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sort of “witches’ brew,”9 remind us of the “curious blending and duality in the emotions of the Dionysian revelers: that pain begets joy, that ecstasy may wring sounds of agony from us”10 in the same manner that Blake’s proverbial “Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.”11 Likewise, the Olympian gods are unable to suggest “asceticism, spirituality or duty”12 but rather, they embody an exuberance “in which all things, whether good or bad, are deified”13 concomitantly resonating with Blake’s “Exuberance is Beauty.”14 Moreover, thinking of King Midas who asks Silenus, Dionysus companion, “what is the most desirable of all things for man,”15 Silenus slices him with his all-too-early nihilistic wisdom “not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best ... is quickly to die.”16 Precisely because of the terror and meaningless of life and its potential to bloom into nihilistic thought, the Greeks, Nietzsche says, “created these Gods...as a transfiguring
9 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995
10 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 6
11 Blake, William. Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. xviii
12 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 8
13 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 8
14 Blake, William. Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. xx
15 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 8
16 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. 8
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