also seemed to have
troubled the peace of his friend and colleague, J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's
vision of the Great Tribulation of Middle Earth has the dark forces of Mordor
making war against Nature in all its flowering beauty, to be cut down and
brought under control by something that looks very like the scientific or
Enlightenment mindset. The Victorian Romantics were particularly conscious
of dark Mordor-like forces sweeping over their world. That Victorian
Bacchante, Algernon Charles Swinburne, lamented a "world grown grey," when
all the old gods had been washed out to sea. Swinburne blamed it on the
"pale Galilean," which seems to agree with Nietzsche in placing Christ on the
side of Apollo against Dionysus. But given certain other obvious suspects in
a world then ruled by English imperialism, industrialism and positivism, that
vision of Romantic melancholy seems more than a wee bit myopic.
Lewis, for his part, all across his writings and in many different ways,
clearly places the blame for that greying of the world, the Narnian Winter,
on the cult of Scientism: whose virtues are objectivity, universality,
predictability, clarity, order, control, and absolute domination. Hmmm…
It's interesting, at this juncture, to consider that, at the absolute high
water mark of Modernity, when it came time to name the most singular
manifestation of the triumph of the Enlightenment, the name chosen was —
"Project Apollo." Now, I love Project Apollo. I was there. Few things in
my lifetime have given me more joy, hope, thrill, and wonder. But there's
also no question that, along with all those wonderful things, the phrase conjures for
me images of buttoned-down NASA nerds, slide rules, and clean rooms. Believe
me, there would be no Talking Animals allowed in Mission Control.
Meanwhile, before moving on, the question begs to be asked: what might some
"Project Dionysus" look like? Oh, yeah: it would look pretty much the
rest of the 1960s. As with the larger unresolved conflict between the
gods, the debate over that decade's Dionysian rebellion against a
predominately Apollonian culture remains with us. In this connection, it's
fascinating to lay side by side a pair of films that each make of that debate
their ideological subtext: The Dead Poets' Society restages the
culture wars of the Sixties from a distinctively partisan perspective,
favoring Dionysus or the Romantic point of view. A few years later, the film
The Emperor's Club
offered an almost scene-for-scene rebuttal of Dead Poets, from an
Apollonian or Classicist perspective. (Neither film was especially poetic but
critics generally found The Emperor's Club so thuddingly prosaic as to
make Dead Poets seem lyrically inspiring indeed.)
But where were we? Narnia. Right. Let's go back, shall we? In Book One,
Lucy travels through the magical Wardrobe and meets Mr. Tumnus, a faun —
half-man, half-animal. Over tea, Mr. Tumnus recalls wistfully what Narnia
was like before the onset of the endless Winter. In the recent Walt Disney film
version of the novel, the faun makes general passing reference to some vague
music and dancing before the freeze. But perceptive fans of the Narnia
stories will notice a curious omission here. For in C. S. Lewis's novel, Mr.
Tumnus makes particular reference to a particular embodiment of
the Good Old Days, before the White Witch covered Narnia with ice and snow…
… when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to
visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run
with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to
jollification for weeks on end. (The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe)
For most readers, that reference will pass overhead as so much pixie dust.
The context may evoke a certain vague nostalgia for some, but chances are
they'll just keep reading. Those who do understand the reference, though
— who know that Bacchus is Dionysus, and that Silenus is his drunken
satyr sidekick — maybe be forgiven for spitting up their hot chocolate.
What a jarring note for an innocent fairy tale — a children's book for
goodness sakes! — especially one written by a respected Oxford professor
and Christian apologist. A trained Classicist reading this innocent fairy
tale to her children may at this point wonder what sort of pervert this
Professor Lewis is.
Yet the story continues on from Mr. Tumnus's cottage to the happy ending. The
White Witch is defeated. Christmas returns to Narnia. The endless Winter
comes to an end, the frozen fauns and satyrs thaw and run free once again.
But we're still not treated to quite the picture of the Golden Age that the
wistful faun had painted — that will have to wait for the next
book in the series.
In Prince Caspian, a young boy, whose parents are dead, is sent to
live with relatives, who he doesn't like. They are very practical,
no-nonsense types who debunk all the old myths of lost glory and keep from
him the secret of his true identity. Then a mysterious Mentor Figure spirits
him away and reveals to the lad a world bigger and more full of marvels than
he'd ever known, and most astonishing of all, his own special destiny to face
and defeat evil and restore that lost glory.
