Part 12 (1/2)

V

It will be demanded, however, what place there is then for a temporal factor, if the typical drareat scene? It cannot be denied that the drama is a work of art developed in time, like music and poetry It comes to a climax and a resolution; it evolves its harmonies like the sylect, in such an aesthetic analysis, what is an undoubted element in dramatic effect, the so-called inevitable march of events In answer to this objection we may hold that the temporal factor is a corollary of the primary demand for confrontation It is necessary that the confrontation or conflict should be vividly iined, with all possible associative reinforceht up to the turn of the screw, as it were

For this, then, motivation is absolutely necessary An attitude is only clearly ”realized” when it is made to seem inevitable

It takes complete possession of our iven scene, the power of a part to reproduce itself in us is iven it by motivation, and for this there must be a full body of associations to draw on, to round out and co The villain of the play is, for instance, less coested” to us, because our associations are supposedly less rich for such characters; as a beggar hypnotized and re mental equipment for the part Now, this inner possession can co course of preparation

In providing such an accuer Dureater! To make his audience accept--that is, identify itself with--the action of the hero in ”Denise,” or the mother's decision in ”Les Idees de M, and thereby to experience fully the great drao the effect of innumerable small impulses

And to realize some situations is even beyond the scope of a play's development It is an acute remark of Mr GK

Chesterton's, that e: which subject is one for slow years of adjustment, patience, adaptation, endeavor; while the drama requires quick decisions, bouleversements, etc, and would do wisely to confine itself to fields in which such bouleversements can be made credible At any rate, motivation is desirable for the dra-out--is an essential condition of motivation To make the dramatic conflict ever sharper and deeper, until it either h the destruction of one element, is the whole duty of the development, and makes it necessary

That develop the flood that it reater force

This, too, is an answer to the objection that if confrontation is the dramatic essential, bare opposition, because the clearest confrontation, would be the greatest drama, and the ”Suppliants”

of Euripedes be indeed an example of it Bare opposition is never real confrontation in our sense, for that onism of all impulses of soul and sense

It hts, all passions, all delights,” to be complete, and the measure of its completeness is the measure of its aesthetic value

In the sanificance in the drama is clearly to be reached from the purely dramatic need Inner ”possession,” the condition for our draestions-- suggestion in its, so to speak, quantitative aspect The attitude of a character reat and general laws of life If it is fundaest and cos hollow We cannot completely enter into it Thus we see that the one central require deic, sanity, and morality in the ideas of a play

This should not be interpreted as exhausting the aesthetic value of logic and morality in the drama The drama is a species of literature: and these qualities, apart from the fact that they are necessary to the full dramatic moment, have also an aesthetic effect proper to themselves Thus the developress; but this beauty is common to the epic, the novel, and the syiven by the confrontation and tension of sis to the dra the dramatic end that I have deduced

Yet we may well recall here the other aspect of the experience

analogous to the pleasure in rhythm and in music, in which the awaited beat or tone slips, as it were, into a place already prepared for it, with the satisfaction of harmonious nervous adjustress For it is not felt as inevitable unless the whole crystallization of the situation ht necessary at a certain point in the structure, nized with acclai and accepting it; and we realize it as it coical analysis of the will itself--theoretically, the two states are nearly identical Thus this continual anticipation and ”co-tone of all volition; and so in ree in all forms of literature, we have the illusion of the triumphant will This is the secret of that creative joy felt by the spectator at a drama, which has been so often noted It is this illusion of the triuely into our acceptance of the tragic end Much has been said, in the ”dispute over tragedy,” of the so-called ”Resignation” of the tragic hero, and of the audience in relation to his fate But I believe that these writers are wrong in connecting this resignation primarily with a moral attitude

What is foreseen as perfectly inevitable, is sufficiently ”accepted” in the psychological sense--that is, vividly iined and awaited,--to contribute to this illusion of volition Hence arise, for the catastrophe of drama, that exaltation and stern joy which are indissolubly connected with the experience of will in real life

VI

We have spoken of the dramatic, and have desired to show that its peculiar aesthetic experience arises out of the tension or balance of e forces If this is a fruitful theory, it should throw light on the distinction between the different forms of the draedy” which is alith us

The possible results of aof two forces are these

Both forces, or one force, may be destroyed; or, short of destruction, the two ive way before the other I think it may be said that these alternatives represent the distinctions of Tragedy and Comedy

