Essence of the Greek Tragedies--Ideality of the Representation--Idea of
Fate--Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations--Import
of the Chorus--The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology--
Comparison with the Plastic Arts.
We come now to the essence of Greek tragedy. That in conception it was
ideal, is universally allowed; this, however, must not be understood as
implying that all its characters were depicted as morally perfect. In such
a case what room could there be for that contrast and collision which the
very plot of a drama requires?--They have their weaknesses, errors, and
even crimes, but the manners are always elevated above reality, and every
person is invested with as high a portion of dignity as was compatible
with his part in the action. But this is not all. The ideality of the
representation chiefly consisted in the elevation of every thing in it to
a higher sphere. Tragic poetry wished to separate the image of humanity
which it presented to us, from the level of nature to which man is in
reality chained down, like a slave of the soil. How was this to be
accomplished? By exhibiting to us an image hovering in the air? But this
would have been incompatible with the law of gravitation and with the
earthly materials of which our bodies are framed. Frequently, what is
praised in art as _ideal_ is really nothing more. But this would give
us nothing more than airy evanescent shadows incapable of making any
durable impression on the mind. The Greeks, however, in their artistic
creations, succeeded most perfectly, in combining the ideal with the real,
or, to drop school terms, an elevation more than human with all the truth
of life, and in investing the manifestation of an idea with energetic
corporeity. They did not allow their figures to flit about without
consistency in empty space, but they fixed the statue of humanity on the
eternal and immovable basis of moral liberty; and that it might stand
there unshaken, formed it of stone or brass, or some more massive
substance than the bodies of living men, making an impression by its very
weight, and from its very elevation and magnificence only the more
completely subject to the laws of gravity.
Inward liberty and external necessity are the two poles of the tragic
world. It is only by contrast with its opposite that each of these ideas
is brought into full manifestation. As the feeling of an internal power of
self-determination elevates the man above the unlimited dominion of
impulse and the instincts of nature; in a word, absolves him from nature's
guardianship, so the necessity, which alongside of her he must recognize,
is no mere natural necessity, but one lying beyond the world of sense in
the abyss of infinitude; consequently it exhibits itself as the
unfathomable power of Destiny. Hence this power extends also to the world
of gods: for the Grecian gods are mere powers of nature; and although
immeasurably higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they
are on an equal footing with himself. In Homer and in the tragedians, the
gods are introduced in a manner altogether different. In the former their
appearance is arbitrary and accidental, and communicate to the epic poem
no higher interest than the charm of the wonderful. But in Tragedy the
gods either come forward as the servants of destiny, and mediate executors
of its decrees; or else approve themselves godlike only by asserting their
liberty of action, and entering upon the same struggles with fate which
man himself has to encounter.
This is the essence of the tragical in the sense of the ancients. We are
accustomed to give to all terrible or sorrowful events the appellation of
tragic, and it is certain that such events are selected in preference by
Tragedy, though a melancholy conclusion is by no means indispensably
necessary; and several ancient tragedies, viz., the _Eumenides_,
_Philoctetes_, and in some degree also the _Oedipus Coloneus_, without
mentioning many of the pieces of Euripides, have a happy and cheerful
termination.
But why does Tragedy select subjects so awfully repugnant to the wishes
and the wants of our sensuous nature? This question has often been asked,
and seldom satisfactorily answered. Some have said that the pleasure of
such representations arises from the comparison we make between the
calmness and tranquillity of our own situation, and the storms and
perplexities to which the victims of passion are exposed. But when we take
a warm interest in the persons of a tragedy, we cease to think of
ourselves; and when this is not the case, it is the best of all proofs
that we take but a feeble interest in the exhibited story, and that the
tragedy has failed in its effect. Others again have had recourse to a
supposed feeling for moral improvement, which is gratified by the view of
poetical justice in the reward of the good and the punishment of the
wicked. But he for whom the aspect of such dreadful examples could really
be wholesome, must be conscious of a base feeling of depression, very far
removed from genuine morality, and would experience humiliation rather
than elevation of mind. Besides, poetical justice is by no means
indispensable to a good tragedy; it may end with the suffering of the just
and the triumph of the wicked, if only the balance be preserved in the
spectator's own consciousness by the prospect of futurity. Little does it
mend the matter to say with Aristotle, that the object of tragedy is to
purify the passions by pity and terror. In the first place commentators
have never been able to agree as to the meaning of this proposition, and
have had recourse to the most forced explanations of it. Look, for
instance, into the _Dramaturgie_ of Lessing. Lessing gives a new
explanation of his own, and fancies he has found in Aristotle a poetical
Euclid. But mathematical demonstrations are liable to no misconception,
and geometrical evidence may well be supposed inapplicable to the theory
of the fine arts. Supposing, however, that tragedy does operate this moral
cure in us, still she does so by the painful feelings of terror and
compassion: and it remains to be proved how it is that we take a pleasure
in subjecting ourselves to such an operation.
