Part 12 (2/2)

LITERATURE OF ECSTASY EMANATES FROM THE UNCONSCIOUS

Aristotle's best known contribution to literary criticism is his statement that tragedy has the effect of a catharsis upon the reader and helps him to discharge emotions of pity and fear that overburden him. We have considerably amplified Aristotle's views, as we include under tragedy the recording of any very painful event in prose or verse, in dialogue or narrative. We believe that perusing literature in general relieves the reader of all nerve-racking emotions and produces a homeopathic effect upon him by the aesthetic voicing of his unconscious feelings.

Professor J. E. Spingarn's book, _Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_, gives us a good survey of several Italian commentators who correctly interpreted Aristotle's view of the purgation of the emotions of fear and pity as aesthetic, and not ethical. The first of these critics was Robortelli (1548); Vettori and Castelvetro followed him, while Maggi and Varchi applied the purgation to all emotions similar to pity and fear, a more Freudian conception. Minturno likened the purgation to the physician's method, while Speroni pointed out that pity and fear, holding men in bondage, were properly to be expurgated. These men antic.i.p.ated the great work of Bernays in the nineteenth century, who destroyed the centuries-old fallacy that Aristotle had in mind the moral purification and reformation of the reader. Even Lessing erroneously thought that this was Aristotle's meaning.

Moreover, Milton, who had traveled in Italy, must have read these Italians when he gave us his correct interpretation of the pa.s.sage in the preface to _Samson Agonistes_. Milton properly understood Aristotle's meaning of the function of tragedy. It was to ”temper and reduce them (the pa.s.sions) to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those pa.s.sions well imitated.”

We know now the true interpretation of Aristotle's view of the function of tragedy from a pa.s.sage in his _Politics_. He was thinking of the relief the spectators' surcharged emotions obtained by witnessing similar emotions expressed. His real meaning was perceived by Henri Weil and Jacob Bernays, two great Jewish cla.s.sical scholars of Germany.

Bernays states moreover in his work,[180:A] first published in 1857, that any literary work telling of unhappy events has a homeopathic effect on the reader. This is true, for even if we do not actually suffer, the capacity and possibility of suffering are latent within us.

Though Bosanquet, commenting on Bernays in his _History of Aesthetics_, believes tragedy or poetry must be written in verse, he is forced to admit that even _Vanity Fair_ and _Cousin Bette_ would come within the definition of tragedy developed by Bernays; for the reader finds his own emotions expressed in these works no less than in Sophocles and obtains relief when he reads them. Bosanquet further admits that any serious and even formless portrayal of life may be placed within Bernays's theory adding, ”It may indeed be admitted to be a development inherent in Aristotle's theory.”

Aristotle perceived that the spectator of tragedy was putting himself in the place of the characters, living their lives emotionally and sympathizing with them. Since the novel or lyric poem depicts human sorrow, and the reader is purged by reading these literary forms, just like the spectator of tragedy, all literature has the effect of an aesthetic catharsis upon the reader.

The novels of Thackeray and Balzac are poetry in parts and the emotional influence in reading them is the same as in seeing a tragic verse-play acted. Bosanquet, however, does not fully accept Aristotle's theory as applied to tragic stories in prose because he regards poetical prose rhetoric and not poetry. Would he exclude from the domain of tragedy the entire episode in Hardy's _Return of the Native_, of the death of Eustace's mother? Hardy's tragedy is as real as the tragedies of the Greek playwrights. The novel fulfills all the requirements of poetic tragedy in that the reader is purged and relieved of pity and fear and kindred emotions. For tragedy is not to be found only in dialogues in verse, but in narration and dialogue in prose, and its function is to relieve us of any choking emotion, besides fear and pity.

Aristotle is the founder then of psychoa.n.a.lytic interpretation of literature and is a forerunner of Freud. He however refers only to the catharsis upon the spectator, but not to that of the author's work upon himself.

Every creator of tragedy in prose or verse, in fiction, essay or lyric was first subject to repression and then ecstasy. We may say as Nietzsche did, that tragic art is the reconciliation of Apollo and Dionysius, of dreaming and emotional intoxication, and both these conditions are, in Freud's words, due to repression.

But we have travelled far beyond Aristotle in our views of tragedy.

Freud has revolutionized the art of criticism and a disciple of his, F.

