Literature & Dramaturgy

Karl Horsky

Fiction as Apophantic Structure of Poetry over the Root in the Real World

Looking for Truth behind the poetic Veil of Fascination

An apophantically structured poetic work can have a dialectical structure? Does dialectic also exist in fiction? The dialectic as construction in dramatic and cinematographic works breaks the logic of the fictional world ?

The Dialectic is a complex structure of logical judgments. In both, the fictional and the real world, dialectical processes are at work mainly during  crisis, when the time "paints gray on gray".  According to the dialectic formula of HEGEL in his "Natural Law", "...the owl of Minerva only begins its flight with the approaching dusk."

NIETZSCHE reveald the dialectical polarity of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in his work "The Birth of Tragedy," (1872/1906) which led to his nomination as Professor of Philology in Basel. Federico FELLINI took up this polarity between Apollonian “sun-clearnis” and Dionysian “pleasure-subjetction” as a latent axis in his film "La Dolce Vita."(1960). The dialectical structure of the Greek classic tragedy shimmers through the film: crisis, catharsis, and “deus ex machina”. The Dionysian is introduced with the medieval symbolism of the “Fountain of Youth” as a night bath in the center of Rome and is continued in the degenerate parties of the final scenes as a crisis, leading to catharsis.

The “deus ex machina”, however, appears as early during the film's opening scene, carried by helicopter over the Vatican; its function is to announce an enigma, for in Greek tragedy it is only supposed, to “Deus” descend from the sky as the companion of catharsis after the crisis at the end of the tragedy, here at the film's end.

The viewer is tasked with finding the disguised "deus ex machina" - the proposition of this cinematic work of art - at the end of the film and solving the enigma.

The main character of the film is Marcello, portrayed by actor Marcello Mastroianni, a gossip columnist. He is incapable of forming serious relationships with any of the many women from the upper classes and the glamorous world, whom he meets through his work and in the night life. The "Bacchus culture" of "fountain-of-youth-substances”, legally accessible to the upper classes, and the "monetization of glamour" problematize the naturally "Apollonian-crystal-clear" relationships between the sexes in 1960s Rome, as depicted in the film.

The dialectical structure of the classical Greek tragedy served as the framework for the film; the apophantic architecture is obvious: the projective Dionysian culture leads to Marcello's personal crisis, the proposition accompanying the catharsis is hidden.