The analogy of Aristotle's conception of the emotion of
tragedy with certain modern views is evident. To feel pain
is to live intensely, it is said; to be absorbed in great,
even though overwhelming, events is to make us realize our
own pulsing life. The criticism to be made on this theory
is, however, no less simple: it consists merely in denying
the fact. It does not give us pleasure to have painful
emotions or to see other people's sorrows, in spite of the
remains of the "gorille feroce" in us, to which Taine and
M. Faguet attribute this imputed pleasure. And if we feel
pleasure, excitement, elevation in the representation of
the tragic, it must be due to some other element in the
experience than the mere self-realization involved in
suffering. It is indeed our first impulse to say that the
painful quality vanishes when the exciting events are known
to be unreal; pity and fear are painful because too intense,
and in the drama are just sufficiently moderated. The
rejoinder is easy, that pity and fear are never anything,
but painful down to the vanishing point. The slight pity
for a child's bruised finger is not more pleasurable because
less keen; while our feeling, whatever it is, for Ophelia
or Gretchen, becomes more pleasurable in proportion to its
intensity.
It is clear that the matter is not so simple as Aristotle's
psychology would make it. Pity and fear do not in themselves
produce pleasure, relief, and repose. These emotions as
aroused by tragedy are either not what we know as pity and
fear in real life, or the manner of their undergoing brings
in an entirely new element, on which Aristotle has not
touched. In some way or other the pity and fear of tragedy
are not like the pity and fear of real life, and in this
distinction lies the whole mystery of the dramatic Katharsis.
But there is an extension of Aristotle's theory, lineally
descended from that of Lessing, which professes to elucidate
this difference and must be taken account of, inasmuch as it
represents the modern popular view. Professor Butcher, in
his edition of the "Poetics," concludes, on the basis of a
reference in the "Politics" implying that the Katharsis of
enthusiasm is not identical with the Katharsis of pity and
fear, that the word is to be taken less literally, as an
expulsion of the morbid elements in the emotions,--and these
he takes to be the selfish elements which cling to them in
real life. Thus "the spectator, who is brought face to face
with grander sufferings than his own, experiences a
sympathetic ecstasy, a listing out of himself. It is
precisely in this transport of feeling, which carries a man
outside his individual self, that the distinctive tragic
pleasure resides. Pity and fear are purged of the impure
element which clings to them in life. In the glow of tragic
excitement these feelings are so transformed that the net
result is a noble emotional satisfaction."
In spite of our feeling that the literal and naive reading
of the analogy was probably after all nearer Aristotle's
meaning, we may accept the words of Professor Butcher as its
modern formulation. They sound, indeed, all but a truism:
yet they are seen on examination to glide lightly over some
psychological difficulties. Firstly, the step is a long
one from the pity and fear felt by the Greek toward or about
the actors, to a sharing of their emotion. The one is a
definite external relation, limited to two emotions; the
other, the "sympathetic ecstasy," opens the door to all
conceivable emotions, and needs at least to be justified.
But, secondly, even suppose the step taken; suppose the
"sympathetic imitation" conceded as a fact: the objections
to Aristotle's interpretation are equally applicable to
this. Why should this "transport of sympathetic feeling"
not take the form of a transport of pain? Why should the
net result be "a noble emotional satisfaction?" If pity
and fear remain pity and fear, whether selfish or unselfish,
it doth not yet appear why they are emotionally satisfactory.
The "so transformed" of the passage quoted assumes the point
at issue and begs the question. That is, if this transformation
of feeling does indeed take place, there is at least nothing
in the nature of the situation, as yet explained, to account
for it. But explanation there must be. To this, the lost
passage on the Katharsis must have been devoted; this, every
thorough-going study of the theory of the drama must make
an indispensable preliminary. What there is in the nature
of tragic art capable of transforming painful to pleasurable
emotion must be made clear. Before we can accept Professor
Butcher's view of the function of Tragedy, its possibility
as a psychological experience must be demonstrated. For the
immediately pleasurable aesthetic effect of Tragedy, a certain
kind of pity and fear, operating in a special way, are required.
It must be thus only in the peculiar character of the emotions
aroused that the distinctive nature of the tragic experience
consists. What is this peculiar character?