Part 11 (2/2)

It is clear that the y would make it Pity and fear do not in themselves produce pleasure, relief, and repose These eedy are either not e know as pity and fear in real life, or the s in an entirely new element, on which Aristotle has not touched In soedy 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 fro, 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” i 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 ele to theht face to face with grander sufferings than his own, experiences a sy out of hi, which carries a ic pleasure resides Pity and fear are purged of the ilow of tragic excites are so transformed that the net result is a noble e that the literal and naive reading of the analogy was probably after all nearer Aristotle's , we may accept the words of Professor Butcher as its modern formulation They sound, indeed, all but a truishtly over so 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 sy”

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 transfore quoted assus the question That is, if this transfor 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 e on the Katharsisstudy of the theory of the drama must make an indispensable preliic art capable of transfor 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 iedy, 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 eic experience consists What is this peculiar character?

III

A necessary step to the explanation of our pleasure in supposedly painful emotions is toe know to be unreal, and to sho this emotion is sympathetic, that is, imitative, rather than of an objective reference In brief, why do we feel WITH, rather than toward or about, the actors?

The answer to this question requires a reference to the current theory of eists, emotion is constituted by the instinctive response to a situation; it is the feeling acco very complicated physical reactions, which have their roots in actions once useful in the history of er, the flushed face, dilated nostril, clenched fist, are remains or marks of reactions serviceable in es proper to anger, are accoanic reactions, the ”feel” of all of which together is an indispensable eleer

The point to be noted in all this is that these reactions are ACTIONS, called up by so hich we literally HAVE TO DO

A person involved in real experience does not reproduce the emotions about him, for in real life he must respond to the situation, take an attitude of help, consolation, warning; and the character of these reactions deterh he really do nothing, theto make up his attitude appreciably interfere with the reproduction of the reactions of the object of his interest In an exactly opposite way the artificial conditions of the spectator at a play, which reinforce the vivid reproduction of ideas, and check action, stifle those emotions directed toward the players, the objective emotions of which we have spoken The spectator is completely cut off from all possibilities of influence on events Between his world and that across the footlights an inexpressible gulf is fixed He cannot take an ”attitude,”

he can have nothing to do in this galere Since he s of action which make the basis of emotion are inhibited in him The spectator at a play experiences much more clearly and sharply than the sympathetic observer; only the proportions of his mental contents are different

This, I say, accounts for the absence of the real pity and fear, which were supposed to be directed toward the persons in the play But so far as yet appears there is every reason to expect the sympathetic reproduction of the emotions of the persons themselves

Let us briefly recall the situation The house is darkened and quiet; all lines converge to the stage, which is brightly lighted, and heightened in visual effect by every device known to art The onlooker'sof self is pushed down to its very lowest level He has before hi, and in which he follows the action not only by coreat vehicle of suggestion We cannot see tears rise without ainst our will; the sudden or the regular movement of a companion we are forced to follow, at least incipiently Now the expression which we is up in us to a certain extent the whole co to that expression

Moreover, the more closely we attend to it, the ical principle Thus in the artificially contrived situation of the spectator at a play, he is forced, not only to understand intellectually, but also to FOLLOW, quite literally, the e, raised to the highest pitch, involves by its very nature also reproduction of what is understood The complex of the ideas and associations of the persons of the play is ideally reproduced Are not the organic reactions belonging to these set up too?--not directly, in response to a situation in which the spectator may act, but directly, by reproduction of the mental contents of one who may act, the person of the drama The final answer to this question contains, to my mind, the whole kernel of the dra-point for an aesthetic theory of tragedy

IV

Every play contains at least two actors The suggestion of states of iven by two persons, or groups of persons, at once These persons are, normally, in conflict Othello ht, Hillon vaunts his inherited personality, Metternich--holds the candle to the mirror! But what of the spectator? He cannot at once shrink and menace, assert and deny, as the conditions of sympathetic reproduction would seem to demand Real emotion implies a definite set of reactions of the nature of movements; and two opposed movements cannot take place at the saether in amity The spectator has a vivid picture of Othello and Desdeether; but his reactions have neutralized each other, and his eanic conditions, are in abeyance

This is the typical dramatic moment, for it is the one which is alone characteristic of the dra forces is the fullof emotional impulses possible, and it is only in this simultaneous realization that the draonistic purposes are actually presented to the onlooker in the same moment of time, then alone can be felt the vividness of realization, the tension of conflict, the balance of emotion, the ”alleviation” of the true Katharsis!

