From Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy:

Euripides’ basic intention now becomes as clear as day to us: it is to eliminate from tragedy the primitive and pervasive Dionysian element, and to rebuild the drama on a foundation of non-Dionysian art, custom and philosophy.

Euripides himself, towards the end of his life, propounded the question of the value and significance of this tendency to his contemporaries in a myth. Has the Dionysian spirit any right at all to exist? Should it not, rather, be brutally uprooted from the Hellenic soil? Yes, it should, the poet tells us, if only it were possible, but the god Dionysus is too powerful: even the most intelligent opponent, like Pentheus in the “Bacchae,” is unexpectedly enchanted by him, and in his enchantment runs headlong to destruction. The opinion of the two old men in the play — Cadmus and Tiresias — seems to echo the opinion of the aged poet himself: that the cleverest individual cannot by his reasoning overturn an ancient popular tradition like the worship of Dionysus, and that it is the proper part of diplomacy in the face of miraculous powers to make at least a prudent show of sympathy; that it is even possible that the god may still take exception to such tepid interest and — as happened in the case of Cadmus — turn the diplomat into a dragon. We are told this by a poet who all his life had resisted Dionysus heroically, only to end his career with a glorification of his opponent and with suicide — like a man who throws himself from a tower in order to put an end to the unbearable sensation of vertigo. The Bacchae acknowledges the failure of Euripides’ dramatic intentions when, in fact, these had already succeeded: Dionysus had already been driven from the tragic stage by a daemonic power speaking through Euripides. For in a certain sense Euripides was but a mask, while the divinity which spoke through him was neither Dionysus nor Apollo but a brand new daemon called Socrates. Thenceforward the real antagonism was to be between Dionysian spirit and the Socratic, and tragedy was to perish in the conflict.

…

What, under the most auspicious conditions, could Euripides have hoped to effect in founding his tragedy on purely un-Dionysian elements? Once it was no longer begotten by music, in the mysterious Dionysian twilight, what form could drama conceivably take? Only that of the dramatized epic, an Apollinian form which precluded tragic effect. … The poet who writes dramatized narrative can no more become one with his images than can the epic rhapsodist. He too represents serene, wide-eyed contemplation gazing upon its images. The actor in such dramatized epic remains essentially a rhapsodist; the consecration of dream lies upon all his actions and prevents him from ever becoming in the full sense an actor.

But what relationship can be said to obtain between such an ideal Apollinian drama and the plays of Euripides? The same as obtains between the early solemn rhapsodist and that more recent variety described in Plato’s “Ion”: “When I say something sad my eyes fill with tears; if, however, what I say is terrible and ghastly, then my hair stands on end and my heart beats loudly.” Here there is no longer any trace of epic self forgetfulness, of the true rhapsodist’s cool detachment, who at the highest pitch of action, and especially then, becomes wholly illusion and delight in illusion. Euripides is the actor of the beating heart, with hair standing on end. He lays his dramatic plan as Socratic thinker and carries it out as passionate actor. So it happens that the Euripidean drama is at the same time cool and fiery, able alike to freeze and consume us. It cannot possibly achieve the Apollinian effects of the epic, while on the other hand it has severed all connection with the Dionysian mode; so that in order to have any impact at all it must seek out novel stimulants which are to be found neither in the Apollinian nor in the Dionysian realm. Those stimulants are, on the one hand, cold paradoxical ideas put in the place of Apollinian contemplation, and on the other fiery emotions put in the place of Dionysian transports. These last are splendidly realistic counterfeits, but neither ideas nor affects are infused with the spirit of true art.

