I've been thinking about the work Arlo did a few years back.
Good stuff. Here are most the central quotes he'd used...
"We shall do a great deal for the science of esthetics, once we perceive
not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of
intuition, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the
Apollonian and Dionysian duality..." (Nietzsche)
"... there existed a sharp opposition, in origin and aims, between the
Apollonian art of sculpture, and the non-plastic, Dionysian, art of
music.... they continually incite each other to new and more powerful
births, which perpetuate an antagonism, only superficially reconciled by
the common term 'Art'..." (Nietzsche)
Pointing towards the undifferentiated continuum, Nietzsche writes, "The
higher truth [Apollonian forms], the perfection of these states in
contrast to the incompletely intelligible everyday world.. is at the
same time the symbolical analogue of the soothsaying faculty and of the
arts generally, which makes life possible and worth living. (Nietzsche)
Interesting here, Nietzsche is not describing the Apollonian impulse
towards form as "bad" while setting up the Dionysian impulse towards
dissolution as "good", but instead that without form, without the
apprehension of pattern from the unpatterned landscape, life would not
only be not worth living but impossible in the first place. Although
"form" is an abstraction, it is an abstraction we cannot do without.
Nietzsche refers to the Apollonian as "the man wrapped in Maya"
(Schopenhauer), "... so in the midst of a world of sorrows the
individual sits quietly, supported by and trusting in his principium
individuationis" (Schopenhauer quoted).
This principium is summed by Wikipedia as "...the name given to
processes whereby the undifferentiated tends to become individual, or to
those processes through which differentiated components become
integrated into stable wholes."
In short, it is the perception of form within chaos, the apprehension of
stability within flux, the sensing of coherence within the
incomprehensible. "We might consider Apollo himself as the glorious
divine image of the principium individuationis, whose gestures and
expression tell us of all the joy and wisdom of 'appearance', together
with its beauty." (Nietzsche)
But alongside the impulse towards differentiation, one has to also
consider as equally important Dionysian impulse towards dissolution.
"Schopenhauer has depicted for us the terrible awe which seizes upon
man, when he is suddenly unable to account for the cognitive forms of a
phenomenon, when the principle of reason, in some one of its
manifestations, seems to admit an exception... at this very collapse of
the principium individuationis, we shall gain an insight into the nature
of the Dionysian." (Nietzsche)
Thus for Nietzsche the structures of Apollonian form are at once and
always incomplete. Through "the immediate certainty of intuition" we
sense exceptions, and when we stop and gaze into that incompleteness, we
find the song of Dionysus.
Nietzsche describes the Dionysian impulse as that which "cause[s] the
subjective to vanish into complete self-forgetfulness".
In the following quote, I hear Pirsig's talk in ZMM about our
estrangement from nature and being one with the world brought on by not
only dominance of "rationality", but the abandonment of the romantic
"groove". Nietzsche talks about the same phenomena, a world where
Apollonian dominates and Dionysian impulses are denigrated.
"Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and
man reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile or
subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigical
son, man. ... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile
barriers, which necessity, caprice or 'shameless fashion' have erected
between man and man, are broken down... he feels as if the veil of Maya
had been torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the
mysterious Primordial Unity." (Nietzsche)
Nietzsche continues, "He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of
art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature
reveals itself to the highest gratification of the Primordial Unity."
"We have considered the Apollonian and its antithesis, the Dionsysian,
as artistic energies which burst forth from nature herself, without the
mediation of the human artist..." (Nietzsche)
I note here that both the "tendency towards form" and the "tendency
towards dissolution" are both "artistic energies" in Nietzsche's
telling, and that, like the MOQ's levels emerge directly from Quality.
"... energies in which nature's art-impulses are satisfied in the most
immediate and direct way: first, on the one hand, in the pictorial world
of dreams, whose completeness is not dependent upon the intellectual
attitude or the artistic culture of any single being; and... as a
drunken reality, which likewise does not heed the single unit, but even
seeks to destroy the individual and redeem him by a mystic feeling of
Oneness." (Nietzsche)
For Nietzsche, the Greek Dionysian was not simply
biological "licentiousness, whose waves overwhelmed all family life and
its venerable traditions" (Nietzsche).
Earlier Greek culture, according to Nietzsche, was dominated by the
Apollonian impulse, and is evidenced best in the Homeric tradition.
Alongside this sat the Dionysian impulses, evidenced as folk-revelry and
festivals. As these impulses synthesized in Greek culture, the Tragedy
was born, and we saw for a moment in time what Pirsig saw in the early
Hippie movement.
"This reconciliation is the most important moment in the history of the
Greek cult: wherever we turn we note the revolutions resulting from this
event... If we observe how, under the pressure of this treaty of peace,
the Dionysian power revealed itself, we shall now recognize... the
significance of festivals of world-redemption and transfiguration."
(Nietzsche)
I'll nod again to Dionysian being equatable with pre-intellectual
awareness, expressed as the "tendency towards dissolution" in the
following, "In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to the greatest
exaltation of all his symbolic features; something never before
experienced struggles for utterance - the annihilation of the the veil
of Maya, Oneness as the soul of the race, and of nature itself."
(Nietzsche)
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