Others have been pleased to say that we are attracted to theatrical
representations from the want of some violent agitation to rouse us out of
the torpor of our every-day life. Such a craving does exist; I have
already acknowledged the existence of this want, when speaking of the
attractions of the drama; but to it we must equally attribute the fights
of wild beasts among the Romans, nay, even the combats of the gladiators.
But must we, less indurated, and more inclined to tender feelings, require
demi-gods and heroes to descend, like so many desperate gladiators, into
the bloody arena of the tragic stage, in order to agitate our nerves by
the spectacle of their sufferings? No: it is not the sight of suffering
which constitutes the charm of a tragedy, or even of the games of the
circus, or of the fight of wild beasts. In the latter we see a display of
activity, strength, and courage; splendid qualities these, and related to
the mental and moral powers of man. The satisfaction, therefore, which we
derive from the representation, in a good tragedy, of powerful situations
and overwhelming sorrows, must be ascribed either to the feeling of the
dignity of human nature, excited in us by such grand instances of it as
are therein displayed, or to the trace of a higher order of things,
impressed on the apparently irregular course of events, and mysteriously
revealed in them; or perhaps to both these causes conjointly.
The true reason, therefore, why tragedy need not shun even the harshest
subject is, that a spiritual and invisible power can only be measured by
the opposition which it encounters from some external force capable of
being appreciated by the senses. The moral freedom of man, therefore, can
only be displayed in a conflict with his sensuous impulses: so long as no
higher call summons it to action, it is either actually dormant within
him, or appears to slumber, since otherwise it does but mechanically
fulfil its part as a mere power of nature. It is only amidst difficulties
and struggles that the moral part of man's nature avouches itself. If,
therefore, we must explain the distinctive aim of tragedy by way of
theory, we would give it thus: that to establish the claims of the mind to
a divine origin, its earthly existence must be disregarded as vain and
insignificant, all sorrows endured and all difficulties overcome. With
respect to everything connected with this point, I refer my hearers to the
Section on the Sublime in Kant's _Criticism of the Judgment_ (_Kritik der
Urtheilskraft_), to the complete perfection of which nothing is wanting
but a more definite idea of the tragedy of the ancients, with which he
does not seem to have been very well acquainted.
I come now to another peculiarity which distinguishes the tragedy of the
ancients from ours, I mean the Chorus. We must consider it as a
personified reflection on the action which is going on; the incorporation
into the representation itself of the sentiments of the poet, as the
spokesman of the whole human race. This is its general poetical character;
and that is all that here concerns us, and that character is by no means
affected by the circumstance that the Chorus had a local origin in the
feasts of Bacchus, and that, moreover, it always retained among the Greeks
a peculiar national signification; publicity being, as we have already
said, according to their republican notions, essential to the completeness
of every important transaction. If in their compositions they reverted to
the heroic ages, in which monarchical polity was yet in force, they
nevertheless gave a certain republican cast to the families of their
heroes, by carrying on the action in presence either of the elders of the
people, or of other persons who represented some correspondent rank or
position in the social body. This publicity does not, it is true, quite
correspond with Homer's picture of the manners of the heroic age; but both
costume and mythology were handled by dramatic poetry with the same spirit
of independence and conscious liberty.
These thoughts, then, and these modes of feeling led to the introduction
of the Chorus, which, in order not to interfere with the appearance of
reality which the whole ought to possess, must adjust itself to the ever-
varying requisitions of the exhibited stories. Whatever it might be and do
in each particular piece, it represented in general, first the common mind
of the nation, and then the general sympathy of all mankind. In a word,
the Chorus is the ideal spectator. It mitigates the impression of a heart-
rending or moving story, while it conveys to the actual spectator a
lyrical and musical expression of his own emotions, and elevates him to
the region of contemplation.
