Part 5 (1/2)

Such in outline is Hegel's main view It may be illustrated more fully by two examples, favourites of his, taken froa Orestes, their son, is ie his father, and is ordered by Apollo to do so But to kill a ainst filial piety The spiritual substance is divided against itself The sacred bond of father and son demands what the equally sacred bond of son and mother forbids When, therefore, Orestes has done the deed, the Furies of his murdered mother claim him for their prey He appeals to Apollo, who resists their claim A solution is arrived at without a catastrophe The cause is referred to Athene, who institutes at Athens a court of sworn judges The votes of this court being equally divided, Athene gives her casting-vote for Orestes; while the Furies are at last appeased by a proone_, on the other hand, to Hegel the 'perfect exeative The brother of Antigone has brought against his native city an ar it He has been killed in the battle, and Creon, the ruler of the city, has issued an edict forbidding anyone on pain of death to bury the corpse

In so doing he not only dishonours the dead one without hesitation disobeys the edict, and Creon, despite the remonstrance of his son, who is affianced to her, persists in exacting the penalty Warned by the prophet Teiresias, he gives way, but too late Antigone, immured in a rocky chamber to starve, has anticipated her death Her lover follows her exaone has lost her life through her absolute assertion of the faainst the state; Creon has violated the sanctity of the family, and in return sees his own hoht of the family nor that of the state is denied; what is denied is the absoluteness of the claier of illustrations like these is that they divert attention from the principle illustrated to questions about the interpretation of particular works So it will be here I cannot stay to discuss these questions, which do not affect Hegel's principle; but it will be well, before going further, to reenerally to be found in criticisone_ The el talks of equally justified powers or claims But Aeschylus never meant that Orestes and the Furies were equally justified; for Orestes was acquitted Nor did Sophocles ht And how can it have been equally the duty of Orestes to kill his mother and not to kill her?' But, in the first place, it isat all e should generally call the moral quality of the acts and persons concerned, or, in the ordinary sense, what it was their duty to do And, in the second place, when he speaks of 'equally justified' powers, what he means, and, indeed, sometimes says, is that these powers are _in themselves_ equally justified The family and the state, the bond of father and son, the bond of mother and son, the bond of citizenshi+p, these are each and all, one as iance It is tragic that observance of one should involve the violation of another These are Hegel's propositions, and surely they are true Their truth is quite unaffected by the fact (assu this observance of one and violation of another was ht, or by the fact (if so it is) that one such act (say Antigone's) wasIt is sufficient for Hegel's principle that the violation should take place, and that we should feel its weight We do feel it Weit we still feel that it is no light matter to disobey the law or to ht say) there is much justice in the pleas of the Furies and of Creon, and that the _tragic_ effect depends upon these facts If, again, it is objected that the underlying conflict in the _Antigone_ is not between the family and the state, but between divine and huel's interpretation,[3] but it would not affect his principle, except for those who recognise no obligation in human law; and it will scarcely be contended that Sophocles is to be nu theret that Hegel eht,' 'justified,' and 'justice' They do not s, but to others they suggest associations with criments, or perhaps the theory of 'poetic justice'; and these are all out of place in a discussion on tragedy

Having deterel proceeds to give an account of some differences between ancient and modern works In the limited time at our disposal we shall do best to confine ourselves to a selection froedy Hegel, who finds soly but little use of him for purposes of contrast, while his main point of view as to Aeschylus and Sophocles has already appeared in the illustrations we have given of the general principle I will only add, by way of preface, that the pages about to be suly, the impression that to his mind the principle is edies than in modern works But the question whether this really was his deliberate opinion would detain us too long froel considers first the cases wherewith conflicts arising from the pursuit of ends which may be called substantial or objective and not edy here shows a reater variety Subjects are taken, for example, fros and nobles, of state and church Calderon shows the conflict of love and honour regarded as powers iations

Schiller in his early works ainst convention, or of freedohts in their essence universal Wallenstein aims at the unity and peace of Gereht and action union with the Absolute In such cases the end is iance of the individual; but, on the other hand, it does not always or generally represent a great _ethical_ institution or bond like the family or the state We have passed into a wider world

