Download Dionysus

DIONYSUS Commentaries
Music in the Presentation: Borodin, from Prince Igor; Stephen Sondheim, Hymn to Dionysus from The Frogs; Loreena
McKennitt, Mystical Dream (You Tube); Debussy, Syrinx; Verdi, Triumphal March from Aida; Richard Strauss from the final
scene of Ariadne; Handel, “No No I’ll Take No Less” from Semele; Wagner, Magic Fire Music from Die Walkurie; Bartok,
Romanian Folk Dance; Karunesh, Flowing Bamboo; Glass, Concerto for Two Timpani, Heroes Symphony
Some websites:
Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: http://www.art-and-archaeology.com/timelines/rome/empire/vm/villaofthemysteries.html
Theoi.com – for detailed information and original sources for all the gods; The fantastic story of the poet Arion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arion
From The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso (145): Apollo and Dionysus are false friends, and
likewise false enemies. Behind the charade of their clashes, their encounters, their overlapping, there is something that
forever unites them. Both Apollo and Dionysus know that possession is the highest form of knowledge, the greatest power.
And this is the knowledge, this the power they seek. Apollo and Dionysus choose possession as their peculiar weapon and
are loath to let others mess with it. For Dionysus, possession is an immediate, unassailable reality; it is with him in all his
wanderings, whether in the houses of the city or out on the rugged mountains. If someone refuses to acknowledge It,
Dionysus is ready to unleash that possession like a terrifying beast. Those who are reluctant to follow the call of the god
dash off and race furiously about the mountains. Soon they are killing people. This is how Dionysus punishes those who
don’t accept his possession which is like a perennial spring gushing form his body, or the dark liquid that he revealed to
men.
For Apollo, possession is a conquest. And, like every conquest, it must be defended by an imperious hand. Like every
conquest, it also tends to obliterate whatever power came from it. Apollo wants his possession to be articulated by meter,
he wants to stamp the seal of form on the flow of enthusiasm. Apollo is responsible for imposing logic too: a restraining
meter in the flux of thought. When faced with the darting disordered, furtive intelligence of Hermes, Apollo drew a dividing
line – he kept his invincible oracle for himself.
From Introduction to Masks of Dionysus Thomas Carpenter and Christopher Faraone, eds.: Dionysus is undoubtedly
the most complex and multifaceted of all the Greek gods, appearing alternately as the urbane inventor of wine and the
symposium, the master of uncontrollable madness and intoxication, the civic patron of Athenian music and drama, the wild
hunter who rends his victims with his bare hands and eats them raw, a fertility god represented by the erect phallus, and the
mysterious god who comforts the dying and frees them from the fear of death.
Nietzche – The Birth of Tragedy (http://www.historyguide.org/europe/dio_apollo.html): Apollonian and Dionysian are terms
used by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy to designate the two central principles in Greek culture. The Apollonian is the
basis of all analytic distinctions. Everything that is part of the unique individuality of man or thing is Apollonian in character;
all types of form or structure are Apollonian, since form serves to define or individualize that which is formed; thus,sculpture
is the most Apollonian of the arts, since it relies entirely on form for its effect. Rational thought is also Apollonian since it is
structured and makes distinctions.
The Dionysian, which corresponds roughly to Schopenhauer's conception of Will, is directly opposed to the Apollonian.
Drunkenness and madness are Dionysian because they break down a man's individual character; all forms of enthusiasm
and ecstasy are Dionysian, for in such states man gives up his individuality and submerges himself in a greater whole:
music is the most Dionysian of the arts, since it appeals directly to man's instinctive, chaotic emotions and not to his formally
reasoning mind.Nietzsche believed that both forces were present in Greek tragedy, and that the true tragedy could only be
produced by the tension between them. He used the names Apollonian and Dionysian for the two forces because Apollo, as
the sun-god, represents light, clarity, and form, whereas Dionysus, as the wine-god, represents drunkenness and ecstasy.
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/greece/theater/playersOverview.html Dithyrambs, an early form of Greek theater, were
performed by choral groups of 50 men and 50 boys from the different Athenian tribes who would sing and chant the
playwright's words in unison. These performances were led by a choregos (lead chorus member) and accompanied by an
auletes, a musician playing an aulos (a wind instrument with similarities to a modern oboe).
