Dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian

Dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian

Rather than conceiving of the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in poetic works as based on a dichotomy, it is vital to recognize that both Apollonian and Dionysian elements come together in the process of forging poetic works. They are thus interdependent and inseparable. While this process is more evident in some poems than others, we will narrow our discussion of the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy to two 20th century poems - Frank O'Hara's "Homosexuality" and Stephen Dobyns's "Counterparts" - to show how a dichotomous conception of Apollo and Dionysus is rather limiting from the standpoint of literary analysis. Instead, one must take both Apollonian and Dionysian aspects into consideration when attempting to understand any self-contained work of art. In fact, only by considering the intertwining of Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies may we adequately grasp a poet's mythical conception of the universe.

At first glance, O'Hara's poem seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of homosexuality. As one penetrates below the surface of the poem, however, it becomes readily obvious that, without making any explicit references to homosexual practices, "Homosexuality" is in fact an homage to the Dionysian celebration of life that has traditionally been an integral part of the gay lifestyle. Dionysus has traditionally been aligned with the idea of joyful excess, drunken revelry, and, in art and literature, formlessness. The speaker in the poem feels unable to contain his own soul, and so he lets it drift off and intends to follow it on its unpredictable journey:

The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;

so I pull the shadows around me like a puff and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment of a very long opera, and then we are off!

A without reproach and without hope that our delicate feet will touch the earth again, let alone "very soon."

The "soul" of the poem is in fact given agency via the speaker's voice. It is this imposition of form on to the apparently chaotic realm that the poem inhabits that refers to the Apollonian temperament of the poem. for, as the next line in the poem asserts in mock scientific terms: "It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate." The Dionysian is ultimately dependent on the Apollonian for making sense of emotions that would otherwise remain indecipherable were it not for the imposition or evocation of form from amongst the chaos. As the speaker of the poem concludes, " 'It's a summer day, / and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."

Dobyns's poem, at first glance, seems to be built on the exact opposite terrain. With a remarkably more somber tone, "Counterparts" appears to exemplify the Apollonian qualities of clarity, restraint, and sobriety in the construction of a work of art that is meant to mirror an occurrence in the real world and thus formulate an experience through the guise of art, via form. "This is a country of smaller wars," the speaker tells us:

You have your office and ranch house, your foreign car

And family. You are still not necessary. I see

Your face in a photograph from the war, surrounded

By soldiers convinced by their smiles. [...]

But in this poem, which seems to be in homage to someone who the speaker has lost in a war, the illogical, wild whims of nature continuously interfere with the speaker's attempts at making sense of his lost, thus pointing to the Dionysian motif of the wholeness of existence, the fact that all boundaries separating our categorical notions of nature, life, and death are ultimately interconnected. This is why the speaker's body, emotions, and interactions with/observations of the natural world continue to intersect throughout the course of the poem:

All things desire

To be surrounded by stone. There is rain on my hands.

There is the steady thud of birds falling into hills

Sloping with sheep. We memorize the art of decay.

A swift and pervading gray slips through my fingers,

Cloud covered and accustomed to war. A bone