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Nietzsche's Apollonian And Dionysian

Apollonian and Dionysian, terms for the twin principles which the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche detected in Greek civilization in his early work Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872). Nietzsche was challenging the usual view of Greek culture as ordered and serene, emphasizing instead the irrational element of frenzy found in the rites of Dionysus (the god of intoxication known to the Romans as Bacchus). He associated the Apollonian tendency with the instinct for form, beauty, moderation, and symmetry, best expressed in Greek sculpture, while the Dionysian (or Dionysiac) instinct was one of irrationality, violence, and exuberance, found in music. This opposition has some resemblance to that between classicism and Romanticism. In Nietzsche's theory of drama, the Apollonian (in dialogue) and the Dionysian (in choric song) are combined in early Greek tragedy, but then split apart in the work of Euripides; he hoped at first that Wagner's operas would reunite them.

In this essay I will relate my self-portrait called "Always a Woman" to Nietzsche's philosophy of the poles of "Apollonian and Dionysian”, the philosophical dichotomy between free will and primal nature. In relation to Nietzsche, Wikipedia describes Apollonian and Dionysian as:
"Apollo (Apollonian): the dream state or the wish to create order, principium individuationis (principle of individuation), plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation.

Dionysus (Dionysian): chaos, intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction."...