No, wait. That's the plot of the Harry Potter series. Er, no. That's
Star Wars. Or Dune…
In any case, the hero of a thousand faces is, in Prince Caspian, the
title character. He is the true prince of Narnia, who escapes his wicked
aunt and uncle to discover the surviving Old Narnians in the woods and lead
them in a war aimed at reconquering their country. Armies assemble. The
Western Europeans arrive on time for battle — Peter, Edmund, Susan and
Lucy. But Lewis's much-criticized sexism is in play here, for while the boys
get to go into battle against the Telmarines, the girls are left behind in
the forest with Aslan.
And the strangest interlude ensues.
Even though we're on the eve of the battle for Narnia, the real climactic
moment, the one to which the whole book has been leading, now takes place:
the great lion roars, with a supernatural power that echoes across the land
and awakens all of Old Narnia from its sad slumber. The effect in the
immediate vicinity is quickly seen as whole forests of trees, moving like
Tolkien's majestic "ents", which gather from all sides, and come together in
a spirited tree-dance around Aslan. They are soon joined by diverse other
creatures:
One was a youth, dressed only in a fawn-skin, with vine-leaves wreathed in
his curly hair. His face would have been almost too pretty for a boy's, if
it had not looked so extremely wild. You felt, as Edmund said when he saw
him a few days later, "There's a chap who might do anything — absolutely
anything." He seemed to have a great many names — Bromios, Bassareus,
and the Ram, were three of them. There were a lot of girls with him, as wild
as he. There was even, unexpectedly, someone on a donkey. And everybody was
laughing: and everybody was shouting out, "Euan, euan, eu-oi-oi." (Prince
Caspian)
Some future annotated Narnia series may include the note that "Euoi" is the
famed "shriek of ecstasy" and invocation used in only one place in all of
pagandom: among the cult of Dionysus, or Bacchus, or Euon, Bromoios, etc.
The Roman poet, Horace, rhapsodizes —
On a remote crag I saw Bacchus —
Believe me, you who come hereafter —
Teaching his songs to the listening Nymphs
and goat-footed Satyrs with their pointed ears.
Euoi! My mind trembles with fear still fresh...
Another Roman poet, Ovid:
Wherever Bacchus goes, the cries of women
Hail him, and young men's joyful shouts, and drum
And timbrels sound, and cymbals slash, and flutes
Pipe shrill.
Perhaps our annotated Narnia set will include photos of classical statuary or
urns to show how Bacchus is depicted in pagan mythology just as described by
Lewis — though some images may include details of Bacchanalian, er,
excitement that may make the book off-limits for the kiddies.
Meanwhile, here's the part of the Bacchanal that I'd like to see illustrated
— from Euripides:
You could have seen a single woman with bare hands
Tear a fat calf, still bellowing with fright,
In two, while others clawed the heifers to pieces...
Scraps smeared with blood hung from the fir-trees.
Whoever this god may be,
Sire, welcome him to Thebes!
(It's gets even bloodier in Ovid — very Stephen King.)
Now, I must confess. There is a part of me that would like to see Susan and
Lucy tear apart animals and eat their flesh raw. But I'm not proud of that,
so I'll channel the reaction of my imaginary classics professor and exclaim
"Pardon my Ancient Greek, but what the HADES is Professor Lewis up to here?"
He's brought dear, sweet Lucy and Susan — not to mention any children
reading or listening to the story — into the midst of a wild party in
the woods that is unmistakably, astonishingly, a Dionysian revel!
Lucy and Susan among the maenads, for heaven's sake! And there's
Silenus drunkenly braying for "Refreshments!", repeatedly falling off his
donkey and having to be put back up on (go read it for yourself!) All this
amidst a menagerie of strange pagan creatures shrieking and hollering and
playing their pagan flutes and drums and dancing their pagan dances. Vines
sprouting and putting forth leaves and grapes to be plucked and eaten as they
all caper through the forest in a literal bacchanalia.
So this is Lewis's Ideal Republic, his picture of Narnia resurrected
and restored, his return to a mythological "Golden Age". This, in some
allegorical sense, is obviously Professor Lewis's view of "the way things
ought to be" — and set forth in a beloved children's story that has been
almost universally embraced while apparently without being universally
understood: for what the so-called Christian creator of Narnia seems to be
telling us is that life as it was meant to be is... Dionysian.
With C.S. Lewis's answer to the question of whether Christianity is more
Dionysian or Apollonian apparently answered decisively in favor of Bacchus,
the question that comes to my mind right after "What exactly does he mean by
that?" is "Where exactly does that leave Apollo?"
And there might be one more question, less important in the cosmic scheme of
things, but still intriguing to consider: "What's Disney going to do with all
this in their next Narnia film?"
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