The Locus of Tragedy (Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology)

The Locus of Tragedy

Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology Editor

Chris Bremmers

(Radboud University, Nijmegen)

Associate Editor

Arthur Cools (University of Antwerp) Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Radboud University, Nijmegen) Advisory Board

Jos de Mul (Erasmus University Rotterdam) John Sallis (Boston College) Hans-Rainer Sepp (Charles University Prague) Laszlo Tengelyi (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)

VOLUME 1

The Locus of Tragedy Edited by

Arthur Cools Thomas Crombez Rosa Slegers Johan Taels

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The locus of tragedy / edited by Arthur Cools . . . [et al.]. p. cm. — (Studies in contemporary phenomenology ; v 1) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-16625-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Tragic, The. 2. Tragedy. I. Cools, Arthur, 1967– II. Title. III. Series. BH301.T7L63 2008 111’.85—dc22

2008038894

ISSN 1875-2470 ISBN 978 90 04 16625 7 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Series Preface .............................................................................. Editors’ Preface ...........................................................................

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Introduction: Tragedy and Hope ............................................... Terry Eagleton

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PART ONE

THE POLIS AS THE LOCUS OF TRAGEDY Locus Tragicus: The Problem of Place in Greek Tragedy ........... David Janssens

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How to Perform the Polis? Tragedy as the Locus of Deception Bram Van Oostveldt and Stijn Bussels

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PART TWO

THE EARLY MODERN LOCUS OF TRAGEDY The Tragic Representation of the Prince: The Political Theology of Ernst Kantorowicz and the Theatricality of Absolutism ......................................................................... Klaas Tindemans

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Early Modern Oedipus: A Literary Approach to Christian Tragedy .................................................................................. Enrica Zanin

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Tragédie classique, souveraineté et droit: Le cas de Britannicus (1669) de Jean Racine ............................................................ Karel Vanhaesebrouck

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contents PART THREE

TRAGEDY AND MODERNITY Modernity in Hölderlin’s Remarks on Oedipus and Antigone Frans van Peperstraten

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Is the Tragic Always the Tragic? Kierkegaard on Antiquity and Modernity in Shakespeare .............................................. Adam Wood

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Tragedy, Community Art, and Musikorgiasmus: Examining the Language of Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie ..................... Thomas Crombez

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Nietzsche and the Paradox of Tragedy ..................................... Robrecht Vandemeulebroecke

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PART FOUR

TRAGEDY AND ANTROPOLOGY Selfhood as the Locus of the Tragic in Paul Ricœur’s Soi-même comme un autre ............................................................ Arthur Cools

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The Tragic is Always the Tragic: Kierkegaard and Lacan on a Modern Antigone .......................................................... Paul Vanden Berghe

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Tragic Choices: Fate, Oedipus, and Beyond .............................. Jens De Vleminck

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PART FIVE

TRAGEDY AND MODERN LITERATURE Noises Off: On Ibsen .................................................................. Simon Critchley

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contents The Tragic Heroism of Captain Ahab ...................................... Daniel Shaw

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The Tragedy of Having a Lover: The Crystallization of Odette and Albertine in À la Recherche du temps perdu ............ Rosa Slegers

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Incest and Plague: Tragic Weapons Turned Against Tragedy in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty ............................... Laurens De Vos

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PART SIX

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE TRAGIC IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE Prometheus Unbound: The Rebirth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Technology ........................................................ Jos de Mul

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Laughing Matters: The Unstoppable Rise of the Comic Perspective .............................................................................. Johan Taels

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What Should Be Said of Tragedy Today? ................................ Dennis J. Schmidt

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SERIES PREFACE This first volume on the locus of tragedy is a fine representation of the specific scope of the new series ‘Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology’. Focusing on tragedy, it broaches a topic that may be called a phenomenon in at least two senses: on the one hand, the tragic is an undeniable part of our contemporary lives and life worlds; on the other, tragedy in its present-day form is no longer located in a unique figure that would make sense of the tragic feature of life and world the way it did in Greek tragedy. Consequently, the question arises how and where tragedy can be discussed in its own phenomenality. This volume testifies to a phenomenological approach broadly construed. It takes seriously the directedness to the ‘things themselves’— phenomenology’s original aim—in order to clarify the constitutive significance of these ‘things’ for our life and life world. The life world is overwhelmed by abstract conceptualizations, worn out in empty speech, lost or tied up in cultural history or dismissed by all kinds of scientific positivism. The aim to recover ‘things themselves’ was an attempt to remain faithful to the European ideal of a rational culture, which at the same time tried to avoid the intrinsic risk of this rationality, i.e. the loss of the things’ significance for life and life world. This European ideal is vulnerable to this risk because of the implied obligation to respond to some reflective epistemic standards that neglected, from the very start, the rootedness of things in a pre-reflective disclosure. Moreover, from a methodological point of view, phenomenology does not invoke any authority of traditions, epistemic paradigms or methodologies, let alone ideologies, but aims to include the key for the disclosure of the phenomenal. This is achieved through an investigation of specific articulated experiences or testimonies of experimental fictions, which tries to make sense of an apparent or hidden reality. While phenomenology should first and foremost concentrate on topics which present themselves as major questions concerning human life and its intentional realm within contemporary culture and not primarily on authors and developments within its own history, we are well aware of the fact that ‘systematic’ phenomenological studies always rely on major thinkers who disclosed fields of attention and research within an intellectual culture with its own history and in a field of discussion

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engaging many different perspectives and voices. In this sense phenomenology is always ‘hermeneutical’ but this hermeneutic moment only serves to clarify the phenomenality of the life world. This also means that phenomenology is not concerned in the first place with the possibility of a philosophy that follows the end of metaphysics, or adds to the industrious, ongoing interpretation of any specific academic subject. It binds itself to an originary, productive and normative exploration of what inevitably presents itself, and it aims to articulate its significance for life and life world. We are glad that we may welcome in this volume so many ‘young unknown’ authors as well as a few ‘older and more or less well-known’ ones. They worked together to make sense of phenomenology in a way that would not be possible in expert-meetings or private studies. Chris Bremmers, Series Editor, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

EDITORS’ PREFACE Arthur Cools, Thomas Crombez, Rosa Slegers, and Johan Taels As a dramatic genre, tragedy originated in a very specific historical context. It had its roots in Dionysian rites, and blossomed in the Greek polis of the fifth century BC. The further development, too, was marked by a series of historical contingencies. Countless times the nature of tragedy has changed, both in form and content, and there were even periods in which tragedy was denied any meaning whatsoever. Even so, tragedy has always re-emerged and has been reinvented time and again. And now, after twenty-five centuries of Western history, tragedy and the tragic together should be considered among the key concepts of our culture. This observation frames the discussion of The Locus of Tragedy, and raises fascinating questions for philosophers, literary theorists, and historians. How does a coincidental, historical phenomenon gain an apparently ‘universal’ meaning? And in what exactly does this supposed universality consist? In his Poetics, without a doubt the most influential work ever written on the topic of tragedy, Aristotle anticipates these very questions. He sketches tragedy’s development from its origins, and explains its similarities to and dissimilarities from other literary genres. In chapter six, Aristotle formulates his now classic description: Tragedy, then, is a representation of an action which is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude—in language which is garnished in various forms in its different parts—in the mode of dramatic enactment, not narrative—and through the arousal of pity and fear effecting the catharsis of such emotions.1

Aristotle thus distinguishes tragedy from comedy, even though, as a dramatic genre, the two also have a lot in common. While tragedy, however, centers around “noble actions and noble agents,” comedy deals with “the actions of base men.” Of primary importance is Aristotle’s claim that poetry ( poièsis) should be considered as “more serious” than

1

Aristotle’s Poetics, trans. S. Halliwell (London, 1986), ch. 6, 1449b.

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history. As opposed to the latter discipline, poetry, just like philosophy, has access to the universal: It is for this reason that poetry is both more philosophical and more serious than history, since poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars. A ‘universal’ comprises the kind of speech or action which belongs by probability or necessity to a certain kind of character—something which poetry aims at despite its addition of particular names. A ‘particular’, by contrast, is (for example) what Alcibiades did or experienced.2

Poetry has universal meaning because it results in true knowledge. In contrast with the historian, the poet not only describes what happens, but also explains why it happens in this particular way. He sketches the actions and events as related parts forming a whole. It is precisely this orderly arrangement of parts, according to Aristotle, which gives the tragic action “a certain magnitude.” He describes this magnitude as follows: A concise definition is to say that the sufficient limit of a poem’s scale is the scope required for a probable or necessary succession of events which produce a transformation either from affliction to prosperity, or the reverse.3

Aristotle’s claims about tragedy, the tragic, and tragedy’s universal meaning still inspire us today. Aristotle’s tragic hero, who embodies the deepest forms of human suffering, continues to exercise its influence in western culture. Yet at the same time, this ancient idea provokes a number of philosophical, aesthetic, ethical, and anthropological questions. What is the locus of tragedy? Do we locate the tragic first and foremost in the aesthetic imagination, as Aristotle states? Is the theatrical genre of tragedy the locus authenticus of all things tragic? Or is there more to the tragic than drama and play? What about the uncanny pleasure the audience experiences when watching human suffering? Does tragedy help people in dealing with the tragic experiences of everyday life? What is the scope of this performative enactment? Perhaps tragedy relates to metaphysics, the gods, destiny, and chance? Or is it a matter of ethics, of the Law and its transgression? Does man himself occupy the locus of tragedy, because of his unreasonable and

2 3

Ibid., ch. 9, 1451b. Ibid., ch. 7, 1451a.

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boundless desires, as many philosophers have suggested? Is man today still able to account for his tragic condition? Again: is the ‘locus of tragedy’ contingent upon its historical and cultural context? Perhaps the self-understanding of the (post)modern subject has undergone a change which has rendered the ancient understanding of the tragic hero naïve, or even comical? Might it be the case that the enormous scientific and technological developments of the past decades have eroded the meaning of ‘tragic’ and ‘tragedy’? Or conversely, might technology itself be the new locus of tragedy? These questions were engaged by over a hundred scholars of philosophy, theatre, literature, and communication studies from Europe and the United States, at the international colloquium entitled The Locus of Tragedy, which took place at the University of Antwerp in November 2006. The colloquium was organized in the context of a research project funded by the FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek– Vlaanderen/Research Foundation–Flanders) entitled “Tragedy, ethics, and moral luck.” The colloquium was organized by the Centre for Ethics of the University of Antwerp, in cooperation with the Centre for Philosophy of Culture, Aisthesis: Centre for Theatre Studies and the Research Group Visual Culture/ECREA. The editors wish to express their profound gratitude to all of these institutions, especially the Research Foundation—Flanders, for their generous support. The present volume, however, does not simply hold the conference proceedings. Many perspectives were explored at the conference. This volume concerns only two: the philosophical perspective (historical, anthropological, aesthetic, social, and ethical) and the perspective of the literary theorist. Furthermore, many of the selected texts have undergone significant revision, and a few of the essays are new. The Locus of Tragedy consists of a brief introduction followed by six thematically organized parts. The first three parts are historical and trace the locus of tragedy in the Greek polis (Part One), early modernity (Part Two), and late modernity (Part Three). The last three parts deal with tragedy and anthropology (Part Four), tragedy and modern literature (Part Five), and the sense of the tragic in contemporary culture (Part Six). In his introductory contribution, entitled Tragedy and Hope, Terry Eagleton opens the discussion with a general reflection on four major reasons for the persistence of the idea of the tragic in the age of modernity. He first distinguishes between a traditionalist view of

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tragedy and a leftist version of the same critique. Subsequently he discusses Kulturkritik in “its two most definitive modes of Christianity and socialism,” in which the central notion of an ultimate hope cannot exist without the experience of failure. In developing a dialectic of acceptance and transfiguration, he provides a genuine locus for a resolute tragic realism. In ancient Athens, drama was heavily politicized. Every year thousands of citizens participated in assembly meetings or sat on large judicial panels. The dramatic performances were overtly political public events at the heart of civic festivals. So, it is a matter of course that the Greek poet’s duty was a political one. The first part, “The Polis as the Locus of Tragedy,” highlights some aspects of this political dimension of Athenian theatre. In Locus Tragicus: The Problem of Place in Greek Tragedy, David Janssens demonstrates how, unlike its nineteenth- and early twentieth-century precursors, contemporary research emphasizes questions regarding the origins and the limits of the political community raised by the tragic poets. Janssens assesses the problem of ‘spatiality’ in classical tragedy: the polis and its nomos as a political, legal, moral, and religious space in which places are assigned. The point of departure of Stijn Bussels and Bram Van Oostveldt’s contribution How to Perform the Polis? is a statement assigned to the sophist Gorgias in Plutarch’s Moralia: “Gorgias called tragedy a deception whereby he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.” Gorgias, the authors argue, anticipates one of the basic problems of later theatrical reflection. How can theatre as an art of deception be of any use for creating a truthful community or a public space of negotiation? Bussels and Van Oostveldt examine how various ancient and early modern reflections on tragedy and theatre—from Aristotle to Diderot—deal with this paradoxical problem. Parts two and three examine tragedy in those critical stages subsequent to the ancient period, namely the tragedies of the Renaissance, neoclassical and Romantic tragedy, and modern transformations of tragedy and the tragic. The reception of classical tragedy in the early modern period was quite complex. Two points help to contextualize this reception. First: early modern writers became interested in classical tragedy through

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their acquaintance with Aristotle’s Poetics, Horace’s Ars Poetica, and Seneca’s letters, dialogues, and tragedies. Second: the tragedy of the Italian and French traditions differs from English tragedy. In ancient Greece, the tragic genre was bound by a set of rules pertaining to its form and content. With the revival of tragedy in Italy and France, these rules were adopted, refined, and narrowed to a strict system of criteria used to both produce and evaluate tragedies. As in classical tragedy, general character types took center stage while scant attention was paid to the psychology of individuals. Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, on the other hand, importantly broke with this tradition. Now, tragedy was written in prose, contained many comic elements, featured decidedly less noble characters, and focused more on the psychology and actions of individuals. The three essays in the second part, “The Early Modern Locus of Tragedy,” investigate different aspects of both the Italian-French and the English tradition. Klaas Tindemans’s essay The Tragic Representation of the Prince concerns The King’s Two Bodies (1957) by the British historian Ernst Kantorowicz. Kantorowicz describes how the absolutist kings in England and France at the end of the sixteenth century legitimized their sovereignty through reference to secular political theology. Tindemans argues that Kantorowicz overlooks the theatricality involved in creating this sovereignty and moreover that it is precisely this theatricality that explains the great success of the ‘second birth’ of European theatre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Enrica Zanin analyzes the Italian and French reception of ancient tragedy at the beginning of the modern era (1550–1650) in light of the tragic figure of Oedipus. In Early Modern Oedipus she examines first Aristotle’s comment on Oedipus the King in his Poetics, then Dell’Anguillara’s Edippo, published in Padua in 1565, and finally Corneille’s Oedipe, written in 1659. Zanin demonstrates that the tragic form was introduced in modern literature during times of intense religious and ideological transformation. Karel Vanhaesebrouck argues that, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the interpretation and reception of ‘classical’ French tragedy gradually took on its prototypical form through a complex process of codification and canonization. In Tragédie classique, souveraineté et droit: Le cas de Britannicus (1669) de Jean Racine, he isolates three important aspects of this process, taking the respective interpretations of Britannicus by the French star actors Lekain and Talma as a starting point.

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Unlike the pre- and early modern periods, on which tragedy had little discernable effect, modernity was deeply influenced by tragedy from the eighteenth century onwards. German poets and philosophers, both Romantic and neoclassical, recreated classical tragedy and so begin to shape modernity itself. For instance, G.E. Lessing broke with the orthodoxy of French tragedy, and wrote tragedies in prose featuring fictional characters in a contemporary setting. Friedrich Schiller developed a Kantian outlook on tragedy. The tragic hero’s actions are not determined by physical forces; he is rather challenged through suffering to discern the path of moral righteousness. Similarly, G.W. Hegel’s dialectical notion of tragedy looks to the rational agent’s reconciliation of conflicting ethical claims, and in so doing also rejects the ancient understanding of individuals as hapless victims of unpredictable, irrational forces. The profound insight of these German authors is that the concepts of ‘tragedy’ and ‘the tragic’—das Tragische, a newly coined notion that is gradually assuming equal importance during this period—are no longer understood to be merely aesthetic, but begin to function as key concepts in understanding the spirit of the times—history, culture, modernity, and human existence. This social and cultural turn will be completed and radicalized in the nineteenth century in the works of, for example, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Frans van Peperstraten opens the third part, entitled “Tragedy and Modernity,” with Modernity in Hölderlin’s Remarks on Oedipus and Antigone, a survey of four different views on the relation between modernity and tragedy. He distinguishes, first, the speculative-dialectical reading proposed by Schelling and Hegel, who consider Greek tragedy as the perfect manifestation of the human capacity to bear contradictions; second, the poetical reading by Hölderlin, which shows that the separation between the divine and the human is inevitable; third, the mythical-theological reading by Heidegger, and, fourth, the theatrical reading by Lacoue-Labarthe, who interprets modernity as a displacement of myths. In Is the Tragic Always the Tragic?, Adam Wood examines Kierkegaard’s distinction between ancient and modern tragedy in Either/Or (1843). Whereas Kierkegaard argues that Oedipus was a tragic character not only insofar as he killed his father and married his mother, but also insofar as prophecy, fate, the gods and family ties all conspired to

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make him do so, in modern tragedy ‘the hero stands or falls on his own deeds’. This heightened responsibility and diminished suffering in modern tragedy means that instead of the ambiguity play of innocence and guilt that Oedipus embodies, the modern tragic hero or villain can be deemed blameworthy. Wood hones these Kierkegaardian resources to argue that Shakespeare’s tragedies evince characteristics of both the ancient and the modern. In Kierkegaard and Nietzsche tragedy becomes linked to the existential realization of humanity’s greatest hopes and fears. Especially for Nietzsche tragedy comes to be associated with human flourishing and hopes for cultural renewal. In his contribution Tragedy, Community Art, and Musikorgiasmus, Thomas Crombez examines the language of Die Geburt der Tragödie. He finds a vocabulary of natural impulses that fits in with the typically nineteenth-century development of a socially determined concept of culture, giving rise to a strong connection between ‘art’ and ‘community’. Crombez draws on Derrida’s comments concerning the appropriation of Nietzsche’s writings by National Socialism to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Nietzsche’s thought in Die Geburt der Tragödie. Robrecht Vandemeulebroucke analyzes a paradox which has perpetually mystified philosophers. How and why do we enjoy being moved by scenes of pity, fear, suffering, and distress? Why is the spectacle of human suffering seductive? In Nietzsche and the Paradox of Tragedy he briefly explains the views of Aristotle, Schopenhauer, and Hume on this paradox, before turning to Nietzsche’s remarkable answer. The anthropological and hermeneutical turn of the nineteenth century reverberates in the twentieth-century schools of psychoanalysis, existentialism, existential phenomenology, and hermeneutics. The authors in the fourth part, “Tragedy and Anthropology,” turn to the thought of Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Lacan, and Lípot Szondi in order to develop their own respective anthropologies. The central question in Arthur Cools’s contribution, Selfhood as the Locus of the Tragic, concerns the resurgence of the tragic within the limits of a hermeneutics of personal identity. Cools questions an ambiguity in Ricœur’s approach to the tragic at the end of his major work Soi-même comme un autre. The theme of the tragic appears there in direct reference to Greek tragedy, but the constitution of selfhood is analyzed in terms of narrative identity and therefore Ricœur refers to the modern novel.

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This ambiguity highlights the importance of temporality in Ricœur’s narrative theory. The question remains: how does the reference to Greek tragedy invoke a tragic experience at the heart of selfhood? Starting point of Paul Vanden Berghe’s The Tragic is Always the Tragic is once again Kierkegaard’s distinction between ancient and modern tragedy in Either/Or (1843). Kierkegaard recognizes a modern tragedy in which the ancient tragedy is reflected: the modern Antigone who assumes external substantial determinants. But Kierkegaard seems unable to transcend the modern understanding of tragedy. Therefore, Vanden Berghe turns to psychoanalysis as a worthy locus of the Greek inheritance. In contrast with Kierkegaard, Freud and Lacan take a further step towards defining modern tragedy by stressing the fundamental lack of transparency of the modern subject, insofar as he is determined by factors that are at once foreign and familiar to him. Jens De Vleminck’s contribution also deals with the locus of the tragic in psychoanalysis. In Tragic Choices: Fate, Oedipus, and Beyond he examines the tragic sense of human existence as presented in the work of the Hungarian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Lípot Szondi. He shows how Szondi’s Schicksalsanalysis establishes a connection between fate, destiny and the tragic and makes clear how Szondi’s specific elaboration of the tragic can be made relevant to contemporary developments in psychoanalysis and philosophical anthropology. The complex relationship between modernity and tragedy, and the question of the tragic aspect of modernity itself, are expressed in new forms of theater but especially in literature. As such, the essays in part five, “Tragedy and Modern Literature,” each deal with an exemplary work of modern tragic literature. In his contribution entitled Noises Off: On Ibsen, Simon Critchley argues that a turn has occurred from the tragic towards the tragiccomic, which he recognizes in Ibsen’s drama. The focus rests no longer on the tragic in any Hellenic or Helleno-Germanic sense (a cathartic redemption through beauty) but on the ridiculousness of life. Existence is an oppressive burden to be carried, and—for Critchley—we respond to it by turning away, by evading it. The tragic-comic is about a debt that one cannot pay off, resulting in a sense of guilt that divides one against oneself. This is what Critchley sees as the essential experience of conscience: the modern subject is, in the author’s own terms, a dividual.

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The Tragic Heroism of Captain Achab offers a paradigmatic analysis of the figure of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Adapting the concepts of authenticity and resoluteness from Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Daniel Shaw claims that tragedy is a convincing affirmation of human existence in the face of its obvious injustices, because the resolute commitment to values for which tragic protagonists are willing to die affirms the value of struggling to achieve one’s future goals even if failure is the ultimate result. The Tragedy of Having a Lover by Rosa Slegers demonstrates how romantic love in Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu involves a constant attempt to reduce the other to an ideal construed by the imagination. Stendhal calls this the process of crystallization: the imagination adds crystals to the person loved until nothing of the original person is left visible to the lover. The author discusses two great loves in À la Recherche, illuminating their tragic character by means of the distinction between problem and mystery as it is found in the work of Gabriel Marcel, who speaks in this context of “the tragedy of having.” It is hardly coincidental, Laurens De Vos notices, that Jacques Lacan has devoted a complete chapter to Sophocles’s Antigone in his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis. The search for the Real stands out as the hero’s glorification and deification, and it is this endeavor to have done with the symbolic order that is at the heart of Artaud’s work as well. In his essay Incest and Plague: Tragic Weapons Turned Against Tragedy in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty he refers to René Girard’s theory of the scapegoat to elaborate some further parallels between tragedy and Artaud’s program. How do the tragic hero and the Artaudian protagonist relate to the scapegoat, and where do they differ from each other? The author argues that Lacan’s fulfillment of the ‘second death’, by which the realm of signifiers is wiped away, leads to Girard’s concept of sparagmos. The three contributions of part six, “The Experience of the Tragic in Contemporary Culture,” connect the problem of tragedy to related questions from the philosophy of culture. Jos de Mul focuses on technological culture in a contribution entitled Prometheus Unbound: The Rebirth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Technology. He asks whether the tragic conception of fate still holds any relevance for modern man. Referring to Nietzsche, Steiner, and Oudemans and Lardinois (in their book Tragic Ambiguity from 1987), De Mul first considers the perspective of

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those who agree—however divergent they themselves may believe their positions to be—that the death of tragedy is marked by the transition from mythos to logos. Tragedy was undone by the hegemonic rise of technical rationality and optimism. De Mul defends the opposite view: in (post)modern society, the tragic reveals itself again, even within the technical domain. It is precisely in technology that the rebirth of the tragic is witnessed. In his essay on Laughing Matters: The Unstoppable Rise of the Comic Perspective, Johan Taels argues that the centre of “reflexive modernity” (Ulrich Beck) is occupied not so much by the tragic as by the comic perspective. He takes as his starting point the notion that the comic or tragic character of an event is not dependent on the event itself, but on the way the subject relates to it. Drawing from Hegel and Kierkegaard, Taels contends that the age of modernity, more specifically the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, encompassed a turn of perspective whereby the appreciation for the comic replaced that of the tragic. Taels claims that, in a hyper-reflexive, postmodern community, only humor, as an art of living, can resist the ever-present call of eternal laughter. To conclude our volume, Dennis Schmidt asks What Should Be Said of Tragedy Today? His essay is a reworking of the last chapter of his book On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life (2001). Here, Schmidt showed that it was the beauty of Greek tragic art that led Kant and other German thinkers and writers to appreciate the relationship between tragedy and ethics. Through the Greeks, the Germans were able to reflect on the enigmas of ethical life and ask innovative questions about how to live an ethical life outside the typical assumptions and restrictions of traditional Western metaphysics. In his concluding essay, Schmidt again outlines his argument and ends with three questions expressing ‘what should be said of tragedy today’. How are we to understand the project of interpreting history as the movement of a tragic destiny; more specifically, does the idea of the tragic help us to understand the present crisis of history? How is the experience of tragedy to be spoken and written; more specifically, how is the knowledge found in tragedy to be taken up in the language of the concept, the language of philosophy? Is it possible for tragedy still, against all sense, to be beautiful?

INTRODUCTION: TRAGEDY AND HOPE Terry Eagleton (University of Manchester) One might claim that the idea of the tragic in the age of modernity has been so prominent and persistent for four major reasons. Before I say what they are, it might be worth pointing out that perhaps the most obvious reason—that the modern age has been far the most bloodstained on record—is not one of them. It is not one of them because modern tragic theory has not typically put routine, unedifying suffering at the centre of its inquiry. The first reason is that tragedy, with its spiritual absolutes and transcendent sublimity, seeks to replace religion in a secular age. There have been many candidates for such a project over the past couple of centuries—Art, Culture, the Religion of Humanity, the Humanities, even the Science of Society—and they have all proved spectacularly unsuccessful. When it comes to bringing the most imposing absolute truths to bear on the daily conduct of countless millions of ordinary men and women, religion is simply unbeatable. That’s one reason why it is becoming more powerful, not less. Any purely aesthetic substitute for religion won’t do, not least because of its inevitable minority appeal. Culture will do to some extent in the broad sense of the term, since culture, like religion, is what men and women will kill for; but it will not serve in the narrower sense. And even in the broader sense of the term, it lacks the universal, foundational force of religion, as well as its numinousness. Religion is the most successful ideological project ever devised, and nothing—certainly not Phèdre or Philoctetes—is likely ever to adequately replace it. Secondly, tragedy promises to provide an aesthetic solution to the question of why it is that men and women seem everywhere free yet everywhere in chains. The question, in short, of freedom and determinism. I shall leave this to one side here, except to point out that if you are driven to seek an aesthetic solution to a political and theoretical contradiction, then you are already in big trouble. Thirdly, tragedy has acted as a kind of modern-day theodicy or justification of evil. Transcendence survives in our age only in the form of its negation. Auschwitz, it would appear, is the nearest we can get to the supernatural. I don’t intend to say anything about this project either, other than

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to remark that tragedy has been no more successful than any other kind of theodicy. I am not myself one of that liberal-rationalist crew who do not believe in the notion of evil, and I do believe that it is inexplicable; but nor do I believe it can be justified, and here I am a paid-up liberal rationalist. There is, however, a much more important reason for the persistence of the idea of the tragic, and that is what one might call tragic theory as a form of Kulturkritik—as an implicit critique of modernity, and as such one of the last shining deeds of spiritual aristocratism in a degraded world. In this sense, the discourse of tragedy as part of that broader vision of modernity, all the way from Coleridge and Ruskin to the early Thomas Mann, Ortega y Gasset, Karl Mannheim, T.S. Eliot and a great many others, for which the aesthetic, the classical, the heroic, the transcendent, and the dark gods are to be pitted against a modern-day wasteland of rationalism, liberalism, science, progress, individualism, democracy, industrialism, egalitarianism and a number of other tediously familiar isms. Tragedy becomes a paradigm of the decline of high culture—a sort of numinous nostalgia for the days when men were really men and had their children served up to them in a stew without turning a patrician hair. It is a response to what is felt to be a debased, degenerate kind of everyday life; and as such, this traditionalist view of tragedy, like much so-called traditionalism, is not really traditional at all. No ancient, medieval or early modern commentator would have recognized this as an account of the genre. They would, however, have recognized the ancient Greek term for tragedy as meaning something like ‘grand’ or ‘serious’ or ‘elevated’ or ‘high-minded’; and it is this, really—not much more than a tone or ambience—that the Kulturkritikers salvage from tradition. It is no accident that one of the most ardent champions of the tragic in our own time, George Steiner, is also one of the few surviving heirs of this extraordinarily fertile, richly resourceful, politically catastrophic lineage. I can’t resist here quoting Steiner’s resonant declaration in The Death of Tragedy that “if there are bathrooms in the house of Atreus, it is for Agamemnon to be killed there.” In its mixture of panache and hauteur, the imperious and the lapidary, this sentence is the pure essence of Steinerism. The opposite of tragedy is plumbing. Let me say by way of a digression that one of the latest manifestations of Kulturkritik is a so-called ethics of the Real, from Lacan and Levinas to Derrida and Badiou. It is, to be sure, a largely leftist version of a rightwing phenomenon—but one with a similar disdain for the

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rational, normative, everyday, collective, merely moral as opposed to highmindedly ethical. Tragedy, in one version of this Kulturkritik view, requires the intolerable burden of God’s presence, and is precious because this absolute value redeems you from the chaos of the modern. Yet because this presence also devalues secular experience, it serves to confirm that chaos, thus leaving you with a tragic meaninglessness as absolute as the Almighty himself. Tragedy is a form of resistance to Enlightenment rationalism, and so both admirable and appalling. Human life, in contrast to the callow view of the bourgeois rationalists, is darkly opaque, unfathomably rich and mysteriously impenetrable. Yet if you press this critique too far, you land yourself with a kind of nihilism, which is simply the flipside of bourgeois modernity. To counter that, with all of its distasteful contingency and fragmentation, you need to insist that there is a shapely narrative or cosmic order implicit in reality itself—that the world itself is story-shaped. But then you may find that you have signed on for a symmetry and lucidity in reality which threatens to reduce them to a paper-thin transparency, banish the dark gods and reunite you with the very scientific rationalism you were out to oppose. The only way out of this dilemma is to claim that there is indeed a pattern to things, but it is an unintelligible one—which isn’t much of an improvement over no pattern at all. This is one of several ways in which this version of tragic Kulturkritik is self-contradictory, and here are one or two others. First, tragedy on this view is an ontological condition, which of course it never was for Aristotle. But it is also a fairly elitist affair, confined mostly to heroes and aristocrats; and it seems odd that ontology could be such a minority matter, almost as though someone were to claim that only those with PhDs in Oriental languages could be afflicted by bird flu. You can square this circle after a fashion by arguing that the elite reveal most graphically a condition common to us all; but this then must imply that most of us live a tragic condition unconsciously, and it is far from clear that for this current of thought you can be tragic without knowing it, anymore than you can be in pain without knowing it or dance the tango without knowing it. A further contradiction lurks within the idea of freedom. In one sense, tragedy acknowledges no more noble human value, even if the freedom in question must pass through a certain submission to higher powers in order to be authentic. Yet in another sense, freedom is the very badge of the bourgeoisie, and so part of the ideological baggage

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which tragic Kulturkritik wants to oppose, perhaps with the notion of a deeper sort of providence or cosmic determinism. But how then is this grand cosmic destiny to be distinguished from common-or-garden scientific determinism? Aren’t you, once more, back where you started? Much the same goes for the related idea of individualism, which in its everyday, vulgar, petty-bourgeois sense, this theory of tragedy wants to counter with some idea of the communal, the epic, the ritual or Choric. Yet it also finds itself reduplicating at a higher level, in the un-Aristotelian figure of the solitary hero. Freedom involves responsibility, and this is another conundrum for this line of thought. If the tragic protagonist is not at all responsible for his or her downfall, then the effect is merely shocking; but if she is very much responsible, then she loses a fair bit of moral credibility. A fine line must consequently be trod between protagonists who are admirably free of guilt but thus more hapless victims than worthy moral agents, and those who are granted the dignity of having a hand in their own destruction but only at the cost of tarnishing their moral status. Another incoherence in this body of theory is its attitude to hope. It must, of course, reject any form of vulgar progressivism, which is why Steiner seems to derive a grisly relish from the fact that tragedy is utterly negative, without even the ghost of redemption. He would rather embrace a patrician absurdity than a bureaucratic utopia. On the other hand, to put the point as crudely as I can, nihilism isn’t good news for the ruling class. There is something profoundly subversive about pessimism, which is why Thomas Hardy—the first truly tragic English novelist since the eighteenth-century Samuel Richardson—was so reviled. As the philistines say: if art can’t cheer you up a bit, what’s the point? You need, then, to portray the indestructibility of the human spirit without falling prey to shallow styles of Enlightenment optimism; and this takes us back to the question of freedom and determinism, or the tragic paradox by which one transcends one’s suffering by the very unflinching resolution with which one submits to it. The trick, in other words, is to ward off nihilism and triumphalism at a stroke. If this is done successfully, then another name for tragedy is realism. You must worst those whose shabby lack of idealism diminishes the human spirit—but not at the price of throwing in your hand with the thin-blooded Enlightenment optimists with their slide-rules and calculators. If you diminish the human spirit, then you deprive men and women of the very criteria by which they might take the measure of their sufferings and failures; but if you inflate it, their sufferings and failures begin to look fairly trivial.

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Now if one had to come up with an essence of tragedy, I think you could do a lot worse than look here. At its finest, tragedy instructs us in how to hope without optimism, and is thus a remarkably appropriate mode for disenchanted leftists who wish to keep the faith without sacrificing political realism. Perhaps this is one reason why it has become something of a modish topic in our times. The American philosopher Jonathan Lear, having written on everything from desire in Aristotle to the breast in Melanie Klein, has just published a book entitled Radical Hope, in which he investigates the history of a tribe of North American Indians, the Crow, who suffered a cultural catastrophe in the late nineteenth century. Ravaged by disease, devastated by the rival Sioux and Blackfeet, and almost bereft of their buffalo, the Crow saw nearly two-thirds of their number perish in the 1890s, and were finally herded onto a reservation by the US government. After this, observed their chief Plenty Coups, “Nothing happened”—meaning, so Lear argues, not so much that nothing happened, as that the interpretative frame which determined for the tribe what counted as a significant event simply crumblid away. They were subject to a breakdown in the field in which occurrences occur. Plenty Coups, however, was informed in a dream that if he and his people let go of their traditional way of life, they would be able to cling to their lands after all. This, indeed, was what happened, as the Crow accepted life on the reservation and in return were granted some of their lands back by the government. Plenty Coups was not of course an optimist. Far from it. It is rather that his resolute tragic realism, in accepting the inevitable disintegration of his culture, was the power which allowed him and his people to come through. Only by letting go can you clear a space for the new. There are parallels for this complex experience in tragic art, though there are plenty of bogus versions of it too. Hope is not the same as optimism because it does not confidently anticipate a good outcome. Instead, it trusts in a more general way in human resourcefulness and resilience, and it can do so precisely because it has had an experience (like Plenty Coups) of breakdown and defeat yet is still around to register it. As Edgar observes in a magnificent line in King Lear: “The worst is not, so long as we can say ‘this is the worst’.” In this sense, there can be no ultimate hope without the experience of failure. Anything short of that is so much dewy-eyed optimism, which we can leave to the pathologically up-beat Americans. And this is very different from submitting to destiny in order to demonstrate your indomitable powers. Hope is what you find, if you’re lucky when those powers are broken and exhausted. If Jesus on Calvary submitted to his

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death with one canny eye on his resurrection—if he muttered to himself ‘Well it’s only three days in the tomb and then off to heaven’—he would not of course have been raised from the dead by the love and mercy of his Father. But neither would he have been raised up if he had, in Lacan’s terms, given way on his desire—a desire which in his case was that peculiar species of love we know as faith. Only because the crucifixion was not some kind of Houdini con-trick but a hellish encounter with the Real of utter destitution could it represent a transitus to new life. Only if Jesus recognized that his mission had come to nothing could it bear fruit in the lives of others. This is the meaning of martyrdom, harnessing Thanatos or the death drive to the service of Eros or the living. Trying to peer beyond the dead-end of death only ensures that you will stay trapped within its cul-de-sac. Having hope, by contrast—finding, for example, that even in these desolate conditions you can’t give up on your faith or love, however little it can be realized or rewarded—is what might just transform that barrier into a horizon. Only for those who really do see the self-divestment of death as the last word is there hope that it might not be quite that after all, as the hellish symphony at the end of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus ends with an infinitely hushed impossible, scarcely audible note, a mere frail suggestion on the air, which might just—who knows?—herald some other way of looking and living altogether. This dialectic of acceptance and transfiguration is at the same time one between the commonplace and the extraordinary, which is exactly where it differs from Kulturkritik’s high-minded contrast between tragic intensity and everyday banality. Tragedy in its Kulturkritik mode joins this flight from the everyday; but in what seem to me its two most definitive modes—Christianity and socialism—it sees a revolutionary continuity between the exceptional and the everyday. Christianity is an example of what one might term the sublunary sublime, in which the whole cosmos is at stake in the gift of a cup of water (indeed it was Christianity, as Charles Taylor points out in Sources of the Self, which invented the concept of everyday life in the first place). Socialism, for its part, is about the heroism of the commonplace. If there is the Real of revolution, with all its drama, crisis, and transformative rupture, it is made by, and exists for the sake of ordinary existence, or the symbolic order.

PART ONE

THE POLIS AS THE LOCUS OF TRAGEDY

LOCUS TRAGICUS: THE PROBLEM OF PLACE IN GREEK TRAGEDY David Janssens (Universiteit van Tilburg) When the politicians and architects and developers have all gone home, I’ll still be there making sure that everything that is built on this site is right because it is . . . Ground Zero. Daniel Libeskind1

Introduction What could a phenomenology of the tragic look like? Much, of course, depends on what definition of the tragic is adopted and what phenomena are selected. On both counts, we are faced with an embarrassment of riches. To begin with, from ancient times up to the present, history has produced a host of definitions, based on perspectives and emphases that are often incommensurable.2 As for the phenomena, they might range from a random domestic disturbance to a political conflict to a natural calamity to the 9/11 attacks to the continuing crisis in Darfur.3 Unsurprisingly, contemporary discourse—moral, political, and historical—has become fraught with the adjective ‘tragic’ almost to the point of saturation. Between suffering that is nearly unperceived to suffering that is public and apocalyptic, however, the risk of slipping into allcomprehensive triviality is considerable.

Quoted in John Rosenthal, “The Philosophy of Ground Zero,” Policy Review 125 (2004). 2 See, among many others, Aristotle, On Poetics; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (Harmondsworth, 1994); Oscar Mandel, A Definition of Tragedy (New York, 1961); George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London, 1961); Richard H. Palmer, Tragedy and Tragic Theory: An Analytical Guide (Westport, CT, 1992); P.E. Easterling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1997); M.S. Silk, ed., Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (Oxford, 1998); Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (London, 2003). 3 Cf. Ronald L. Hall, “Our National Tragedy: Some Philosophical Reflections,” Florida Philosophical Review 2.2 (2002): 45–55; Roberto Belloni, “The Tragedy of Darfur and the Limits of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’,” Ethnopolitics 5.4 (2006): 327–346. 1

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Instead, a prudent way to begin would seem to consist in choosing the opposite direction, by limiting one’s definition as far as possible and focusing exclusively on Greek tragedy itself. For if the tragic fails to appear there, where else can we expect it to do so? Even if almost every individual tragedy eventually proves to resist being brought under any general definitional rule, at least the range of phenomena will be somewhat more manageable. Moreover, it would seem sufficient to limit ourselves to the written texts as such, while bracketing performance. For as Aristotle suggests in the Poetics, it is not necessary to see a tragedy performed in order to understand it: “the power of tragedy is possible without a contest and performers.”4 All that is required to discover the tragic phenomenon, he adds, is reading: “tragedy, like epic poetry, does its own thing even without movement, for it is apparent ( phaneros) through reading what sort of thing it is.” (P, 1462a12) How, then, should we read Greek tragedy? On this point as well, Aristotle offers valuable clues. As Davis asserts, “the Poetics is philosophy of literature masquerading as a writing workshop”: it shows that understanding poetry is impossible without having some knowledge of how to produce it, without becoming acquainted, so to speak, with the tricks of the trade.5 As a result, it is often difficult to distinguish Aristotle’s advice and instructions to poets from guidelines for their readers. A telling example is the following passage, in which Aristotle addresses the composition of tragedies: As much as possible one should put stories (mythoi) before one’s eyes while putting them together and working them out together with the talk (lexis). For if one does this one would see most vividly, just as though one were among the actions themselves as they were being done, and would discover what is appropriate, and one would least fail to notice incongruities (or contradictions—hupenantia). (P, 1455a22)

This could be addressed equally to someone who is about to write a tragedy or to someone who is about to read one. In any case, Aristotle suggests that visualizing the play with the mind’s eye is essential. By entering the drama as active participants, bringing together and comparing what the characters say and what they do, we are better able to perceive congruities and incongruities between speeches and deeds. Aristotle, On Poetics, trans. Seth Benardete and Michael Davis (South Bend, 2002), 1450b18. Henceforth cited as P. 5 Michael Davis, The Poetry of Philosophy: On Aristotle’s Poetics (South Bend, 1992), p. 6. 4

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Aristotle goes on to give an example of an incongruity that was due to the failure of the poet to properly visualize the action. However, he leaves us wondering whether there may be incongruities that not only are intentional but that would go unnoticed in performance, only to be detected through an attentive reading. On this point, it is worthwhile to further explore the parallel between tragedy and epic poetry drawn by Aristotle. As he observes, Homer’s depiction of Achilles’s protracted pursuit of Hector in the Iliad would be ridiculous when staged, “but in epic this is not noticed” (P, 1460a15). Could it be that there are things in tragedy that usually go unnoticed when it is performed, but prove to be incongruous, perhaps even laughable, when read with proper care? After all, Homer, who is at the origin of both tragedy and comedy, “has been especially effective in teaching everyone else how they must speak falsehoods ( pseudè legein)” (P, 1460a19). From Homer, the poets learned to exploit their audience’s willingness to be charmed and fooled by the pleasing effect of the wondrous. By the same token, they learned that, while “the poet himself ought to speak least” in his work, he nevertheless may speak through the design and the coordination of speeches and deeds (P, 1460a8). A phenomenology of the tragic, it would seem, cannot ignore this crucial observation about the poet’s modus operandi.6 It suggests that some caution is warranted in reading Greek poetry in general, and Greek tragedy it particular. One of the characteristic falsehoods of tragic drama is, precisely, that it creates and upholds the impression that the tragic poet is entirely absent from his creation. According to Seth Benardete, “no one represents unequivocally the wisdom of the poet in Greek tragedy; everything that might detract from its absoluteness is usually suppressed, and this is done so systematically that some effort is required to notice what has been suppressed.”7 What has been suppressed, however, is crucial in understanding what has not: it throws an oblique light on the ostensible meaning of the drama, revealing its stern order to be contrived and artificial, only seemingly seamless. Once this is recognized, it becomes clear that tragedy cannot simply

6 Cf. Christopher Gill and T.P. Wiseman, eds., Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Austin, 1993); L.H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics (Ann Arbor, 1993). Consider also Oscar Wilde’s provocative essay “The Decay of Lying,” in Intentions (London, 1913), pp. 1–54. 7 Seth Benardete, The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Chicago, 2000), p. 100.

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be understood as a celebration of public morality. As Davis notes, “tragedy [. . .] does not simply support morality and subverts moral naïveté.”8 Expressed more generally, precisely by presenting the order of the polis in all its comprehensive severity, tragedy implicitly points the reader to what conditions it, and thus to what escapes it and renders it questionable. As I will argue in the remainder of this paper, one of the ways in which this particular feature of Greek tragedy can be brought to light is through its handling of religious, legal, and political place. As distinguished from space, which is generally understood as a receptacle in the abstract sense, I will focus on place lived and experienced as concrete and articulated. Moreover, I will deal with place as it appears within the drama, as an ingredient element of the frame of reference informing the characters’ speeches and deeds. Consistent with the Aristotelian approach outlined above, I will not address the question of theatrical space, i.e., everything having to do with the actual performance of Greek tragedy.9 Place in the ancient world In order to properly understand tragedy’s particular approach to place, some preliminary remarks are in order. Throughout antiquity, man’s experience of his life-world was strongly predicated on “locality” or “placiality.” As Edward Casey explains, the ancient world was a “placeworld” that consisted of “thickly lived places,” places bearing concrete and more or less stable features and connected in a network charged with meaning.10 As such, places were crucial in guiding and coordinating human life, both individual and collective. What Casey omits to mention, however, is that this “thickness” was suffused with religion,

Michael Davis, “Introduction,” in Aristotle, On Poetics (South Bend, 2002), p. xxiii. See David Wiles, Tragedy in Athens: Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning (Cambridge, 1999); Rush Rehm, The Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, 2002). 10 Edward Casey, “Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the Place-World?,” Annals of the Association of Amerian Geographers 91.4 (2001), p. 684. According to Casey, with the rise of modernity and of globalization, “place” was eclipsed by the more abstract and universal notion of “space,” only to be rehabilitated by phenomenology. Similarly, Henri Lefebvre (La Production de l’espace (Paris, 1974)) writes of the transition from the “espace absolu” of pre-modernity to the “espace abstrait” of modernity. 8 9

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with man’s relationship to the divine and the sacred. Divine power and authority—the basis of human law, morality, and politics—were not abstract and omnipresent, but were essentially local and emplaced. At the same time, this involved a complex enlacing of presence and absence or, to be more precise, representation. The gods were believed to be present in their places, but they were generally invisible and dependent on something that represented them. According to Fustel de Coulanges’s classic reconstruction, the first divinities were dead forefathers who were believed to continue to exist underground and who therefore required to be honored and sustained by their progeny.11 A visible token of the invisible, a sacrificial fire was studiously kept on the tombstone, which thereby literally became the focus of the family’s religious, moral, political and legal unity, as well as of their own common place in the world.12 In return for their care, the ancestor-god acted as protector and guardian of the family and its own place. The focus thus served as both a material and normative reference point by which the family and its dwelling place were defined and delimited as a separate unity. In later times, when families had merged first into tribes and then into cities, divine authority nonetheless remained soundly local: while particular families continued to worship their domestic gods, the gods of the state were given a place in temples. Like the family home, temples were centered on a sacrificial fire and frequently had a statue of its god. And similarly, they acquired special status: “sacred and inviolable” (hiera kai asulos), they provided an abode for the god who, in return for proper sacrificial commitment, provided aid and protection.13 This special status was not limited to man-made structures: it also attached to natural places. Both inside and outside the city, there were many sacred groves (alsè) devoted to various gods. An exceptional view in arid surroundings, a grove invariably pointed to the presence of a well: its water, like the flame of the focus, linked it to the netherworld. Like the temples, the groves were protected by the god to whom they were devoted. Violating or desecrating an alsos—in some cases, merely Numa-Denys Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique: Étude sur le culte, le droit, les institutions de la Grèce et de Rome (Paris, 1984), pp. 7–38. 12 Focus is Latin for “hearth” (hestia in Greek). See Charles Daremberg and Edmond Saglia, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines (Paris, 1877–1917), v. “focus.” 13 See Kent J. Rigsby, Asylia: Territorial Involiability in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley, 1996). 11

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by entering or touching it—was considered a grave offense, and punishment was often severe.14 Besides temples and groves, there were numerous other places—marked by statues or commemorative stones—that plotted the landscape and contributed to constituting and structuring it as a normative whole. Conversely, place pervaded the various ways in which man gave expression to his religious, moral, legal, and political experience. Reference to the many rituals that were performed within daily life—such as prayer, sacrifice, and burial—was impossible without involving locality. Most important, even law (nomos) itself, in many respects the core concept of ancient religion, morality, and politics, had a distinctly ‘placial’ dimension: its root verb—nemein—denoted a wide range of activities to which place was ingredient: herding and pasturing; the sowing of seeds; the distribution of goods, offices, and even places within a delimited community and its territory; the forceful occupation of a place; the mere dwelling in a place.15 Literally, the law was experienced as being “the law of the land”: it assigned a proper place to both human beings and gods inside and outside the city. However, the introduction of the polis and its nomos was not unproblematic, neither on the level of human beings, nor on the level of the gods. On the first level, it required pre-political forms of community such as families and tribes to give up their self-sufficiency and be incorporated in a larger political whole. Fathers, the traditional bearers of authority within a private sphere, had to become citizens in a public sphere. On the second level, it involved a domestication of the sacred. By giving the gods a place in the polis, nomos also domesticated them and thus limited the capacity of the sacred to intervene and subvert human 14 Cf. Pierre Bonnechère, “The Place of the Sacred Grove (Alsos) in the Mantic Rituals of Greece: The Example of the Alsos of Trophonios at Levadeia (Boeotia),” in Michel Conan, ed., Sacred Gardens and Landscapes: Ritual and Agency (Washington, 2002), pp. 17–41. Bonnechère’s definition of the alsos as “a natural manifestation of a median place between two worlds”—to wit the human and divine—is unsatisfactory, considering the fact that the two worlds were experienced as intertwined or perhaps even as one. 15 Cf. Homer, Iliad, 2.496 and 20.8; Odyssey, 2.167; Herodotus, Histories, 4.19; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 1.2; Plato, Minos, 317d–318b, 321c–d. See H.G. Liddell, Robert Scott, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1940), sub “nemô”; Carl Schmitt, “Nehmen/Teilen/Weiden: Ein Versuch, die Grundfragen jeder Sozial- und Wirtschaftsordnung vom Nomos her richtig zu stellen,” in Schmitt, Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1924–1954: Materialien zu einer Verfassungslehre (Berlin 1985), pp. 489–504; Hans Lindahl, “Give and Take: Arendt and the Nomos of Political Community,” Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 32, No. 7 (2006), 881–901.

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life.16 By the same token, it imposed itself as an ultimate horizon beyond which human beings need not venture in order to satisfy their needs.17 This process finds a mythological echo in two momentous events: the revolt of the Olympic gods, led by Zeus, against the archaic deities ruled by his father Cronos, and the subsequent theft of fire from the Olympic gods by the archaic deity Prometheus, who enabled mankind to gain some measure of autonomy by developing the arts. Thus, on both levels a profound tension remained between the old pre-political order and the new order of the polis. In many respects, this tension is the matrix of tragedy.18 Placing and displacing the city Even the most superficial glance at any number of Greek tragedies suffices to see that they abound with references to places and their religious, moral, legal, and political meaning. Take almost any principal character, from Ajax to Orestes, from Deianira to Medea, from Electra to Prometheus or Pentheus, and it quickly becomes clear that their speeches and deeds are closely intertwined with certain places. Closer examination in accordance with Aristotle’s pointers, however, reveals that tragedy presents this intertwinement itself in such a way as to render it problematic. As Seth Benardete argues, “the sacred loses its political place in tragedy.”19 In light of the observations made in the previous paragraph, a complementary assertion is warranted: in tragedy, the constitution and ordering of political place is brought to light in all its questionableness. In a variety of ways, tragedy displays and effectuates a displacement of the polis and its nomos that raises fundamental questions about their unity and legitimacy. To find a first tentative substantiation of this claim, it is worthwhile to turn to a privileged case in point: Sophocles’s Theban trilogy. The vicissitudes of the house of Cadmus not only offer a memorable exploration of the workings of religion and politics, but also in the way they are predicated on place. 16 Cf. Susan E. Alcock and Robert Osborne, Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1996). 17 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 164. 18 Aeschylus, Eumenides and Prometheus; Sophocles, Antigone; Euripides, Hecuba, esp. 799–805. 19 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 101.

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david janssens Alternating autochthony: Oedipus the King

In Oedipus the King, it quickly becomes apparent that the protagonist’s most salient characteristics are indignation (orgè) and spirited anger (thymos).20 This indignant anger becomes visible primarily as an essentially public or political passion: having become ruler of Thebes, Oedipus proves to be unable to distinguish the city’s interest from his own: “my soul suffers at once for the city, for me and for you,” he tells his subjects who come to ask for his help (OK, 63–64). Identifying with the city, he wants all of his actions to be fully public (OK, 93–94) and like a full-fledged tyrant he addresses the Theban citizens as “children” (OK, 1, 58). Accordingly, he ignores the distinction between the public and the private, which is constitutive of the inner spacing of the city. When Creon, Jocasta’s brother, defends the interests of his family and charges Oedipus with ruling badly, the phrasing of Oedipus’s indignant invocation already betrays the fragility of the political unity he purports to embody: “o city, city!” (OK, 629). Only after he has discovered his origins and blinded himself, does Oedipus seem to become aware again of the distinction between private and public. At the very beginning of Oedipus in Colonus, he addresses his daughter Antigone as “child” in the singular (teknon, OC, 1). For the same reasons, Oedipus the tyrant refuses to accord a place in the city to the sacred. When the blind seer Tiresias, who is unable to move from one place to another without assistance, confronts him with the cause of Thebes’s troubles and the need for atonement, Oedipus accuses him repeatedly of betraying the city. Moreover, he dismisses Tiresias’s disturbing claims about his fate, and insists on pursuing his inquiry regarding Laius’s killer: “If it has protected the city, it is no care of mine” (OK, 443). By denying the importance of the private and of the sacred, Oedipus disregards two elements that are constitutive of the inner and outer spacing of the city, and which call into question the claim to self-sufficiency underlying the city and its law. Lest we be blinded by the violent events that follow the tragic recognition (anagnôrisis) of his origins, it should give us pause that somehow this disregard must be connected to the fact that Oedipus first saved Thebes by solving the riddle of the Sphinx. That accomplishment reveals a profound

20 Cf. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (henceforth OK), 334–338, 345, 405, 524, 674, 807, 914; Oedipus in Colonus (henceforth OC), 411, 855. See also Antigone (henceforth A), 875: according to the chorus, Antigone has inherited her father’s anger and savageness.

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ambiguity in the character of Oedipus. On the one hand, it shows a specific aptitude for detached theoretical abstraction, doubtless honed by his displacement as a limping wanderer. By dint of this aptitude, it should be noted, Oedipus becomes an atypical tyrant. Setting aside the unwitting murder of his father, his rise to power within Thebes is markedly peaceful, and his rule is benevolent, enlightened and rational compared to Laius’s reign.21 On the other hand, his solving the riddle also betrays a lack of self-awareness. Oedipus, who is able to see the general form of man through the Sphinx’s riddle, fails to realize that his disability makes him the exception to that general form, just as he is unaware that his twin crimes of patricide and incest set him apart from humanity. One is entitled to wonder whether this peculiar combination of insight and blindness does not contribute to the tragic element as much as fate. Reporting the violent dénouement, the messenger uses an odd figure of speech to describe how Oedipus blinded himself: “he struck the joints of his own eyeballs (epaisen arthra tôn autou kuklôn)” (OK, 1270). Arthra literally denotes ‘joints’ or ‘limbs’: Oedipus would seem to repeat the act that began his fateful trajectory and thus go back to square one.22 At the same time, Oedipus’s principal character trait points to a fundamental problem. As Benardete argues, his angry disregard exemplifies the tendency of the city and its law to homogenize everything for the sake of its own cohesion and unity, and to exclude everything deemed to be alien.23 This tendency includes the city’s exclusive claim to its own place, its own territory. In the case of Thebes, homogeneity must be taken as literally as autochthony. According to its founding story, the first Thebans sprang from the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus, son of the Phoenician king (OK, 1). As a result, all Thebans share the earth as a common mother, and their unity derives from the soil. Homogeneity in combination with autochthony is perhaps one of the oldest motivations for defending a city. In Plato’s Republic, the “noble lie” (kalon pseudos) with which Socrates proposes to persuade the guardians of the best city

21 Because of his abduction and rape of Chrysippus, Laius was reputed to have been the originator of love against nature. Cf. Peter J. Ahrensdorf, “The Limits of Political Rationalism: Enlightenment and Religion in Oedipus the Tyrant,” The Journal of Politics 66.3 (2004): 773–799. 22 Cf. Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 83n20. As Benardete observes, Oedipus’s singularity is already contained in the ambiguity of his name, which evinces his problematic relationship to place: “Swollen Foot” and “Know-Where” (ibid., p. 126). 23 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 78.

