Part 4 (2/2)

How can the representation of this sheer evil become a good? The principle involved is a simple one. Announced first, as far as I know, by Mendelssohn, it has recently been much more scientifically and penetratingly a.n.a.lyzed by Lipps, although wrongly applied by him to the tragic rather than the pathetic.[Footnote: Cf. Lipps: _Der Streit ber die TraG.o.die_, and _Aesthetik_, Bd. I, S. 599.]

It is a familiar and generally recognized experience, as Lipps has observed, that any threat or harm done to a value evokes in us a heightened appreciation of its worth. Parting is a sweet sorrow because only then do we fully realize the worth of what we are losing; the beauty of youth that dies is more beautiful because in death its radiance s.h.i.+nes the brighter in our memory. A good in contemplation comes to take the place of a lost good in reality. Just as we hold on the more tightly to things that are slipping away from us in a vain effort to keep them, so to save ourselves from utter sorrow, we build up in the imagination a fair image of what we have lost, free of the dust of the world. This makes the peculiar charm of the delicate and fragile, of weak things and little things, of the transient and perishable; they awaken in us the tender, protective impulse while they last, and when they are gone they suffer at our hands an idealization which the strong and enduring can never receive. Our pity for them mediates an increased love of them; we mock at fate which deprives us of them by keeping them secure and fairer in our memory.

As in life, so in art. Beneath and around the pictured destruction and ruin there opens up to us a more poignant vision of the loveliness of what was or might have been. At the end of _The Dram Shop_, when Gervaise sinks into ruin, we inevitably revert to the beginning and see again, only more intensely, the gentle girl that she was, or else, going forward, we imagine what she might have been, if only she had been given a chance. The form of a possible good rises up from under the actual evil. The story of oppression becomes the praise of freedom; the picture of death, a vision of life. I know of no finer example of this in all literature than Sophocles' _Ajax_. Ajax has offended Athena, so he, the hero of the Grecian host, is seized with the mad desire to do battle with cattle and sheep. In lucid intervals he laments to his wife the shameful fate which has befallen him. How glorious his former prowess appears lost in so ridiculous a counterfeit! And his despair creates its magic.

In almost all so-called tragedies, true tragedy and pathos are intermingled; for we feel both pity and admiration, and the pity intensifies the admiration. The danger that threatens or the disaster that overwhelms the values which the hero embodies make us realize their worth the more. Throughout the _Antigone_ we admire the heroine's tragic courage of devotion; but it is at the point when, just before her death, she laments her youth and beauty that shall go fruitless--

Alechron, anymenaion, oute ton gamon mepos lachousan oute paideion tpophaes

that we feel the fullness of strength that was needed for the sacrifice.

One might perhaps think this lament a blemish of weakness in a picture of fort.i.tude; but the impression is just the opposite, I believe; for force is measured by what it overcomes.

There are so many different theories of tragedy that it would be impossible, were it worth while, to embark on a criticism of all of them. There are certain ones, however, which, because of their wide acceptance, demand some attention at our hands. First, it is often a.s.sumed that a tragedy should represent the good as ultimately triumphing, despite suffering and failure. But how can the good triumph when the hero fails and dies? Only, it is answered, if the hero represents a cause which may win despite or even because of his individual doom; and it is with this cause, not with him, that we chiefly sympathize. This was Hegel's view, who demanded that the tragic hero represent some universal interest which, when purged of the one-sidedness and uncompromising insistence of the hero's championing, may nevertheless endure and triumph in its genuine worth. In the _Antigone_, Hegel's favorite example, the cause of family loyalty finds recognition through the punishment of Creon for the girl's death; while at the same time the principle of the sovereignty of the state is upheld through her sacrifice. There are many tragedies which conform, at least partially, to this scheme; but not all, hence it cannot be a universal norm. In _Romeo and Juliet_, for example, although the death of the young people serves to bring about a reconciliation of their families, the real principle for which they suffered--the right of private choice in matters of love--is in no way furthered by the outcome of the play. And, although it is always possible to universalize the good which is sought by any will, it is not possible to deflect upon a principle the full intensity of our sympathy, away from the individual, concrete pa.s.sion and action. Whenever a great personality is represented, it is his personal suffering and fort.i.tude that win at once our pity and our admiration. For private sorrows, for the ruin of character, for the death of those whom we are made to love, there can be no complete atonement in the universal; because it is with the individual that we are chiefly concerned. No; the reconciliation lies where we have placed it--in tragedy, in the personal heroism of the strong character; in pathos, in the vision, not in the triumph, of the good.

