Dionysian Echoes in Rabelais and his World:the Implicit Dialogue between Nietzsche and Bakhtin

Abstract

This article investigates the presence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, despite the almost complete absence of explicit references to the German philosopher. We assume that, although silenced by the ideological context of Stalinism, Nietzschean influence is covertly manifested in Bakhtin’s conception of carnival. To this end, we examine four analytical axes: the Russian intellectual context of the early twentieth century, biographical elements of Bakhtin that favored the reception of Nietzsche, theoretical connections already suggested by Western interpreters, and finally, the internal reading of the work itself. The results indicate that central categories of Nietzschean thought—such as the Dionysian, the eternal return, and the critique of social hierarchies—were reworked by Bakhtin from the perspective of popular culture, taking on communal and collective features in contrast to Nietzsche’s aristocratic individualism. We conclude that the relation between the two thinkers should not be understood as mere thematic coincidence, but as an implicit and creative dialogue that broadens the understanding of Bakhtin’s carnival as a philosophical, aesthetic, and anthropological category.