Dionysus and Apollo in Badenheim 1939: a Nietzschean interpretation of Aharon Appelfeld’s post-Holocaust work

Journal article

This article holds that it is possible to conceptualize Aharon Appelfeld’s experience of the Holocaust through the Nietzschean framework of the Dionysian/Apollonian dichotomy. To Nietzsche, in the Dionysian state, things appear to humans as they actually are, and existence is chaotic, meaningless, and terrifying. In the Apollonian state, on the contrary, order and meaning prevail. Tragic art allows the individual, via the intervention of the Apollonian, to embrace the Dionysian insight without succumbing to it. I argue that, in the novel Badenheim 1939, Appelfeld describes the Holocaust as an eruption and takeover of Dionysian violent and chaotic instincts, which fail to be mitigated by the Apollonian. Consequently, artistic expression acquires a fundamental role in the elaboration of the trauma of the Holocaust. Art becomes the Apollonian medium, which, similar to tragedy, enables survivors and readers to come in contact with the Dionysian experience of the Holocaust without surrendering to it.

Authors: Amati, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Journal: Prooftexts
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 93-114
• Publication date: 2025-01-30
• Acceptance date: 2023-05-15
• DOI: 10.2979/ptx.00009
• EISSN: 1086-3311
• ISSN: 0272-9601
• Language: English