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to defend it is a “Phoenician thing,” a story that closely resembles the tale of Cadmus.24 By invoking a pre-existing natural bond among its members and grounding it in the territory they inhabit, and by presenting this bond as threatened by an enemy, the story makes it possible to view the city as a unified whole and act in its defense. However, in the case of Thebes homogeneity in combination with autochthony also reveals a darker side to the story. It implies that incest is inevitable among the Thebans, even though it is strictly proscribed by their laws. According to Benardete, Oedipus’s breaking of the prohibition against endogamous marriages reveals a paradox at the heart of the city: That prohibition allows for the bonding of the city’s families qua families, but not for the bonding of the citizens qua citizens, which can only be effected if the prohibition against incest that holds for each family does not hold for the city as a whole.25

On the one hand, incest is the most radical form of the love of one’s own, which must be checked and suppressed within the family in order that it may relinquish its self-sufficiency and acquire a place within the city. Besides being a confusion of family relations, incest also confounds temporal and spatial relations, in that it juxtaposes what should be consecutive and brings together in one place what should be kept in separate places. When Oedipus has discovered his origins and has fled inside the palace, the chorus laments him, “for whom the same great haven was sufficient for child and father to enter as bridegroom” (OK, 1208–1212). Subsequently, when he reveals his incest to his children, his abhorrence is cast in spatial metaphors that sound like a travesty of autochthony: “he sowed there were he himself was begotten, and he acquired you whence he himself was born” (OK 1496–1499). On the other hand, in Thebes incest is the necessary condition for civic unity. Only by acknowledging that they have all sprung from the same place, Mother Earth, at the same time, are they able to recognize one another as citizens and claim the territory as their own place.26 In other words, the city’s claim to legitimacy and authority, as well as the claim to its own territory, is inevitably doubtful. To the extent that his

Plato, Republic, 414d–e. See also Vincent J. Rosivach, “Autochthony and the Athenians,” The Classical Quarterly, New Series 37.2 (1987): 294–306. 25 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 129. 26 Ibid., p. 78. 24

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transgression of the prohibition “makes Oedipus the one true citizen of Thebes,” it brings to light the questionable claims underlying political membership and territoriality.27 As Plato’s use of the story of Cadmus as a “noble lie” illustrates, political community is inevitably suspended between an origin that escapes it and the temptation to appropriate and incorporate that same origin.28 Hide and seek: Oedipus at Colonus In Oedipus at Colonus, the problem of political place is at the heart of the drama, and it emerges right from the beginning. Accompanied and guided by his daughter/sister Antigone, Oedipus is now a blind wanderer ( planètès, OC, 3), “without a city” (apoptolis, OC, 208) and “out of place” (ektopios, OC, 119). As such, his actions and speeches in the prologue call into question a host of acquired spatio-political distinctions. From his opening question, which already hints at the difference between a region (chôra) and the city ( polis) located inside it, we might surmise that he has no idea whatsoever of his whereabouts. However, when Antigone tells him she can see Athens even though she doesn’t know the region (chôros), he responds, oddly enough, that “every traveller told us that much” (OC, 25). Furthermore, he instructs Antigone to look for “a sitting-place (thèkasis) either on profane ground or by groves of the gods,” as if he would deliberately trespass on sacred ground (OC, 9–10). That the latter is indeed the case is borne out when Oedipus has sat down and a native approaches.29 The native urgently enjoins him to leave his sitting-place without speaking another word because it is

Ibid., p. 129. Cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, Verfremdung der Moderne: Phänomenologische Grenzgänge (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 139–140: “Das Ereignis des Ordnungsstiftung ist nicht selbst Teil der gestifteten Ordnung”; ibid., 64: “Die Selbstbegründung einer Ordnung gehört zu den Versuchungen politischer Ordnungsbemühungen.” Cf. David Janssens and Klaas Tindemans, “À propos de la loi: Discussion sur la tragédie, le politique, la représentation et le crime,” in Christian Biet, Paul Vanden Berghe and Karel Vanhaesebrouck, eds., Œdipe contemporain? Tragédie, tragique, politique (Vic-la Gardiole, 2007), pp. 109–136. 29 Interestingly enough, the anonymous native of Colonus is called xenos, which denotes both “stranger” and “host” or “guest-friend.” As becomes apparent in the play, Oedipus’s disturbing presence in Colonus brings this ambiguity to the surface. Cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, “Fremdheit, Gastfreundschaft und Feindschaft,” links: Rivista di letteratura e cultura tedesca/Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft 5 (2005): 31–40. 27 28

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“a region not to be trespassed (chôros ouch’agnos)” (OC, 37). Oedipus, however, chooses to remain where he is, in a state of transgression, and keeps talking. As he tells Antigone when the native has left, an oracle foretold him he would find his final resting place here, to the advantage of those who welcome him and to the ruin of those who expelled him (OC, 90–93). In reaction to Oedipus’s behavior, the native’s information regarding the place becomes particularly enigmatic. He first says that it is “untouched and uninhabited,” the domain of “the fearsome daughters of Earth and Darkness” (OC, 39–40), i.e., the Furies. But he immediately adds that they are known by the people as the Eumenidai or “benevolent,” as if he knows that the establishment of law in Athens required domesticating the pre-Olympian deities by giving them their own place in the polis.30 Moreover, when Oedipus asks him—yet again—to what place (chôros) they have come, he gives an enigmatic answer: The whole region (chôros) is sacred. Awe-inspiring Poseidon possesses it. The fire-bearing Titan god Prometheus dwells in it. The place (topos) you tread upon is called the bronze-footed threshold of this ground (chthôn), the buttress (ereisma) of Athens. The nearby fields claim Colonus the horseman, as their founder of old, and all have his name in common. Such, you see, stranger, is this place, not honored by words, but rather by a being together (sunousia). (OC, 56–63)

What seems at first to be one single place quickly dissipates when we scrutinize the native’s convoluted account. To begin with, it intimates a political problem. The native is at pains to distinguish Colonus as a sunousia with its own legal authority from the city of Athens. When Oedipus asks him who rules the people of Colonus, he diffidently responds: “here it is ruled by a king downtown (kat’astu)” (OC, 67).31 Moreover, he initially says that he does not dare to remove Oedipus from the sacred place acting “apart from the city” ( poleôs dicha, OC, 48–49). Moved to pity by Oedipus’s beguiling talk, however, he goes off to inform his fellow demesmen (dèmotai). They are competent to decide whether Oedipus can stay or not, and hence there is no need for him to go “downtown” (kat’astu) (OC, 79–80). It seems that the polis Cf. Aeschylus, Eumenides, 1021–1023. As distinguished from polis, which refers to the properly political aspect, the citizen body, astu denotes the material aspect of the city, its buildings and streets. Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, p. 151. 30 31

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Colonus is on strained terms with what it regards as the astu Athens. As Benardete surmises, when Oedipus arrives Colonus has just been involved in the so-called sunoikismos, the unification of previously independent Attican communities under Athenian rule by Theseus, who imposed political unity but left local religious cults intact.32 From the native’s utterances, as well as from those of the chorus of elders that arrives later, we gather that Colonus does not suffer Athenian unification gladly and tries to uphold its claim to political-legal autonomy and authority, which is based on autochthony.33 In fact, this political tension determines the action of the play as a whole. Oedipus shrewdly avails himself of the situation, and finds a way to further at once the interests of Colonus, those of Athens and his own (OC, 308–309). In order to secure a final resting place in Attica and to avoid being abducted to Thebes by Creon, he seizes the opportunity to mediate the latent conflict between Colonus and Athens and thus to strengthen Athenian unity. In this attempt, he shows a keen awareness of the meaning and use of political place. By staying on the forbidden sacred ground, he ensures that no one will remove him forcibly, thus transforming the sacred grove into a de facto asylum (OC, 48–49, 176–177). By promising great profit to Athens—without disclosing its nature—he first manages to impel the native to bring the Colonian elders to him. When they arrive, he hides on purpose and thus tricks them into committing a grave transgression of their own. As they enter the sacred grove, they are looking and speaking where, according to their own admonitions, they should not.34 On Oedipus’s sudden appearance, they are terrified, but he entreats them with words that pointedly allude at the chorus’s own transgression: “Do not behold me, I beseech you, the lawless” (anomon, OC, 142).35 On the basis of this tacit complicity, he then shows himself willing to move. The elders enjoin him not to speak before he has left the sacred ground, so that he may “speak there where the law (nomos) is

32 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 111. Benardete refers to Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.15–16. See also Steven Diamant, “Theseus and the Unification of Attica,” Hesperia Supplements 19 (1982): 38–47. 33 Cf. OC, 185, 236, 668–669, 695. 34 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 113; Davis, The Poetry of Philosophy, p. 85. Cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1343–1371: the contrast between what the chorus says—asserting the need for common resolve—and what it does—wasting valuable time in arguing about what to do—is almost comical. 35 Cf. Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 113.

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for all” (OC, 168). In spite of this command, however, Oedipus keeps the conversation going with almost taunting questions, leading the elders to aggravate their initial transgression. When he finally reaches the designated spot, it seems as if the elders have guided him to his proper place. In fact, he has displaced them. The speeches (logoi) of the stranger Oedipus have estranged them from what they took for granted as their own. Their wordless (alogos, OC, 132) devotion has been replaced by a reflexive awareness of the need to justify in speeches their own customs as well as their own place.36 In fact, they are seen to espouse a most bleak view of life. After Theseus has given Oedipus refuge, they pronounce their well-known words: “not to have been born ( phunai) surpasses every speech (logos)” (OC, 1225). Oedipus’s action has called into question the religious, political, and territorial claims underlying their dwelling. His slow and laborious return within the bounds of profane territory and law actually brings to light and displaces the boundary between the profane and sacred, so that the Colonian territory can eventually accommodate the ektopios Oedipus (OC, 142) as well as the legal-political authority of Theseus. When he divulges his identity and his crimes to the elders, he succeeds in checking their revulsion. He appeals not only to the devout hospitality of Athens, but also to the retributive justice underlying what turned out to be his patricide, and to the profit he brings. As a result, the elders are now content to defer to “the ruler of this land (gè)” for decision (OC, 294–295). When Theseus arrives, Oedipus is able to bring his plan to completion. Without ever disclosing the details of the oracle, he secures Theseus’s permission to be buried in Attic soil, and is welcomed by the elders to Colonus. Apparently, the prospect of war with Thebes is real enough for both to believe his promise to bring great profit from beyond the grave. Moreover, Oedipus succeeds in reconciling Colonus with Athens. When, later, Theseus comes to the aid of Oedipus against Creon, we learn that he was interrupted while sacrificing to Poseidon, the protector of Colonus.37 Finally, the fulfillment of the oracle once more draws attention to the problem of political place. Notwithstanding Theseus’s hospitality and his invitation to accompany him to Athens, Oedipus chooses to stay and end his life in Colonus, as the oracle

36 Cf. Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey (Lanham, 1997), p. 159n89. 37 Cf. OC, 887–890, 1158.

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requires (OC, 644–646). At the same time, it allows him to exploit the full potential of his position as a guest. For, as Bernhard Waldenfels notes, the guest has an ambiguous status: he is neither an insider nor an outsider, neither a member nor a total stranger.38 As a result, his presence within a community and its territory causes unrest, since it calls into question the very claims underlying political membership and territoriality, and thus even the right of the host to extend hospitality. As both the sunoikismos and Oedipus’s exchange with the Colonian elders show, their authority to determine “there where the law is for all” is equivocal and susceptible to challenge.39 Without this susceptibility, however, Oedipus would have been unable to even attempt to reconcile Colonus to Athens. However, Oedipus’s diplomatic success does not solve the problem of community and territoriality. To begin with, we should not forget that his actions take place against the background of Theseus’s sunoikismos. The process of unification was not only a matter of persuasion, but also of the threat of force on the part of the Athenian ruler (OC, 560–565).40 Moreover, at the end of the play, Oedipus’s burial place, the seal and bulwark of the new union, remains shrouded in mystery. For it to be effective in protecting Athens—now including Colonus—against its enemies, Oedipus has Theseus swear never to disclose either its location or its entrance to any human being (OC, 1522–1523), and to forbid every mortal to come near the place (topos) of his sacred tomb (OC, 1760–1763). However, as we learn from the messenger who witnessed the event from a distance, Oedipus did not die, but in fact disappeared in a miraculous way. He was last seen at the bronze-footed threshold the native had described as the buttress of Athens, but the exact place of his disappearance remains unknown even to Theseus, who was the last to accompany him but who covered his eyes with his hand at the crucial moment (OC, 1650–1651). It remains to be seen how Theseus will at

38 Waldenfels, “Fremdheit, Gastfreundschaft und Feindschaft,” pp. 35–36. Cf. Robert Gorman, “Poets, Playwrights, and the Politics of Exile and Asylum in Ancient Greece and Rome,” International Journal of Refugee Law 6.3 (1994): 402–424. 39 It is worth noting that the Colonians venerate Prometheus, whom the Colonian xenos calls the “bringer of fire” (Oedipus in Colonus, 55–56). 40 As Thucydides notes, with a keen sense of irony, Theseus “besides his great wisdom was also a man of very great power” (Peloponnesian War, 2.15). See also Plutarch, Life of Theseus, 24.1–5. According to some interpretations, the name Theseus is derived from the Greek thesmos (“institution”) and thus from the verb tithèmi, “to set down,” “to establish,” but also “to impose.”

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all be able to communicate the secrets of its location to his successor, let alone how it may serve to protect Athens (OC, 1530–1532).41 This puts Athens in a paradoxical predicament: the sacred place that is the root (OC, 1591) and buttress of Athens, as well as the seal of its political unity and sovereignty, remains outside of Athens.42 Moreover, since its exact location is unknown it cannot avoid being trespassed on in the future.43 The ektopios Oedipus has reconciled Colonus to Athens by irreversibly displacing both, giving them a common basis in what is almost literally an atopos, a non-place: nowhere, unknown, invisible and thus permanently prone to trespass. This casts a shadow on the consoling final words of the chorus: “Authority takes charge of these things” (OC, 1797). In spite of his promise to Oedipus to protect his daughters from harm, Theseus does not oppose them when they express the wish to return to Thebes, even though this will expose them to great danger and will eventually prove to be fatal for one of them. Joining the family: Antigone Right after Oedipus’s disappearance, Antigone showed herself particularly eager to see his tomb, which she called “the hearth (hestia) beneath,” irrespective of any transgression it might entail (OC, 1726). In the play that bears her name, her speeches and deeds turn out to be just as revealing of the problem of political place as those of her father/brother. Her actions also reveal how the love of one’s own is both required by and squarely at odds with the city. In Antigone’s case, the love of one’s own takes the form of love of the dead and, ultimately, of love of death. In her view, the netherworld is literally a hearth, a family home: in her suicidal attempt to give her brother Polynices a 41 Cf. Edith Hall, “The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy,” in Easterling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, p. 103. 42 Cf. L. Campbell, “Colonus Hippius,” The Classical Review 20.1 (1906): 3–5. Clearly, this qualifies the “Athenocentrism” that is often attributed to Greek tragedy: see, for example, Hall, “The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy,” p. 100. 43 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 112. After Oedipus has taken leave of his daughters, a divine voice bids him to hurry: “what are we waiting for?” (OC, 1627–1628). The Greek for “waiting for” (mellô chôrein) can also be read as “be about to make room (or open up a space).” Because of the ‘atopic’ character of Oedipus’s tomb, the play cannot be read unqualifiedly as an account of the transformation from a human being into a hero. Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, p. 169; Darice Birge, “The Grove of the Eumenides: Refuge and Hero Shrine in Oedipus at Colonus,” The Classical Journal 80.1 (1984): 11–17.

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proper burial, she aims to reassemble her family in Hades.44 Her appeal to the divine law (nomima) that enjoins human beings to bury their own is her only way of justifying her incestuous origins without having recourse to generation (hence her name). It should give us pause, Benardete stresses, that the child from an incestuous marriage should be the staunch defender of the integrity of the family.45 As a result, Antigone not only comes into conflict with Creon’s decree (kèrugma), but also with the derivative political love of one’s own that is patriotism, and thus with its concomitant understanding of political place. For Creon, the question of burial is vital to shoring up his questionable title to rule the territory of Thebes. When he enters the scene, he conjures the fiction of unbroken succession, imposes himself as the legitimate successor to Oedipus, and claims to speak for the whole of Thebes. In doing so, he is silent on the questionable way Oedipus came to power, as well as on the fact that he is only related to his predecessor indirectly by way of his sister. Moreover, his addressing the chorus of Theban elders “apart from all the others” (ek pantôn dicha, A, 164) as a deed belies his claim to represent civil unity. Having Eteocles buried and leaving Polynices unburied is thus literally fundamental for Creon’s authority, as a claim to determine, both what belongs above and what below the earth, and what portion of the earth qualifies as country and fatherland (A, 184–200). Driven by the urge to establish his rule, however, Creon becomes the mirrorimage of Oedipus the tyrant. Once the defender of family interests against Oedipus’s hypostasis of the public sphere, he now negates the distinction between private and public by taking the household (oikos) as a paradigm for the city (A, 661–662). Similarly, like a true tyrant he obliterates the distinction between his decree (kèrugma) and a genuine law (nomos) (cf. A, 177, 192). By the same token, Antigone’s “criminal piety” (hosia panourgèsasa, A, 74) constitutes a multiple threat to his claims. Her famous appeal to the divine law (nomima) that enjoins human beings to bury their own not only calls into question his decree, but it also suggests that the love of one’s own underlying patriotism, when brought to its ultimate consequences, “does not consist in the desire to die for one’s country but

44 Seth Benardete, Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone (South Bend, 1998), pp. 6–9, 61–62. 45 Benardete, The Argument of the Action, p. 102.

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in the desire to be buried there.”46 As the disappearance of Oedipus reveals, the city’s foundations ultimately lie in Hades. His daughter’s suicide mission, her fanatical determination to die for the sake of burying her brother to the point of descending into Hades alive (A, 821–822, 920), now threatens to uproot the city. As the guard who caught Antigone tells Creon, she approached the exposed and rotting corpse of Polynices as a bird would approach her nest (A, 423–425): death is her family home. Her actions are based on a literal interpretation of the law that enjoins burial. As a result, they reveal the subversive effects of the sacred when it becomes detached from its political moorings. In this sense, she is a pre-Promethean anomaly within the Promethean order of the Theban polis. Just as the Colonian elders mistake Oedipus for one of the Furies when they first see him, the Theban elders, upon seeing Antigone, wonder whether they see a “divine monster” (daimonion teras, A, 376).47 By the same token, Antigone is the blind spot of the chorus’s equally famous first stasimon. In her attempt to carry the law of burial to its extreme, to become this law, she alone is at once hupsipolis and apolis: for her, the city is high and there is no city (A, 370). Just as her presence within the city subverts its political order, it calls into question its placial order. Creon orders her to be entombed alive in order that she be “deprived from living together (metoikia—literally ‘sharing a home’) above the ground” (A, 890). She, however, almost espouses the dungeon, not only as “a tomb” (tymbos), but also as “a bridal chamber” (nympheion) and a “deep-dug ever watchful home-dwelling” (kataskaphès oikèsis aeiphrouros) (A, 891–892). Like Oedipus, she reveals the anomia at the heart of the law, the incivility at the basis of the city, and the ektopia at the core of its own place. As Benardete points out, the fact that the chorus celebrates Earth as “the highest of the gods” (A, 338), only to subject it to human art and culture, is not without political consequences: [T]he city must rest on something outside of man; and if the city alone determines the good and the noble, that something can only be Earth, whose ambiguity as itself or as one’s country conceals the violence it suffers in becoming one’s own.48

46 47 48

Benardete, Sacred Transgressions, p. 93. Ibid., p. 122. Ibid., p. 49.

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The establishment of a polis and its nomos entails appropriating a portion of the earth and domesticating the sacred as well as the profane within its confines. Nomos, it should be remembered, is derived from the verb nemein, which not only means ‘herding’, ‘pasturing’ and ‘distributing’ offices and places, but also ‘exploiting’ and, ultimately, ‘taking without a prior title’. However, as the experiences of Oedipus and Antigone show, while polis and nomos need the sacred in order to subsist, the sacred forever resists and controverts political-legal appropriation, domestication and emplacement. Within this unsurmountable tension, the tragic continues to appear. Conclusion As Sophocles’s Theban trilogy shows, one of the ways in which tragedy subtly undercuts its own ostensible celebration of the polis and its nomos is through its use of place. Read with the care urged by Aristotle, the interplay of speeches and actions furnishes the reader with an oblique perspective on the constitution of religious, moral, legal, and political place. First, by their skillful use of the motifs of homogeneity and autochthony, the three plays reveal the problematic nature of a city’s claims to unity and legitimacy. They point to tensions at the core of the city and its law that are both constitutive and disruptive. Second, Oedipus and Antigone, who violate the established order, by the same token controvert its distribution of places. They thus bring to light the complex way in which the city and its law at once need the sacred and are at odds with it. By dint of this relationship, city and law are always ‘ectopic’. In their strenuous endeavor to determine who is who, what is what and where is where, they try but cannot hide the fact that their basis necessary lies elsewhere, and hence that their territory, as much as their citizenry, is capable of being displaced. In this sense, tragedy runs counter to the tendency of the city and the law to reify its horizon and cast itself as wholly self-sufficient. The locus of tragedy, the place from where the tragic appears, is not the polis, but Hades, the “unseen” (Aidès).49

49 I am grateful to Hans Lindahl and Frans van Peperstraten for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

HOW TO PERFORM THE POLIS? TRAGEDY AS THE LOCUS OF DECEPTION Bram Van Oostveldt (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Stijn Bussels (Universiteit Leiden) Thessalians are too ignorant to be deceived. In Plutarch’s De audiendis poetis (15d), this is the bold answer from Simonides of Keos (556–467 BC) to the question why the poet did not deceive them like he did the rest of the Greeks. Here, the concept of apatè, generally translated as “deception,” is used in a remarkable way, diametrically opposed to the way in which we usually interpret deception. While we might suppose that a person is ignorant because he lets himself be deceived, Simonides maintains the complete opposite. He claims that a person must possess intelligence and knowledge to be deceived. For Simonides, apatè is not the work of an impostor who tries to make a fool of his victims in order to gain maximum advantage. On the contrary, apatè is the work of the poet who does a favor to his audience by giving it a depiction of the world. A special kind of deception is therefore at stake, since here the relation between representation and the object of representation is at the centre of attention. Why were knowledge, representation, and deception so closely related? Concerning this question, the fragment of Simonides leaves us guessing. We have to search further. Directly after Simonides, the equally bold Gorgias of Leontini (487–380 BC) is cited. This famous sophist linked apatè to a specific genre of poetry, namely tragedy. Plutarch writes: Gorgias called tragedy a deception whereby he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.1

According to Plutarch, therefore, the success of representation in tragedy is for Gorgias the shared responsibility of the tragic artist—without

1 Plutarch, Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA, 1927). See also Hermann Diels and Walther Krans, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Hamburg, 1957), p. 126.

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differentiating between the poet, the narrator or the actor—and his audience. This quotation appears not only in Plutarch’s De audiendis poetis but also in his De gloria Atheniensium. In the latter, Plutarch specifies that apatè of tragedy is all about handling the difference between representation and the object of representation. Plutarch writes: “the deceiver handles more correctly, because he announces what he does.” The audience of the tragic artist, in its turn, is wiser because it uses the status of representation properly. The represented emotions give him empathy and pleasure. Plutarch writes: “the deceived shows more wisdom, because what is not without feeling gets carried away easily by the pleasure of words.”2 So Plutarch interprets Gorgias’s pronouncement by adding that the artist who announces that he depicts his subject differently than it is in reality, acts more correctly than the artist who does not do this. The artist resolutely utilizes representation, knowing and announcing that it differs from what is represented. The ideal audience possesses the wisdom to comply with the announced apatè by looking through a specific frame. The correctly performed and observed tragedy moves the audience in such a way that the represented emotions will give it empathy and pleasure. The effect of the represented feelings, according to Plutarch, is that the wise audience is absorbed by the pleasure of the words by means of which these emotions are represented.3 One may wonder to what extent Plutarch’s interpretation matches the proper intentions of Gorgias. How did the sophist link deceiving and being deceived (by the difference between representation and the object of representation) with correct handling and wisdom? Why did Gorgias specifically chose tragedy to discuss the link between deception and knowledge? The importance of these questions lies in the fact that this citation is one of the earliest pronouncements on tragedy. Gorgias (487–380 BC) lived in the same age as Sophocles (497/6–406 BC) and Euripides (480–406 BC). Consequently, a deepening of our understanding of this citation could shed more light on the conceptualization of tragedies in the period they were created. Furthermore, these questions bring us to the fifth- and fourth-century Greek world where tragedy was Plutarch, Moralia, 5.348. See T. Buchheim, Gorgias von Leontinoi: Reden, Fragmente und Testimonien (Hamburg, 1989), pp. 149–164 and Rainer Hisch-Luipold, Plutarchs Denken in Bildern (Tübingen, 2002), pp. 225–260. 3 Hisch-Luipold, pp. 65 and 76. 2

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continuously seen as the locus of supreme entanglement, but paradoxically also as the locus of pleasure and wisdom. We will focus on other writings by Gorgias, on Plato’s Gorgias and Republic, and on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics to discuss how tragedy, in the dramatic text, but also on the often overlooked level of performance, was conceptualized as locus to describe the artistic representation that actualizes its subject in a shared here and now with the audience. This actualization achieves strong agency, as it is used as a mediating force in society. More specifically, the tragedy achieves a (re)confirmation of important views in the polis by means of emotions, ratio, and pleasure. All three thinkers acknowledge the existence of this performative mode, but they differ in their estimation of it as either strictly necessary or totally reprehensible. Only a few writings by Gorgias have been passed down to us. It is therefore hard to get a general picture of his ideas. Nevertheless, two works are interesting for our subject: his philosophical On Not-Being or On Nature and his discourse in which he tries to counter criticism of the belle of the Iliad, Helen. Let us start with the latter. In his Encomium of Helen, Gorgias introduces this mythological character to make pronouncements about the actual world and, by doing so, suggests changes in the non-fictitious system of norms and values. On a metadiscursive level, the sophist discusses the role of speech or logos as a powerful lord, because in its performativity it is constitutive for Greek identity.4 Gorgias starts his discussion on the power of logos as follows: But if speech persuaded [Helen to go to Troy] and deceived her soul, not even to this is it difficult to make answer and to banish blame.5

Logos does not give a straight, unmediated view on the world. It is, moreover, an excellent means to mould reality to the speaker’s will of how the world ought to be viewed. The listener is easily led to believe in this represented state of affairs. Applied to Gorgias’s central case, it is the eloquence of the young Paris that made Helen believe in his view of reality. The belle is convinced by speech that she could have

4 C.P. Segal, “Gorgias and the Psychology of the logos,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 66 (1962): 99–155. 5 Gorgias, Encomium of Helen, § 8, trans. George Kennedy, in “Language and meaning in Archaic and Classical Greece,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ed. G.A. Kennedy (Cambridge, 1989), p. 83.

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a wonderful life by fleeing Menelaus’s Sparta and going to the city of Troy where her young lover lives. To argue the proposition that speech was chiefly responsible for Helen’s deception, Gorgias elaborates on the power of words and refers primarily to poetry. It is presented as a fine example to illustrate the power of speech, as a recited poem is capable of strongly moving the listeners by the performance of fictitious fortunes of characters: On those who hear it come fearful shuddering and tearful pity and grievous longing as the soul, through words, experiences some experience of its own at others’ good fortune and ill fortune.6

For the poem’s audience, fiction and real emotions go hand in hand. Gorgias continues that the mastery of logos is also strikingly present in eloquence and philosophy. Since we will never know everything about the past, present or future, he states that the well-chosen word is needed to achieve common acceptance of a certain opinion (doxa). So the emotional and rhetorical power of logos may have convinced Helen to go to Troy. Owing to the supreme power of speech, which can even be linked to magic, the beautiful girl is not to blame. In contrast to the fragment on tragedy, the Encomium casts deception in a bad light. Nevertheless, here again, apatè is primarily concerned with the difference between representation and the object of representation. The power of persuasive speech deceived her, since it was impossible for her to take stock of the situation. The fact that the world around us cannot be grasped is also expressed in Gorgias’s philosophical treatise On Non-Being or On Nature.7 Here Gorgias advances three theses. Firstly, that nothing is. Secondly, that if there is something, it is impossible for mankind to grasp it. Thirdly, that if it could be grasped, it would still be impossible to communicate or explain it to our fellow man. So the sophist does not believe that the entire and irrefutable truth exists, nor does he believe that this truth can be found or communicated. Putting it the other way around, fiction (language, speech, art) has no firm ground in its relation to ‘reality’. Conversely, he defends the belief that a diversity of opinions circulates in the polis. Any opinion can only find general acceptance if it is com-

Ibid., § 9. Barbara Cassin, “Procédures sophistiques pour construire l’évidence,” in Dire l’évidence: Philosophie et rhétorique antiques, ed. Carlos Levy and Laurent Pernot (Paris, 1997), pp. 15–29. 6 7

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municated in a convincing manner. Speech is powerful in the way that it ascertains our relative constructions of truth. Verbal communication negotiates which opinion can be accepted. Whether the commonly held opinion is actually true or false is of no significance, since that cannot be verified. Here, deception is given a neutral appraisal. It can be applied in either a good or bad way, for mankind cannot grasp given moral truths a priori. From this context, we can return to Gorgias’s previously quoted fragment on tragedy. Tragedy [is] a deception wherein he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.

Deception in tragedy is not a unique case. Since opinions have to be made acceptable through speech, deception can be found in all forms of verbal communication. Although not unique to deception, tragedy is an ideal means to get a grip on life, a means by which what can generally be seen as true can be negotiated.8 Therefore, tragedy is put forward as a pregnant locus of Gorgias’s epistemological conviction. This may not surprise us when we think about the Hellenic theatre that enticed thousands of spectators and was an explicit place to (re)affirm certain opinions as common truths in a performance where verbal apatè met visual means of persuasion.9 However, due to the fragment’s shortness, many pressing questions about Gorgias’s opinion on tragedy remain. It remains unclear if the sophist believed that, next to speech, sight also played a mayor role in the tragic apatè. Moreover, many other questions can be raised. How did the tragic artist have to make clear that he was deceiving? In how far is the wisdom of the audience related to the consciousness of the representational level? How can this public consciousness be linked to emotions, empathy, and pleasure?

8 For a broader link between tragedy and sophistry see Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 222–243. 9 See, among others, P.E. Easterling, “Form and Performance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. P.E. Easterling (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 151–176; Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 265–286; Simon Goldhill, “Reading Performance Criticism,” Greece & Rome 36 (1989), pp. 172–182; O.P. Tapling, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977); O.P. Tapling, Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978) and David Wiles, “Reading Greek Performance,” Greece & Rome 34 (1987): 136–151.

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We already saw that Plutarch interpreted the fragment by declaring that the tragic artist acts correctly because he does not obscure the representational level, and that a wise audience is aware of the representational level of words and uses a special frame to look at the tragedy. Following Plutarch, their response will feature multiple layers. The audience has to get emotionally involved. Only then—and this is a paradox to us—can they fully enjoy the phrasing of the representation. It is impossible to verify if Gorgias shared Plutarch’s five centuries younger opinion. But even if he did, it still remains unclear how the deceiving artist has to show his deception, and how a distinction can be made between the poet, narrator, and actor in the manner and strength of deception. Moreover, it is still unclear how the knowledge, emotion, and pleasure achieved by the tragedy are related to one another. We therefore have to move to the two generations following Gorgias, and arrive at Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC). Their opinions on tragedy are far better known and have been fiercely discussed from many perspectives down through the ages. However, the focus is seldom on the precise act of deceiving in tragedy, since the philosophical debates on the effect of the performance are often disregarded. By linking the opinions of Plato and Aristotle on the visual means of the performance to their opinions on the textual means of the dramatic text, we will try to gain more insight into how tragedy was seen as a promising locus of deception. Let’s start with Plato. He, too, connects the concepts of knowledge, pleasure, and emotion with deception and the functioning of the tragedy. If we refer to Plato, we have to keep in mind that he consciously attacked his most influential rivals, the sophists. In the eyes of Plato, there was too much public interest in how they demonstrated and taught their detrimental eloquence. Moreover, the wages they demanded were far too high.10 Gorgias was an important representative of this group. It is very telling that one of the most famous attacks on the sophistic view was phrased in three successive dialogues that Plato entitled Gorgias (ca. 387 BC).11 In these dialogues the celebrated sophist and some of his pupils enter into an argument with Socrates. The latter is portrayed as playing a risky game by attacking eloquence in the presence of the most 10

112.

John Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece (Columbia, 1995), pp. 74–

11 For a larger contextualisation, see Bruce McComiskey, “Disassembling Plato’s Critique of Rhetoric in the Gorgias (447a–466a),” Rhetoric Review 10 (1992): 205–216.

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eloquent man of his time. However, Socrates/Plato left no room for doubt: rhètorikè is an objectionable art that is purely about flattery.12 For our case, it is interesting to see how Socrates/Plato involves the tragic artist, another influential rival of the philosophers.13 Next to rhetoric, tragedy seeks to provide cheap satisfaction and pleasure too. Both arts are removed from the beneficial, wholesome philosophical quest for incontrovertible knowledge defended by Plato. The main character in the dialogues, Socrates, presents his adversaries with the following question which, although it wants to enfeeble rhetoric, in an ironical way displays an almost perfect mastery of eloquent phrasing: Do the orators strike you as speaking always with a view to what is best, with the single aim of making the citizens as good as possible by their speeches, or are they, like the poets, set on gratifying the citizens, and do they, sacrificing the common good to their own personal interest, behave to these assemblies as to children, trying merely to gratify them, nor care a jot whether they will be better or worse in consequence?14

In his Gorgias, Plato is diametrically opposed to Gorgias. Apatè is, for Plato, the promotion of myopic expediency, and absolutely no ineluctable condition for giving an opinion public acceptance, as incontrovertible knowledge exists most certainly for Plato. One has to aspire to Epistèmè at all times, even if this quest is almost impossible for man. Therefore, the rhetoric-poetical deception is vehemently rejected in the Gorgias. Rhetoric and tragedy only serve to negotiate opinions. The orator and the tragic artist neglect the search for general knowledge. They even frustrate the philosopher in his search. The famous tenth book of the Republic links other artists with deception. In this text, Plato does not restrict himself to verbal representation but mentions visual representation when he writes the famous pronouncement that representation is “a corruption of the mind of all listeners who do not possess as antidote a knowledge of its real

12 For a more detailed discussion, see among others James L. Kastly, “In Defense of Plato’s Gorgias” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 106 (1991): 96–109; Eric Ramsey, “A Hybrid Techne of the Soul? Thoughts on the Relation between Philosophy and Rhetoric in Gorgias and Phaedrus,” Rhetoric Review 17 (1999): 247–262; Edward Schiappa, “Did Plato Coin Rhetorikè?” The American Journal of Philology 111 (1990): 457–470 and Robert Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and their successors (London, 1996), Chapter I–III. 13 Helmut Kuhn, “The True Tragedy: On the Relationship between Greek Tragedy and Plato,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 52 (1941): 1–40 and 53 (1942): 37–88. 14 Plato, Gorgias, trans. W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 502e.

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nature.”15 It is interesting to see that no specific medium is taken as the main target but, rather, a specific way of perceiving, namely the unconditional belief in the alleged presence of the represented fiction. Following Plato, such a living presence response of an ‘incompetent’ audience leads to a confusing and problematic view of the world outside the representation. In spite of the many forms of deceitful artistic representation, tragedy is put forward time and again as the form of representation that is most difficult for the audience to interpret correctly as pure fiction. In the first place, the specific way of representing the world has an important role here, a way that can be found not only in tragedy but also in the writings of Homer. In his Aesthetics of Mimesis, Stephen Halliwell devotes a whole chapter to the tragic way of representing the world.16 He refers to the second and third book of the Republic in which Plato criticizes the false fiction of tragedy where gods are given responsibility for malevolence, where death is depicted as a fearful destiny and as an irreversible loss, where Good is not always linked with happiness, and where evil people are shown in full prosperity. Such a false image does not stimulate a rightful view of the world. Plato defends the belief in the perfection of God, in death as liberation, and in the Good that is wholesome and effective. However, we must not forget another significant characteristic that singles out tragedy as the most difficult form of deception to deal with, as Plato also discusses the importance of the performance, or more precisely the fact that the tragedy is played in full seriousness for a massive audience.17 In the performance lies the almost inevitable danger that both the performers and the audience identify themselves with the characters. In that way one completely loses sight of the sense of reality and the consciousness of the representational status. Following Plato, there are two styles of poetic discourse: diègèsis, or pure narration, and mimèsis, or a narrative achieved through imitation.18 In this context the term mimesis is used in a narrow meaning as a specific style. In contrast

15 Plato, The Republic, trans. Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA, 1963), 595b. Henceforth cited as R. 16 Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, 2002), pp. 98–117. Cf. Kuhn, “True Tragedy,” pp. 33–40. 17 Halliwell refers to the importance of the performative aspect of the tragedy in Plato’s conceptualization of the tragedy (pp. 51–55 and pp. 74–85). 18 Aryeh Kosman, “Acting: Drama as the mimèsis of praxis,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Amélie O. Rorty (Princeton, 1992), pp. 51–54.

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with pure narration, where the poet speaks in his own status as poet, in mimesis the poet speaks as though he is someone else. Even worse is the performance of tragic poetry by someone other than the poet. Plato may refer to two different forms of performance: on the one hand, a play involving a few actors and a choir; on the other, a play delivered by a narrator who took different roles in order to blur his own presence. The actor, choral singer and narrator are all much worse than the poet, since they not only pretend to be fictional characters, but also pretend that the words they speak spring from their own minds.19 The detrimental incorporation of a fictive role has therefore the worst effect for the empathizing performer. Concerning the different genres of theatre, the Republic discusses tragedy as more deceitful than comedy, since the latter genre features a jesting character who lessens the impact of the incorporation of the narrator or actor.20 Plato powerfully rejects acting: “Or have you not observed that imitation, if continued from youth far into life, settles down into habits and (second) nature in the body, the speech, and the thought” (R, 395d). Here, we reach the core of the argument about the danger of the artistic performance. The internal world of the tragedy is externalized during the act of playing. In performance, the distorting power of tragedy is at its most extreme. The world evoked in the tragedy acquires its own life outside the representation because the narrator or actor gives some of the characteristics of his character a place in his own life. Therefore, in the third book of the Republic the philosopher forbids the boys who will later be part of the pick of the army and government to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune and possessed by grief and lamentation—still less a woman that is sick, in love, or in labor. [. . .] Nor may they imitate slaves, female and male, doing the offices of slaves. [. . .] Nor yet, as it seems, bad men who are cowards and who do the opposite of the things we just now spoke of, reviling and lampooning one another, speaking foul words in their cups or when sober and in other ways sinning against themselves and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men. (R, 395d-e)

19 Throughout this contribution, we will use the word ‘actor’ to denote the performer of the tragic characters, but also the choir and even the storyteller who impersonated all characters. It is beyond our scope to focus on the differences between them: see Easterling, “Form and Performance,” pp. 151–176. 20 R. Brock, “Plato and Comedy,” in Owls to Athens: Essays on Classical Subjects Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover, ed. E.M. Craik (Oxford, 1990), pp. 39–49.

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Acting is left to slaves and strangers whose well-being is of absolutely no concern to Plato. If the future military and political leaders are allowed to play a role, then it has to be concerned with the representation of univocal values such as will, composure, integrity, and independence. In other words, values that are far removed from the complex and extreme characteristics of the tragic characters. The most promising boys are not allowed to get into contact with a practice in which the performed characters are totally overwhelmed by harsh emotions, for playing reprehensible emotions means incorporating these emotions. Moreover, it is not desirable that the promising boys grow accustomed to putting themselves in different positions. This leads to a schizophrenic situation in which the soldiers-to-be and politicians-to-be no longer precisely know who they will become, as Plato strongly believes that one person can only properly fit one position. Playing several roles wreaks havoc on this educational dogma. At first sight, however, the writer of the Republic seems to leave a window of opportunity for attending tragedies. In the sequel to the passage just cited, he writes: And I take it they must not form the habit of likening themselves to madmen either in words nor yet in deeds. For while knowledge they must have both of mad and bad men and women, they must do and imitate nothing of this kind. (R, 396a)

So the audience of the performance has to be aware of certain extreme states of mind that are revealed in the tragedy, but may under no circumstances find itself in these states of mind. The onlookers have to arm themselves against the strong emotional impact of the performed poetry. According to Plato, tragedy could only be useful if the spectators maintain a critical distance in relation to the represented emotions, if they could gain insight into the complex morality of Good and Evil, choose rigorously for what is Good, and be able to discern and reject Evil in life outside of the theatre. However, this kind of educational task is, in the eyes of Plato, not reserved for tragedy. As we just discussed, tragedy and tragic literature, like Homer’s writings, are not the ideal purveyors of norms and values of the ideal polis, precisely because of the specific fictitious and detrimental world they evoke. Next to this, there is the inevitable danger that the spectator of the tragic performance, and also the reader of the poem, will lose his critical distance. In the tenth book of the Republic, Plato discusses through the character of Socrates the discrepancy between the emotional behavior

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achieved by reality and the emotional behavior achieved by representation. Socrates/Plato says that: [T]he very best of us, when we hear Homer or some other of the makers of tragedy imitating one of the heroes who is in grief, and is delivering a long tirade in his lamentations or chanting and beating his breast, feel pleasure, and abandon ourselves and accompany the representation with sympathy and eagerness, and we praise as an excellent poet the one who most strongly affects us in this way. (R, 605c-d)

This kind of combining of grief and pleasure contrasts sharply with the behavior that Plato prescribes. The future leaders of Plato’s ideal polis have to learn that misfortune and distress cannot result in self-pity, but have to be restrained by total composure. In fact, the spectator or reader has to be repulsed by the indecent reaction of the tragic antihero, but regrettably he is often urged to do the complete opposite, to incorporate the emotions and to commiserate with all pathos shown. Hereby the psyche of the audience is incorrectly stimulated to lament and pity. Once a setback has to be dealt with in the ‘real’ world, those who lost themselves in the tragedy also lose themselves in everyday life and proclaim their complaints loudly. In this way the tragedy erodes the fundaments of Plato’s polis, fundaments that rest on a decision-making that is guided by ratio and consult. Plato’s ideas on representation are often linked with those of his pupil Aristotle. But we should note that Aristotle no longer takes the performance as the primary focus.21 Two generations after Sophocles and Euripides, performing, narrating, and reading are treated more and more equally. Secondly, we have to keep in mind that Plato brought the tragedy into epistemological, moral and educational discussions, whereas Aristotle discusses the representation as a technical device whereby skills and competence are at the centre of attention.22 Aristotle teaches how an artist can cover his art and how the audience can be convinced that the artistic representation is a ‘real’ event. In that way, the spectator, listener, or reader becomes an eyewitness. For our focus on the deception of tragedy, it is interesting to look first at Aristotle’s notes on eloquence, the Rhetoric, where the effect of 21 Karen Bassi, “Visuality and Temporality: Reading the Tragic Script,” in The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama, ed. V. Pedrick and M. Steven (Chicago, 2005), pp. 254–260. 22 See among others Paul Woodruff, “Aristotle on Mimèsis,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, pp. 73–95.

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pro ommatôn poiein, or bringing-before-the-eye, is explained.23 After Aristotle, this effect has, among other things, been called enargeia, evidentia and illustratio.24 Although the rhetorical effect is seldom linked to the discussions on tragedy, it is interesting to do so, since it conceptualizes the persuasiveness that results from the clarity of a visual representation or a literary representation that uses plastic language. Thanks to visualization by metaphor, antithesis or description, the orator and poet can put a person or event in full visual clarity before the (mental) eye of the audience. The painter, sculptor, and actor may do this in any case by means of visual media. By visualization or visuality, the audience forgets the representational status of the artistic object under observation. The spectators or readers think that the represented person or event shares the here and now with them. This living presence response has the advantage that the audience no longer reacts as audience but as eyewitness. In that way, the audience can be brought into the chosen emotion ( pathos). In addition to this, a living presence response can also be used to create evidence and even wonder. In order to be as persuasive as possible, the writer, speaker or artist has to use his technique inconspicuously. Wherefore those who practise this artifice must conceal it and avoid the appearance of speaking artificially instead of naturally; for that which is natural persuades, but the artificial does not. For men become suspicious of one whom they think to be laying a trap for them, as they are of mixed wines. Such was the case with the voice of Theodorus as contrasted with that of the rest of the actors; for his seemed to be the voice of the speaker, that of the others the voice of some one else.25

With concrete references Aristotle teaches his pupils in rhetoric that they have to be led by the performance of the tragedy, the joint work of the poet and the actor. Following the last great tragic writer Euripides and the fourth-century actor Theodorus, the orator has to mask as well as possible the representational level with the choice of his words and the use of his voice. In that way, he cannot be suspected of deception.

23 Sara Newman, “Aristotle’s Notion of “Bringing-before-the-eyes”: Its Contributions to Aristotelian and Contemporary Conceptualisations of Metaphor, Style, and Audience,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 20 (2002): 1–23. 24 Alessandra Manieri, L’immagine poetica nella teoria degli Antichi: ‘Phantasia’ ed ‘enargeai’ (Pisa, 1998). 25 Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA, 1947), 1404b4–5. Henceforth cited as Rh.

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By comparing deception to the mingling of wine, no moral position is taken. Aristotle only makes clear that the audience may not notice the artifice of the maker if wine, a discourse, a drama text or a performance has to please. He gives a merely technical advice: the representation has to blur its representational status. Paradoxically, therefore, the idea of deception is only at stake when it is noticed and exposed. The achievement of living presence response in the tragedy is the influential model for the orator in order to deliver maximum impact. Just as in the performance of tragedy, the orator has to make a certain person or event present through his style and delivery. Consequently, we see once again that tragedy is chosen as a locus. The technè (art or technique) that is used during the writing and performance of the tragedy to bring the represented subjects before the mental eye has to be followed in the technè concerning style and delivery in rhetoric.26 About delivery, Aristotle writes: “Now, when delivery comes into fashion, it will have the same effect as acting” (Rh, 1404a7). The technè that is at the basis of the performance of the tragedy has to achieve an aura of naturalness by which the representative status is blurred. Therefore, the technè has to focus on creating strong external similarities with the subject represented. In the Poetics, Aristotle also prescribes this kind of “natural” representation. With concrete examples from the performance of tragedy, he once again makes clear that this prescription has to be followed closely: “In the belief that the spectators do not notice anything unless the performer stresses it, they engage in profuse movement [. . .] just as with the earlier actors’ views of their successors: it was for an excessive style that Mynniscus dubbed Callippides an ‘ape’, and the same opinion was also held about Pindarus.”27 Aristotle explicitly condemns exaggerations in the performance of the tragedy. The philosopher prescribes that, next to the words of the dramatic text, the gestures of the performance have to arise from empathy (P, 1455a22). He does not go further than these concrete instructions. Aristotle does not argue with Plato, who reproaches the emphatic actor to incorporate the bad characteristics of tragic characters. However, if we look at the way in which Aristotle thinks that the dramatic text has to be related to this longing for naturalness, we

For the term technè in Aristotle: Pollitt, Ancient View of Greek Art, pp. 36–37. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 1461b29. Later in the text referred to as P. 26 27

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arrive at another, far more complex discussion. It is a discussion that not only tells something about the technè of words, but also deals with the specific agency that a tragedy can achieve in the world outside the representation. This discussion no longer focuses on the importance of the performance, but on the dramatic text, which can be mediated in reading as well as in speech during performance. The technè of the writing of a drama text has to be blurred, but not by imitating the world outside of the representation indiscriminately, as there are strict and artificial rules to be reckoned with. The plot has to have a unity of action (P, 1451a22ff ). Furthermore, the characters of a tragedy ought not to bear too great a resemblance to people from everyday life. Conversely, they have to be sublimated. Aristotle writes: Poets should emulate good portrait painters, who render personal appearance and produce likenesses, yet enhance people’s beauty. Likewise, the poet, while showing irascible and indolent people and those with other such character traits, should make them nonetheless decent, as for example Homer made Achilles good though an epitome of harshness. (P, 1454b8)

Just like Plato, Aristotle links the representative act of painting to that of poetry. But what is more important for our case is the fact that Aristotle prescribes that the writer has to create a tragic character by combining the imitation of persons outside theatre with the enlarging of the character in order to make them more noble. In contrast with the actor who is absolutely not allowed to exaggerate his character, the tragic poet has give their characters a certain excellence that can only be found to a much lesser degree in the world outside the theatre. In our discussion on the effect of pro ommatôn poiein, we tried to make clear that the actor and the tragic poet employed an exemplary technè to create lifelikeness. However, in addition to this aim, there is also a need for enlargement of the characters. What kind of complementary effect can be achieved by this? By sublimating the characters in the dramatic text, read or spoken, the tragedy gains a stronger impact, as Aristotle makes clear that the emotions and actions of the characters affect the audience in a different way than do the emotions and the actions of people from everyday life. We may refer here to Aristotle’s much-quoted definition of tragedy as: mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete, and of magnitude; in language embellished by distinct forms in its sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and through pity and fear accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions. (P, 1449b24–28)

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The enactment of a sublimated and consciously ordered action lets the audience cry and shiver as they do in the world outside theatre.28 These represented emotions do not achieve the same effect as in a non-representational mode. The tragic audience gets pleasure from mimesis. Following Aristotle, pleasure is affected not only by embellished language, but also by catharsis of the emotions of pity and fear.29 Catharsis is a difficult term. In order to avoid the pitfalls of its complex tradition of interpretations, we may start from the influential viewpoint of Jonathan Lear.30 He discusses catharsis as a public process, in which the fictional mode of tragedy offers the opportunity to acquaint someone with recognizable and at the same time extreme emotions that are mostly ignored in the world outside the theatre, but are put before the eyes of the tragic audience (which we may connect to the previously mentioned effect of pro ommatôn poiein). In that way the tragic representation of an action touches on moral possibilities in an explicit way. The tragic characters who are imitating real persons achieve a living presence response that results in pity for the direct undeserved misfortune of the tragic characters and fear of misfortune for oneself, one’s kin or one’s close friends.31 The sublimation of the characters complements this effect by giving the audience a look into life “outside the plain.” An emulated life is conveyed with a vigor seldom experienced outside representation. Lear writes that the audience puts itself, imaginatively, in a position in which there is nothing to fear. There is a consolation in realizing that one has experience of the worst, there is nothing further to fear, and yet the world remains a rational, meaningful place in which a person can conduct himself with dignity. Even in tragedy, perhaps especially in tragedy, the fundamental goodness of man and world are reaffirmed.32

Amélie Rorty further discusses how tragedy promotes a sense of shared civic life. Although catharsis can be different for every individual, there are collective emotions and thoughts:

28 Elizabeth Belfiore, “Pleasure, Tragedy and Aristotelian Psychology,” Classical Quarterly 32 (1985): 349–361. 29 G.M. Sifakis, Aristotle on Tragic Poetry (Herakleion, 2001), pp. 38–49. 30 Jonathan Lear, “Katharsis,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, pp. 315–340. 31 David Konstan, “Aristotle on the Tragic Emotions,” in The Soul of Tragedy, p. 16. 32 Lear, “Katharsis,” p. 340.

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bram van oostveldt and stijn bussels By presenting us with common models and a shared understanding of the shapes of actions, tragedy [. . .] moves us beyond the merely individual or domestic, towards a larger, common civic philia.33

More specifically, tragedy achieves a common belief that excellence can be retained despite all misfortunes. The undeserved suffering of the sublimated character arouses fear and pity, but the moral point of view that nobleness can be preserved in the most disastrous of situations arouses pleasure because trust in mankind is strengthened emotionally and rationally.34 Is it far-fetched to say that Gorgias’s opinion on tragedy can be seen as a precursor of Aristotle’s much more extensive ideas? Of course, Aristotle goes far deeper than the mere “honesty” and “being wiser” of Gorgias. However, neither Aristotle nor Gorgias see tragic mimesis as a prototype for corrupting deception, as Plato did. For the two former thinkers, tragedy is the locus to name a fictive space in which opinions are negotiated in order to be accepted as true. Gorgias’s fragment is very short and therefore leaves many things unclear. It can, however, be used as an anticipating motto to summarize Aristotle’s ideas on the effect of tragedy.35 On the one hand, Aristotle wants the tragic artist to prompt the audience to empathize with and acknowledge the specific actions of the tragic characters as if they were sharing the here and now ( pro ommatôn poiein). Tragedy, therefore, is a matter of deceiving and being deceived. On the other hand, tragedy relies on a so-called “universality” that is achieved by working out an action by strict principles.36 By raising the action above everyday life in a sublimated, serious, and coherent structure, the audience not only is deeply affected, but also enjoys its insight into fundamental constitutions of human nature. He who goes along with the sublimated vividness is therefore wiser than he who does not do this.

33 Amélie O. Rorty, “The Psychology of Aristotelian Tragedy,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, p. 17. 34 G.F. Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge, 1963), p. 449. 35 Segal, “Gorgias and the psychology of the logos,” pp. 130–132. 36 Malcolm Heath, “The Universality of Poetry in Aristotle’s Poetics,” The Classical Quarterly 41 (1991): 389–402.

PART TWO

THE EARLY MODERN LOCUS OF TRAGEDY

THE TRAGIC REPRESENTATION OF THE PRINCE: THE POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF ERNST KANTOROWICZ AND THE THEATRICALITY OF ABSOLUTISM Klaas Tindemans (Erasmushogeschool Brussel, RITS) This paper is about discursive practices in early modern Europe. It explores the relationships between the conceptualization of political sovereignty—as a typically modern notion of political legitimacy—and elements of theatrical discursivity.1 More specifically, it concentrates on the relationship between the origins of the concept of modern sovereignty in political theology—as Ernst Kantorowicz has outlined them in his monumental “pre-Foucauldian”2 study of The King’s Two Bodies, the strategies of ‘theatricalization’ in the political regimes that embraced, implicitly or explicitly, the ideology of the King’s two bodies—i.e., France and England—and the theatre and drama practices that took place in these contexts. This subject being too vast, we shall focus on several examples of discursive, political, and theatrical practices, allowing us to formulate some hypotheses about political theatricality in early modernity. A theatricality that could be called ‘tragic’ in the sense of Benjamin’s qualification of the Trauerspiel—a play that mourns the ruins of divine utopias.

1 ‘Sovereignty’ here means: the highest power of a political community conceived in such a way that it cannot, by definition, be present in the actual powers of that community, but only represented by these powers (see Hans Lindahl, “ ‘Vorst, op God na’: politieke macht en de symbolisering van soevereiniteit,” Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Rechtsfilosofie & Rechtstheorie 26.2 (1997): 122–136). Sovereignty is the ground for power and authority. The notion of sovereignty differs from the specific use Michel Foucault made of the concept of “souveraineté” as contrasted with “gouvernementalité” (Michel Foucault, “La ‘gouvernementalité’,” in Dits et écrits 1954–1988 (III, 1976–1979) (Paris, 1994), p. 655). ‘Modern’ is used as a historical notion: early modernity is the period between 1500 and 1700—without implying any premise on the ‘content’ of modernity, e.g., in questions of secularization. 2 Term coined by historian Alain Boureau, the biographer of Ernst H. Kantorowicz and author of Le simple Corps du roi (The King’s Single Body), the mildly provocative title of an essay on cultural-anthropological misinterpretations of Kantorowicz’ theory (Alain Boureau, Le simple Corps du roi: L’impossible sacralité des souverains français—XV e–XVIII e siècle (Paris, 2000).

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A conceptual process consisting of four steps will be developed: (1) the specificity of Kantorowicz’ notion of “political theology” as a historical way of thinking and as a contemporary form of discourse analysis; (2) the place of late medieval and religious and political ceremonies in Kantorowicz’ analysis and their status as early forms of public theatricality; (3) the specific status of Shakespeare’s history plays as markers for the theatricality of Tudor absolutism; (4) the extreme theatricality of the French court in the late seventeenth century. These aspects of theatricality in early modernity could lead to a more general and tentative hypothesis on the tragic qualification of sovereignty. Which form of theatre makes sovereignty work, especially secularized sovereignty? Performed drama, or the real spectacle of power in the form of political ‘masques’? And in what sense are we allowed to call this theatricality ‘tragic’? Step 1

Political theology, theory, and ideology

The most important text quoted by Kantorowicz in The King’s Two Bodies comes from the Reports (1550) of the English lawyer Edmund Plowden, a collection of common law cases and commentaries: [A]lthough [the king] has, or takes, the land in his natural Body, yet to this natural body is conjoined his Body politic, which contains his royal Estate and Dignity; and the Body politic includes the Body natural, but the Body natural is the lesser, and with this the Body politic is consolidated. So that he has a Body natural, adorned and invested with the Estate and Dignity royal; and he has not a Body natural distinct and divided by itself from the Office and Dignity royal, but a body natural and a Body politic together indivisible; and these two Bodies are incorporated in one Person; and make one Body and not divers, that is the Body corporate in the Body natural, et e contra the Body natural in the Body corporate.3

In itself the text had no particular authority, since Plowden only formulates—very clearly—a ruling principle about conflicts on real estate between the King and his subjects. But as the culmination of a long discursive development in medieval political theory and practice, Plowden’s summary of the legal status of the Prince is of utmost

3 Quoted in Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1985), p. 9.

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importance. Kantorowicz’ study tries not only to elucidate the formal and logical structure of this strange dogmatic concept of the King’s two bodies—a “body natural” and a “body politic,” indivisible and incorporated in one person—but he shows how this notion and its history were embedded in a set of discursive practices—of symbolic and mimetic character—around the “embodiment of sovereignty.” Some historians, such as Pierre Legendre,4 situate the beginning of the transformation to modernity in the second half of the Middle Ages. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, scholasticism, as the ‘official’ Christian school of thought, was confronted with the newly discovered collections of Roman Law.5 Scholastic thought, as the middle ground between theology and philosophy, provided the philosophical basis for the definitive and deep-rooted Christianization of Western Europe.6 In Roman Law it met a systematized set of rules, including a firm dogmatic framework. This encounter resulted in a legal-political theory that had its primary consequences for canon law but in later centuries became increasingly important for political theory and public law. The central question in political theory, in an era of rivalry between ecclesiastical and secular powers, was that of the legitimacy of political authority, as represented by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and, consequently, of all secular monarchic authority, as independent from the loyalties due to the system of feudality, which were not strictly political. Theological notions were discursively transformed into politically relevant concepts, based on the Roman ius publicum. The outcome was a hybrid “judicialized theocracy” using fictions like pater et filius iustitia for the legal position of the emperor or king as legitimate lawgiver. The corpus mysticum is the most telling example. This term was used for the institution of the church itself, in contrast with the corpus verum of Jesus Christ. Based upon the theological argument of aequiparatio—the possibility of considering two or more subjects in equivalent terms, even

4 Pierre Legendre, Leçons VII: Le Désir politique de Dieu: Étude sur les montages de l’État et du Droit (Paris, 1988). 5 The Digestae were a collection, with extensive dogmatic commentaries, of the imperial laws at the time of Justinian (sixth century), emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, and a part of the complete codification of Roman law, known as the Corpus Iuris Civilis. The Digestae were rediscovered in the eleventh century in a Florentine library: they had been lost in the Western part of the former Roman empire since the Germanic invasions. 6 Georges Duby, Le Temps des Cathédrales (Paris, 1976).

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though they do not seem to have to do anything with each other7—the corpus mysticum could be applied to other entities, including secular communities and the political community itself.8 The corpus mysticum, sometimes recast as the corpus reipublicae, was an empty screen onto which important features of Roman public law such as universitas, populus and potestas could be projected: worldly power could be legitimized as an organic concept of sovereignty, linked both to the body of the king and to the body of the nation. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the king’s two bodies had definitively liberated themselves from their canonic origin. Kantorowicz demonstrates how leading political issues—the continuity of the monarchy, the distinction between public and private property and other post-feudal problems—were first answered by theology, before being regulated in strictly legal terms: the qualification of the royal estate as res quasi sacrae paved the way for a legal notion of public dominion. Kantorowicz sees political theology and its resulting figure—the King’s two bodies—as a way of thinking, a discursive formation of fiction of very diverse character—theological, legal, philosophical. It does not constitute an implicit or explicit ideology, let alone the construction of a metaphysical or sacralized king.9 He also uses the idea of political theology as a conceptual framework that allows him to develop both an epistemology of political authority—how can we know the supposed origins of secular power?—and an instrument to analyze the discourse in which this development could take place. It is thus completely different from the use Carl Schmitt made of the term to define an anti-liberal if not anti-modern idea of political sovereignty. In asserting that “[a]ll pertinent concepts in the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts,”10 Schmitt uses the notion of political theology in a context that is substantially different from the discourse of medieval canonists and (public) lawyers. He sees the embodiment of sovereignty—the power to define the exception, as analogous to the theological notion of the miracle—as a real possibility.

Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “La souveraineté de l’artiste: Note sur quelques maximes juridiques et les théories de l’art à la Renaissance,” in Mourir pour la patrie et autres textes (Paris, 1984), p. 51. 8 Kantorowicz, The Kings’ Two Bodies, pp. 207–232. 9 Boureau, p. 19. 10 Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre der Souveränität (Berlin, 1933), p. 51. 7

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By contrast, Kantorowicz—and others with him11—interprets modern sovereignty, according to the logic of the legal fiction, as an epistemological issue—how can the nation be sure of the legitimacy of the king? It is, one might say, not a question of the substantial experience of power, but of the representation of the (secularized) corpus mysticum, conceived as the continuity of the dynasty or the perpetuity of the nation.12 Another point in the critique of Schmitt’s appropriation of political theology is the ease with which he puts political power—be it supreme sovereignty or not—on the same level as divine omnipotence. It is precisely the political reference to a divine idea of sovereignty that implies the factual and conceptual autonomy of secular power. Secularization does not mean, as Blumenberg points out, that the reference to the state of exception as the ultimate ground for law-giving authority cannot do without its divine analogy—the miracle—but, on the contrary, that the rational and epistemological realms of theology and political theory become clearly separated: the realm of politics is defined by politics and not by God. Schmitt sees secularization as the necessity of legitimizing modern political concepts with theological arguments, whereas Blumenberg says that modernity refuses to play this discursive game, referring to Thomas Hobbes, who shows how a poor tautology such as ‘Jesus is the Christ’ is indeed quite futile as a religious ground for the commonwealth.13 This does not mean that speculating on the exception (to the rule) as the logical ground for sovereignty and thus for a modern legal order is wrong, but this is different from transforming theological issues—e.g., the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist—into grounds for secular authority.14 It leaves us once again, as Kantorowicz implicitly concedes, with the question of (modern) representation. Step 2

Political theology, ceremony, and theatricality

The novelty of Kantorowicz’ contribution to the history of the Middle Ages and early modernity is due to the heterogeneity of the sources

11 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, 1998), pp. 32–33. 12 Kantorowicz insists on the importance of the development of the theological notion of time for the concept of continuity in matters of secular authority and sovereignty (The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 273–291). 13 Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), pp. 99–113. 14 Agamben, Homo Sacer, pp. 15–29.

