Maenads of Modernity
Bacchanalia, Opus of All Our Joys, Open Ye Wide
We know not of what has bitten us
Only that to a beat may we abide,
so damn us or madden us,
Dance we shall, regardless.
“I could only believe in a God that could dance.”
The struggle between reason and madness is written by Nietzsche as an expression of two Hellenic Gods; Apollo, God of Light and Reason, patron of the arts, and Dionysos, God of Wine and Madness, patron of passions. Hesiod nor Homer writes any conflict between the two in their mythologies – indeed, the stories of the two seemingly opposing forces rarely intertwine. Apollo was perpetually the ideal youth, while Dionysos morphed over time — first as a horned, bearded man of wildness, and as he became Bacchus and won the hearts of all Hellas, a youth in the visage of Apollo himself.
But in the plane of their worshippers, whether accidental or not, they became pontifical of the struggle within every single person. Manicheaism, the early rival of Christianity, postulated a similar dichotomy between light and dark. But there is one great difference; this battle was, and is, not between dark and the light, or the heavenly and carnal, but between two Gods of likeness power. And, for Nietzsche, these were the Gods that interested him the most: not the authoritative figure that all goodness derives, like the Abrahamic God that inspired fear and dedication beyond al things, but the Gods of the Pantheon that overlooked the vineyard – Gods who could Dance.
In the Tsonga enclaves outside Maputo; along the rich banks of the Anambra; in the dim bars of Messolonghi; dancing is universal.
A young woman takes a deep breath before approaching the roar of lights upon her stage - she must step carefully unless she wants to plunge herself into madness.
A young man takes a swig of his Clontarf whisky before throwing his dress jacket into the wilds - he must step bravely unless he wants to give into reason.
For one and each, the threat of madness is terrifying: the word terror comes from terrere, ‘to fill with fear.’ Such things are not feared by everyone, however. It soon became terrific from the mouths of those less terrified.
Awe, as one succumbs to the feelings that bubble beneath circumstance, is equally to be feared, but awe-inspiring to those who venerated their God.
“The madness which is called Dionysus is no sickness, no debility in life, but a companion of life at its healthiest. It is the tumult which erupts from its innermost recesses when they mature and force their way to the surface. It is the madness inherent in the womb of the mother. This attends all moments of creation, constantly changes ordered existence into chaos, and ushers in primal salvation and primal pain—and in both, the primal wildness of being.”
Walter Otto, Dionysos: Myth and Cult
Awe belongs to both Apollo and Dionysos, but one inspires madness while the other inspires reason.
For the Socratic philosophers and Stoics, who used deduction to understand the rules of their world, Apollo was the shining example – for the Asechylians and Homerics, the fathers of tragedy and history, Dionysos was the patron of their craft, so much so that contemporary sources speak of the God himself visiting Aeschylus and inspiring his first tragedy. Dualities define the Greek thinkers and artists as much as they do to their modern descendants.
Dionysos and Apollo were not the Gods of ecstasy alone; Apollo was always enraptured in heavenly principles and Dionysos always victim to the wilderness. Their virtues became their vices.
Make it stand out.
For when one stands in awe of something, even their creator, they are sure to look for it elsewhere. And they often find it in the awesome or awful. Everywhere, all and each, people given into their bravery to both overcome and succumb to madness - art is the expression of this silent struggle.
For when one stands in awe of something, even their creator, they are sure to look for it elsewhere. And they often find it in the awesome or awful. Everywhere, all and each, people given into their bravery to both overcome and succumb to madness - art is the expression of this silent struggle.
Order things without, meaning can be lost entirely. There are no parts to sum.
Play too carefully around the edge, and one might just be pulled in: swim too close to the undertow …
And risk being subsumed.
Watch each delicate petal, without end or beginning, find rigidity and finality. To what on the Earth does one give this?
“The things that Picasso and I said to one another during those years will never be said again, and even if they were, no one would understand them anymore. It was like being roped together on a mountain.” - Georges Braque
A blind man gives into madness and paints the most beautiful, disordered garden that anyone had ever seen. In his joy, he has coloured the trees blue and the sky green - he felt the pigments on his fingers and felt they best matched each other this way. When children study his work, a century later, they bemoan the insincerity of it - they don’t even know he was blind, the structuralists say. What’s so special about this one?
