I said that the
religion of Dionysus was, for those who lived in it, a complete
religion, a complete sacred representation and interpretation of the
whole of life; and as, in his relation to the vine, he fills for them
the place of Demeter, is the life of the earth through the grape as
she through the grain, so, in this other phase of his being, in his
relation to the reed, he fills for them the place of Apollo; he is
the inherent cause of music and poetry; he inspires; he explains the
phenomena of enthusiasm, as distinguished by Plato in the Phaedrus,
the secrets of possession by a higher and more energetic spirit than
one's own, the gift of self-revelation, of passing out of oneself
through words, tones, gestures. A winged Dionysus, venerated at
Amyclae, was perhaps meant to represent him thus, as the god of
enthusiasm, of the rising up on those spiritual wings, of which also
we hear something in the Phaedrus of Plato.
The artists of the Renaissance occupied themselves much with the
person and the story of Dionysus; and Michelangelo, in a work still
remaining in Florence, in which he essayed [19] with success to
produce a thing which should pass with the critics for a piece of
ancient sculpture, has represented him in the fulness, as it seems,
of this enthusiasm, an image of delighted, entire surrender to
transporting dreams.
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