FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Christ or Dionysus?

Rant Number 520    3 January 2013

On 3^rd January 1889 in Turin the sight of cab-driver beating his horse so upset a passer-by that he hugged the animal’s neck and then fainted. When he came to, the man had gone stark, raving mad. He claimed divinity, to control the weather, decide the political future of Europe and have the German emperor shot. That madman had been a philosopher. His name was Friedrich Nietzsche.

‘One day there will be linked with my name the recollection of something frightful, of a crisis like no other on earth’ wrote Nietzsche in Ecce Homo. Some have read that as prophesying Hitler but it is a shallow view. National-Socialist populism would have repelled the timid and solitary man who disdained the masses, the vulgar multitudes. Besides, the philosopher composed Ecce Homo, a sort of surreal autobiography, in an exalted, euphoric, almost omnipotent mood. Madness is incipient in a book with chapters like ‘Why I am so clever’, ‘Why I am so wise’ and ‘Why I write such good books’. (‘Why do I write such good Rants?’ the priest might occasionally wonder.) Nietzsche’s daring, vertiginous speculations had gone too far. His cult of the superman, as well as his anti-Christian fury and his assaults on ethics, attacks and violates the moral compact that binds human beings together. Nemesis followed. Nonetheless, much of his thinking is extraordinary insightful, indeed prophetic of our rotten times.

‘Have I been understood? Dionysus against the Crucified...’ The last line of Ecce Homo. The antithesis is between two figures, two rival world views, the former being Nietzsche’s, the latter that of Christ, albeit a peculiarly distorted Christ, almost a travesty. As to Dionysus, it was the Greek god of wine and luxuriant fertility. Usually portrayed as a handsome youth, many fables were told about him. In Cyprus, in the ancient Greek city of Pathos where I holidayed last week, I saw a colourful mosaic depicting the god campaigning triumphantly as far as India and the Ganges, with his army of Satyrs and adoring, frenetic females, the inspired Bacchantes. Festivals in honour of Dionysus were celebrated by young women only. They processed through forests and mountains, garlanded with ivy or snakes (!), dancing wildly, to the sound of the drum and the flute. Orgies, in fact. (‘Orgia’ in Greek means esoteric religious ceremonies.) After slaughtering goats and oxen, the drunken girls would tear them to pieces and eat them raw. Meant to recall Dionysus’ own killing and dismembering by the Titans – part of the myth. No wonder Professor Seyffert says Dionysus’ oldest representation was a phallus.

Is Dionysus truly a deity for our time? Many blab obsessively about banks and Mammon, the god of riches – fair enough – but they oddly neglect the present-day votaries of Dionysus. The young binge drinkers, druggies and sluts of either sex now a regular feature of English town centres at week-ends seem to indicate the ancient cult is alive and kicking. With a difference, though. The orgies of old were mysteries, conducted secretly, away from the public eye. The current ones have shed that restraint, judging by what you can view in the public square. A young couple were even having sex in a pub. No patron breathed a word, until they started smoking. Then people complained. Consoling there are some standards left.

Of course, today’s cult is somewhat degraded. Who reads the Greek classics these days? Inebriated or doped young revellers could not even spell ‘Dionysus’, let alone know the ancient, thrilling mysteries. Adapting a celebrated line by Karl Marx, paganism repeats itself, first as a tragedy, now as a comedy. An extremely crude, coarse and debased one. Dionysian rites gave rise to drama, the Greek theatre. So Dionysus was a god of masks because Greek actors wore a mask onstage. Their true face was hidden. By contrast, our young and old degenerates have dropped all masks. Shame has gone. Free, unrestrained copulation is all right and God save the ‘stick in the mud’ foolish enough to bleat a complaint. It is all in the open for all to see – and shudder. Such is the world democracy – the rule of the demos, the rabble – has created, Nietzsche might say.

Walter Kaufmann comments that the philosopher first contrasted Dionysus with Apollo, another god of the Greeks. But later Dionysus is set up in opposition to Christ. In The Will to Power, which I sedulously studied while in Cyprus, Nietzsche inveighs against the God on the Cross. The root problem for him is the meaning of suffering, ‘whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning’. Dionysus affirms life because life itself ‘creates torment, destruction, the will to annihilation.’ The Cross, on the other hand, constitutes ‘an objection to life’. Dionysus, even when cut to pieces by the Titans, is ‘a promise to life: it will be eternally reborn and will return from destruction’. Such is Nietzsche’s confusing myth of ‘eternal return’.

‘Life’ is actually a rather large affair. It contains many things. Suffering is one of them. Compassion is the right response to it but Nietzsche loathed compassion, hence he rejected Christ. Still, our philosopher suffered a great deal. Terrible migraines, stomach aches, convulsions that often left him helpless. (Ronald Hayman claims Nietzsche’s illness was syphilis, contracted as a student.) His glorification of life in its Dionysian aspects could perhaps be seen as a compensation for his ailments.

Contrary to popular prejudice, Nietzsche was not a misogynist. He even proposed to women, who turned him down. Yes, he stupidly makes his Zarathustra say: ‘Are you going to women? Don’t forget to take thy whip.’ Bertrand Russell, a notorious old goat, cruelly mocked him for that but in fact N. liked the fair sex and had many women friends.

Belief in the beyond and in any objective morality had become impossible, Nietzsche wrote. From where he is now – not in hell, no, probably in a mild philosophers’ purgatory – I trust the unhappy man has realised how tragically mistaken he was. And the God of compassion has forgiven him, I am sure.

Revd Frank Gelli