Apocalypse Now Series: Part II

I've Seen Horrors

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine’…” —Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve Seen Horrors

Part I introduces Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy and the Apollonian and Dionysian synthesis at the heart of Greek tragedy.

In Part II we examine the Wisdom of Silenus, dreams, and Willard’s tragic flaw.

We will refer back to these themes throughout the series as we analyze and interpret Apocalypse Now.

Apollo, Dionysus, and the Wisdom of Silenus

In Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche introduces the separate art worlds of Apollo and Dionysus—that of dreams and intoxication—and describes their artistic impulses. Apollo, god of light and dreams, represents beauty, harmony, logic, measure, and restraint. Apollo appeals to our rational faculties and sustains our notions of individuality. He is a protector, reinforcing invisible boundaries and shrouding the world in coherent illusions. The Apollonian is expressed in dreams, appearances, optics, and the plastic arts.

Dionysus, on the other hand, is a god of wine-making, fertility, religious ecstasy, and ritual madness. He is much older than Apollo and lurks in the ancient recesses of the mind and body, stirring our emotions, quickening our instincts, and coaxing our intuitions. As such, Dionysus is incomprehensible to our rational minds, and when we encounter him in the wild, we are violently awakened from the “sleep of empirical reality.” His trespasses against Apollo’s invisible boundaries induce awe, ecstasy, and terror, shattering our sense of individuality and returning us a primal unity. Ever mysterious, the Dionysian is usually expressed in music and ritual art.

The tension between Apollo and Dionysus is the heart of creation, and instead of endorsing one over the other, Nietzsche celebrates their unity in art. This is the miracle of Greek tragedy. By achieving a perfect balance between Apollo and Dionysus, tragedy enabled the Greeks to explore existential questions and emerge with a “fullness of joy” rather than despair. He declares this synthesis “the most important moment in the history of the Greek cult.”

Millennia have passed since the last tragic poet harnessed these energies, and we still rely on Aristotle to demystify the art form as it remains incomprehensible to modern eyes. But no matter how distant Greek tragedy seems to us today, we should not disregard it. For if Nietzsche is correct, the Greeks were more like us than we realize. They once stared into the abyss that now brings us to our knees. And they, too, grappled with the same deadly wisdom that seeps into our favorite books and films, traumatizing familiar characters like Benjamin Willard.

Perhaps we still have something to learn; our art today almost demands it.

The Wisdom of Silenus

In Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche flouts scholarly consensus and insists that the ancient Greek, like modern man, was no stranger to existential dread. And to illustrate the point, Nietzsche resurrects a tale from Aristotle’s long-lost dialogue, Eudemus:

“There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: ‘Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon.’ ”

This fragment of folk wisdom, known as the “Wisdom of Silenus,” tells us that the Greeks had tasted the bitter pessimism of a bleak and meaningless existence—long before the birth of Olympus. But whereas other civilizations sank into despair, never to rise again, the Greeks triumphed over the curse time and again. They achieved this by entreating the “shining one,” Apollo, and through the impulse to beauty, created an Olympian world, Homeric poetry, and Attic tragedy…