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by which he sketches the development of the concept of ‘the King’s two bodies’. These sources are not only of texts, but also descriptions of ceremonies of religious and secular nature. Boureau claims that as performed embodiments of the dual nature of monarchic authority, secular ceremonies—especially the funerals of kings—have too often been interpreted as having the same ‘real’ consequences and effects as their religious analogies, e.g., in transubstantiation.15 The funeral of Charles VIII in 1498 consecrates the distinction between the mortal body physic of the French king and the perpetual body politic—kingship as a political institution—in a public, ceremonial display. It is during these ceremonies that the famous cry, marking dynastic continuity, is heard for the first time: “Le Roi est mort! Vive le Roi!” Two other innovations were the burial of Charles VIII without the royal accessories (crown, sceptre, etc.) and the fact that his successor, Louis XII, stayed away from the funeral.16 This example indicates a shift from learned, textual discourse to public, ritual discourse. Some historians are tempted to interpret this shift as the reappearance of religious rituals—including the idea of the real divine presence and effectiveness associated with them—in a secular guise. Contemporary observers of these ceremonies were indeed inclined to see them as a ritual for the sacralization of (secular) kingship. But neither the reference to the Roman public law—the law ruling the dignitas of the Augusti—nor the chronicles of posthumous miracles performed by the dead king justify the same conclusion as those observers tried to convey.17 There is no legal or political tradition, neither in the Roman tradition nor in its ius publicum, of the sacralization of secular power. The specific Christianization of Western Europe speaks against it: the growing authority of the Pope as the sole divine representative could not tolerate religious usurpation by secular kings, and the deep influence of the mendicant orders suppressed popular belief in any but ecclesiastical saints. Moreover, the well-documented funeral of Charles VIII shows a more or less hidden political agenda behind the strict separation of political dignitas and physical mortality. The masters of ceremony, who wrote the script for the ceremony and supervised its execution, were

15 Boureau, pp. 24–27. The difference between ceremony and ritual is important: “Ceremony indicates, ritual transforms” (Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York, 1982), p. 80). 16 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 412, 424, and 429. 17 Boureau, pp. 24–42.

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interested in a smooth dynastic transition, less than fifty years after the Hundred Years’ War, and in their personal survival at the court after a dynastic change. They forced the entourage of Louis XII to concentrate on the kingship, the dignitas as such, without explicit mourning of the deceased king. At the same time, the funeral demonstrated the futility of life—even that of a king—in times of a pandemic plague that made no distinction between people and aristocracy. The dignitas of the king was abstract, his physical body was real. There is no hint of a real political intent to implement sacralization, neither in theory nor in the facts. The specific function of the effigy in the transition from death to coronation proves this again: from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the coffin and the effigy become separated, the effigy being the subject of an almost autonomous ritual, both in England and France.18 This separation between the transience of the body and the perpetuity of its representational functions—ambiguously embodied in a (wax) effigy—may be connected with a changed view of the body itself—no longer a gift from God, but in its vulnerability a poisoned gift from Him. The experiences of plague and war could not tolerate a holy kingship and the distinction between body and dignitas satisfied both parties confronted with this dilemma: the population recognized the fragility of life, and the ruling class upheld the continuity of secular power. The result was a display of power, a spectacle of sovereignty with a theatrical dimension that came close to actual theatre. The king, now a “split subject of power,” had to be shown in his ambiguity: the funeral ceremonies provided the perfect context. Kantorowicz’ sources and arguments for the final phase in the development towards Plowden’s “the King’s two bodies” thus became more visual and theatrical. Duvignaud sees three common elements in theatricality in general, when compared to theatre as a dramatic form: (1) the ceremony, (2) the polarity of the reach, and (3) the privileged

18 Giorgio Agamben problematizes Kantorowicz’ comparison between the Roman institution of the effigy and its late medieval form in France and England. By accentuating the difference, Kantorowicz suppresses the cruel aspect of the ritual—the effigy is burned—and thus the ambiguity of kingship itself. This ambiguity was clear in the position of the Roman princeps, close to the homo sacer—the man who may be killed but not sacrificed. Kantorowicz wanted the Christian kings not to be touched by this dark side of kingship, says Agamben (pp. 91–94). But following Boureau’s argument, one could say that what Kantorowicz wanted was precisely to avoid contamination by any idea of sacred kings.

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individuation.19 Ceremonies are representations of actions, coming from a mythical or historical past, e.g., collective religious practices or preparations for future actions, e.g., legal procedures. Social theatricality, in contrast to dramatic enlargement—theatre sensu stricto—which suspends judgment, aims at social or political effectiveness. By the ‘reach’ of a theatrical experience, we mean not only the material space where interpreters and audience are gathered—as structural poles of the theatrical event—but also the mental space within which symbolic codes can be exchanged. As in a ‘magic conclave’, the sorcerers or interpreters have to acquire a credibility that makes this exchange possible. This polarity and this community are both structural requirements for any kind of theatrical performance. The privileged individuation—the third element of theatricality—implies the transformation of a social protagonist into an isolated hero. Applied to medieval theatricality, Duvignaud suggests that this role as a privileged representative of the community, including all its contradictions, anticipates the construction of the modern ‘self ’. The genesis of the (professional) actor as a separate social function illustrates this. This profession is born at the moment a fixed social context with its stable activities and forms of life—embodied in “effective” ritual and in ceremony—makes way for a social potential for dynamic change. When influential members of the community problematize the stability of their and other people’s social roles, this growing flexibility in social roles is embodied in the persona of the actor. He is the atypical character anticipating social frameworks that do not yet exist.20 As illuminating as the histrionic profession is the fate of chivalry, since it was the most prominent field of symbolization in the Middle Ages, in its paradoxical culture of sophisticated formalism and extreme violence. The theatrical function of chivalry reached its peak when the political importance of the knight as the guardian of feudality was in seriously decline, whether referring to Christian legend—the Round Table—or to ancient mythology—the Golden Fleece.21 When social mobility increases, the stabilized aestheticism of knighthood, stripped of its social and economic “effectiveness,” serves as the perfect vehicle for staging the individual theatricality of the Prince. The instability of society from the fourteenth century on and the fear of losing social Duvignaud, Sociologie du théâtre: Essai sur les ombres collectives (Paris, 1965) pp. 17–35. 20 Jean Duvignaud, L’Acteur (Paris, 1993), pp. 26–33. 21 Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (Amsterdam, 1997), pp. 90–141. 19

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cohesion paradoxically explain a fixed, transparent visualization and representative enactment of supposedly basic values. When the Prince is at the centre of these dynamics, his omnipotence should be staged: he cannot be present everywhere, so he becomes a character. The effigy at his funeral, with all its political-theoretical connotations, is possibly the most absolute form of this theatricality.22 Why does modern theatre appear when the Prince’s political independence from theology is expressed so effectively in the theory of the King’s two bodies? Is there any causal relationship? In the sixteenth century, omnipresent medieval theatricality, as a societal phenomenon, becomes concentrated on the persona of the Prince. And the main subject of early modern drama—perhaps even the only one—is the position of the Prince: not his legal position, but his status as an outsider, as an embodiment of the anomy (Durkheim’s term) of a society in transition. This transition takes place in the cities, which are places of experiment in all kinds of symbolization, including theatricality. The birth of the modern self is, in these critical times of economical accumulation, territorialization of political power and expansion of a neutral bureaucracy, not felt as a liberation, but as a crisis. A crisis that has to be represented in order to be dealt with, by staging its crucial actors—in both senses of the word: the one who acts and the one who plays. So there are only two ‘characters’ who can assume these roles: the Prince and the villain, both situated on the social and cultural margins of urban society.23 The theatricality of the baroque court and the reach of early modern tragedy are two sides of one, although very complex, coin: secularization.24

22 Duvignaud, Sociologie du théâtre, pp. 101–125. He also notes a remarkable development, in the late Middle Ages, in the Christianization of Western Europe. The struggle against heathenism and heresy was conducted with an ‘army’ of representations, including theatrical devices. But as soon as the Church became aware of the flexibility of the actor who, representing the Christ, made possible a diversity of interpretations of the son of God, it distanced itself from the theatre. The theatre was chased out of the church porch to the marketplace and, although carrying with it its ‘mystical’ symbolization, became the expression of an urban society, a representation that embodied subjective freedom against a fixed corpus mysticum (pp. 88–92). 23 Duvignaud, Sociologie du théâtre, pp. 167–192. 24 Following the paradigm of Hans Blumenberg: a recognition, epistemologically and politically, of the right of absolute self-affirmation, but without denying the existence of a God who determines human fate sub specie aeternitate (see Blumenberg, pp. 225–226 and Hans Lindahl, “Macht en rationaliteit: Blumenberg en de legitimiteit van de moderne tijd,” Wijsgerig Perspectief 38:1 (1997): 10–16).

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Theatricality and secularization (I)

The first chronicle play William Shakespeare wrote, King Henry VI (Part I), opens with the funeral of the young King Henry V (1387–1422). His last history play, King Henry V, deals with Henry’s life, his kingship as the “cautious conqueror.” Both Henry V and the opening scene of Henry VI (Part I) are nice examples of Elizabethan patriotic drama and rhetoric: Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! [. . .] England ne’er had a king until his time. [. . .] What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech. (Henry VI (Part I) 1.1.1, 1.1.8 and 1.1.15)

The personality of the late king is marked by his readiness for action, and through his person the mourning kingdom achieves political identity. Finally, the icon of “Henry V” is sealed by heaven, and a religious surplus is suggested. The ceremony is interrupted by a messenger, announcing that France is profiting from the interregnum to reconquer the territories it lost to Henry V. In the three parts of Henry VI Shakespeare describes a disintegrating nation, the arbitrary course of history, and a painful image of kings losing their legitimacy. Historically, the chaotic succession of Henry V—the prologue to England’s defeat in the Hundred Years’ War—demonstrates the first identity crisis of a young English nation. This crisis is sublimated by Shakespeare in modern political ideals. When he dramatizes the ‘icon’ Henry V and the subsequent chaos, he achieves perfectly transparent theatricality: an interrupted ceremony, including the almost Christological icon of the hero. Marking the start of a long history of disasters, switching constantly from the battlefield, the popular quarters filled with soldiers and brawlers, the conferences between kings and kingmakers, and the private rooms of the royal court. Shakespeare explores the limits of dramatic reach and so indirectly experiments with all kinds of possibilities to define the nation as a conceivable identity. It is as if it were only in the theatre that the Prince is able to convince his subjects that he does indeed embody the sovereignty of the nation. Only months after the death of Henry V in 1422, the French king, Charles VI, who was responsible for the loss of territory to England, dies. His successor Charles VII claims it back, of course. But the English regent, the Duke of Bedford, provides a coup de théâtre at the funeral of Charles VI. He orders the master of ceremonies to conclude the usual prayer

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for the late king with the exclamation: “Vive Henry par la grace de Dieu roy de France et Angleterre.” The English nobles present join in these cries. As we have seen, the funeral of Charles VIII strips this formula to the bone—“Le Roi est mort! Vive le Roi!”—and makes it more effective. So Shakespeare begins to dramatize Western European history at a crucial moment of political emancipation. Emancipation by means of theatricality: a hesitantly secular society is shown and the monarchy is depicted at its most vulnerable.25 The question is, to what extent did theatre in general, and Elizabethan tragedy in particular, fashion modern, secularized subjectivity by its specific idea of representation—especially the representation of sovereignty.26 Henry V exemplifies the double challenge of the representation of the Prince: as an icon—an image of universal kingship—and as a subject—the traumatized ego that leads eventually to the persona of Hamlet. Henry V both questions the ideology of national unity and demonstrates the distance between artistic resolution and political pacification, and this tragedy uses a particular device: the Chorus, a role played by a single actor who exposes the artificiality of the theatre and the theatricality of claimed authority. The ‘epic’27 nature of the Chorus undermines the self-contained unity of the dramatic structure, parallel to the incapacity of the characters and the action to affirm the political unity of the nation.28 On a theoretical level, Henry V does indeed reflect on the precariousness of dynastic continuity, the main issue in the war with France. But on the level of dramatic action, the frailty of authority is challenged in a way that suggests a different legitimacy of political authority. Incognito, the King visits the private soldiers, transgressing all social boundaries:

I use ‘emancipation’ in the sense proposed by Jacques Rancière: that part of political discourse (le politique) which structurally makes places for both fundamental and pragmatic critique of institutionalized authority—la politique as distinct from la police (Rancière, Aux Bords du politique (Paris, 1998), pp. 240–241). 26 Christopher Pye, The Regal Phantasm: Shakespeare and the Politics of Spectacle (London, 1990), p. 6. 27 ‘Epic’ in the Brechtian sense, i.e. a style of acting which implies the distancing of the player from his character in order to demonstrate socially relevant causal relationships (Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Schriften 16: Schriften zum Theater 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), p. 556). 28 Graham Holderness, Nick Potter and John Turner, Shakespeare: The Play of History (London, 1988), pp. 72–82). 25

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klaas tindemans Bates. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as cold a night as ‘tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here. King Henry V. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king: I think he would not wish himself any where but where he is. Bates. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved. (Henry V, 4.1.110–118)

In Henry V Shakespeare exemplifies two extremes of royal legitimacy, in a contradiction that could be typical for early modern sovereignty. The passage quoted represents a fiction of social mobility: the king as a “common man,” talking about himself as an authority in the third person—the king plays the King. But Henry V also includes one of the most patriotic speeches in Elizabethan drama, the “Saint Crispin’s Day speech”: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. (Henry V, 4.3.60–67)

King Henry expresses chivalric ideals by literally promising his soldiers a coat of arms (“gentle his condition”), thereby illustrating the whole “tragedy” of early modern, secularized kingship. The factual disintegration of the social roles, as they were eternally fixed in the feudal and theological anthropology of the early Middle Ages, gave way to a sliding metaphor: a king disguises himself as a common citizen and then affirms himself by posing as a knight. Henry’s dramaturgical fate might be called “mock sovereignty.”29 The two parts of Henry IV, chronologically preceding Henry V, show the very physical body of the Prince as a brawler and a womanizer, his authority almost annihilated. But the public knew that at this king’s funeral, the most eloquent eulogies ever given an English king were spoken. Shakespeare deconstructed this image of the King in the Henry IV plays, not to reconstruct it in Henry V, but to demonstrate the equivocality of absolute power itself. The base-line of the theory or ideology of the King’s two bodies was: the

29

Pye, p. 13.

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mortal body physic is God-made, the immortal body politic is manmade.30 It is only the theatre that succeeds in suggesting this paradox of sovereignty: the actor never dies on stage, but kings and common men alike are slain in abundance. King Henry V—in Henry VI (Part I)—is buried, a nation is brought to ruins and then gradually resurrected in a succession of ambiguous Princes: Richard II, too God-like, Henry IV, too man-like, and a born-again Henry V. Everybody is convinced of his pure artificiality and thus made aware of the non-presence of the political power represented by this ‘sovereign’. The king himself knows this all too well and gives the only possible answer: he wages war, realizing he is to fall in battle at the very end. In between, he stages himself as a sovereign with historical and even sociological selfconsciousness—knight, mercenary, king. An analysis of Shakespeare’s royal drama shows only the representation of the representation: the reach of the performance is too well defined. The ‘professionalism’, the fiction of the complete social flexibility of the actors, demonstrates the ambiguous construction of the political subject. But the other side of secularized power should be mentioned: how does the Prince stage himself, what is the dramaturgy of this theatricality? Thomas Hobbes, writing after the closure of the theatres, transforms the reality of the stage into a reflected theatricality. His notion of a political subject is not based on the spectator, but on the author. It is he who is responsible for this overwhelming presence of the “absolute actor,” the persona of the Prince—the most powerful fiction.31 But theory is not enough, visibility counts. Step 4

Theatricality and secularization (II)

The issue of a secularized representation of legitimate political power is thus in the first place an epistemological one. How does the political subject know that the authorities are sovereign, when God refuses to legitimize the Prince? This can be taken literally, since it is no gratuitous decision when Pope Innocent III refuses, in 1204, to anoint the head of the Prince: this is the privilege of priests, the Prince is anointed on his shoulder. From that moment on, the anointment of the Prince is

Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 422–423; Pye, p. 17. Pye, pp. 44–50; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. MacPherson (London, 1985), pp. 217–218. 30 31

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no longer an official sacrament.32 Although the practice in France and England would not change until the eighteenth century—the Princes protested against this loss of decorum—the ideological basis of kingship was definitively changed. The Roman ius publicum served as the conceptual canvas onto which the actual issues of sovereignty could be projected.33 Effective rituals will no longer do and the theatre itself shows the ‘heretical’ nature of the embodiment of mythical-historical kings—as we have seen in the example of Henry V. This fourth step illustrates the intertwining of the secular theatricality of the French king and the dramatic discourse of the same period—the reign of Louis XIV in the second half of the seventeenth century. This relationship forms the subtext of the theoretical discourse on theatre and, conversely, lays bare the theatrical basis of any modern theory of sovereignty. Early modern sovereignty tries to identify the place where political authority originates, at a moment when societal developments suggest that power is both mobile and futile. The criteria for citizenship—the right to belong to the political community—are no longer ‘natural’ and the ‘representative’ authority comes gradually to represent only one thing: an empty place.34 It was only nineteenth-century constitutionalism that would, hesitantly, recognize this. The French monarchy of the seventeenth century makes explicit use of the idea of the “embodiment” of political power to communicate its self-image: “La nation ne fait pas corps en France, elle réside tout entière dans la personne du roi.”35 This can only reinforce the taboo regarding the royal body, and regicide is the worst crime imaginable—hence its success in drama. It is not easy to distinguish the physical metaphor from the fiction of a organic society, not even in its theatricality. During

32 Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Le Prince sacrifié: Théâtre et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris, 1985), pp. 11–12. 33 Agamben points to the Roman roots of the secularization of monarchic power, with the distinction between auctoritas and potestas. The potestas of the Prince is his legal power, the auctoritas is his power of suspending legal normality. Traditionally, the Roman Senate possessed auctoritas, but it needed a magistrate to exercise normal legal power. In the persona of the Prince, these two aspects came together and, since auctoritas was linked to an “undying body,” the issue of succession and continuity became imminent (Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago, 2005), pp. 74–88. 34 Claude Lefort, “Permanence du théologico-politique?” in Claude Lefort, Essais sur le politique (XIX e–XX e siècles) (Paris, 1986), pp. 265–266. 35 Louis XIV quoted in Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Le Roi-machine: Spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris, 1981), p. 13.

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the Royal Entry of Louis XIV into Paris (1660) the King is immersed in a pandemonium that expresses the historical and sociological identity of France as an aesthetic discourse, as if the bourgeoisie was not concerned with commerce and industry but belonged to the leisure class. The underlying idea was epistemological. The nation should recognize itself, i.e., recognize itself as a unity in the royal display.36 This takes place on two levels: the politics of culture and the spectacular display of the Prince himself—“le roi machiniste”—both aiming at the aestheticization of national and royal identity. Louis XIV’s chief minister Colbert puts all the Académies, founded by Richelieu to strengthen the cultural heritage of France, under strict central control. In this way the aristocracy acquires modern substance, having lost its feudal functions: their intellectual content creates a new division in society, between spiritual labor and blind reproduction. The bourgeoisie is not recognized as an economic, let alone a political factor, but it determines the process of symbolization and meaning in modern society. One of the most remarkable achievements is the imposition of the scène à l’italienne as the absolute reference for the theatrical reach in the Baroque era and centuries after. The scène à l’italienne encloses the house and provides the ideal spatial structure, both for performers and spectators, to tell the story of this ambiguous ‘chivalric bourgeoisie’ that surrounds the Prince.37 But the highly aestheticized presence of the Prince himself is the high-point of this implementation of absolute sovereignty. Louis XIV creates spectacles and architectural environments for himself, displacing Roman examples—ranging from the ius publicum itself to Ovid’s Metamorphoses38—and linking the deification of Roman emperors with Christological imagery and rhetoric. The ancient source permits the Prince to use the deifying metaphors without transgressing theological boundaries: he creates mythistoire.39 This content is closely linked to formal developments in society in general and in the theatre—the 36 Apostolidès, Le Roi-machine, pp. 16–19. A particular form of this royal manifestation is the portrait of the Prince on medals, subsequently used as monetary coins: the idea of the coin as “royal host” (“l’hostie royale”) is a faint recollection of the dogma of transubstantiation (see Louis Marin, Le portrait du roi (Paris, 1981), pp. 147–168). 37 Duvignaud, Sociologie du théâtre, pp. 280–283. 38 Ovid’s Metamorphoses can superficially be read as the narrative of Julius Caesar’s deification, but its structure is much more complex, as contemporary readings/performances have shown (Klaas Tindemans, “De Roovers and their Metamorphosen or the limits of epic theatre,” Image & Narrative 9 (2004)). 39 Apostolidès, Le Roi-machine, pp. 66–92.

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scène à l’italienne—in particular: the machinery that enables the conspicuous theatricality of the Prince is an allegory for the machine that transforms society into long-lasting modernity. Theatricality produces cultural and ideological meaning, economic development produces commodities by (early) industrial means.40 Together with the military feats of the chivalric King, this prosperity allows the court to fixate the image of the King and even to transgress the religious taboo of Christian deification. The King’s presence is not necessary anymore, the nation can worship his aesthetic representative, the (painted) effigy, no longer disguised as a displaced Roman emperor, but the physical body is completely hidden. At the same time the cultural dynamics of absolutism—the heritage of Richelieu—have come to a halt. The great tragedians are simply added to a classical canon. The absent Prince has become a “roi-machine,” governed by his own body politic. But the spectacular unity of the nation, as shown in the microcosm of Versailles, masks the depressed perception, especially on the part of the bourgeoisie, of the (political) achievements of le Grand Siècle. Speaking in Lefort’s terms, the empty place of sovereignty is truly vacant: the symbolization concentrated in the theatrical King has not been flawless. Only the politics of culture are successful, since an intellectual elite was created around the new mythistoire of the timelessness of the nation, of an auctoritas—bare sovereignty in Agamben’s sense—that no longer needed a ‘real’ embodiment.41 In late seventeenth-century France, a fierce debate took place about the rules of the tragédie classique. One of the main topics was the interpretation of Aristotelian catharsis. The playwright Pierre Corneille, a fervent defender of his independence as a writer, spoke against l’Abbé d’Aubignac, a fervent defender of orthodox classicism, who insisted on strict unity of action and, consequently, a strict demonstration of an unqualified moral outcome. Corneille says that emotions as aroused by performed tragedy cannot be classified according to moral criteria, since the particular theatrical pathos the spectator experiences simply does not allow conclusive goals. Aesthetic value is not morally neutral, but it is not teleological in nature.42 His own drama shows this more than once, e.g., in his singular adaptation of Euripides in Médée, where Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., pp. 138–147. 42 Pierre Corneille, Trois Discours sur le Poème Dramatique, ed. Bénédicte Louvat and Marc Escola (Paris, 1999), pp. 99–105. 40 41

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he shows Jason’s tragic failure to conquer the crown by neglecting to repress the ‘theological’ powers of the sorceress Medea.43 Sovereignty is, in the historical view Corneille shares with Bossuet, part of God’s plan for the world.44 But man isn’t aware of this fate, especially not if he is anointed with sovereign authority. Most of Corneille’s heroes are scarcely conscious of their historical role. This is hardly a modern vision of history, but it reveals the relevance of early modern tragedy in a way close to the fear the Athenians of the fifth century BC. felt when realizing that their tragic heroes came so close to their ideals of citizenship that they irritated the gods. Emancipation means a disintegration of the fabric of society and liberation from the theological foundations of a historical-political worldview—i.e., secularization—is thus all the more painful. Conclusion But what about the ‘tragic’ nature of early modern theatricality? Kantorowicz’ discourse analysis demonstrated the necessity of an “epistemology of representation” in order to create secular grounds for modern sovereignty. This epistemology has theological grounds and its origins lie in the scholastic and canonic debate on the status of the corpus mysticum. The political-theoretical development towards “the King’s two bodies” is the result of the secularization of these theological ways of thinking, both substantially—the corpus—and logically—the aequiparatio. But at the same time we saw that discourse, even in its most efficient ideological forms, is not enough. That is the moment when theatricality is needed. Modern theatricality appears in two distinctive guises: the spectacular display of power and the professionalism of theatrical art. The separation of these two aspects may in itself be symptomatic of the specifically modern nature of theatricality. Ancient Attic tragedy, as a deliberately theatrical questioning of autonomous political authority, was performed in a broader religious and civic context, that of the Great Dionysia. Although the boundaries between secular and religious ceremonies were clearly drawn, those between the display of political power—potestas, in Agamben’s sense—and the tragic representation of

43 See Louis Marin, “Théâtralité et pouvoir: Magie, machination, machine: Médée de Corneille,” in Louis Marin, Politiques de la représentation (Paris, 2005), pp. 275–285. 44 Apostolidès, Le Prince sacrifié, p. 78.

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political issues were not.45 Even when, especially in France, the theatre as an independent form of art was firmly controlled by the ideological apparatus of the absolutist state, the distinction between this and the spectacle of the royal presence was relatively easy to see. Even when phenomena such as the mythistoire around the Prince and the allegorical displacement of the effigy of the absent Prince make this distinction more vague, the continued marginal social status of the professional actor remains meaningful in this respect.46 But this could be a side-effect of the general trend towards the division of labor in early modernity, and says less about tragic “substance.” Ancient tragedy dealt with the profound incapacity of a voluntarist citizen to define himself as a political subject. Modern tragedy probably wrestled with a comparable problem. But there is one important difference, as the “democratic” disintegration of Shakespeare’s Henry V illustrated. Whereas Aeschylus’s Eteocles in Seven against Thebes, or Sophocles’s Creon in Antigone immediately shift, at the first sign of divine presence, from a political to a theological level of authority, the Modern Prince, confronted with an existential crisis, silently but clearly makes the distinction between his private position and his representation of the nation. He opens up the possibility of redefining sovereignty as a concept to be qualified on a broader, democratic basis—several centuries later. Even the allegorical displacement of the older Louis XIV can be interpreted in this way: it is his theatrical effigy that guarantees the absolute power of monarchy, not his physical body. Benjamin sees the German Trauerspiel as an example of an allegory. Allegories do not show history as an eternal process of life, but as a chain of events, events meaning inevitable disaster. Allegories are in the world of thought what ruins are in the world of matter.47 Insofar as modern tragedy comes close to allegory, it mourns the destruction of the mysticism around auctoritas and the disappearance of the theological foundations of sovereignty.48 But even in this regression, it discloses the constitution of a democratic political subject, however problematic.

45 Klaas Tindemans, Recht en tragedie: De scène van de wet in de antieke polis (Leuven, 1996), pp. 316–336. 46 Duvignaud, L’Acteur, pp. 79–95. 47 Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), pp. 155–156. 48 Romain Jobez, La Question de la souveraineté dans la tragédie baroque silésienne (Paris, 2004), p. 101.

EARLY MODERN OEDIPUS: A LITERARY APPROACH TO CHRISTIAN TRAGEDY Enrica Zanin (Paris IV-Sorbonne) Modern critics generally agree that the tragic cannot be Christian, because Christian and even Judaic conceptions of life are not consistent with that implied by tragedy. George Steiner points it out in The Death of Tragedy: The Judaic spirit is vehement in its conviction that the order of the universe and of man’s estate is accessible to reason. The ways of the Lord are neither wanton nor absurd . . . Tragic drama arises out of precisely the contrary assertion: necessity is blind and man’s encounter with it shall rob him of his eyes, whether it be in Thebes or in Gaza.1

More recently, Barbara Joan Hunt in The Paradox of Christian Tragedy enumerates a list of oppositions in order to emphasize the impossibility of reconciling Christian values with tragic plots.2 Greek tragedy ends with despair, Christian tragedy should end with redemption; the Christian hero is free, the Greek hero is not; fate rules Greek tragedy, Providence rules a Christian one.3 However, if this progression by paradoxes stresses the opposition between Christian and tragic drama, it may lack subtlety and neglect the ambiguities of both systems. From a poetic rather than an aesthetic point of view, analyzing tragedies instead of the tragic, it appears that Christian tragedy does exist, as far as modern tragedy is grounded in a Christian society. Ancient Greek tragedy was rediscovered at the beginning of the modern era, in the context of Christian beliefs and morality, and became a pedagogic means of showing the ruin of the mighty, and the terrible consequences of sin. Ancient Greek tragedy, rediscovered at the beginning of the modern era, is imitated and manipulated in

George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London, 1961), pp. 4–5. Barbara Joan Hunt, The Paradox of Christian Tragedy (New York, 1985). 3 The problem of a Christian tragedy was dwelt upon by many critics we cannot discuss here, such as Karl Jaspers, Tragedy Is Not Enough (London, 1953); I.A. Richard, Principles of Literary Criticism (London, 1924). 1 2

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order to fit the new moral and religious context. Does this imply that modern tragedy is not tragic? The answer may be complex, because tragedy and the tragic refer to different contexts. Tragedy is a poetic genre, defined by Aristotle and analyzed by modern theorists such as Castelvetro; while the tragic is an aesthetic concept brought about by Schelling, not to define a poetical practice, but as a philosophical interpretation of a poetical object. Furthermore, trying to define tragedies through the concept of the tragic may be misleading. It tends to reduce tragedy to a coherent and homogeneous object, forgetting its historical evolution and its regional variety. Aristotle’s definition is contradicted by the medieval conception of tragedy as a story which ends sadly, and modern tragedy hesitates between these two meanings.4 Therefore, applying the philosophical definition of the tragic on the poetical variety of modern tragedy implies under a certain extent an anachronism, and a misunderstanding of the heterogeneous nature of tragic genre. Instead of looking for a Christian concept of the tragic, I will rather analyze Christian tragedy—in particular French and Italian early modern tragedies—and point out some problems arising from the contact between a tragic interpretation of Greek models and the modern reception of ancient tragedy. I will study modern adaptations of Oedipus the King, and see how modern dramatists try to respect both moral injunctions and the tragic contradictions of Sophocles’s plot.5 Ancient and modern Oedipus According to Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, in Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, Greek tragedy was born when the right of the city began to impose itself on the ancient forms of mythical or religious right. The instauration of laws brought about the notions of subjective will and responsibility, against the ancient conception of the stain, which was both committed and endured by the agent, and was conceived as an offence to the religious order, dragging the agent and his

4 This conception of genre is taken from Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1982). 5 The following analysis is largely inspired by Paul Vanden Berghe’s contribution to Œdipe contemporain? (Vic de la Girandole, 2007), pp. 29–44, and by his kind remarks and advice.

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descent down in his downfall.6 This interpretation of the tragic, as an ambiguity between an ancient objective order and a modern subjective order, is reminiscent of Hegel’s definition, and can help to understand Oedipus’s fault. From an objective point of view Oedipus made two terrible mistakes. He killed his father and married his mother. However, from a subjective point of view, Oedipus is not responsible for these crimes, for he acts unwillingly. The gods or the fate of his family lead him to commit both patricide and incest. The ambiguity attached to the notion of stain, bringing together evil and sorrow,7 intertwines the objective and the subjective order until the end of the tragedy, so that it leaves the question of responsibility unanswered. Only in Oedipus at Colonus the innocence of the hero will be affirmed. In Oedipus the King, the hero is both innocent and guilty, and the ambiguity of the denouement of the tragedy is a powerful source of pathos. In a Christian context this ambiguity cannot be preserved. Christian beliefs brought about a subjective order of personal responsibility, replacing the stain with the sin, which is a fault committed willingly, damaging the relation of love which exists between man and God. Oedipus did not intend to commit incest and patricide, therefore he is innocent. However he suffers a great punishment. But God cannot be made responsible for his suffering. The Christian God can impossibly be evil. Oedipus’s case becomes less tragic, as far as it removes the ambiguity of the Greek tragedy, but appears more complex as far as the reasons for Oedipus’s suffering cannot be explained. Christian tragedy does not avoid the problem of evil, but asks even more firmly the question of its origins, in order to state God’s innocence in human sorrow. Therefore, the modern imitations of Oedipus the King cannot elude the problem of evil and, thus dwelling on it, they introduce again, in a Christian context, some tragic ambiguities taken from the ancient model. If Christian tragedy cannot be ultimately tragic, it has to discuss and to solve the problem of evil. Doing this, it inevitably gives vent to some elements of the ancient concept of the tragic. 6 Jean-PierreVernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, vol. 1 (Paris, 1968), pp. 55–56. 7 The notion of stain is analyzed by Paul Ricœur in Finitude et culpabilité II: La Symbolique du mal, rev. ed. (Paris, 1988): “L’inventaire de la faute, dans le regime de la souillure, est plus vaste du côté des événements du monde dans la mesure où il est plus étroit du côté des intentions de l’agent. Cette ampleur et cette étroitesse témoignent d’un stade où le mal et le malheur n’ont pas été dissociés, où l’ordre éthique du malfaire n’est pas discerné de l’ordre cosmo-biologique du mal-être” (p. 189).

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Oedipus the King, despite Aristotle’s outspoken preference, is not the most imitated Greek tragedy in early modern drama.8 The first translation of Seneca’s Oedipus was produced in France only in 1629,9 and the translation of Sophocles only appeared in 1692, thanks to Dacier’s Œdipe. In Italy a translation of Sophocles was published relatively early,10 but modern adaptations of Oedipus remained few. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were only six translations or adaptations of the Greek tragedy in Italy,11 three in France,12 and one in England.13 Only from the eighteenth century onwards was Oedipus widely translated and rewritten.14 Many reasons may have delayed the modern reception of Oedipus. First, the lack of propriety in the plot: modern dramatists may have found it particularly improper to debate onstage on the subject of incest and patricide, at a time when theorists such as Boileau or d’Aubignac promoted bienséance. Moreover tragedy, as we have seen, does not attribute the responsibility of evil, while modern dramatists need to find moral justifications for Oedipus’s suffering. Early translators, such as Jean Prévost, tend to avoid the question, and focus their play on diffuse pathos. Other theorists, such as Dacier, state Oedipus’s guilt. He is not guilty of incest and patricide, but he is responsible for both, because he commits several sins—such as murdering a man on the main road—and suffers from several deadly

8 A general and somewhat partial analysis of Oedipus the King and its modern reception, in Bruno Gentili et al., Il Teatro greco e la cultura europea, Edipo, Atti del convegno internazionale (Urbino, 1986). 9 Œdipe, in Les Tragédies de L.A. Sénèque, trans. Benoist Bauduyn d’Amiens (Troyes, 1629). Subsequent translations: Œdipe, in Le Théâtre de Sénèque, trans. P. Linage ( J. Paslé, 1651); Œdipe, in Les Tragédies de Sénèque, trans. M. de Marolle (P. Lamy, 1659). 10 Orsatto Giustiniani’s Edipo Tiranno is translated and staged in 1585, see Léo Schrade, La Représentation de ‘Oedipo tiranno’ au Teatro Olimpico, Vicence, 1585 (Paris, 1960). 11 Alessandro Pazzi de Medici, Edipo principe, written in 1526 (manuscript); Guido Guidi, Oedipus, published in 1532; Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara, Edippo, staged in 1556; Orsatto Giustinani, Edipo Tiranno, published in 1585; Pietro Angeli Bargeo, Edipo tiranno, published in 1589; Emanuele Tesauro, Edipo published in 1661. Bernardo Segni’s Edipo principe will be published only in 1778. More details in Paolo Bosisio, “Il Tema di Edipo nella traduzione della tragedia italiana,” in Enea Balmas et al., Studi di letteratura francese, Edipo in Francia (Florence, 1989), pp. 87–123; and in Fabrizio Richard, “The Two Oedipuses: Sophocles, Anguillara, and the Renaissance Treatment of Myth,” MLN 110.1 (1995): 178–191. 12 Jean Prévost’s Œdipe, published in 1614, Tallemant des Réaux’s Œdipe, written in the second half of the seventeenth century, and Pierre Corneille’s Œdipe in 1659. 13 Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus published in 1679. 14 As reported in Christian Biet, Œdipe en monarchie (Geneva, 1994).

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sins—such as wrath and pride.15 Although this explanation of Oedipus’s misery may be moral, it appears less dramatic. The sight of a guilty man being rightly punished may arouse a feeling of justice, but it cannot provoke strong pathos, as Aristotle states in his Poetics.16 Dramatists need to preserve the original plot, to respect morality and to arouse pathos, all at the same time. These three constrictive boundaries would make the dramatists adopt different paths, as dell’Anguillara’s Edippo, Bracciolini’s Harpalice, and Corneille’s Œdipe would show.17 The first tragedy attempts to Christianize some elements of the ancient plot, such as the ambiguity between an objective and a subjective order. The second one tries to erase tragic ambiguity, stressing Oedipus’s personal responsibility. The last one removes this ambiguity by transforming Oedipus into a Christian martyr. Oedipus predestined Dell’Anguillara’s Edippo is the first modern adaptation of the ancient tragedy to be published and staged, in Padua in 1556 or in 1560. It mainly imitates Seneca’s Oedipus, but is also reminiscent of Statius’s Thebaid, of Euripides’s Phoenician Women, and of medieval romances, in order to tell both the tragedy of Oedipus and the fight between his sons. Dell’Anguillara’s dramatic strategy consists in explaining and clarifying the whole plot. Therefore, he assembles many episodes related to Oedipus, he reveals in the first scene the true origins of the hero, and he explains the moral dilemma of the play in the exposition, as Tiresias speaking of Edippo and Jocasta asserts: “Ciascun di lor la mente have innocente, e pecca, e nulla sa del suo peccato.”18 The play will then explain how it is possible to have an innocent conscience and yet to be

“La faute d’Œdipe c’est la faute d’un homme, qui emporté de colère pour l’insolence d’un cocher, qui veut le faire ranger malgré lui, tue quatre hommes deux jours aprés que l’oracle l’a averti qu’il tuerait son propre père,” André Dacier, La Poétique d’Aristote, traduite en françois, avec des remarques (New York, 1976), p. 192. 16 Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell (Chapel Hill, 1987), chapter 13. 17 I will generally consider modern depictions of ancient divinities as an expression of the Christian God, as acknowledged in Christian Delmas, Mythologie et mythe dans le théâtre français (1650 –1676) (Geneva, 1985). 18 “Each one of them has an innocent conscience, yet he sins, and knows nothing of his sin,” Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara, Edippo (Padua, 1565), act 1, scene 1, p. 2, my translation. All future references are to act, scene, and page of this edition. 15

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a sinner. This cautious technique may have suited the censure’s moral concern, but certainly not the public desire for suspense. Everything is unveiled before the beginning of the action. Dell’Anguillara’s tragedy progresses as a slow rise of pathos. Edippo is shown to be innocent. He is a loving father (1.2), and no one considers him to be responsible for his crimes. The messenger from Corinth, after Edippo’s recognition of his true identity, says he is innocent and does not deserve any punishment.19 The plot is then structured as the Greek one. The hero’s subjective innocence is contradicted by the terrible punishment inflicted by the Gods. But the author cannot afford to accuse God of being evil. He then avoids the tragic ambiguity by presenting the hero’s punishment as self-inflicted, as Oedipus claims after his final recognition: Ma vo punirmi al tutto da me stesso, Se non come vorrei, come potrò. En tanto penserò di trovar via Di soffrire ogni giorno mille morti.20

However, this explanation for Edippo’s suffering does not feel wholly satisfactory, as it reveals a contradictory hero, half legalist, half masochist. The last chorus of the tragedy may solve the tragic paradox: Ma quei peccati anchor, ch’alcun commette Per ignoranza, e contra il suo volere, [Dio] Vuol, che condannin l’huomo a penitenza.21

Every sin committed unwillingly is condemned by God to punishment. This moral issue seems to mistake the Christian notion of intentional sin with the Greek notion of an unintentional stain. But it might also be explained otherwise. During the ominous sacrifice staged in the second act, the sacred ox is suddenly illuminated by a ray of light, but it refuses to look at it. It then throws itself onto the sword, which pierces its eye and kills it. Obviously, the ox represents Edippo, but rewriting Seneca’s text,22 dell’Anguillara allowed for a religious interpretation of 19 “You sinned without knowing the whole truth, therefore you do not deserve any punishment” (3.5, p. 38). 20 “But I will punish myself thoroughly, if not as I wish, as I will be able to. Meanwhile I will think out how to suffer every day thousands of deaths” (3.5, p. 39). 21 “But God wants sins that one commits out of ignorance and unwillingly to condemn man to punishment” (5, p. 63). 22 Seneca’s sacrifice shows an ox and a mare, representing Oedipus and Jocasta, the first avoiding sunlight and the second throwing its body onto the sword. Dell’Anguillara

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the sacrifice. Edippo refuses to receive God’s light, therefore he suffers from blindness and exile. He will not see God, he will be exiled from paradise. Edippo becomes aware of his guilt, rather than it being selfinflicted. Edippo’s true origin is the original sin. Edippo might have overcome the original sin by accepting God’s light, i.e., God’s grace. But he refuses the light and receives eternal exile. Dell’Anguillara’s conceptions of grace and redemption appear quite close to Protestant assumptions about predestination and free will, and eventually Protestant understanding of grace may be a modern translation of ancient fate. But even this moral explanation of the play is not wholly convincing: in a universe ordained by a loving God, an innocent cannot be punished without humanity questioning the goodness of Creation and risking a descent into absurdity. Besides, dell’Anguillara probably was not Protestant.23 Dell’Anguillara was imitating an ancient text, and imitation can give a third justification of the morality of the play. While adapting an ancient text, dell’Anguillara did not need to assume Sophocles’s or Seneca’s ideology and be responsible for the moral contents of the tragedy: he could simply fade behind the screen of imitation, leaving the principle questions of the play unanswered. Edippo then seems to keep some of the ancient ambiguity, as far as evil responsibility is not clearly attributed. Dell’Anguillara has Christianized many elements of the ancient plot, but the hero’s punishment is excessively cruel to fit a Christian or more specifically a Protestant frame without leading to absurdity. Therefore the hero’s self-inflicted punishment and the filter of imitation leave the denouement of the plot ambiguous, and the question of evil unanswered. Through this ambiguity the ancient conception of the tragic seems to be preserved in this modern version of Oedipus the King. Oedipus guilty Francesco Bracciolini’s Harpalice is a tragedy published in 1613 and patronized by pope Urban VIII. The moral setting of this version of Oedipus the King is then strictly catholic. The hero is not the king of combines the two reactions and focuses on the eyes of the ox refusing the light and desiring the sword. 23 Dell’Anguilara was patronized by Cardinal Farnese, as reported in Beatrice Premoli, Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara, accademico sdegnato ed etereo 1517–1572 (Rome, 2005).

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Thebes, but the queen of modern Spain. She is the daughter of the count and the countess of Valencia, who, at her birth, was secretly substituted for the daughter of the king of Spain by her nurse, under the orders of the countess of Valencia who eventually wounded and abandoned the nurse in the forest. At the death of the king of Spain, Harpalice became queen, but she killed by mistake the countess her mother, by giving her a poison she thought was a love potion; and she wished to marry the count her father, in order to establish her power against the political ambitions of her uncle Gherardo. The priest said that a sacrilege has been committed, for a daughter married her father and killed her mother, and that only the death of that woman, killed by her father, would purify the country. Just before the intended marriage the wounded nurse reappeared and told the count the whole truth. But the cupidity of the count made him forget the message of the nurse and to secretly marry Harpalice. However, after Harpalice’s secret wedding, the nurse told the queen her true origins and Harpalice became aware of her sacrilege and accepted the only way of punishing it: she would be killed by her father, as the priest recommended. Through adapting the original story, Bracciolini makes Harpalice responsible for her crimes. An angel, at the opening scene of the play, tells the ghost of the dead countess of Valencia that Harpalice is guilty. She desires to marry the count, although she ignores he is her father, and her desire makes her guilty of murder retrospectively. If she did not want to kill the countess, she now enjoys the advantages of that murder, as she is going to marry the count.24 This explanation, given by the angel, is quite heterodox, and seems to imply that Harpalice has an Oedipus complex! But the following scenes help to justify this moral explanation. Harpalice appears guilty of luxury, as far as she married the count in secret before the intended wedding, despite the ominous dream that she narrates (1.2). Had she waited until the official wedding, the message of the nurse would have reached her in time to save her honor and her life. Harpalice appears guilty of foolishness: she refused to act prudently and to ponder on the political consequences of her desired union, as her secretary (3.2) and her uncle (3.1) reminded her. Besides, Bracciolini changes some details of the original story in order to stress the heroine’s fault: Harpalice knows that the count and

24

Francesco Bracciolini, Harpalice (Florence, 1613), p. 13.

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the countess (i.e., her secret parents) are man and wife, while Oedipus does not. The desire of Harpalice is then blameful, for she desired to marry the count without respecting his mourning. At the opening of the play Harpalice is not yet married, while Oedipus is. Her loving and lascivious desire is then amplified by the four acts of waiting before the incestuous union. The ambiguity between an objective and a subjective order seems here dissolved: the subjective laws of Christian faith rule the play, for Harpalice willingly committed the crimes she is accused of. Her punishment is then just, and arouses little pathos. However, Harpalice is not the only character responsible for these crimes. Her mother is guilty of concealing Harpalice’s true origins, and the count is guilty of desiring to marry the queen in order to fulfill his political ambitions. Furthermore, Harpalice does not seem to act as if she knew the consequences of her actions. The angel, in the first scene, explains the theological meaning of this apparent irresponsibility. The guilt of Harpalice’s mother falls on her daughter, as the sin of Adam falls on all his descent.25 In Christian theology, the sin is not only evil subjectively, for it damages the personal relation between God and his creature. It has also some general consequences, as far as all God’s creatures are linked together in the communion of the saints.26 Therefore, Harpalice suffers from the consequences of her mother’s sin and she is not entirely free in her actions, but she has a strong tendency to sin. That is why she desires so much to marry the count, despite the warning of the other characters. As a matter of fact, the principal consequence of the sin is that it diminishes the agent’s freedom: the creature is perfectly free when she chooses to fulfill God’s will, but she loses her freedom as long as she follows her tendency to evil, although she can always makes the choice of God and be saved.27 Harpalice is not free in her actions: she could have become free, had she resisted her desire of the count, but, as she followed her inclination towards sin, she became progressively unable to choose freely what was good. In a Catholic interpretation of Oedipus the King, then, the hero’s sin is a modern version of Oedipus’s fate. The hero is prone to sin, but while Oedipus cannot resist his fate,

Rm 5. As explained by Paul Ricœur in Le Conflit des interpretations, essais d’herméneutique (Paris, 1969), chapter IV. 27 As explained in Philippe Nemo, Job et l’excès du mal, rev. ed. (Paris, 2001). 25

26

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a Christian hero can always chose freely to follow evil, or to oppose it. Harpalice consents to sin, and progressively loses her freedom until she is subjected to the consequences of her actions, as Oedipus undergoes his doom. Harpalice’s destiny is then more tragic than it seems. If she has sinned, she was not fully free in her actions, and she is punished for the consequences of crimes she was not completely aware of. Oedipus martyr Corneille’s version of Oedipus the King brings about a further Christianization of the tragic plot. Œdipe is a tragedy written and staged in 1659. After the failure of Pertharite, Corneille decided to imitate a famous plot, challenging great authors such as Sophocles and Seneca, as he asserts in his Examen of 1660.28 He claimed he had taken, in his tragedy, “a different path,” and actually his plot does tend to differ from Seneca’s and Sophocles’s in order to satisfy the modern public’s tastes. Thus, he created a typical Cornelian heroine, Dircé, daughter of Laius and Jocasta, who criticizes Œdipe’s legitimacy. He introduces a romantic couple, Thésée and Dircé, thwarted in love by Œdipe, who fears that Thésée, marring Laius’s daughter, should become the king of Thebes by deposing him. Therefore, politics become the tragedy’s main issue: how may a tyrant become a good king?29 Besides, the tragedy gives a justification of evil that is notably original.30 Corneille’s Œdipe is guilty. He is not responsible for his patricide and his incest, but he is a bad king, as Dircé claims, calling him a “tyrant” (l. 500 and l. 554). Indeed, he governs his family as a tyrant, for he would force Dircé to marry Hémon against her will. Œdipe’s oppressive domination is the domestic evocation of his political tyranny. Œdipe is presented as guilty of misgovernment, but he receives a punishment

Corneille, Oedipe, in Œuvres Complètes, vol. 3, Paris: Gallimard, 1987, p. 20. Christian Biet gives a profound explanation of the play’s political implications in Œdipe en Monarchie, tragédie et théorie juridique à l’âge classique, op. cit., pp. 103–121. 30 Corneille’s reception of Oedipus the King is analyzed in Judd David Hubert, “L’AntiŒdipe de Corneille,” XVII e siècle 146 (1985): 47–56; in Christian Delmas, “Corneille et le mythe: le cas d’Œdipe,” in Révue de la société d’histoire du theatre, 1984, n. 2: 132–152; in Terence Cave, “Corneille, Oedipus, Racine,” in Convergences, Rhetoric and Poetics in seventeenth-century France, ed. David Lee Rubin (Ohio, 1989), pp. 82–100. A study of the influence of neo-stoicism in Corneille’s beliefs and in his Œdipe, in René Girard, La Violence et le Sacré (Paris, 1990), pp. 105–134; and in Jacques Maurens, La Tragédie sans tragique: Le néo-stoïcisme dans l’oeuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris, 1966). 28 29

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which appears excessive when compared to his fault, and not directly related to it. Therefore, evil is not entirely justified, as the discovery of Œdipe’s origins provokes a dramatic debate over human free will: Aux crimes malgré moi l’ordre du ciel m’attache . . . Hélas ! qu’il est bien vrai qu’en vain on s’imagine Dérober notre vie à ce que [l’ordre du ciel] nous destine! (1825, 1829– 1830)

Œdipe realizes how little free will he had in the direction of his life. He therefore considers God’s inflictions to be unjust. The tragedy seems to leave the problem of evil unanswered, instead of giving a reassuring moral justification of it. However, Corneille’s Œdipe does castigate himself. But I do not believe, as some critics allege, that his self-inflicted punishment expresses a free act of rebellion against God’s cruelty.31 Corneille’s Œdipe cannot make the choice of Satan and refuse God’s grace. In a pre-Romantic period this denouement is clearly not conceivable, and only later it will become a tragic issue for Christian plays. Corneille’s Œdipe makes the only free choice he can afford. He freely chooses his own punishment, as he states in the fifth act: Mais si les Dieux m’ont fait la vie abominable, Il m’en font par pitié la sortie honorable, Puisque enfin leur faveur mêlée à leur courroux Me condamne à mourir pour le salut de tous, Et qu’en ce même temps qu’il faudrait que ma vie Des crimes qu’ils m’ont faits traînât l’ignominie, L’éclat de ces vertus que je ne tiens pas d’eux Reçoit pour récompense un trépas glorieux. (1831–1841)

The rhyme between “abominable” and “honorable” suggests that Œdipe’s terrible discovery of his punishment is beneficial, for it allows him to repair his misfortune. Therefore, Corneille’s Œdipe is redeemed and saved, since he will receive a “reward,” a “glorious death” thanks to the “glow of his virtues.” Corneille, then, expresses his belief in the Molinistic conception of grace and free will, brought forward by the Jesuits: humanity is free, and its charitable works contribute to its salvation. Œdipe does not accuse God of perversity, he rather affirms God’s “pity” (5032). Œdipe seems here to undergo a conversion: he abandons 31 Such as Mitsutaka Odagiri in Écritures palimpsestes, ou les théâtralisations françaises du mythe d’Œdipe (Paris, 2001), p. 54.

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his tyrannical suspicions and lets Dircé marry Thésée (1049–1055). The revelation of his miserable origin does not condemn him, as it condemns dell’Anguillara’s Edippo, but it mysteriously discloses God’s grace, as Œdipe tells Tiresias: “j’admire un sentiment si confus que le mien” (1048). How can God’s grace arise from Œdipe’s acknowledgement of his own misery? According to Christian morality, freedom resides in doing God’s will. One becomes free when one acknowledges God’s design for one and accepts to fulfill it. One then expresses God’s creative freedom, sheds the passivity of the creature and becomes free, in the image of God. This is why Œdipe’s discovery of his tragic identity is the path to his redemption. Œdipe accepts God’s design, and he carries it freely. He could have rejected it, choosing to follow the evil, as Harpalice does, or he could have borne it, as dell’Anguillara’s Edippo does. Œdipe chooses to accomplish God’s will and thus imitates Christ, as he affirms at line 1834: he will die for the sake of all. Œdipe, accepting God’s punishment, becomes free, and freely decides to sacrifice himself, through exile, thus saving his people. God is not responsible for evil. The revelation of Œdipe’s misfortune is the trial that reveals the way towards redemption. Corneille’s Œdipe removes all tragic ambiguities. The play begins as a tragedy of fate and ends as a tragedy of martyrdom. Corneille achieves this evolution through the device of conversion. The hero is converted into a saint, and all the values of the original plot follow this conversion: the tragic punishment of the hero becomes a blessing, for it leads to redemption. The ambiguity between an objective and a subjective order is not only erased by the triumph of subjective responsibility, but the inscrutable law of the Gods coincides here with the subjective law of men. God’s goodness is not to be demonstrated, but is to be accepted by faith, and changes the whole meaning of the play. In a tragedy of martyrdom, the tragic remains as a doubt, as a moment of the knot, but does not last until the end of the play. The conversion which starts the denouement reverses all tragic values into Christian hopes. Conclusion After the reading of Oedipus the King modern adaptations, since the rebirth of the genre until its classical formalization, it is striking to see how early modern tragedy, instead of emphasizing the tragic ambigui-

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ties, tends to erase them, in order to achieve a classical tragedy grounded on an unambiguous morality. If dell’Anguillara preserves the conflict between the hero and his inscrutable predestination, Corneille evacuates every ambiguity between the order of the Gods and the order of men. Of course, Corneille’s poetics is very peculiar, and the ideas of conversion and forgiveness rarely appear in classical French tragedy. But in general classical tragedy eludes ambiguity for the sake of morality, only reintroducing some elements of the ancient tragic concept, in order to arouse pathos. A conventional model of dramatic mastery, such as Racine’s Phèdre, may help to understand how the tragic elements we analyzed in early modern adaptations of Oedipus the King are still present in later tragedies as poetical devices, weakening the moral exactitude of the play. Phèdre appears firmly grounded on Christian morality. The queen chooses freely to follow her incestuous love for Hippolyte, as Harpalice desires to marry the count, and she is then punished for her crime.32 But some poetical strategies reintroduce tragic ambiguities in order to arouse pity for the heroine. Phèdre’s punishment is self-inflicted, for she kills herself as dell’Anguillara’s Edippo blinds himself. She is then to be pitied, for she recognizes the wrong she has committed and wants to atone for it. Besides, Phèdre, as Harpalice, is not the only responsible for her crimes: Œnone is the one who lies to Thésée, causing Hippolyte’s death, and Phèdre’s mother fault (i.e., her lascivious love for the Minoan bull) falls on her daughter, whose love is incestuous. Furthermore, Phèdre is a modern adaptation of Euripides and Seneca’s tragedies, and the respect for the ancient plot allowed Racine to be absolved for responsibility for its morality. Phèdre accuses Venus of being guilty of her incestuous passion, denouncing thus the cruelty of the gods. This accusation is not meant to be addressed to the Christian God, but to be read as a poetical device setting the story in its mythological context. However, while mentioning the pagan gods, Racine introduces some ambiguity in the play. The intervention of

32 The unknown author of the Dissertation sur la tragédie de Phèdre et Hippolyte published in 1677, thus sets the moral meaning of the play: “Ce qui peut encore excuser la Phèdre d’Euripide et de Sénèque, et ce qui doit condamner celle de MM. Racine et Pradon, c’est que chez les anciens elle est entraînée malgré elle dans le précipice, selon le principe de leur religion [. . .] cet amour ne leur semblait pas si horrible qu’à nous [. . .] qui attachant le vice à la seule volonté du criminel, regardons toujours cette horrible action, sans prétexte, sans voile et sans excuse” in Jean Racine, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris, 1999), p. 880.

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Venus, who is responsible for Phèdre’s love, makes the heroine a victim of her incestuous passion, instead of an agent who willingly consents to it. Phèdre then, thanks to the poetical presence of pagan gods, appears more ambiguous. The heroine seems to be both the victim of love, as she would have appeared in the ancient objective order, and the cause of it, as she would have appeared in the Christian subjective law. Therefore, while affirming Christian morality, Racine can introduce some ambiguities through the evocation of pagan gods, the distribution of the heroine fault, the heritage of her mother’s sin. If the Christian tragic concept cannot exist as a theological or a theoretical idea, it does exist in practice, as a poetical device, as a mean of creating ambiguity and of arousing pathos in a tragedy grounded on Christian morality. Some elements of the ancient concept of the tragic are then adapted to the modern belief, in order to suit the censure and to produce dramatic effects. However, the adaptations of ancient tragedies show that the question of evil is not evacuated by modern dramatists, but remains a tragic issue until the end of the play. The character of the saint cannot be tragic for he converts all the tragic elements into peaceful hopes, as we have seen in Corneille’s Œdipe. But a character blinded by his sin, such as dell’Anguillara’s Edippo, endures his destiny as tragic or even as absurd. Characters like Phèdre or Athalie, in Racine’s tragedies, are good examples of this blindness condemning them to eternal suffering. Christian heroes, then, can assume some features of tragic ones as long as they appear neither entirely bad nor entirely good, such as in Aristotle’s definition of the tragic character, in the chapter 13 of his Poetics. If a Christian hero is entirely good, he is a saint, if he is entirely evil, he is a creature of the devil: these characters are not ambiguous and cannot arouse pathos. On the other hand, a hero blinded by his sin who cannot recognize God’s grace moves in a world of ambiguities, where the old values of the tragic tinge the new values of Christian morality. In this kind of tragedies, the conception of sin can be reminiscent of the archaic notion of stain, and the conception of grace may appear as a modern version of ancient fate. However, this ambiguities need to be solved before the end of the play, in order to affirm the morality of God and of the dramatists: the blinded hero is then made responsible and condemned for his crimes—as it appears in Harpalice and of dell’Anguillara’s Edippo—or he undergoes a conversion and become a saint—as we have seen in Corneille’s Œdipe. Some elements of the ancient concept of the tragic are preserved in modern

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tragedy, and this relic of the tragic seems to imply that the Christian belief does not wholly eradicate the problem of evil: it only indicates a way of answering it, but this way is not open to anyone, for it implies the will and the faith of transforming evil into redemption.

TRAGÉDIE CLASSIQUE, SOUVERAINETÉ ET DROIT : LE CAS DE BRITANNICUS (1669) DE JEAN RACINE Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Universiteit Maastricht) Britannicus, expérience de réflexion politique ? Abstract in English The tragedy of Britannicus is not only a gallant history, as it simultaneously confronts its spectators with a reflection on the limits of sovereign power, in an era in which the absolute monarch has no other limitation than the will of God. Instead of a straightforward affirmation of its contemporary frame of reference, Britannicus questions this very frame. Racine’s tragedy is both a thorough reflection on the gradual transition from sovereignty to governamentality (as it was also described by the French philosopher Michel Foucault), and a sharp analysis of the way in which the French monarchy constructed its own mythological history, rooting its own origins in the history of the Roman Empire. Racine shows how Nero is a true baroque sovereign suffering from deep melancholia, but also a modern tyrant who does not hesitate to proclaim the state of exception. However, Britannicus also deals with very specific juridical problems such as the laws of primogeniture, Racinian tragedy being a locus of juridical experimentation.

