Reflections on the Modern Dionysus
Written by Maria Cairoli
“Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness. This example I cite could be extended to the exclusively noisy and undifferentiated music listened to in those places where millions of people gather to exorcise the horror of their solitude. But why more than ever before has civilized man reached the point of having horror of himself?”
This reflection on consumerism, a critical reminder of the disastrous effects of the capitalization of art, was given by the Italian poet Eugenio Montale as a plea to reclaim art for its own sake.
Yet, it was another aspect of his thinking that really remained engraved in my brain for the longest time. Are nightclubs really just another last, desperate attempt to fill a hole that is fundamentally unfillable? Do we go out exclusively for the comfort of being in an environment so loud we cannot hear our own thoughts? Is surrounding ourselves with people to the point we barely have any room to move a way to not bear the existential dread of humanity alone? Most importantly, and most controversially, is this necessarily something to be looked down upon?
The answers to these questions are ambiguous. Cathartic experiences that allow us to forget about ourselves and to let go have always been central to societies. Friedrich Nietzsche spilled rivers of ink about this very aspect of ancient Greek society. The Greeks viewed art as born from two distinct forces: Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollonian art is beauty, equilibrium, perfection. Dionysian art is music, intoxication, deindividuation, the therapeutic and cathartic loss of oneself. But Apollonian art has a fatal flaw: it is tragically, undeniably superficial, a mere illusion. The Greeks chose to live on the surface of life in a calm, balanced illusion. They found refuge in the sweet, harmonic shapes of Apollonian art because the depth of their conscience and the awareness of the finite, spiteful nature of human life was too atrocious for them to bear. And yet, occasionally, Dionysiac rituals broke through this façade of perfection to reveal the depths of the human mind and lost souls in a perfect communion, exorcizing civil society, offering an escape from loneliness, and ultimately restoring people’s balance.
Is a rave every once in a while all we need to maintain sanity? Perhaps there is more to the enigma. I came across an Instagram post this summer: a video of people dancing the night away in a club while, as one could see from the windows of the room, tall flames burned forests in the distance. Blissfully unaware and wallowing in a culture of hedonistic overconsumption, these people danced while the planet was burning to ashes through our destructive models of production.
While losing ourselves occasionally may help us to restore our balance, a mere Instagram post reminds us that blind escapism and hedonistic loss of all awareness and contact with reality must not become our normality. Inebriation cannot shield us from harsh reality forever, and perpetual depersonalization is not the salvation we are looking for. Is life but a careful balancing act between loss of depth and loss of situational awareness, between surface and tragedy, between action and perdition?