In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche maintains that artistic creation is the product of two formative and controversial forces--the Apollonian and the Dionysiac-–"rising directly from nature" (24). According to Nietzsche, the artist must appear as "imitator" of nature, "either as the Apollonian dream artist or the Dionysiac ecstatic artist, or, finally... as dream and ecstatic artist in one" ( 24).