... drives and instincts into clarity and order. While Dionysus was often associated with music, a passionate, engrossing art form, Apollo was associated with sculpture, a rigid, detached art form searching for perfection. Ashenbach's parents were perfect examples of these two opposing forces. His mother was a wild, fiery Dionysian, while his father was a stubborn, regimented, and orderly. The offspring of Apollonian and Dionysian parents, Mann depicted Ashenbach as too Apollonian, too stiff, too restrained, and too cerebral to create truly great art. His rigidity in daily routine made Ashenbach feel like he was accomplishing more yet he was actually holding himself back from his true potential. As Ashenbach succumbs to the Dionysian lifestyle while in Venice, we see him drink the juice of the pomegranate and hear that the plague that is infecting the city is from Asia. The significance of this detail is that the cult of ...

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