Camille Paglia Quote

The Orestia shows that society is a defense against nature. Everything intelligible — institutions, objects, persons, ideas — is the result of Apollonian clarification, adjudication, and action. Western politics, science, psychology and art are creations of arrogant Apollo. Through every century, winning or losing, western mind has struggled to keep nature at bay. The Orestia's sexist transition from matriarchy to patriarchy records the rebellion every imagination must make against nature. Without that rebellion, we as a species are condemned to regression or stasis. Even rebelling, we cannot get far. But vying with fate is godlike.

p. 101 - Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)