The other images also tend to provide the car with natural attributes - such as a tongue.
In the final lines of the poem, there is a suggestion of Apollonian individualism. The protagonist overcomes the fear of the car and drives. This can be seen as an assertion of individuality over the Dionysian mystery or, on the other hand, acceptance and entrance into that mystery. The last lines of the poem tend to favor the latter interpretation.
The world's open gate, eternity
Hits me like a heart attack.
There is a sense of Dionysian ecstasy in these lines. The poet suggests the larger dimension of interconnected nature and reality. The last Line, "...like a heart attack" also suggests the death of individualism in the understanding of the Dionysian mystery
The second poem, a Display of Mackerel, by Mark Doty, also shows predominantly Dionysian characteristics. The sense of uniformity, inner cohesion and the feeling of being immersed in a single natural entity in the description of the fish clearly, indicate Dionysian symbolism. There is a consistent emphasis in the poem on integration and unity, rather than the Apollonian qualities of separateness and individualism.
The Dionysian interpretation of the poem is obvious from the opening lines.
They lie in parallel rows,
On ice, head to tail,
Each a foot of luminosity
Lines 1-3)
The words "parallel rows" leave no doubt of the unity of the arrangement of the fishes. However, the poem is careful to stress that this is not a bland and dull sort of uniformity. The last line of the first and other stanzas in the poem emphasizes the sense of light, radiance and "luminosity" that suggests a deeper and more energetic sense of life and mystery.
The central meaning and intent of the poem can be discerned from the following lines.
Nothing about them of individuality. Instead they're all exact expressions of the one soul, each a perfect fulfillment
Lines 16-21)
The above lines clearly contain Dionysian symbolism. The fish have no individuality but are rather subsumed and integrated into "one soul," which is the expression of "perfect fulfillment." These lines could be used as a fairly good description of the ecstatic Dionysian desire for unity with mysterious nature. The poem also asks a question that suggests an argument against the Apollonian desire for rational individuality.
I would you want
To be yourself only,
Unduplicatable, doomed
To be lost?
Lines 33- 36)
The poem ends with a positive sense of affirmation in the unity of the fish.
How happy they seem
Even on ice, to be together, selfless,
Which is the price of gleaming.
It should be remembered that these are fish that are dead or dying and the poem suggests that the unity of their being and their interconnection with nature overcomes or supersedes their individual deaths. From this perspective, the entire poem is an affirmation of the Dionysian view of life and nature.
" Communing with nature is the ultimate Dionysian act; the poet's subsequent writing of the communion is the Apollonian gesture that tempers this Dionysian indulgence. What each of these three poems has in common is the fact that they are based around images of human figures confronting the Dionysian motifs of descent and ascent via nature. Each poem represents a struggle between the Apollonian and Dionysian extremes, a struggle that is
The park is clearly preferable to a railway station, not only because it is more idyllic for the scene of an erotic encounter, but also because it is a Dionysian setting, preferable to the crude, structured Apollonian setting of a railway station. In a park, one may readily lose oneself in the eroticism of nature and become one with the natural environment. This is surely preferable to hanging around
" 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,"
Death in Venice In Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice, a writer goes to the title city in order to find inspiration and to ease his writer's block. During his time there, he discovers and then becomes obsessed with a young boy who he sees as incomparably beautiful. Instead of physically expressing his emotions for the boy, he forces the emotions to remain internal, something which eventually leads to his destruction.
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