Classic Poem

Since Aristotle dealt with tragedy, and, as usual, drew the main
features of his subject with those sure and simple strokes which no
later hand has rivalled, the only philosopher who has treated it in a
manner both original and searching is Hegel. I propose here to give a
sketch of Hegel's theory, and to add some remarks upon it. But I cannot
possibly do justice in a sketch to a theory which fills many pages of
the Aesthetik; which I must tear from its connections with the
author's general view of poetry, and with the rest of his philosophy;
and which I must try to exhibit as far as possible in the language of
ordinary literature. To estimate this theory, therefore, from my sketch
would be neither safe nor just--all the more because, in the interest of
immediate clearness, I have not scrupled to insert without warning
various remarks and illustrations for which Hegel is not responsible.

On certain characteristics of tragedy the briefest reminder will
suffice. A large part of the nature of this form of drama is common to
the drama in all its forms; and of this nothing need be said. It will be
agreed, further, that in all tragedy there is some sort of collision or
conflict--conflict of feelings, modes of thought, desires, wills,
purposes; conflict of persons with one another, or with circumstances,
or with themselves; one, several, or all of these kinds of conflict, as
the case may be. Again, it may be taken for granted that a tragedy is a
story of unhappiness or suffering, and excites such feelings as pity and
fear. To this, if we followed the present usage of the term, we should
add that the story of unhappiness must have an unhappy end; by which we
mean in effect that the conflict must close with the death of one or
more of the principal characters. But this usage of the word 'tragedy'
is comparatively recent; it leaves us without a name for many plays, in
many languages, which deal with unhappiness without ending unhappily;
and Hegel takes the word in its older and wider sense.

Passing on from these admitted characteristics of tragedy, we may best
approach Hegel's peculiar view by observing that he lays particular
stress on one of them. That a tragedy is a story of suffering is
probably to many people the most obvious fact about it. Hegel says very
little of this; partly, perhaps, because it is obvious, but more because
the essential point to him is not the suffering but its cause, namely,
the action or conflict. Mere suffering, he would say, is not tragic, but
only the suffering that comes of a special kind of action. Pity for mere
misfortune, like fear of it, is not tragic pity or fear. These are due
to the spectacle of the conflict and its attendant suffering, which do
not appeal simply to our sensibilities or our instinct of
self-preservation, but also to our deeper mind or spirit (Geist, a
word which, with its adjective, I shall translate 'spirit,' 'spiritual,'
because our words 'mind' and 'mental' suggest something merely
intellectual).

The reason why the tragic conflict thus appeals to the spirit is that it
is itself a conflict of the spirit. It is a conflict, that is to say,
between powers that rule the world of man's will and action--his
'ethical substance.' The family and the state, the bond of parent and
child, of brother and sister, of husband and wife, of citizen and ruler,
or citizen and citizen, with the obligations and feelings appropriate to
these bonds; and again the powers of personal love and honour, or of
devotion to a great cause or an ideal interest like religion or science
or some kind of social welfare--such are the forces exhibited in tragic
action; not indeed alone, not without others less affirmative and
perhaps even evil, but still in preponderating mass. And as they form
the substance of man, are common to all civilised men, and are
acknowledged as powers rightfully claiming human allegiance, their
exhibition in tragedy has that interest, at once deep and universal,
which is essential to a great work of art.

In many a work of art, in many a statue, picture, tale, or song, such
powers are shown in solitary peace or harmonious co-operation. Tragedy
shows them in collision. Their nature is divine, and in religion they
appear as gods; but, as seen in the world of tragic action, they have
left the repose of Olympus, have entered into human wills, and now meet
as foes. And this spectacle, if sublime, is also terrible. The
essentially tragic fact is the self-division and intestinal warfare of
the ethical substance, not so much the war of good with evil as the war
of good with good. Two of these isolated powers face each other, making
incompatible demands. The family claims what the state refuses, love
requires what honour forbids. The competing forces are both in
themselves rightful, and so far the claim of each is equally justified;
but the right of each is pushed into a wrong, because it ignores the
right of the other, and demands that absolute sway which belongs to
neither alone, but to the whole of which each is but a part.

And one reason why this happens lies in the nature of the characters
through whom these claims are made. It is the nature of the tragic hero,
at once his greatness and his doom, that he knows no shrinking or
half-heartedness, but identifies himself wholly with the power that
moves him, and will admit the justification of no other power. However
varied and rich his inner life and character may be, in the conflict it
is all concentrated in one point. Antigone is the determination to do
her duty to her dead brother; Romeo is not a son or a citizen as well as
a lover, he is lover pure and simple, and his love is the whole of him.