Having now recognized that Euripides failed in founding the drama solely on Apollinian elements and that, instead, his un-Dionysian tendency led him towards inartistic naturalism, we are ready to deal with the phenomenon of aesthetic Socratism. Its supreme law may be stated as follows: “Whatever is to be beautiful must also be sensible” — a parallel to the Socratic notion that “knowledge alone makes men virtuous.” Armed with this canon, Euripides examined every aspect of drama — diction, character, dramatic structure, choral music — and made them fit his specifications. What in Euripidean, as compared with Sophoclean tragedy, has been so frequently censured as poetic lack and retrogression is actually the straight result of the poet’s incisive critical gifts, his audacious personality. The Euripidean prologue may seen to illustrate the efficacy of that rationalistic method. Nothing could be more at odds with our dramaturgic notions than the prologue in the drama of Euripides. To have a character appear at the beginning of the play, tell us who he is, what preceded the action, what has happened so far, even what is about to happen in the course of the play — a modern writer for the theater would reject all this as a wanton and unpardonable dismissal of the element of suspense. Now that everyone knows what is going to happen, who will wait to see it happen? Especially since, in this case, the relation is by no means that of a prophetic dream to a later event. But Euripides reasoned quite otherwise. According to him, the effect of tragedy never resided in epic suspense, in a teasing uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. It resided, rather, in those great scenes of lyrical rhetoric in which the passion and dialectic of the protagonist reached heights of eloquence. Everything portended pathos, not action. Whatever did not portend pathos was seen as objectionable. The greatest obstacle to the spectator’s most intimate participation in those scenes would be any missing link in the antecedent action: so long as the spectator had to conjecture what this or that figure represented, from whence arose this or that conflict of inclinations and intentions, he could not fully participate in the doings and sufferings of the protagonists, feel with them and fear with them. The tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles had used the subtlest devices to furnish the spectator in the early scenes, and as if by chance, with all the necessary information. They had shown an admirable skill in disguising the necessary structural features and making them seem accidental. All the same, Euripides thought he noticed that during those early scenes the spectators were in a peculiar state of unrest — so concerned with figuring out the antecedents of the story that the beauty and pathos of the exposition were lost on them. For this reason he introduced a prologue even before the exposition, and put it into the mouth of a speaker who would command absolute trust… Between the epic prologue and epilogue stretched the dramatic-lyrical present, the actual “drama.”

As a poet, then, Euripides was principally concerned with rendering his conscious perceptions, and it is this which gives him his position of importance in the history of Greek art.

With regard to his poetic procedure, which was both critical and creative, he must often have felt that he was applying to drama the opening words of Anaxagoras’ treatise: “In the beginning all things were mixed together; then reason came and introduced order.” And even as Anaxagoras, with his concept of “Nous,” [“mind,” “reason”] seems like the first sober philosopher in a company of drunkards, so Euripides may have appeared to himself as the first rational maker of tragedy. Everything was mixed together in a chaotic stew so long as Nous, the sole principle of universal order, remained excluded from the creative act. That’s how Euripides must have thought about it; that’s how he, the first “sober” poet must have passed sentence on the “drunken” poets. Euripides would never have endorsed Sophocles’ statement about Aeschylus — that this poet was doing the right thing, but unconsciously; instead he would have claimed that  Aeschylus, because he created unconsciously, did what was wrong. Even the divine Plato speaks of the creative power of the poet for the most part ironically and as being on a level with the gifts of the soothsayer and interpreter of dreams, since according to the traditional conception the poet is unable to write until reason and conscious control have deserted him. Euripides set out, as Plato was to do, to show the world the opposite of the “irrational” poet; his aesthetic axiom, “whatever is to be beautiful must be conscious” is strictly parallel to the Socratic “whatever is to be good must be conscious.” We can hardly go wrong then in calling Euripides the poet of aesthetic Socratism. But Socrates was precisely that other spectator, incapable of understanding the older tragedy and therefore scorning it, and it was in his company that Euripides dared to usher in a new era of poetic activity. If the old tragedy was wrecked’ aesthetic Socratism is to blame, and to the extent that the target of the innovators was the Dionysian principle of the older art we may call Socrates the god’s chief opponent, the new Orpheus who, though destined to be torn to pieces by the maenads of Athenian judgment, succeeded in putting the overmastering god to flight. The latter, as before, when he fled from Lycurgus, king of the Edoni, took refuge in the depths of the sea; that is to say, in the flood of a mystery cult that was soon to encompass the world.

Wikipedia’s entry on Lycurgus of Thrace:

Lycurgus (also Lykurgos, Lykourgos) was a king of the Edoni in Thrace, and the son of Dryas, the “oak” (Iliad vi). He banned the cult of Dionysus. When Lycurgus heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he imprisoned Dionysus’ followers, the Maenads. Dionysus fled, taking refuge with Thetis the sea nymph. Dionysus then sent a drought to Thrace.