Modern critics have never known what to make of the Chorus; and this is
the less to be wondered at, as Aristotle affords no satisfactory solution
of the matter. Its office is better painted by Horace, who ascribes to it
a general expression of moral sympathy, exhortation, instruction, and
warning. But the critics in question have either believed that its chief
object was to prevent the stage from ever being altogether empty, whereas
in truth the stage was not at all the proper place for the Chorus; or else
they have censured it as a superfluous and cumbersome appendage,
expressing their astonishment at the alleged absurdity of carrying on
secret transactions in the presence of assembled multitudes. They have
also considered it as the principal reason with the Greek tragedians for
the strict observance of the unity of place, as it could not be changed
without the removal of the Chorus; an act, which could not have been done
without some available pretext. Or lastly, they have believed that the
Chorus owed its continuance from the first origin of Tragedy merely to
accident; and as it is plain that in Euripides, the last of the three
great tragic poets, the choral songs have frequently little or no
connexion with the fable, and are nothing better than a mere episodical
ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take one
more step in the progress of dramatic art, to explode the Chorus
altogether. To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary
to observe that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus, in prose, in
opposition to the principles of some other poets; and that, far from
following blindly the practice which he found established, like an
intelligent artist he was able to assign reasons for his own doings.
Modern poets of the first rank have often, since the revival of the study
of the ancients, attempted to introduce the Chorus in their own pieces,
for the most part without a correct, and always without a vivid idea of
its real import. They seem to have forgotten that we have neither suitable
singing or dancing, nor, as our theatres are constructed, any convenient
place for it. On these accounts it is hardly likely to become naturalized
with us.
The Greek tragedy, in its pure and unaltered state, will always for our
theatres remain an exotic plant, which we can hardly hope to cultivate
with any success, even in the hot-house of learned art and criticism. The
Grecian mythology, which furnishes the materials of ancient tragedy, is as
foreign to the minds and imaginations of most of the spectators, as its
form and manner of representation. But to endeavour to force into that
form materials of a wholly different nature, an historical one, for
example, to assume that form, must always be a most unprofitable and
hopeless attempt.
I have called mythology the chief materials of tragedy. We know, indeed,
of two historical tragedies by Grecian authors: the _Capture of Miletus_,
of Phrynichus, and the _Persians_, of Aeschylus, a piece which still
exists; but these singular exceptions both belong to an epoch when the art
had not attained its full maturity, and among so many hundred examples of
a different description, only serve to establish more strongly the truth
of the rule. The sentence passed by the Athenians on Phrynichus, in which
they condemned him to a pecuniary fine because he had painfully agitated
them by representing on the stage a contemporary calamity, which with due
caution they might, perhaps, have avoided; however hard and arbitrary it
may appear in a judicial point of view, displays, however, a correct
feeling of the proprieties and limits of art. Oppressed by the
consciousness of the proximity and reality of the represented story, the
mind cannot retain that repose and self-possession which are necessary for
the reception of pure tragical impressions. The heroic fables, on the
other hand, came to view at a certain remoteness; and surrounded with a
certain halo of the marvellous. The marvellous possesses the advantage
that it can, in some measure, be at once believed and disbelieved:
believed in so far as it is supported by its connexion with other
opinions; disbelieved while we never take such an immediate interest in it
as we do in what wears the hue of the every-day life of our own
experience. The Grecian mythology was a web of national and local
traditions, held in equal honour as a sequence of religion, and as an
introduction to history; everywhere preserved in full vitality among the
people by ceremonies and monuments, already elaborated for the
requirements of art and the higher species of poetry by the diversified
manner in which it has been handled, and by the numerous epic or merely
mythical poets. The tragedians had only, therefore, to engraft one species
of poetry on another. Certain postulates, and those invariably serviceable
to the air of dignity and grandeur, and the removing of all meanness of
idea, were conceded to them at the very outset. Everything, down to the
very errors and weaknesses of that departed race of heroes who claimed
their descent from the gods, was ennobled by the sanctity of legend. Those
heroes were painted as beings endowed with more than human strength; but,
so far from possessing unerring virtue and wisdom, they were even depicted
as under the dominion of furious and unbridled passions. It was an age of
wild effervescence; the hand of social order had not as yet brought the
soil of morality into cultivation, and it yielded at the same time the
most beneficent and poisonous productions, with the fresh luxuriant
fulness of prolific nature. Here the occurrence of the monstrous and
horrible did not necessarily indicate that degradation and corruption out
of which alone, under the development of law and order, they could arise,
and which, in such a state of things, make them fill us with sentiments of
horror and aversion. The guilty beings of the fable are, if we may be
allowed the expression, exempt from human jurisdiction, and amenable to a
higher tribunal alone. Some, indeed, have advanced the opinion, that the
Greeks, as zealous republicans, took a particular pleasure in witnessing
the representation of the outrages and consequent calamities of the
different royal families, and are almost disposed to consider the ancient
tragedy in general as a satire on monarchical government. Such a party-
view, however, would have deadened the sympathy of the audience, and
consequently destroyed the effect which it was the aim of the tragedy to
produce.
