Dionysus

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Dionysus

• God of Wine , Music ecstasy .

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Birth of Dionysus
Dionysus is the only god to have a human
mother. Semele was the daughter of Cadmus, king
of Thebes. Seduced by Zeus, she inspired Heras
jealousy. Hera tricked her into asking Zeus to
show himself to her in his true form. Exposed to
divine reality, she was burned up. Only the
glowing embryo of Dionysus remained.
Zeus sewed the embryo into his thigh and birthed
it himself.
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Birth of Dionysus
As Athenas birth from Zeuss head signifies her
intellect and purity, Dionysus birth from Zeuss
thigh associates him with physical sensation and
chaotic sexuality. Also a little bit of gender
bending.
Dionysus was raised by various nymphs and other
woodland creatures. Here Hermes brings him to
Silenus, the old, forest-living, wine-loving
satyr often shown in the gods retinue.
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Appearance of Dionysus
Dionysus may be shown as a bearded older man . . .
. . . or as a sensual, even effeminate, beardless
youth. Flexible age image, as with Hermes.
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The Nature of Dionysus
This dual nature, especially the effeminate
aspect, was a little scary.
Greek mythology emphasized the foreign, Eastern
origins of Dionysus, but archeological evidence
suggests he is as old as the other Greek
gods. The East was a symbol of decadence and
extremes.
The wild, effeminate portrayal of Dionysus
emphasizes the threat of ecstatic experience to
what is dignified and proper.
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The Nature of Dionysus
On the other hand, the Greeks regarded a little
drunken partying as a good thing.
In the Anthesteria, a 3-day Athenian festival,
much of the second day was devoted to wine
tasting and drinking contests, open to all men
above the age of three, slave and free alike.
Dionysus matched Demeters gift of grain, with
wine. He turned the grapes into a flowing drink
and offered it to mortals, so when they fill
themselves with the liquid vine, they put an end
to grief. Euripides, Bacchae
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The Nature of Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of drama, which embodied
aspects of ecstasy (standing outside oneself)
the actors impersonated mythological characters,
and the audience experienced feelings and
emotions incited by the plays.
catharsis, or emotional release, is one of the
things Dionysus offers.
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The Nature of Dionysus
But drama was also a civic, com-munity thing.
Major civic festivals, such as the dramatic
festivals of Lenaia and Dionysia, as well as the
more sober parts of the Anthesteria, emphasized
Dionysus role as a god whose power supported a
well balanced life, both family and civic.
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Dionysus the Pirates
First of all a sweet and fragrant wine flowed
through the black ship, and a divine ambrosial
odor arose . . . immediately a vine spread in all
directions from the top of the sail, with many
clusters hanging down . . . the sailors escaped
an evil fate and leaped into the shining sea and
became dolphins. Homeric Hymn to Dionysus
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Dionysus his retinue
Dionysus is thought of as accompanied by
not-quite-human satyrs (half-man, half-goat).
Satyrs are another symbol of the mysterious
powers of nature and the wild. Satyrs are a
little bit crazy, often over-sexed, fond of
wine. Pan is the quintessential satyr.
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Dionysus his retinue
Satyrs and nymphs accompany the god. The satyrs
play musical instruments and the nymphs are shown
dancing with krotala (castanets). Music and dance
are essential to Dionysiac celebration.

• Attributes
• wine cup
• music dance

• nymphs satyrs
• trailing ivy

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Dionysus his retinue

• Maenads are a key feature of Dionysus retinue.
• Attributes
• thyrsus (pinecone or ivy-tipped rod, kinda
  phallic)

• fawn skin or panther skin (dappled, camouflage)

• mastery over connection with wild animals

• wild, ecstatic dancing, head turned up or back

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Ariadne
Dionysus married Ariadne, the daughter of the
king of Crete, when he found her sleeping on Naxos
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Euripides Bacchae
Euripides wrote the Bacchae at the end of his
life. It is one of his most masterful plays and
shows the tension between the drive to live a
normal, controlled life, and the divine power of
chaos that Dionysus brings.
Major characters Dionsysus The god is disguised
as his own priest. Pentheus The young king of
Thebes. He wants to run his city in a strict,
orderly fashion.
Bacchae the chorus, a group of women who
followed their god from Asia, sleeping in the
woods, dancing, and hunting.
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Euripides Bacchae
Cadmus, the oldking of Thebes (Pentheus
Dionysus grandfather) Tiresias, the old blind
seer two old men who, ridiculous though it is,
have recognized the gods power and are dancing
in celebration of him.
Chorus What is wisdom? What is beauty? Slowly
but surely the divine power moves to annul the
brutally minded man who in his wild delusions
refuses to reverence the gods. . . Euripides,
Bacchae
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Euripides Bacchae
Its a foregone conclusion Pentheus cannot fight
the power of the god brainwashed and driven
insane, he participates in his own sparagmos . .
. The innocent suffer too, as his mother and
grandfather are bereaved, despite accepting the
god.
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• What principles fuel the conflict between
  Pentheus and Dionysus? 
• Are these inevitable conflicts of the human
  soul? 
• What is wisdom, according to the Dionysiac
  perspective?

