Dionysus requests a sacrifice for our pleasure

When delving into Nietzschean philosophy, which relates to philosophic ideas from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. This philosopher who looked into idea of the superman or Übermensch as the rebirth of man.  Anyway there came an interesting subject from one of his books called "Birth of Tragedy".  I did not think too much into it at the time, but then when surfing the net, I kept finding reference to Dionysus each time.  This intrigued me. 

Who was Dionysus? Why is Nietzsche so interested in him?

Well A couple of months ago. I decided to listen to a couple of lectures from the teaching company series.  One of them was called "Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition".  There was this particular lecture, which is "lecture 14. Bacchae".  The lecture was quite difficult to get into at first, so I had to replay the thing again, but the more I listened to this lecture.  The more I realized why Nietzsche was so infatuated with Dionysus who one of the main characters of this play.  Sorry that I have not mentioned this before, but The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy written by the great playwright Euripides around 405 BC.

In short the play is about vengeance brought upon a family who disbelieves Dionysus's mother actually gave birth to him from the great god Zeus.  Dionysus is a god unlike any other, completely opposite from Apollo; his worshippers are filled with uncontrollable rage and are unstable.  Dionysus represents the god of wine and irrationality.  He is a jealous god and demands tribute, the god loves to show off his power and is vengeful.  While Apollo represents structure, control, rationality and perfection.  

Nietzsche took both these gods from the Greek myths and compared them to the society of his day.  He felt the persona of Dionysus had more to offer man of his day and hopefully in the future.  He felt that society was decadent in building up its structure in the form of Apollo.  There was room for madness, irrationality, passion.  Man was decadent in this age, man wanted perfection, but how can man be perfect?

This lecture does not centre too much on Nietzsche’s philosophy, but on Euripides idea of Dionysus.  Obviously the most striking part of the play is a horrible tragic scene towards the end of the play, but I will not spoil that for you.  It is incredibly gory.  The lecture unravels the reasons why Dionysus was needed at in the play, but it seems this play The Bacchae has set a standard of its own.  Many theatres play homage to the great play and the audience does as well, without even knowing anything about it.  Why and how?

Not only was the Bacchae influencing plays to come, it influenced culture and art.  There have been Vases that tell the story of the play and this lecture mentions the story of the vases.

Major Scene in The Bacchae

The god of Wine

If you can get hold of the course “Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition”.  Lecture 14 is worth listening to.  The lecture is around 40 mins long and has 80 courses ranging from Beowulf, Tolstoy and Proust.

A very hefty course indeed.