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IGENERAL ,,,\Ijc

INTRODUCTION/ . iTCic\cit'

\\ To tragedy I have no addiction;What I always say is there 's enough trouble in reallife without readingabout it in fiction.However, I don't mind tears and smiles in a judiciousblending,And I enjoy a stormy beginning i f it leads to a halcyon ending,'Most people would agree with Mr. Nash that tragedy depic.) man's troubles. But this is only h alf tbe story, fo r trag

H'The Emancipation of Mr o Poplin," T/:e New Yorker,May 8,1954,p. 37

;!I- - : ~ L ~ ; 7 ' I J n Greek the word "tragedy" means "goat song," bu t the con:/ nection between tragedy and goat song is obscure. Perhaps

;.1 goat was th e p ri ze at some sort of early singing contest iIi Greece, or perhaps the dancers wore goat skins. One medievii writer ingeniously suggested that tragedy is called goat son) because it begins prosperously, as a goat is abundantly hairI in front. and ends wre tchedly, as a goa t is hare in the reaDante Alighieri, whose Divine Comedy proves him to be thgreatest poet of t he Middle Ages, offered the engaging idethat t ragedy is so cal led because its story is unpleasant ansmelly as a goat.Th e American public docs no t greatly approve of gosongs. We arc an independent, optimistic people and like t

feel that we can do anythingwe please. Our movies, for example. specialize in success s tories with happy endings, anHollywood has almost banished death from the screen. I f theris a death in a film. it is likely to he that of either a vil laor a minor character. Deaths of villains comfort us , and th".' death of a minor good character. such as the hero 's friend (so-Called "secondary tragedy"). allows us to indulge in sentment -and ye t come through smiling" Ogden Nash has summarized the dominant American view:

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(what they say, and both instructor and student ore consciof the real significance of the words. The tragic hero, howevoften does no t at first understand the implications of his owords or actions.When he asser ts h imsel f, the tragic hero is committ\ sometimes unconsciously. to consequent suffering. But .wh

I troubles come-s-and they usually come not as single spiesin battalions-be accepts tbem (never passively, and usuadefiantly) and, indeed, may glory in his act and in the sfering it brings. Or he may perceive the folly of his actiBut whatever Ius attitude toward the mistake or flaw (hamtia) or heroic action which precipita tes his fall, the puniment or suffering is so disproportionate that it usually destrthe hero's body. Th e destruction of the body is, however, ofaccompanied by such an enlargement of spirit that, no mabow awful the consequences of the e rror , t he hero bas ,feel, in a way triumphed over tbem and subjugated themhis greatness of mind. He reveals tbc full extent of his powonly under the most tremendous of pressures, and these prsures are somewhat dwarfed by his expansion. This is mavictory.

All tragedies portray suffering, and critics have often souto find in this SUffering the special pleasure which t r a g affords. Some theorists. notably Thomas Hobbes, famoushis suggestion that man's l ife is nasty, brutish, and short, hsuggested that Our pleasure is sadistic, that we en joy ctemplating the suffering- of OU f fellows, and that attendaat a tragedy is a dignified version of watching a public exetion. Lucretius, the Roman poet, took a somewhat milder vby asserting that when we a re saf e on land we enjoy wating a disaster at sea, no t because we delight in thepalnsothers but because it is pleasant to perceive vividly tbc efrom which we are exempt. On the other hand, some crihave cla imed that we identify ourselves with the tragic sfcrer and derive pleasure from feeling ourselves mistreaBut although mankind includes masochists-c-pcople who enbeing made to suffer-s-ruascchism, like sadism, is too narto expla in the pleasures of tragedy. Similarly, the idea ttragedy excites sympathy, and sympathy is in itself a plcasuble passion , is surely no t sufficient to explain the appealtragic drama. I f sympathy afforded such pleasure, a hospas David Huruc, the English philosopher, wrote to AdSmith, "would be a more entertaining place than a Ball."

(' Literary criticism from Aristotle to the present is fined wa t t e ~ p t s (al l more or less unsuccessful) to expla in our ines t 10 tragedy. Yet whatever the secret be, those who respto t ragedy sec in it no t merely rich language or _'}_ well

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10 GENERAJ_ INTRODUCIIONbut this movement is no t merely downhill. The 'pain wh}ch he

' undergoes is often part ly self-inflicted; fo r ~ willfully VIOlatesan existing code. He insists on cxprcssmg himself, even thoughhe must suffer for his self-assertion. Thus, Aeschylus' Promet heus boldly admits 111at he defied Zeus's commands. andO'Neill's Abbie glories in he r violation of G ~ d ' g edict. 1\10stof the acts of self-assertion are the result of pride, or what the