When two ai to them are important,--that is, powerful,--there edy When they are reconcilable, if they are important, we have serious coed as iedy and Comedy are closely related,-- more closely than we are prone to think In the words of the late Professor Everett, in ”Poetry, Coic is, like the coedy of Nature, which is called the Struggle for Existence, results siruousness between any forsThe coruous relation considered ruous relation taken as to its reality” For this word incongruity I would substitute collision or conflict When there is no way out, we have Tragedy; when there is a way out, we have Coh, there always is a way out, for we can at least always agree to disagree In any case, the end of the conflict is a period, repose, unity This sees hich we coreat comedy are indeed almost identical The excitement, tension, sunk into repose, are coely paralleled by our resignation to a bad one,-- significant of our real indifference to the fact, so long as the Aesthetic Unity is reached

In George Meredith's wonderful little essay on the Comic Spirit, this view is rather remarkably confirmed He has defined Comedy as the contrast of the aries, ”Comme un point fixe fait remarquer l'emportement des autres” Comedy, he says, teaches the world to understand what ails it”Coain, ”the use of the true cohter” ”Men's future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees theiven to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or moved with conceit, individually or in the bulk--the Spirit overhead will look huht on thehter That is the Comic Spirit” The Comic Spirit is the just coolden ht of our flashi+ng laughter at the deviation therefrom And because there is, even the unreconciled--reconcilable--difference or conflict is not serious That is why true Comedy seems to find its best field in a developed social life The incongruities of human nature hurt is they are pressed too deep, because they are irreconcilable; they too quickly edge the tragic gulf

But the incongruities of the conventional life do not hurt when pressed To change our metaphor, adjustment to the middle way is here so easily credible and possible, that it is the very hunting-ground for the Comic Spirit

The reputed masterpiece of Moliere shows us Alceste and Celiht-heartedness and sincerity are not to cohtly led up to the ihter Wherever the middle way is divined, there is the possible entrance of the Spirit of Coic effect of Pinero's greatest play, that the middle way, the possibility of reconciliation, is shadowed forth in the last word,--the cry of the stepdaughter of the Second Mrs

Tanqueray, ”If I had only been more merciful!” Dumas fils would never have allowed that He would have written his play around that thought, anddrama-- or he would have suppressed the cry The end of Romeo and Juliet--date I confess it?--has always hovered for me close to that border which is not sublime For the hapless lovers ht inevitable in their plight I see the Co across to stay the hand of the iht? she edy ensues when there is no way out It is not that ruin or death for those in whom these forces are embodied is of the essence of the situation; only that in the complete destruction of a force or purpose when it has been e desperate character, the death of that character is usually involved There is no solution but to cut the knot The tragic has been defined as ”that quality of experience whereby, in and through some serious collision, followed by fatal catastrophe or inner ruin, so valuable in personality becomes manifest, either as sublime or admirable in the hero, or as triumph of an idea” But ”Lear,” ”Macbeth,” ”Ha,” ”Othello,” exist to contravene this view No, the tragic (in its first sense, in the sense derived from the dramatic form from which it is named) is in the collision itself; it is the profound and, to our vision, the irreconcilable antagonism of different elements in life And in life we accept it because we s, we ic experience is the reaction of the unconquerable Soul In tragic literature another appears We are helped in transcending the essential contradictions of life presented to us, because the conditions of literature in ”preparing” an event create for us the illusion of volition, the acceptance of fate And in the tragic drama, to all these elements of the complex experience, there is added the exaltation of the aesthetic ”arrest,” the tension of confrontations

The question of the ”highest” or ”eneral agreeic of the justified opposing force is theand i and cos are called into play on each side than in the case of the unjustified opposing force But the definition of the tragic drama we have won seems further to illuminate our undoubted preference for this type We demand aesthetically all that will make the confrontation, the dramatic tension, more clearly felt; and we cannot realize fully a side which should be unjustified In such a play as Maeterlinck's ”Aglavaine and Selysette” there is no movement, and even the conflict is subterranean; yet, as all the characters are in their way noble, and in their way justified, we find it anant of his plays Nay, more, in any situation the more nearly the conflict is shown to be absolutely inevitable, arising out of the very nature of life as we know it,--completely justified, or at least FELT as inevitable on both sides,--the ic emotion The conflict of duties to one's self and to the world is the sharpest of tragedies Luther, as Freytag well shows, is a really tragic figure from the moment e conceive of the inner connection of his intolerance with all that is good and great in his nature

As the expression of such a conflict of iedy than the ”Joy of Living;” ”Ghosts” than ”Hedda Gabler;” the story of ”Francesca Da Rimini” (I do not mean D'Annunzio's play) than ”La Citta Morta”