In defending against the criticisms of the Olympics Opening Ceremony last week — which many Christians believed was mocking da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper — artistic director Thomas Jolly claimed that the production wasn’t inspired by the da Vinci painting at all, and that, in actuality, we must look to Mount Olympus for the answer.
“There is Dionysus who arrives on this table. He is there because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology,” Jolly said, according to NBC. “The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus.”
On Friday, the X account for the Olympics seemed to support this: “The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings,” the post said.
A potentially better way to word that might have been that the Greek god Dionysus makes us aware of absurdity, period. This is more or less what the god has stood for since his birth millennia ago.
The Oxford Classical Dictionary's definition of Dionysus takes nearly four entire pages of fine print—far too much for this piece—but perhaps a few snippets will suffice. “Perceived as both man and animal, male and effeminate,” it says, and “His myths and cults are often violent and bizarre.” Finally, “His other provinces include ritual madness or ecstasy.” Thus, the god Dionysus represents the loss of reason whereby a person is governed merely by emotion.
But this ancient Greek god has a counterpart: Apollo. Like his brother Dionysus, Apollo was fathered by Zeus, but this is where the similarities break down. “In literary contexts, Apollo represents harmony, order, and reason — characteristics contrasted with those of Dionysus, god of wine, who represents ecstasy and disorder,” the New World Encyclopedia says.
This dichotomy between Dionysus and Apollo was most famously popularized by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book, “The Birth of Tragedy,” in which Nietzsche argued that these two modes are necessary for a true and vital literary narrative. Put more simply, the Apollonian side, which is represented by the hero, faces off against a vague and confusing Dionysian world of which he seeks, if not to conquer, at least to make sense. In short, the goal of the hero is to overcome the chaos of the Dionysian world, not, as seems to be happening at the Paris Olympics, to throw down his sword and celebrate it.
I’ve written before about the illogicality of our time, about its chaos and amoral drift, and it’s impossible for me not to see this current debate in these terms. Put simply, I believe that, if we live in an Apollonian-Dionysian world, then the Dionysian side is winning, and this isn’t good.
But what does this mean exactly? It means that emotion and feeling are winning out, not just in arguments in the street, but in the hallowed halls of order, where reason was originally intended to prevail. The most obvious form of this is the political push for transgenderism, but we can also see it in other areas, such as the confusion in the Middle East and the uncertainties over Ukraine. There is the confusion over President Biden’s health, questions over who is really running the country, and bewilderment over what happened in Butler, Penn., several weeks ago, particularly regarding who oversaw things. Everywhere lately, confusion, even the embracing of it, seems to reign supreme, and the nod to Dionysus at the Olympics is just the most recent, and perhaps boldest and most symbolic, example of it.
But all is not lost. Although it seems that the Dionysian side of feeling and emotionalism has all but swallowed up the Apollonian side of reason and order so desperately needed in the West right now, standing there waiting on Mount Olympus is the ever-rational, light-bearing Apollo. That light is the light of reason, and if we follow it long enough, we might just find our way back to its very Creator.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at allen@kellerlumber.net.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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