Besides, it must be remarked that the royal families, whose crimes and
consequent sufferings afforded the most abundant materials for affecting
tragical pictures, were the Pelopidae of Mycenae, and the Labdacidae of
Thebes, families who had nothing to do with the political history of the
Athenians, for whom the pieces were composed. We do not see that the Attic
poets ever endeavoured to exhibit the ancient kings of their country in an
odious light; on the contrary, they always hold up their national hero,
Theseus, for public admiration, as a model of justice and moderation, the
champion of the oppressed, the first lawgiver, and even as the founder of
liberty. It was also one of their favourite modes of flattering the
people, to show to them Athens, even in the heroic ages, as distinguished
above all the other states of Greece, for obedience to the laws, for
humanity, and acknowledgment of the national rights of the Hellenes. That
universal revolution, by which the independent kingdoms of ancient Greece
were converted into a community of small free states, had separated the
heroic age from the age of social cultivation, by a wide interval, beyond
which a few families only attempted to trace their genealogy. This was
extremely advantageous for the ideal elevation of the characters of Greek
tragedy, as few human things will admit of a very close inspection without
betraying some imperfections. To the very different relations of the age
in which those heroes lived, the standard of mere civil and domestic
morality is not applicable, and to judge of them the feeling must go back
to the primary ingredients of human nature. Before the existence of
constitutions,--when as yet the notions of law and right were
undeveloped,--the sovereigns were their own lawgivers, in a world which as
yet was dependent on them; and the fullest scope was thus given to the
energetic will, either for good or for evil. Moreover, an age of
hereditary kingdom naturally exhibited more striking instances of sudden
changes of fortune than the later times of political equality. It was in
this respect that the high rank of the principal characters was essential,
or at least favourable to tragic impressiveness; and not, as some moderns
have pretended, because the changing fortunes of such persons exercise a
material influence on the happiness or misery of numbers, and therefore
they alone are sufficiently important to interest us in their behalf; nor,
again, because internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed with
external dignity, to call forth our respect and admiration. The Greek
tragedians paint the downfall of kingly houses without any reference to
its effects on the condition of the people; they show us the man in the
king, and, far from veiling their heroes from our sight by their purple
mantles, they allow us to look, through their vain splendour, into a bosom
torn and harrowed with grief and passion. That the main essential was not
so much the regal dignity as the heroic costume, is evident from those
tragedies of the moderns which have been written under different
circumstances indeed, but still upon this supposed principle: such, I
mean, as under the existence of monarchy have taken their subject from
kings and courts. Prom the existing reality they dare not draw, for
nothing is less suitable for tragedy than a court and a court life.
Wherever, therefore, they do not paint an ideal kingdom, with the manners
of some remote age, they invariably fall into stiffness and formality,
which are much more fatal to boldness of character, and to depth of
pathos, than the monotonous and equable relations of private life.
A few mythological fables alone seem originally marked out for tragedy:
such, for example, as the long-continued alternation of crime, revenge,
and curses, which we witness in the house of Atreus. When we examine the
names of the pieces which are lost, we have great difficulty in conceiving
how the mythological fables (such, at least, as they are known to us,)
could have furnished sufficient materials for the compass of an entire
tragedy. It is true, the poets, in the various editions of the same story,
had a great latitude of selection; and this very fluctuation of tradition
justified them in going still farther, and making considerable alterations
in the circumstances of an event, so that the inventions employed for this
purpose in one piece sometimes contradict the story as given by the same
poet in another. We must, however, principally explain the prolific
capability of mythology, for the purposes of tragedy, by the principle
which we observe in operation throughout the history of Grecian mind and
art; that, namely, the tendency which predominated for the time,
assimilated everything else to itself. As the heroic legend with all its
manifold discrepancies was easily developed into the tranquil fulness and
light variety of epic poetry, so afterwards it readily responded to the
demands which the tragic writers made upon it for earnestness, energy, and
compression; and whatever in this sifting process of transformation fell
out as inapplicable to tragedy, afforded materials for a sort of half
sportive, though still ideal representation, in the subordinate species
called the _satirical drama_.
