Nietzsche’s Apollo

Nietzsche’s account of Apollo and the Apollinian in The Birth of Tragedy contains underappreciated distortions. Apollinian moments in some tragedies are described as Dionysian. The Apollo seen in BT fails to interpret dreams (indeed this book renders dreams impervious to interpretation) and scarcely prophesies. Most important, Nietzsche’s vision of the Apollinian as surface and bounded plane image denies Greek uses of sculpture in just the opposite way, namely to effect communication between the visible and invisible realms. It is improbable to suppose that Nietzsche is ignorant of such a prominent aspect of Greek culture, or that he simply wants to keep his aesthetic categories neatly demarcated. More likely, he represses the communicative Apollo in a gesture against modern Europe’s nostalgic treatment of antiquity. Thus the familiar question of BT’s accuracy sheds unexpected light on the familiar question of its relationship to nostalgia.