But, secondly, he observes, in regard to er number of instances such public or universal interests either do not appear at all, or, if they appear, are scarcely round for the real subject The real subject, the i conflict, is personal,--these particular characters with their struggle and their fate The iiven to subjectivity--this is the distinctive edies bear its i may be illustrated thus We are interested in the personality of Orestes or Antigone, but chiefly as it shows itself in one aspect, as identifying itself with a certain ethical relation; and our interest in the personality is inseparable and indistinguishable from our interest in the power it represents This is not so with Hamlet, whose position so closely reserosses our attention is the whole personality of Ha spiritual power, but with circumstances and, still more, with difficulties in his own nature No one could think of describing Othello as the representative of an ethical family relation His passion, however much nobility he may show in it, is personal So is Roht, as soht, if it could occur to us to use the terht

On this edy others depend For instance, that variety of subject to which reference has just been ht is attached to personality, al character is involved ain, characterisation has become fuller and more subtle, except in dramas which are more or less an iedy are far fro types or personified abstractions, as those of classical French tragedy tend to be: they are genuine individuals But still they are comparatively simple and easy to understand, and have not the intricacy of the characters in Shakespeare

These, for the most part, represent simply themselves; and the loss of that interest which attached to the Greek characters from their identification with an ethical power, is compensated by an extraordinary subtlety in their portrayal, and also by their possession of so superiority Finally, the interest in personality explains the freedom hich characters edy Mephistopheles is as essentially modern as Faust The passion of Richard or Macbeth is not only personal, like that of Othello; it is egoistic and anarchic, and leads to crie of their wickedness; but to the reatness of the personality justifies its appearance in the position of hero Such beings as Iago and Goneril, aledies; but, according to Hegel, they would not have been adedy at all If Clytemnestra had been cited in objection as a parallel to Lady Macbeth, he would have replied that Lady Macbeth had not the faintest ground of coamemnon_ we are frequently reminded that Clyteht have added that Clytemnestra is herself an example of the necessity, where one of the principal characters inspires hatred or horror, of increasing the subtlety of the drawing or adding grandeur to the evil will

It reard to the issue of the conflict We have seen that Hegel attributes this issue in the former to the ethical substance or eternal justice, and so accounts for such reconciliation as we feel to be present even where the end is a catastrophe Now, in the catastrophe of edy, he says, a certain justice is sometimes felt to be present; but even then it differs from the antique justice It is in soh it is not egoistic, is still presented rather as his particular end than as soh partial; and hence the catastrophe appears as the reaction, not of an undivided ethical totality, but ainst a too assertive particular[5] In cases, again, where the hero (Richard or Macbeth) openly attacks an ethical power and plunges into evil, we feel that he ets what he deserves; but then this justice is colder and edy Thus even when the modern work seems to resemble the ancient in its issue, the sense of reconciliation is imperfect And partly for this reason, partly from the concentration of our interest on individuality as such, we desire to see in the individual himself some sort of reconciliation with his fate What shape this will take depends, of course, on the story and the character of the hero Itthat he is exchanging his earthly being for an indestructible happiness; or again, in his recognition of the justice of his fall; or at least he may show us that, in face of the forces that crush hith of his oill

But there reedies where we have to attribute the catastrophe not to any kind of justice, but to unhappy circumstances and outward accidents And then we can only feel that the individual whose merely personal ends are thwarted by mere particular circumstances and chances, pays the penalty that awaits existence in a scene of contingency and finitude Such a feeling cannot rise above sadness, and, if the hero is a noble soul, it may become the impression of a dreadful external necessity This impression can be avoided only when circumstance and accident are so depicted that they are felt to coincide with so in the hero himself, so that he is not simply destroyed by an outward force So it is with Hamlet 'This bank and shoal of time' is too narrow for his soul, and the death that seems to fall on him by chance is also within him And so in _Romeo and Juliet_ we feel that the rose of a love so beautiful is too tender to bloo of reconciliation is still one of pain, an unhappy blessedness[6] And if the situation displayed in a drama is of such a kind that we feel the issue to depend _siive to the course of events, we are fully justified in our preference for a happy ending

