The Nostalgic Silliness of Tragedy as the Twentieth Century Draws to a Close

Abstract

For a long time and in most histories of literature the phenomenon ‘tragedy’, or ‘the tragic’, has been all but synonymous with the highest in poetic and narrative achievement, depicting ‘man’ at his ‘most human’. Such near-absolutist canonization deserves to be examined by testing out its presuppositions before some breadth of contemporary audience possibilities, in order to build ways for exploring the question of quality with regard to such a genre. My own partisan stance toward this part of the exploration is no doubt clear from the title I have given to this chapter; I should say that the label came only after the analysis was nearly finished.

A belief that defies intellectual convictions is a frantically defended lie. That defense may constitute a great tragic theme, but is not itself a poetic expression of the tragic sense of life; it is actual pathetic expression, springing from an emotional conflict.

Suzanne K. Langer

Even to dramatize a simple newspaper report one needs something much more than the dramatic technique of a Hebbel or an Ibsen. That is no boast but a sad statement of fact. It is impossible to explain a present day character by features or a present day action by motives that would have been adequate in our grandfather’s time.

Bertolt Brecht