Wittels, in the _Tragische Motiv_, gave us an interpretation from the psychoa.n.a.lytic point of view of the nature and sufferings of tragic characters. There is an abstract of the book by Dr. J. S. Van Teslaar in the _American Journal of Psychology_ for April, 1912. Wittels shows that the unconscious unethical desires break into consciousness and cause tragedy. He points out that the Greeks were purified of pent up emotions in the theater, and that they identified the demons of their inner self in the actors. He also says that the Greek drama cannot any longer talk as clearly to us as of old, for with our civilization we have wandered away from the nave Greek mind. The author emphasizes the fact that unconscious causes make the writer compose his work, as well as the fact that characters in history and literature acted from unconscious causes. Thus suppressed erotic impulses influenced the patriotism of Joan of Arc.

At all times, again, it was vaguely understood that dreams reveal the unconscious, that poetry emanates from the dream state, that in fact poems are even composed in dreams. Thus, the Bible itself is authority for the fact that all the prophets received their messages in a dream or vision. The Hebrew sages said that the dream was a fraction of prophecy, the unripe fruit of prophecy.

One of the first critics who treated at length the question whether poetry may actually be composed in dreams is the Hebrew poet and critic Moses Ibn Ezra, who lived in Spain in the early part of the twelfth century. The seventh chapter of his _Conversations and Recollections_[182:A] deals with the subject. He was influenced by Arabs who were absorbingly concerned with the interpretation of dreams. Ibn Ezra thought that it was just in the sleeping state that the use of thought and imagination was greatest, for then the soul loses consciousness of things, the body and senses are at rest and only the common sense, which the critic uses really as synonymous with the unconscious, is active. He quotes a Hebrew philosopher to the effect that the soul, when detached from the body, has finer perceptions than when awake. This is in accordance with Aristotle who said that the soul can discover hidden things when detached from the senses, when it is pure. Ibn Ezra a.s.serts that his Hebrew authority maintains that one may compose verses in sleep, and he gives examples of his own.

Ibn Ezra believed that nightmares have some idea behind them, that an interpreter of dreams whose reason is superior to that of the dreamer can discover the idea, for dream interpretation is the science of hidden things communicated by G.o.d. The poet also composes verses in dreams, often because he does this in waking life, for many people carry on in their dreams the occupations of their daily life. We all recall that we read in our dreams, especially if we are lovers of reading. We do in our dreams what we would like to do.

The Aristotelian medieval Hebrew philosophers, Isaac Israeli, Abraham Ibn Daud, Moses Maimomides, and Levi ben Gerson also developed the idea of the connection of prophecy with dreams.[183:A]

We know to-day that the poet creates a congenial surrounding for himself out of his imagination. He is repelled by the sordidness of his environment or the suffering he has had in life. He writes a poem like _Epipsychidion_, to build himself a home where he has ideal love, because he is not satisfied with his married life. He writes a prose poem like _Dream Children_ where he sees himself wedded to his lost love, with their children about him, because he is a bachelor who has neither love nor children.

Poetry, like dreams, creates a state where unfulfilled unconscious wishes are gratified. Poetry is the voice then of the unconscious. The poem is usually a product of the day-dream, which is related to the dream of sleep, for both species of dreams reveal the unconscious.

Poetry shows conflicts and makes adjustments to reality. Poetry is aesthetic therapeutics.[184:A]

The dream poems of literature are so numerous that one is amazed that the theory of poetry as a dream has not been more prominently discussed by literary critics. In the middle ages many poems were cast in the form of dreams. The allegory was generally a dream. Who can doubt that the _Divine Comedy_ and _Pilgrim's Progress_, both in the form of dreams, were attempts by the poets to adjust themselves to reality, to purge themselves and relieve their unconscious?

Even those poets who are always hiding their souls and making inlays of verbal mosaic reveal themselves. Their dabbling with trifles is indicative of an inability or lack of courage to think and feel. They thus make a disclosure more marked than if they had sung their private thoughts openly.

Poetry is a psychological art rather than a plastic one. It deals with the soul. Horace's statement that if the poet would make the reader weep he must weep himself, is true. Yet we have often failed to recognize that poetry is a genuine personal cry of a man who dreams. We have confused poetry with prosody, instead of identifying it with the unconscious.

The poem with the social message, the problem play for example, or the novel with a purpose, also belongs to the literature of dreams. The poet sees foul infections infiltrating society; he has often himself been a victim of social abuses. He voices complaints about the unjust system and its tyrannical sway. He shows himself and others suffering in its coils. He dreams a vision of a more beautiful and just system of society where neither he nor others are consumed in vexation. He states ecstatically the ideas that come to him as he condemns; he entertains and expresses views whose adoption would enable man to reconstruct society on a better plan.

His intellect is colored by his inability to adjust himself socially.

His dreams give him ideas. He does not have to become a reformer, but he recognizes social wrongs resulting from custom or stupidity or downright wickedness. Personal repression and dreaming produce not only love poems, but poems containing utopias of society, plans for improvement.

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