The ordinary Protestant theological theory of tragedy is even more inadequate than the Hegelian. For, by a.s.suming that there is no genuine loss in the world, that every evil is compensated for in the future lives of the heroes, it takes away the sting from their sacrifice and so deprives them of their crown of glory. It makes every adventure a calculation of prudence and every despair a farce. It is remote from the reality of experience where men stake all on a chance and, instead of receiving the good by an act of grace, wring it by blood and tears from evil.

On much the same level of thinking is the moralistic theory which requires that the misfortunes of the hero should be the penalty for some fault or weakness. This view, which has the authority of Aristotle, is also based on the doctrine of the justice of the world-order. It was pretty consistently carried out in the cla.s.sical Greek drama; although there suffering is not exacted as an external retribution, but as the inevitable consequence of the turbulent pa.s.sions of the characters; for even the punishment for offenses against the G.o.ds is of the nature of a personal revenge which they take. Later, of course, when the G.o.ds retreated into the background of human life, retributive justice was conceived more abstractly. Now, it must be admitted, I think, that this idea, so deeply rooted in the popular mind, has exerted a profound influence on the drama; yet it cannot be applied universally without sophistry. To be sure, in _Romeo and Juliet_, the young people were disobedient and headstrong; in _Lear_, the old father was foolishly trustful of his wicked daughters; these frailties brought about their ruin. But did they deserve so hard a fate as theirs? Did not Lear suffer as much for his folly as his daughters for their wickedness? This is always true in life, and Shakespeare holds the mirror up to nature--but is it consistent with the theory of retributive justice? One can usually trace back to some element of his nature, physical or moral, the misfortunes that befall an individual; even those which we call accidents, as Galton claimed, are often due to some inherent defect of attention which makes us fail to respond protectively at the right moment. If we take the self to include the entire organism, then it remains true that we cooperate as a partial cause in all that happens to us. Ophelia's weak and unresisting brain must share with the stresses which surrounded her the responsibility for her madness. In this sense, and in this sense only, do we deserve our fate, be it good or ill. Yet, when interpreted in this broadest meaning, retributive justice loses all ethical significance. And the cosmic disharmony appears all the more glaring. It ceases to be chargeable to an external fate or G.o.d, to the environment or convention, which might perhaps be mastered and remolded; and is seen pervading the nature of reality itself, no accidental circ.u.mstance, but essential evil, ineradicable. The greatest tragic poets see it thus. And then blame turns to understanding and resentment into pity.

Retributive justice, as the motive force of tragedy, has for us lost its meaning. We no longer feel the necessity of justifying the ways of G.o.d to man, because we have ceased to believe that there exists any single, responsible power. The good is not a preordained and automatically accomplished fact, but an achievement of finite effort, appearing here and there in the world when individuals, instead of contending against each other, cooperate for their mutual advantage.