In this last reel, of course, is not criticising Shakespeare He is objecting to the destiny-draence in sentily as he asserted the essential function of negation throughout the universe, the affirmative power of the spirit, even in its profoundest divisions, was for hi theme And one may see this even in his references to Shakespeare He appreciated Shakespeare's representation of extreme forms of evil, but, even if he was fully satisfied of its justification, his personal preference lay in another direction, and while I do not doubt that he thought _Haenie_, I suspect he loved Goethe's play the best

Most of those who have thought about this subject will agree that the ideas I have tried to sketch are interesting and valuable; but they suggest scores of questions Alike in the account of tragedy in general, and in that of the differences between ancient and edy, everyone will find stateret; and scarcely one of Hegel's interpretations of particular plays will escape objection It is impossible for me to touch on more than a few points; and to the main ideas I owe so much that I am more inclined to dwell on their truth than to criticise what seem to be defects But perhaps after all an atte soin with the atte eedy rather than on the suffering andthat does not spring in great part froency of the sufferer, is tragic, however pitiful or dreadful itpresent, misfortune, the fall fro it, at once becoredient, as does the pity for it in the tragic feeling Hegel, I think, certainly takes too little notice of it; and by this o the importance of which he would have ad is borne Physical pain, to take an extre it, is another And the noble endurance of pain that rends the heart is the source of ain, there is one particular kind of ency, which undoubtedly ests the idea of fate Tragedies which representof chance or a blank fate or a malicious fate, are never really deep: it is satisfactory to see that Maeterlinck, a enius, has now risen above these ideas But, where those factors of tragedy are present which Hegel e fateful in e call accident, the impression that the hero not only invites , but is also, if I ely and terribly unlucky, is in ic effect It is so, for example, in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ It is so even in dra that character is destiny

Hegel's own reference to the prominence of accident in the plot of _Hao's victim if his own character had been different; but still, as we say, it is an extraordinary fatality which makes him the coh, brave enough, and vile enough to ensnare hione_ itself, and in the very catastrophe of it, accident plays its part: we can hardly say that it depends solely on the characters of Creon and Antigone that the one yields just too late to save the life of the other Now, it el's whole account of the ultiedy is a rationalisation of the idea of fate, but his remarks on this particular aspect of fate are neither sufficient nor satisfactory

His insistence on the need for soic catastrophe, and his rereatest value; but one result of the oerates it, and at other ti of the kind of tragedy heat the close of the conflict is, or should be, one of complete reconciliation This it surely neither is nor can be Not toand death we have witnessed, the very existence of the conflict, even if a supreme ethical power is felt to be asserted in its close, ree h we may be said to see, in one sense, how the opposition of spiritual powers arises, soainst it And even the perception or belief that itthat the necessity is terrible, or our pain in the woe of the guilty and the innocent Nay, oneand the pain would not vanish if we fully understood that the conflict and catastrophe were by a rational necessity involved in the divine and eternally accoel's language, if partly due to his enthusiasm for the affirmative, may beIn the _Philosophy of Religion_, I edies like the _Antigone_ so remains unresolved (ii 135)

On the other hand, his treatedy is in several respects insufficient I will mention only one He does not notice that in the conclusion of not a few tragedies pain islike exultation Is there not such a feeling at the close of _Hah the end in the last two cases touches the liitimate pathos? This exultation appears to be connected with our sense that the hero has never shown hireat or noble as in the death which seals his failure A rush of passionate adle with our grief; and the cos, appears to leave them untouched, or even to be entirely in harmony with them If in such dramas we may be said to feel that the ultimate power is no mere fate, but a spiritual power, then we also feel that the hero was never so near to this power as in the moment when it required his life