Going insane, Lycurgus mistook his son for a mature trunk of ivy, which is holy to Dionysus, and killed him, pruning away his nose and ears, fingers and toes. Dionysus decreed that the land would stay dry and barren as long as Lycurgus was left unpunished for his injustice, so his people had him dismembered by wild horses. With Lycurgus dead, Dionysus lifted the curse.

In some versions the story of Lycurgus and his punishment by Dionysus is placed in Arabia rather than in Thrace. The tragedian Aeschylus, in a lost play, depicted Lycurgus as a beer-drinker and hence a natural opponent of the wine god: Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 447c (Dalby 2005, pp. 65-71, 153). There is a further reference to Lycurgus in Sophocles’ Antigone in the Chorus’ ode after Antigone is taken away (960 in the Greek Text).

In Homer’s Iliad, an older source than Aeschylus, Dryas is not the son of Lycurgus, but the father, and Lycurgus’ punishment for his disrespect towards the gods, particularly Dionysus, is blindness inflicted by Zeus followed not long after by death (Iliad Book 6.130-140).

*

A passage from Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, “What German’s Lack”:

How much disgruntled heaviness, lameness, dampness, dressing gown–how much beer there is in the German intelligence! How is it at all possible that young men who dedicate their lives to the most spiritual goals do not feel the first instinct of spirituality, the spirit’s instinct of self-preservation–and drink beer? … The alcoholism of young scholars is perhaps no question mark concerning their scholarliness–without spirit one can still be a great scholar–but in every other respect it remains a problem.– Where would one not find the gentle degeneration which beer produces in the spirit! Once, in a case that has almost become famous, I put my finger on such a degeneration–the degeneration of our number-one German free spirit, the clever David Strauss, into the author of a beer-bench gospel and “new faith” … It was not for nothing that he had made his vow to the “fair brunette” — in verse–loyalty unto death …

*

Some of the most striking examples of intellectual stuntedness I see among even the quickest and cleverest businessmen:

• An extreme aversion to unpredictability coupled with an equally extreme overvaluation of predictability.
• A tendency toward reductionism. Wholes are constituted of parts. Parts are the fundamental elements. Gestalt reactions are often mistrusted and picked apart into cognizable bits.
• Equating objectivity with reality. What can be observed dispassionately, analyzed and measured is automatically accorded more validity than that which is experienced as real yet defies measurement. Until a reality is made measurable and given the appearance of objectivity, they are treated as “subjective” nonrealities, powerless imaginings.
• An incapacity to conceive of brand as anything other than a sentimental complement to the objective rationality of business strategy. And brand is also confused with the attempts to describe, define or systematize the brand. The notion that a brand can exist in a manner that is only reflected in objectivity sounds really vague and suspicious, or worse, purely subjective.
• A failure to imagine the possibility things can be perceived differently than how they appear at first glance. Or, rather, at an incredulous first glance, followed by a completely credulous second glance. First glances are always refuted by subsequent analysis. We may love the gestalt something at first as a gestalt and even feel repelled by the idea of scrutinizing it, but the clever, thorough and detail-attentive businessman resists such subjective temptations. He vivisects the ideas and demands that each organ stand alone and defend itself against every conceivable attack. Sure enough, this test always reveals fatal weaknesses. Each organ is then re-crafted out of tougher materials, reassembled, oiled and cranked into stiff, unstoppable motion.

Am I being unfair?

*

Too many people confuse maturity with disillusionment. The potential our youthful selves felt, which we expected to just happen, doesn’t just happen. To conclude from this that the potential was illusory — that because it did not actualize under its own mysterious forces, that the potential never really existed — is a premature and cursory interpretation.

I have never understood why people put fate or destiny or the will of God at a distance from themselves, as if the thesis “it will happen solely through my own will” can only be met with an antithetical “it will happen entirely apart from my will.” What about “it will happen only if people participate in something greater than any single person to bring it about”? Certainly destiny is not confined to the human will, but equally certainly it involves human wills. Maybe when something is destined to happen, that means people were destined to actively work to bring it about.