But what is this? No emotion after all, when the very traditional test of our enjoy it arouses!--when hearts beat, hands clench, tears flow! Emotion there is, it may not be denied; but not the sympathetic emotions of the traditional theory

What e of impulses in a balance, a tension, a conflict which is yet a bond; and this it is which is the clue to the excitement or exaltation which in the dra We have eneral, we have heard, consists just in the union of a kind of sti of the vital energies unacco of forces which we connect with action, and which is felt the h equilibriuiven by the dramatic conflict

Introspection makes assurance doubly sure The tense exaltation of the typical aesthetic experience, undirected, unlimited, pure of personal or particular reference, is reproduced in this naic draedy, is, then, a special type of the unique aesthetic eular peculiar characteristic of the drama-- the face to face confrontation of forces--which furnishes these conditions As we ht have foreseen, the peculiar Katharsis, or pleasurable disappearance or alleviation of eedy, is based on just those elements in which the drama differs from other forms of art Confrontation, and not action, as the dramatic principle, is the important deduction from our theory;--is, indeed, but the objective aspect of it

The view of confrontation as the dramatic principle is confirmed by dramatic literature We emphasize in our study of Greek plays their siue, their sculptural, bas-relief quality The Greek draedy is a well-co syone,” ”on one side civil law in all its blind rigor, on the other moral law in all its splendor” The only element in common with the modern type is found in the conflict of wills Could such a play as the ”Suppliants” of Euripedes find any aesthetic justification, save that it has the one dramatic essential--confrontation, balance of eation or sententious repartee, which cannot but have for us an ele as they were to the Greek audience, froht to sharpest vision the confrontation of the two antagonists The mediaeval dra but a succession of duels, material or spiritual It is indeed the two profiles confronting one another, our sympathy balanced, and suspended, as it were, between thereat field The lish and French draal characterization, rhetorical and lyrical beauty of the Shakespearean draical, but resistless movement of the French Yet the contrast is not quite that between characterization and form; the essential form is common to both In the first place, Elizabethan drama was platform drama--that is, by the testi but the succession of more or less unconnected scenes between two or three persons And we see clearly that the great dramatic power of ”Hamlet,” for instance,purpose, but in the separate scenes of his struggle, each one wonderfully rich, vivid, balanced, but almost a unit in itself On the theory that the true draress, dramatic--as contrasted with literary--poould have to be denied to ”Ha of ”Lear” is not in the terrible retribution of pride and self-will, but in the cruel confrontation of father and daughters

This is no less true of the first great French plays It is certainly not the resistless ue which makes the ”Misanthrope,” ”Tartufe,” the ”Precieuses Ridicules,”

masterpieces of comedy as well as of literature Their dra-of-war between Alceste and Celiue and Chimene in ”Le Cid,” is e think of as dramatic; and it is this same ele English plays And infactor is the ”scene a faire,”--what I have called the scene of confrontation The notoriously successful scene in the English drama of to-day, the duel of Sophy and Lord Quex-- tolerably eh it is-- beco of the face-to-face ele this aesthetic moment of arrest can we allow dramatic value to such a play as ”Les Affaires sont les Affaires”--a truly static drama The hero of this is, in the words of a reviewer, ”essentially the sanitude and direction from the rise to the fall of the curtain It does not move; it is ho are taken around it so that we may see its various facets It is not moulded by the successive incidents of the play, but only disclosed by them; sibi constat” Yet we cannot deny to the play dramatic power; and the reason for this is, as I believe, because it does, after all, possess the dramatic essential--not action, but tension