By 534 BCE, the poet Thespis began performing a specific role distinct from the chorus in his plays, establishing the basic
concept of an "actor" (today, actors are also known as "thespians"). The works of other Greek poets, such as The Odyssey
and The Illiad, were also influential in the evolution of theatrical performance, both thematically, and as a template for
rhythmic line delivery.
http://www.carnaval.com/greece/festivals/http://www.carnaval.com/greece/festivals/ The Greater Dionysia in Athens: The
Greater Dionysia was celebrated in Athens in the late spring for five days. Pisistratus, in the second half of the sixth century
B.C., introduced the cult of Dionysos in the city as an addition to the popular rural one. Dionysian theatre was noted for its
democratic nature for everyone was invited to be entertained. During the celebration business life stopped, prisoners were
freed in order to participate. In the city, this festival opened with a phallic parade, in which the god's image was born through
the streets of Athens from outside the walls and brought to the Temple of Dionysus on the slopes of the Acropolis. After
completion of the sacrifices, the image was now borne to the theatre dancing floor (the orchestra) accompanied by torch
bearers - and there it stood throughout the presentation of the plays over the next several days but not before the komos, or
revel, a night-long feast and celebration.
From the Introduction to EURIPIDES’ BACCHAE BY E. R. DODDS To the Greeks of the classical age Dionysus was not
solely, or even mainly, the god of wine. Plutarch tells us as much, confirming it with a quotation from Pindar, and the god's
cult titles confirm it also: he is Δενδρίτης or Ἔνδενδρος, the Power in the tree; he is "Aνθιος the blossom-bringer, Kάρπιος
the fruit-bringer, Φλεύς or Φλέως, the abundance of life. His domain is, in Plutarch's words, the whole of the ὑγρὲ ϕύσις
(moist nature) —not only the liquid fire in the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins of
a young animal, all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature.
From reviews of the Scottish National Theater’s Bacchae (2008) (The Independent):
(http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s310) in the powerful confrontation between the show's
playful, dangerous star Alan Cumming as Dionysus, and a superbly grey and controlled Tony Curran as his cousin, the
Theban prince Pentheus, it's possible to sense a whole rich vein of resonance for our own political culture, torn as it is
between a growing binge-culture of uncontrolled excess on one hand and, on the other, a new authoritarian obsession with
law and order, and the suppression of "anti-social" behavior.
Playing it for laughs does no harm when the terrible grip of irony and grimness is also allowed to take such compelling hold;
the story's tragic dimensions are no less fully revealed for the comedic playfulness of the earlier scenes. While Ewan Hooper
as Cadmus may make his first entrance in white tie, top hat and tails, shuffling through a tap dance routine with Ralph
Riach's Tiresias, his grief at the end is palpable. The frenzied Bacchanalian scenes are left to our imagination but the climax
is as striking as any, in a production whose visual and dramatic detail will linger long in the mind.
From Edith Hall’s Introduction to Euripides: Iphigenia among the Taurians, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis,
Rhesus,Translated with Explanatory Notes by JAMES MORWOOD The Greek mind was trained to think in polarities; to
categorize, distinguish, and oppose. If the divine personality of Dionysus can be reduced to any one principle, it is the
demonstration that conventional logic is an inadequate tool with which to apprehend the universe as a whole. Dionysus
confounds reason, defies categorization, dissolves polarities, and inverts hierarchies. He is a youthful god and yet as an
immortal, respected by the elderly Cadmus and Teiresias, cannot be defined as young. He is a male god and yet in his
perceived effeminacy and special relationship with women cannot be defined as conventionally masculine. Conceived in
Thebes yet worshipped abroad he is neither wholly Greek nor barbarian. He conflates the tragic and comic views of life, as
the patron deity of both genres. Similarly, his worship can bring both transcendental serenity and repulsive violence: the
slaughter of Pentheus, followed by his mother's invitation to the Bacchants to share in the feast, entails three crimes
considered by the ancient Greeks to be among the most abominable: human sacrifice, infanticide, and cannibalism.
Dionysus may be worshipped illicitly on the wild hillsides of Thebes, but he is also the recipient in Euripides' Athens of a
respectable cult at the heart of the city-state: as such, he cannot be defined as the representative of nature in opposition to
culture and civilization. And in using illusion to reveal the truth he confounds all conventional distinctions between fiction and
fact, madness and sanity, falsehood and reality. In Bacchae Dionysus causes the imprisoned to be liberated, the 'rational' to
become demented, humans to behave like animals, men to dress as women, women to act like men, and an earthquake
physically to force the untamed natural world into the 'safe', controlled, interior world of the household and the city.