The last oel's theory is that he underrates the action in tragedy of what h distinction moral evil rather than defect Certainly the part played by evil differs greatly in different cases, but it is never absent, not even froel's favourite type If it does not appear in the main conflict, it appears in its occasion You o and Macbeth have evil purposes, neither the act of Orestes nor the vengeance of the Furies, neither Antigone's breach of the edict nor even Creon's insistence on her punishs froone has to deal, and so in a sense the whole tragedy, arises froa ruin on his native city In fact, if we confine the title 'tragedy' to plays ending with a catastrophe, it will be found difficult to naedies, ancient or modern, in which evil has not directly or indirectly a pro on the effect produced by the catastrophe On the one hand, it deepens the sense of painful awe The question why affirh; but the question why, together with theenerated violent evil and extreme depravity is harder and more painful still But, on the other hand, the elethened by recognition of the part played by evil in bringing it about; because our sense that the ultimate power cannot endure the presence of such evil is implicitly the sense that this power is at least erated claims of its own isolated powers, that which provokes from it a much more vehement reactionis forcibly evoked by Shakespeare's tragedies, and in many Greek dramas it is directly appealed to by repeated reminders that what is at work in the disasters is the unsleeping Ate which follows an ancestral sin If Aristotle did not in some lost part of the _Poetics_ discuss ideas like this, he failed to give a coedy

I come lastly to the matter I have el's theory seeedy And I will not assert that his own statement of it fails to cover the whole field of instances For he does not teach, as he is often said to do, that tragedy portrays only the conflict of such ethical powers as the family and the state He adds to these, as we have seen, others, such as love and honour, together with various universal ends; and it eneral state to himself, no substantial or universal ends collide, but the interest is centred on 'personalities' Nevertheless, when these cases coel's view, they are the most characteristically modern cases--we are not satisfied They naturally tend to appear as declensions from the more ideal ancient form; for how can a personality which represents only itself clai universal? And further, they are sometimes described in a manner which strikes the reader, let us say, of Shakespeare, as both insufficient and , then, unprofitable questions about the coedy, I should like to propose a restateeneral principle which would make it more obviously apply to both

If we omit all reference to ethical or substantial powers and interests, what have we left? We have the el's own--that tragedy portrays a self-division and self-waste of spirit, or a division of spirit involving conflict and waste It is implied in this that on _both_ sides in the conflict there is a spiritual value The sael's oords) by saying that the tragic conflict is one not ood with good

Only, in saying this, wethat has spiritual value, not oodness alone,[7]

and that 'evil' has a similarly wide sense

Now this idea of a division of spirit involving conflict and waste covers the tragedies of ethical and other universal powers, and it coversto it the collision of such poould be one kind of tragic collision, but only one _Why_ are we tragically moved by the conflict of fah value on fa else that has sufficient value affect us tragically? It does The value must be sufficient--a moderate value will not serve; and other characteristics ranted these conditions, _any_ spiritual conflict involving spiritual waste is tragic And it is just one greatness of ic fact in situations of so many and such diverse kinds

These situations have not the peculiar effectiveness of the conflicts preferred by Hegel, but they may have an equal effectiveness peculiar to the a most unfavourable instance--unfavourable because the play seeood and evil, and so, according both to Hegel's stateedy at all: I reed that it does not lie between two ethical powers or universal ends, and that, as Hegel says, the main interest is in personalities Let us take it first, then, to lie between Macbeth and the persons opposing hiood on both sides--not an equal aood on each to give the iood in Macbeth? It is not a question ood It is not a question of the use ood, but of its presence And such bravery and skill in war as win the enthusiasination as few but poets possess; a conscience so vivid that his deed is to hi of terror, and, once done, condemns him to that torture of the mind on which he lies in restless ecstasy; a deter that, for all this tor back, but, even when he has found that life is a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, will tell it out to the end though earth and heaven and hell are leagued against hiood? Do they not make you, for all your horror, adony, pity him, and see in him the waste of forces on which you place a spiritual value? It is simply on this account that he is for you, not the abstraction called a criion, knows no such thing), but a tragic hero, and that his ith other forces of indubitable spiritual worth is a tragic war[8]

It is required by the restateel's principle to show that in the external conflict of persons there is good on both sides It is not required that this should be true, secondly, of both sides in the conflict within the hero's soul; for the hero is only a part of the tragedy Nevertheless in almost all cases, if not in all, it is true It is obviously so where, as in the hero and also the heroine of the _Cid_, the contending powers in this internal struggle are love and honour

Even when love is of a quality less pure and has a destructive force, as in Shakespeare's Antony, it is clearly true And it remains true even where, as in Hamlet and Macbeth, the contest seeht conveniently be said to lie, between forces siood and siic effect depends upon the fact It depends on our feeling that the elements in the ood in hi the evil, reinforces it