I hope I shall be forgiven, if I attempt to illustrate the above
reflections on the essence of Ancient Tragedy, by a comparison borrowed
from the plastic arts, which will, I trust, be found somewhat more than a
mere fanciful resemblance.
The Homeric epic is, in poetry, what bas-relief is in sculpture, and
tragedy the distinct isolated group.
The poetry of Homer, sprung from the soil of legend, is not yet wholly
detached from it, even as the figures of a bas-relief adhere to an
extraneous backing of the original block. These figures are but slightly
raised, and in the epic poem all is painted as past and remote. In bas-
relief the figures are usually in profile, and in the epos all are
characterized in the simplest manner in relief; they are not grouped
together, but follow one another; so Homer's heroes advance, one by one,
in succession before us. It has been remarked that the _Iliad_ is not
definitively closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to
precede and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may
be continued _ad infinitum_, either from before or behind, on which
account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an
indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of
combatants, &c. Hence they also exhibited bas-reliefs on curved surfaces,
such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the
two ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one
object appears as another disappears. Reading Homer is very much like such
a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we lose sight
of that which precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what is to
follow.
But in the distinct outstanding group, and in Tragedy, sculpture and
poetry alike bring before our eyes an independent and definite whole. To
distinguish it from natural reality, the former places it on a base as on
an ideal ground, detaching from it as much as possible all foreign and
accidental accessories, that the eye may rest wholly on the essential
objects, the figures themselves. These figures the sculptor works out with
their whole body and contour, and as he rejects the illusion of colours,
announces by the solidity and uniformity of the mass in which they are
constructed, a creation of no perishable existence, but endowed, with a
higher power of endurance.
Beauty is the aim of sculpture, and repose is most advantageous for the
display of beauty. Repose alone, therefore, is suitable to the single
figure. But a number of figures can only be combined together into unity,
_i.e., grouped_ by an action. The group represents beauty in motion,
and its aim is to combine both in the highest degree of perfection. This
can be effected even while portraying the most violent bodily or mental
anguish, if only the artist finds means so to temper the expression by
some trait of manly resistance, calm grandeur, or inherent sweetness,
that, with all the most moving truth, the lineaments of beauty shall yet
be undefaced. The observation of Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable.
He says, that "beauty with the ancients was the tongue on the balance of
expression," and in this sense the groups of Niobe and Laocoön are master-
pieces; the one in the sublime and severe; the other in the studied and
ornamental style.
The comparison with ancient tragedy is the more apposite here, as we know
that both Aeschylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and that Sophocles was
also the author of a Laocoön. In the group of the Laocoön the efforts of
the body in enduring, and of the mind in resisting, are balanced in
admirable equipoise. The children calling for help, tender objects of
compassion, not of admiration, recal our eyes to the father, who seems to
be in vain uplifting his eyes to the gods. The wreathed serpents represent
to us that inevitable destiny which often involves all the parties of an
action in one common ruin. And yet the beauty of proportion, the agreeable
flow of the outline, are not lost in this violent struggle; and a
representation, the most appalling to the senses, is yet managed with
forbearance, while a mild breath of gracefulness is diffused over the
whole.
In the group of Niobe there is the same perfect mixture of terror and
pity. The upturned looks of the mother, and the mouth half open in
supplication, seem yet to accuse the invisible wrath of heaven. The
daughter, clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mother, in
her childish innocence has no fear but for herself: the innate impulse of
self-preservation was never more tenderly and affectingly expressed. On
the other hand, can there be a more beautiful image of self-devoting,
heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends forward to receive, if
possible, in her own body the deadly shaft? Pride and defiance dissolve in
the depths of maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features
are the less marred by the agony, as under the rapid accumulation of blow
upon blow she seems, as in the deeply significant fable, already
petrifying into the stony torpor. But before this figure, thus
_twice_ struck into stone, and yet so full of life and soul,--before
this stony terminus of the limits of human endurance, the spectator melts
into tears.
Amid all the agitating emotions which these groups give rise to, there is
still a something in their aspect which attracts the mind and gives rise
to manifold contemplation; so the ancient tragedy leads us forward to the
highest reflections involved in the very sphere of things it sets before
us--reflections on the nature and the inexplicable mystery of man's being.