A seeing woman gives into reason and paints the most ordered, naturalist, landscape that captures Denis Dutton’s ethics, who she has studied extensively, perfectly.
Expertise or virtuosity. Humans cultivate, recognize, and admire technical artistic skills.
Nonutilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art's sake, and do not demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.
Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules of composition that place them in a recognizable style.
Criticism. People make a point of judging, appreciating, and interpreting works of art.
Imitation. With a few important exceptions like abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.
Special focus. Art is set aside from ordinary life and made a dramatic focus of experience.
She is so happy with the appraisal at her local art museum that she barely checks the street – a car runs her down, and she loses all her memory of the past year. When she awakes, she casts her eyes upon the piece and the cheque in her hands. What do they say, the structuralists ask, what did you mean by this? She shakes her head. It must have been an accusation against corporate power, she reckons, just as the radio in her hospital room stops playing its anti-establishment adverts. They cheer at her bravery.
Johann and Liza awake from their stupor, checking their chickens and pulling the leathers over their wares - their mother said it might rain today - and check in to see how their uncle Joachim has been recovering. When they find him gone, they fear the worst.
Quickly, Liza urges, call the mayor, I told you the Schmitt’s wanted his homestead, I told you! Their hearts soar when they see he’s fine – he’s more than fine, really. He’s dancing.
Did he mean to get chanced by these charlatans, Johann shouts, just as he loses sight of Liza. She’s happy, and she joins in the dancing: there has to be a dozen of them. Johann knows the lady that guides them about the town, leaping to imaginary tunes: Lady Troffea.
By the end of the day, they’ll be dancing with the crowds, too; by the end of the day, half of the village will have joined in. And when the priests and the doctors arrive, they will see the dancing as madness, and hospitalise and confirm those who fall from sore ankles and broken feet. Some will breath their last breaths in the midst of a flurry of dancing. Their families don’t get the chance to mourn; they’re dancing, too.
Naïve art is that which has been made without outside structure or tutoring. A horse paints a picture with its mouth, but it does so for treats — this is not naïve art. An old woman, for no reason at all, paints an image from her youth while reminiscing, despite never being trained with a brush — this is naive art.
Folk art is that which is conducted inside a conclave of culture, and therefore not receptive to outside influences. Outsider art is just as simple as art done by those who have sought to teach themselves with sources but without a trained individual. To spin a phrase not original, these people ‘paint like no one’s watching.’
And for many, this will always be the case and intention. Primitivists are those who are ‘watched’ but desire not to be, so their work harkens back to a simpler, more liberating time without the shackles of structure and form.
Even the content is not free from speculation and debate for the structured artist: the very nature of film, structured or not, rests on the philosophy of it. Many artists seek to impart some wisdom from their life into their work, naturally. In narrative, there must be some moral victory or choice – the harder the choice, the wiser the hero becomes, and the more wisdom needed on the artist’s part to have engineered the narrative in the first place.
For the modern artist, the presence of film is overpowering - advertisements, social media and stories are transferred through the moving image above all else. If Dionysos was worshipped today, he might come to filmmakers and screen-actors rather than playwrights. Now, we all bare witness to the filmed stage.
Wisdom, if viewed in the a posteriori fashion, must come from experience. And if wisdom is the sum of experiences, then film, which details experience magnificently, should be at home within the philosopher: madness or otherwise. However, Christopher Falzon puts the dichotomy at work in the medium beautifully:
“The idea of philosophy through film most clearly contrasts with the view that film has nothing to do with philosophy; that film is in effect philosophy’s ‘bad other’, containing all that is foreign or dubious from philosophy’s point of view. Along these lines it might be argued that philosophy is the realm of reflection and debate, whereas film is restricted to experience and action;”
Be careful – the film critic is rarely to let go of their superstition so easily. For the two extremes – film as unordered action, or ordered experiential wisdom – there exist supporters. The propagation of the medium across every facet of society, from advertisement to cinema, gives weight to a part of life that does not acquiesce without a fight.
