Wallace Stevens の詩におけるディオニューソス的要素

Abstract

There has been a long history of Dionysian aspects, which was long suppressed by Apollonian ones in the western civilization. Dionysus, Thracian origin, is one of ancient Greek gods to which had been added many contradicted meanings since it was accepted by the Greeks. The god is also well known as Bachus, who introduced wine and its raising method to Greece. It is generally considered to represent an emotional nature of human beings, while Apollo is known as a symbol of reason, which dominated the western social/political world up to the end of the 19th century. In the age called modern, from 1885 to 1925,Friedrich Nietzsche, a German individual moralist rather than a systematic philosopher, made an epoch-making discovery that Dionysus could awaken unconsciousness long suppressed under reason to reject the "slave morality" for the new, heroic one. The ambiguity and unintelligibility of Wallace Stevens's poetry make us embarrassed whenever we read his poems. His steep and massive language barrier prevents the readers from proceeding to his poetic fluent mundo. But we know the place composed of a supreme fiction would give us an ultimate spiritual joy. Considering Nietzsche as his literary predecessor, we might find a path through Stevens' enigmatic works to the place we have never predicted and experienced.