Dionysus: The Anomalous and Necessary God

Rational order and emotions require a balancing act, as it clear when we consider the ancient Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus.

A statue of Dionysus (known by the Romans as Bacchus) in Holy Trinity Bridge of Florence, Italy. Millionstock/Shutterstock

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Western culture has displayed an abundance of Dionysian behavior. One aspect of the cult of the Ancient Greek god Dionysus is wine drinking and ecstasy, especially through sexual orgies. In myths, Dionysus traveled the world, often accompanied by his wild retinue of satyrs and maenads, who surrendered themselves to divine madness. If this sounds like a rock and roll tour that the young (and the not-so-young) crave, adore and worship, it’s because it is just like that.

Apollo Versus Dionysius

In the 19th century, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche posited the opposition between the gods Dionysus and Apollo in a number of his works, beginning with “The Birth of Tragedy.” That opposition was potentially responsible for much evil in the succeeding century. Leaving aside the question of how much Hitler and his henchmen were influenced by, or misappropriated and misinterpreted Nietzschean teachings, the fact remains that the dichotomy that Nietzsche outlined between Apollo—the god of order, rationality, harmony, reason, clarity, individuality and all that gives life meaning through structured beauty—and Dionysus, who represents chaos, passion, emotion, irrationality, and collective unity, is true.

Coming at the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche noticed a historical phenomenon: The 18th century, with the beginnings of the Age of Enlightenment and reason, was in one sense Apollonian. It seems that even rationality, order, and structure became tired and spiritless and that something needed to happen to refresh life. This something was represented by the chaos of the god Dionysius. As if in reaction to the Age of Enlightenment, the Romantic movement began (in earnest in England in 1798 with the publication of William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge’s “Lyrical Ballads”) and swept away the god of reason with a god of feeling and irrationality.

Dionysus’ Birth

"Zeus, Semele and Hera," 17th century, Erasmus Quellinus II or Jan Erasmus Quellinus. Marquisdeposa/CC BY-SA 4.0

Unlike Apollo’s origins, Dionysus’ are obscure and conflicting. The most common account of his birth is that he is the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal princess of Thebes. In this version, Zeus’ wife Hera is jealous of his affair, and she tricks Semele into asking Zeus to reveal himself in his full divine form. Unable to survive the sight of his lightning, Semele is incinerated. However, Zeus saves their unborn child by sewing him into his thigh, from which Dionysus is later “reborn”—hence his epithet “twice-born.”

However, other versions suggest that Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Persephone (queen of the Underworld) and was dismembered by the Titans before being reborn. His rebirth connects him to Orphic traditions, which emphasize his death and resurrection, symbolizing the cycle of nature and the mysteries of life and death.

The stories are alike in two important ways. Both connect him with the supreme god, Zeus, which means in itself that Dionysus represents some force fundamental of the cosmos and of life.

The second similarity is that both show a connection with death and liberation from death. According to psychologist James Hillman in his book “The Force of Character,” after Titans rip Dionysus to pieces, his grandmother, Rhea (the Earth), puts his dismembered parts together and brings him back to life. This story also mirrors the Egyptian myth of Osiris, who was dismembered, put back together (this time by his wife/sister), and subsequently came to rule the underworld. Hillman explicitly says, “This (Dionysus) life force, who came on the scene together with a dancing gang of prancing satyrs and raving devotees, was also declared to be one and the same as Hades, invisible god of the souls in the underworld.”

Dionysus, then, is a very dangerous god. Yet his strange (almost mad) cavorting, excesses, and ecstasies are a necessary part of the cosmos. The cosmos requires the balance (if that is the right word for such an extreme god) that Dionysus represents.

Chaos’ Place in the World

If the cosmos requires chaos, how does it manifest in ways that bring balance rather than excess?

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche popularized the Apollonian and Dionysian dialectic. Public Domain

One important area is in drama; Dionysus was the patron of theater. The Dionysian festivals (notably in the City Dionysia in Athens) gave rise to Greek tragedy and comedy. Nietzsche, believed that the greatest Greek tragedians were Aeschylus and Sophocles, who masterfully balanced two forces: the Dionysian element was present in the raw emotional power and the chorus, while the Apollonian element was seen in a structured plot and dialogue. He lamented the fact, as he saw it, that Euripides and Greek rationalist philosophy, weakened the Dionysian spirit in favor of pure logic and led to tragedy’s decline.

This idea extends to all art forms and possibly to all great achievements. The contemporary icon painter Aidan Hart, in his book “Beauty, Spirit, Matter: Icons in the Modern World,” noted that, as a 17th-century manual on Chinese painting mural puts it, “To be without method is deplorable but to depend entirely on method is worse.” What does this mean? First, to be without method is Dionysian, but too much method? That is too Apollonian.

In short, artists ruled entirely by rules produce inferior work, just as those who have no rules produce chaotic and generally worthless work. To use a Chinese analogy: Too much yin is a problem, but so too is too much yang. We could quote a maxim from Apollo here: Not too much. Not too much even of Apollo himself!

Structure and Rule-Breaking

The spirit of creativity requires some Dionysian rawness. It requires the divine madness or frenzy necessary to poets and prophets. It also requires a clear understanding of the rules, the structure, and the order. A true master may supersede structure and rules.

In John Milton’s tribute to Shakespeare, he wrote of “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,/ Warble his native wood-notes wild.” To our ears now, this sounds patronizing, but it recognizes something—the “wood-notes wild”—that Milton himself practiced.

The opening of Milton’s masterpiece, “Paradise Lost,” has a Dionysian moment. This epic poem is in blank verse, with ten syllables per line in iambic meter. Iambic meter is a pattern of five-stressed syllables, each preceded by an unstressed syllable. That is the rule.

Milton’s epic poem "Paradise Lost" shows us the clear contrast between Satan’s pride and God’s righteousness. Detail of “Him the Almighty Power/Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky (I. 44, 45),” 1866, by Gustav Doré for John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Engraving. Public Domain

Given that there are approximately another 10,000 lines to come, it would be expected that the first line of such an epic poem would follow the rule. However:

Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit

The word “first” intrudes itself here and immediately breaks the iambic pattern. Because of the iambic pattern, the word “and” is stressed but only weakly. Essentially, though, six syllables are stressed in what is supposed to be a five-stress line.

The genius of this aberration is that it’s mimetic: Adam’s first disobedience (and, therefore, mankind’s) is to break the pattern of the line: an original sin, as it were. Dionysus enters the frame because without that breaking the pattern, without a bit of chaos, the poem would be monotonous and also less meaningful.

And so, whether it is poetry, art, drama, music, or gardening, cooking, reading or even regular dog walking, it might be time to consider how Dionysus can stir the pot, add a pinch of creativity here or there, or lead us away from tedium. Just remember not to go the whole Dionysian hog, for in that way truly madness lies.

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