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March 8, 2004
TT: Litmus test
Felix Salmon, writing at MemeFirst, had an interesting reaction to a recent posting in which, among other things, I discussed the difficulties inherent in drawing up Top Five lists:Terry Teachout, today, says that "it's usually not that hard to pick a One Best--absolute excellence is by definition self-evident". He goes on to give examples: "The greatest opera ever written," he says, "is The Marriage of Figaro". To which my immediate reaction is "That's not the greatest opera ever written – it's not even the greatest opera ever written by Mozart!"
Upon reflection, however, I think that Terry might have stumbled across yet another instance of the age-old Apollonian/Dionysian distinction. Most people think of this as the Beatles vs the Stones, but there are definitely advantages to using a single artist rather than two very different ones in order to force people into one camp rather than the other. Here's my theory, then: if you prefer Figaro to Don Giovanni, you're Apollonian; if you prefer Don Giovanni to Figaro, you're Dionysian.
Well, maybe. In fact, probably--but only up to a point, Lord Copper. Don Giovanni is definitely more Dionysian than Figaro, but surely all of Mozart's music, Don Giovanni included, is Apollonian by comparison with, say, Rigoletto or La Bohème or Yevgeny Onegin, not to mention the Beatles and the Stones.
Nevertheless, Felix's distinction is a reasonable one. The Marriage of Figaro is a comedy of reconciliation, one in which the natural order of the world is first threatened, then restored. It has the wholeness and perfection of Shakespearean comedy, as does (logically enough) Verdi's Falstaff, which is my other candidate for Best of All Possible Operas. So does George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments. So does all classical art--and comedy and classicism go hand in hand.
Alas, we live in a hopelessly Dionysian age, and thus are inclined to underrate classicism, just as too many of us too often take it for granted that "seriousness" demands unhappy endings, or misunderstand what Matisse meant when he said that he wanted his work to serve as "a kind of cerebral sedative as relaxing in its ways as a comfortable armchair," a remark as subtle and misleading as T.S. Eliot's observation that Henry James had "a mind so fine no idea could violate it." You have to think hard about both remarks to understand how profound they are, just as you have to look hard at Matisse's paintings to see how radically original they are.
As for the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy, I was writing about it just the other day in the chapter of my Balanchine book that describes (surprise) Apollo, Balanchine's first collaboration with Stravinsky and his first great ballet:
Apollo can also be seen as an "argument" for the superiority of Apollonian neoclassicism over Dionysian expressionism, a prime example of what the art critic Clement Greenberg had in mind when he advocated "the development of a bland, large, balanced, Apollonian art in which passion does not fill in the gaps left by the faulty or omitted application of theory but takes off from where the most advanced theory stops, and in which an intense detachment informs all."
Not surprisingly, I love that quote. But if you don't--if, indeed, it strikes you as an apt summing-up of the kind of modern art you like least--then you're sooooo Dionysian.
(And yes, I prefer the Beatles to the Stones.)
Posted March 8, 2004 12:01 PM