C’est en novembre 1668, après Andromaque et Les Plaideurs, que Racine écrit pour la première fois une tragédie romaine, le genre préféré de son grand rival Pierre Corneille. L’intrigue de Britannicus, pour laquelle Racine s’est appuyé sur l’historiographe romain Tacite, est bien connue. Néron est bombardé empereur, partiellement grâce à l’aide d’Agrippine, sa mère et quatrième épouse de l’empereur Claude. Cette dernière a réussi à faire de Néron le fils adoptif de l’empereur Claude et en même temps l’empereur suivant, au désavantage de Britannicus, fils naturel du même Claude. C’est à Britannicus qu’Agrippine a offert Junie, dont il est éperdument amoureux, comme un prix de consolation pour le rôle mineur qu’il jouera dans la politique de Rome jusque-là. Cependant, Néron est pris par le désir et tombe éperdument amoureux de Junie. Petit à petit l’empereur se dégage de l’influence de sa mère : son amour pour Junie—qu’Agrippine dans sa qualité de marieuse avait destiné à Britannicus—est comme une déclaration d’indépendance. Il sent brûler le feu amoureux et décide de mettre de côté toute logique politique

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en revendiquant Junie. Lors d’un acte de séduction un peu maladroit il reçoit l’aide du malin Narcisse, que Britannicus considère—tout à fait à tort—comme son homme de confiance. Néron et Narcisse s’allient pour obliger Junie à mettre son amant dans une position de désespoir absolu en lui faisant suggérer faussement qu’elle ne l’aime plus. Caché derrière un rideau, Néron écoute et surveille attentivement la scène où Junie déclare à contrecœur ne plus aimer Britannicus. La jeune femme s’affirme comme une actrice remarquable—même Néron est impressionné par son talent théâtral!—et Britannicus est désespéré. Quand Junie rassure son amant un peu plus tard, la vengeance de Néron ne se fait pas attendre. Il feint la réconciliation et invite Britannicus à un dîner. Le soir même notre jeune héros meurt d’empoisonnement. Néron attribue la mort de Britannicus à son épilepsie (une donnée historiquement attestée du reste). Junie cependant n’y croit guère et la tragédie se termine sur sa fuite chez les Vestales, laissant tous les personnages et les spectateurs dans un désespoir et un malaise profond. La tragédie de Britannicus est non seulement une histoire galante, elle propose en même temps aux spectateurs une réflexion sur les limites du pouvoir souverain, et cela à une époque où le vrai souverain absolu n’a comme restriction de son propre pouvoir que le désir de Dieu. Cette restriction est réelle, mais peut être facilement niée. Avec sa fable romaine, Britannicus est un jeu à deux niveaux qui permet à la fois de prendre de la distance et de dire quelque chose sur sa propre époque. Des références aux institutions romaines et aux institutions françaises du temps de Racine interagissent. L’effet est donc double : les allusions au cadre de référence contemporain font que le spectateur de l’époque ne peut considérer la pièce que comme un commentaire sur sa propre situation et son propre temps. En même temps, la romanité permet la distance, elle renvoie le spectateur à un univers romain qui n’est pas le sien. Ce double jeu de référence permet donc de parler de sa propre époque via le détour du passé. La scène en devient un espace critique sans qu’on n’ait l’obligation ni la peur d’être militant. Dans cet espace, on peut confirmer l’ordre politique en vigueur et rester conservateur tout en suggérant d’envisager une autre réalité politique. Dans son texte “Il faut défendre la société” Michel Foucault indique que ce ne sont pas les sujets qui déterminent la nature et l’ampleur des relations de pouvoir, mais que l’inverse est vrai : l’identité est intégralement fixée par la nature de ce rapport de forces.

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[P]lutôt que de demander à des sujets idéaux ce qu’ils ont pu céder d’eux-mêmes ou de leurs pouvoirs pour se laisser assujettir, il faut chercher comment les relations d’assujettissement peuvent fabriquer des sujets.1

L’identité n’est donc pas une donnée ontologique. Un sujet ne tire son identité que du rapport qu’il entretient avec d’autres sujets. Le même constat s’applique aussi à la tragédie, au cœur de laquelle les écrivains, les acteurs et les spectateurs se penchent sur la relation du sujet avec son souverain. Au dix-septième siècle, la tragédie est un lieu important pour tous les débats sur la notion très vaste de souveraineté. En effet, c’est au cours de ce siècle que la monarchie absolue s’est définitivement établie, aussi bien au niveau mental qu’au niveau juridique, si bien que les auteurs sont, en quelque sorte, obligés de prendre position face à cette problématique. La tragédie fonctionne ainsi comme un rituel social où sont thématisés des problèmes juridiques et politiques. Elle pose les questions sur lesquelles le droit public s’interroge. [I]l ne faut pas oublier qu’au dix-septième siècle, et pas seulement en France, la tragédie était une des grandes formes rituelles dans lesquelles se manifestait le droit public et se débattaient des problèmes.2

Ainsi Racine utilise donc la scène non seulement comme un lieu où on montre un récit, mais aussi comme un lieu de réflexion et de critique qui lui permet de problématiser un certain nombre d’ hypothèses concernant la souveraineté (ne fût-ce qu’en montrant une alternative et en faisant radicalement appel au désir du spectateur d’être témoin du délire et de la mélancolie destructrice de Néron). Au lieu d’être une affirmation univoque du cadre de référence en vigeur, Britannicus est d’abord une remise en question de ce même cadre.

1 Michel Foucault, “Il faut défendre la société,” dans Foucault, Dits et écrits III 1976–1979, éd. établie sous la direction de Daniel Defert et François Ewald (Paris, 1994), p. 124. Dans les paragraphes présents, je fais usage de deux textes du même titre, le premier fait partie du troisième tome de Dits et écrits, le deuxième est incorporé dans le volume Cours au Collège de France. 2 Michel Foucault, “Il faut défendre la société,” in Foucault, Cours au Collège de France 1976, sous la direction de M. Bertani en A. Fontana (Paris, 1997), p. 155.

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karel vanhaesebrouck La dichotomie foucaldienne souveraineté/gouvernementalité

Une partie importante du trajet politico-intellectuel de Michel Foucault est fondée sur la dichotomie souveraineté versus gouvernementalité, deux notions qu’il applique de façon diachronique (historique) et synchronique (les deux principes peuvent donc se manifester simultanément). La souveraineté est d’abord un principe territorial lié aux surfaces et aux frontières. En termes juridiques de base, la souveraineté est le droit d’une entité politique d’exercer son pouvoir et vise donc à établir et maintenir la relation entre un souverain et son territoire. L’ampleur de son pouvoir sera alors mesurée en fonction de son territoire—plus la surface de son royaume est grande, plus son pouvoir sera grand. Ainsi on pourrait dire que le moteur dramaturgique de King Lear (et de presque toutes les tragédies) est tout d’abord cette notion de souveraineté parce que l’histoire de cette pièce est d’abord une question territoriale. La territorialité fonctionne dans ce contexte comme un critère socioéconomique plutôt que géographique parce que la territorialité dans le sens strictement politique—une nation avec des frontières—est un concept bien plus récent. La gouvernementalité par contre ne s’occupe plus de questions territoriales, mais s’occupe de la gestion—littéralement : le gouvernement—des corps qui peuplent ce territoire. L’autorité étatique ne s’occupe plus—ou le fait moins—de ses frontières physiques, mais se penche sur des questions comme les taux de natalité ou de mortalité, la productivité et l’hygiène publique. Le principe de gouvernementalité pourrait donc être considéré comme une nouvelle incarnation du roiberger (rex pastor) du Moyen Age, qui devait s’occuper d’abord de sa troupe et non de ses champs ou de son territoire. Dans une première phase, cette gouvernementalité prend la forme d’une anatomopolitique qui vise l’assujettissement de corps individuels (Foucault pense ici notamment à l’établissement des prisons, des asiles etc.). Dans une deuxième phase, elle se concrétise en une biopolitique qui vise la normalisation de variables collectifs comme la mortalité, la productivité et la fécondité et leur corrélation civile. Cette activité excède largement l’assujettissement indivuel : l’état intervient dès lors à un niveau plus général qui dépasse celui de l’assujettissement, parce qu’ici le sujet a internalisé les normes (le sujet n’a donc plus besoin d’une instance externe qui l’oblige à suivre les normes). Dans les deux phases, le pouvoir s’approprie le droit d’intervenir dans la vie physique, biologique de l’humain. Dans une troisième phase, que Foucault dénomme la thanatopolitique et qui est

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toujours latente, mais qui ne se réalise pas nécessairement, le pouvoir intervient non seulement dans la vie de ses sujets, mais s’usurpe le droit de terminer cette vie. Comme l’indique aussi Thomas Crombez, on pourrait dire que la souveraineté laisse vivre et laisse mourir, que la gouvernementalité fait vivre (elle administre tout ce qui est vivant) et laisse mourir, à un niveau d’assujettissement individuel pour l’anatomopolitique et à un niveau collectif et internalisé pour la biopolitique, et que la thanatopolitique, l’ultime phase de la gouvernementalité, fait vivre ét mourir.3 Dans une perspective diachronique et historique, on pourrait formuler l’hypothèse suivante : à partir des années 1550–1600, la souveraineté et la gouvernementalité commencent à s’entremêler mutuellement de manière de plus en plus intensive. Bien que la monarchie absolue soit née d’ambitions exclusivement territoriales et qu’elle en soit entièrement dépendante, elle commence alors à s’autonomiser graduellement, à élargir son terrain d’action d’une façon radicale : “la monarchie, en tant qu’instance de gouvernement, forme une totalité qui, bien que née de la nation, vise à lui échapper.”4 C’est précisément à cause de l’extension des entités étatiques que le rôle administrateur du souverain et de ses disciples gagne en importance, au niveau horizontal (diversification des tâches) aussi bien qu’au niveau vertical (intensification de l’assujettissement disciplinaire). Paradoxalement, la délégation des tâches souveraines devient alors le seul moyen de maintenir la centralisation du pouvoir. Cette délégation entraîne bien sûr une ramification régionale importante de la gouvernementalité. Ce n’est d’ailleurs pas seulement l’appareil étatique que souhaite s’organiser d’une façon efficace ; les sujets eux aussi aspirent de plus en plus à une organisation intégraliste de la vie quotidienne. Avec l’assujettissement, apporté par la biopolitique, surgit une réflexion critique sur l’organisation d’une société toute entière. En appliquant cette réflexion foucaldienne à Britannicus on pourrait être tenté de conclure que Néron relègue à l’arrière-plan la logique de la souveraineté au profit d’une gouvernementalité illégitime où il assujettit son entourage d’une façon quasi arbitraire (en se laissant guider par ses ambitions passionnelles plutôt que politiques) et qu’il revient ainsi

3 Thomas Crombez, site du projet de recherche “Théâtralité et souveraineté” (Université d’Anvers), ; voir aussi Christian Biet, Œdipe en monarchie : Tragédie et théorie juridique à l’âge classique (Paris, 1994). 4 Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Le Roi-machine : Spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris 1981), p. 66.

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à l’anatomopolitique (son amour pour Junie implique un pas en arrière dans la généalogie foucaldienne de l’assujettissement). À ce momentlà, il semble mettre le pas définitif vers la thanatopolitique : Néron fait vivre ét mourir. Britannicus devient ainsi non seulement une analyse des conséquences d’un régime dans lequel politique et amour s’entrelacent, la tragédie est aussi une analyse pointue de la tyrannie, une tentative qui se trouve étroitement entremêlée avec le contexte politique d’alors où l’absolutisme fut définitivement installé : Néron devient, de fait, un héros de l’histoire de la tyrannie doublé d’un assassin politique baroque, autrement dit une référence pour la définition du concept de tyrannie au XVIIe siècle. Les seules limites de son pouvoir seront Junie et Dieu, profondément unis à la fin de la pièce pour faire obstacle aux agissements de celui qui est engagé dans le Mal, et pour toujours, mais qui, ici, débute seulement sa carrière de monstre.5

Il importe de faire deux remarques dans ce contexte. D’abord, il n’est pas certain que le portrait de Néron en tant que tyran, criminel et, plus tard, persécuteur, soit historiquement exact, parce que son image mythique a, entre autres, été engendrée par les écrits des premiers chrétiens et par les portraits de Tacite et de Suétone qui furent à leur tour les sources principales pour Racine.6 Deuxièmement, Racine avait dramaturgiquement besoin de la tyrannie de Néron : sans la naissance de ce monstre il n’y aurait pas eu de tragédie ni de réflexion sur la légitimité politique. La mythistoire de l’Empire romain Une grande partie de l’organisation concrète et de l’iconographie visuelle de l’Ancien Régime est fondée sur l’Empire romain. L’image de l’Imperium donne à l’autorité royale une emblématique, une cohérence. Elle lui offre de nouveau un corps symbolique complet qui excède les ambitions territoriales et mercantilistes. L’Imperium fut pour l’autorité royale “une manière originale de penser le temps, l’histoire et la politique.”7

5 Christian Biet, “Racine et le roi : Histoire, tragédie, historiographie,” in M.-C. Canova-Green, Racine et l’Histoire, colloque de Londres, PFSCL, Biblio 17, 155 (2004) : 17–36. 6 Se référer à Claude Aziza, Néron : Le mal aimé de l’histoire (Paris, 2006). 7 Apostolidès, Le Roi-machine, p. 67.

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En même temps, cet exemple historique procure au souverain un modèle, un idéal qui ne fut pas le sien mais qui est pourtant présenté comme tel au peuple. Le souverain s’approprie donc de ce modèle pour légitimer sa propre autonomie ; il se procure une légitimité incontestable pour sa propre autorité : “en s’affirmant héritiers présomptifs de l’empire romain, les monarques absolus se doivent de réaliser un idéal de gouvernement existant en dehors d’eux, doué d’une matérialité et d’une objectivité perceptibles par tous. L’autonomie du modèle historique justifie à leurs yeux l’autonomie de leur politique.”8 L’Empire romain donnera donc à la monarchie absolue française l’occasion de se doter de sa propre histoire mythologique, de ses propres ancêtres, de sa propre mythistoire. C’est précisément cette ambition historicisante qui explique la fascination de la monarchie absolue française pour l’Empire romain. La technologie politique de l’empire ne fonctionnait pas seulement comme un modèle politique et idéologique, mais devait contaminer, pénétrer dans l’imagination populaire (de là venaient les préoccupations iconographiques et théâtrales du régime). Le lien entre la réalité politique et le monde imaginaire devait être resserré à l’aide de cette mythistoire. Jean-Marie Apostolidès décrit d’ailleurs comment le roi change la nature de sa propre présence théâtrale, du roi-machiniste en roi-machine. Dans une première phase, le roi met en scène son propre personnage, dans toutes sortes de divertissements, et sa propre dominance culturelle dans un nombre de rôles allégoriques. Vers 1670, il semble opter pour une autre stratégie, parce que son apparence physique ne correspond plus à son image publique qu’il désire garder intacte. Par l’intermédiaire de toute une iconographie (statues, peintures) qui ne demande plus sa présence physique, il essaie donc de contaminer l’imagination populaire, en fixant sa représentation idéalisée dans la culture visuelle d’alors. Dans ce but, il se crée avec Versailles un nouveau contexte théâtral qui n’a plus besoin d’un référent historique (Rome comme métaphore de la grandeur de l’Ancien Régime) mais qui se présente comme un référent autonome et autoréférentiel. Avant cette rérorientation par contre (la première de Britannicus coïncide avec la construction du Château neuf à Versailles), Louis XIV a donc pu écrire sa propre histoire mythologique en faisant référence dans sa propre représentation à des exemples historiques très concrets,

8

Ibid., p. 66.

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c’est-à-dire la figure d’Auguste, en donnant au mythe une image concrète sans simplement l’imiter, en inventant sa propre théatralisation : Louis XIV n’est pas la réincarnation d’Auguste, il n’est pas non plus le roi de France voulant imiter l’empereur romain ; il devient [mes italiques] Louis-Auguste, un nouveau personnage projeté dans une dimension autre qui associe le présent au passé, le mythe à l’histoire.9

Volker Schröder indique à juste titre qu’Auguste joue de cette façon un rôle important dans Britannicus, en tant que point de référence mythique : Auguste représente en effet, dans Britannicus, un point de référence absolu en tant que fondateur divinisé de l’empire, une origine plus mythique qu’historique de laquelle découle une légitimité à la fois politique et morale.10

Bien que cette référence soit donc principalement mythique, elle a des effets et un impact bien réels et elle structure la vie politique et morale à un niveau très concret. L’état d’exception D’une manière surprenante, Britannicus est très proche du Trauerspiel silésien, notamment dans la façon dont la pièce traite la problématique de la succession souveraine, qu’elle déconstruit et démasque comme une fiction. Quand Romain Jobez affirme alors que le Trauerspiel “rejoue dans la représentation les scènes fondatrices du politique en mettant en avant leur caractère construit et fictionnel,” il est peut-être surprenant de constater que Racine, soi-disant en plein classicisme, lève d’une façon analogue le voile sur l’appareil monarchique de Néron en problématisant les lois de primogéniture.11 D’autre part, il ne faut pas exagérer non plus l’aspect critique de la tragédie classique. Comme l’indique Apostolidès, celle-ci est d’abord une re-présentation (au sens littéral du terme) rituelle des origines de la situation actuelle :

Ibid., p. 67. Volker Schröder, “Politique du couple : amour réciproque et légitimité dynastique dans Britannicus,” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises, 49 (1997) : 455–491, ici p. 467. 11 Romain Jobez, La Question de la souveraineté dans la tragédie baroque silésienne (Paris, 2004), p. 12. 9

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[L]e théâtre met constamment en scène l’origine de la situation présente, il revient au moment de la fondation de l’Etat pour la célébrer comme un instant unique, religieux, à partir duquel l’histoire présente s’est instaurée. La représentation théâtrale devient rituelle, elle réactualise la genèse de la monarchie, insistant sur le moment où plusieurs solutions s’offrent : in illo tempore.12

C’est néanmoins en représentant ces différentes solutions que le théâtre classique et Britannicus en particulier pourraient avoir une fonction critique dans le sens foucaldien : en pensant ce qui est impensable, en formulant une réflexion critique sur l’organisation concrète de la société, organisation sur laquelle la monarchie a bien sûr une influence déterminante, en montrant le statut contingent d’un certain cadre de référence et en étant donc historiciste dans le sens brechtien du terme. Dans toute réflexion sur la souveraineté, la notion d’état d’exception devrait jouer un rôle crucial. Ce terme est au cœur de la Théologie politique de Carl Schmitt et pourrait être défini comme la capacité (du souverain de n’importe quel type) de se mettre en dehors de la loi pour rétablir l’autorité de l’état. Schmitt considère cet état d’exception comme le privilège principal du souverain et le formule ainsi de façon lapidaire : “est souverain qui décide de l’état d’exception.”13 Le concept central de la terminologie schmittienne est celui de la sécularisation, la transformation métaphorique de termes et de catégories théologiques en concepts politiques. Le concept politique du roi-berger est ainsi une sécularisation juridique d’une notion christo-religieuse, comme l’est aussi la métaphore du mariage mystique entre le roi et l’Etat : “la vieille métaphore du mariage mystique unissant l’évêque à son siège est reprise pour définir les liens entre le Roi et l’Etat, ce dernier étant lui-même interprété comme un corps mystique.”14 Le souverain obtient la possibilité d’effectuer des miracles en proclamant l’état d’exception. Schmitt situe l’origine du contenu juridique de la souveraineté en dehors de la rationalité, il refuse ainsi à l’individu l’autonomie de pensée en dehors de Dieu : le vrai souverain, c’est exactement Dieu, l’individu ne joue qu’un rôle d’importance mineure. Selon Schmitt c’est d’abord le roi qui décide de la normalité d’une situation, de ce qui est juridiquement correct : le droit est donc une

Apostolidès, Le Prince sacrifié, p. 10. Carl Schmitt, Théologie politique, trad. Jean-Louis Schlegel (Paris, 1922/1988), p. 23. 14 Apostolidès, Le Prince Sacrifié, p. 12. 12

13

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donnée fondamentalement contextuelle. Comme le dit Schmitt : “pour créer le droit, il n’est nul besoin d’être dans son droit.”15 Selon Romain Jobez, l’essence du Trauerspiel se trouve bien là : [A]insi le principe dramaturgique du Trauerspiel reposerait sur l’incapacité du souverain à proclamer cet état d’exception : soit il devient tyrannique et perd tout sens commun, soit il se transforme en victime et meurt en martyr.16

De nouveau, Britannicus s’avère avoir des affinités importantes avec la dramaturgie politique du Trauerspiel, puisque le spectateur se trouve confronté à l’irrationalité croissante de Néron, empereur qui n’arrive pas à gérer son empire. Au risque de généraliser la problématique et d’omettre des différences importantes entre le Trauerspiel et Britannicus, on pourrait conclure que Néron est un souverain baroque. Le statut éclaté du souverain—qui porte toujours en lui un tyran—fait intégralement partie de la théâtralité baroque. La tragédie baroque nous montre un roi dont les états affectifs changent constamment et d’une façon quasi incontrôlable sous l’influence d’impulsions physiques ; la constance n’est nullement un trait baroque. L’absolutisme monarchique, qui est en effet la dernière étape dans l’interprétation moderne de la souveraineté, est—pour le moins—une catégorie politique au statut assez paradoxal.17 En tant qu’état d’exception, il tente de rationaliser sa base juridique en niant cette base même, c’est-à-dire, son statut d’état d’exception.18 La souveraineté fait usage d’un cadre juridique dans le seul but de légitimer sa négation de ce même cadre. Autrement dit : le souverain, qui dispose du pouvoir législatif de mettre la loi hors service, se place lui-même en dehors de la loi. Ce pouvoir est d’ailleurs parfaitement légal, sauf s’il transgresse une loi fondamentale directement liée à la couronne (loi d’indisponibilité de la couronne, loi salique, loi de catholicité).19 La monarchie absolue

Schmitt, Théologie politique, p. 60. Jobez, La Question de la souveraineté, p. 14. 17 Nous utilisons ici le terme dans le sens foucaldien, qui est différent de l’interprétation de Hobbes ou de Rousseau pour qui la souveraineté serait d’abord liée à un peuple et serait l’essence même de la modernité (ce qui n’est pas le cas pour Foucault). 18 Pour Claude Lefort, le totalitarisme et la démocratie se distinguent dans la mesure où ils occupent la place du pouvoir. Dans un régime totalitaire la place du pouvoir est symboliquement ancrée dans et représentée par le corps du roi. Dans une démocratie par contre, l’espace du pouvoir est vide, le pouvoir n’ayant pas une seule incarnation physique. Le lieu du pouvoir n’est occupé que symboliquement. 19 Christian Biet, La Tragédie (Paris, 1996), pp. 92–93. 15 16

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est donc une fiction, une construction, une métaphore, la légitimité du roi n’étant basée que sur une mystique théologico-politique. Celui qui possède les clefs de ce régime métaphorique, pourra donc accéder à l’autorité politique. Il est important de noter dans ce contexte que Walter Benjamin défend une proposition tout autre. Selon Benjamin, la première tâche du souverain consisterait à rendre cet état d’exception impossible.20 Le philosophe italien Giorgio Agamben établit une distinction nette entre ce qu’il appelle la zoë (la vie naturelle, le fonctionnement animal de tout être vivant) et le bios (la forme de vie culturelle, la vie politisée à l’intérieur de la polis ou d’une société). Les notions foucaldiennes d’assujettissement individuel (anatomopolitique) ou collectif (biopolitique) renvoient à la première de ces situations et sont, formulées d’une façon lapidaire, la politisation de la zoë. L’état d’exception—que seul le souverain a le privilège de proclamer et d’annuler—n’est pas l’état naturel (l’état zoë ) qui précède le contrat social : il est toujours présent de manière latente, en tant que possibilité du pouvoir souverain, au cœur de chaque système politique, dans chaque ordre étatique.21 Britannicus rend cet état latent de nouveau visible, en montrant un roi qui utilise sa souveraineté pour se mettre en dehors de la loi. Dans Homo Sacer, qui est en premier lieu une réflexion sur la souveraineté et la nationalité au vingtième siècle, Agamben affirme que l’état d’exception n’est plus un état latent : l’état d’exception est devenu règle.22 Néron : typologie d’un tyran Dans son cours “Il faut défendre la société” (repris dans le volume consacré au cours du Collège de France en 1976), Michel Foucault insiste lui aussi sur le fait que la tragédie classique et la tragédie racinienne ne peuvent pas être réduites à une simple confirmation du status quo politique. Au contraire, affirme-t-il, la tragédie racinienne nous confronte au revers de la médaille politique, à l’aspect humain et donc obscur du pouvoir monarchique : 20 “[ W]hile Schmitt views the state of exception as the condition sine qua non for the establishment of sovereignty, Benjamin sees sovereignty as existing in order to avoid the state of exception in the first place.” Horst Bredekamp, “From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt via Thomas Hobbes,” in Critical Inquiry 25 (1999), p. 260. 21 Lieven de Cauter, De capsulaire beschaving (Rotterdam, 2004), p. 165. 22 Giorgio Agamben, État d’exception (Paris, 2003), p. 26.

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karel vanhaesebrouck La tragédie classique, la tragédie racinienne que fait-elle ? Elle a pour fonction, c’est en tout cas un de ses axes, de constituer l’envers de la cérémonie, de montrer la cérémonie déchirée, le moment où le détenteur de la puissance publique, le souverain se décompose peu à peu en homme de passion, en homme de colère, en homme de vengeance, en homme d’amour, d’inceste, etc.23

En effet, la tragédie racinienne—et Britannicus en particulier—confronte son spectateur au moment où le souverain ne peut, ni ne veut plus être souverain, le moment où il décide de renoncer à sa fonction politique et de (re)devenir un homme. Racine nous montre à travers sa tragédie l’aspect problématique, le court-circuit de la mise en scène monarchique, le revers de la ritualisation politique. Dès lors que le roi ne peut plus renoncer à son intérêt personnel, il devient tyran : le corps privé anéantit le corps étatique. C’est exactement là que se trouve la tragédie de Néron. Le tyran agit par calcul, fait de ses propres désirs une priorité au détriment des exigences de la royauté. Il devient donc le metteur en scène de sa propre histoire et de l’histoire de Rome, et il est un metteur en scène qui, dans son état de véritable machiavéliste, met en place les conditions nécessaires à l’actualisation de sa libido dominandi, qui est le vrai moteur de sa passion amoureuse. En se libérant graduellement de l’étreinte incestueuse de sa mère, en se dégageant de la tutelle politique de sa mère régente et de tout autre conseil politique (Burrhus), Néron perd sa majesté, son rôle de souverain dans le sens foucaldien du terme : il entre dans le mal. La distinction entre le corps privé d’un roi et le rôle politique du Roi, c’est-à-dire son rôle en tant que monarque, forme le point de départ théorique du magnum opus de l’historien Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies.24 Cette même distinction entre fonction et personne est au cœur de la structure dramaturgique de Britannicus, qui est donc en premier lieu un compte-rendu de la naissance d’un tyran : Néron n’arrive plus à réconcilier sa fonction impériale et donc publique avec ses propres passions.25 Il l’exprime lui-même d’une façon saillante :

Foucault, Il faut défendre la société, p. 157. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (1953; repr. Princeton, 1997). 25 Dans son étude sociodiscursive des tragédies raciniennes Gilles Revaz nous montre que cette distinction conceptuelle entre le roi et le Roi correspond à deux types de discours nettement différents. Le Roi, en tant qu’entité politique, se sert de la stratégie discursive de l’ordre : “cette stratégie se réalise [. . .] dans une structure discursive de type argumentatif, dans une argumentation politique, donc par le biais du genre délibératif 23

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Je vous croirai, Burrhus, lorsque dans les alarmes Il faudra soutenir la gloire de nos armes, Ou lorsque plus tranquille assis dans le Sénat Il faudra décider du destin de l’Etat : Je m’en reposerai sur votre expérience. Mais, croyez-moi, l’Amour est une autre science, Burrhus, et je ferais quelque difficulté D’abaisser jusque-là votre sévérité.26

Ce décalage ne peut que donner lieu à un court-circuit politique et émotionnel, un court-circuit qui touchera tous les personnages entourant Néron ( Junie, Britannicus), mais qui finit par contaminer aussi sa propre fonction politique et son rôle étatique. Comme nous l’indique Kantorowicz, la monarchie absolue est fondée sur l’identification du pouvoir souverain avec la figure du monarque comme père de son peuple. Grâce “à ce double statut”, qui est en même temps physique et théologique, le souverain pourra simultanément établir les conditions pour l’identification du peuple avec son souverain et maintenir la distance nécessaire à toute autorité. Cette dualité est rendue possible à travers ce double statut du roi. La notion des King’s Two Bodies a une origine explicitement religieuse et théologique et pourrait être considérée comme une sécularisation de la distinction catholique entre Jésus et le Christ, processus qui a été décrit en détail par Schmitt. Le roi incarnerait ainsi une personne jumelle (gemina persona) comparable au Christ, une personne qui serait alors Dieu et homme, selon le principe “una persona, duae naturae.” En suivant cette piste de réflexion il faut néanmoins tenir compte d’une différence importante entre ces deux entités, dont l’une serait religieuse et l’autre politique : Jésus fut Roi et Christ par nature, le roi n’est que Roi par la grâce de Dieu. La distinction entre la fonction et la personne royale fut d’une importance capitale pour toute réflexion ultérieure sur le rôle du de la rhétorique classique. Par conséquent, un acte illocutaire important de cette stratégie est l’acte de conseiller” (La Représentation de la monarchie absolue dans le théâtre racinien : Analyses sociodiscursives (Paris, 1998), p. 193). Il est donc bien important de noter que le pouvoir monarchique réside non seulement dans le corps physique du roi, mais qu’il peut aussi bien être présent dans—ou au moins être influencé par—les personnages qui l’entourent. Narcisse en est un exemple bien clair. L’amant au contraire—dans le contexte de Britannicus, le roi est d’abord amant—ce sert d’un discours de type interrogatif : “Le discours de l’amant, par opposition à celui du Roi, est irrationnel. Il est construit sur un type de phrases—et non de textes (comme c’est le cas pour la stratégie du Roi) récurrentes, à savoir le type interrogatif ” (p. 194). 26 Racine, Britannicus, 3.1.791–798 dans Jean Racine, Œuvres Complètes, éd. G. Forestier (Paris, 2002).

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souverain. En effet, cette distinction fut au treizième siècle à la base de la conviction que l’empereur Frédéric II doit non seulement décréter les lois, mais qu’il est, lui aussi, soumis à ces lois. : il est pater et filius justitiae. En temps de guerre, le roi est de la même façon censé mettre son corps à la disposition du Roi. Néron, par contre, semble sombrer dans la mélancolie et l’immobilisme, dans un état qui semble nier toute superstructure divine. Selon Romain Jobez la mélancolie serait une caractéristique typique du souverain baroque, et serait le résultant du court-circuit qu’éprouve le souverain au moment où il ne peut plus accorder ses passions avec ses responsabilités politiques : [I]l n’y a [. . .] pas de souveraineté positive : incapable d’agir et de proclamer l’état d’exception le souverain sombre soit dans la dépression et meurt d’incomplétude, souffrant de mélancolie que Benjamin identifie comme une maladie baroque typique.27

Bien que Néron ne soit pas un souverain baroque et que Britannicus ne soit pas un Trauerspiel silésien, il est bien évident que c’est la même mélancolie dont souffre Néron, mélancolie qui le mènera dans une phase ultérieure à la folie. Contrairement au héros antique, Néron ne sait pas transformer cette mélancolie en productivité mais il sombre dans la rage et la folie, sans réussir à contrôler ses propres passions. Cette tension continue entre fonction et personne forme la base dramaturgique de toute tragédie baroque. Le public, quant à lui, se trouve confronté à un souverain impuissant, délirant, qui symbolise néanmoins le pouvoir monarchique. C’est une contradiction qui confond et fascine. Walter Benjamin la décrit de la manière suivante : Ce qui ne cesse de me fasciner dans la chute finale du tyran, c’est la contradiction que l’époque ressent entre l’impuissance, la dépravation de sa personne et la foi absolue dans le pouvoir sacro-saint de sa fonction.28

Mais là où le Trauerspiel essaie de se défaire de la mélancolie médiévale qui fut d’abord associée à la folie, Britannicus semble reprendre cette logique. Depuis la Renaissance, le prince mélancolique a été un topos préféré des arts. Comme dans le Trauerspiel et comme dans Britannicus, cette

Jobez, p. 45. Walter Benjamin, Origine du drame baroque allemand (Paris, 1985), p. 74 (cité dans Jobez, p. 47). 27 28

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mélancolie est causée par le conflit continu entre l’image publique et le revers de cette image qui est pathologique aussi bien que héroïque. De plus, cette mélancolie implique toujours un retour dans le temps ou—comme le dit Jean-Pierre Sarrazac—un détour à un lieu archaïque.29 Laurence Giavarani remarque : [L]a manducation mélancolique des personnages raciniens fait de la mimesis tragique un retour vers un lieu archaïque qu’il convient peut-être de lire comme un lieu historique.30

Pour le prince mélancolique, l’amour est toujours une forme de pathologie qui prend en première instance la forme d’un fantasme. Et c’est bien pour cette raison que Néron est obsédé par l’image fantôme du couple amoureux de Junie et Britannicus : “nul mieux que le mélancolique n’est capable chez Racine de se figurer l’union du couple rival dans la temporalité dont il est exclu.”31 Néron fait de ses fantasmes le revers de sa représentation politique et sape ainsi son propre absolutisme : le roi Néron contamine le Roi. Le rêve est donc en premier lieu un moyen de montrer ce qui ne pourrait pas être montré en réalité, il est un état qui permet à l’homme dormant ou sombrant d’être sans responsabilité. En effet, l’homme vit une fiction, et peut, de ce fait, être comparé au spectateur de théâtre. Néron par contre, décide de transformer son rêve en réalité, d’actualiser son fantasme. La transgression qu’il exécute est donc double. Non seulement raconte-t-il, montre-t-il son fantasme au moyen d’alexandrins, mais il le réalise effectivement. La scène devient ainsi le lieu où on peut s’imaginer ce qu’on ne peut ni dire ni faire. Elle est à la fois locus de réflexion politique—pensons aux allusions aux problèmes de la primogéniture—et lieu de transgression, lieu où le spectateur se laisse tenter par un certain charme de transgression, charme qui menait le libertin Saint-Réal à proposer que non la catharsis aristotélicienne, mais le simple plaisir d’assister au mal serait donc le principal moteur de la réception théâtrale. Ni le rêve ni le théâtre n’auraient donc un but moralisant. Au contraire, leur première raison d’être serait la transmission du simple plaisir de voir (et, ne l’oublions pas, d’être vu), d’assister, à travers les alexandrins, Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, Jeux de rêves et autres détours (Belval, 2004), p. 14. Laurence Giavarani, “Mélancolie du prince, héroïsme et représentation dans la tragédie racinienne,” in Gilles Declercq, Michèle Rosselini (dir.), Jean Racine 1699–1999 : Actes du colloque du tricentenaire (25–30 mai 1999) (Paris, 2003), pp. 543–569, ici p. 548. 31 Christian Biet, “Rêver, peut-être . . . Tragédie, rêve et fantasme au XVIIe siècle,” manuscrit dactylographié. 29 30

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à la joie qu’apporte ce fantasme au public qui s’imagine à son tour cette scène fantasmée ; Néron partage son fantasme, ce moment de transgression, avec un public qui est coprésent. La pratique théâtrale se montre donc une pratique fondamentalement sociale, qui s’inscrit, via l’histoire, dans l’actualité, pour en discuter, et pour l’analyser. Elle fait en même temps directement appel, via le personnage de Néron, au désir de voir du spectateur. Une représentation de Britannicus est avant tout une forme de sociabilité. Le détour juridique et la primogéniture Britannicus ne traite non seulement de problèmes politiques de nature générale, tels que les questions de la souveraineté ou la tyrannie, la tragédie fut en même temps un locus d’expérimentation juridique. En effet, dans son cours “Il faut défendre la société” Michel Foucault attire l’attention sur l’affinité mutuelle entre la tragédie et le droit : Je vois donc que la tragédie Shakespearienne est, par un des axes au moins, une sorte de cérémonie, de rituel de re-mémorisation des problèmes du droit public. On pourrait dire la même chose de la tragédie française, celle de Corneille et peut-être plus encore celle de Racine, justement ?32

La tragédie met donc en scène les problèmes juridiques, propose des solutions alternatives à des problèmes que le droit ne peut pas encore résoudre : la scène fonctionne ainsi comme un lieu expérimental de réflexion juridique. Ces problèmes ne sont généralement pas mis en scène d’une façon directe, mais les auteurs se servent d’un détour historique (l’Antiquité, la mythistoire romaine) ou géographique (l’Orient).33 Ce détour se prêtait particulièrement bien à toute réflexion sur le droit monarchique en général et les droits de succession en particulier. [L]e droit monarchique au dix-septième siècle en France et surtout sous Louis XIV, se donne, par sa forme et même par la continuité de son histoire, comme se situant en ligne directe par rapport aux monarchies antiques.34

Foucault, Il faut défendre la société, p. 155. Ce détour n’est bien sur pas le privilège de la tragédie classique. Les tragédies sanglantes de la fin du seizième et du début du dix-septième siècle par exemple appliquent conséquemment cette stratégie en utilisant le passé lointain et archaïque pour commenter la réalité contemporaine. 34 Foucault, Il faut défendre la société, p. 155. 32 33

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La tragédie donne donc corps à la tension permanente entre ces références à l’antiquité d’une part et la cour, lieu de sociabilité contemporaine, d’autre part. La cour fonctionne alors comme une institution qui tente de restreindre l’effet, le pouvoir tragique de la tragédie, de pousser cette tragédie en direction de la galanterie et de l’intrigue limpide. La cour se donne ainsi beaucoup de mal à installer la souveraineté, en tant qu’idée et concept juridique, dans une action quotidienne en la ritualisant, en la remettant en scène jour après jour. La tragédie y propose en contre-partie un lieu de réflexion et d’expérimentation, en représentant des alternatives, des other possible worlds. De cette façon, la tragédie devient le locus idéal pour une analyse critique du système juridique existant. Jean-Marie Apostolidès signale d’ailleurs que ces textes furent souvent écrits par des auteurs de formation juridique : à la manière des légistes qui tentaient d’adapter le droit romain aux besoins du dixseptième siècle,35 eux aussi adaptaient les drames grecs et romains à la situation contemporaine : Les auteurs dramatiques possèdent en commun une formation juridique ; c’est-à-dire qu’en se consacrant à l’art, ils passent du droit romain à la littérature de l’antiquité, et qu’ils reportent sur ce dernier domaine des habitudes acquises dans l’étude du droit. Dit autrement, les poètes du XVIIe siècle adaptent à la situation contemporaine les drames grecs et romains de la même façon que les légistes ont adapté depuis le XIIIe siècle, le code justinien aux problèmes posés par l’émergence de l’état.36

La tragédie devient ainsi un exercice intellectuel qui problématise et représente des problèmes auxquels le droit n’a pas encore trouvé et formulé de solution adéquate. Cette réflexion, que les spectateurs considéraient comme nécessaire et intéressante, portait en premier lieu sur les lois de souveraineté, elle interrogeait les lois qui procuraient au roi ses pouvoirs : Social issues like attitudes towards primogeniture, problems of dynastic succession, and the development of capitalist ethic based on competition in the present and a relative disregard for tradition are woven into the fabric of seventeenth-century French tragedy, and that consequently the

35 Le principe date de la fin du bas Moyen Age et c’est donc pour cette raison qu’il fut si souvent problématisé au dix-septième siècle. 36 Apostolidès, Le Prince sacrifié, p. 28.

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karel vanhaesebrouck viewing public for whom these playwrights wrote was highly sensitized to these issues.37

La problématique de la succession royale—et celle de la primogéniture38 en particulier—est bien évidemment au cœur de la tragédie racinienne. Dans La Thébaïde par exemple, l’auteur confronte la légitimité populaire (celle du démagogue) à la légitimité du sang. Bien que Racine semble sanctionner la première, il ne fait pas pour autant triompher la seconde : sa conclusion est donc moins univoque qu’on ne le penserait. Britannicus est, comme l’indique Volker Schröder, en premier lieu une tragédie dynastique, qui s’appuie d’une façon concentrée sur la problématique de la primogéniture, proposant à ses spectateurs une réflexion nuancée sur la loi salique. Racine semble accentuer la descendance de Britannicus, en son rôle de fils de Claudius plutôt qu’en tant que successeur ab intestat d’Auguste, le souverain idéal. [L]a légitimité dynastique de Britannicus est donc fondée non pas sur le rapport lointain avec l’aïeul, fondateur de l’empire, mais sur le rapport immédiat avec le père, précédent empereur.39

La question cruciale serait alors la suivante : le fait que Britannicus est le fils de Claudius, suffit-il pour donner plus de droits à Britannicus qu’à Néron qui est non seulement le fils adoptif de Claudius—l’adoption étant une coutume bien régulière à l’époque romaine—mais aussi, contrairement à Britannicus, un descendant direct d’Auguste, le souverain archétype ? Bien que Racine semble privilégier, comme le faisait sans doute son public, Britannicus et donc la légitimité du sang qui fut aussi au cœur même de la monarchie absolue,40 il utilise le personnage de Burrhus pour formuler la logique alternative en défendant Néron en tant que fils adoptif de Claudius et descendant d’Auguste (cf. les vers 860–866). De plus, il est bien significatif que Racine ait mis ces mots dans la bouche de Burrhus et non dans celle de Narcisse, qui est quand

37 Richard E. Goodkin, Birth Marks: The Tragedy of Primogeniture in Pierre Corneille, Thomas Corneille, and Jean Racine (Philadelphia, 2000), p. xi. 38 Ce n’est qu’à la fin du Moyen Age que l’onction perd sa signification politico-juridique et qu’on développe les lois sur la succession et la primogéniture. On partageait donc la conviction que le Saint Esprit, jusque-là transmis par cette onction, était a priori présent dans le sang royal. 39 Volker Schröder, “Politique du couple,” p. 474. 40 Cf. la remarque très significative d’Agrippine : “je sais, que j’ai moi seule avancé leur ruine,/Que du trône, où le sang l’a dû faire monter/Britannicus par moi s’est vu précipiter” (1.1.60–62).

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même un avocat beaucoup plus fervent de la souveraineté de Néron. Racine a donc voulu que l’autre piste de réflexion soit perçu comme valable et digne de considération. Dans une logique strictement romaine, la descendance de sang ne fut qu’un des facteurs qui déterminaient le choix de tel ou tel empereur, mis à part le testament de l’empereur décédé et le choix du Sénat, de l’armée et du peuple. De plus, l’adoption fut une raison parfaitement acceptable pour l’accession au trône—les précédents sont nombreux dans l’histoire romaine. Dans une logique française par contre, le fait qu’un empereur puisse avoir au moins une influence sur le choix de son successeur, fut impensable : cela serait tout à fait contraire au principe d’indisponibilité du monarque français.41 Bien que Racine présente les deux points de vue comme possibles, il n’y a aucun doute que Racine préférait la logique française à la logique romaine : il y a donc bel et bien un décalage entre le niveau descriptif et le niveau évaluatif. [L]a tragédie montre qu’il n’est de bonne monarchie que celle où la succession au trône est réglée par un critère indiscutable, tel celui de la primogéniture.42

L’exercice intellectuel que Racine entreprend avec son Britannicus est néanmoins un fait significatif et montre que la tragédie classique et plus spécifiquement la tragédie racinienne sont plus qu’une simple émanation d’un assujettissement croissant au cadre idéologique et politique dominant et que les tragédies témoignent de la mobilité sociale ascendante et d’une critique de la primogéniture qui résonnera de plus en plus fort : “the ambiguity about power transmitted in Britannicus reflects the changing nature of French society.”43 En effet, Racine a greffé sa tragédie romaine sur la réalité politique de l’Ancien Régime et sur ses propres problèmes politiques. Le genre de la tragédie de l’époque de Racine est étroitement lié au contexte plus large dans lequel la tragédie a été écrite—et jouée. Chaque tragédie reflète à la fois des changements socio-économiques et des changements

41 Il est dans ce contexte certes très significatif de constater que même pour Néron la règle de la primogéniture est la règle principale pour la succession impériale, lorsqu’il se soucie du fait qu’Octavia ne lui a pas encore offert d’enfant : “Le Ciel même en secret semble la condamner./Ses vœux depuis quatre ans ont beau l’importuner./Les Dieux ne montrent point que sa vertu les touche :/D’aucun gage, Narcisse, ils n’honorent sa couche./L’empire vainement demande un héritier” (2.2.469–473). 42 Schröder, “Politique du couple,” p. 479. 43 Goodkin, Birth Marks, p. 173.

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de mentalité dans une interaction complexe entre microhistoire (le système théâtral) et macrohistoire (l’histoire contextuelle). L’ambiguïté qui entoure le transfert du pouvoir politique dans Britannicus—dans les autres tragédies sur le même sujet il n’est pas question de cette ‘inconsistance’—met à nu les questions socio-politiques de l’époque sur la succession, la parenté et l’adoption, étudiées moins en détail par d’Aubignac et bien d’autres dont le commentaire politique se limitait à un plaidoyer implicite pour un status quo de la monarchie absolue. C’est tout à fait à dessein que Racine n’a pas suivi les coutumes romaines en la matière. Pour les Romains, la parenté constituait certes une donnée importante, qui ne menait cependant pas automatiquement à la succession. Par contre, la parenté en tant que critère indispensable pour l’accès immédiat au trône a toujours été une notion cruciale à travers l’histoire française. Pour les Romains, l’adoption était plutôt règle qu’exception, pour les Français ceci n’était pas le cas. C’est grâce à cette seule raison, dans la logique interne de la pièce même, que Britannicus peut revendiquer le trône, parce qu’il est le seul successeur légitime pouvant se vanter d’une véritable parenté avec Claudius. Dans le système politique de la France du XVIIe, Britannicus était donc le successeur légitime (son lien avec Junie, qui peut invoquer à son tour sa descendance proche à la gens légitimement héritier du pouvoir, légitimait cette revendication). Dans un contexte romain par contre, ce droit à la succession n’aurait été une certitude : en tant que fils adopté, Néron aurait eu les mêmes droits. En effet, c’était Agrippine—non seulement veuve de Domitius, le père de Néron, et, en secondes noces, veuve de l’empereur Claudius, mais elle-même descendante d’une gens puissante parce qu’elle fut la petite-fille de Julie, qui fut à son tour la fille unique du légendaire Auguste—qui avait mis Néron sur le trône, en convaincant Claudius de l’adoption de Néron et en liant Néron à Octavie, elle-même fille de Claudius, comme le formule à juste titre Burrhus lors de son entretien avec Agrippine : Madame, c’est un Fils, qui succède à son Père, En adoptant Néron, Claudius par son choix De son Fils et du vôtre a confondu les droits. (3.3.860–862)

L’adoption de Néron par Claudius fit que Néron fut non seulement le frère de Britannicus, comme le voulait le droit romain, mais qu’il fut aussi le successeur légitime de Claudius, puisqu’il fut l’aîné de ce même frère. Bien que Racine n’esquisse qu’à grands traits les deux options politiques, il semble montrer une préférence pour le modèle français. Comme l’explique Volker Schröder :

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[L]a tragédie non seulement donne à voir qu’il n’est pas bon prince que par le droit de succession, mais elle montre encore qu’il n’est pas de bonne monarchie que celle où la succession au trône est réglée par un critère indiscutable, tel celui de la primogéniture.44

Ainsi, Néron fonctionne comme un exemple négatif des conséquences d’un tel choix en matière de succession. Le vice de Néron serait alors la conséquence directe des fondations pourries de la monarchie impériale. C’est au moins ce que Racine, dans la vision de Schröder, semble suggérer. La scène tragique est donc en premier lieu un lieu de doute organisé, un lieu d’expérience politico-philosophique, où on montre la transgression même des catégories politiques existantes, transgression à laquelle un public assiste avec plaisir. Le contenu et la portée de ce lieu sont fondamentalement déterminés par le contexte dans lequel ces représentations fonctionnent, parce que c’est précisément cette interférence entre une pratique et un contexte qui indique ce qui est pensable et ce qui ne l’est pas. Cette interférence détermine d’ailleurs dans une large mesure les limites mêmes des implications politiques d’une représentation théâtrale. Bien que Racine montre le vice de Néron, ce vice est psychologiquement et non politiquement expliqué, le contexte institutionnel ayant donc une influence immédiate sur la pratique.45 Le problème de Néron n’est pas politique (c’est au moins ce que suggère Racine), sa légitimité politique n’est pas contestée, ses motivations sont d’ordre psychologique. Ce n’est qu’ainsi que le contexte institutionnel de la séance peut tolérer la représentation de cette transgression. En même temps, ce détour, à la fois psychologique et historique, permet à Racine de contourner ces limitations institutionnelles (n’oublions pas que, avec Racine, on se trouve au cœur même du champ artistique en cours de constitution) et de montrer l’impensable.

Schröder, “Politique du couple,” p. 479. Le contexte du dix-septième siècle est par exemple différent de celui du théâtre antique grec qui fait partie de l’habitus démocratique et civil et qui se trouve au cœur même des débats politiques. Le théâtre fonctionne alors comme prétexte à un débat politique plutôt qu’à une séance sociale. Ainsi il se fait que les problèmes de Chréon, contrairement à ceux de Néron, sont d’abord d’ordre politique et non psychologique, le contexte institutionnel étant de tout autre nature. 44 45

PART THREE

TRAGEDY AND MODERNITY

MODERNITY IN HÖLDERLIN’S REMARKS ON OEDIPUS AND ANTIGONE Frans van Peperstraten (Universiteit van Tilburg) Introduction It is remarkable that many authors treat the question of the relationship between tragedy and modernity as if we know what we are talking about on either side of this relationship: what tragedy is, on the one hand, and what modernity is, on the other. The only question that remains, then, is which aspects of tragedy are still effective in modernity. But what if we have to acknowledge that, actually, both sides are uncertain? For first of all, what do we have in mind when we say ‘tragedy’? Even if we are well informed and base our notion of tragedy on Aristotle’s classical description of it in his Poetics, it might still be that some of us refer to a play that brings about the catharsis of fear and pity in the spectators, others to the depiction of the reversal from fortune to misfortune that life may have in store for any of us, whereas still others may have a more general tragic sense of life in mind that is supposed to be typical of Greek antiquity. Still less do we know what modernity is, in my view. Is it rationality, is it democracy, is it technology, or is it a little bit of all of these? Is it just everything that comes after 1750? I think that even today it is not certain what modernity is and that we are still in the midst of a struggle about its definition. And what if the question in itself is circular, in the sense that what we think tragedy is depends on what we think modernity is—and vice versa? Thus, differences of opinion about what tragedy is, even if we limit ourselves to classical Greek tragedy, do not just stem from different approaches in academic scholarship devoted to a closed subject, but they are at least also related to the ongoing struggle about what modernity is. The interpretation of tragedy is a struggle about modernity, about who we are and who we are going to be. For us, in 2008, this situation has become even more complicated, because we can hardly refer to Greek tragedy without taking notice of the interpretations of it that came about some two hundred years ago. I am thinking of Schelling, Hegel and Hölderlin. Indeed, their work

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belongs to the opening stages of modernity, while at the same time it clearly displays the first great struggle about the interpretation of Greek tragedy—and in particular of the tragedies written by Sophocles. Later modern readings of Greek tragedy have to deal with these early modern interpretations, or, in other words, more recent readings are necessarily also interpretations of these intermediate interpretations. As for these more recent interpretations I am thinking of Heidegger, on the one hand, and the French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940–2007) on the other. Indeed, their views on tragedy result both from a reading of Greek tragedy and from a reflection on the positions taken by Schelling, Hegel, and Hölderlin. Because the interpretations developed by Schelling and Hegel are very similar, I am actually discerning four different readings of Greek tragedy, and therefore also four different views on modernity: 1. The speculative-dialectical reading by Schelling and Hegel: In his Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kriticismus (1795–96), Schelling presented Greek tragedy as the perfect manifestation of the human capacity to bear contradictions. According to Schelling, tragedy thus demonstrates that man is free, even in the presence of the powers of objective reality. This reading of tragedy by Schelling was subsequently endorsed by Hegel. It comprises the idea of a modernity in which the subject becomes absolute. 2. The poetical reading by Hölderlin: In the same period Hölderlin, amongst other things, tried to write a tragedy himself (Empedokles), translated two of the tragedies written by Sophocles (Oedipus der Tyrann and Antigone) and wrote down his reflections on these tragedies (the “Remarks”).1 In Hölderlin’s view, tragedy is structured by the poet around the caesura, which shows that the separation between the divine and the human is inevitable. In Hölderlin we find the idea of a modernity in which myth is counterbalanced by sobriety. 3. The mythical-theological reading by Heidegger: not only did Heidegger submit his own interpretations of Sophocles’s tragedies, but he also studied Hölderlin’s work intensively. According to Heidegger, Hölderlin is the first to have overcome the traditional (“metaphysical”) world

1 One finds these reflections sometimes presented as two separate texts with two different titles (“Remarks on Oedipus” and “Remarks on Antigone”), at other times under a common title (“Remarks on Sophocles”).

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view, at least in his poetry.2 In Heidegger’s idea of modernity the gods are gone, so that no other possibility is left for us than to wait for their return, for a new beginning, supported by a new mythology. 4. The theatrical reading by Lacoue-Labarthe: it is acknowledged by Lacoue-Labarthe that Heidegger presents a frame of thinking with which one can escape from the speculative-dialectical seizure of tragedy. However, Lacoue-Labarthe regards Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin’s work as very one-sided, even as “a revolting mythicaltheological confiscation.”3 In Lacoue-Labarthe’s view, tragedy is first of all theatre, because theatre offers the strongest possible way to present the caesura. Elaborating on Walter Benjamin, LacoueLabarthe discovers in Hölderlin quite another modernity than Heidegger did. This is a modernity that does not lie in wait for a new mythology; rather, it is the modernity of the displacement of myth. I will not discuss the first interpretation of tragedy, so I will focus on Hölderlin, Heidegger and Lacoue-Labarthe. As for the differences between these three readings of tragedy and between the views on modernity that accompany them, it is clear that the evaluation of the place of myth is crucial. Schelling, for that matter, remains an important figure in the background of this discussion. For there is a remarkable correspondence between Schelling and Heidegger: both plead for a new mythology. As far as I know, the idea that a new mythology is necessary is stressed for the first time in “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus,” a text that is attributed to the triumvirate Schelling, Hegel and Hölderlin and purported to have been written around 1796. However, it is Schelling who repeats this call for a new mythology at the end of his System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800). According to Lacoue-Labarthe, the pursuit of a new mythology is an important element of the “Romantic program,” a program further elaborated in different ways by Wagner and Nietzsche, but also by Heidegger.4 I am not suggesting, however, that this call for a new mythology is not modern, or even more generally, that modernity is

2 Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymne “Andenken,” Gesamtausgabe, vol. 52 (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), p. 63. 3 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Métaphrasis suivi de Le Théâtre de Hölderlin (Paris 1998), p. 5. 4 Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger: La politique du poème (Paris 2002), p. 67.

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something opposed to myth. Rather, this call entails a specific view on what modernity is or should be. What I want to show now is that in Hölderlin we certainly also find a modern reading of Greek tragedy, related to a specific view on modernity, and that this view is at odds with Schelling’s and Heidegger’s call for a new mythology. Furthermore, I want to show that Lacoue-Labarthe has a better understanding of Hölderlin’s poetics than Heidegger. The categorical reversal For Heidegger, myth is not just something of the past, but it certainly also belongs to the present and the future. In “The Origin of the Work of Art” (written in 1936), Heidegger defines art as that in which truth is put to work, while at the same time he identifies art with myth. When we look somewhat more closely, Heidegger actually equates art with poetry, poetry with language, and language with a saying in which being is named. This saying is designated as “die Sage,” a German word that is equivalent to the Greek word mythos. Saying, or myth, in Heidegger’s view, is the most original way in which technè takes up its relationship with physis, or, in other words, in which the presentation of beings takes place. Heidegger thus defines saying as the naming that brings out being. Therefore, saying is not speaking about beings that are already there, but is calling them into being.5 In order to elucidate this, Heidegger, refers precisely to tragedy. Tragedy does not mean that a situation existing elsewhere, for instance the struggle between old and new gods, is displayed on the stage. Instead, Heidegger says, this struggle is fought through tragedy: tragedy is this fight between the old and the new gods.6 We see at once that Heidegger places tragedy in a theological framework. Tragedy presents what is divine and sacred, on the one hand, and what is not, on the other. At the same time, saying has a political dimension. Heidegger writes: “In such saying, the concepts of its presence, that is, of its belonging to the history of the world are typified for a historical people.”7 From this, Lacoue-Labarthe infers that, in Heidegger, myth is the way in which a nation inscribes

Martin Heidegger, “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), p. 61 (my translation). 6 Heidegger, “Der Ursprung,” p. 29. 7 Heidegger, “Der Ursprung,” p. 62. 5

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itself in history and appropriates an identity. Heidegger is tempted for a long time to ascribe to the nation a fixed identity appropriated through myth. And if Heidegger is not consistent in his deconstruction of philosophy, it is because of this idea of a specific mythical identity.8 This obstacle, a result of the fact that Heidegger wants to base himself on a specific constellation of myth, gods, nation and history, also determines his reading of Hölderlin. Lacoue-Labarthe’s criticism of Heidegger starts with a very general observation. He says that Heidegger constantly refused to take the concept of mimesis seriously.9 Since I lack the space to elucidate Lacoue-Labarthe’s theory of mimesis fully, I must confine myself to the statement that he criticizes the traditional understanding of mimesis as imitation and that in his view mimesis also comprises invention and production. In other words, mimesis is not representation, but presentation. There is no such thing as reality without mimesis. Reality is always presented reality and this presentation always demands some sort of mimesis. When we apply the notion of mimesis to tragedy, we may conclude that at least a threefold mimesis takes place. First, there is the mimesis leading to the plot of the actions, a plot that is usually laid down in a text. Second, there is the mimesis performed by the actors on the stage, in order to act out the plot. Third, there is the mimesis taking place in the spectators by their empathizing with the plot. These three mimetic processes cannot be separated from each other. Thus, what happens for the spectators remains closely related to the reality depicted in the plot. On this basis, Lacoue-Labarthe formulates a more specific and perhaps surprising criticism of Heidegger. He reproves Heidegger for ignoring theatre, and, therefore, tragedy as theatre.10 Since LacoueLabarthe accuses Heidegger of ignoring both mimesis and theatre, it will come as no surprise that, in Lacoue-Labarthe’s view, there is a close relationship between mimesis and theatre. We may say that theatre is his example par excellence of what happens through mimesis. As a matter of fact, a strong link between tragedy as theatre and mimesis can already be found in Aristotle. Aristotle defines tragedy as the mimesis of actions. Only if one acknowledges that this mimesis is a presentation

8 9 10

Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, p. 32. Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics (Stanford 1998), p. 297. Lacoue-Labarthe, Métaphrasis, p. 5.

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with specific formal elements of its own, such as the famous peripeteia and recognition, and that the spectators can empathize with these elements in the strongest possible way when they are shown on stage, does one understand that the cathartic function of this mimesis is best brought about by theatre. When Lacoue-Labarthe criticizes Heidegger’s ignorance concerning theatre, this critique applies no less to Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin. Now, Lacoue-Labarthe himself was not only involved for a long time in the Théâtre National in Strasbourg but, amongst other things, he also cooperated actively in the production of the Sophoclean tragedies in their translations by Hölderlin (within the framework of the annual theatre festival in Avignon). In these translations, Hölderlin actually submitted reconstructions that were made with great dramaturgical accuracy, Lacoue-Labarthe holds, so that one may say that Hölderlin really knew what theatre was.11 Indeed, an important lacuna in Heidegger’s work on Hölderlin is that he focuses almost exclusively on Hölderlin’s lyrical poetry, and mainly on Hölderlin’s late hymns. Lacoue-Labarthe’s complaints can be extended and differentiated into three observations: 1. Heidegger’s analyses carry very few references to Hölderlin’s “Remarks” on the two Sophoclean tragedies he translated. Heidegger never attempts to analyze these “Remarks.” 2. When Heidegger himself discusses these tragedies, he refrains from using Hölderlin’s translations. Only with regard to one word (the famous word deinon) does he mention Hölderlin’s translation of this word, only to go on to explain why he, Heidegger, thinks another translation is better.12 3. When Heidegger discusses Sophocles, he reads the text and does not consider its theatrical performance. As a result, the caesura, an important formal aspect of tragedy, seems to escape him. The first consequence of Heidegger’s neglect of theatre is that he shows no interest in the question of catharsis in general and in the changes Hölderlin has introduced regarding this subject in particular. We know

Lacoue-Labarthe, Métaphrasis, p. 3. Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymne ‘Der Ister’, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 53 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 70. 11

12

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that the catharsis of fear and pity Aristotle ascribed to tragedy has been intensively discussed by many authors. The only question I want to deal with now is: where does catharsis take place? In the spectators, or in the main character of the play, or in both? I think, to begin with, that it is plausible to assume that the catharsis in the spectators can take place only if some kind of catharsis is also shown on stage. But even if this is true, we can still ask where the core of catharsis is to be found: in the spectators or in the story as it is brought on the stage? Aristotle still considered the story as presented in the text and on the stage apart from what happens in the spectators, at least terminologically. Thus, Aristotle referred to a reversal in the fate of the hero, namely from misfortune to fortune or the other way around, to a peripeteia, which is a reversal that happens unexpectedly but is forced by a coercing coherence of events, as well as to recognition, the insight gained by the hero or heroine as a result of the peripeteia; in short, to things which belong to the story on the one hand, and to the catharsis as something that happens in the spectators on the other hand. Hölderlin, however, decides that the essence of catharsis is in the story as it is told by the tragedy. Catharsis shifts to what happens to the main characters in the tragedy. According to Hölderlin, it is the reversal in the fate itself of the hero or heroine—or the peripeteia and the recognition that may accompany it—that is a catharsis, a purification. And this purification, in Hölderlin’s view, is a separation. This becomes clear when we read the two rather succinct definitions of tragedy Hölderlin gives in his “Remarks” on the two tragedies by Sophocles. The first definition is: The presentation of the tragic rests preeminently upon this, that the monstrous—how the god and man mate and the power of nature and man’s innermost boundlessly unite in wrath—understands itself in such a way that the boundless union purifies itself through boundless separation.13

We know that Hölderlin, when he thus introduces a purifying separation, directly addresses Aristotle’s theory of catharsis, for he immediately continues with a quote in Greek about the “writer of physis,” an expression that, without any doubt, refers to Aristotle. The second definition of tragedy is somewhat longer and, therefore, I will not quote it, also

13 Friedrich Hölderlin, Essays and Letters on Theory, trans. and ed. Thomas Pfau (Albany, 1988), p. 107 (translation modified). Henceforth cited as E; if I have modified the translation, this will be indicated by: tm.