In addition to the comic, there is much artistic representation of evil which can be cla.s.sed neither as pathetic nor as tragic. Neither moral admiration nor idealization are aroused by the characters portrayed. They may be great criminals like Lady Macbeth or Iago, or the undistinguished and disorderly people of modern realistic literature, yet in either case we find them good to know. And we do so, not merely because we enjoy, as disinterested onlookers, the spectacle of human existence, but because the artist makes us enter into it and realize its values. For even that which from the moral point of view we p.r.o.nounce evil is, so long as it maintains itself, a good thing from its own point of view. Every will, however blind and careless, seeks a good and finds it, if only in hope and the effort to attain. Through the intimacy of his descriptions and often against our resistance, the artist may compel us to adopt the att.i.tude of the life which he is portraying, constraining us to feel the inner necessity of its choices, the compulsion of its delights. It is difficult to abandon ourselves thus to sympathy with what is wrong in life itself, because we have in mind the consequences and relations which make it wrong; yet we all do so at times, whenever we let ourselves go, charmed by its momentary offering. But in the world of art this is easier, because there the values, being merely represented, can have no sinister effects. When great personalities are portrayed, this abandon is readiest; for the strength or poignancy of their natures carries us away as by a whirlwind. Witness Lady Macbeth when she summons the powers of h.e.l.l to uns.e.x her for her murderous task, or Vanni Fucci in the _Inferno_,[Footnote: _Inferno_, Canto 25, 1-3.] who mocks at G.o.d. For the instant, we become as they and feel their ecstasy of pride and power as our own. Yet the great artist can awaken this sympathy even for characters that are small and weak. In Gogol's _Dead Souls_, for example, there are no heroes. The most interesting characters are the country gentlemen who return to their estates planning to write books which will regenerate Russia. But the old habits of life in the remote district are too strong. So, instead of writing, they fall back into the routine of their ancestors and merely smoke and dream. Here are failure and mediocrity; yet so intimate is the artist's story that we not only understand it all, but feel how good it is--to dream our lives away. I do not doubt that in this story there are elements of pathos and comedy; yet, in general, the delineation is too objective for either; we neither laugh nor cry, but are simply borne on, unresisting, ourselves become a part of the silent tide of Russian life.

The problem of evil in aesthetics may finally be solved by the use of the comic. For in comedy we take pleasure in an object which, in the broadest sense, is evil. In order for an object to be comical there must be a standard or norm, an accepted system, within which the object pretends but fails to fit, and with reference to which, therefore, it is evil. There must be some points of contact between the object and the standard in order that there may be pretense, but not enough points for fulfillment. If we never had any definite expectations with reference to things, never made any demands upon them; if instead of judging them by our preconceived ideas, we took them just as they came and changed our ideas to meet them,--there would be nothing comical.

Or, if everything fitted into our expectations and was as we planned it, then again there would be nothing comical. In a world without ideas, the comic could not exist. The comic depends upon our apperceiving an object in terms of some idea and finding it incongruous.

The most elementary ill.u.s.trations demonstrate this. The unusual is the original comic; to the child all strange things are comical--the Chinaman with his pigtail, the negro with his black skin, the new fas.h.i.+on in dress, the clown with his paint and his antics. As we get used to things, and that means as we come to form ideas of them into which they will fit, adjusting the mind to them, rather than seeking to adjust them to the mind, they cease to be comical. So fas.h.i.+ons in dress or manners which were comical once, become matters of course and we laugh no longer. Enduringly comic are only those objects that persistently create expectations and as persistently violate them.

Such objects are few indeed; but they exist, and const.i.tute the perennial, yet never wearying, stock in trade of comedy. But the comic spirit does not have to depend upon them exclusively, for, as life changes, it constantly raises new expectations and offers new objects which at once provoke and fail to meet them. Everything, therefore, is potentially comical and, in the course of human history, few things can escape a laugh; some curious mind is sure, sooner or later, to bring them under a new idea against which they will be shown up to be absurd. The sanct.i.ties of religion, love, and political allegiance have not been exempt.

Why, if the comical object is always opposed to our demands, should we take pleasure in it? How can we be reconciled to things that are admittedly incongruous with our standards? Why are we not rather displeased and angry with them? Investigators have usually looked for a single source of pleasure in the comic, but of those which have been suggested at least two, I think, contribute something. First, by adopting the point of view of the standard as our own, identifying ourselves with it, and through the contrast of ourselves with the object, we may take pleasure in the resulting exaltation of ourselves.

The pleasure in the comic is often closely akin to that which we feel in distinction of any kind. We feel ourselves superior to the object at which we laugh. There is pride in much of laughter and not infrequently cruelty, a delight in the absurdities of other men because they exalt ourselves as the representatives of the rational and normal.

There is often a touch of malice even in the laughter of the child.

Nevertheless, the pleasure in the comic is still contemplative, and so far aesthetic, because it is a pleasure in perception, not in action.

No matter how evil be the comic object, we do not seek to destroy or remodel it; action is sublimated into laughter.

