world (more or less following Aristotle) to seek them there. To understand
what the truths are and how they are expressed, we must understand the
nature of tragic illusion.
Nietzsche posits two forces at work in Greek tragedy, which he names
after the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo represents the drawing of
(and respecting) distinct boundaries between individuals. Dionysus
represents the loss of individuality and the transgression of boundaries.
The tendencies that go by the labels‘Apollo’and‘Dionysus’are found, of
course, in the gods who bear those names. But they are expressed in real-
world activities (Apollo in dreaming; Dionysus in drunkenness and orgy)
and also in characteristic forms of art (Apollo in epic poetry; Dionysus in
choral dance and lyric poetry). Thus in epic poetry we learn about (but
are separate from) the stories of Odysseus and his men; his adventures
take place in a different time and in different locations. This is Apollinian
in at least two ways:first, the listener learns about and is distinct from
the different characters described in the epic; second, the listener is not
himself imaginatively involved in what is described–he does not imagine
himself as part of the story. Choral dance is Dionysian, Nietzsche supposes,
in that the participant gets lost in the crowd and in the present moment,
with no sense of separation and no notion of there being a‘himself’apart
from others–what Nietzsche calls a‘complete self-forgetting’.^68
Along with their differing activities and art forms, Apollo and Dionysus
are connected with different states of mind.^69 In the case of Apollo, the
characteristic state of mind is the illusion of the dreamer (although
Nietzsche suggests that it is the dreamer whoknowshe is dreaming^70 ).
This is something like what I have described (above) as being‘under the
spell’: Nietzsche speaks of illusion, but also of‘semblance’(Schein). In the case
of Dionysus, the characteristic state of mind is intoxication (Rausch).^71
The Apollinian Homer-listener is in a dream-like state of illusion; the
Dionysiac participant in the drunken, choral dance loses himself in the
crowd. Note that both states of mind are, in turn, unlike the experience of
the average Greek, going about his day-to-day business–both take him
away from the (for Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, illusory) everyday world.
To that extent, both Apollinian and Dionysian art forms already offer a
‘truer’experience than that of the average Greek citizen, who thinks that
what he experiences is real: the epic presents a realm of illusion that the
listener knows to be illusory (unlike the everyday realm of illusion, which
he does not recognise as such); the intoxicated choral dancer escapes from
the (false) idea that each of us is a separate, unique individual.
Greek tragedy combines the characteristic art forms and states of mind
associated with Apollo and Dionysus. Dionysus is represented in the
intoxicating song and dance of the tragic chorus, whereas Apollo is found
in the actors and the plot, which, dreamlike, represent the actions of
68 From the World to the Stage