Nietzsche's Apollo or Dionysus by A R  Orage 1906
Channel: Age of Enlightenment
Date: 2021-11-21

Apollo or Dionysus? Why did the Greeks develop Tragic Art? Alfred Richard Orage wrote about Nietzsche's take on the question in 1906.The Dionysian movement was revolutionary, irreligious, immoral, barbaric, and anarchic. The Apollan counter movement was conservative in nature. Apollo stands for Form as against Dionysus for Life; for Matter as against Energy; for the Human as against the Super- human. Apollo is always on the side of the formed, the definite, the restrained, the rational; but Dionysus is the power that destroys forms, that leads the definite into the infinite, the unrestrained, the tumultuous and passionate. Both Orage and Nietzsche see this as an everlasting battle.