But the pleasure in the comic may arise through our taking the opposite point of view--that of the funny thing itself. Instead of upholding the point of view of the standard, we may identify ourselves with the object. If the comic spirit is oftentimes the champion of the normal and conventional, it is as often the mischief-maker and rebel. Whenever the maintaining of a standard involves strain through the inhibition of instinctive tendencies, to relax and give way to impulse causes a pleasure which centers itself upon the object that breaks the tension.

The intrusive animal that interrupts the solemn occasion, the child that wittingly or not scoffs at our petty formalities through his naive behavior, win our grat.i.tude, not our scorn. They provide an opportunity for the welcome release of nature from convention. And the greater the strain of the tension, the greater the pleasure and the more insignificant the object or event that will bring relief and cause laughter. The perennial comic pleasure in the risque is derived from this source. There is an element of comic pleasure in the perpetration of any mischievous or unconventional act. Those things which men take most seriously, Schopenhauer has said, namely, love and religion, and we might add, morality, are the most abundant sources of the comic, because they involve the most strain and therefore offer the easiest chances for a playful release. Even utter and absolute nonsense is comical because it undoes all Kant's categories of mind.

Hence, contrary to the theory of Bergson, the spontaneous as well as the mechanical and rigid may be comical. Sometimes the same object may be comical from both the points of view which we have specified; this is always true, as we shall see, in the most highly developed comedy.

For example, we may laugh at the child's prank because it is so absurd from the point of view of our grown-up expectations as to reasonable conduct, and at the same time, taking the part of the child, rejoice at the momentary relief from them which it offers us. Our scorn is mixed with sympathy. And oftentimes the child himself will hold both points of view at once, laughing at his own absurdity and exulting nevertheless in his own freedom. This is the essence of slyness. It follows, moreover, that a thing which was comical for one of the reasons a.s.signed may become comical for the other, by a simple change in the point of view regarding it. For the behavior which first pleased us because it was unconventional tends itself to become a new convention, with reference to which the old convention then becomes the object of a laughter which is scornful. The tables are turned: the rebel laughs at the king.

The foregoing explanation of why we find the comical pleasant also explains why so many of our other pleasures are intermixed with the comical--why so often we not only smile when we are pleased, but laugh.

For, in the case of all except the most elementary enjoyments, our pleasures are connected with the satisfaction of definite expectations regarding the actions or events of our daily lives. But, owing to the dulling effect of habit, the pleasure attendant upon these satisfactions gradually becomes smaller and smaller or even negligible; until, as a result, only the novel and surprising events which surpa.s.s our expectations give us large pleasure; but these are comical. With the child, whose expectations are rigid and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase ”to be highly tickled” expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way to an impulse contains a slight element of the mischievous or ridiculous; whence, for this reason too, the pleasant is also the comical. In fact, most of the pleasures of highly complex and reflective persons are tinged with laughter.

We expect art to accomplish three great results--reconciliation, revelation, and sympathy. So far we have shown how comic art may accomplish the first; we have yet to prove how it may accomplish the rest. In his book _Le Rire_, Bergson has expressed the view that comedy is explicitly falsifying and unsympathetic. As to the former charge, we can, I think, convince ourselves of the opposite if we examine certain of the more obvious methods of comedy, particularly those which might seem at first sight to lend support to his contention.

One of the most common of these is exaggeration. The simplest example is caricature, where certain features of an object are purposely exaggerated. The effect is, of course, comical, because we expect the normal and duly-proportioned. What a manifest falsification, one might a.s.sert! Yet just the opposite is the actual result. For every good caricaturist selects for exaggeration prominent and characteristic traits, through which by the very emphasis that is placed upon them, the nature of the individual is better understood. Another favorite method is abstraction. Certain traits are presented as if they were the whole man. We get the typical comic figures of the novel and drama; the physician who is only a physician; the lawyer who injects the legal point of view into every circ.u.mstance of life; the lover or the miser who is just love or greed; the people who, as in d.i.c.kens, meet every situation with the same phrase or att.i.tude, This, too, looks like a plain falsification of human nature, because, however strong be the professional bias or however overmastering the ruling pa.s.sion, real people are always more complex and many-sided, having other modifying and counteracting elements of character which prevent their speech and actions from being completely monotonous and mechanical. Nevertheless, we can again acquit the comic writer of falsification, because we understand the method which he is employing, the trick of his trade.

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