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because it does not really differ from the first. We only have to note that the “boundless union” of the first definition is replaced by “infinite enthusiasm” in the second and that Hölderlin now calls the separation “sacred” (heilig), apparently because, although a separation takes place, the God remains present, albeit in “the figure of death” (E, 113). Both definitions prove that, in Hölderlin’s view, tragedy confirms in its story, in what happens to the hero or heroine, the fact that between gods and humans a purifying separation takes place. Hölderlin clarifies his definitions with references to concrete passages from the two Sophoclean tragedies he translated. Thus, Oedipus is guilty of the “boundless union” because he, as Hölderlin observes, “interprets the saying of the oracle too infinitely, and is tempted into nefas” (into what is not allowed). Oedipus does not limit himself to maintaining “good civil order,” but “speaks in priestly fashion”; he has this “furious curiosity,” in which knowledge breaks “through its barriers”; therefore, his spirit suffers in “furious excess” (Unmass) (E, 102–104). In a similar way Antigone thinks she has the obligation and the capacity to represent divinity completely by herself. In Antigone too the problem is her hybris, even if this hybris may not be deliberate, because she is simply “possessed” by the divine. In tragedy, this enthusiasm, this identification with the divine, is parried at a certain moment by the reversal, which indeed is to be identified with the separation between the divine and the human. Hölderlin gives this separation a designation that has become famous: “the categorical reversal” (E, 108). In a sense, this is still the same reversal Aristotle referred to, but now that Hölderlin adds the word “categorical,” it is clear that the expression also tacitly refers to Kant. Hölderlin agrees with Kant in stressing that human life is irreversibly thrown back on finiteness. In his comments on fragments from the ancient Greek poet Pindar, Hölderlin introduces another term in order to clarify the categorical reversal. He says that “the immediate,” that is, the immediate unity with the divine, is impossible for mortals. As a matter of fact, Hölderlin stresses that for the immortals too an immediate unity with the world is impossible. The separation is completely reciprocal. And therefore, Hölderlin concludes, “strict mediateness is the law.”14 Obviously, mediateness means finiteness.

14 J.C.F. Hölderlin, Theoretische Schriften, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Hamburg 1998), p. 113 (my translation).

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In Hölderlin’s view, the categorical reversal does not imply that the divine has no longer any meaning for mortals. The categorical reversal, i.e., the purifying separation, does not result in the disappearance of the divine into an unqualified absence. Rather, it results in a mutual permanent unfaithfulness. And we have to realize that unfaithfulness in a way treats something as absent while at the same time maintaining it in a certain presence. The categorical reversal results in a world, Hölderlin says: with the god and man communicating in the all-forgetting form of unfaithfulness—for divine unfaithfulness is best to retain—so that the course of the world will not show any rupture and the memory of the heavenly ones will not expire. (E, 108, tm)

On the basis of what we have seen up to now, Hölderlin’s position is far from unequivocal as regards the question whether tragedy is something modern or not. The first impression might be that he only gives an analysis of tragedy as it was in antiquity. His idea, then, that catharsis first and foremost takes place in the story and amounts to a purifying separation by means of the categorical reversal, would not refer to modernity, but would only show a characteristic feature of Greek tragedy. The fact that he underscores this feature could then at best be called the result of a typically modern interpretation of Greek tragedy. However, does a modern interpretation not presuppose that there is something in Greek tragedy that can be an element of modernity? Should we not even consider the bold hypothesis that tragedy shows its true nature pre-eminently in modernity and that it, therefore, essentially is a modern phenomenon? Should we not recognize that only modernity can really take the purifying separation of gods and humans seriously? Now what about Heidegger and Lacoue-Labarthe, as far as this categorical reversal or separation is concerned? It cannot be denied that Heidegger’s thinking accounts for human finiteness. However, in his readings of Hölderlin (which, as mentioned, remain restricted to Hölderlin’s later poetry), he always stresses that the sorrow about the flight of the gods characteristic of Hölderlin’s poetry is meant to prepare our readiness to wait for a new god, or for the return of the gods. Waiting for the gods: this is what Hölderlin’s poetry expresses, in Heidegger’s view. Lacoue-Labarthe, however, observes that Hölderlin’s theology is unique, because it neither corresponds to Nietzsche’s notion that “God is dead,” nor to what is generally meant by negative theology,

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nor to the idea of a Deus absconditus (a hidden god), nor to atheism. For the core of Hölderlin’s theology consists in the pious godlessness, a kind of unfaithfulness that remains faithful to a god who has turned his back on human beings. According to Lacoue-Labarthe, the tragic moment is that the god only appears in his having turned away. This, LacoueLabarthe says, is a “theophany without theophany.” We cannot say that god “is” or “appears,” rather, he is “pure passage.”15 Lacoue-Labarthe thinks that this theology expresses modernity quite adequately. It is clear that Lacoue-Labarthe’s conclusion differs from Heidegger’s view. Knowing that the gods have always been nothing but “pure passage” implies quite a different attitude than waiting for the gods. The poetics of the categorical reversal Now we will see that Hölderlin tries to develop a poetics that is adequate to the categorical reversal. And we will also see that, according to Hölderlin, this has to be a modern poetics, which is fundamentally different from Greek poetics. In Hölderlin, the categorical reversal is also a reversal of time. Divine and human time split up. The result of this is, as Hölderlin says, “that beginning and end simply can no longer rhyme with each other” (E, 108, tm). On the one hand, the fact that the end no longer rhymes with the beginning still concerns the content of the events that happen to Oedipus or Antigone. On the other hand, this is also accentuated by an aspect of the form or the composition of tragedy, namely the caesura. In tragedy, the categorical reversal is to be noticed through the caesura. Concretely, Hölderlin points out that in both plays the caesura is produced when the blind visionary Tiresias delivers his speeches. However, essentially the caesura is not so much a concrete part of the play, in the sense that an amount of time would be needed in order to act it out. Rather, the caesura is a transcendental element of tragedy. Hölderlin writes: Thereby, in the rhythmic sequence of representations wherein transport presents itself, [. . .] [the] caesura, the pure word, the counter-rhythmic interruption, becomes necessary in order to encounter the raging change of representations at its summit so that it is no longer the change of representations, but rather representation itself which appears. (E, 102, tm) 15

Lacoue-Labarthe, Métaphrasis, pp. 34, 40–41.

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Thus, the caesura is the condition through which “representation itself ” is possible; the caesura makes it possible that the sequence of representations represents something. With this “representation itself,” Hölderlin undoubtedly refers to the categorical reversal. This reversal is what has to be shown in tragedy—not, however, directly, by means of one of the representations in their sequence, but precisely by means of the interruption of this sequence. Put differently, because the categorical reversal compels man to accept finiteness, the content of what is shown in tragedy is human finiteness—but finiteness also has to be operative in the way this condition is shown, or else nothing can be shown. This finiteness of showing is brought about by the caesura. The poetics of the categorical reversal is a poetics of finiteness. It is because of the caesura that Hölderlin focuses on the poetical and technical aspects of writing. He opens his “Remarks on Sophocles” with the statement that modern poetry must be raised to “the mechanè of the ancients,” that the creation of poetry demands a “lawful calculation,” that modern poetry lacks “training and craftmanship” and that its “mode of operation” can be “calculated and taught.” To be sure, Hölderlin also refers to “the living meaning that cannot be calculated,” but at the same time he says that this meaning has to be “put in relation with the calculable law” (E, 101). These introductory observations about writing modern poetry easily extend into his consideration of tragedy. When Hölderlin speaks about the place of the caesura in tragedy, he explicitly mentions that this too is a case of calculation based on laws. Hölderlin gives rather precise instructions about the place of the caesura in the composition of tragedy. For instance, he explains that in some cases, that is, cases characterized by a specific “rhythm of representations,” the caesura should occur rather in the beginning of the play, and when there is another rhythm, it should occur rather toward the end (E, 102). It is clear that Hölderlin wants to draw lessons from tragedy that precisely nowadays should be applied by writers of tragedies. Thus, Hölderlin is using the Sophoclean tragedies in order to uncover in them the foundations of modern poetics in general and modern tragedy in particular. In Hölderlin’s view, modern poetics is certainly not similar to the poetics of antiquity. This is the conclusion we can draw from Hölderlin’s famous letter to his friend Böhlendorff of December 4, 1801. In this letter, Hölderlin treats the relationship between the Western or modern on the one hand and the Greek on the other hand as a relationship between das Eigene (the own, the proper, the familiar) and das Fremde

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(the foreign, the strange, the alien). Thus, Hölderlin writes: “Yet what is familiar must be learned as well as what is alien” (E, 150). In fact, this letter is the cornerstone of Heidegger’s interpretation of Hölderlin. However, Heidegger’s reading of this letter is dubious on two counts. First, Heidegger thinks that learning the familiar, or in other words, the appropriation of the proper, which necessarily comes about by means of the passage through what is alien, actually can succeed. Heidegger writes: “Finding oneself is [. . .] passing from one’s own into the strange of the other and passing back from this recognized strange into one’s own.”16 In Hölderlin, however, this is not quite certain. For Hölderlin observes: “We learn nothing with more difficulty than to freely use the national” (E, 149). The “national” is the same as das Eigene to which Hölderlin refers. Thus, Hölderlin leaves room for the conclusion that, finally, appropriation does not come about and that, therefore, the “proper” has to remain in the strange. Secondly, Heidegger seems to think that the final result remains identical, regardless of whether one starts from the Greek principle (identified by Hölderlin as, among other things, “the fire from heaven”), passing through the Western principle (which, according to Hölderlin, is, among other things, “the clarity of presentation” and “sobriety”) and then returning (as Homer did, according to Hölderlin), or whether one starts from the principle of modern Western art, going through the Greek principle, and then going back. But this is equally uncertain in Hölderlin, for he writes in this letter to Böhlendorff: I have labored long over this and know by now that, with the exception of what must be the highest for the Greeks and for us, namely, the living relationship and destiny, we must not share anything identical with them. (E, 150)

With this statement Hölderlin clearly distances himself from classical poetics, while referring to the need for a modern poetics. When we return to Hölderlin’s “Remarks on Sophocles” with this letter in mind, it is easier to understand his further reflections on modern poetics in these “Remarks.” It is remarkable that Hölderlin indicates a direct connection between the categorical reversal on the one hand and modern poetics on the other hand. He refers to “the way in which time reverses in the middle” and “how a character follows categori-

16

Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymne ‘Andenken’, p. 86 (my translation).

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cal time categorically,” to which he adds: “how it proceeds from the Greek to the Hesperian,” all of which, according to Hölderlin, does not change, except for “the sacred name under which the highest is felt or occurs” (E, 111). “Hesperian” is an old name for ‘Western’, and this also means ‘modern’. We should not be surprised that Hölderlin sees a direct connection between the categorical reversal and the historical transition from the Greek to the Western and modern. The Greek principle is enthusiasm, the attempt to coincide with the fire of heaven. The categorical reversal states the impossibility of this coincidence. It precludes Greek enthusiasm. In this sense, tragedy always ends up in the modern situation. Hölderlin elucidates the question of the “sacred name” for “the highest” by referring to a passage in Antigone. In this passage the question is raised whether the highest is the sun or Zeus. Hölderlin explains that Antigone’s choice for Zeus is more modern. But, consistently, Zeus is for Hölderlin the guardian of the categorical reversal; Zeus preserves the separation of the divine and the human. Hölderlin explains that Zeus can be called the “father of earth.” It is Zeus who reorientates our striving and directs it to this world, which clearly also means: to the earth. Thus, what we read here is a new description of the categorical reversal. Again, we come across the connection between the categorical reversal and modern poetics in Hölderlin, for he immediately continues by saying: “For we have to present myth in a more provable way.” In the same train of thought he adds that time now is “more calculable” because it is “counted in suffering” (E, 112, tm). We may already conclude that Hölderlin’s idea of modern poetics is an earthly or worldly, a more provable and calculable myth. The last section of the “Remarks” is completely devoted to the differences between what Hölderlin calls “the Greek manner” on the one hand and “our time and mode of representation” on the other. He starts with repeating his observation on “our” (surprisingly modern) Zeus. [W]e live under the more proper Zeus who [. . .] forces the course of nature, being eternally hostile to men in its passage to the other world, more decidedly down to earth. (E, 113, tm)

This turn to the earth is the context in which Hölderlin introduces the word “vaterländisch.” My dictionary wants me to translate this word by “patriotic,” but this is too strong—I will translate it by “national.” This is the “national” Hölderlin spoke about in his letter to Böhlendorff, referring not specifically to Germany, but to the West or modernity in

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general. Therefore, in Hölderlin the meaning of “vaterländisch” or “national” is identical to what he indicates with “Hesperian.” Now we come across the word “reversal” again. Hölderlin refers to a “national reversal.” He defines this “national reversal” as “the reversal of all modes of representation and forms,” as a reversal “in which the entire form of things changes” (E, 114–115). We understand that the “national reversal” demands that our poetics, our way of representing things, differ from the Greek way. And because Hölderlin touches upon the national reversal in the context of the turn to the earth, we can conclude that the national reversal aims at nothing less than the poetics in which the categorical reversal is presented. Although the famous word does not appear in these “Remarks on Sophocles,” it is clear that the national reversal, as leading to a specific western poetics or art form, corresponds to the principle of sobriety. This principle—Hölderlin mentioned it in his letter to Böhlendorff (“the Western Junonian sobriety,” E, 149)—is held to be characteristic of Hölderlin’s later poetry. And as Walter Benjamin has clarified, this principle corresponds to the tendency toward prosaism that can be observed in the Early Romantics.17 In Hölderlin too, prose, or the prosaic word, plays an important part, especially in his later poetry. I hope that no further elucidation is needed when I say that this sobriety and prosaism logically can be added to the earthly, provable, calculable, and in a certain sense technical, character of the modern poetics Hölderlin envisages. Heidegger, however, fails to take notice of these characteristics of a modern poetics one finds in Hölderlin. This omission is not fortuitous, but fits in very well with Heidegger’s thinking. For instance, we know that Heidegger tends to oppose poetry and myth, on the one hand, to calculation and technology, on the other, so that is very difficult for him to deal with the technical aspect of poetry. For analogous reasons, Heidegger has trouble in recognizing the prosaic aspect of Hölderlin’s poetry. This is because prose, or the prosaic, in Heidegger’s view, corresponds to everydayness, which in itself corresponds to inauthenticity, whereas Heidegger relates poetry to authenticity. Lacoue-Labarthe, on his part, does recognize the elements of a modern poetics I mentioned. Furthermore, he thinks that this modern

17 Walter Benjamin, Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I.1 (Frankfurt a. M., 1974), pp. 100–103.

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poetics is not only based on Hölderlin’s view on tragedy, which was neglected by Heidegger, but that it is also characteristic of Hölderlin’s later poetry, which was analyzed intensively by Heidegger. On this point, then, Lacoue-Labarthe opposes Heidegger directly. According to Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin aims at “remythologizing” art.18 Lacoue-Labarthe elaborates precisely on the notions of sobriety and prosaism, which, he claims, express a process of “prosaic literalization” of poetry, by which the poet tends more and more to call a spade a spade. He sees a connection with the topographic, and even photographic precision of Hölderlin’s later poems. All this demonstrates a sense of reality, which, to be sure, remains a poeticized reality, but which is the basis of a more fragmentary and disarticulated character of the poem.19 In Lacoue-Labarthe’s view, this prosaic literalization in Hölderlin implies a deconstruction of the mythical character of poetry. Here, he explicitly joins Benjamin’s early essay “Zwei Gedichten von Friedrich Hölderlin” (1914–15), where Benjamin says that Hölderlin’s poetics comes down to a “displacement of mythology.”20 In short, this displacement means that the traditional Greek mythology is overruled by mythos as created by the poet, a mythos in which the coherence of life is recreated. On the one hand, myth is destroyed. Lacoue-Labarthe points to the fact that in Hölderlin the stereotypes of sacralization and the cult of heroism collapse. On the other hand myth returns, but now connected to life. And life has to be understood in the sense of the categorical reversal, the caesura, the tendency towards the earth, and so on. In this sense, Benjamin refers to “mythical correlations, which in the work of art take the form of [. . .] an unmythical figure.”21 Lacoue-Labarthe expresses the same change by referring to a “défaillance du mythe,” a weakness of myth. This does not mean that the poem becomes figureless and becomes the opposite of myth, but that the poem in a paradoxical way has to lean on the deficiency of figures, on the impotence of myth. The figure of the divine, of the sacred or of the hero retreats, Lacoue-Labarthe says, so we cross out the figure, but at the same time we still see what we crossed out and with this

Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, p. 70. Ibid., pp. 86–89. 20 Walter Benjamin, “Zwei Gedichten von Friedrich Hölderlin: ‘Dichtermut’—“Blödigkeit’,” Gesammelte Schriften, vol. II.1 (Frankfurt am Main,1977), p. 116. 21 Benjamin, p. 126. 18 19

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crossing we make a new figure, which also implies another kind of figures. Lacoue-Labarthe offers an analogous observation regarding the name. As we know, Hölderlin observed that sacred names are lacking. From this, Lacoue-Labarthe concludes that, contrary to what Heidegger believes, the name in a certain sense does not name anymore in Hölderlin. Names too become prosaic. This prosaism, Lacoue-Labarthe writes, bids farewell to the hymn.22 One more observation by Benjamin is backed up by Lacoue-Labarthe. On the basis of his analysis of the relationship between life and poetry, Benjamin states that “the existence of a work of art cannot be the existence of a nation or an individual.”23 Therefore, Lacoue-Labarthe concludes, in contrast to Heidegger again, that the work of art is not at all fit—or let us say ‘appropriate’—for a politics of appropriation, that is, for a politics that wants to base itself on a fixed identity. Finiteness means that striving for such an immediate identity is vain and wrong. In Hölderlin, tragedy attests to this human condition. By means of a new relationship towards mythology, modernity, too, can correspond to this condition.24

Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, pp. 103–111. Benjamin, p. 126. 24 I would like to thank David Janssens and Carrol Clarkson for their comments and corrections. 22 23

IS THE TRAGIC ALWAYS THE TRAGIC? KIERKEGAARD ON ANTIQUITY AND MODERNITY IN SHAKESPEARE Adam Wood (Fordham University, New York) In this essay I consider whether Shakespeare’s tragedies are, in Søren Kierkegaard’s terms, ancient or modern. The text of Kierkegaard’s with which I am chiefly concerned is “Ancient Tragedy’s Reflection in the Modern” from Either/Or (1843), addressed by a pseudonymous Aesthete to a fictitious society of grave-dwellers, and subtitled an “Essay in the Fragmentary Endeavor.” Whatever else “a fragmentary endeavor” may mean here, I think we may assume that even if Kierkegaard ends up telling us a good deal about antiquity, modernity, and their respective forms of tragedy, we should not expect exhaustive or systematic treatment. I put this disclaimer in place because my study itself reaches no definite conclusions; I argue that Shakespeare’s tragedies resist simple characterization as ancient or modern, but do not ultimately settle how best to describe them. This essay is divided into two main sections. In the first, I introduce Kierkegaard’s essay; it takes Hegel’s Aesthetics as its starting point, but pointedly critiques some of Hegel’s conclusions. In the second, I turn my attention to Shakespeare. I begin by arguing that the bard’s tragedies cannot be neatly characterized as ancient or as modern, then assess two further ways of viewing his tragedies: as “truly” modern tragedies in a non-Hegelian sense, or as religious dramas. Ancient tragedy’s reflection in the modern Kierkegaard’s essay begins with the Aesthete’s remark that he would not object too much “if someone said that the tragic will always be the tragic,” assuming, he adds, that the statement makes sense, “that the twice-repeated ‘tragic’ isn’t just a meaningless bracket surrounding a contentless nothing.”1 He explains that while “aestheticians still

1 Søren Kierkegaard, “Ancient Tragedy’s Reflection in the Modern,” Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. Alastair Hannay (London, 1992), p. 139. Henceforth cited as E/O.

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constantly invoke Aristotle’s apparatus of conditions and criteria as exhaustive of the [tragic] concept,” nevertheless Aristotle’s criteria “are quite general in kind, and one could easily agree entirely with Aristotle and yet in another sense disagree.” So while, “the concept of the tragic remains essentially unchanged, just as weeping comes no less naturally to man,” the Aesthete thinks no observer can have failed to notice that “there is an essential difference between ancient and modern tragedy.” The gist of the Aesthete’s inquiry will not only be to explain this difference, but to “show how the special characteristic of ancient tragedy can be discerned in the modern, so that the true tragedy in the latter may come to light.” According to the Aesthete, then, there is an important sense in which the tragic is not always the tragic. Once one has discerned what is particular to ancient tragedy, one will find that it can be embodied in a modern setting as well. But this implies that true modern tragedy has not yet come to light, which contradicts Hegel’s influential teaching in the Aesthetics. Indeed, as Clyde Holler informs us, the Aesthete’s opening remarks are carefully structured around Hegel’s notions regarding ancient and modern drama, and the essay as a whole is a microcosm of Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegelian polemic.2 To understand it, let us look briefly at Hegel’s opinions on tragedy, then at how the Aesthete criticizes them. Hegel writes that all dramatic poetry “makes central the collisions between characters and between their aims, as well as the necessary resolution of this battle,” and holds that “the real beginning of dramatic poetry must be sought in Greece where the principle of free individuality makes the perfection of the classical form of art possible.”3 He makes two important points here. First, the central feature of all tragedies is a conflict and its resolution. This is true of both ancient and modern tragedies. Second, the principal characters must act freely in achieving the conflict’s resolution. A third point follows quickly: the exact nature of the conflict, the factors determining the scope of the action, varies from age to age. In Greek dramas, the conflict is produced by characters running up

2 Clyde Holler, “Tragedy in the Context of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or,” International Kierkegaard Commentary: Either/Or, Part I, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA, 1995), pp. 125–42, here 128. 3 G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 1193, 1206.

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against what Hegel calls “substantive” categories or powers. These are “independently justified powers that influence the human will,” and he lists “family love between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters; political life also, the patriotism of the citizens, the will of the ruler; and religion” as examples.4 Characters act freely under these powers, but the powers’ influence is what marks the drama as distinctively Greek. As Karsten Friis Johansen explains, “the characters in ancient tragedy are subordinated to action, the individual being subject to external powers like that of state, family and religion.”5 So “what principally counts in Greek drama,” according to Hegel, “is the universal and essential element in the aim which the characters are realizing.”6 In Antigone, for example, the action is principally provided by the conflict between conflicting ethical demands: loyalty to the state versus loyalty to family. In contrast, in a modern work like Faust the psyche of an individual, his inner desires and motives, is a more noteworthy feature. Faust would appear to embody the Hegelian modern, in which “the principal topic is provided by an individual’s passions,” and which “is satisfied in the pursuit of a purely subjective end, and in general, by the fate of a single individual.”7 It is not the case that the substantive categories listed above are absent from modern works, but according to Hegel, they are not the primary factors motivating the tragic conflict. Despite this difference between ancient and modern drama, however, Hegel might still agree that the “tragic is always the tragic” because of the factors he thinks all tragedies share. As I mentioned, Hegel states that tragedy rests primarily in the contemplation of a conflict that the principal character acts freely to resolve, leading to his downfall. In addition, as Holler explains, in the actions leading to the hero’s downfall, Hegel “requires that the tragic hero be guilty, that his punishment is his deserved punishment for freely choosing to violate the ethical order.”8 For example, to return to Sophocles’s heroine, Hegel thinks she is guilty of a criminal act against Thebes, and therefore deserves her fate.

Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 1194. Karsten Friis Johansen, “Kierkegaard on ‘the Tragic’,” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 13 (1976): 105–46, here 122. 6 Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 1206. 7 Ibid. 8 Holler, “Tragedy,” p. 132. 4 5

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Indeed, Hegel thinks that “truly tragic suffering” is only inflicted on characters in this way, “as a consequence of their own deed which is both legitimate, and owing to the resulting collision, blameworthy, and for which their whole self is answerable.”10 As we will see, Kierkegaard’s Aesthete disagrees sharply with this conclusion. The Aesthete begins his project, the gist of which I noted above, with some general comments concerning the modern age. These reveal both acceptance and rejection of Hegel’s analysis. Like Hegel, he thinks that heightened subjectivity is characteristic of the modern, but unlike Hegel his outlook on modern subjectivity is decidedly negative. The Aesthete rapidly lists various features of modern life: “undermined by doubt,” isolated, the power of religion “weakened and destroyed,” melancholy, reflective enough to be cognizant of responsibility, but refusing to accept it, until it is handed down the chain of command and “the watchmen or street wardens become responsible” (141). What a tale for Aristophanes, he remarks. It seems that his modern man is afflicted with a sort of “heightened awareness” such as Dostoevsky describes in “Notes From Underground,” stemming from a lack of any foundation on which to quell doubt and ground action. The result is inertia—if people act at all, it is only with overly cautious pettiness. Elsewhere in Either/Or, the Aesthete complains about his contemporaries that: “people’s thoughts are as flimsy as lace [. . .] too paltry to be sinful,” which is why, he says, his soul “reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it’s human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants” (E/O, 48). These comments repeat themes common to the writings of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous Aesthetes. What I wish to highlight from them is a feature of Kierkegaard’s modernity that we might initially consider salutary—a heightened ethical awareness. As I mentioned, along with his reflection and melancholy modern man is also cognizant of moral responsibility. True, this awareness paralyzes him with fear, and he seeks to pass his duties off, but none-

9 10

G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford, 1977), p. 284. Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 1198.

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theless modern man has a conscience. A question arises, however: did Kierkegaard suppose that Greeks were not conscious of ethical responsibility, or that classical tragic heroes did not make ethical decisions? Some comments seem to suggest these possibilities. One might well conclude that the people who developed profound tragedy were the Jews. Thus, when they say of Jehovah that he is a jealous God who visits the sins of the fathers on the children [. . .] one might feel tempted to look here for the material of tragedy. But Judaism is too ethically developed for this. Jehovah’s curses, terrible as they are, are nevertheless also righteous punishment. Such was not the case in Greece, there the wrath of the gods has no ethical character, but aesthetic ambiguity. (E/O, 149)

Here it looks as though only with the nascence of Judeo-Christian law is there truly ethical action, and in an important sense, I think, this is a correct description of Kierkegaard’s opinion. Johansen writes that Kierkegaard’s Greek world is “a closed and finite one—a world in harmony with itself, characterized by technical terms like ‘immediacy’ and ‘substantiality’.”11 I take a “closed and finite” world here to refer to the internal self-consistency of the Greek outlook; the consistency that led Greeks to refer to non-Hellenic cultures as “barbarians” not in order to denigrate their neighbors, but to emphasize their own cohesive insularity. Their system of rules and societal structures provided what Kierkegaard, following Hegel, calls the “substantiality” of their culture, components of which I noted in Hegel: piety, patriotism, family ties, code of honor, etc. Its result, as Holler explains, was that “even if the Greek moved freely as an individual, he was still largely determined by his state, family, and destiny.”12 Where Kierkegaard’s description of ancient and modern tragedy differs significantly from Hegel’s in his understanding of the ways tragic conflicts are resolved. For Hegel it was essential that the tragic hero freely chose to place the demands of one substantial structure over another, thus committing some crime and resolving the conflict by his downfall. In the Aesthete’s estimation, however, the dominance of substantial structures over the lives of the Greeks was so great that they acted, thought, and produced art with what he calls “immediacy”

11 12

Friis Johansen, “Kierkegaard,” p. 105. Holler, “Tragedy,” p. 131.

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of purpose.13 Immediacy is contrasted with the “dialectical” doubt and reflection that characterizes the modern (paradigmatically embodied in Hegelian dialectic). And acts conducted with immediacy of purpose, according to Kierkegaard, are not free acts, nor ethical acts, in the same way that reflective acts are. It is a crucial component of Greek tragedies, Kierkegaard thinks, that “the hero’s downfall is [. . .] not the outcome simply of his action, it is also a suffering” (E/O, 143). His action “is something intermediate between activity and passivity,” and while he is still guilty of the famous tragic hamartia, he is also innocent in a crucial way. Oedipus’s mixture of guilt and innocence is paradigmatic. The king of Thebes is indeed guilty of patricide and incest, but substantial categories mollify his guilt; his fate is determined by prophecy, the laws of the state, and the collision between the noble families of Corinth and Thebes. Kierkegaard sharply contrasts ancient and modern tragedy on this point. Ancient tragedy softens the guilt of its heroes with an “infinite leniency,” and “aesthetic ambiguity” but in modern tragedy “the hero stands and falls entirely on his own deeds” (E/O, 143). Transforming aesthetic into ethical guilt means the hero becomes bad, and evil the real object of tragedy. Kierkegaard links this shift to the heightened reflectivity and ethicality I noted above; he remarks that “it leads you to think that this must be a kingdom of gods, this generation in which I too have the honor to live” (E/O, 144). This last statement is obviously sarcastic, however, and Kierkegaard quickly acknowledges that our god-like state “is by no means the case; the energy, the courage, which would thus be the creator of its own fortune, yes, the creator of itself, is an illusion and in losing the tragic the age gains despair” (E/O, 144). In reply to the questions I raised above, then, in a sense the modern age is more ethical than the Greek; it is more reflective and holds us to a “strict and harsh” standard. But in a sense modern ethical consciousness is a sham. We cannot live up to its demands, and it leads to despair, to shirking responsibility, to hypocrisy. As the Aesthete explains:

Kierkegaard does not use this term in “Ancient Tragedy’s Reflection in the Modern,” but he employs it frequently to describe actions conducted within the aesthetic “existence-sphere” in Stages on Life’s Way (ed. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ, 1988), pp. 412 and 476). 13

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[E]very individual, however original, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of his family, of his friends. Only thus does he have his truth. If in all this relativity he tries to be the absolute, he becomes ridiculous. (E/O, 144)

In a way, likewise, modern tragedy is also a sham. Hegel was wrong about the sort of resolution tragic conflict requires. In fact, he was wrong to require resolution at all; on the contrary, an ambiguous mixture of innocence and guilt must be preserved if a work is truly to be tragic. The Aesthete promised to “bring to light” the “true tragedy” in the modern, and I noted the implication that true modern tragedy did not yet exist. Now we have seen why the Aesthete did, in fact, hold this view. To conclude his critique of Hegel, the Aesthete makes good on his promise by bringing to light a re-interpretation of Antigone that preserves tragic ambiguity between guilt and innocence while incorporating modern characteristics. As he puts it: “the name I retain from ancient tragedy, which in general I shall follow, except that everything will be modern” (E/O, 152). Some of these modern characteristics we saw above: reflection, doubt, subjectivity, etc. In addition, the Aesthete’s work is primarily character-driven, another quality of modern works he assumes from Hegel. So while Sophocles’s Antigone is a sketch of a character, and the ethics of her situation are delineated beforehand by substantial forces, Kierkegaard’s retelling acquaints us thoroughly with his heroine’s inner states. The Aesthete appears quite pleased with his creation, but I do not think we should suppose that he himself has produced a work of modern tragedy. Though he remarks that his Antigone “might well try her hand at the tragic disciplines and venture an appearance in a tragedy,” Kierkegaard produced no such work (E/O, 159). Instead he asserts that nothing will result from “true tragedy” coming to light, and even that his “style has made an attempt to appear to be what it is not—revolutionary” (E/O, 140, 150). Statements like these frustrate any hasty conclusions about Kierkegaard’s intent, and support my suggestion that we shouldn’t expect from Kierkegaard’s essay a precise rubric for defining works as ancient or modern. Nevertheless, at least this much has come to light so far, and it is revolutionary: for Hegel the influence of substantial categories characterize ancient tragedies, heightened subjectivity the modern, but the action, conflict and resolution in any tragedy all take place within an ethical sphere. The hero deserves his downfall. For Kierkegaard, however, the tragic hero must possess a certain ambiguity between

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guilt and suffering due to the immediacy of his actions, his conflict must not be ethically resolved. A truly modern tragedy would incorporate modernity’s heightened reflection into the “substantial” world of antiquity, but would not eliminate aesthetic ambiguity by resolving the conflict for the sake of ethical clarity. With this understanding of Kierkegaard’s essay, I turn to how, in Kierkegaard’s terms, we may best describe Shakespeare’s tragedies. Shakespeare: ancient or modern? This turns out to be a surprisingly difficult question; it is not at all clear how best to answer it. I am most immediately struck in Shakespeare’s tragedies by characteristics Kierkegaard and Hegel might have called modern. I will name two of these, though one might multiply examples at length. First, the tragedies are character-driven, as opposed to plot-driven. I agree with A.C. Bradley’s view. While it would be an exaggeration to say that Shakespeare’s interest lay in mere character, nevertheless, the center of a Shakespearan tragedy lies in “action issuing from character, or in character issuing from action,” and of these two, “the dominant factor consists in deeds which issue from character.”14 In contrast, in Greek tragedies, as Kierkegaard himself writes, “the main thing is the telos, and the individuals do not act in order to portray characters but the latter are included for the sake of the action” (E/O, 142). Holler explains that: [A] modern tragedy without character would hardly be possible. But this was not impossible for the Greeks. For instance the tragedy of Agamemnon, as written by Aeschylus, does not turn on the character of Agamemnon—who Aeschylus barely characterizes—but rather on his fate.15

Kierkegaard clearly indicates this difference in his modern re-telling of Antigone, which departs from Sophocles’s version in that the focus is not on the telos, but rather his heroine’s character. One need only attempt to imagine Hamlet, with the character of its hero left a mere sketch, to see the force of this point. Second, unlike ancient tragedies, on Kierkegaard’s view, Shakespeare’s dramas feature genuinely evil

14 15

A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (New York, 1904), pp. 12, 13, 16. Holler, “Tragedy,” p. 130.

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characters. As I mentioned, Kierkegaard links the possibility of evil characters to the greater subjectivity of the modern: [O]ne turns a deaf ear on the hero’s past life, one throws his whole life upon his shoulders as his own doing, make him accountable for everything, but in so doing one transforms his aesthetic guilt into an ethical guilt. The tragic hero thus becomes bad. (E/O, 143)

Again, one need only search antiquity for a villain to rival Iago, or for a tragic hero more clearly guilty of raw, uncoerced evil than Macbeth and his wife, to see Shakespeare’s modernity on this score. If this brief survey of modern features in Shakespeare’s tragedies is correct, then they do in fact evince the heightened subjectivity and lessened substantiality of the modern. On the other hand, by comparing Shakespeare to some of his contemporaries, we can see that is a sense in which the bard’s work is less modern. In his Defense of Poesie, published a few years before Shakespeare produced his great tragedies, Sidney engages an objection that lingered since Plato’s Republic: what good is poetry anyway? He argues that poetry’s value lies in its excellence at moral pedagogy. Its purpose is “to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.”16 Sidney explains that poetry “ever sets virtue so out in her best colours, making fortune her well-waiting handmaid, that one must needs be enamoured of her.”17 Sidney praises tragedy, in particular, because it “openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours.”18 In short, for Sidney, tragedies are as good as the ethical lessons they impart. By subjecting an aesthetic category to ethical scrutiny in this way, Sidney sounds like Hegel, who held that since a dramatist writes for specific public, he is obligated to assign praise and blame according to the ethical dictates of the country in which he writes.19 But it is not surprising that Sidney views tragedy as a moral instrument. Two of the main influences feeding Elizabethan drama, after all, were the medieval tradition of morality plays, which typically

16 Sir Philip Sidney, “Defense of Poesie,” in Sidney’s ‘Defense of Poesie’ and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism, ed. Gavin Alexander (London, 2004), p. 12. 17 Ibid., p. 21. 18 Ibid., p. 27. 19 Hegel, Aesthetics, pp. 1217, 1175–76.

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featured allegorical representations of virtues and vices, and the revival of Senecan tragedy in Italian universities, in which moral maxims and exhortations to Stoic virtue were likewise interspersed. One finds such moralizing tendencies in English Renaissance tragedy as well. For example, Sidney approved especially of Norton’s and Sackville’s Gorboduc, which he praises as full of “full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtains the very end of poesy.”20 Like King Lear, Gorboduc is a tale of treacherous heirs competing for a throne, but unlike Shakespeare, Norton and Sackville give the subject a particularly moralizing spin. One critic calls it “a commentary of ethical behaviour,” noting that it purpose was to warn Elizabeth “of the disastrous results of uncertain succession.”21 The play’s last lines are Of justice, yet must God in fine restore This noble crown unto the lawful heir: For right will always live, and rise at length, But wrong can never take deep root to the last.22

The moral lessons of this speech are tremendously clear: if subjects remain loyal, and leaders remain firmly resolved toward promoting stability, then God will provide justice. Gorboduc was a hit; Elizabeth requested a repeat performance, and the play’s success spawned numerous imitations. Viewed in this context, Shakespeare’s tragedies are striking for their lack of moral didacticism, and for their refusal to remove aesthetic ambiguity from the actions of their heroes, providing a tidy resolution of their conflicts. King Lear features a very different conclusion than Gorboduc, despite their similarities in plot. Instead of chastising Lear for disastrously splitting his lands, Kent mourns the dead King, “Break, heart; I prithee, break!” and Edgar solemnly proclaims: The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most. We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.23

Sidney, pp. 44–45. Timothy Reiss, “Renaissance Theatre and the Theory of Tragedy,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 3: The Renaissance, ed. Glyn P. Norton (Cambridge, 1999), p. 239. 22 English Plays: Selected, Edited and Arranged, ed. Henry Morley (London, 1878), p. 64. 23 William Shakespeare, King Lear: A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, ed. H.H. Furness (New York, 1880/1963), 5.3.324–326. 20 21

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Is Shakespeare suggesting that he should have judged Lear more harshly, but cannot help but sympathize with him? Here, at least, Shakespeare appears to lean hard against the Hegelian modern, and we could easily find other cases.24 If Shakespeare’s tragedies evince certain modern characteristics, but at the same time display certain ancient characteristics vis-à-vis their contemporaries, then it seems possible that Kierkegaard might them “truly modern tragedies,” or modern tragedies “in which the ancient is reflected” such that they escape his critique of Hegel. After all, while Kierkegaard does not give examples of true modern tragedies beyond his Antigone re-telling, he nowhere explicitly rules out the possibility of there being one. Certainly Kierkegaard has a very high opinion of Shakespeare. He speaks of the bard in glowing terms: The art of writing lines, replies, that with full tone and all imaginative intensity sound out of one passion and in which there is nevertheless the resonance of the opposite—this art no poet has practiced except Shakespeare.25

Or elsewhere: “Thanks to you, great Shakespeare!, you who can say everything [. . .] exactly as it is.”26 In light of these comments of Kierkegaard’s we might argue from the following trilemma: Shakespeare’s tragedies are either ancient, modern, or “truly modern,” but they are not ancient, and given his high opinion of Shakespeare, they cannot be modern in the Hegelian sense, therefore they must be somehow “truly modern.” But this line of reasoning vastly oversimplifies matters. If Kierkegaard really thought Shakespeare’s tragedies neatly resembled his ideal of ancient tragedy reflected in the modern, why would he not simply have said so, instead of suggesting that modern tragedy is a sham? The answer, I think, is that Kierkegaard is not certain that the idea of a “truly modern tragedy” is a coherent one. To see why this is so, we need to consider briefly Kierkegaard’s well-known theory of three “stages of life,” or “existence-spheres.” We have spoken of two of them so far, the aesthetic and ethical, representatives of which author

24 Compare, for instance, the relatively straightforward tale of revenge in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy to the thorny question of the prince’s delay in Hamlet. 25 From the supplement to The Sickness Unto Death, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ, 1980), p. 157. 26 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay (London, 1985), p. 90.

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the two halves of Either/Or. Here is how Kierkegaard describes the author of our essay: [T]he aestheticist in Either-Or was an existential possibility, a young, richly gifted, partly hopeful human being [. . .] one with whom it was impossible to grow angry, because the evil that was in him [. . .] had something of the childlike in it.27

In contrast, the judge who writes the second half of the volume is “ethically sure of himself and essentially admonitory.”28 Or as Kierkegaard puts it elsewhere, the aesthetic is the “sphere of immediacy,” the ethical the “sphere of requirement.”29 Some connections between these spheres and our discussion of ancient and modern tragedy should be apparent. Ancient tragedy requires that its protagonists’ actions be immediate, lending them a certain ambiguity such that their guilt, like the Aesthete’s, has a childlike innocence to it. Modern tragedy, however, has attempted to transform aesthetic guilt into ethical guilt, making tragic heroes genuinely bad, as Hegel does in making Antigone “knowingly commit the crime” of burying her brother. The ethical is “strict and harsh,” says Kierkegaard (E/O, 145). In fact, its requirements are “so infinite that the individual always goes bankrupt.”30 Once one steps out of immediacy and begins to reflect on one’s actions, one can always reflect a little more, and is never assured of acting rightly. The infinite demand for moral reflection is one we can never live up to. Inevitably, if we are to act at all, we must compromise, and impose bounds on our reflection. This is why Kierkegaard thinks the modern age is so farcical, and why he thinks modern tragedy is a sham. Kierkegaard says that the ethical is only a transition sphere or a passageway. One cannot dwell in it, for its obligations are too strict, and lead to hypocrisy. But if this is so, then it would seem to cast doubt on the possibility of Shakespeare’s crafting a tragedy that is truly ancient, that is, truly aesthetic, but which also truly incorporates modern ethical reflection. Such a difficulty is signaled by the very title of Kierkegaard’s work as a whole: either a work is ancient, or it is modern—there is no

27 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton, NJ, 1941), p. 262. 28 Ibid., p. 263. 29 Kierkegaard, Stages, p. 476. 30 Ibid.

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compromise state. If one wished to argue that Shakespeare’s tragedies were “true modern tragedies,” one would first have to demonstrate that Kierkegaard thought such a category coherent, and I will not attempt this. I turn instead to a final way of considering Shakespeare’s tragedies. The ethical sphere is transitional, and what one transitions to is either the hypocritical “finite reflection” of the Hegelian modern, or to the religious, the “sphere of fulfillment”; do Shakespeare’s tragedies make this transition?31 In our essay, Kierkegaard writes that the sinner, one who stands under the judgment of ethical reflection, can’t flee to the temple of aesthetics: “the aesthetic lies behind him, and it would be a new sin for him now to grasp at the aesthetic” (E/O, 145). Once one has begun to reflect, the obligation to reflect is infinite. Instead, his path leads him to the religious: “either the sadness of the tragic, or the profound sorrow and profound joy of religion” (E/O, 145). Kierkegaard makes the life of Abraham emblematic of the religious: Abraham is told to sacrifice Isaac, knows he must do so, and prepares to do so to the point of losing hope entirely, throwing himself on God’s mercy, which God at the last minute grants. What would it mean for a dramatic work to take this path? Kierkegaard asks this very question about Hamlet, whether is it a religious drama, in an appendix to Stages on Life’s Way. His point of departure is the statement by the German critic Ludwig Börne that Hamlet is “a Christian drama.” Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author, Frater Taciturnus, remarks: [T]o my mind this is a most excellent comment. I substitute only the word a “religious” drama, and then declare its fault to be not that it is that but that it did not become that or, rather, that it ought not to be drama at all.32

Cryptic words, to be sure. Kierkegaard is talking about the reason for Hamlet’s delayed revenge, and claims that in a properly aesthetic drama, Hamlet would have gone ahead and killed Claudius. If he does not, it is because either the poet places some obstacle in his way, or because he is 31 Kierkegaard (Stages, p. 414) writes that “in relation to any finite reflection, immediacy is essentially higher, and it is an insult for it to have to be involved with something like this.” So it is better not to reflect at all, and remain in the sphere of immediate action, than to begin to reflect but not carry it through. For the “sphere of fulfillment,” see Stages, p. 476. 32 Kierkegaard, Stages, p. 453.

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a vacillator: a “self-torturer” or a “loiterer.”33 Now clearly Shakespeare does not put any external obstacle in Hamlet’s path when he catches the king in prayer, so aesthetically speaking Hamlet should have exacted his revenge then and there. But he delays. Perhaps, Kierkegaard suggests, this is because he has “religious presuppositions that conspire against him in religious doubt.”34 If so, these religious doubts would either divest him of his plan entirely, or else he would carry it through, and then “collapse into himself and into the religious until he finds peace there.”35 According to Kierkegaard, however, drama can come from neither of these scenarios. To put it very briefly, this is because the movement to the religious is something so entirely inward that it is both inexplicable and unobservable. As I mentioned, Abraham, the father of faith, is emblematic of the religious, but Kierkegaard considered Abraham’s faith something absurd or unintelligible. This is why Kierkegaard is commonly associated with the phrase “leap of faith.” In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard praises the “teleological suspension of the ethical” that constituted Abraham’s leap of faith in sacrificing Isaac. I quoted a line from this work above; I set it now in context: Thanks to you, great Shakespeare!, you who can say everything, everything, everything exactly as it is—and yet why was this torment one you never gave voice to? Was it perhaps that you kept it to yourself, like the beloved whose name one still cannot bear the world to mention? For a poet buys this power of words to utter all the grim secrets of others at the cost of a little secret he himself cannot utter, and a poet is not an apostle, he casts out devils only by the power of the devil.36

Kierkegaard has been describing the sort of torment that Abraham must have felt while approaching Mount Moriah. The “thanks” are for those who step in to relieve this holy torment. Yet Shakespeare is not among these, according to Kierkegaard. Though he says “everything exactly as it is,” Shakespeare does not give voice to faith, and this is because, as a poet (rather than an apostle) he cannot. As a dramatic poet he is bound to the categories of aesthetic immediacy, and the price is that he must keep silent about what lies above and beyond them. Not only is the interiority of the religious inexplicable in aes33 34 35 36

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 454. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 90.

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thetic terms, but a religious drama would be simply boring. Even if Hamlet’s religious doubts divested him of his revenge-plan, he would still look like a vacillator, and would be a dramatic flop. Gene Fendt explains that “being religious is not dramatic. Being religious, having one’s own peace there, lights one up so that his passions and actions shine through it.”37 Kierkegaard criticizes monasticism, indeed, precisely for trying to give exterior expression to an inner state.38 I agree with Richard Kearney that if Shakespeare had made Hamlet carry out his revenge, and then collapse into the religious, this “would ultimately make for a moralizing-sermonizing tract where the aesthetic action of revenge is used merely to make a religious point.”39 In short, there is no way Shakespeare could have made Hamlet a successful religious drama, and since it does not meet aesthetic demands either, it is (as Kearney has it) “neither fish nor fowl. A hybrid creature. In short an aesthetic-religious mess.”40 Several factors, however, should give us pause before ruling out too hastily the possibility that Shakespeare’s tragedies were, in some way religious. Kearney goes on to say that as a “hybrid creature,” Hamlet is “perhaps not unlike Kierkegaard himself.”41 He points out that Kierkegaard, like Hamlet, was an introspective and melancholy Dane, and compares their respective romantic lives with Regine Olsen and Ophelia. More importantly, while Kierkegaard considers the religious subjective, absurd, or inexpressible, he nevertheless manages to say quite a lot about it, much of it couched in the words of pseudonymous aesthetes like Frater Taciturnus, suggesting at least a degree of remove from Kierkegaard’s real opinions. The section on Hamlet, for example, is found in an appendix to a supplement to the concluding part of Stages of Life’s Way; its title is “A Side-glance at Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Furthermore, after deeming Hamlet a dramatic failure, Frater Taciturnus concludes his side-glance by remarking that one may yet agree “on the one opinion that has been the opinion of one and two and three centuries—that Shakespeare stands unrivaled, despite the progress the 37 Gene Fendt, Is ‘Hamlet’ a Religious Drama? An Essay on a Question in Kierkegaard (Milwaukee, 1998), p. 35. 38 See Kierkegaard, Postscript, pp. 362–63. 39 Richard Kearney, “Kierkegaard on ‘Hamlet’: Between Art and Religion,” in The New Kierkegaard, ed. Elsebet Jegstrup (Bloomington, IN, 2004), pp. 224–244, here 230. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid.

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world will make, that one can always learn from him, and the more one reads him, the more one learns.”42 Why this praise, after what seemed sharp criticism? By way of explanation, and to conclude this paper, I want to consider a way of viewing Shakespeare’s tragedies as religious of which I suspect Kierkegaard might have approved. In his essay “God’s Spy: Shakespeare and Religious Vision,” Paul Murray draws our attention to the touching last scene of Lear.43 The old king is finally reconciled with his beloved daughter: When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies; and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out; And take upon’s the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies.44

Murray agrees that it is not “helpful to characterize Shakespeare formally as a religious dramatist,” and thinks that the bard chose in general to leave religion alone.45 But he thinks it possible that Lear’s words might apply to his creator, that “in some way, Shakespeare’s own sense of his task, as artist and poet, called first and last to be contemplative of the world, and yet somehow finding himself gazing at things as if he were God’s spy?”46 Murray readily acknowledges that this question is impossible to answer, but I think this way of describing Shakespeare’s tragedies constitutes a sufficiently eclectic viewpoint that Kierkegaard himself might have agreed with it. Conclusion I set out to determine whether, on Kierkegaard’s terms, Shakespeare’s tragedies are ancient or modern. We have seen that they are modern insofar as they are driven chiefly by well-developed, reflective characters who think and act in ethical terms, but also that they do not elimiKierkegaard, Stages, p. 454. Paul Murray, “God’s Spy: Shakespeare and Religious Vision,” Communio 27 (2000): 764–786, here 781. 44 Shakespeare, King Lear, 10–17. 45 Murray, p. 776. 46 Murray, p. 784. 42 43

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nate substantive elements to the point of eliminating ancient tragedy’s characteristic ambiguity between guilt and innocence, or of sinking to moral didacticism. Given this status mid-way between antiquity and modernity, we might view Shakespeare’s tragedies as “modern, in which the ancient is reflected,” or better still, as transcending the aesthetic and ethical spheres entirely and representing a religious or “God’s eye” view of the world. Ultimately, as I warned, Kierkegaard provides only a fragmentary answer to this question. The attempt to answer it is, nonetheless, worth our while, since as Kierkegaard warns, if we do not from time to time rethink what we mean by tragedy, the concept itself may be become a “meaningless bracket.”

TRAGEDY, COMMUNITY ART, AND MUSIKORGIASMUS : EXAMINING THE LANGUAGE OF NIETZSCHE’S DIE GEBURT DER TRAGÖDIE Thomas Crombez (Universiteit Antwerpen) There is no late nineteenth-century book on ancient Greek culture that still succeeds in drawing as large a readership as Friedrich Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872). Glancing over the customer reviews at Amazon.com of current paperback translations, one finds young readers raving enthusiastically about this odd and old-fashioned work. The popularity of Die Geburt der Tragödie is surprising when one considers the many paradoxes that still obscure its exact significance, even after one hundred and thirty-five years of criticism and scholarship. Is Die Geburt an extension of Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, or does it contradict them? Does the book contain the first expression of Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy, or was it an error he tried to refute afterwards? Was it a pamphlet for Richard Wagner’s budding Bayreuth project, or much more? Does it truly prefigure Nietzsche’s late work as a ‘tragic philosopher’, as he would allege himself in his philosophical autobiography Ecce Homo, or does it fully belong to the early years? If its philosophical sense remains ambivalent, the philologists, on the other hand, buried the book a long time ago. Ever since its publication scholars have described it as scientifically worthless because of its many inaccuracies.1 But in spite of the philosophical difficulties and the historical errors, Nietzsche’s book is widely known and read. I want to examine what makes it so easy to read, and misread. Therefore, my initial concern will be its linguistic form. What kind of thinking is Nietzsche making possible through the particular language he uses in Die Geburt? In the first part, I wish to expound the debate from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century on the topic of “community art,” by means of a word count analysis of Die Geburt.2 Wagner’s ideas on the

1 An overview is provided by Barbara von Reibnitz, Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik’ (Kapitel 1–12) (Stuttgart, 1992). 2 For the process of lemmatizing and analyzing the digital text of Die Geburt der

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aesthetic community in particular greatly influenced Nietzsche’s book. Next, I will investigate how a socially determined concept of culture, developed during the nineteenth century, gave rise to the strong connection between art and community. This will serve, finally, to elucidate the contemporary validity and use of Nietzsche’s vocabulary. The vocabulary of Die Geburt der Tragödie The crucial ideas of Nietzsche’s book on tragedy are not to be found in his reworking of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, as the predominant interpretation holds, but in his response to Wagner’s cultural politics. What Nietzsche borrows from Wagner is the notion that the social and the cultural are intimately interwoven. This is the central statement of what will be called the community art thesis. Only from a living community can a living culture and vigorous art forms grow. The community art thesis, characteristically, is couched in organic metaphors, such as life, vigor, and growth. On every page of Die Geburt biological metaphors are used for cultural phenomena, starting with the very subject: the birth, death, and rebirth of Greek tragedy. Nietzsche was following nineteenth-century intellectual fashion in employing evolutionary terms from natural history to describe human-led events. The idea that ancient art and literature were ‘reborn’ in humanist culture from the fifteenth century onwards, for example, had been laid down in the word Renaissance, especially by the seventh volume of Jules Michelet’s influential Histoire de France (La Renaissance, 1855) and Jacob Burckhardt’s Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860). However, as becomes evident from a simple word count analysis, Nietzsche expands the organic approach up to the point where the whole of his book is suffused with natural vocabulary. Using a computer to look up the most frequent words of Die Geburt—while disregarding the function words—some obvious items come up first, such as Tragödie, Musik, Kunst, Dionysus, Apollo, Socrates, and their cognate words (tragisch, dionysisch). These are the well-known elements of the so-called

Tragödie, I have used the Gutenberg e-text of Nietzsche’s book, to be found at . I would like to thank Gerd Willée (IfK, Universität Bonn), Kim Luyckx and Guy De Pauw (CNTS, Antwerpen) for their much appreciated help.

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metaphysical system of the book. The second most frequent words are Natur and Leben, together with their compounds (Naturwesen, Naturzustand, Naturgewalt; Volksleben, Culturleben, Weiterleben, and so on). Usually, Nietzsche’s nature-centered vocabulary is explained within the framework of his “vitalism” or Lebensphilosophie, namely, his belief that all phenomena of human thinking and human culture should be evaluated using physiological criteria. This leads to his famous questions about the health, degeneration, or even diseasedness of various societies and cultures. Applying the life-based interpretation to Die Geburt, we could speak of a vitalist aesthetics. Until Socrates made his entrance, Greek culture was ‘healthy’, and produced the marvelously balanced art form of tragedy, a perfect blend of the Dionysiac and the Apolline. Afterwards, Greek culture degenerated because of its excessive (and mainly Socratic) rationalism. It is not difficult to uncover the roots of Nietzsche’s vitalist aesthetics. Julian Young has identified its immediate precursor as Schopenhauer’s ontological (mis)interpretation of idealism. Schopenhauer had developed a peculiar reading of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft by Immanuel Kant (1781), insisting that the whole of external reality can be at most a representation (Vorstellung) made by a living being. It follows that all representations are animated by the force of life. Not only is all of material reality the product of the invisible and all-powerful will (der Wille). Mental reality, too, is created by the will. Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the will is characterized by his emphasis on the absolute validity of the idealist hypothesis. All intellectual activity, it seems, is produced by the will to life. Under the perspective of vitalism, the Schopenhauerian teachings of Die Geburt mainly constitute a drastically new philosophy of art. Even Schopenhauer himself had not ventured to apply his doctrine to artworks. Music, famously, may even temporarily suspend the will’s dominion. In Nietzsche’s book, however, the Kantian disinterested judgments of beauty, which had laid the basis for mainstream modern aesthetics, are presumptuously tossed aside in favor of a radically interested doctrine of art. No art exists, Nietzsche advances, that is not nourished by some deeply natural drive of humankind. The two main Kunsttriebe der Natur (natural artistic drives) he identifies as the Apolline and the Dionysiac. But the truly important argument concerns not merely the use of the Greek deities to interpret art, but the simultaneous use of the perspective of natural history.

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The standard, vitalist account of Die Geburt, as presented above, may be limited in some regards. It can only account for the book’s influence within a certain pre-established narrative, namely, the customary account of the history of Western philosophy.3 The book appears as a product of philosophy that has itself generated later products of philosophy. However, this reading leaves out of account why Die Geburt was and is such a popular book, and not just such a popular philosophy book. Die Geburt has been, and, to a certain extent, it still is the livre de chevêt for Wagner enthusiasts, students of Ancient Greek culture (and tragedy in particular), musicians, writers, dancers, artists, psychologists, and actors.4 What is especially astonishing is the mythopoeic power of Die Geburt. Many people who pick up the book today are still inclined to believe that it holds a reliable account of Greek tragedy, no matter how many times Nietzsche’s views have been criticized for not being historically accurate at all. If we want to find an explanation for the strong persuasive powers of Nietzsche’s book on tragedy, I believe we have to look further than the history of philosophy. It is not merely the disputed philosophical contents of Nietzsche’s vitalist aesthetics that made the book such a success, but his vocabulary and the style of his argument. Nietzsche was so persuasive about the nature of Greek tragedy and the possibility of the revival of an authentically tragic art in the present—through Wagner’s music dramas—because of the heterogeneous composure of his argument. He takes up the sociocultural argument of Wagner, i.e., the community art thesis that a living art form can only originate in a living community. But then he mixes in various extra components. Firstly, we must have a look at the community art thesis itself. Wagner developed his argument about art and community in the essays he wrote around 1850, most notably in Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849). 3 To cite just two typical examples: Béatrice Han-Pile, “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics in the ‘Birth of Tragedy’,” European Journal of Philosophy 14.3 (2006), pp. 373–403; Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, 1992). 4 For a brief overview of artists and thinkers influenced by Nietzsche, consult Nietzsche-Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, ed. Henning Ottman (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 485–486; and Robert Wicks, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, .

