 Having by this time absorbed the Schopenhauerian view that non-rational forces reside at the foundation of all creativity and of reality itself, and that these forces are artistically best conveyed in music, Nietzsche identifies a strongly instinctual, wild, amoral, “Dionysian” energy within pre-Socratic Greek culture as an essentially creative and healthy force, locating its prime expression in the tragic chorus, and constituting the very life of the tragedy. Surveying the history of Western culture since the time of the Greeks, Nietzsche laments over how this Dionysian, creative energy had been submerged and weakened as it became overshadowed by the “Apollonian” forces of logical order and stiff sobriety. He concludes that European culture since the time of Socrates has remained one-sidedly Apollonian, repressed, scientific, and relatively unhealthy. Wagner expressed similar sentiments in his 1849 essay “Art and Revolution,” as he described Western society as having been on the decline since the times of the ancient Greeks. 