TRAGEDY

Tragedy as a form of dramatic presentation was unknown to ancient India. It developed in Greece from primitive rituals connected with the worship of the wine god, Dionysus. Literally, tragedy means a goat-song, and therefore it is supposed to have had something to do with the ritual of a goat-sacrifice at the altar of Dionysus. Obviously it was a form of literature which flourished in an age when society was outgrowing its older associations but was not yet prepared to accept a newer order. Tragedy thus holds up the mirror to the moral disintegration in the life of the individual, who, whether resisting the emergence of the new order or trying to initiate it, is often crushed out of existence by the forces to which he is opposed.

Tragedy was defined and studied by Aristotle, and his definition yet holds good. “A tragedy,” said Aristotle, “is an artistic imitation of action that is serious, complete in itself, and of adequate magnitude.” This can only mean that a tragedy must occupy itself with the most fundamental problems of life-which alone can be sufficiently serious and can have real magnitude. He makes this clear when he goes on to explain that this magnitude is achieved by ethos or the moral tone of the characters, and by dianoia or the intelligence to speak words appropriate to the situation. This means that a character of an adequate moral stature must be at the centre of tragic action, and this moral stature is attained only when it is concerned with issues and actions of profound and permanent interest. Such a character will perforce use language appropriate to its own moral structure.

An incident is serious when it has the power to move or shake the mind out of its attitude of complaisance or thoughtlessness. The spectacle of human suffering is most calculated to have this dynamic impact on the mind. Therefore a story of human suffering is the inevitable theme of a tragedy. Hence Aristotle says, “It must be an incident of a destructive and painful sort, such as violent deeds or physical agony.” Therefore, whether it is Greek, or Shakespearean, or modern tragedy, for the purpose of moving the mind, death is in itself immaterial. What matters is the violent mental conflict and the pain it generates.

Like all forms of art, tragedy aims at effect that are aesthetic as well as ethical. The aesthetic aspect is related to the evocation of pity. Here also, Aristotle’s words are significant. Suffering evokes pity when we feel it to be rather undeserved. That is why Aristotle says that the hero must be essentially good; this goodness is transformed into greatness when it emerges victorious out of conflicts and struggles. The suffering of such a man arouses in the mind of the spectator a feeling of profound sympathy amounting to deep pity. At the same time, the character of the hero must not be too perfect, since that will arouse in the mind a feeling of impiety to the gods who impose undeserved suffering on a perfectly good person. That is why the hero has to have a tragic flow in his character, which really means that with his gifts, the hero lacks the power to dominate hostile circumstances.

The strength and the weakness of the hero are brought out best through a conflict between the hero and adverse forces, which may be human (as in King Lear) or impersonal (as in Macbeth). Necessarily, in a tragedy, this conflict is always unequal, though the hero does not recognise this. If he did, he would give up the struggle and become weak and unfit to be a tragic character. But the conflict must not be too unequal, for then the greatness of the hero would not be self-evident. Macbeth is not a good man; yet he wins our sympathy and pity because he fights to the last. This unyielding struggle becomes something elemental,-as though the hero is too great to admit defeat until he is crushed out of existence. The fall of the hero inspires a feeling of profound awe.

The ethical implications of a tragedy are stressed in Aristotle’s theory of “catharsis” or purgation. In Lecture VII on Aristotle’s Politics, Humphrey House has given an explanation of catharsis which is well worth quoting for the light it throws on the problem:

‘A tragedy rouses the emotions from potentiality to activity by worthy and adequate stimuli; it controls them by directing them to the right objects in the right way; and exercises them, within the limits of the play, as the emotions of the good would be exercised. When they subside to potentiality again after the play is over, it is a more “trained” potentiality than before. This is what Aristotle calls catharsis. And this is, what Milton puts forward in his Preface to Samson Agonistes; for though he translates the cathartic process by the verb “purge”, he explains the translation as follows, “That is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight stirred up by reading or seeing the passions well imitated”.’

The result of the catharsis is an emotional balance and equilibrium and it may well be called ‘a state of emotional health.’ The intense and heightened passions gradually attain a state of placid serenity-“calm of mind, all passion spent”. Aristotle recognised that the tragic sufferings of a great man might have the effect of creating a spirit of revolt or impiety against the gods, - the symbols of a static world-order, - and so he was at great pains to emphasise the need for a final reconciliation “with eternal providence”. But the modern conception of tragedy is perhaps different, and from Ibsen tragedy has become the expression of the desire of a reversal of a discredited system in favour of a newer order.

A tragedy that merely depicts an unequal conflict in which the hero is crushed and destroyed is inferior to one in which the destruction of the hero suggests a resurrection, a recreation. Great tragedy suggests a qualitative change in the very conditions of life, the birth of a new order, as it were, the fore-shadowing of a brave new world. This is the difference between a Webster and a Shakespeare. A Shakespearean hero may be destroyed, but he emerges at the end a nobler figure than what he was at the beginning. The evil in him is purged away, and he becomes less a victim of Fate (or its counterpart) than a symbol of hope.

Aristotle attached great importance to the unities of time, place and theme. But this is purely a technical question, related to craftsmanship, and has nothing to do with the essence of a tragedy. While the unities help concentration of interest, and therefore enhance the intensity of the tragic emotions, these can be achieved quite as well without their aid, as Shakespeare demonstrated, and even the Greeks showed. The same criticism holds good of the introduction of comic interludes in a tragedy. While vulgar comedy may contradict the tragic impression, the comic spirit, properly used, is a valuable aid not only by throwing into relief the tragic idea, but also by introducing an ironic motive.

The question of the character and status of the tragic hero is of the utmost importance. The theory that there may be tragedy without a tragic hero is open to grave doubts. Even where the tragedy arises from irreconcilable class conflicts, the conflict itself must be symbolised in the clash of personalities, and the hero must be the type and symbol of the emergent as against the decadent class. But modern tragedy shows the unsoundness of Aristotle’s claim that the superior social status of the hero renders the catastrophe impressively spectacular, and thereby enhances the magnitude of the tragedy. For, in a democratic age, the hero’s greatness is not by any means supposed to lie in his social position, but in his human qualities. But irrespective of his social status, the hero must be a person of outstanding qualities, for only the overflow of such a person produces the right kind of catharsis.