Pictures that move are present as vessels for academia the world over. The difference between that which is consumed, the popular, and that which is elevated, the intellectual, gives an identity crisis to the philosopher in this regard. To reconcile these different facets of film comes the observer: whether, as Sinnerbrink believes, they resist the philosophic proposition, or, like Mulhall, are ‘philosophy in action.’
There is little consensus, as power continues to rest in the observer’s hands, not the maker. Imagine one reads Plato and, because he only describes experience, the reader has no clear idea of the argument he seeks to make, and yet insists on its philosophical merit: madness reigns.
Plato’s Symposium by Anselm Feuerbach. For the Platonics, the symposium represented the gathering of the greatest minds in Athens and the frivolities of civilisation. For the Greeks as a whole, many viewed it as decadence — Plato’s written work of the same name displays jovial name-calling and masterful state-crafting in the same breath. In the thick of flesh and wine, it’s hard to tell who doesn’t belong.
And yet the artist of modernity ponders and postulates; they yearn and burn the midnight candle; they study and discuss and talk; they meander through triviality and circumstance with tight lips; they soar heights alone and plummet upon presentation; they beg to pick masters’ minds and prostrate themselves before the mob. One way is far more successful than the other, the unordered and the ordered, but one does not supersede the other.
Many naive singers may be tutored painters. Many naive actors may be tutored writers. Only so many elements of a person are sharp by tool – the others are sharpened by the wind and rain only. No one can be completely un-naive, but so many are truly naïve.
Here strides madness - feet far apart and shoulders held back - it wears last year’s suit like it always fit. For any who tutored, the art is the madness tamed. Some are so often shackled by the structure of things that they forget what things are of themselves - some have no respect for structure, and things are cast about the place. If only there was one answer, one truth, one expression; it would make artists all the more poorer.
And yet the hunt for that universal expression drives the artist further and further into the arms of madness, even if they say they chase structure and form. The only things ever worth reasonably talking about are things that inspire madness. Therefore, when you speak madly, it is worth realising that there is everything to gain by seeing the topic as truly, implacably, reasonable.
What better example than dancing? An art of expression, imitation, interpretation, and sharp ridicule and practice; on ice, on wood, on tarmac, lines are drawn by arms and legs and statements are written by spins and twirls. For the vast majority, dancing is something to be undertaken purely for its own gain. It is soothing to the soul.
In that moment, set to the right music, a body becomes something more, alone or surrounded by its kind: it transforms into energy, that snaps and bends and flows and leaps, matching the rhythm of something completely unseen. Some look ridiculous in this ritual - some simply look happy - while others achieve praise and adulation. Only a certain rhythm of song can be interpreted as music worthy of dance, according to studies done of babies.
To dance well is a skill most lauded, as it transforms the stationary into the transitory. Scientists believe only a few animals can dance - not even our closest relatives in the ape family – and yet every human can.
It’s like tasting a meal that you can never eat - it’s served well, and the steam has that full aroma, and as it’s passed round patrons, you are left looking dull with cutlery in both hands. Professional dancing can be intoxicating and highly lauded; it can, however, reduce the madness of dancing to the banality of regulation. Such words like ‘illegal’ can suddenly have weight when, by consensus, certain moves become unaccepted in some forms. In film, art and writing, some would call it ‘subversion.’ And for the lonely dancer, entranced in the music to which they will not let anyone, they could never let themselves be overcome by madness - madness, in their terms, being to dance in front of your peers. And yet the real meaning of madness eludes once again - what does it mean to the lonely dancer, and to the structured artist?
From music to paintings and drawings, art inspires and contracts madness across the world.
The human mind is something like a car engine – complicated, powerful and in need of constant upkeep. For a car that is meant to travel from one place to the other, one might believe the most efficient car is the one able to go the fastest - but in the world in which people who drive cars live, roads bend and turn and meander. The straightest roads connect to delicate branches. The most efficient car isn’t the fastest; it’s the best equipped to accelerate and decelerate. It is best to imagine this like the most efficient mind: not the one best equipped for the drags, but one that can best adapt to the road ahead. If that is the sane mind …
Madness is putting the pedal to the floor.