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At this point in his life he had not yet converted to Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy. On the contrary, he was preoccupied with the idea of a socialist revolution, that would also effect a profound cultural change. The concept of community art responded to a deeply felt need in the artistic context of the late nineteenth century. Socially and commercially, Western theatre was at its heyday. In Paris, for example, forty-one theatres gave daily performances and another sixty-seven theatres performed once or twice a week.5 It was a correspondingly homogeneous form of art. Succesful genre formulas such as operetta, melodrama, pantomime, Romantic history plays, and vaudeville drama were reproduced over and over again. Hence Wagner’s diatribe at what he considered a perversion of theatre’s essence: not to provide nightly entertainments for the bourgeoisie, but to express “the self-realization of free humanity.”6 Later in Wagner’s life, after he had been profoundly affected by reading Schopenhauer, and had met with Nietzsche, the entire community art project underwent an important shift. Wagner no longer believed that all of humanity would liberate itself and would be able to express itself in a new art form. But, if art itself was to be saved from the clutches of commercialism, it was perhaps possible for a small elite (backed by aristocratic patrons) to reinvent the ancient and “sacred” forms of drama, in particular Greek tragedy. The project of bringing together a European elite and of founding a new sacred drama bore a single name: Bayreuth. In this middle-sized Bavarian town, in 1872, the same year that a resolutely pro-Wagnerian tract about Greek tragedy and modern music drama was published by a young and unknown university professor—Die Geburt der Tragödie—construction began of the Festspielhaus. Not an ordinary playhouse (or Schauspielhaus) but a place especially designed to stage a new sacred drama, the Ring des Nibelungen cycle.

See Günther Berghaus, Avant-garde Performance: Live Events and Electronic Technologies (Houndmills, 2005), p. 7. 6 Wagner quoted in: “Wagner,” Encyclopædia Britannica 2006, Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 19 Nov. 2006, . 5

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To the argument of Wagner, Nietzsche added at least two distinct and appealing components. The first component is most evident. Nietzsche is a gifted classical philologist, so he is able to flesh out Wagner’s argument about the ancient sacred drama of the Greeks. He provides just the right blend of dusty citations, straight from solid German Altertumswissenschaft, and a vivid retelling of the ancient phenomena they supposedly refer to. A telling example comes from the first chapter of the book: Auch im deutschen Mittelalter wälzten sich unter der gleichen dionysischen Gewalt immer wachsende Schaaren, singend und tanzend, von Ort zu Ort: in diesen Sanct-Johann- und Sanct-Veittänzern erkennen wir die bacchischen Chöre der Griechen wieder, mit ihrer Vorgeschichte in Kleinasien, bis hin zu Babylon und den orgiastischen Sakäen.7

Barbara von Reibnitz, in her extensive and excellent commentary to Die Geburt, has noted that Nietzsche, despite the title of his work, is less concerned about the historical details of tragedy’s origins, than about the transhistorical validity of his tragic theory—i.e., the Dionysiac account of music drama. Die Geburt, she argues, is not a history of ancient religious phenomena, but the attempt to found a new religion.8

7 Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Leipzig, 1872), § 1. I am quoting from the Gutenberg e-text version of this book, to be found at . “In the German Middle Ages, too, ever-growing throngs roamed from place to place, impelled by the same Dionysiac power, singing and dancing as they went; in these St. John’s and St. Vitus’ dancers we recognize the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their pre-history in Asia Minor, extending to Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea.” (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. R. Geuss and R. Speirs, trans. R. Speirs (Cambridge, 1999), p. 17.) 8 See von Reibnitz, Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 78–79: “Für all diese “Referenzmodelle” soll seine Beschreibung dionysischer Erfahrung [. . .] Geltung haben. Das ist in solcher Allgemeinheit schwer zu widerlegen, erklärt jedoch nichts für die Spezifik ekstatischer Erfahrung, die immer, auch wo sie scheinbar spontan auftritt, durch einen kulturellen und sozialen, meist einen spezifisch religiösen Rahmen bestimmt ist. Selbst innerhalb der griechischen Dionysosreligion, an die Nietzsche ausdrücklich anschließt, ist sein konkreter Bezugsrahmen kaum zu erschließen. [. . .] Diese Unspezifik hat einerseits ihren Grund in den mangelnden theoretischen Vorgaben der Religionswissenschaft seiner Zeit, zum anderen aber in dem selbst nicht religionshistorischen Erkenntnisinteresse Nietzsches. Die historisch benannte und abgeleitete Erfahrung soll vor allem überhistorische Geltung haben, sie soll wiederholbar sein. Die historische Referenz hat vor allem propädeutische Funktion: Ziel der Geburt der Tragödie ist die Stiftung einer neuen Religion, nicht die Historie einer vergangenen.”

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The second component that Nietzsche adds to Wagner’s community art thesis, is the register of Trieb, the (mostly sexual) impulse or drive.9 If one reads Wagner’s descriptions of how the new “sacred festival drama” (Bühnenweihfestspiel, as the subtitle of Parsifal states) is going to weld a community together, it sounds impassioned and exciting, even inflaming. But when Nietzsche rephrases the community art thesis within the context of ancient, “Dionysiac” phenomena, he adds a sexually primed style. Drawing again on a word count analysis of Die Geburt, another remarkable and highly frequent word is Lust. Lust and its cognates and compounds (lustvoll, Wollust, Urlust, Daseinslust) are embedded in a large and diverse semantic field. On the one hand, Nietzsche deploys the word in the literal and sexual sense, such as when Dionysiac celebrations are being characterized by “Wollust und Grausamkeit,” or more specifically by “einer überschwänglichen geschlechtlichen Zuchtlosigkeit, deren Wellen über jedes Familienthum und dessen ehrwürdige Satzungen hinweg flutheten.”10 On the other, Lust is also used in its figurative and psychological sense, namely to describe the workings of the aesthetic drives (Dionysiac and Apolline). This metaphorical use of Lust is stretched so far as to denote a spiritual and cosmic force of nature, namely, “die unermessliche Urlust am Dasein.”11 The vocabulary of Lust was not absolutely new in the history of philosophy: it is already to be found in Hegel. But Nietzsche was one of the first to make the impulsive aspect of sexuality (the Trieb) into a prime motor of his conceptuel scheme. The result of the lustvoll idiom is that Wagner’s description of community art is intensified through an impulsive and sexual register. Although it is impossible within the framework of this paper to explore the full semantic field that grounds Lust, I would like to refer to one interesting subset of this field, namely: the words relating to orgy, such as Orgiasmus, orgiastisch, and that unique and untranslatable compound of Nietzsche, the Musikorgiasmus. Towards the end of Die Geburt, one can read the inimitable description: “Die Tragödie saugt den höchsten Musikorgiasmus in sich hinein.”12 9 Compare Han-Pile, “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics,” p. 381: “From the onset, the Birth is ripe with sexual undertones [. . .].” 10 Nietzsche, Geburt § 2. “[A]n excess of sexual indiscipline, which flooded in waves over all family life and its venerable statutes” (Nietzsche, Birth, p. 20). 11 Nietzsche, Geburt § 17. 12 Nietzsche, Geburt § 21. “Tragedy draws the highest musical orgiastic ecstacy into itself.” For this quotation, I do not use the Cambridge translation because I believe it is already

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Musikorgiasmus is the one word that epitomizes Nietzsche’s reception of Wagner’s community art thesis, and perfectly illustrates the technique of Die Geburt. It is impossible to ask what the word Musikorgiasmus exactly means. Certainly, one can find a definition by putting together various descriptions from Die Geburt. But do not ask what historical or artistic phenomenon could correspond to a Musikorgiasmus. The key thing is that the word, as a word and a rhetorical artifice, works. Nietzsche repeatedly takes a number of suggestive but ill-attested anecdotes from classical Antiquity, which he then connects directly to the artistic, cultural, and political dreams of a European elite. This historically strained combination of arguments is finally consolidated by a sexual register that was absolutely new at the time. The origin of cultures Nietzsche’s version of the community art thesis in Die Geburt has been so important and influential because of the marvelously inflammatory language in which it was couched. The argument itself, however, strongly depends on the community art thesis from Wagner’s writings, which is a typically nineteenth-century idea. Nietzsche and Wagner reinterpreted the only recently developed concept of ‘culture’ to foster their own artistic and social ends. In order to understand how this was effected and what the consequences could be, it is necessary to delve into the origins of the culture concept. The first use of ‘culture’, as it is still understood today, is to be found in the work of Gustav Friedrich Klemm. His Allgemeine Cultur-Geschichte der Menschheit (General Cultural History of Mankind, 1843–1852) was the first work of modern historiography that extended the concept of history to that of cultural history. Culture not only covered literature and the arts, but also religion, technology, tools, clothing, and social organization. Klemm had to be so inclusive in his methodology because of a specific late modern event, namely, wide-scale colonization. Non-European art and artifacts were flooding the continent. Scholars such as Klemm (who was an avid collector of primitive art) had to find new conceptual

an interpretation of Nietzsche’s words (“Tragedy absorbs the supreme, orgiastic qualities of music,” Birth 99). Instead, I have opted for the online translation by Ian Johnston (Nov. 2003, ).

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schemes to make the new material fit in. So they devised an extremely inclusive concept of culture that was abstract enough to cover everything from early medieval European painting to Aztec astronomy. All these things could be termed cultural phenomena. There was, however, a downside to the innovative concept. It was heavily influenced by the emerging study of premodern societies and their artworks. As a consequence it did not and could not account for a particular tendency of contemporary European society, namely, what sociologists have since designated as functional differentiation. Social science and cultural historiography, such as they originated in the nineteenth century, allowed the social and the cultural to coincide, inspired by the example of the premodern societies discovered through colonialism. This idea was so innovative and appealing that it made scholars overlook the fact that the social and the cultural were becoming more and more autonomous domains in their own European society. It is no accident that Wagner ultimately had to give up his universalist dreams of revolution, and instead opted for Bayreuth, a small but homogeneous community of initiates. The vocabulary of Die Geburt is once more very eloquent on this point. The elite Bayreuth community is mirrored in the communal experiences of ancient Greece, expressed through such words as Jünger, Schwärmern, Eingeweihten, Cultversammlung, Schaar, and more. The community art thesis of Wagner and Nietzsche was not that original in the nineteenth century, on the contrary, it was very much dans l’air du temps. Especially from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, the incorporation of the social and the cultural was a grand project that was shared by many intellectuals. The French pioneers in sociology, Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, characterized a phenomenon such as the potlatch ritual as a “total social fact” ( fait social total). The Cambridge School of Ritualists (Gilbert Murray, Jane Harrison, Francis Cornford) investigated the ritual origins of Greek art, and theatre in particular, more profoundly than Nietzsche had done. Numerous artists from architecture, the visual arts, and the decorative arts dreamed about a new community as the foundation for a new art, such as William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, Hendrik Petrus Berlage and Richard Roland Holst in the Netherlands, and Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus in Germany. When we move further into the twentieth century, German Expressionism, French Surrealism, Italian Futurism, and Soviet Constructivism all added their own peculiar artistic communities to the sheerly endless list.

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Apart from the historical and art historical repercussions, how did the community art thesis, as it was expressed by Nietzsche, perform? The purpose of this essay was to draw attention to the incendiary language of the book. Through the analysis of Die Geburt by means of word counting—albeit a crude instrument—we saw that the book employs a welldefined vocabulary which prominently features words from the fields of nature, life, art, and community. Such a biologist and communitarian discourse was also part and parcel of the language of National-Socialism, which infamously appropriated the writings of Nietzsche. In his lecture Otobiographies (1976), Jacques Derrida warned against the hasty dismissal of this peculiar event. He suggested that Nietzsche’s writings were connected to National-Socialism through an obscure “thought machine.”13 One may think of it as a linguistic space opened up by Nietzsche’s writings (his language, rhythm, vocubulary, and style) that somehow tolerated the presence of National-Socialist philosophy on one of its borders. Even if one does not agree with Derrida’s rather far-reaching judgment, it must be admitted that his vitalist philosophy has positively influenced a number of biologist doctrines of the twentieth century. Could it be that this semantic space, pervaded by the notion of ‘life’, has also shapen the domain of subsequent community art discourses? The social and sexual dimension of Nietzsche’s tragedy book has certainly marked later theories of the sociocultural. Die Geburt helped form a contemporary theory of art that cannot but conceptualize the artistic process as a social process, characterized by greater connectedness and intimacy between group members. Hence, the greatly increased importance of the artistic event over the work—a phenomenon that is without doubt greatly indebted to late twentieth-century developments such as environmental theatre, happening, and performance art. But the question may be raised whether these tendencies would have expressed themselves in the same way if they had not been fed by the feverous theories on Dionysiac art which we find in Die Geburt. A key event

13 See Derrida, Otobiographies: L’enseignement de Nietzsche et la politique du nom propre (Paris, 1984), pp. 81–96; “Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name,” trans. A. Ronell, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, transference, translation: Texts and discussions with Jacques Derrida, ed. Christie McDonald (Lincoln, NE, 1988), pp. 23–31.

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from postwar performance arts, such as Dionysus in ’69 (by Richard Schechner and the Performance Group), for example, can hardly be imagined without a markedly Nietzschean or ‘Dionysiac’ interpretation of Euripides’s Bacchae.14 Nietzsche’s Die Geburt, conflating the artistic community with biological metaphors and a sexually primed style, has served as the conceptual and linguistic mould for later discussions and conceptions of art. Discourse analysis not only reveals the components of this linguistic pattern, but also allows for a further question. What kind of art theories were excluded from twentieth-century aesthetics because of the popularity of Nietzsche’s book? It is evident that non-social theories of art will be the first candidates for such exclusion. Maybe the twentieth century’s art theories can be collectively characterized by the explicit or subliminal presence of the social, a heritage from nineteenth-century ‘cultural studies’ that is impossible to think away. Contemporary artworks, providing elaborate environments for individual spectators (in installation art, Virtual Reality, digital art), may soon bring the social premise to the fore. Is it possible, let alone desirable, to conceive a theory of art that sharply distinguishes the social from the cultural?

14 See Richard Schechner, ed., Dionysus in ’69 (New York, 1970); Froma Zeitlin, “Dionysus in 69,” Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium, eds. E. Hall, F. Macintosh, and A. Wrigley (New York, 2004), p. 57.

NIETZSCHE AND THE PARADOX OF TRAGEDY Robrecht Vandemeulebroecke (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) The classical tragedies by Sophocles and Aeschylus abound with highly unpleasant, often painful events and situations: injustice, wanton cruelty, loss, despair, and death. Almost equally unpleasant are the feelings of fear and pity they stir up in the viewers. To an outsider, the intensity of these feelings must make the staging of one of the great tragic plays seem like an ordeal. Nevertheless, they have been enjoyed time and again by audiences who evidently found some pleasure or use in witnessing such negativity. This apparent paradox has mystified philosophers throughout the ages. Why are we drawn to artistic representations of the negative sides of life? The question also applies to tragic content in literature or film, and even to non-representational music written in a minor key or containing harsh dissonants; but to Friedrich Nietzsche, it bore a much broader relevance, as I will try to show. I will briefly explain the views of Aristotle, Schopenhauer and David Hume on the ‘paradox of tragedy’, before turning to Nietzsche’s remarkable answer. Aristotle, Schopenhauer, and Hume on tragedy According to Aristotle, audiences sit through the unfolding and climax of a tragic story to periodically purge themselves of their negative feelings in a cathartic release, a thunderstorm to clear their emotional skies. This theory is evidently based on a conviction that the negative side of life should, and to a large extent can, be shunned, although its accretion over time in feelings like pity and fear is inevitable. But with regular cathartic treatments, we can lead our lives relatively free from these undesirable elements. I should mention that this widely accepted ‘psychoanalytic’ or ‘therapeutic’ interpretation of a short passage in Aristotle’s Poetics is actually the subject of great controversy; it was developed mainly by the influential nineteenth-century philologist Jakob Bernays. Aristotle’s original text allows for several other readings, but since Bernays’s version was apparently taken up by Nietzsche as representative of Aristotle’s views on tragedy, I will do the same here

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for simplicity’s sake.1 Judged by these views, Aristotle seems fairly optimistic. Although pain is unavoidable, it is not essential to a successful existence; it can be remedied and thus kept under the surface. Life is worth living insofar as it manages to suppress the negative. Schopenhauer’s pessimism takes up this logic and uses it to argue the contrary. If our existence is essentially sorrowful and pain cannot be avoided, human life simply is not worth living. All we can do is try to resign ourselves to our unfortunate condition. And that, according to Schopenhauer, is why tragedy is a useful art form: it is an exercise in resignation. By witnessing the losing battle of a tragic hero, we share the relief of his renunciation, a very pale form of pleasure. But more importantly, we learn to abandon our own futile desires and accept the inevitable defeat of our every endeavor. Tragedy reveals to us the true nature of the world and our existence, governed by “wickedness, injustice and the scornful mastery of chance,” so that this knowledge may “work as a quietener of the will,” neutralise our “once so powerful motives” and “produce resignation,” mercifully delivering us from our will to live.2 This is the best we can hope for in life: to find relative peace in the enduring sorrow that is our fate, slightly comforted by the knowledge that every other course of action would only result in disappointment and more sorrow. Like Aristotle’s theory of catharsis, Schopenhauer’s account of tragic pleasure is ultimately about the reduction of pain and misery. To my knowledge, David Hume’s dissertation “Of Tragedy” is never mentioned by Nietzsche, which means that he may not have read it. Still, it fits in well here since Hume too tries to tackle the tragic paradox, in a way typical of eighteenth and nineteenth century views. It will serve to illustrate how Nietzsche deviated from this heritage, and also what he retained from it. Essentially, Hume claims that our pleasure in the artistic spectacle of the play overshadows and converts any unpleasant feelings we may otherwise have felt. Aesthetic beauty defines the whole experience: we see no real cruelty, no suffering; only a good storyline, eloquent 1 Bernays’ reading of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy is referred to in Nietzsche’s Nachlass, Winter 1869–70 / Frühjahr 1870, 3 [38] in Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1980), vol. 7, p. 71. This edition is henceforth cited as KSA. Moreover, Bernays is paraphrased in several passages throughout Die Geburt der Tragödie and later works. 2 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Wolfgang Frhr. von Löhneysen (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 353–354.

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dialogue, and skillful acting. Pain and misery obviously do not even enter the picture here. Their intensity merely “nourishes the prevailing affection,”3 which in this case is the sensation of beauty, so they are not experienced as the painful feelings they are. Only when the atrocities on the scene are too gruesome, too bloody, and too distasteful do they break in on the audience’s hedonistic enjoyment. In that case, says Hume, the play is simply not a very good one.4 Nietzsche’s revaluation of suffering Although these theories ostensibly resolve the paradox, they really only sidestep it, because they do not allow for the possibility that the negative could be enjoyable for its own sake. Aristotle, Hume, and Schopenhauer struggle to reconcile notions they see as opposite: the good and the bad, the beautiful and the unpleasant, joy and pain. Instead of looking for some common ground, they only amplify these antinomies. Nietzsche calls this belief in the opposition of values the “fundamental belief of the metaphysicians,”5 who simply cannot accept the notion that truth can be rooted in error, that desire can be a source of generosity, nor that genius can exist in a cruel and arrogant soul (and perhaps only there). All these complexities have no place in their fairy-tale world. In Aristotle’s and Schopenhauer’s theories, the viewer’s pleasure always followed indirectly from the negative, by negation of the negative. Nietzsche’s answer to the paradox of tragedy is radically different.6 In Die Geburt der Tragödie and later works, he develops the idea that suffering itself can in some circumstances be the direct source of joy. The Dionysiac heritage that lies at the historic roots of Greek tragedy is an element of chaos and terror, of unbridled violence and destruction smashing our sedated lives out of their hinges; but in fact, says Nietzsche, it is not a negative element at all. The audience is overcome with joy 3 David Hume, “Of Tragedy,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis, 1985), p. 221. 4 Ibid., p. 224. 5 Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse I, § 2; KSA, vol. 5, p. 16. 6 Cfr. Kurt Weinberg, “Nietzsche’s Paradox of Tragedy,” Yale French Studies 96 (1999): 86–99 (reprinted from vol. 38, May 1967); Amy Price, “Nietzsche and the Paradox of Tragedy,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 38.4 (1998): 384–393; Keith M. May, Nietzsche and the Spirit of Tragedy (Basingstoke, 1990); Martha C. Nussbaum, “The Transfigurations of Intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Dionysus,” in Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, eds. S. Kemal, I. Gaskell and D.W. Conway (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 36–69.

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because it rediscovers death as an inalienable part of becoming, as the destruction that reveals creation at work. They experience the sacrifice of the tragic hero as a celebration of the overabundance of life, of its inexhaustibility and its supreme indifference to loss. Things, however, are not as simple as that. Isolated and pure, the Dionysiac would be as unbearable as an actual outbreak of violence and chaos; it would be an appalling “Mischung von Wollust und Grausamkeit,” as Nietzsche writes, a veritable “Hexentrank.”7 It was the genius of the ancient Greeks that inspired them to mix this witches’ brew with an antidote prepared by the god of medicine himself: Apollo. As one of Nietzsche’s preparatory notes for Die Geburt der Tragödie reads: “Die Tragödie ist die Naturheilkraft gegen das Dionysische. Es soll sich leben lassen: also ist der reine Dionysismus unmöglich.”8 The medicinal force of Apollo plays a more vital part in this than Nietzsche cares to admit, as Michael Silk and Joseph Stern confirm in Nietzsche on Tragedy: “The Dionysiac is necessary, but must always be mediated through the Apolline—that should have been Nietzsche’s formula. We might almost say, it is his formula.”9 Surprisingly, we find a note of similarity here with Hume’s traditionally eighteenth-century explanation of the tragic paradox, which also hinged on the transformation of the unbearably harsh into a tolerable experience by the beautifying force of art; but in fact he and Nietzsche are worlds apart. As I have shown, Hume never allows the drama’s tragic content itself to come into play, but only the faceless intensity of the feelings it evokes, transformed unrecognizably into artistic delight. His dissertation on tragedy has an unmistakable air of hedonism, an attitude which Nietzsche fiercely opposed. Nietzsche’s ideal Greeks did not live in “a realm of sentimental fantasy in which really nasty things are no more allowed to exist,” as Julian Young describes it; “Apollonian art [. . .] in some way and to some degree, acknowledges and does not eliminate from consciousness the terrible in life. Illusion it may offer us; but in some sense it is a truthful illusion.”10

Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie § 2; KSA, vol. 1, p. 32. Nachlass, Winter 1869–70/Frühjahr 1870, 3 [32]; KSA, vol. 7, p. 69. “Tragedy is nature’s healing power against the Dionysiac. Life must be lived: therefore pure Dionysism is impossible” (my translation). 9 M.S. Silk and J.P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge, 1981), p. 247. 10 Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 42–43. 7 8

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The Apolline element of deceptively calm and ordered appearances merely creates a distance between the audience and the stage; one could even say that the stage itself is the Apolline element, because it confines and positions the drama in a separate space. This is the only setting that allows the viewers to encounter the Dionysiac in a positive way. An over-quoted line from Götzen-Dämmerung, “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker,”11 may help us better understand this. The Apolline element takes the edge off the Dionysiac, so it doesn’t overpower or ‘kill’ the audience. What is left is an extremely powerful experience that can only make them feel stronger, precisely because it doesn’t kill them. Amy Price describes this as “the exhilarating [. . .] recognition that we can expose ourselves to these ugly truths [. . .] and live with them.”12 It’s important to realise that, although this joy of being alive while the hero suffers is closely linked with cruelty, it is in no way a simple case of Schadenfreude, because the hero’s suffering is, or at least represents as universal, each audience member’s own predicament.13 The spectators’ elation is more akin to the thrill of surviving cruelty. The opportunity to experience destruction in a positive way is rare and precious, and the distinctive trait of tragedy is that it provides a unique setting in which the Dionysiac can be enjoyed. It places us in an advantageous relation to life’s dark side; it lets us, the spectators, play the lead part. The tragic event is staged and thereby transformed in such a way that it emphasises our own vitality. We share the artist’s triumph at having captured reality in all its dreadfulness, at having successfully depicted and thus conquered it. The strategy of self-dramatization Though atypical and somewhat juvenile when compared to his later works, Die Geburt der Tragödie contains the blueprint for Nietzsche’s novel approach to philosophy. In fact, he keeps returning to his first book, rereading, commenting, re-interpreting it in several passages throughout 11 Götzen-Dämmerung, “Sprüche und Pfeile” § 8; KSA, vol. 6, p. 60. “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger” (my translation). 12 Amy Price, “Nietzsche and the Paradox of Tragedy,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 38.4 (1998): 384–393, here p. 388. 13 The interpretation of the audience’s joy as Schadenfreude is also repudiated in Young, p. 46.

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his later works and even more so in his unpublished notes. In 1885, he wrote to a friend: Das Durchdenken der principiellen Probleme [. . .] bringt mir immer wieder [. . .] auf dieselben Entscheidungen: sie stehen schon, so verhüllt und verdunkelt als möglich in meiner “Geburt der Tragödie,” und alles, was ich inzwischen hinzugelernt habe, ist hineingewachsen und Theil davon geworden.14

To me, this is what this whole investigation is about: its enormous potential for a broader application to philosophy as a whole. Like tragedy, philosophy has its own paradox. It mainly operates destructively, overthrowing false idols and exposing the ugly truths beneath our thin cultural veneer; but it is itself a constructive activity in the most literal sense, and therefore still requires a certain quantum of ‘naïve’ conviction to succeed. This means philosophers are in constant danger of destroying their own driving force. Essentially, I have just described the “paradox of the ascetic ideals” that Nietzsche writes about in Zur Genealogie der Moral. Philosophers are always attempting to use their power to plug the sources of the same power—“die Kraft zu gebrauchen, um die Quellen der Kraft zu verstopfen.”15 Or in simpler terms: the more we discover about our existence, the more we undermine our motivation to keep on discovering. The realities we unveil as philosophers can be as paralyzing as a purely Dionysiac experience gone wrong, as per Nietzsche’s description in Die Geburt der Tragödie. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we’ve looked deeply into the true nature of things: In diesem Sinne hat der dionysische Mensch Ähnlichkeit mit Hamlet: beide haben einmal einen wahren Blick in das Wesen der Dinge gethan, sie haben erkannt, und es ekelt sie zu handeln; denn ihre Handlung kann nichts am ewigen Wesen der Dinge ändern, sie empfinden es als lächerlich oder schmachvoll, dass ihnen zugemuthet wird, die Welt, die aus den Fugen ist, wieder einzurichten. Die Erkenntnis tödtet das Handeln, zum Handeln gehört das Umschleiertsein durch die Illusion.16

14 Letter to Franz Overbeck, 13 July 1885, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1986), p. 67. “Reflecting upon the fundamental problems [. . .] I always come [. . .] to the same old conclusions: they’re all there in my Birth of Tragedy, as veiled and obscured as can be, and everything I’ve learned since has blended in to become a part of it” (my translation). 15 Zur Genealogie der Moral III, § 11; KSA, vol. 5, p. 363. 16 Die Geburt der Tragödie § 7; KSA, vol. 1, pp. 56–57. “[B]oth have gazed into the true essence of things, they have acquired knowledge and they find action repulsive, for

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Interestingly, this description echoes almost literally the effects Schopenhauer found so beneficial; but to Nietzsche, they are precisely what tragedy is meant to remedy. It seems that philosophy can do with a dose of the same Apolline medicine that kept the audience safe from the Dionysiac element of a tragic play. This is why Nietzsche constantly stages and dramatizes his ideas. However bleak and disheartening his findings may be, he still somehow makes them confirm his own achievement at being the first to have discovered them. He deliberately puts himself back at the centre of his philosophy, playing the lead part of a tragic Promethean hero. Nietzsche’s refusal to succumb under the weight of a pessimistic world-view makes him aware of the need to fictionalize his thoughts—especially his most dangerous one, the “eternal recurrence of the same”—in order to make it as life-affirming and paradoxically uplifting as a well-written tragedy. If this seems like self-deception, that is because self-deception is Apollo’s mode of operation, as he spins his veil of illusion to keep us from falling apart. The strategy of self-dramatization was present from the very start in Die Geburt der Tragödie, with its peculiar mix of classical scholarship and inflammatory rhetoric,17 and there are many other examples throughout Nietzsche’s work. I will discuss two more. The first is found in the chapter “Der Genesende” (“The Convalescent”) in Also sprach Zarathustra; the second concerns Ecce Homo as a whole. Babbling and the eternal recurrence In the first section of “Der Genesende,” Zarathustra challenges his “most abysmal thought,” the “eternal recurrence of the same,” to a final showdown. As we know by now, such a frontal encounter with the Dionysiac in its pure, undiluted form can only end in dismay. The “eternal recurrence” is, and is meant to be, a devastating concept. It eliminates the eschatological prospect of an afterlife that gave meaning and a promised happy end to our worldly existence; it thoroughly their actions can do nothing to change the eternal essence of things [. . .]. Knowledge kills action; action requires one to be shrouded in a veil of illusion [. . .].” Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. R. Geuss and R. Speirs, trans. R. Speirs (Cambridge, 1999), p. 40. 17 See the contribution by Thomas Crombez in this book, “Tragedy, Community Art, and Musikorgiasmus: Examining the language of Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie.”

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eradicates any claim to historical uniqueness; and—not forgetting Nietzsche’s tentative cosmological underpinning of his “theory”18—it reduces our personal history to one of the countless random permutations that necessarily occur in finite matter over an infinite amount of time. Like the purely Dionysiac experience that Nietzsche linked to Hamlet, this bleak perspective on “the true nature of things” brutally exposes the futility of our earthly endeavors. During his brief showdown with the abyss, Zarathustra seeks the dominant position he needs to ensure his safety, but he seems to have underestimated the weight of the void that opens up beneath him and his initial triumph is quickly hurled into horror: “Heil mir! Heran! Gieb die Hand —— ha! lass! Haha! —— Ekel, Ekel, Ekel ——— wehe mir!”19 After his collapse, Zarathustra lies motionless in his cave for seven days, while his animals, the eagle and the snake, keep vigil. Fortunately, the animals know just the cure for this Dionysiac paralysis: fiction. Like the Apolline dreamers they are, they construct an artificial universe where everything is exactly like it is in the real one, including the dreaded “eternal recurrence,” except that it all revolves around Zarathustra’s glorious lead role. The outside world is his own to inhabit, they whisper, like the Garden of Eden was created as a kingdom for mankind to dwell: Tritt hinaus aus deiner Höhle: die Welt wartet dein wie ein Garten. Der Wind spielt mit schweren Wohlgerüchen, die zu dir wollen; und alle Bäche möchten dir nachlaufen. Alle Dinge sehnen sich nach dir, dieweil du sieben Tage allein bliebst,— tritt hinaus aus deiner Höhle!20

Even the “eternal recurrence,” the animals chant, is there exclusively for Zarathustra’s benefit, to give meaning and importance to his existence; for he is to become the first teacher of this new wisdom.

Nachlass, Frühjahr 1888, 3 [188]; KSA, vol. 13, pp. 374–376. Also sprach Zarathustra III, “Der Genesende”; KSA, vol. 4, p. 271. “Hail to me! Here now! Give me your hand—ha! Let go! Haha!—Nausea, nausea, nausea—oh no!” Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, eds. Adrian Del Caro and Robert Pippin, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge, 2006), p. 174. 20 KSA, vol. 4, pp. 271–272. “Step out of your cave: the world awaits you like a garden. The wind is playing with heady fragrances that make their way to you; and all brooks want to run after you. All things long for you, while you have stayed alone for seven days—step out of your cave!” Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 174–175. 18 19

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Denn deine Thiere wissen es wohl, oh Zarathustra, wer du bist und werden mußt: siehe, du bist der Lehrer der ewigen Wiederkunft—, das ist nun dein Schicksal! Daß du als der Erste diese Lehre lehren mußt,—wie sollte dies große Schicksal nicht auch deine größte Gefahr und Krankheit sein!21

A seductive image of heroic destiny indeed! The animals have managed to turn the worst into the best by tingeing it with a theatrical vanity that is described by Zarathustra as “Schwätzen” or babbling.22 Zarathustra knows better than to simply believe them, and he benevolently chides them for their impudence, but his experience in the abyss also taught him not to dismiss their cure out of hand. As Robert Pippin points out in his introduction to the English translation, Zarathustra will hear many more of these shallow, almost parodic repetitions of his own words in the fourth part of the book, where he talks with so-called “higher beings”: kings, an old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, and the ass. Pippin understands that this is unavoidable and rightly concludes that “The parodic return of [Zarathustra’s] own words is thus the heart of his tragedy,”23 but in my opinion, he does not give Zarathustra’s disciples the credit they deserve. I believe the shallowness of their renditions is not merely due the inferiority of second-hand experience or to their misunderstanding of Zarathustra’s words. On the contrary, it seems they have understood quite well that the only way to communicate the eternal recurrence is by “babbling” it, because in its true, undiluted and hopeless form it is hostile towards the very act of communicating—which is always an act of hope. Babbling the eternal recurrence infuses it with the antidote to its own Dionysiac message. Is that not shallow? Of course it is; but that, again, is how Apollo’s medicine works. The necessity of theatrical pathos Ecce Homo is a peculiar book in more ways than one, but what stands out most is the brazen self-adulation that permeates the whole work.

21 KSA, vol. 4, p. 275. “For your animals know well, oh Zarathustra, who you are and must become; behold, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence—that now is your destiny! That you must teach this teaching as the first [. . .].” Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 177–178. 22 KSA, vol. 4, p. 272. 23 Robert Pippin, foreword to Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. xxxiii.

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I believe this is Nietzsche’s most obvious application of his redeeming strategy of self-dramatization. He has often described the artist’s feeling of power that necessarily accompanies every creative act. According to a note written in the same period as Ecce Homo, this “Machtsgefühl” consists of delusions of certitude, superiority, and uniqueness that may be induced by chemical stimulants or by “aufregende Irrthümer.”24 Again, we recognize the fictional ‘lead part’ a tragic artist must allow himself to play. Since philosophical writing is a creative act as well—a fact that is all too easily overlooked—Nietzsche would agree that a minimal quantum of such ‘naïve’ self-assurance is indispensable for it to succeed. Keeping this in mind, we find that Ecce Homo’s seemingly outrageous chapter titles and claims to historical importance are not even that exceptional. They are a precise, though comically exaggerated parody of what can be read between the lines of every book that has ever been conceived, because the act of writing itself implicitly expresses the author’s silent conviction that he has something meaningful and unique to say, and that he is in a better position to say it than anyone else. As long as he is convinced of that, the author is immune to the self-critical consequences of whatever Dionysiac revelations may flow from his pen. As such, a certain uncritical self-staging can even be regarded as a necessary precondition for critical philosophy. Interesting philosophical perspectives arise when we understand the constraints this imposes upon the subjects philosophers can allow themselves to write about critically. Even the most pessimistic among them—according to Nietzsche that would of course be Schopenhauer—need to (and unwittingly do) shield off a small core of self-confidence from their own crushing criticism. This taboo significantly demarcates their line of reasoning, guiding their omissions and evasions as well as their sympathies. Ecce Homo wears these usually hidden mechanisms on its surface for all to see. Schopenhauer was never really a pessimist, Nietzsche surprisingly writes in Zur Genealogie der Moral; he was too passionate a fighter; he took his enemies too seriously and therefore also himself, as their enemy.25 Paraphrasing an aphorism from Jenseits von Gut und Böse, we could say that even the expression of a universal pessimism still requires a hidden

24 25

November 1887 / March 1888, 11 [285]; KSA, vol. 13, pp. 110–111. Zur Genealogie der Moral III, 17; KSA, vol. 5, p. 349.

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belief in oneself as the one who unmasks.26 This, again, is the paradox of philosophy. Nietzsche brought it to light and realized at once the difficulties it entails for every self-critical writer. Ecce Homo can be read not only as a parody of common philosophical practice, but also as an instructive example of how to keep our creative Machtsgefühl intact by allowing ourselves the tragic illusion that we ‘know a little more’. From the joyful self-praise of the chapter titles to the elaborate reinterpretation (verging on falsification) of Nietzsche’s own life and work, establishing post factum an impressive coherence of meaning and intention, it is a detailed blow-up of the hidden anatomy of any philosophical work. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche has accomplished his quest for a truly ‘tragic’ approach to philosophy by overtly moving himself to the center of the stage like great Dionysus emerging from the satyr-choir—but always, necessarily, speaking in Apolline visions.

26

Jenseits von Gut und Böse IV, 78; KSA, vol. 5, p. 87.

PART FOUR

TRAGEDY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

SELFHOOD AS THE LOCUS OF THE TRAGIC IN PAUL RICŒUR’S SOI-MÊME COMME UN AUTRE Arthur Cools (Universiteit Antwerpen) Le chemin sera long au-delà d’Aristote. Paul Ricœur1

Starting point of my inquiry into the tragic dimension of human existence is the excursion—Ricœur calls it an “interlude”—entitled “Le tragique de l’action” in chapter nine of his major work Soi-même comme un autre.2 This is certainly not the only place where Ricœur treats the issue of the tragic: in the second volume of Finitude et culpabilité, entitled La Symbolique du mal, he already included a whole chapter on the tragic vision of existence and confronted it with other symbolizations of the origin of evil.3 But the resurgence of the theme at the end of the book dedicated to the project of a hermeneutics of the self—“l’irruption du tragique, en ce point de notre méditation”4—attests to the importance of the tragic in Ricœur’s understanding of selfhood. In fact, Ricœur’s excursion is highly enigmatic. Chapter nine at the end of Soi-même comme un autre has a meaning central to the whole project of the book. Considering selfhood in relation to the possibilities of practical wisdom, it resumes not only Ricœur’s final argument on the ethical dimension of the self, but it develops as well the reflections on personal identity in a more fundamental way, confronting the project of a hermeneutic clarification of selfhood with a final, insurmountable condition. Related to such a broad approach of the self, Ricœur’s reference to the tragic at this point in his argumentation seems to serve a double purpose. First, it indicates a kind of limitation—a radical finitude—to the powers and the possibilities of the ethical self. According to Ricœur, tragedy reminds us of a non-philosophical voice that is distinct even from the moral and the practical—“une autre voix

Paul Ricœur, Temps et récit I: L’Intrigue et le récit historique (Paris, 1983), p. 68. Paul Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre (Paris, 1990), pp. 281–290. 3 Paul Ricœur, Finitude et culpabilité II: La Symbolique du mal (Paris, 1960), pp. 199–217. 4 Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 281. 1 2

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que celle de la philosophie même morale ou pratique”5—to which it is necessary to refer in order to revalue the moment of conflict in the ethical dimension of the self. Second, the tragic seems to be in an exemplary way the expression of a ‘primary’ narrative in which all those features, analyzed and developed in the hermeneutic approach to selfhood, are joined together. In this regard, the resurgence of the tragic in Ricœur’s argumentation confronts us with this part of the self that resists the complete re-description of the self in a merely ethical or moral discourse. Obviously, the tragic has an essential, not to say ‘original’ meaning for Ricœur, that does not only belong to the legacy of a poetical form, but appears to be inherent in the experience of human existence. Therefore, it is the task of the hermeneutical clarification of the self to take into consideration the intrinsic relation between selfhood and the experience of the tragic, at the risk of evoking the inescapable resurgence of archaic forces. Because of that view, Ricœur’s position, whatever may be the decisive role of the reference to an eschatology in his hermeneutics, is still clearly distinct from and opposed to Levinas’s philosophy of subjectivity, in which the primacy of ethics is precisely defined as a defeat of the tragic dimension of existence.6 It is not my intention to confront these two positions in this paper, nor will I consider the interplay as such between ethics and the experience of the tragic. I will rather raise a preliminary question from a limited perspective. How does the experience of the tragic appear in Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self ? The relevance of this question may be mentioned first of all in relation to the actual proliferation of candidates for the locus of the tragic. In common sense interpretations, the tragic is attributed to issues as varied as terrorism, multiculturalism, technology, medical decisions, car accidents, the European continent, and others. The list of candidates sometimes seems to be indefinite and as a result, the word ‘tragic’ functions merely as a passe-partout meant only as an attempt to attract the attention of the public on the proposed issue. In Ibid. It would not be difficult to show how the tragic experience defines from the start Levinas’s philosophy of subjectivity as a project of “leaving existence by a new way” (“sortir de l’être par une nouvelle voie”), because, as Levinas argues, “toute civilisation qui accepte l’être, le désespoir tragique qu’il comporte et les crimes qu’il justifie, mérite le nom de barbarie” (Emmanuel Levinas, De l’évasion, ed. Jacques Rolland (Paris, 1982), p. 127). The formulation of this project returns as such in the main argument of Autrement qu’être: “il s’agit d’énoncer l’éclatement d’un destin qui règne dans l’essence.” (E. Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (La Haye, 1974), p. 20. 5 6

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Ricœur’s view, on the contrary, the tragic never loses its original meaning and his project of a hermeneutics of the self can therefore help shed a light on the horizon of sense within which the tragic appears to be irreducible. In other words, his approach enables us to clarify a conceptual confusion in contemporary uses of the tragic and to specify the actual conditions of the appearance of the tragic. It is precisely for this reason, however, that there is still another advantage to limit our examination to the resurgence of the tragic in the experience of selfhood. A kind of ambiguity is characteristic of Ricœur’s approach. On the one hand, the scope of his examination of the insistence of the tragic in human existence is time and again the Greek tragedies. On the other hand, the main notion in his analysis of selfhood is narrative identity and it is in direct reference to the modern novel that this notion comes to the fore. The question concerning the resurgence of the tragic in the experience of selfhood seems to lead us back to the question how the narrative of the modern novel is constitutive for the concept of personal identity. It must be possible to relate the tragic to modern narrative and to reinterpret it with this condition in mind in order to clarify how selfhood is affected by the experience of the tragic. What is at stake here is nothing less than the condition of the appearance of the tragic within the limits of the modern condition of selfhood. I will come back to this question in the second part of this contribution. First, I will examine the ambiguity characteristic of Ricœur’s approach. The ambiguity of the tragic in Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self In his theory of narrative, as worked out in Temps et récit, Aristotle’s philosophical account of the tragedy as a dramatic form is playing a primary role.7 What Ricœur calls configuration, the central activity of narrative that consists in composition, is entirely shaped by Aristotle’s notion of mythos (which he translates as mise en intrigue), and it is “la poésie tragique qui porte à l’excellence les vertus structurales de l’art de composer.”8 The scope of this analysis of narrative, however, is not limited to a theory of literary genres. From the start, the significance of

Ricœur, Temps et récit I, pp. 66ff. Ibid. “[I]t is [. . .] tragic poetry that most bears the structural virtues of the art of composition.” Ricœur, Time and Narrative I, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago, 1988), p. 32. 7 8

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narrative is conceived in relation to the temporal structure of human experience.9 The world developed by narrative is essentially a temporal world, and it is therefore possible to consider narrative as a way of articulating the human experience of time. Because of this connection, it is not surprising to see that Ricœur in Soi-même comme un autre refers directly to his analyses of Temps et récit in order to show the primary contribution of narrative in the constitution of selfhood.10 But considering the tragic in his hermeneutics of the self, Ricœur does not relate to Aristotle—despite the importance, not to say the primacy, of Aristotle’s ethics in his account of the ethical self—and it is not in connection with the concept of narrative identity that he examines the experience of the tragic. On the contrary, he refers immediately to Greek tragedy, Antigone in particular, from a perspective that clearly goes beyond Aristotle and beyond the limits of an analysis of selfhood in narrative terms. Why this ambiguity? In fact, Ricœur’s examination of the tragic in Soi-même comme un autre is consistent with his earlier writings on the theme. Already, in one of his first publications on the issue, written shortly after World War II, in which he comments on contemporary publications on the tragic experience (by Gerhard Nebel, Henri Gouhier, Max Scheler, and Karl Jaspers), he affirms the necessity of going beyond Aristotle: N’est-ce pas ici la limite d’une philosophie du tragique? Et de l’acte philosophique en général? Depuis la prose des sophistes et d’Aristote, la philosophie ne s’est-elle pas exclue de ce pouvoir d’assumer le tragique, en se situant elle-même hors du champ de la poésie et de l’évocation des transcendances?11

With regard to the theme of the tragic, it clearly is not Ricœur’s intention to give a hermeneutic actualization of Aristotle’s analysis of tragedy in his Poetics. He is not interested in a conceptual clarification of the tragic on the basis of an analysis of the poetical form of tragedy. On the contrary, his approach is inspired by a much more radical interrogation concerning the limits of philosophical discourse itself. It seems that for Ricœur, it is important to first of all recognize tragedy as a

Ricœur, Temps et récit I, p. 17. Cf. “L’identité personnelle et l’identité narrative,” in Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, pp. 137–166. 11 Paul Ricœur, “Sur le tragique” (1953), in Ricœur, Lectures 3: Aux frontières de la philosophie (Paris, 1994), p. 200. 9

10

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non-philosophical source, and it is this same perspective that dominates the resurgence of the theme in Soi-même comme un autre: L’irruption du tragique, en ce point de notre méditation, doit son caractère intempestif à sa dimension non-philosophique. [. . .] Que le tragique résiste à une “répétition” intégrale dans le discours de l’éhique et de la morale, ce trait doit être rappelé avec brièveté mais avec fermeté, de peur que la philosophie ne soit tentée de traiter la tragédie à la façon d’une carrière à exploiter . . .12

Similarly, the reference to Greek tragedy that dominates Ricœur’s perspective on the tragic in Soi-même comme un autre, is consistent with his interpretation of the tragic already given in La Symbolique du mal: [L]’exemple grec n’est pas un exemple parmi d’autres; la tragédie grecque n’est pas du tout un exemple au sens inductif, mais la manifestation soudaine et entière de l’essence du tragique; comprendre le tragique c’est répéter en soi-même le tragique grec, non point comme un cas particulier de la tragédie, mais comme l’origine de la tragédie, c’est-à-dire à la fois son commencement et son surgissement authentique.13

According to this view, the original locus of the tragic is Greek tragedy. It is there that the phenomenon of the tragic appears as such for the very first time. Greek tragedy reveals at the core of the experience of the tragic a fundamental and paradoxical interdependence of two essential features: the inescapable destiny of a divine, but hostile transcendence on the one hand, and the human liberty of an action capable of confronting and postponing this destiny on the other. With one of these two features lacking, there is no tragic experience. Only because of their interdependence, the authentic greatness of the hero resisting his destiny through action can appear with regard to a fundamental blindness of the hero, unable to foresee and to accept the limits of his action in his confrontation with destiny. And because the drama of this confrontation results in the destruction of the hero’s resistance, fear and suffering are the specific expressions of the tragic experience. Yet the resurgence of the tragic in the project of Soi-même comme un autre remains—despite these clear references to the earlier work—fundamentally paradoxical. Selfhood is described in terms of narrative identity and the modern novel is considered to be the laboratory where this identity has been composed. Nevertheless, the reference to Greek 12 13

Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 281. Ricœur, Finitude et culpabilité II, p. 199.

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tragedy remains primary and is mentioned as such in order to express the experience of the tragic that affects selfhood. Moreover, Ricœur emphasizes the original and irreducible dimension of the tragic which resists philosophy and which philosophy is unable to assume. But in the mean time, he includes the tragic explicitly in the project of a hermeneutics of the self, claiming that practical wisdom can only be taught in confronting this limit of philosophy. “Et pourtant, la tragédie enseigne.”14 In this respect, Ricœur not only speaks of a “tragic wisdom,” but claims that practical wisdom benefits from the tragic experience: “une sagesse [. . .] capable de nous orienter dans les conflits.”15 It seems, therefore, that the tragic, despite its irreducible dimension, contributes nevertheless to an ethical apprenticeship. Why is it important to Ricœur to stress in such a paradoxical way the emergence of the tragic? What is the nature of this ambiguity? The reason for these paradoxes can be found in the priority given to the analysis of the human experience of time in Ricœur’s approach. As we already mentioned, this perspective dominates the analysis of Temps et récit. The book opens with a commentary on the aporias of the essence of time in book XI of Augustine’s Confessiones before it shifts to an analysis of Aristotle’s theory of the intrigue. This chronological inversion enables Ricœur to interpret Aristotle’s notions of mimesis and intrigue in terms of ‘emplotment’ (mise en intrigue), i.e., the (verbal) art of composing a plot capable of organizing and unifying the discordant dimensions of the experience of time. From this perspective the tragic poetry, which in Aristotle’s Poetics is the literary genre par excellence, is situated at the extreme opposite of Augustine’s definition of time in terms of distentio animi. For the excellence of tragic poetry is related to the order it composes—the connection between the events—and this order appears in tragic poetry from the constraints defined by the art of composition, without any reference to the concrete experience. The connection between the events in tragic poetry is logical and necessary instead of chronological and episodic. Ricœur’s project consists, then, in showing how the verbal activity of composition is related to the concrete experience of time and this means that he will elucidate the temporal implications characteristic of the model of tragic poetry. In other words: for Ricœur, the essence of the tragic is less a ques-

14 15

Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 283. Ibid.

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tion of representation—as it is the case in Aristotle’s Poetics—than a question of temporality. As a result, he transforms the mise en intrigue characteristic of tragic poetry beyond the scope of Aristotle’s classification of genres into a general theory of narrative whose main feature is to articulate the experience of time. But at the same time and as a second result, the condition is created to consider the tragic itself as a concrete experience of time. The same perspective still determines the project of a hermeneutics of selfhood. Certainly, the theory of narrative is no longer invoked in Soi-même comme un autre in relation to the constitution of the experience of time, but with regard to the hermeneutical problem of the constitution of selfhood. However, the experience of time is already implied in the elucidation of this hermeneutical problem. A temporal dimension belongs essentially to the constitution of selfhood. This dimension of selfhood is articulated by the notion of personal identity: “l’identité personnelle ne peut précisément s’articuler que dans la dimension temporelle de l’existence humaine.”16 From Augustine’s examination of time to the re-examination of Aristotle’s theory of myth, and from the revised and generalized theory of narrative to the hermeneutics of selfhood, there is a clear continuity in Ricœur’s argumentation. The aporias of time in Augustine’s examination are given a new formulation as the aporias and “perplexities” of personal identity in Ricœur’s examination of selfhood.17 Thanks to the mediating role of the theory of narrative in his argument, Ricœur is able to articulate the experience of time within the limits of a hermeneutics of selfhood. What is at stake in his analysis of Soi-même comme un autre is first of all the elaboration of the concept of narrative identity as a fundamental contribution to the elucidation of the problem of personal identity. In this analysis, the mise en intrigue as it is realized by the tragic genre in a paradigmatic way is already implied, but the specificity of the tragic genre in a general theory of narrative disappears. However, the resurgence of the theme at a later point in the hermeneutics of the self is called first of all an “épreuve,”18 an ordeal. In other words, as expression of the condition of human existence, the resurgence of the tragic is considered to be a specific experience of

16 17 18

Ibid., p. 138. Ibid., pp. 138, 288 et passim. Ibid., p. 281.

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time. Tragedy, according to Ricœur , creates “une aporie éthico-pratique qui s’ajoute à toutes celles qui ont jalonné notre quête de l’ipséité; elle redouble en particulier les aporias de l’identité narrative . . .”19 Does this short survey of Ricœur’s line of argumentation now enable us to clarify the paradoxical appearance of the tragic within the limits of a hermeneutics of selfhood? On the contrary, this survey concludes with an emphasis on its enigma. Including the tragic as an irreducible experience of the ethical self, Ricœur seems to consider the tragic a constant, insurmountable phenomenon of the human condition. But faced with the question how the tragic continues to affect the experience of the self, he refers to the representation of Greek tragedy, of which Antigone is the emblematic figure. The question then remains: how to clarify hermeneutically the experience of the tragic? How is selfhood affected by this experience? What is the relation between this experience and the aporia of personal identity? In short: how to articulate the specific structure of the enigma constitutive of the tragic? A further approach to these questions can only be found in scrutinizing the constitution of personal identity. Personal identity and the tragic The interpretation of the tragic in relation to the primal question of temporality opens the possibility of a radical thesis, namely that the experience of time as such is tragic. Augustine’s reflection on the aporias of time certainly does not allow for this interpretation. But it seems to be defended, though, by the Dutch philosopher Paul Van Tongeren, who writes in “The Ethics of the Tragedy of Temporality”: In our condition, the tragedy of temporality consists in the unbearable and at the same time inevitable tension between eternity and temporality.20

Is it sufficient to refer to this tension, to the experience of death and the insurmountable finitude of human existence, in order to define the

Ibid., p. 288. “De tragiek van de tijdelijkheid van onze conditie bestaat in de onverdraaglijke, maar tegelijk onvermijdelijke spanningsverhouding tussen eeuwigheid en tijdelijkheid terwijl die tijdelijkheid zelf ons voortdurend wegtrekt naar wat zal zijn en naar wat geweest is.” Paul Van Tongeren, “Ethiek van de tragiek van de tijdelijkheid,” in P. Vanden Berghe, W. Lemmens, J. Taels, eds., Tragisch: Over tragedie en ethiek in de 21ste eeuw (Budel, 2005), p. 158. 19 20

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tragic? It would imply that the tragic is an attribute of the experience of human existence as such. Against this view, Ricœur recalls the Greek meaning of the tragic that qualifies an act: “la tragédie a bien pour thème l’action [. . .]. Elle est ainsi l’oeuvre des agissants eux-mêmes et de leur individualité.”21 Tragedy concerns actors who intervene, to whom it is possible to ascribe intentions, convictions, the capacity to act, and who are able (or unable) to take responsibility for their acts. Only the examination of the relation between the act and the actor provides an answer to the question how the tragic concerns the experience of human existence. But the examination of this relation defines from the start and accompanies until the end the whole project of the hermeneutics of selfhood. In other words, the thesis that the connection between the actor and his act constitutes as such the experience of the tragic, is no less radical than the assertion that the experience of time fulfils the condition of the tragic. Is it then sufficient to refer to the estrangement of the actor from the act in which he realized himself, in order to situate the tragic in the experience of selfhood? It would imply that there is no place for human freedom, and that the human ability to act and to assume responsibility as such defines the experience of the tragic. That is not the case. In his approach, Ricœur invites us on the contrary to abandon such general views on the tragic and to invert the perspective by considering the tragic as a specific modality of revealing the condition of selfhood in the concrete experience of a singular action. What is at stake in this inversion, is the specificity of such a “modality of revealing” (a formulation in which the reader can recognize the legacy of the phenomenological method in Ricœur’s approach). But how to determine this specificity in the constitution of selfhood? Ricœur’s inversion of perspective already provides a starting point. In order to specify the tragic experience, it is necessary to relate the experience of time to the connection between the actor and his action, as a consequence of which it becomes possible to elucidate the temporal dimension in the realization of a single action. As we already know, this art of ‘relating’ is characteristic of narrative. It brings the person and the outcome of his choices and deeds together in a temporal order. Therefore, the pièce de résistance of Ricœur’s argumentation in Soi-même comme un autre consists in clarifying the contribution of the theory of

21

Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 283.

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narrative to the project of a hermeneutics of selfhood. The concept of narrative identity realizes this synthesis. Because of its mediating role, narrative enables him to approach the central problem of personal identity which concerns first of all the temporal experience of the self—the irreducible tension between the transformations of self and its identity. In this analysis of narrative identity, the reference to the modern novel is essential. Characteristic of the modern novel, Ricœur remarks, is the emancipation of the character from a pre-given narrative order. With regard to Aristotle’s definition of the intrigue, the relation between plot and character is inverted: “au contraire du modèle aristotélicien, l’intrigue est mise au service du personnage.”22 In the modern novel, the experience of the character and the transformation of his or her identity are fully explored, to the point even of substituting the dramatic intrigue of events. The modern novel analyses the experience of time as a quest of a character for his or her identity. This connection transforms the quest into an “épreuve”: C’est alors que l’identité [du personnage], échappant au contrôle de l’intrigue et de son principe d’ordre, est mise véritablement à l’épreuve.23

How then does the tragic experience emerge from this quest? That means: how is the tragic related to the problem of personal identity? The problem of personal identity is a problem of identification. It has to do with the question of the continuation of the self in time. How can one say that a person remains the same despite all transformations in his life? How can one consider the same person responsible for a single act in the present, the past and the future? According to Ricœur, there are two ways to define personal identity, as sameness (mêmeté) and as selfhood (ipséité). The first enables us to identify the person as the same body (for instance, by fingerprint), the second defines the person from the perspective of its self-relatedness, as having and living its own body. The importance of narrative in the constitution of selfhood consists in bringing these two modalities of continuation in interaction with each other. The experience of a dissociation where the experience of the senses is separated from the sameness of the body is in this view already a kind of narrative, as is the case for instance in science fiction.

22 23

Ibid., p. 176. Ibid.

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How does the tragic emerge from this interaction? The interaction takes place between two extremes where the distinction between sameness and selfhood itself collapses. This is the case, on the one side, when personal identity is defined as ‘character’. Character is a kind of disposition that constitutes our relation to the world, the others, and ourselves (it is essential for our self-relatedness), but it is at the same time fixated on something that a person cannot change: character defines selfhood as sameness, as a sum of invariable ‘traits’, but in which it is possible to recognize a person. On the other side, the distinction collapses when personal identity is defined as the possibility of being faithful without taking into consideration the dependence of the impersonal features of sameness. In this moment selfhood defines personal identity as released of a sameness that cannot be assumed in terms of selfhood: whatever happens to me, whatever I have done, whatever my character may be, I will do . . . Narratives constitute a form of playing with these extremes. Is it possible to define the tragic with regard to these extremes? The fairy tale, for instance, is a narrative in which the character is identified with certain types (the witch, the good fairy, the ugly beast). The modern novel, Ricœur admits, tends towards the opposite extreme, i.e., the stream of consciousness, but also the kind of novel where the I is going through the experience of the impossibility of defining the I (as is the case for instance in Samuel Beckett’s fictional writings, while Ricœur refers to Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) reflects the persistence of the question of a selfhood released from any factual determination. But Ricœur interprets neither as ‘tragic’. A tragic-narrative does not reduce a character to a mere set of personality-traits or to a walking body listening to a strange voice in his head and seeing the world with the eyes of another, as is the case for instance in some contemporary experimental performances, where one makes use of technical means in order to create an artificial experience of dissociation.24 But neither is it the insistence of the question who I am after having lost all means to identify myself. The modern novel certainly expresses a crisis of identity in this regard, which ends up questioning the narrative structure of the novel (the disappearance of character), but it seems that Ricœur does

24 See for instance the multi-medial performances of the theatre group CREW, .

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not qualify this crisis as ‘tragic’. The resurgence of the tragic in the modern novel seems to be somewhere else. What, in fact, is lacking in those two narratives in order to call them ‘tragic’? The narrative of the fairy tale lacks the expression of the lived experience of the own body. In the modern novel, on the contrary, as it radicalizes the quest for selfhood, the possibility of realizing the self in a single act is lost. How then does the tragic emerge from Ricœur’s narrative approach? Ricœur does not give a definition of the resurgence of the tragic in narrative terms—as already mentioned, he refers immediately to Greek tragedy and in particular to Antigone when pointing to the tragic dimension in the experience of selfhood. His narrative approach, however, is the basis for his elucidation of the problem of personal identity. So it must be possible to consider the specific temporality of the tragic experience in narrative terms, too. I suggest therefore the following definition: the tragic is a narrative that brings together the two extremes of sameness and selfhood in one and the same temporality, in such a way that the profound and insurmountable conflict between them appears to be constitutive for personal identity. It is not the collapse of one of the two extremes of personal identity that qualifies the tragic experience, nor is it the more or less successfully and historically realized interaction between them that is able to express the tragic dimension of existence. The tragic reveals at once the impossibility of escaping this distinction—this means: it reveals a fixed opposition within the constitution of selfhood—and the impossibility of integrating this opposition in the projects or the meanings of the self—this means: it reveals a kind of fatality that limits intrinsically the power of its freedom. In other words, it is in the tragic experience that the question of personal identity appears as such as an inescapable and at once insoluble problem, not in the sense that the I is still in search for a determination (in the tragic experience the I has, on the contrary, a fixed determination and that is the reason why Ricœur includes it in the chapter entitled “La conviction”), but in the sense that the I in the very moment of affirming its self-determination (its being faithful to itself ) is exposed to a sameness that it is unable to assume in terms of selfhood, but from which it cannot be released. The structure of this conflict can be clarified in terms of a double, but contradictory commitment—commitment of the self (subjective genitive) with regard to its self-relatedness: ‘me who is committed to . . .’, but at the same time assignment of the self (objective genitive) with regard to an impersonal

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sameness that singularizes the I: ‘in the face of this meaningless dead body of my brother, nobody can take my place’. The dimension of the future as it is implied by the first assignment (the promise of being faithful to one self ) is expressed in a direct correlation with something that belongs to a past before there was the possibility of a choice as it is implied in the second assignment. In this temporal conflict, the tragic appears to be a concrete experience of the self, which distinctive feature is the reference to (or the promise of ) the possibility of a redemption from a sameness that the I is unable to assume without having the means to itself realize this redemption in a single act. It is clear by now why the theme of the tragic returns in Ricœur’s project of a hermeneutics of the self in a chapter concerning the ethical dimension of the self, rather than in the chapter on narrative identity. Ethics already conditions the resurgence of the tragic in the constitution of selfhood, because without the search for the realization of one’s own freedom through action, without the experience of being committed in this search, and without the possibility of ascribing to oneself convictions and obligations in order to give an orientation to this search, it is not possible to be confronted with the tragic dimension of existence. But at the same time, it is possible to indicate why it is wrong to consider ethics as an interruption of the tragic experience of the self, and why it is important to state inversely that the tragic marks an essential finitude of the ethical self. There is no guarantee in existence that the commitment by which the self assumes its responsibility is not exposed to an commitment by something impersonal that the I is unable to assume, but that ruins the meanings of its responsibility. There is no guarantee in the experience of selfhood that the promise of a future beyond any factual determination does not become the scene of a conflict in which the self is confronted with the resurgence of an irremediable past. Conclusion Starting point of this paper was the ambiguity of Ricœur’s examination of the tragic as it appears within the project of a hermeneutical understanding of selfhood. On the one hand, he interprets the tragic as an “épreuve,” an ordeal that constitutes one of the aporetic experiences of personal identity. Therefore, the tragic is approached in relation to the theory of narrative that articulates the temporal dimensions of

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these experiences (as is the case in the modern novel). But on the other hand, Ricœur refers directly to the representation of Greek tragedy in order to account for the radical, non-philosophical dimension of the tragic that is inherent in the experience of selfhood. The resurgence of the tragic in the context of an analysis of personal identity seems then to displace the ‘original’ meaning of the tragic. How does this ambiguity concern the understanding of the tragic as an experience of selfhood? The ambiguity of Ricœur’s approach seems to result from an inversion of the relations between the theological and anthropological perspectives. According to his earlier reflection on the symbolization of evil, the original meaning of Greek tragedy with regard to any approach of the tragic is due to the fact that it reveals the priority and the omnipresence of the theological dimension: “l’exemple grec, en montrant le tragique lui-même, a le privilège de nous en révéler sans aucune atténuation le ressort théologique.”25 The human condition, and particularly the blindness of man, are from the start represented as the locus of the confrontation of divine forces and as the locus submitted to the powers of an evil god that leads man to his downfall. In the hermeneutical project of Soi-même comme un autre, the perspective is inverted. The constitution of selfhood and in particular the problem of personal identity can be elucidated without any reference to the divine . . . until the moment of the tragic experience. The resurgence of the tragic in the analysis of identity coincides with the appearance of “archaic forces” in the experience of selfhood—“des énergies archaïques et mythiques qui sont aussi les sources immémoriales du malheur”26—and with the confrontation of a transcendence to which the whole question of subjectivity is submitted. But neither this transcendence, nor the reference to divine forces are mentioned here with regard to a pregiven divine order. In other words: the hermeneutic reflection on the constitution of selfhood shed a light on the condition of appearance of the tragic. As a result, the opposition between freedom and destiny, characteristic of all tragic experience, does no longer appear in reference to an evil divine force, but as an inescapable and insoluble conflict between the constituents of personal identity.