The end of the tragic conflict is the denial of both the exclusive
claims. It is not the work of chance or blank fate; it is the act of the
ethical substance itself, asserting its absoluteness against the
excessive pretensions of its particular powers. In that sense, as
proceeding from an absolute right which cancels claims based on right
but pushed into wrong, it may be called the act of 'eternal justice.'
Sometimes it can end the conflict peacefully, and the tragedy closes
with a solution. Appearing as a divine being, the spiritual unity
reconciles by some adjustment the claims of the contending powers
(Eumenides); or at its bidding one of them softens its demand
(Philoctetes); or again, as in the more beautiful solution of the
Oedipus Coloneus, the hero by his own self-condemnation and inward
purification reconciles himself with the supreme justice, and is
accepted by it. But sometimes the quarrel is pressed to extremes; the
denial of the one-sided claims involves the death of one or more of the
persons concerned; and we have a catastrophe. The ultimate power thus
appears as a destructive force. Yet even here, as Hegel insists, the end
is not without an aspect of reconciliation. For that which is denied is
not the rightful powers with which the combatants have identified
themselves. On the contrary, those powers, and with them the only thing
for which the combatants cared, are affirmed. What is denied is the
exclusive and therefore wrongful assertion of their right.

Such in outline is Hegel's main view. It may be illustrated more fully
by two examples, favourites of his, taken from Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Clytemnestra has murdered Agamemnon, her husband and king. Orestes,
their son, is impelled by filial piety to avenge his father, and is
ordered by Apollo to do so. But to kill a mother is to sin against
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 promise of everlasting honour at Athens.

In the Antigone, on the other hand, to Hegel the 'perfect exemplar of
tragedy,' the solution is negative. The brother of Antigone has brought
against his native city an army of foreigners bent on destroying 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 man, but violates the rights
of the gods of the dead. Antigone 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
example, and his mother refuses to survive him. Thus Antigone has lost
her life through her absolute assertion of the family against the state;
Creon has violated the sanctity of the family, and in return sees his
own home laid in ruins. But in this catastrophe neither the right of the
family nor that of the state is denied; what is denied is the
absoluteness of the claim of each.

The danger 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 remove a misunderstanding of it which is
generally to be found in criticisms of his treatment of the Eumenides
and the Antigone. The main objection may be put thus: 'Hegel 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 mean that Antigone and Creon were equally
right. 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 is most
important to observe that Hegel is not discussing at all what we 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 citizenship, these are each and all,
one as much as another, powers rightfully claiming human allegiance. 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 (assuming it is one) that in the
circumstances the act combining this observance of one and violation of
another was morally right, or by the fact (if so it is) that one such
act (say Antigone's) was morally right, and another (say Creon's) was
morally wrong. It is sufficient for Hegel's principle that the violation
should take place, and that we should feel its weight. We do feel it. We
may approve the act of Antigone or Orestes, but in approving it we still
feel that it is no light matter to disobey the law or to murder a
mother, that (as we might 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 human law, that objection, if sound, might touch Hegel's
interpretation, 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 numbered among them. On the other
hand, it is, I think, a matter for regret that Hegel employed such words
as 'right,' 'justified,' and 'justice.' They do not mislead readers
familiar with his writings, but to others they suggest associations with
criminal law, or our everyday moral judgments, or perhaps the theory of
'poetic justice'; and these are all out of place in a discussion on
tragedy.

Having determined in outline the idea or principle of tragedy, Hegel
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 from his remarks on the latter. For in
speaking of ancient tragedy Hegel, who finds something modern in
Euripides, makes accordingly 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 summarised leave on one, rightly or wrongly, the impression that to
his mind the principle is more adequately realised in the best classical
tragedies than in modern works. But the question whether this really was
his deliberate opinion would detain us too long from weightier
matters.

Hegel considers first the cases where modern tragedy resembles ancient
in dealing with conflicts arising from the pursuit of ends which may be
called substantial or objective and not merely personal. And he points
out that modern tragedy here shows a much greater variety. Subjects are
taken, for example, from the quarrels of dynasties, of rivals for the
throne, of kings and nobles, of state and church. Calderon shows the
conflict of love and honour regarded as powers imposing obligations.
Schiller in his early works makes his characters defend the rights of
nature against convention, or of freedom of thought against
prescription--rights in their essence universal. Wallenstein aims at the
unity and peace of Germany; Karl Moor attacks the whole arrangement of
society; Faust seeks to attain in thought and action union with the
Absolute. In such cases the end is more than personal; it represents a
power claiming the allegiance 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 modern tragedy, that in a
larger number of instances such public or universal interests either do
not appear at all, or, if they appear, are scarcely more than a
background for the real subject. The real subject, the impelling end or
passion, and the ensuing conflict, is personal,--these particular
characters with their struggle and their fate. The importance given to
subjectivity--this is the distinctive mark of modern sentiment, and so
of modern art; and such tragedies bear its impress. A part at least of
Hegel's meaning 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 resembles that of Orestes. What
engrosses our attention is the whole personality of Hamlet in his
conflict, not with an opposing 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 Romeo's love. It is not pursued, like Posa's freedom of
thought, as something universal, a right of man. Its right, if it could
occur to us to use the term at all, is Romeo's right.

On this main characteristic of modern tragedy others depend. For
instance, that variety of subject to which reference has just been made
depends on it. For when so much weight is attached to personality,
almost any fatal collision in which a sufficiently str