How, then, is the Euripidean play related to this ideal of the
Apollonian drama? Just as the younger rhapsodist is related to the
solemn rhapsodist of the old time. The former describes his own
character in the Platonic "Ion" as follows: "When I am saying anything
sad, my eyes fill with tears; when, however, what I am saying is awful
and terrible, then my hair stands on end through fear, and my heart
leaps." Here we no longer observe anything of the epic absorption
in appearance, or of the unemotional coolness of the true actor,
who precisely in his highest activity is wholly appearance and joy
in appearance. Euripides is the actor with leaping heart, with hair
standing on end; as Socratic thinker he designs the plan, as passionate
actor he executes it. Neither in the designing nor in the execution is
he an artist pure and simple. And so the Euripidean drama is a thing
both cool and fiery, equally capable of freezing and burning; it is
impossible for it to attain the Apollonian, effect of the epos, while,
on the other hand, it has severed itself as much as possible from
Dionysian elements, and now, in order to act at all, it requires new
stimulants, which can no longer lie within the sphere of the two unique
art-impulses, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The stimulants are
cool, paradoxical _thoughts_, in place of Apollonian intuitions--and
fiery _passions_--in place Dionysean ecstasies; and in fact, thoughts
and passions very realistically copied, and not at all steeped in the
ether of art.