25 26

Ricœur, Finitude et culpabilité II, p. 200. Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 281.

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That may be the reason why Antigone remains for Ricœur the emblematic figure of the tragic experience. Antigone is certainly the most ‘anthropological’ figure of the Greek dramas. As an individual she incarnates to a large extent the power of freedom because of her obstinate will to realize in a single act her commitment beyond the written laws of the city. But even in her experience of a fatal destiny, the reference to a pre-given divine order seems to disappear in favor of an anthropological condition: the commitment to her brother that belongs to a past she could not choose. Ricœur points explicitly to this familial knot in order to indicate the condition where the divine forces inescapably resurge: “Le lien de la sœur au frère, qui ignore la distinction politique entre ami et ennemi, est inséparable d’un service des divinités d’en bas, qui transforme le lien familial en un pacte ténébreux avec la mort.”27 In this regard, Antigone appears to be a very ambiguous figure: a figure in which the theological reference retreats, because she is able to shed a light on the (anthropological) condition of the appearance of the tragic, but a figure that reveals at once the inevitability of the theological reference: because of her obligation to her family she unbinds archaic forces. This ambiguity makes Antigone the figure par excellence to translate the original locus of tragedy into the domain of the constitution of selfhood. The resurgence of the first in the second is made possible by the continuation of the familial knot. As a laboratory of personal identities, family relations are first of all a symbolic structure of ascriptions and commitments through which personal identity emerges. Family relations are therefore constitutive of the mediation between the irremediable acts of the past and the responsible ego of the future. But for that same reason, family ties are always at risk of becoming the attestation of an irresolvable conflict between the commitment to the sameness of a past and the commitment of selfhood that is unable to assume this past.

27

Ibid., p. 282.

THE TRAGIC IS ALWAYS THE TRAGIC: KIERKEGAARD AND LACAN ON A MODERN ANTIGONE Paul Vanden Berghe (Universiteit Antwerpen) Less than half a century has passed since George Steiner proclaimed “the death of tragedy.”1 As a literary scholar, he asserted that tragedies had been written only within very specific temporal and geographic settings, and that, as far as he was concerned, these settings had unfortunately disappeared for good. He argued that Christianity and the profane philosophies that he regarded as its secularized heirs—back in 1961, he was surely thinking of Marxism—postulated human freedom to such an extent that no room remains for the notion of a tragic fate. Steiner felt that, after Racine, there were hardly any traces of tragedy to be found. Meanwhile, however, the god of Christianity has in turn been definitively declared dead, while Marxism, like the other “grand narratives,” has fallen into a deep coma. Consequently, the question arises whether the end of the so-called ‘anti-tragic’ narratives, do not perhaps create an opportunity for a rebirth of the tragic. In his 1996 essay “Tragedy, Pure and Simple,” Steiner indeed acknowledged that this may well be the case. Moreover, he added: [ T ]he rise to preponderance of the modern prose-novel, and of such derivatives as the film, have made the concept of tragedy diffuse. The contours are today so loose as to be almost meaningless.2

Generalizing statements are easily gratuitous; but when relating to tragedy, they can be substantiated lexically. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, for example, illustrates this broadening of meanings. According to contemporary usage, ‘tragedy’ means

George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London, 1961). George Steiner, “Tragedy, Pure and Simple,” in M.S. Silk, ed., Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (Oxford, 1996), pp. 534–546, here p. 542. 1 2

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paul vanden berghe 1. A terrible event that causes great sadness [. . .] (i.e., extremely unfortunate) [. . .] 2. A serious play with a sad ending.3

With these definitions, the dictionary very much has its finger on the pulse of the times. Not only are more tragedies performed than ever before, but any adversity or misfortune is readily qualified as tragic. The word ‘tragic’ is used to describe natural disasters and human-made atrocities, road accidents and bankruptcies, and physical as well as mental illness. In fact, it is even thrown around as an epithet for public figures, such as the princess who lost her life in a car crash, the singing nun who committed suicide, the footballer whose career was ruined by the bottle, the pop star who became out of touch with reality. But does this do justice to the essence of the tragic? Is ‘tragic’ simply a synonym for disastrous, terrible, sorrowful, or even unhappy? And if it is, then have we not lost some of the original richness of connotations associated with the notions of ‘tragedy’ and ‘the tragic’? In its definition of tragedy, an authoritative source such as The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary refers almost cursorily or coincidentally to the related notion of fate. It describes tragedy in the second instance as “a serious verse play in classical and Renaissance drama in which the protagonist is drawn to disaster or death by an error or fatal flaw.” So how essential is this cursory reference to fate? Does the notion that fate simply comes over the victim wrap up the meaning of the tragic, or does the tragic victim also have a personal, active contribution to make? And how tangible is that personal contribution in the case of, say, a supposedly tragic illness or traffic accident? Kierkegaard, too, reflected on this issue and asserted that “generally there ought to be somewhat more discrimination about what is called a tragic collision.”4 While he is not entirely mistaken, it would seem to us to be more fruitful to explore what this broadening of meaning entails for the philosophical question of what is the essence of the tragic. Is there such a thing as a modern interpretation of the tragic that diverges significantly from the ancient, classical meaning? And, if there is, then what is the meaning of ‘tragic’ as their common denominator?

3 Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, ed. Sally Wehmeier (Oxford, 2005). 4 Søren Kierkegaard, “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama: A Venture in Fragmentary Endeavor,” in Kierkegaard (pseud. Victor Eremita), Either/Or, ed. and trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ, 1987), pp. 139–164, here p. 162. Henceforth cited as E/O.

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A modern Antigone Rather than to begin this essay with an exposé on ancient tragedy or Aristotle’s view on it, we shall ask ourselves whether, contrary to what Steiner claims, there is perhaps such a thing as ‘modern tragedy’ after all. And indeed, we can imagine that there is, if we follow Kierkegaard’s argument from the wonderful essay in Either/Or (1843), entitled “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama”: Antigone is her name. I shall keep this name from the ancient tragedy, to which I shall hold for the most part, although from another angle everything will be modern. [. . .] So, then, the Family of Labdakos is the object of the indignation of the gods: Oedipus has killed the sphinx, liberated Thebes; Oedipus has murdered his father, married his mother, and Antigone is the fruit of this marriage. So it goes in the Greek tragedy. Here I deviate. With me, everything is the same, and yet everything is different. Everyone knows that he has killed the sphinx and freed Thebes, and Oedipus is hailed and admired and is happy in his marriage with Jocaste. The rest is hidden from the people’s eyes, and no suspicion has ever brought this horrible dream into the world of actuality. Only Antigone knows it. [. . .] Whereas the Greek Antigone goes on living so free from care that, if this new fact had not come up [i.e., the decision to bury her brother, in spite of Creon’s prohibition], one could imagine her life as even happy in its gradual unfolding, our Antigone’s life, on the other hand, is essentially at an end. [. . .] Her life does not unfold like the Greek Antigone’s; it is turned inward, not outward. The stage is inside, not outside; it is a spiritual stage. [. . .] She is proud of her secret, proud that she has been selected in a singular way to save the honor and glory of the lineage of Oedipus. When the grateful nation acclaims Oedipus with praise and thanksgiving, she feels her own significance, and her secret sinks deeper and deeper into her soul, ever more inaccessible to any living being. She feels how much has been placed into her hands, and this gives her the preternatural magnitude that is necessary in order for her to engage us tragically. [. . .] I assume that Oedipus is dead. Even when he was alive, Antigone knew this secret but did not have the courage to confide in her father. By her father’s death, she is deprived of the only means of being liberated from her secret. To confide in any other living being now would be to dishonor her father; her life acquires meaning for her in its devotion to showing him the last honors daily, almost hourly, by her unbroken silence. But one thing she does not know, whether or not her father knew it himself. Here is the modern element: it is the restlessness in her sorrow, it is the amphiboly in her pain. [. . .] While the father was living, she could not confide her sorrow to him, for she indeed did not know whether he [Oedipus] knew it, and consequently there was the possibility of immersing him in similar pain. [. . .] In addition, she is continually in conflict with her surrounding world. Oedipus lives in the memory of his people as a fortunate king, honored and extolled;

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paul vanden berghe Antigone herself has admired and also loved her father. She takes part in every commemoration and celebration of him; she is more enthusiastic about her father than any other maiden in the kingdom; her thoughts continually go back to him. She is extolled in the land as a model of a loving daughter, and yet this enthusiasm is the only way in which she can give vent to her sorrow. Her father is always in her thoughts, but how—that is her painful secret. And yet she does not dare to abandon herself to sorrow, does not dare to mourn; she feels how much depends upon her; she fears that a clue would be given if anyone saw her suffering [. . .]. Developed and elaborated in this way, Antigone can engage us, I believe, and I believe that you will not reproach me for frivolousness or paternal prejudice when I believe that she might very well venture into the tragic line and appear in a tragedy. (E/O, 154–162)

It is impossible within the scope of this presentation to do justice to the tragic as a specific aesthetic category in Kierkegaard’s famous threesome of aesthetics, ethics, and religion. We restrict ourselves to an issue the title already alludes to: the distinction between ancient and modern tragedy, which he connects with a broader distinction between antiquity and modernity. Kierkegaard’s “Greek Antigone” may be characterized as follows. First and foremost, she belongs to the family of the Labdacides, descendants of Labdakos, a lineage to which her father Oedipus and her father’s father Laius obviously also belonged. Antiquity distinguishes itself by what Kierkegaard calls “substantial determinants”: the family, the state, the gods, and fate (E/O, 143). They are referred to as substantial because they determine the essence of man, externally and collectively. Ancient man ‘suffers’ under these determinants; they befall him, like a contingency; he undergoes them. And, in this passivity, ancient man contrasts sharply with the activity of modern man. As Kierkegaard already suggests, we may also refer to these substantial determinants as objective determinants: they are literally ob-jectum, “thrown in the way” of ancient man, so that they are beyond his control and thus beyond his responsibility and guilt. On the other hand, there are elements which Kierkegaard considers to be characteristic of the newness of modernity, namely individualization and internalization, which find expression in an intensification of acting (as a person). Hence the sharper sense of responsibility and a greater desire for reflection. Kierkegaard asserts that the modern era is characterized by subjectivity. By analogy with the substantial or objective determinants of ancient man, we may in this respect speak of subjective determinants: man is no longer the ob-ject, but rather the sub-ject. In

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so far as he is subjected, he has subjected himself. In this context, suffering suddenly assumes a different appearance. Rather than befalling man, it is caused by man, and man must therefore bear responsibility for it. This explains his feelings of doubt, anxiety, isolation, restlessness, depression, and despair. Each of these qualifications is a key term in Kierkegaard’s essay and, for 1843, they are strikingly modern. Kierkegaard’s Antigone hides a painful secret that will not allow her wound to heal; a secret she will not and cannot share with anyone, namely the patricide and incest committed by her father. And this, above all else, makes her a modern Antigone. This way, Kierkegaard draws a distinction between antiquity and modernity, based on the twin concepts of objectivity versus subjectivity, and objective determinants versus subjective determinants. (Indeed, Hegel is never far away in this particular essay.) But what about the notion of the tragic? Kierkegaard situates it within the dialectic field between those objective and subjective determinants. It is neither of these two extremes; the tragic is neither ‘to be determined entirely objectively’, nor is it ‘to determine entirely personally’, that is to determine ‘subjectively’. And yet the tragic is related to either pole in the sense that it incorporates a dialectic tension between the two. If the individual is isolated, then either he is absolutely the creator of his own fate, and then there is nothing tragic anymore, but only evil, for it is not even tragic that the individual was infatuated with or wrapped up in himself—it is his own doing; or the individuals are merely modifications of the eternal substance of life, and so once again the tragic is lost. (E/O, 160)

Kierkegaard immediately connects it with considerations on guilt and innocence: Between these two extremes lies the tragic. If the individual has no guilt whatever, the tragic interest is annulled, for in that case the tragic collision is enervated. On the other hand, if he has absolute guilt, he no longer interests us tragically. (E/O, 144)

What does this imply for our daily use of the term ‘tragic’? If an individual develops lung cancer, despite a healthy lifestyle—if, in other words, the illness is an entirely objective determinant, not a personal or subjective determinant—then Kierkegaard would not call this circumstance tragic, but simply sad, deplorable, and so senseless as to be absurd. If, on the other hand, the person has smoked all his or her life, fully aware of the dangers of tobacco, then that person’s personal or

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subjective determinant is substantial. In that case there may be an element of guilt, but again there is no evidence of the tragic. The tragic as a dialectic field between objective and subjective determination is thus situated in between the realm of the absurd and that of personal guilt. Kierkegaard interprets the tragic as a tension between on the one hand guiltlessness, which stems from dark, substantial—that is to say, “objective”—determinants, and, on the other, guilt stemming from personal and, in Kierkegaard’s view, entirely transparent self-determination on the part of the subject. This dialectic relationship constitutes the unchanging essence of the tragic. In response to those who like to distinguish too sharply between ancient and modern tragedy, Kierkegaard asserts that “the tragic is always the tragic,” and he continues that it must be as a warning, and all the more so since everyone must be gripped by a certain sadness because no matter how much the world has changed, the idea of the tragic is still essentially unchanged, just as weeping still continues to be equally natural to humankind. (E/O, 139)

So where do we now stand on the title of his essay? After all, it seems to suggest that he too distinguishes quite clearly between the tragic in an ancient and in a modern context. Remarkably, Kierkegaard states that he does not wish to elaborate on this issue, and hopefully when we reach our conclusion we shall be able to put forward a reason why. But let us first take a brief look at the ancient tragedy, where the notion of dialectics is equally fruitful. Subsequently, we shall draw from Jacques Lacan, as we dwell in some greater detail on an example of a truly modern tragedy. Eventually, we shall return to Kierkegaard’s “modern Antigone” as a reflection of the ancient tragedy in the modern tragedy, in order to demonstrate “how the characteristic feature of the tragic in ancient drama is incorporated in the tragic in modern drama in such a way that what is truly tragic will become apparent” (E/O, 140). The tragic in antiquity In our discussion of ancient tragedy, we draw from Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, whose Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, written in 1972, is considered a standard work on this topic. Their starting point is the notion that the tragedy as a literary genre is no more than a creation, which manifested itself at a particular moment in a particular place, and which, at least in its purest form, disappeared again shortly after. The turning point was the rise of the Greek city-state or polis, in

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the Athens of the fifth century BC, and in particular the advent of a legal system, based on civil law.5 This decisive socio-political moment subsequently had an impact on literary production, giving rise to the tragedy as a new literary genre, as well as on ethics, with the simultaneous emergence of a “tragic consciousness.”6 As a turning point, it came about to the detriment of the old explanatory models based on mythical heroes and gods, and to the benefit of the new perspective that signified the advent of law, and thus the emergence of such notions as personal choice and responsibility. [ Tragedy] confronts heroic values and ancient religious representations with the new modes of thought that characterize the advent of law within the city-state. The legends and the heroes are connected with royal lineages, noble géne which in terms of values, social practices, forms of religion and types of human behavior, represents for the city-state the very things that it has had to condemn and reject and against which it has had to fight in order to establish itself. At the same time, however, they are what it developed from and it remains integrally linked with them.7

Vernant situates the tragedy in the transition from religion to law, an assertion which we—inspired by Kierkegaard—interpret with some philosophical freedom as a transition from an objective order (of substantial determinants) to a personal sphere for the fledgling subject. The ‘creation’ of tragedy, and the fact that it caught on, is after all an expression of the growing concern of the young city-state with liberating itself from the objective sphere, the explanatory models of myths about gods and heroes, and, by means of an emerging system of law, to become its own history. In this new legal system lie the origins of the individual as a subject, a legal subject with a personal responsibility, who may thus be held to account for (and not just reflect on) his actions before a court of law. To Vernant, precisely the fact that this emancipation out of objectivity and the shift towards a subjective determination of humankind are not perfect yet is a source of tragedy. He expresses the tragic tension between the divine and the human in terms of an “ambiguity,” which is surprisingly in unison with what Kierkegaard referred to as a dialectics. Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, trans. J. Lloyd (Sussex, 1981), pp. 7–9. 6 Ibid., p. 7. 7 Ibid., p. 4. 5

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paul vanden berghe The tragic consciousness of responsibility appears when the human and divine levels are sufficiently distinct for them to be opposed while still appearing to be inseparable. The tragic sense of responsibility emerges when human action becomes the object of reflection and debate while still not being regarded as sufficiently autonomous to be fully self-sufficient.8

It is thus a logical consequence of Vernant’s position that when the tension or ambiguity in actions between the divine and the human level disappears—i.e., the tension between the objective and the subjective determinants—the real tragedy, as well as the true tragic consciousness, literally becomes history. When Aristotle established his theory of tragedy, “he no longer understood tragic man.”9 While we follow Vernant’s assessment of Aristotle, this does not make the latter uninteresting for the study of the tragic. Neither does it mean that, with Aristotle, the definitive end of tragedy had been reached. Vernant is right to claim that the rise of philosophy undermined the notion of fate or the divine will as an explanatory principle. Aristotle, for example, still accepted the existence of the gods, but rejected the notion that they interfered in human actions. In his Poetics, which deals primarily with tragedy as a form of drama, there is not a single reference to fate or the gods. Quite the contrary: as Stephen Halliwell (Aristotle’s Poetics, 1986) points out, he strongly emphasizes human action, poièsis in the primary sense of ‘doing, acting, making’. To the extent that he recognizes no other causality in human action than that of man himself, he denies the existence of the tragic in ethics, and de facto lays the foundation for those philosophies that banish the tragic to the realm of the aesthetic; that consider tragedy merely as a form of drama. But is it really so that, if there are no gods who intervene in human actions, the tragic cannot continue to exist? We can, of course, not even begin here to outline the history of the demise of the tragic. However, can we not perhaps imagine other objective determinants that go against the subjective, personal determination of human existence, and that may thus constitute a source of tragic tension and the kind of misfortune we may rightly qualify as ‘tragic’? At first glance, there would appear to be plenty of candidates: one could cite the laws of nature, which cause flooding and landslides; one could argue that there is such a thing as structural evil that causes hunger or social exclusion; or one could stress the direct or indirect guilt

8 9

Ibid. Ibid., p. 6.

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of others, for example if their inattention or traffic violations cause an accident. Ultimately, though, all these examples can be reduced to the one objective determinant that would appear to be recognized after the abolition of the divine fate, namely that of chance, or tychè, which can be experienced as a source of tragedy when it crosses the path of the subjective determinants.10 While we shall not dwell upon this aspect further, it would appear to us that, whereas in the tragic, objective and subjective determinants were dialectically interwoven, they are now dissociated. Either the objective determinants are stressed one-sidedly, and then the accident is not tragic but an absurd coincidence; or one considers only the subjective determinants, and then the accident is not tragic either, but entirely attributable to human error. To the extent that, in human action itself, no objective determinants are recognized as being relevant to the ethical content, how then can action possibly be regarded as tragic? And if not, is all that remains not absolute guilt and accountability of man? The tragic in modernity Jacques Lacan’s perspective on the modern tragedy would, at first sight, appear to tie in firmly with that of an absolute turn towards subjectivity, crowned with the proclamation of the death of God. It is a well-known fact that Lacan, in his seventh seminar, L’Éthique de la psychanalyse, dating from 1959–60, devoted ample attention to the figure of Antigone, which one can hardly call a modern tragedy.11 As an example of a modern tragedy, he refers in his eighth seminar, Le Transfert,12 to a play by the French dramatist, poet and diplomat Paul Claudel. Its title is L’Otage, and it was published in 1911 as the first part of a trilogy, which would subsequently be completed with Le Pain dur and Le Père humilié.13

10 This is the perspective that Martha Nussbaum develops in her work The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1986). To the extent that she also applies it to Aristotle, she fails to convince a number of critics. 11 Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar VII: 1959–1960), ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. D. Porter (New York, 1992). See especially chapters XIX to XXI: “The Essence of Tragedy: A Commentary on Sophocles’s Antigone,” pp. 243–290. 12 Jacques Lacan, Le Transfert (Le séminaire VIII: 1960 –1961) (Paris, 1991). See especially chapters XIX to XXII: “Le mythe d’Œdipe aujourd’hui: Un commentaire de la trilogie des Coûfontaine, de Paul Claudel,” pp. 311–384. 13 Paul Claudel, Théâtre, ed. J. Madaule (Paris, 1964).

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Napoleon stands at the pinnacle of power. A pious young woman, Sygne de Coûfontaine, one of the last descendants of a noble family, lives on what is left of the family estate, which she has been anxiously trying to reassemble since the revolution. The story begins with the reappearance of her only remaining relative, cousin Georges de Coûfontaine, who has emigrated. He is accompanied by a character whom we soon recognize to be no other than the Holy Father, the Pope in person, who subsequently becomes the hostage referred to in the title. With the help of Georges de Coûfontaine, the Pope has managed to escape beyond the power of the emperor-oppressor, and together they seek refuge with Sygne. But they are soon discovered and exposed by a third character, Baron Toussaint Turelure, an extremely villainous person, and a republican out of rancor and opportunism. He has had his eyes set on Sygne and her inheritance for some time. This older man, with an altogether ugly appearance and a limp, is the child of a sorcerer and the wet nurse (and later servant) of Sygne. Moreover, he is responsible for the beheading of her entire family during the turbulent years of terror. Now he seizes his opportunity: in exchange for Sygne’s hand, he is prepared not to turn over the pope (to his superior), which places Sygne before a heart-wrenching choice. She has, after all, just proclaimed her love for her cousin Georges, a marriage that would moreover keep her inheritance, blazon, and estate within the family. Lacan notes in this context that “she must renounce her very being.”14 After having consulted her confessor, Father Badilon, Sygne decides to sacrifice her personal happiness and her inheritance for her belief in Christ and his representative on earth. She becomes Baroness Turelure and, on the day that she gives birth to a son, the drama reaches its climax. During some skirmishes between the Imperial and the Royal armies, Baron Turelure is prepared to hand over the keys of the beleaguered Paris to the Ambassador of King Louis the Eighteenth, who is no other than Georges de Coûfontaine. One of the conditions that Baron Turelure sets for his betrayal is that Coûfontaine should give up the most essential piece of what is left of his inheritance, the name Coûfontaine itself, so that he could pass it on to his own son (the fruit of his morganatic marriage). Having reached this point, it shall not come as a surprise that—and here I paraphrase Lacan—matters

14

Lacan, Le Transfert, p. 322.

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are settled by gunfire. Once the conditions have been accepted, and the cousin-ambassador knows he shall obtain the city for the King, he also decides to deal once and for all with Baron Turelure. However, the latter has foreseen this and, like his adversary, he carries a small pistol in his pocket. As the clock strikes three, the two pistols go off, and naturally it is not the villain who is left for dead. Sygne de Coûfontaine throws herself in the path of the bullet that is about to strike her husband, and, by saving his life, she sacrifices her own. In the final scene, after her act of desperation, her only action on the stage is to shake her head, as if she had a nervous tic, like an almost surreal “grimace of life,” as Lacan puts it. With this wordless and ultimate “no” she expresses an absolute refusal. She rejects the peace of religion when abbé Badilon exhorts her in articulo mortis to offer herself to God who is going to receive her soul. She refuses to see her newborn son, and to reconcile with her husband, who lucidly interprets her sacrifice as an expression of hatred for someone whom she begrudges even his death. Finally, she refuses to speak or even mutter the family motto, “Coûfontaine adsum,” “Coûfontaine, here I am,” which once represented the entire meaning of her life. So where precisely does the modern element of this tragedy lie, keeping in mind Kierkegaard’s distinction? Lacan emphasizes first and foremost Sygne de Coûfontaine’s total abandonment: in her ultimate act of suicide, she loses not only her life, but everything that was part of her essence, namely her inheritance, her love, and her belief in god. She dies in “absolute dereliction.”15 Equally modern is the freedom with which Sygne takes the various decisions that lead to her demise, as Lacan stresses. It is not about a divine necessity or personal duty, as is experienced by the Greek Antigone, who strives to be the savior of the human dignity of her brother Polyneikes and to provide him with a grave; it is instead about “an act of liberty,” an expression of total autonomy.16 There is no longer a god, either in the Greek or in the Christian sense, who might have such a fate in store for Sygne. There are no objective determinants outside herself. Had there been even an “evil god” (Dieu méchant) to deal her that fate, then she had at least been connected with something and not

15 16

Ibid., p. 324. Ibid., p. 323.

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been totally abandoned, asserts Lacan. Then she might at least have been able to reconcile herself with her fate, like the tragic hero Oedipus was able to do in Colonus. The two factors together, freedom of choice leading to a lonely demise, neatly echo Kierkegaard’s description of the modern era. The subjective determinants, the self-determination of man who takes his lot into his own hands, become so dominant at the expense of the objective determinants that we may ask ourselves whether the story of Sygne is, ultimately, still truly tragic. Is it not the case that Sygne herself is entirely responsible for her own downfall? Still, it would appear that Sygne’s end is brought about by more than just her own fault, and that there is something that partially exonerates her. But what precisely may this modern interpretation of objective determination be, without which no dialectic and thus no tragic tension with the aforementioned subjective determinants can exist? Lacan’s answer is as follows: the objective determinant in question is desire itself, in so far as this may, by definition, be understood to be “of the subject” and yet not always to be under that subject’s conscious control. What can we say about this without falling back on deep profundities? Perhaps this: to Lacan, desire is always the desire of the Other, “le désir de l’Autre” with capital A. This desire, to the extent that it distinguishes itself from unequivocal and transparent needs, may under certain conditions operate as a foreign object in the core of the subject. One could argue that it is ob-jectum, “thrown in the way” of the sub-ject that is subjected to it. This is the case in all instances where man is unable to recognize himself in things that he desires and does. In instances, for example, where those desires become excessive or boundless; where man perceives his desires not to be directed towards what is good for him as a subject. (For that matter, this was also the case with Antigone: her desire to bury her brother may, in many ways, have been legitimate, despite Creon’s prohibition; yet it was definitely not good for her self-preservation.) As in the Christian era, God could desire from me that I sacrifice what is dearest to me—in Sygne’s case, her inheritance, her lover, etc.—so after the death of God can this strange desire inside Sygne bring her to abandon her faith, thereby denying herself even that last straw to hold on to. Consequently she ends in a state of absolute dereliction and forlornness. To the extent that her faith was good for her as a source of salvation beyond death, since the death of God, desire can make me strive for things that are not good for me and for which no even higher good will appear in the

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place, not even the hope of a life after death. In such cases, this strange desire inside me makes me want to erase my own body and soul, like Sygne de Coûfontaine; it makes me desire death, or even desire never to have lived; it makes me cry out like Oedipus: mè funai, if only I had never been. So in this sense, any desire is potentially a desire to die, says Lacan; “un désir de mort.” And he alludes not only to the first, physical death, but, in a reference to St. Paul, also to “the second death”: the soul that is totally lost. The point that Lacan emphasizes repeatedly is the observation that after the death of the gods—not only the Greek ones but the Christian God as well, spelling the end of the ultimate objective determination—something inside man himself has taken the place of that determination. That something is part of the structure of the human psyche, a strange desire, a bizarre object of desire that is like a boulder, something strange inside man. We may thus refer to it as something objective inside the subject, at once external and internal. Exterior, yet intimate, or extimate, after “l’extimité,” the neologism that Lacan coined in the seventh seminar. To the modern era—which recognizes no objective determinants outside man—this is the ultimate substantial or objective determinant without which there can be no tragedy; without which there is no dialectic tension with the subjective determinants that characterize contemporary man more than ever before. Whereas in antiquity these objective determinants were sought in the macrocosm, today they are radically interiorized. That is to say, they are to be sought in our personal microcosm. Conclusion So where do we now stand on Kierkegaard’s modern Antigone as the “reflection of the ancient tragedy in the modern tragedy”? Lacan systematically describes desire as “le désir de l’Autre,” to be understood as an objective genitive: the desire towards the Other, I desire the Other; but at the same time as a subjective genitive: inside me, there is also the desire of the Other, the Other desires through my desiring. Here, Lacan thinks first and foremost of the mother: even before my birth, my parents have all kinds of expectations of me; they have projects in store for me, which already determine me before I am born; which are a precondition for my desires, but by which those desires are at once conditioned, so that they are never entirely my own desires. Those

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desires may be wholesome or less wholesome, depending not least on how the desires of my parents are in turn inscribed in their own lives (again, under the influence of their own parents). In this manner, my desire is incorporated into a history of desires within my family, much like Sygne—in her attachment to her family, the noble lineage of Coûfontaine—found her own essence. And which, in the two subsequent plays in Claudel’s trilogy, is passed on as a veritable family fate. Both Kierkegaard’s modern Antigone and Claudel’s Sygne de Coûfontaine (in the interpretation of Lacan) are referred to as “modern” because they choose freely for an absolute loneliness. Still, this in itself would not be tragic if there were no dialectic tension with an objective and uncontrollable determinant, which for both figures we may identify as a familial factor; the cursed fate of the Labdacides in the first case, the desire of the Other, the other de Coûfontaines in the second. Where then lies the difference between Kierkegaard and Lacan? Well, it consists in the fact that the objective, familial factor in the case of Kierkegaard’s Antigone—the double crime by Oedipus—is external to the tragic heroin, who subsequently chooses freely to make this into a subjective determinant of her person. She does this by appropriating this factor in an extremely personal way, in the shape of a secret which, in this manner, she withdraws from the externality. This originally external factor is the ancient tragic factor which is reflected in the subjective appropriation of the modern tragic. If Kierkegaard’s modern Antigone is able to choose freely what to do with her objective familial factor, i.e., to make it public or to conceal it, it is because it is known to her. Kierkegaard explicitly and repeatedly uses the term “transparent.” Lacan, on the other hand, recognizes the modern tragic without the reflection of the ancient tragedy to the extent that he no longer considers as transparent and external the strange desire of the Other, but sees it rather as something in which the subject of this desire does not recognize itself, for which he had not chosen and to which Freud referred with the term the “unconscious.” Man is no longer the master of his own home to the extent that he sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, brings about his own downfall. We have tried to explain how Kierkegaard is able to distinguish very clearly the tragic in antiquity: the Greek Antigone, who is almost entirely “substantially” determined by oracle, family curse and gods. He is also able to conceive of something he refers to as the modern tragedy in which the ancient tragedy is reflected: the modern Antigone who,

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in the shape of a conscious and freely chosen secrecy, assumes external substantial determinants. However, as we have pointed out, he is unable to reach beyond the other pole: the truly undiluted modern tragedy. He runs aground on it, believing that this is precisely where the pendulum of the dialectic should move in the other direction, i.e., the direction of the entirely subjective and free self-determination in which the tragic vaporizes completely. Let me quote Kierkegaard one last time: One could say of the Greek tragedy that it is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of a living god. The wrath of the gods is terrible, but still the pain is not as great as in modern tragedy, where the hero suffers his total guilt, is transparent to himself in his suffering of his guilt. (E/O, 148)

Where guilt is absolute, however, tragedy is absent according to Kierkegaard’s own definition of the tragic as a dialectic field between guiltlessness and guilt. It is in this sense that, with Freud and Lacan, we may be able to take a further step towards determining the true modern tragedy by stressing those points—stubborn psychological mechanisms of obstinate repetition for example—where man is not always transparent to himself and is determined substantially and objectively by factors that are at once foreign and familiar to him to him, and to which he has no immediate access. In the twenty-first century, the realm of tragedy has therefore perhaps not shifted entirely to tragic (bio)ethical choices. Nor does it appear exclusively and uninvitedly in the ambiguous creations of modern technologies, or disguise itself paradoxically in the dictatorship of the comical, which—rather tragically!—no longer recognizes the tragic aspect of the situation. It tends to present itself unasked for; there where it is rooted most deeply in man himself and from where it proliferates, not rarely across generations: man who—already ‘psychologically burdened’—must time and again make choices, as if he were entirely free . . . Perhaps Kierkegaard’s transparent self-insight did not reach so deep that he recognized himself to be a tragic figure, marked by a melancholy that he could not even hide in his intellectual endeavors: Everyone must be gripped by a certain sadness because no matter how much the world has changed, the idea of the tragic is still essentially unchanged, just as weeping still continues to be equally natural to humankind. (E/O, 139)

TRAGIC CHOICES: FATE, OEDIPUS, AND BEYOND Jens De Vleminck (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) You, you’ll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused! Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen, blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind from this hour on! Blind in the darkness—blind! Sophocles, Oedipus the King1

This lamentation is one of the most famous verses of Sophocles’s tragedy. At the climax of the play, Oedipus uncovers the truth about his past and realizes how blind he has been to his own destiny. After he discovers the suicide of his mother and wife Jocasta, Oedipus blinds himself by plunging the spikes of her golden brooches into his eyes, unable to look at what he has done. He had been blind to his own truth as it was revealed by the oracle of Apollo. He thought he could transcend his own destiny. Rather than being able to choose his own existence freely, it appears that Oedipus “has to endure his destiny like a curse that makes him other than himself.”2 It is as if Oedipus’s life is not entirely his, as if he is confronted with mysterious forces that he cannot face, but that nevertheless act through him. These are the forces Freud tries to explain in order to gain insight into the mystery of the human condition. The Freudian reading of Oedipus’s vicissitudes can be seen as emblematic of the psychoanalytic enterprise more generally. Like Oedipus, the human subject is blind to the motives that move him in his own life. It is being blind to who he is that makes Oedipus the prototype of the tragic man who suffers from the pain of having been blind to his own fate and to himself. In fact, since Freud, the figure of Oedipus has become paradigmatic for the tragic dimension of human existence. According to Jean Starobinsky, “as [an] ancient hero, Oedipus symbolizes the universality of the unconscious disguised as Sophocles, Oedipus the King, in The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, trans. R. Fagles (New York, 1982), lines 1405–1409. 2 Elisabeth Roudinesco, Why Psychoanalysis? trans. Rachel Bowlby (New York, 2001), p. 109. 1

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destiny.”3 Freud’s Oedipus reveals something of the tragedy of man’s encounter with himself, fighting against himself in a battle he cannot win. In a certain sense, through its specific focus on the inner conflicts of the human psyche, psychoanalysis discovered this tragic possibility as an inherent capability of human nature and destiny. In this way, the opening quotation from Oedipus the King reveals something of the tragic element of human existence as such. Oedipus’s destiny is not tragic only due to external circumstances. Rather, the situation is more tragic because Oedipus is the victim of the actualization of his own nature, despite whatever the circumstances may be. The tragic hero of Freud’s key narrative functions as the mirror in which the human tragedy of our singular subjectivity is reflected. Oedipus, thus, discloses the locus of tragedy in the everyman’s life: “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur” (“Change the name, and the story would be yours”).4 This paper will argue that psychoanalysis can be seen as a worthy inheritor of the Greek attempt to give an account of the tragic vicissitudes of the human psyche. One of the most interesting contributions to psychoanalysis is the Schicksalsanalysis of the Hungarian psychiatristpsychoanalyst Lipót Szondi (1893–1986). I will try to show that the tragic destiny of the human subject is both the point of departure and the leitmotiv of Szondi’s thinking. Finally, I will suggest that, in line with Freudian psychoanalysis, Szondi’s Schicksalsanalysis can be characterized as a ‘tragic humanism’. Human tragedy and psychoanalysis No one would disagree with the view that psychoanalysis’ most radical claim is the assumption that an “unconscious” exists. It was Freud’s conviction that psychoanalysis had offended humanity even more violently than Copernicus and Darwin by showing that—in principle and fundamentally—we cannot know ourselves. Still, the existence of an unconscious, consisting of powerful, hidden, and uncontrollable forces that drive the individual, seems to have a history prior to psychology and psychiatry. In Greek mythology and tragedy, for example, the unconscious is interpreted in terms of man as a passive victim of superhuman outside forces, destiny-spinning gods or daemons. However, 3 4

Starobinsky quoted in Roudinesco, p. 109. Horatius, Satires, I, 69.

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Freud’s thesis is revolutionary because it emphasizes that these forces were not ruled by external powers, but had their origin within the human psyche. By the introduction of a personal unconscious, Freud establishes a fundamental alienation at the heart of human subjectivity. The Freudian idea of the unconscious had implications for the image of man as a self-transparent “rational animal,” because it fundamentally questioned its origin, i.e., consciousness. The strained relation between conscious and unconscious forces became the paradigm of the psychoanalytic model of the psyche. The recognition of this conflict and the subjective acquaintance with the personal unconscious became the central goal of psychoanalysis. Since Freud, the human subject has been “inevitably caught in the intersection of two conflicting principles.”5 The subject becomes aware of the fact that some of its motives elude its conscious awareness. Freud reveals to the subject that it has a personal truth that goes beyond conscious and rational understanding. He refers to a repressed intentionality in the depth of the soul that is not immediately accessible. According to Lear, the characterization of the human condition as one of psychic conflict is what makes Freud “a tragic thinker.”6 In this sense, Freud’s locus of tragedy is the ‘theatre’ of the individual’s intra-psychic life. Since psychoanalysis reveals the singularity of subjectivity, it immediately follows that human tragedy is intra-human tragedy. Freud’s project of disclosing the tragic nature of human motivation and desire consistently coincides with the study of the unconscious system as anchored in human biology.7 Freud speaks of an “archaic heritage” as the biological substratum of the unconscious.8 He increasingly realized the overwhelming power of the “constitutional” strength of the instincts (Triebe).9 The impact of a repressed personal unconscious alone was insufficient to understand fully the tragedy of the human condition. Freud became gradually more aware that the ontogenetic 5 Jonathan Lear, Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Cambridge, MA, 2000), p. 139. 6 Ibid. 7 Frank J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend (New York, 1979). 8 Sigmund Freud, Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937), Standard Edition 23 (London, 1966), p. 240. 9 In line with Strachey, I will translate Freud and Szondi’s term Trieb as ‘instinct’ and not as ‘drive’. For, in both Freud and Szondi, translating Trieb by ‘instinct’ most clearly expresses and preserves its essentially biological connotation, problematic though it may be (see infra).

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factor (that takes into account occurrences in early childhood) fails—at least partially—to explain the vicissitudes of man’s instinctual life. Thus, as Freud runs up against the biological limits of the unconscious, he seems to be confronted with the limits of psychoanalysis itself. Although unable to expand on it, Freud made it clear that the impact of genetic constitution needed further investigation. At this point, the Hungarian psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Lipót Szondi picked up the threads of Freud’s inadequate efforts to understand the impact of hereditary constitution on the vicissitudes of the unconscious. The further elaboration of the late Freud’s constitutional perspective made it possible for Szondi to develop one of the most interesting contributions to psychoanalysis, i.e., the so-called Schicksalsanalysis (“fateanalysis” or “analysis of destiny”).10 From his first theoretical writings, Szondi explicitly identifies himself with both ancient Greek “anankology” and Freud’s increasing interest in the constitutional factor. In a way analogous to Heidegger’s concept of “Dasein,” Szondi introduces the Greek term Anankè (in German: Schicksal ) as a key concept with which to characterize the individual human condition. The different meanings and connotations of Anankè or Schicksal, ranging from ‘fate, destiny, exigency’, to ‘necessity’, and ‘consanguinity’,11 immediately point to Szondi’s preoccupation with the impact of constitution, in contrast to Freud’s lasting influence on the impact of early childhood. Daimôn kai Tuchè [Endowment and Chance] determine a man’s fate— rarely or never one of these powers alone. [. . .] Initially, one might venture to regard constitution itself as a precipitate from the accidental effects produced on the endlessly long chain of our ancestors.12

From the start, Szondi interpreted Freud’s increasing emphasis on the “daemonic” influence of the constitution in terms of constraint, though without reducing it to any form of brute determinism. Rather intuitively, Szondi developed the idea that every constraint has the positive potential for existential possibilities at the same time. In order to grasp

10 According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Szondi’s work was the first to establish a fundamental relationship between psychoanalysis and genetics” (in: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (London, 2004), pp. 318–319). 11 Lipót Szondi, Schicksalsanalyse: Wahl im Liebe, Freundschaft, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod (Basel, 1944/2004), p. 30. 12 Sigmund Freud, The Dynamics of Transference (1912), Standard Edition 12 (London, 1966), p. 99n2.

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how Szondi understood the interplay between both inner constraint and psychic freedom, we must go back to the moment where Szondi began. Oedipus and beyond Early in his career, Szondi was contacted by a young couple suffering from intense relationship problems. The woman, who was suffering from a severe form of compulsive neurosis, told Szondi—in the presence of her husband—how her psychic condition was a stress factor in their relationship. Extremely worried, the woman asked Szondi whether he had ever treated a condition as severe as hers. Szondi told her he had had a female patient with exactly the same clinical condition a couple of years earlier. From his description of this previous patient, the couple discovered that Szondi was talking about the husband’s mother. The current case made Szondi consider the possibility that this could not be merely accidental. Although the young woman had not been suffering from the disorder at the time of the object-choice, her husband had fallen in love with her, a woman having the same pathological disposition that his mother was suffering from. Szondi asked himself: “Could the tragedy of these three people be perhaps approached from a genealogical aspect?”13 Szondi tried to understand the tragic object-choice of this couple in the context of his ongoing research into the hereditary nature of psychopathology. Extensive genealogical research revealed a significant positive correlation between psychopathology and object-choice. For, while going through the genealogical data of hundreds of patients, Szondi noticed that inherited disorders not only appear among descendants. Love partners seem to share the same hereditary disease as well. These findings urged him to develop a theory of object-choice maintaining that the mutual preference among individuals suffering from similar psychic disorders is the result of an attractive force among people with similar or identical variants of genes. Empirical research of thousands of cases confirmed Szondi’s hypothesis that people who have mutually chosen each other are “gene-related” persons (Genverwandte). Moreover, he found evidence to support his assumption that the choice preferences of both healthy and ill people are guided by their inherited characters. 13 Lipót Szondi, “Contributions to Fate Analysis: An Attempt at a Theory of Choice in Love,” Acta Psychologica 3 (1937), 6 (my italics).

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However, the determining influence of one’s genetic disposition is significantly more powerful. It not only affects the choice of a love partner, but every possible choice in life. According to Szondi, genes take part in shaping all human activities from birth to death, from choosing friends and jobs, to what illnesses we suffer from (both physical and mental), and even how we die.14 Our choices are ‘subjective’ choices in the sense that they naturally follow from our particular personality and thus constitute our singularity. In this sense, our choices are a manifestation of a vital individual life plan, our Schicksal or ‘destiny’, which unfolds itself during our entire life.15 In reference to Freud and Dostoevsky, Szondi emphasizes indeed that “[t]he story of the soul of a man [. . .] is a heroic novel that we like to tell unhurriedly in long sentences.”16 Given the fact that it is the individual hereditary constitution that essentially determines this subjective destiny, Szondi calls it a Zwangschicksal, a “compulsive destiny.”17 Consequently, this “Schicksal” also means “fate” because the subjective destiny receives a ‘fatalistic’ interpretation. This hereditary determination is called “genotropism.” Although it is particularly stressed in Szondi’s early writings, the idea of constraint would remain the cornerstone of Schicksalsanalysis. The ultimate schicksalsanalytic challenge is to enable the patient to gain a more conscious insight into his/her personal genotropism. This process of becoming conscious enables the patient to facilitate a transition from “compulsive destiny” towards “free destiny” (Freiheitsschicksal ). Szondi develops the relation between heredity and the unconscious into a “genetics of the unconscious.” The hereditary disposition by which individuals are biologically related to the rest of their family manifests itself phylogenetically at the level of the unconscious instinctual life. Szondi’s genotropism implies the existence of an independent functional layer that is genotropically determined and is situated within the larger unconscious system. Szondi calls this hitherto unexplored

14 Szondi, Schicksalsanalyse, p. 33. Cf. Freud’s idea that the compulsion to repeat assures “that the organism will follow its own path to death” (Sigmund Freud, Beyond The Pleasure Principle (1920), Standard Edition 18 (London, 1966), p. 39; my italics.). 15 Lipót Szondi, Ich-Analyse (Bern, 1956/1999), p. 152. 16 Lipót Szondi, “Foreword,” in Introduction to the Szondi Test, ed. Susan Deri (New York, 1949), pp. vii–viii. 17 Freud uses the term “the compulsion of destiny” (Schiksalszwang) understood as “the compulsion to repeat,” linked to the hypothesis of the “death instinct” (cf. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 23). Szondi, however, tries to explain this ‘repetition’ by referring to ‘heredity’ (Schicksalsanalyse, p. 33).

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layer the “familial unconscious” (das familiären Unbewusste) and sees it as lying between Freud’s “personal unconscious” and Jung’s “collective unconscious.”18 As such, these three layers are constitutive of the unconscious system as a complete “biologically organized unity.”19 According to Szondi, Freudian psychoanalysis is the ontogeny, Schicksalsanalysis the genealogy, and Jung’s analytical psychology the archeology of deep mental processes.20 Where Freud and Jung respectively focused on symptoms and symbols, Schicksalsanalysis emphasizes the importance of understanding the subject’s choices as an expression of its inherited determined familial unconscious. Szondi’s stress on compulsive destiny or fate means that the subject’s choices can be interpreted as ‘tragic choices’. For, fateful decisions are often tragic in the sense that they lead to destruction. Destiny is a uniquely human capacity because only humans are capable of making their fateful instinctual motives conscious. The hereditary basis of the familial unconscious renders a transgenerational dimension to the unconscious instinctual life which breaks through the barriers of the Freudian nuclear family. Moreover, Szondi puts the “absolute” value of the Oedipus complex into a radically new perspective: “[ I ]nstead of reducing it to the images of daddy-mommy, [there is] [f ]inally some relation to the outside!”21 Szondi introduces a concrete and complicated social dimension into the analysis of the unconscious, “an entire social historical field” beyond Oedipus.22 In order to fully understand the destiny of the tragic hero one very often has to go much further than one or two generations. The emphasis on the trans-generational destiny and the extended family is precisely what Szondi’s Schicksalsanalysis has in common with Greek tragedy. The individual unconscious instinctual life is not only related to that of our parents and grandparents, but also connects us with other and—at first sight—more distant genetic ‘relatives’: ancestors (Ahnen). This is the reason why Szondi initially called his theory an “ancestor theory.”23 Ancestral choices are expressed in a renewed way by directing the decisive destiny-shaping choices of their genetic descendants. Szondi

18 19 20 21 22 23

Szondi, Schicksalsanalyse, p. 33. Lipót Szondi, Experimentelle Triebdiagnostik (Bern, 1947), p. 20. Szondi, Ich-Analyse, p. 101. Deleuze and Guattari, p. 319. Ibid. Szondi, “Contributions to Fate Analysis,” p. 25.

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interprets the repetition of ancestral choices in our individual destiny in terms of Freud’s notion that the repetition or “restoration” of an earlier (ancestral) state is an inherent urge of all instincts.24 Despite the pivotal role of genetics in his analysis, Szondi, in keeping with Freud, compares unconscious instincts with “an aboriginal population in the mind.”25 Freud thinks of instincts as “mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness.”26 Though, he is also convinced that psychoanalysis really needs “a securely founded theory of the instincts.”27 With regard to Freud’s concerns, Szondi considers his discovery of the familial unconscious as the bridging of a psychoanalytic gap.28 In Freud’s metapsychology, the unconscious is considered as a complex of dynamic forces “on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative[s] of the stimuli originating from within the organism and reaching the mind.”29 Szondi extrapolates this idea to the level of the inherited familial unconscious. So, genotropism implies a direct link between the instincts and the “instinct genes” (Triebgene), the biological entities that constitute the biological foundation of the familial unconscious. The Szondian instincts emerge from instinct genes in the familial unconscious. Eventually, this leads Szondi to identify the “psychic unconscious” with the “genetic unconscious.”30 The human crystal Szondi analyzes the familial unconscious as consisting of four fundamental components, as the interplay of four instincts that give shape

Lipót Szondi, Freiheit und Zwang im Schicksal des Einzelnen (Bern, 1968), p. 61. Sigmund Freud, The Unconscious (1915), Standard Edition 14 (London, 1966), p. 195. 26 Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures in Psycho-Analysis (1933), Standard Edition 22 (London, 1966), p. 95. 27 Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study (1925), Standard Edition 20 (London, 1966), p. 56. 28 Lipót Szondi, Schicksalsanalytische Therapie (Bern, 1963/1998), p. 31. 29 Sigmund Freud, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915), Standard Edition 14 (London, 1966), p. 122. 30 From the start, Szondi’s Schicksalsanalysis was mostly criticized for its genetic elaboration. Although the focus gradually moved from genetics towards the psychological implications of theory, test, and therapeutic method, Szondi himself held on to the genetic principle (even though with some adaptations to his original thinking). Cf. Lipót Szondi, Integration der Triebe (Bern, 1984). 24

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to human destiny. Szondi distinguishes the sexual instinct, the paroxysmal31 instinct, the ego instinct, and the contact instinct. In turn, each of these instincts, or “vectors,” is experienced in a polar striving that is due to the ambiguous nature of one’s heritage. This dynamic polarity enters into the personality as a dual set of needs. Given the fact that each vector is subdivided into two constituting poles or “factors,” the analysis of the familial unconscious reveals eight factors which form the genetic “roots” of human existence. Szondi very often calls them the “radicals of destiny” (Schicksalsradikale): the driving forces embedded in the human personality. Each of them is named after one of the eight essentially human psychiatric disorders Szondi distinguishes within the entire psychiatric spectrum: hermaphroditism and sadomasochism (representatives of sexual psychopathology), epilepsy and hysteria (representatives of paroxysmal psychopathology), catatonia32 and paranoia (representatives of ego psychopathology), and mania and depression (representatives of cyclic psychopathology). What is unique to Szondi’s approach is that these psychiatric categories have a meaning that exceeds their merely psychiatric interpretation. For, at the same time, each radical represents a certain personality area, an existential dimension of human existence, which has the potential of degenerating as a problem area of our existence. As such, Szondi simultaneously humanizes psychiatry and discovers psychiatry in every human being. Thus, these factors are essential in the sense that they are universally human. Of course, their individual manifestations are variable and cover a wide range of possible characteristics. In fact, Szondi’s theory of the instincts can be interpreted as a radical elaboration of the Freudian “crystal principle.” The latter holds that psychopathology is at the heart of human existence: “[ W ]e are familiar with the notion that pathology, by making things larger and coarser, can draw our attention to normal conditions which would otherwise have escaped us.”33 It makes clear that the difference between

31 The concept of ‘paroxysmality’ is used by Szondi to describe a certain emotional character that must be understood in terms of ‘surprise’ or a sudden ‘outbreak’. It tries to express the character of a ‘seizure,’ like a sudden burst of anger or like the falling in love at first sight. Cf. Lipót Szondi, Lehrbuch der experimentellen Triebdiagnostik, 1 (Bern, 1960/1972), p. 102. 32 Cf. Jens De Vleminck, “Philosophy and Its Vicissitudes: A Psychiatric Approach to Philosophical Historiography,” in An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, eds. Patricia Hanna, Adrianne L. McEvoy, Penelope Voutsina (Athens, 2006), pp. 323–338. 33 Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p. 58.

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psychopathology and normality is essentially of a quantitative nature and rather has to be understood in terms of a continuum.34 Szondi holds that every one has a genetic disposition towards the development of each of the eight fundamental disorders. Actually, a pathological manifestation is only one of the many possible expressions of destiny.35 For, the same disposition can actualize itself in a socialized or humanized way as well.36 However, the predisposition for either disease or health cannot be simply reduced to the strength of one or a few of the radicals. Szondi indeed notices that it is very important to take the total perspective into account. Both psychopathology and normality must be understood in terms of a delicate dynamic interplay between all of the eight factors. The balanced and integrated instinctual life of the healthy or ‘normal’ personality reflects a dynamic equilibrium between the different pairs of opposites. In this way, every subject is constantly involved in a kind of personal training to maintain a modus vivendi in psychic life. In the psychopathological condition, the unconscious psychic life is rigid and out of balance. Instead of forming an integrated whole, the pairs of opposites are internally split or disconnected from each other. This condition can be characterized as psychically fragmented.37 With respect to the other end of the continuum, Szondi holds that a static understanding of normality is an ideal fiction. Psychic health and pathology always co-exist. This means, for example, that a seemingly normal personality always consists of potentially pathological elements, even though it is possible that these pathological elements never become manifest. Likewise, it is possible that formerly unnoticed factors come to the surface out of the blue. This makes us understand why Szondi characterizes unconscious instinctual life as a dynamic process of transition and a continuous fine-tuning of complementary polarities.

34 The sexual vector, e.g., consists of both the gentleness of ‘hermaproditism’ and the aggressiveness of ‘sadomasochism’. Analogous to Freud, Szondi interprets the perversion as an enlargement of what at the same time is an essential element of ‘normal’ sexuality (Lehrbuch der experimentellen Triebdiagnostik, p. 102). 35 Szondi, Schicksalsanalyse, p. 77. 36 The factor ‘hysteria,’ e.g., can become manifest in the hysteric patient (pathology), the politician (socialization), and the actor (humanization or sublimation). Cf. Lipót Szondi, Triebpathologie 1: Dialektische Trieblehre und dialektische Methodik der Testanalyse (Bern 1952/1977), p. 90. 37 Lipót Szondi, Die Triebentmischten (Bern, 1980).

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The faces of destiny It must be noted that Szondi was always guided by therapeutic concerns in the elaboration of his theory. To an increasing extent, Szondi felt the need to develop a diagnostic aid that enabled the analyst to make an adequate diagnosis, an “instinctual profile” (Triebprofil ) of the patient instantly. This way of achieving an overview of the patient’s instinctual constellation was worked out in his “experimental diagnostics of the instincts” (experimentelle Triebdiagnostik), a projective photo test that has become known as the “Szondi test.”38 The test material consists of forty-eight pictures of psychiatric patients, sub-divided into six sets of eight pictures each. Each of the pictures displays a person severely suffering from one of the eight above-mentioned essentially human, psychic disorders. According to Szondi, the psychiatric diagnosis of the patients on the photographs was beyond all doubt.39 Looking at those “pure types,” the Szondi test confronts the patient with the forty-eight faces of madness and destiny. The patient is asked to choose the two most liked and the two least liked photographed individuals from each of the six sets. Analogous to what happens in the object-choice, Szondi assumes that the subject chooses himself through his choices for particular photographs. On the basis of its choices the subject puts together the profile of its particular familial unconscious all by itself because each of the photographs the patient chooses corresponds with one of the eight different spheres that are all constitutive of the instinctual life of every human being. The subject’s particular choices become the visible evidence of its destiny and disclose some of the yet hidden “truths” of its unconscious instinctual life. The fact that the available choice implies a choice for psychopaths and other psychiatric patients confronts the patient with parts of his personality he was unaware of before. The specific character of this projective identification, which emerges through making these choices, forces the patient to become aware of the tragic potential of his own destiny. In this sense, the Szondi test functions as the most important psycho-diagnostic key with which to unlock the mystery of the familial unconscious. Of course, the diagnostic profile thus obtained

Szondi, Experimentelle Triebdiagnostik, p. 20. Lipót Szondi, Ulrich Moser, and M.W. Webb, The Szondi Test in Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Treatment (Philadelphia, 1959). 38 39

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can only indicate a static clinical picture at a certain moment in time. As such, the test needs to be administered several times in order to see whether there are variable or stable test results. It allows the analyst to uncover whether the patient’s destiny gives evidence of a dynamic or a rigid instinctual pattern. But, of course, these instinctual profiles are most valuable because they deliver an immediate cause for further exploration. Why are these photographs in particular so appealing to the patient? Needless to say this method of working can be further completed by confronting this material with the examination of dreams or free association. There are good reasons to think that, when Szondi conceived of the test, he already had in mind an integrative use for it that left open the possibility of other therapeutic methods and techniques. From constraint to inner freedom Theoretically as well as clinically, Szondi has always tried to bridge the gap between the very different psychological schools. Focusing on the specific compatibility of psychoanalytic praxis, it seems as if schicksalsanalytic therapy is characterized by the Freudian principle of “making the unconscious conscious.” Szondi reuses the Freudian dictum “where id was, there ego shall be” and adapts it to the familial unconscious.40 In the context of therapeutic practice, Szondi prescribes schicksalsanalytic therapy as supplementary to the classical psychoanalytical cure. When the patient is faced with an obstinate family-determined psychic pattern that manifests itself as “being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some ‘daemonic’ power,” the Szondian treatment should be possible.41 In his last writings, Freud saw himself confronted with the limits of psychoanalytic analyzability. Over the course of time and through therapeutic experiences, he increasingly became convinced of the constitutional determination of psychodynamic life. This idea gave rise to the growing therapeutic pessimism which would gain its clearest expression in “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937). In this paper, Freud explicitly links his pessimism to the “compulsion to repeat,” a problematic phenomenon he had encountered many years 40 41

Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p. 80. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 21.

