How does Greek Tragedy relate to this?

Question

How does Greek Tragedy relate to Apollonian and the Dionysian? This is from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy.

Answer 1

its all greek  to me

Answer 2

Apollonian is the light and order where Dionysian is dark and chaos.

It relates to the two gods Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo the god of the sun and Dionysus the god of wine and intoxication.

Answer 3

I wrote a paper on the Apollonian and the Dionysian for my Nietzsche class, actually. All citations are from "The Basic Writings of Nietzsche" Trans. Walter Kaufmann:

If we think of aesthetics as a spectrum, not much unlike the conservative to liberal scale for politics, we would have the Apollonian at one end and the Dionysian at the other. They are best thought of as separate realms first- where the Apolloninan is a realm of dreams and the Dionysian is a realm of intoxication (Nietzsche 33). Dreams are the “illusions of illusions,” and thus, the Apollonian artist is rightfully preoccupied with appearances and form. The Apollonian artist veils reality with the clearer, more beautiful, and more comprehendible concept of dreams, but dreams are still mere shadows of reality (66). They use dreams to create the illusion that there is a single image of the world- that there is a reality, but their art still only depicts a dream of reality (128). Reality is truly just “mere appearance” and it is dreams that “train the aesthetic man for life” (34). 
On our scale, the Dionysian falls at the opposite end. If the Apolloninan’s dream realm is concerned with appearances, the Dionysian realm of intoxication is concerned with feeling, passion, and ecstasy(34). Through the Dionysian breaks the floodgate of extreme and excess emotions: pleasure and grief pour out simultaneously (46). Here we find the source of frenzy and passion that lies completely unbounded by reason (34). It is only through this frenzy and passion that humanity can find oneness with nature. Our hearts are set free through emotion and thereby we truly break through the shackles of life (37). It is through these extreme passions known as the Dionysian that allow us to break the illusions set up for us by Apollonian, but through the illusions we can also weaken the intoxication (99).


The pieces of art that are more Apollonian hold true to the tradition with appearances: typically the best manifestations of the Apollonian are seen in the plastic arts and the epic poem (Nietzsche 34, 50). It is easy to see how the plastic arts are preoccupied with appearances, but the idea of the epic poet’s preoccupation with appearance is a little more abstract. Language creates an image and this is what the true poet does- he crafts an illusion by using words (63). The Dionysian, on the other hand, is best displayed in music (40).  To attempt to approach the Dionysian, is to “transform Beethoven’s ‘Hymn to Joy’ into a painting (37).” Then again, there is no true art that is purely Apollonian or purely Dionysian.  Think of the lyricist. The “I” of the lyricist is a lie- for no words that the lyricist could place to the melody truly add anything that was not only there and he, in a sense, hands over his subjectivity in the creative process (48-49, 55). Music creates for itself its own lyrics. (53) Language will never truly be able to convey the truest meaning in music, the truest sense of the Dionysian (55). The lyricist creates an Apollonian image to serve as, instead of a substitute, an accompaniment to the Dionysian. ”Apollo could not live without Dionysus! (46)” Nietzsche proclaims, but in the same right, neither can Dionysus live without Apollo. Can music ever be completely Dionysian? Without the Apollonian “beat of rhythm,” it would lose all its structure and simply be a pile of emotion and noise (40). Thus, without Dionysian, there is no passion and without the Apollonian there is no structure. While art can never be completely Apollonian or Dionysian, there is a  purer mix of these two ends of the spectrum: tragedy (56).
Tragedy, Nietzsche says, arose from the tragic chorus and cultures that had folk song (Nietzsche 55-56). The folk song originates in cultures that were strongly influenced by the Dionysian and this carries over into tragedy. The source of the Apollonian in tragedy is the dialogue: it is simple, conspicuous, and is simply another mode of beauty. The tragic chorus, however, should not be confused with the modern stage chorus (such as in Operas) because there should not be action when there is the conveyance of suffering (65). Instead, the opera should strive to cause rapture in its audience, much in the same way nature does (65). In the tragic, we are presented with a stunning live art, but Nietzsche makes it extremely clear that not all tragedy is Apollonian or Dionysian,especially that of the modern day. 


...yeah >->