The consequence of doing this in real life needs no statement: however, in the mind, the roads are one’s own ego, the apparatus of the society in which one has been raised. Madness tears at the roundabouts, hard-shoulders, on-ramps of modern society. Madness shoots through cement and stone and brick. Madness destroys, reduces and pulverizes the walls of the mind that separate ‘that’ from ‘this.’ A hand becomes an elbow that becomes a shoulder that rotates and flows like water; one has to close their eyes to really, truly, feel it. Many people have trouble turning their vehicle in their mind past the legal speed limit - they need an additional nitro, and they might find it in alcohol or other substances. For many, this kick-starts the engine that tears at the walls of their internal world.
However, these enhancers can never give a person what isn’t already inside of them. In a world of purpose-driven action and sensibility and circumstance, like the monotony of retail labour or spreadsheet check-ins, those restrictions of what can and can’t be done are only constraints - they aren’t the foundations of your internal world. They are only the walls and the roofs; the tip of the iceberg. Everything destroyed can be rebuilt; that is, after all, the joy of destruction. It is only destroying things that do not belong to you that evil lies — the rest is as necessary as cleaning your own room.
And thus, the lonely dancer understands madness. What can become the destruction of regulation and conformity is also the ingredient of evil – destroying that which does not belong to you. And, for some, this is a good a reason as any to deny it, vilify it, repress it.
But one does not hate the sun for being blinding; they bask in his warmth, retreat to the shade when too keenly shone, and repair themselves for another day in the light tomorrow. If the sun could be somehow removed, plucked from his seat, how many people would want to find some less complicated alternative? This is Nietszche’s amor fati: a love of one’s inescapable fate.
For the structured artist, madness is the pursuit of expression in violation of order. For example, poetry and the ways it is experienced: should it be read, or read aloud?
Reading poetry aloud allows one to listen to the rhythm and pattern of the words perfectly, as well as the skill of rhetoric and casing that can be explored by the speaker. But it is also tyrannical, a top-down approach to an artform that is otherwise very personal. You can lead a person to a poem, but you can’t make them think.
Approach poetry like watching a film, one can lose their own voice: watch a film like reading poetry, and one will lose a forest for the trees. And yet one can do both with ease, and not suffer for it; in fact, both can discover entirely new emotional experiences. For the object and the observer, nonetheless, this may very well be madness.
What does this say about the rules, conventions and attitudes that the artist has been taught?
What would drive someone to write something that, by itself, is lonely in its conversation? A very long time ago, people experimenting with literacy, when that was the cutting-edge of art, suffered ridicule for the dangers of the written word: what if one just forgets how to speak?
They, too, must have felt mad for continuing their endeavours - for confiding in paper rather than people. Every piece is a message-in-a-bottle, sent in the vague, curious hope that it’ll land on a distant shore where they speak a different language, and they’ll still understand the content. They build a house they’ll never live in. The sake of the artist is the little victory and the endless defeat – one where the artist keeps reinterpreting and expressing the world in which they live, and are always left with more water in the boat than before. And how, for all the wisdom in the world, there is only one person capable of interpreting the myopia of modernity into something more focused: you.
But listen to their stories, from one page to the next, and watch the painter their brush, from one stroke to the next, and see the dancer their dance, from one step to the next: then you’ll see the madness they inhabit, and perhaps, then, you’ll be able to find that fuel in your heart that may have been repressed by modern idolatry — that madness.
So what is it, then? What is your madness?
Sources:
https://academic.oup.com/book/25712/chapter-abstract/193199519?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
https://academyofideas.com/2017/03/nietzsche-and-dionysus/
https://iep.utm.edu/phi-film/
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/04/01/297686709/the-list-of-animals-who-can-truly-really-dance-is-very-short-who-s-on-it
http://www.actforlibraries.org/dance-and-impacts-on-culture/
https://www.thecollector.com/nietzsche-philosophy-apollonian-dionysian/
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/georges-braque-803
https://briefly.co.za/30548-tsonga-culture-people-language-music-food-traditional-attire.html
https://www.carnaval.com/greece/dance/
https://www.britannica.com/art/tarantella