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• Maenads speech p. 277 ff what is happiness?
  What are the driving forces of their lives?
• How do Tiresias and Cadmus feel about Dionysus?
  What are their reasons for following him despite
  the fact that it makes them ridiculous?
• What views about morality and how to enforce it,
  arise in the conversation of Dionysus and
  Pentheus on p. 281-2?
• What does the end of the play, with the
  destruction of Pentheus, say about the nature of
  Dionysus in specific, and the gods in general?

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So hail to you, Dionysus, rich in grape clusters
grant that we may in our joy go through these
seasons again and again for many years. Homeric
Hymn to Dionysus
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Dionysian
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Dionysian is a philosophical and literary
concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features
of ancient Greek mythology. Several Western
philosophical and literary figures have invoked
this dichotomy in critical and creative works,
including Plutarch, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl
Jung, Franz Kafka, Robert A. Heinlein, Ruth
Benedict, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, singers Jim
Morrison and Iggy Pop, literary critic G. Wilson
Knight, Ayn Rand, Stephen King, Michael Pollan,
Diane Wakoski, Umberto Eco and cultural critic
Camille Paglia.
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In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both
sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the Sun,
dreams, reason, and plastic visual arts while
Dionysus is the god of wine, music, ecstasy, and
intoxication. In the modern literary usage of the
concept, the contrast between Apollo and Dionysus
symbolizes principles of collectivism versus
individualism, light versus darkness, or
civilization versus primitivism. The ancient
Greeks did not consider the two gods to be
opposites or rivals. However, Parnassus, the
mythical home of poetry and all art, was strongly
associated with each of the two gods in separate
legends.
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German philosophy Although the use of the
concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian is famously
related to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, the
terms were used before him in Prussia.1 The
poet Hölderlin used it, while Winckelmann talked
of Bacchus, the god of wine.
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Nietzsche's usage
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Nietzsche's aesthetic usage of the concepts,
which was later developed philosophically, was
first developed in his book The Birth of Tragedy,
which he published in 1872. His major premise
here was that the fusion of Dionysian and
Apollonian "Kunsttrieben" ("artistic impulses")
forms dramatic arts, or tragedies. He goes on to
argue that that has not been achieved since the
ancient Greek tragedians. Nietzsche is adamant
that the works of above all Aeschylus, and also
Sophocles, represent the apex of artistic
creation, the true realization of tragedy it is
with Euripides, he states, that tragedy begins
its "Untergang" (literally "going under", meaning
decline, deterioration, downfall, death, etc.).
Nietzsche objects to Euripides' use of Socratic
rationalism in his tragedies, claiming that the
infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy of its
foundation, namely the fragile balance of the
Dionysian.
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Nietzsche claimed in The Birth of Tragedy, in the
interplay of Greek Tragedy the tragic hero of
the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to
make order (in the Apollonian sense) of his
unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) Fate, though he
dies unfulfilled in the end. For the audience of
such a drama, Nietzsche claimed, this tragedy
allows us to sense an underlying essence, what he
called the "Primordial Unity", which revives our
Dionysian nature - which is almost indescribably
pleasurable. Though he later dropped this concept
saying it was ...burdened with all the errors of
youth (Attempt at Self Criticism, 2), the
overarching theme was a sort of metaphysical
solace or connection to the heart of creation, so
to speak.
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Different from Kant's idea of the sublime, the
Dionysian is all-inclusive rather than alienating
to the viewer as a sublimating experience. The
sublime needs critical distance, whereas the
Dionysian demands a closeness of experience.
According to Nietzsche, the critical distance,
which separates man from his closest emotions,
originates in Apollonian ideals, which in turn
separate him from his essential connection with
self. The Dionysian embraces the chaotic nature
of such experience as all-important not just on
its own, but as it is intimately connected with
the Apollonian. The Dionysian magnifies man, but
only so far as he realizes that he is one and the
same with all ordered human experience. The
godlike unity of the Dionysian experience is of
utmost importance in viewing the Dionysian as it
is related to the Apollonian because it
emphasizes the harmony that can be found within
ones chaotic experiences.
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Post-modern reading Nietzsche's idea has been
interpreted as an expression of fragmented
consciousness or existential instability by a
variety of modern and post-modern writers,
especially Martin Heidegger in Nietzsche and the
Post-modernists. According to Peter Sloterdijk,
the Dionysian and the Apollonian form a
dialectic they are contrasting, but Nietzsche
does not mean one to be valued more than the
other. Truth being primordial pain, our
existential being is determined by the
Dionysian/Apollonian dialectic. Extending the use
of the Apollonian and Dionysian onto an argument
on interaction between the mind and physical
environment, Abraham Akkerman has pointed to
masculine and feminine features of city form.
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Pegah Khalesi