Abstract
Sociohistorical influences, such as the Vietnam War and 9/11, strongly stimulate the creative processes of dialectics within different epochs. In conjunction, diametrically opposed forms of human inventiveness, in rationalism and rapture, are dialectically inspired in times of human calamity. However, the historical and phenomenological progressions of these resurgent eras of profound creativity are not explicit. Friedrich Nietzsche’s formative work The Birth of Tragedy gives form to both sides of these radicalized dialectical exchanges through the diametrically opposed Greek art deities Dionysus and Apollo, and isolates their historically and phenomenologically creative evolutions within Greek Attic tragedies. The contemporary human catastrophes of the Vietnam War and 9/11 provide the conceptual arenas to isolate Nietzsche’s historical and phenomenological progressions of tragedy and creativity in “real world tragic experiences.” Conclusively, the modalities of Dionysus and Apollo resurface in these two distinct eras of American history to give form to a radicalized dialectical exchange of creativity in the process of tragic unfolding.