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earlier.42 According to Freud, the compulsion to repeat could give the most plausible explanation for the continuous repetition of unconscious (psychopathological) patterns despite all therapeutic efforts. He explicitly expresses the hope that fundamental research into the “inherited trends” of the id would shed a different light on the unconscious instinctual life.43 Nevertheless, Freud himself was unable to make any valuable contributions to the study of the constitutional role for understanding the unconscious. Szondi would be the first and only one to give a plausible solution for ‘Freud’s riddle’.44 His Schicksalsanalysis was an attempt to end Freud’s (therapeutic) pessimism. According to Szondi, genes are the ultimate source of the biological compulsion to repeat, including its psychic counterpart in the familial unconscious.45 The fact that a hereditary constitution can be accounted for in order to understand the exigency experienced in the compulsion to repeat, i.e., the exigency of one’s Schicksal, immediately sheds light on the psychotherapeutic goal: the realization of the transition from exigency to freedom. During therapy, the patient comes to terms with his familial unconscious, with the existential possibilities and impossibilities he has in common with his ancestors. In this sense, it can be said that schicksalsanalytic therapy is a family therapy with only one person.46 When ancestral possibilities exist on an unconscious level, the patient can only experience them as an external constraint. It is the process becoming conscious of hereditary possibilities—and also of the impossibilities—that functions as the catalyst to the therapeutic process. This process of psychic ‘relief ’, which is also at the heart of psychoanalytical therapy, is summarized by Szondi as follows: “Where constraint was, there shall be freedom.”47

Sigmund Freud, The ‘Uncanny’ (1919), Standard Edition 17 (London, 1966), p. 238. Sigmund Freud, An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis (1940), Standard Edition 23 (London, 1966), p. 206. 44 Rudi Vermote, “De cirkel van de herhaling,” in De ezel en de steen: Over psychoanalyse en herhaling, eds. A. De Bruyne and W. Heuves (Meppel, 2003), p. 13. 45 Susan Deri, “Great Representatives of Hungarian Psychiatry: Balint, Ferenczi, Hermann, and Szondi,” Psychoanalytic Review 77 (1990), 492. 46 Szondi’s key concept of the familial unconscious seems to have much in common with the emphasis on the trans-generational family in the psychoanalytically inspired ‘contextual therapy’ of the Hungarian psychiatrist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy. Cf. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, Foundations of Contextual Therapy: Collected Papers of Ivan BoszormenyiNagy (New York, 1987). 47 Szondi, Schicksalsanalytische Therapie, p. 39 (my translation). 42

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However, the psychic relief or inner freedom procured through the intensity of the schicksalsanalytic process slightly differs from the Freudian conceptualization of therapeutic aims. Freudian psychoanalysis seems to understand this inner freedom merely in terms of becoming conscious of conflicts between the unconscious instincts on the one hand and the ego, which “develops from perceiving the instincts to controlling them,” on the other hand.48 For Szondi the relation between ego and instincts is not one of repression and conflict. The ego is not just the agency that is focused on becoming conscious of the unconscious possibilities of an individual destiny. Szondi interprets the ego foremost as an ego pontifex, a mediator or “bridge builder” between the constitutional factors of the familial unconscious. The concrete function of the ego pontifex is to keep the eight factors attuned to one another. Szondi stresses that conflict is situated between the instincts, which each strive to realize themselves freely and not between the instincts and the ego, as Freud argues. Thus, for Szondi, therapy consists of rendering this inter-factorial conflict conscious by unraveling it and giving necessary freedom to the familial unconscious’ pairs of opposition. Thus, the ego becomes acquainted with the different hereditary possibilities which get the opportunity and psychic space to develop in all possible freedom. It is the task of the ego to keep an eye on the fact that this subjective realization does not happen rigidly, but as dynamically and freely as possible. What is at stake in the process of schicksalsanalytical therapy can be illustrated by a short case-study. A twenty-eight year old clergyman suffering from an ejaculation disorder began analysis with Szondi.49 After a while, it became clear that his sexual inhibition could be linked to his severe anxiety of having an epileptic fit. During analysis the patient began to realize that he experienced the emotional character of an orgasm and that epileptic fits had the same character. Szondi reports how the patient suddenly cried out (“ejaculated”) at the end of the session: “Fit and ejaculation are one and the same.”50 Instead of experiencing his hereditary epileptic disposition as an external exigency, as a “flight into illness” (epileptic fits or ejaculation disorders), schickalsanalytic therapy aims at making the patient’s hereditary constitution

48 49 50

Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p. 76. Szondi, Schicksalsanalytische Therapie, pp. 338–352. Ibid., p. 345.

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more explicit. In particular, the patient’s family seemed to share an epileptiform and paranoid-schizoid hereditary disposition. Apart from congenital epilepsy, Szondi’s genealogical research makes mention of people suffering from spasms of the vocal cords and stuttering. In addition to these morbus sacer individuals Szondi also writes of homo sacer figures such as theologians and vicars as well as of violent Cain figures. These are the figures that appear on the stage of the unconscious. These are the “pencils of destiny” which are at the patient’s disposal with which to express himself on the “canvas of life.” Becoming conscious of the possibilities of one’s destiny enables the ego pontifex to choose freely out of the other options which follow naturally from the individual’s familial constitution. The patient’s psychic freedom consists of his potential to become aware of his own options—the pathological as well as the ‘sublimated’ ones—and of learning how to actualize his potential in a way that is more free. Of course, Szondi would agree with Freud that “analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or the other.”51 How does this happen in the case study of the clergyman? The patient chose to develop his epileptic potential freely. His ego opted for the unhindered flourishing of his epileptiform possibilities, which became manifest through the decision to engage in an intense theological study, the writing of an immense theological oeuvre, and a successful career as a pastor.52 It is through the continuous task of choice-making, always embedded in a familial context, that our individual destiny gradually takes its own shape. Thus, “Schicksal macht Wahl” (“Destiny creates choice”) but also, conversely, choice creates destiny.53

51 Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923), Standard Edition 19 (London, 1966), p. 50 (note 1). 52 Szondi interprets the theological interest as a ‘sublimated’ manifestation of the epileptic vector. The connection between epilepsy and religiosity had already been known since Esquirol (cf. K. Dewhurst and A.W. Beard, “Sudden Religious Conversions in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,” Epilepsy and Behavior 4 (2003), 78–87). Contemporary neuroscientific research considering the origins of religion suggests a link with epilepsy (cf. Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (Chicago, 2005)). Additionally, one can also refer to Vincent van Gogh’s fits of ‘hyper-religiosity’ (cf. Dietrich Blumer, “The Illness of Vincent van Gogh,” American Journal of Psychiatry 159 (2002), 519–526). 53 Szondi, Freiheit und Zwang, p. 41 (my translation).

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Although he never elaborates on the concept of tragedy as such, the theme of the tragic seems to function as the leitmotiv of Szondi’s Schicksalsanalysis. While Freud introduced the dimension of the tragic as a characteristic of psychic life, Szondi placed it at the heart of his analysis of human existence. For Freud, the model of the tragic in everyday existence is Oedipus. The psychoanalytic preoccupation with early childhood, however, was unable to clarify the daemonic manifestation of the compulsion to repeat. The impact of childhood made it possible to understand the pathogenesis of the daemonic constraint that characterizes the repetition of certain psychopathological patterns. Nevertheless, it could not explain its etiology. After all, the constraint had its cause in the hereditary psychic constitution of the familial unconscious. Of course, it is not only the focus on the constraining character of compulsive destiny that gives rise to Szondi’s tragic interpretation of human existence. Szondi reveals that the tragic is the complex mixture of both constraint and freedom characterizing the human condition. The human possibility to move from this constraint towards freedom, to move from compulsive destiny (Schicksal as fate) towards free destiny (Schicksal as destiny), is illustrated in the core of schicksalsanalytic therapy. Szondi’s radicalization of the psychoanalytic idea that psychopathology is at the heart of the human condition confronts us with the tragic dimension of human existence. The polymorphous-pathological subject constantly makes choices through which it creates its own subjective destiny. These choices, however, are always tragic choices: they inherently carry the risk of leading to pathologic lapses. It is precisely the making conscious of this pathological, subjective potential that reveals our own human tragedy. But, at the same time, it enables us to actualize the potential we have at our disposal in a way that is more free. It is through this transition from compulsive destiny towards a free destiny that one can become human: “Freiheitsschicksal heisst die Wahl der Menschwerdung” (“Free destiny is the choice of the becoming human”).54 Analogous to the tragedy of Oedipus, the revelation of the motives of the familial unconscious is experienced as tragic. Szondi recalls how for both Oedipus and the patient in the therapeutic setting

54

Szondi, Schicksalsanalytische Therapie, p. 98.

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it is “a shock” to find out that his choices are not entirely his—or at least not in the sense he thought they were before.55 Szondi, however, stresses that this tragic message implies simultaneously a “hopeful” emergence of formerly unknown existential possibilities. It is in this sense that the philosophical anthropology of Szondi’s Schicksalsanalysis can be called a tragic humanism. For, according to Szondi, it is only through the heroic affirmation of and resignation to its destiny, including both existential possibilities and impossibilities, that the subject is able to realize the human values of freedom and happiness in his own way.

55

Szondi, Freiheit und Zwang, p. 72.

PART FIVE

TRAGEDY AND MODERN LITERATURE

NOISES OFF: ON IBSEN Simon Critchley (New School for Social Research, New York)1 Hören Sie denn nicht das entzetzliche Schreien ringsum, das man gewöhnlich die Stille heißt. Georg Büchner2

When I read Ibsen, I always hear noises, not the noises of the words, but the noises behind and between the words, noises that risk reducing those words to mere noises, to birdsong. In other words, to use theatrical parlance, I hear ‘noises off’. For the most part, the noise remains in the background like a distant but faintly audible throb; a ringing, hissing, gnawing, whisking, rustling or distant singing, like the trickling of the polluted springs in An Enemy of the People. But at times the noise becomes cacophonous, drowning out the voices of the characters and dominating the dramatic action, like the roar of the cataracts at the beginning of Brand, or the running of the mill-race in Rosmersholm. At these moments the noise becomes both actor and action. When I read or watch Ghosts, I hear the steady rain over the gloomy fjord landscape and the flames of the burning orphanage. In Hedda Gabler, I hear the crackling fire that consumes Lövborg’s manuscript on the future of civilization, thereby consuming the possibility of the future. In A Doll’s House, I hear a rising tidal wave of black, icy water that only breaks with Nora’s moment of lucidity, “Yes, now I’m really beginning to understand.” It is the high mountain snow that consumes Rubek and Irene in the avalanche at the end of When We Dead Awaken, just like the thunder of snow that swallows Brand at the end of that play,

1 I’d like to thank Trond Herne, Atle Kittang, Ellen Mortensen, Toril Moi and Aino Rinhaug for their helpful remarks on my argument and for clarifying my thoughts on Ibsen. This paper was prepared for a seminar called “Sexed Ibsen” in Bergen, Norway, 26th May, 2006 and then subsequently given at conferences in Oslo and Antwerp. 2 “So, do you not hear that horrific screaming all around that one usually calls silence.” This text was the epigraph to Werner Herzog’s 1974 movie, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen Alle, more popularly known as The Enigma of Kasper Hauser. I will leave the reader to find the connection, or lack of one, between this paper, Ibsen and Herzog’s monumental cinema.

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which is a cacophony of noise: the rifle shooting the silver bullet and the screaming of the strange white bird. The sounds of fire and water, those primal elements, are the natural soundtrack to Ibsen’s dramas. But there are other noises in Ibsen, human sounds that resemble natural sounds, like the voice of the people in Brand, “that murmuring sound . . . the sea under a rising wind,” the people who follow Brand and then stone and reject him, the people cynically manipulated by the lies of the Dean and the Mayor, “vox populi, vox dei.” But there is something more to these noises in Ibsen, something more unnatural and uncanny, like the gnawing, scuttling and rustling of the rats in Little Eyolf, or the noise of the hooves of the white horses throughout Rosmersholm. At times, I feel, this noise is an estranging, brooding background hum, like a power station, the swollen roar of distant traffic, or the almost animal moaning of a New York central heating system. Yet, there is also a supernatural quality to this noise: a rumbling, a murmuring, the sound of something like voices, the troll-demons within or without, barely audible, unintelligible, the “harps in the air” in The Master Builder. This is close to what Levinas calls “le remue-ménage de l’être,” the bustling, stirring or hullabaloo of being, which is the uncanny presence of the il y a, the sheer thatness or thereness of existence. Is this noise the true song of Norway? Who knows. Listen to the opening lines of Ibsen’s final drama When We Dead Awaken. Rubek, the celebrated artist returning to Norway after a long voluntary exile overseas, who has spent his time making busts of bourgeois society people since the failed completion of his titanic masterwork ‘The Day of Resurrection’, confesses that he is not happy. Rubek. What’s the matter. Maya. Just listen to the silence. Rubek. You can hear the silence? Maya. Of course. Rubek. Well, mein Kind, perhaps you can. Maya. One can’t help noticing the silence here—it makes such a thundering sound. Rubek. You mean here at the spa? Maya. I mean everywhere in this country of ours. Oh the cities we visited were noisy enough, but that was dead noise, too—noise without meaning. Rubek. You’re not happy being back home again? Maya. Are you? Rubek. Me?

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Maya. Well, you’ve seen a lot more of the world that I have. Can you really say you’re happy to be home again? Rubek. Well, no . . . to tell you the truth . . . not altogether happy Maya. I knew it.3

Let me pass over the obvious riposte to this scene as to whether Norwegians can ever be happy in Norway, which is a dilemma I have learnt from some nameless Norwegian friends. (Of course, hating your country is just an inverted form of love, and believe me I hate England with a vengeance. Although, and this is a theme that interests me in Ibsen, there is a continual reiteration of the relation to the foreign in Ibsen, the horizons of Paris, Rome, and Munich, and the entire beautiful otherness of the south, continually play in contrast to the rain-soaked fjords of Norway, mainly through the figure of the returning artist or scholar, whether Rubek, Oswald Alving or Jörgen Tesman). It is the background noise in the above passage that interests me. This noise might turn into the thundering avalanches at the end of When We Dead Awaken or Brand, but it is the soundtrack to all of life, whether the dead meaningless noises of the city, Baudelaire’s “rue assourdissante,” or the purportedly more meaningful noise at the spa and especially in the mountains. This noise seems to dictate words and even to direct the drama. At one point, the aethereal, ghostly Irene says, “every word is being whispered in my ear.” To which Rubek stupidly responds, “Some string in your nature is broken.” Is this noise behind and between Ibsen’s words sexed? Is it male or female, or some third, fourth or fifth intersex? I don’t think so. For me, it is neutral; it is the very anonymity of existence, the neutrality of its murmuring and rumbling: natural, unnatural or supernatural, but always uncanny. Ibsen’s noises off are neutral and they, in turn, neutralize existence, rendering it suddenly meaningless, vacuous. These noises are the sounds of things thinging, and the thinging of the spaces between things, the low reverberating meaningless hum of life in the world. In so many of Ibsen’s dramas, this background, the hooves of the white horses, the screaming of the white bird, the gnawing of the rats, is the presentiment of death. In listening to this noise, in allowing its ringing stillness to neutralize existence, one welcomes life’s clandestine companion, namely death.

Henrik Ibsen, When We Dead Awaken, in The Oxford Ibsen, trans. James Walter McFarlane, vol. 8 (Oxford, 1960), p. 239. 3

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However, although I think these noises off are neutral and neutralizing, they are sexed insofar as they are heard by Ibsen’s women protagonists. Ibsen’s women hear these noises, they listen out for these noises: Hedda, Nora, Helene Alving, Hilde Wengel, Maya, Rita Allmers, Rebecca West née Gamvik. Pushing this thought a little further—and let’s ambitiously call this my hypothesis—one might say that the subjectivity of these female characters is constituted in response to this noise of existence, these noises off that both make life possible and impossible at once. I will come back to this seeming paradox. I think this background noise of existence—what I have elsewhere called “the tinnitus of existence”4—might be said to both constitute female subjectivity and make that subjectivity unbearable. The thought here is that female subjectivity might be both made and unmade, done and undone in the act of listening to, turning towards and turning away from the background noise of existence. Existence is an oppressive burden to be carried and we respond to it in turning away, in evading. When we turn towards it, when we succumb to it, we die. Ibsen’s women confront the facticity of existence in a movement that feels that fact as a burden it would like to be lifted while knowing all the time that it cannot. We will hopefully see how this hypothesis puts a decisive twist in the idea of the tragic hero and the tragic itself. To this extent, women are the true subjects of Ibsen’s dramas, at least the ones that I am going to focus on (and I can’t pretend to have mastered them all). Men are the objects of those subjects, somehow deaf to those noises off, like Tesman or Helmer or even the mad Master Builder Solness who deludes himself into thinking that he is speaking to God. Ibsen’s men are foolish and his women are wise, but it is a dark wisdom comes at such a high price that one might crave folly. What, one might ask, is Henrik Ibsen’s relation to this female subjectivity? Very simply and polemically, I think he wants to be it. I think he wants to lose his hugely impressive beard and assume the position of female subjectivity. Just as Flaubert famously said, “Mme Bovary, c’est moi,” I would like to imagine Ibsen saying “Hedda, c’est moi, Hilde, c’est moi, Nora c’est moi.” That is, Ibsen is a hysteric. Now, I have no idea whether this idea is shocking or a shockingly cheap Freudian banality and of course what is particularly fascinating about

4 Simon Critchley, “Who Speaks in the Work of Samuel Beckett?” Yale French Studies 93 (1998): 114–130.

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the relation between Freud and Ibsen is the explicit and implicit influence of Ibsen’s women on the formation of psychoanalysis. Of course, to say that Ibsen is a hysteric is not meant critically. Not at all. What the hysteric wants is to be loved, nothing more. But what the hysteric knows is that such love is impossible, and this knowledge makes them impossible and their relationships impossible. The hysteric knows too much, which is why the hysteric usually always outwits the psychoanalyst. Perhaps Ibsen knew too much. I, of course, am not a hysteric and nor, of course, are any of you.5 Like all decent self-respecting academics, we are obsessional, which also means that we are unable to love, but in a different way, mainly because we are self-absorbed and not as clever as the hysterics whose demand for love we cannot hear. But that, as they say, is another story. Doing the impossible With these thoughts in mind, I’d like to approach the character of Hedda Gabler. How do we account for her demonic malevolence? It seems to me that this malevolence flows from a basic mood of boredom. What Hedda feels more than anything else is a sheer boredom with existence, which provokes in her a feeling of listlessness or languor that makes existence unbearable. This is why Hedda craves liveliness, “I trust it will be lively” she intones to her transitional love-object Brack. She desperately hopes that liveliness, which finds an echo in Mrs. Alving’s “joy of life” that I will turn to below, will overcome her languor, but she knows that this is futile. The only apparent redemption lies in beauty, specifically the beauty of death, which requires an act of courage, making the impossible possible, and I will come back to that pregnant and rather obscure formulation. This is the courage that Hedda initially attributes to Lövborg’s death, “this beautiful act. That he had the courage to take his leave of life . . . so early.” Until it is 5 I borrow here from Hilde Bondevik’s important study, “Henrik Ibsen og Hysteriet,” Edda 4 (2005): 327–343. On this point, I would like to register a disagreement with Adorno’s reading of Ibsen in Minima Moralia (trans. E.F.N. Jephcott [ Verso, London, 1974]). Is Ibsen’s treatment of women outdated? Are Ibsen’s heroines outdated hysterics who would fare much better with some good medication, a little power yoga, and regular sex? Adorno writes, mischeviously, “Their grand-daughters, however, would smile indulgently over these hysterics, without even feeling implicated, and hand them over to the benevolent treatment of social welfare” (p. 93). If only this were true! On the contrary, I am stunned by the continuing relevance of Ibsen’s women.

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discovered that he shot himself in the abdomen; well, actually the word in Norwegian is unterlivet, which refers, I believe, to the genitalia. As Ibsen writes in his notes to Hedda Gabler, “Life is not tragic.—Life is ridiculous—and that cannot be borne.” Is Hedda’s own death at the end of the play any more courageous than Lövborg’s unhappy accident? I don’t think so, although at least she manages to shoot herself in the temple rather than unterlivet, as it were. This is not a tragic death, it is tragic-comic in Beckett’s sense, perhaps even a ridiculous death with the ever-hapless Tesman (I know so many academic men like him, present company excepted) flapping, “Shot herself! Shot herself in the temple! Think of that!” To which the would-be Heathcliff, Brack, adds, “But, good God Almighty . . . people don”t do such things!’; as if omitting to add the final words “in Norway” (picking up on Pastor Manders’s line, “but surely not in this country, not here”). There is no redemption through beauty in this act, no Aristotelian catharsis, no Schellingian harmonization of freedom and necessity, or Hegelian tragic reconciliation between opposed forces in collision (I note for amusement that Ibsen’s publisher was called Hegel). There is just Hedda, alone, surrounded by these fools of men whom she feigns to desire simply as a way of fending off the boredom that would otherwise consume her. Her death is not tragic in any Hellenic or Helleno-Germanic sense, it simply confirms the ridiculousness of life which is unbearable. Also, in relation to Rosmersholm, am I alone in finding the double suicide, jumping hand-in-hand into the mill-race, slightly ridiculous? I think a similar analysis could be offered for Hilde in The Master Builder, who shares much more with Hedda than three letters of her name. She is a fascinating character, truly the subject of The Master Builder whose object is Solness. She convinces Solness of the events that happened ten years earlier (“I must have thought it, wished it, willed it,” Solness says) and leads him into a suicidal psychosis where he believes he is talking to God on the tower of the newly finished house. Her genius consists in getting Solness to believe in her or even to treat her like the material fulfillment of some unconscious wish, “How did you become as you are, Hilde?,” to which she replies, “How did you make me as I am.” Hilde gets Solness to believe that she is the object of his subjectivity, whereas I think it is precisely the reverse. Is Hilde any less malevolent than Hedda? I don’t think so. The kingdom that she wants from Solness, the kingdom of which she repeatedly speaks, has nothing to do with ‘castles in the air’, but is the kingdom of death, his death, as a purported punishment or retribution for what happened ten

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years earlier; or perhaps just to relieve the boredom of her existence; or perhaps simply for sport. This is what is meant by making the impossible possible, words which are Ibsen’s but which are freighted with an obvious allusion to Heidegger’s analysis of being-towards-death and the latter’s inversion in the writings of Levinas and Blanchot. Staying with The Master Builder, when Solness climbs the church tower only to fall to his death, the watching Ragnar has the impression that he is witnessing the impossible, “I feel as though I am witnessing something utterly impossible”; to which Hilde replies, “Yes! What he is doing now is impossible!” But this is a theme that runs throughout the play from when Solness says in Act Two, “Haven’t you ever noticed, Hilde, how seductive, how inviting . . . the impossible is?” This is continued in Act Three, when Solness speaks about overcoming his vertigo and mounting the tower for the first time in the presence of the young Hilde: “I did the impossible.” After Hilde persuades him to mount the tower and do the impossible for a second time, he falls to his death hearing the noises of the harps in the air, the ringing singing of death. Death is the possibility of impossibility. If I had world enough and time, I would want to link this theme of the impossible to the obsession with building in Ibsen, with architecture, whether this concerns the building up of the house of God or of homes for the people in conditions of radical homelessness, like the Orphanage in Ghosts, which burns down, like the old family house in The Master Builder. The melancholic Mrs. Solness says en passant, “There is no home, Halvard.” Ibsen seems to be against architecture, against its phallic hybris, and the women characters in Ibsen want to see all projects of building and dwelling collapse into ashes. The modern condition of homelessness makes the experience of ‘home’ unbearable, which perhaps accounts for the mood of suffocation that characterizes so many of Ibsen’s purportedly domestic dramas, though I can think of nothing less domestic than Ibsen. There is no home and no air, just bad air that makes us catch our breath. When the fatally seductive idea of doing the impossible is raised by Solness, Hilde immediately links it to the idea of the troll within, “But is it any wonder I’m becoming like a troll . . . the way things are going for me!” It is the troll within that calls on external powers and who destroys lives, a very devilish troll. This can be linked to the figure of the Boyg, Bøygen, in Peer Gynt. The Boyg is a mixture of mist and slime and is described as a formless thing that is neither living nor dead,

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which is, of course, one definition of das Unheimliche in Freud. The Boyg is also connected to the idea of the self, and it says to Peer that it is “my self ” and that this self is something that must be “gone around,” “Gå utenom, Peer.” Or as the Button Moulder says in a final dialogue with Peer, “Being one’s self means slaying one’s self.” The troll within, then, is that Thingly part of the self, that formless slime that makes the self what it is and which cannot be integrated or assimilated into subjectivity. It can only be evaded or gone around. For me, there is something deathly about the entire secret commonwealth of trolls, fairies, devils and ghosts invoked by Ibsen. We are chained alive to the troll within, to the impossibility that both makes us possible and whose actualization destroys us, as when Solness says of his wife that it is like being chained alive to a dead woman—ah, the joys of married life and the family in Ibsen.6 Langor and lethargy Let me change focus here for a moment. If I were to name a precursor to Hedda and perhaps for Hilde and other of Ibsen’s women, then it would be Racine’s Phèdre, although Aeschylus’s Cassandra also powerfully comes to mind. Ibsen’s art, like Racine’s is defined by a whole metaphysics of blood, of blood as the existential mark of the past, the mark of an inheritance, of the ghostly constitution of subjectivity in A word on the family and children in Ibsen’s allegedly ‘domestic’ or ‘naturalistic’ dramas. It would seem to me that, for Ibsen, the family is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken. The family in Ibsen is a net and nest of incest in which we are trapped by the past and by desire, the desire that Oswald feels for his half-sister Regine in Ghosts, or indeed the hypocritical desire that Manders feels for Regine and which she will willingly reciprocate in order to get on in the world. Incest and the largely unconscious perpetuation of abuse is the truth of family. Or again, consider the truth of the family in The Master Builder, with dead, poisoned children, a duty-bound tomb-like mother and a psychotic philandering father. Or consider children in Ibsen, with Hedda burning Lövborg’s manuscript and saying, in utter malice, “Now, I’m burning your child, Thea! . . . I’m burning . . . burning your child.” This is one of the most terrifying moments in the history of theatre, an act of utterly willful malevolence. It can obviously be linked together with the dream of the burning child in Freud’s Traumdeutung. It should also not be forgotten that Hedda is pregnant when she kills herself. Her suicide is infanticide. In When We Dead Awaken, the artwork is a child, Irene and Rubek’s stillborn child. We should also think of the dead twins in The Master Builder, and the Aeschylean image of children poisoned by their mother’s milk. Finally, in Little Eyolf, the appearance of the Ratwife recalls the rats that are gnawing away at the Allmers’ family and in particular their hunchback son. And let’s not forget how Eyolf got his hunchback, because his mother, the voluptuous hysteric Rita Allmers, lured Alfred away from looking after Eyolf in order to fuck him. 6

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relation to which the subject is guilty. This experience of blood-guilt comes out most strongly and obviously in Ghosts, to which we will turn presently, but it is all over Ibsen. Such blood-guilt (or the truly disturbing milk-blood-guilt of Aline Solness, with which she poisons and kills her twins in The Master Builder) is very different from that which we find in ancient tragedy, where guilt can be forgiven or sacrificed for a higher truth. What differentiates Euripides’s Hippolytus from Racine’s Phèdre and connects the latter to the character of Hedda, is that this guilt cannot be forgiven or expiated. In my view, what is peculiar to Hedda and Phèdre, and possibly also Hilde, Mrs. Alving, Nora, Rebecca West, Rita Allmers and the rest, is that it is as if they are the only characters on stage during their dramas. The rest of the world is an empty, meaningless game in which they are both momentarily caught up, the objective illusory male world, a world of towers, children and master building, that stands opposed to female subjectivity, a subjectivity haunted by ghosts and unable to stop listening to the noises off. Yet, what unites Hedda and Phèdre most profoundly is the experience of languor, which is a mood that interests me greatly. The constant presence of the noise of existence makes me languish. The experience of languor makes me an enigma to myself. I find myself enchained to a facticity whose very nearness makes me lose focus and unable to catch my breath. I burn, breathless, in my languor. I suffocate. The experience of languor is the body’s limpness, its languid quality, and time as distension, as stretching out, procrastination. In languor, I suffer from a delay with respect to myself, my suffering is experienced as an endless waiting. I undergo myself, or I am undergone. The weight of the past makes me wait, and awaiting, I languish. I grow old. Phaedra languishes. Hedda languishes. They experience languor as a mental and physical weariness, a sheer fatigue or exhaustion in the face of their thrownness. But languor also has strong erotic overtones: it is a feeling of dreaminess and laxity, closer to the Middle English ‘love-longing’ and the German Sehnsucht, yearning. In Phaedra’s confession to Hippolytus, she says, “Oui, Prince, je languis, je brûle . . .” Hedda burns, Rita burns, Rebecca burns, Nora ignites, but it is a colder, crueller fire than Racine’s. Hedda’s malaise is the experience of languor as an affective response to the fact of being riveted to herself and utterly bored by that fact. She desires liveliness and escape, something to break the utter boredom of the life she is living, but she is trapped, trapped by her idiot of a husband and her unconvincing lovers. Unlike Phaedra, there is no God watching her, but only the noises off that drone endlessly in her ears, reminding her of the sheer burden of existence and

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making that burden unbearable. When we dead awaken, we realize that we have never lived. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes, Die Verzückung des dionysischen Zustandes mit seiner Vernichtung der gewöhnlichen Schranken und Grenzen des Daseins enthält nämlich während seiner Dauer ein lethargisches Element, in das sich alles persönlich in der Vergangenheit Erlebte eintaucht. [. . .] Sobald aber jene alltägliche Wirklichkeit wieder ins Bewusstsein tritt, wird sie mit Ekel als solche empfunden; eine asketische, willenverneinende Stimmung ist die Frucht jener Zustände.7

The idea here is that contact with the Dionysian, what Nietzsche elsewhere refers to as the primal unity or the womb of being, the Ur-Eine, which he later renounces as a bad-smelling Schopenhauerian ur-ine or an artist’s metaphysics, produces a kind of lethargy; it slows one down and one becomes sleepy. When one becomes conscious again, when we are roused from our lethargy, we feel nausea. I think this is a very good description of what happens in Ibsen. Hedda, Hilde and the other female protagonists have looked into the abyss at the heart of existence, they have been listening to the noises off that ring, hum, gnaw and hiss and they feel lethargy and languor. This can be extended in Nietzsches’s very brief, but extremely perceptive, reading of that other Scandinavian, Othello. Only joking, I mean Hamlet, although I sometimes dream of Moorish Othello as a Dane at the centre of a cartoon scandal. The great Dane sees the abyss that is opened up by his father’s assassination and his mother’s betrayal. He sees—like the entire Islamic world—that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, but instead of acting, like any self-respecting vengeful Greek tragic hero, he shrinks back and falls into lethargy. But why should seeing the truth lead to action? Why shouldn’t it lead instead to nausea? Why do anything? Isn’t it action that has gets human beings into so much trouble? There is a obvious analogy with Beckett here, which is revealed in the final words of Godot, which are repeated throughout 7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Leipzig, 1872), § 7. Quoted from the Gutenberg e-text available at . “For the rapture of the Dionysian state with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence contains, while it lasts, a lethargic element in which all personal experiences of the past become immersed [. . .] but as soon as this everyday reality re-enters consciousness, it is experienced as such with nausea: an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fruit of these states.” The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York, 1967), p. 82.

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the play, “Let’s go,” to which Beckett adds the stage direction, “they do not move.” Tragic insight into the abyss might produce stasis not kinesis. We are rooted to the spot in our languor, like Murphy strapped into his chair listening to a “matrix of surds.” To say this is at the very least to try and complicate the idea of the tragic hero and Ibsen’s heroism, addressed in the important recent work of Atle Kittang.8 Let me say a word on this topic. I think there is what I would call a ‘tragic-heroic aesthetic’ at work in Ibsen, in particular in the firebrand Fichtean martyr figure of Brand, “If you give all but then stop short at life, then you’ll have given nought.” Brand’s whole being is sustained by the activity of the will, by a radical voluntarism and sovereignty. His is a will of ice that bound to the call of an ice church. It makes him utterly merciless, refusing absolution to his dying mother and letting his son die. It is also interesting that Ibsen seems to identify with this all or nothing position, saying in a letter to Peter Hansen, “Brand is myself in my best moments”; although it is perhaps a peculiarity of truly great writers, just think of Kafka and Dostoevsky, to be constantly self-deceived about the nature of their writing (perhaps part of the definition of a great writer in their self-deception about the nature of their art). One also sees a tragic heroism in Dr. Stockman’s character in An Enemy of the People, where the drama plays itself out in terms of the conflict between truth and lies, or truth and power, given that power is a lie that the civic authorities use to dupe the gullible people with the help of a compliant press. As Stockman insists, the truth makes one lonely, uncanny even, thinking of Heidegger’s fatally myopic reading of the Antigone, and the uncomprehending unwashed mob turn against the solitary hero. Brand too becomes an enemy of the people in an almost Schmittian sense, where the individual tragic hero stands alone for truth and is thereby constituted as an enemy through the lies of authority. Although this Promethean, heroic, deeply volitional tragic heroism is a strong strand of Ibsen’s work, which can at its most disturbing be linked to an ideology of national Romanticism, a Norwego-centrism or a phallogo-Norwego-centrism as one might have said in the 1980s, I would want to qualify or criticize it by bringing out the ridiculous or tragi-comic elements of the dramas. This tragic-comic dimension comes out most obviously in delightful Egyptian absurdities of Peer Gynt, but also in the comic stupidity

8

See Atle Kitang, Ibsens heroisme (Oslo, 2003).

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of some of Ibsen’s characters, like Tesman. But it can be seen most powerfully in the daemonic female characters we have discussed in this talk, who listen to offstage noises whose source is more powerful than the will. If Brand’s entire existential energy is devoted to the creation of another world and a new human being, a quest—in Heideggerian terms—for individual and collective authenticity, then I see Ibsen’s women as renouncing this quest, questioning the possibility of such authenticity and falling back into a deep and lethargic facticity. Yet, perhaps this is also a way of reading the final scene of Brand where he finally experiences something beyond his hitherto unyielding will, a transcendence. At this point, he is released and kneels. His final words are a question to himself and his project throughout the play: “Why is man’s own proud will his curse?” At the point of being swallowed by the avalanche, an anonymous off-stage voice gives the answer, “he is deus caritas.” Let’s just say that I am not sure whether it is the God of love that is announced at the end of Brand, even the God of a rather tough love, whether Lutheran or Jansenist. It is rather the voice of a more neutral and troubling transcendence, what I call ‘atheist transcendence’ that rumbles with the rolling tide of snow. In my view, Brand is brought to his knees not by God, but by a realization of his finitude, by a dying that exceeds his will and which undoes him. In this, at the last, he resembles Hedda, and Ibsen’s tragic heroism turns over into a tragic-comic anti-heroism of the ridiculousness of life. If only life were tragic, but sadly it is not. Funny isn’t it? Guilt, conscience, sin, and dirty secrets I would like to move on the central centennial question of how we can inherit Ibsen. Obviously, so many of the characters in Ibsen’s drama struggle with inheritance, both the sins of the fathers, in Ghosts and elsewhere, but also the sins of the mothers. As the infinitely dumb and selfish Helmer declares to Nora, “My dear Nora, as a lawyer I know what I’m talking about. Practically all juvenile delinquents come from homes where the mother is dishonest.”9 We might also consider the fact of the law in Ibsen, which often takes the form of documents, namely the legal status of the IOU and 9 Ibsen, A Doll’s House, in The Oxford Ibsen, trans. James Walter McFarlane, vol. 5 (Oxford, 1960), p. 233.

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repayments on a debt in A Doll’s House or the absence of an insurance policy in Ghosts. Also, there is the theme of legal documentation and forgery, whether a false birth certificate or a posthumous paternal signature, “Oh, all this law and order! I often think that’s the cause of all the trouble in the world.” An Enemy of the People is another drama of documents, of reports, articles printed or not, stock in companies and the like. Ibsen’s characters are physically flayed alive by memory, by the memory of what they have inherited, an obscene secret which they are often reluctantly brought to confess. This can also be tragic-comic as with Dr. Rank’s spinal tuberculosis in A Doll’s House, which is a consequence of his father’s taste for truffles and oysters. But it can also be simply painful, as with Rosmer’s sense of unbearable guilt for the death of his wife or Builder Solness’s overwhelming sense of indebtedness which leaves him with what Hilde calls a “fragile conscience” that feels like “a great expanse of raw flesh.” For me, the character who best expresses the agony of inheritance is Mrs. Alving, the newly converted free-thinker who has been reading those unmentionable books that Pastor Manders cannot bear to even look at, books which allow her to pick away at the knots of Christian teaching until the whole thing falls apart at the seams. An almost identical conflict can be found in Rosmersholm, in the debate between the pious Dr. Kroll and the desirous Rebecca West. At the beginning of Ghosts, Mrs. Alving seeks to deny Oswald’s inheritance and any likeness to his father and then the truth begins to unravel until the nature of Oswald’s fatal inheritance becomes clear as the sun that stubbornly refuses to shine until the final scene, although one suspects that Mrs. Alving has been, like Hamlet, “too much in the sun” throughout the entire play. What one inherits are ghosts and these ghosts constitute an existential, familial, cultural and even economic debt that we can never make up. We can never meet the repayments on the unasked-for loan which the past demands of us. This is the ontological meaning of guilt as Schuld in German or skyld in Norwegian which means guilt, wrong or even sin, but it can also, of course, simply mean debt. To be schuldig is to be guilty or blameworthy, but it can also mean to give someone their due, to be owing, to be in someone’s debt. Schulden are debts, which have a material origin as Nietzsche points out in Zur Genealogie der Moral. Life is a series of repayments on a loan that you didn’t agree to, with ever-increasing interest and which will eventually cost you your life. This is the death rattle inside life’s mortgage, its death-pledge. This might be

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linked to the theme of money in Ibsen: the loan with the dead father’s forged signature in A Doll’s House, the methodical payments made to build the orphanage in Ghosts. Inheritance is both a biological concept within the family, a cultural conception in the transmission of the past, and a financial issue about capital flows from the past and how and whether they will extend into the future. We are schuldig in the double sense of indebted and guilty and this indebtedness both defines and divides subjectivity, producing what we might call a mort-gaged subjectivity where the subject is defined in terms of its self-division. This is classically expressed in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “For the good that I would I do not, yet the evil that I would not that I do” and finds contemporary expression in the logic of loans, credit card agreements, and real estate contracts. Self-consciousness essentially takes shape in relation to the experience of a debt that I cannot pay off, which yields a guilt that divides me against myself. In my jargon, this is what I see as the essential experience of conscience: the subject is a dividual, a self whose singularity consists in the experience whereby it turns against itself. Yet, although the concepts of guilt, conscience and, of course, original sin have their fons et origo in Christian anthropology, the issue—the issue that I see Ibsen working through in his so many of his plays—is how these concepts are not to be rejected through the affirmation of what is repeatedly and unconvincingly called “the joy of life” throughout Ghosts, which echoes Hedda’s craving for liveliness, but rethought spectrally and existentially after the so-called death of God. I take it that this is the meaning of Mrs. Alving’s beautiful speech on the nature of ghosts, although we should keep in mind that the Nowegian Gengangere is closer to idea of revenant, of those returning from the dead or from absence, Ghosts. When I heard Regine and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts. But then I’m inclined to think that we are all ghosts, Pastor Manders, every one of us. It’s not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. It’s all kinds of old defunct theories, and things like that. It’s not that they actually live on in us; they are simply lodged there, and we cannot get rid of them. I’ve only to pick up a newspaper and I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. Over the whole country there must be ghosts, as numerous as the sands of the sea. And here we are, all of us, abysmally afraid of the light.10 Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts, in Four Major Plays (Doll’s House; Ghosts; Hedda Gabler; and The Master Builder), trans. James McFarlane and Jens Arup (Oxford, 1998), Act 2, p. 126. 10

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In this way, we can return to my opening theme: namely, that the noises off that we hear all through Ibsen’s dramas are the sounds of ghosts, ghosts who are at once offstage and utterly center stage. They are lodged at the heart of subjectivity, primarily female subjectivity, defining that subjectivity in a movement that divides it. We do not live; we are lived through in a passivity, a vulnerability, like the raw flesh of conscience. Consider the dialogue between Asta and Allmers in Little Eyolf. Asta. Oh, Alfred. Let the dead rest in peace. Allmers. Yes, let them rest. But the dead will not give us peace. Day and night they haunt us.11

It is a question of rethinking concepts like guilt, conscience and sin not as theological concepts, but existentially, as claims about the being of being human. Being human is originally constituted as a lack, as a radical indebtedness to a past that cannot be made up by the subject’s own volition. This is what Brand discovers at the point of death and what Hedda knew all along. Guilt and sin constitute the subject in a state of want, as what Heidegger calls ein geworfener Grund, a thrown basis or ground that cannot throw off that thrownness in a movement of free will, ecstatic projection or the joy of life. Sinful existence is experienced as a load or burden to which I am enchained and in which I languish. I languish in sin, like Oswald whose final Phaedra-like words are ‘the sun, the sun’, before he collapses into the languor of hereditary syphilis. Of course, what Oswald is staring at, the enigma that transfixes and paralyses him, is himself: the son. Here is subjectivity as self-division. And wouldn’t this be one way of reading Nietzsche’s collapse from the effects of tertiary syphilis at the other end of the same decade in which Ghosts was published, where the realization of the essential self-division of the subject is the entire drama of Ecce Homo, i.e., there is no one homo to behold, just a radically self-divided subject that ironically presents itself as writing such excellent books, being so wise and even being a destiny. Whatever the true cause, it is simply the case that this realization of the self as something that cannot be realized precedes and perhaps precipitates Nietzsche’s final collapse into burbling idiocy. It is not a question of approaching concepts like sin or guilt as a moral judgement upon human nature, but as existential concepts that describe

Henrik Ibsen, Little Eyolf, in Plays 3 (Rosmersholm; The Lady from the Sea; Little Eyolf ), trans. Michael Meyer (London, 1980), Act 2, p. 259. 11

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the movement of existence as a lack that cannot be made up, what I call in connection with Heidegger, although it is a critical connection, an originary inauthenticity that cannot be overcome by any movement of authentic Brand-like projection. After the death of God, concepts of sin, guilt, and conscience do not disappear in some illusory and finally ideological cloud of aesthetic self-creation and liberation—‘I’m OK, you’re OK, hey we’re both OK, let’s go to power yoga and then do brunch’. On the contrary, the experience of guilt and conscience digs deeper into the heart of human existence as the essential lack that I am, and which can only be momentarily mastered by affirming my finitude, an affirmation that always slips back into ghostly languor. The privileged dimension of temporality in Ibsen is the past. His heroes and heroines are consequences of a past that they cannot throw off and into which they keep slipping back. Yet his heroines—listening to the noises off, the ghosts whose cries fill the air and who haunt the centre stage of subjectivity—have an utterly lucid awareness of the past’s primacy. When Hedda burns Eljert Lövborg’s manuscript on the future of civilization, what she is burning is very possibility of the future, of the future as possibility, both the possibility of the book (and there are so many unwritten or unfinished books in Ibsen’s dramas), and the possibility of the child, both her jealousy for Thea’s child and her horror at the child that she is carrying. The future is incinerated and possibility is folded back into the facticity of the past. Free of the ideological delusions that always privilege the future along with compulsory happiness, Ibsen’s art gives us clues for the interpretation of a past that is not through with us, however much we might like to be through with it.

THE TRAGIC HEROISM OF CAPTAIN AHAB Daniel Shaw (Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania) Widely acknowledged as one of the best tragic novels, Moby Dick has vexed interpreters for over 150 years. In what follows I intend to propose a theory of tragedy that makes particularly good sense out of Herman Melville’s masterpiece. Let me begin by summarizing the problems which any adequate theory of tragedy must avoid. It must not fault tragic protagonists simply because their choices lead to massive suffering. It must not subsume tragedy to any explicitly ethical purposes, relative as those are to time, culture, and individual. It must solve the paradox of tragic pleasure, namely, that the experience of tragedies is pleasurable in part because of that suffering, and in a way that goes beyond the mere catharsis of unpleasant emotions. Tragic pleasure, I contend, is a unique and sublime feeling that demands fuller explication, and is neither a mere vicarious purgation, nor a kind of Schadenfreude (sadistically taking pleasure in another’s pain). In the best of tragedies, from my perspective, characters with whom we are led to strongly identify are depicted in the process of resolutely defining themselves through action. These defining actions, which are central to who they are, are taken in tragically configured situations that lead in a plausible fashion to their precipitous fall. Their suffering can neither be morally deserved nor sought after in a masochistic or suicidal manner. It must rather be the likely result of being true to their principles, in rather unique situations. Tragic pleasure comes from the esteem we feel for such characters, in part because they show themselves willing to pay such a terrible price for upholding their convictions. While sharing in their misery, we also share in their nobility, because they embody the quintessentially human characteristics of what Martin Heidegger described in Sein und Zeit as authenticity and resoluteness.1 Great tragedies allay our fears of nihilism by replacing our initial feelings of pity and terror with admiration for the strength of the protagonist’s beliefs. In a world where it 1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarie and Robinson (New York 1962), esp. sections 60 and 61.

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has never been harder to sustain the conviction necessary for resolute action, these monumental art works can help us to better realize our own projects. The inspiration of tragic heroism makes everyday heroism much easier to envision. It was Herman Melville’s contact with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writings, and with that author as an individual, that led to Melville’s transformation from an adventure novelist into a tragedian. Melville wrote an enthusiastic review of Mosses from an Old Manse (which he entitled “Hawthorne and His Mosses”) for The Literary World in the summer of 1850. He praised Hawthorne for “this great power of blackness in him [which] derives its force from its appeal to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin.”2 He likened Hawthorne to Shakespeare, and in the process, patriotically championed all American writers: “Believe me, my friends, that men not very much inferior to Shakespeare are this day being born on the banks of the Ohio” (543). I think it is fair to say that these comments can be taken as selfreferential. During that same period, Melville threw out a virtually completed version of a whaling novel, an adventure tale on the order of White Jacket or Omoo. As Edwin Miller observed in his biography of Melville: “It seems reasonably certain, however, that he in effect rewrote the entire book after his meeting with Hawthorne.”3 He self-consciously sought to create an American tragic hero, spending a great deal of time investing his whaling captain with a noble and kingly stature. Melville did not do so simply to have Ahab be seen as a monstrous monomaniac mired in irrational illusions. It is important to understand why Ahab would build such metaphysical significance into the White Whale. Melville himself was raised a Presbyterian, and struggled throughout his life with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, and the obsession with innate depravity and inherent evil in the universe to which he referred in his paean to Hawthorne. Melville came to reject many of the tenets of what had become a peculiarly American orthodoxy. Henry Murray, for example, in “In Nomine Diaboli,” observed that Melville railed against his Christian background “as furiously as Byron and Shelley, or any Satanic writer who preceded him, as furiously as Nietzsche Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition to Moby Dick (New York, 1967), p. 540. Future references to this primary text will be followed by the page numbers from which they are taken. 3 Edwin Haviland Miller, Melville (New York, 1975), p. 180. 2

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or the most radical of his successors in our day.”4 Melville embodied that rebelliousness in several of his later protagonists (including Pierre and Bartleby), but none was more eloquent than Ahab. In his first description of Ahab, Ishmael depicts him “looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable willfulness in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance” (103). Ahab was “shaped in an unalterable mold, like Cellini’s cast Perseus” (102). Tormented beyond normal comprehension, “moody, stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe” (103). In the crucial “pasteboard masks” speech on the Quarter-Deck, Ahab declares his rebellion, trying to retaliate against “some unknown but still reasoning thing [that] puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask” (136). If Ahab is a tragic figure, it must seem reasonable for him to believe this. If our sense is that his convictions are wholly irrational, we will continue to pity him for laboring under such misapprehensions. But if we can understand why he arrived at his convictions, we can empathize even if we do not share them, or even consider them to be patently false. Antigone offers a clear illustration of this. Our culture no longer countenances the Attic Greek belief that the soul of an individual will wander restlessly for all eternity if their body is not properly buried. But our response to Antigone is undiminished; we esteem her commitment to her brother despite the fact that we do not share her particular form of religious piety. So, we must examine Ahab’s life, and the sources of his convictions. Captain Peleg tells Ishmael that Ahab received the name of a reviled Old Testament King from his crazy widowed mother, who died before he was a year old (67). He was likely to have been raised in a Presbyterian orphanage, since it was the dominant religious sect in Nantucket at the time. Ahab went to sea as “a boy-harpooneer of eighteen,” and spent forty years confronting the horrors of the deep (451). Given to deep reflection anyway, his bloody profession was a natural one to set him thinking about the implications of his Calvinist principles.

4 Henry A. Murray, “In Nomine Diaboli,” in Moby Dick Centennial Essays, Tyrus Hillway and Luther Mansfield, editors (Dallas, 1953), p. 15.

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The doctrine of free will is the most convincing Christian response to the problem of evil, which is generally posed in the following terms. If God is a perfect creator, then why is there so much evil in the world? As David Hume contended, an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God would have had the will, the knowledge, and the power to make a better universe, with less evil in it.5 Theologians as diverse as Thomas Aquinas and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz have argued that humans must be capable of choosing evil if they are to be held responsible for their actions, and that much of the evil in the world is the result of contingent human choices. Natural evils like famine, floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, or whale attacks offer challenges to a Christian’s faith, and human evil is the inevitable result of granting imperfect physical beings like us the dignity of free will. But Calvinists are denied this solace. If God has predestined all events, and if humans are either members of the elect, or not, with no free will to change the situation, then God can be held responsible both for human and for natural evil. At that point, it is reasonable to conclude that, from our admittedly limited perspective, God does not appear perfect to us (since we cannot fathom his reputed Divine Plan). The legitimacy of God’s moral authority over us is dependent on that perfection. An imperfect being with sufficient power could compel our obedience, but it would lack the moral authority to legitimately command us. Hence, Ahab concluded that the appropriate response to such a deity would be rebellion. His projection of this deistic hatred onto Moby Dick may well have been delusional. The White Whale was incredibly powerful, but it might simply have been a singular specimen of a sperm whale. After all, the Whale’s mangling of Ahab was clearly provoked. Ahab lost his leg only when he grabbed the line knife from his shattered craft and “dashed at the whale as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale” (154). One can easily see that he brought the attack upon himself. Indeed, Ahab sometimes doubts whether the whale is the appearance of some more basic reality: “Sometimes I think that there is naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me” (136). One of the premiere whaling captains in the fleet, he finds the challenge of bringing

5

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, IX.

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down this Leviathan to be compelling in itself. Ahab’s quarry offers him something like the excitement a big game hunter enjoys at the thought of slaying his most daunting prey. He is affronted at having been repelled by the behemoth. But if Ahab was merely seeking “vengeance against a dumb brute,” as Starbuck accuses him of doing, then his quest would be less than noble, and fall short of its epic stature. It is “the little lower layer” behind his pursuit of Moby Dick that makes Ahab so fascinating. He saw the whale as an agent of God. [A]ll the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s hump the sum of the general rage felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. (154–155)

Moved to question his own identity (“Is Ahab Ahab?”), in his first intimate exchange with Starbuck right before the final chase, he described the inhuman toll of his quest: “I feel deadly faint, bowed and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise” (452). Like Ivan in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ahab rejected the notion that a comprehensive divine plan could compensate for the injustices visited upon particular human beings. He sees Moby Dick as the embodiment of the inscrutable malice of a perverse deity, and that is what most enrages him, for he consistently rejects all suffering that cannot be rendered humanly intelligible. Also like Ivan, Ahab is not really an atheist, for he continues to acknowledge the existence of the deity while denying its authority over him: “I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery of me” (422). It is crucial to our tragic pleasure that Ahab be seen as a prodigious figure in his own right, or else his search for a single whale in all the world’s oceans would seem foolish. His wisdom about whaling astounds even the trenchant Starbuck. The chart that Ahab kept, showing all the whale sightings reported by the Nantucket fleet, made locating Moby Dick in the vast Pacific a conceivable enterprise. His scientific acumen also served him well, and greatly impressed his superstitious crew, when he extinguished St. Elmo’s Fire with his bare hands (knowing it to be mere static electricity) in “The Candles,” and when he remagnetized the compass in “The Needle.” The mesmerizing power he had over his crew is one of

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Ahab’s most impressive traits, and central to his tragic stature. Much of that power stemmed from a supreme sense of theatre. To remain below decks for weeks, and then have his first address to the crew be the speech on the Quarter-Deck, was rhetorically brilliant. Enhancing the crew’s involvement with the great measure of grog made his pitch all the more intoxicating. Ahab was a kind of diabolic high priest, enacting rituals that bound the crew together. Having the harpooneers drink out of their harpoon sockets transformed the weapons into chalices. Grabbing the lances of the three mates, and seeking to instill in them the obsession which had “accumulated within the Leyden jar of his emotions,” Ahab had them virtually hypnotized (138). His pagan rite of baptizing the new lances forged out of his own personal razors with the blood of his harpooneers (“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli”) was a stroke of genius (409). Keeping Fedallah and his crew of demons under wraps until first lowering, and having them be the fastest crew on the ship, only enhanced Ahab’s mystical dominion. By the second day of the final chase, despite their complete rout the day before, “They were one man, not thirty [. . .] all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to” (463). One learns a lot about Ahab from this description of the ideal man, given to the carpenter as he fashioned the captain’s new leg: Hold, while Prometheus is about it, I’ll order a complete man after a desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest modeled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to ’em, to stay in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all, brass forehead, about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and, let me see—shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards. (395)

While Ahab himself does not do away with his own heart (see below), we clearly see what he believes to be the essence of the human, especially in his stress on intelligence and introspection at the end. In a letter to Hawthorne dating from April of 1851, Melville described what he called “a certain tragic phase of humanity.” An individual going through such a phase is described as follows. [ He] declares himself a sovereign nature (in himself ) amid the powers of heaven, hell and earth. He may perish; but so long as he exists, he insists upon treating with the Powers that be on an equal basis. If any of these

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powers choose to withhold certain secrets, let them; that does not impair my sovereignty in myself; that does not make me tributary.6

Notice how Melville switched from the third to the first person in the course of the passage, indicating how personally he took this theme. Melville best captured this “certain tragic phase of humanity” in his depiction of Ahab. Ishmael described Ahab as a Promethean figure, though his own pieties led him to conceive of Ahab’s rebellion in essentially negative terms: “God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him Prometheus, a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; that vulture is the very creature he creates” (170). Like the chorus in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, Ishmael can only prophesize unending woe for anyone who dares to flaunt the superiority of God. Yet the grandeur of their common rejection of the imperfect authority of god, which makes Ahab’s suffering significant, is not even hinted at by the narrator. A Nietzschean reading of Moby Dick would privilege Ishmael as the bearer of truth. In Die Geburt der Tragödie, Friedrich Nietzsche contended that the chorus in Ancient Greek tragedies spoke the truth about the ultimate meaninglessness of all human stirving. This is too simple an assumption to do justice to the fascinating dialectic between Ahab and his chorus figure. Ishmael seems to embrace a pantheism reminiscent of the German Romantics, with whom Melville was quite familiar and ambivalently admired. In another letter to Hawthorne, Melville mocked Goethe’s famous recommendation to “live in the all”: “What nonsense! [. . .] As with all great geniuses, there is an immense deal of flummery in Goethe.”7 Though he admitted to being attracted by that “flummery,” there is at least as much of Ahab in the author as of Ishmael. The present reading makes no truth claims about the respective world views of the protagonist or his narrator. I contend that our response to tragic misery has little to do with our opinion of the truth or falsity of the conviction held. That emotional response is most fundamentally a feeling of horrified admiration for the resolute will with which tragic heroes serve the values they honor. Though an atheist is likely to identify more strongly with Ahab’s rebellion, even a devout Christian should

6 Letter from Melville to Hawthorne dated 16 April 1851, reprinted in The Portable Melville (New York, 1952), p. 427. 7 Reprinted in Moby Dick, p. 560.

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be able to appreciate his sincerity, and admire his fortitude, despite disagreeing with his reasoning and values. Given our contemporary sense of the nature and limits of moral responsibility, Oedipus cannot be considered fully responsible for killing his father and marrying his mother, since he lacked the requisite guilty intent. Furthermore, he did everything he could (except for refraining from rashly slaying a stranger at the crossroads) to avoid his prophesied fate. Surely his willingness to give up a wonderful life as the adopted son of the King and Queen of Corinth speaks to his moral character. Our feeling when he blinds himself, however, is not ‘You fool, you were not guilty!’ The sensitive appreciator must judge a work of art (as much as possible) in its context and milieu, not simply according to his or her priorities. An Attic Greek would have focused on his actions, and their tragic consequences, in determining guilt. Having violated the most fundamental taboos of his culture (against incest and parricide) made him guilty, whatever his intentions. To return, then, to his obsessive religious beliefs (which most of us do not share), Ahab had previously flirted with devil worship as an early expression of his rebellion. Cloaked in flaming images throughout the novel, Ahab synthesizes the iconography of diabolism and Prometheanism in his worship of fire. He acknowledged that he acquired his ghastly white scar in the course of performing some obscure demonic ritual: Oh! Thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee that to this hour I bear the scar. (422)

Like Prometheus, Ahab would give mankind a gift: his fiery and unbending will, his rebellious ‘No!’ which he utters in the name of human dignity and inviolability. As such, he is not without his own heartrending eagle. But just as Prometheus, chained and tormented on his rock, did not desist in condemning the “vile despotism” of Zeus, so, too, Ahab persists in his attempt to strike through the mask, despite his mutilation. If Ahab were simply a monomaniac, going about his bloody business like an automaton, his character would not be so compelling. But Ahab has his doubts, and Ishmael, as omniscient narrator, shares them with us from the very beginning. Watching the sun set after his triumph on the Quarter-Deck, Ahab shows his human side: “Is, then, this crown too heavy that I wear? This Iron Crown of Lombardy [. . .] ’Tis iron—that I know—not gold. ’Tis split too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me

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so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal” (139). He does not bear his Promethean burden lightly. Ahab is further humanized by his relationship to Pip, the AfricanAmerican cabin boy. Poor panicked little Pip jumped out of his whaleboat during a Nantucket Sleighride, and was stranded for hours alone in an immense expanse of empty ocean. He goes mad, and develops into the functional equivalent of Lear’s fool, uttering profound truths and being fiercely loyal to the captain. Pip is his constant companion throughout the last quarter of the novel, and Ahab is inspired by this development: “Now then, Pip, we’ll talk this over. I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!” (440) In “The Cabin,” one of the final chapters before the chase, Pip offers to take the place of Ahab’s broken artificial leg, just as long as he can remain near his liege. When Pip promises never to abandon Ahab (unlike Stubb, who had left the pitiful child behind), our embittered warrior is so moved he threatens to kill his servant: “If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab’s purpose keels up in him” (444). This ability to be vulnerable to another’s loyalty is crucial to our identification with him. In the last section of the book before the final chase, Starbuck comes upon an Ahab deeply touched by the profound beauty of an azure Pacific day. He has “dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all of the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop” (451). Making human contact for the first (and only) time, Ahab and Starbuck reminisce about their respective families, prompting the latter to make an impassioned plea for them to return home. Unfortunately (as Ishmael predicted in his initial description of the first mate) Starbuck “cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual, terrors which sometimes menace you from the concentrated brow of an enraged and mighty man” (96) when an exhausted Ahab reveals the depths of his despair: What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it [. . .] that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding and jamming myself on all the time, recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? [. . .] Where do murderers go, man? Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged before the bar? (452–53)

That horrific thought, that a world without a perfect God would have no foundation for moral judgment, is too much for a pious Presbyterian

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to withstand. When Ahab looks up for comfort, Starbuck has stolen away, and when he returns his gaze to the sea, the tormented captain finds only the reflected tiger eyes of Fedallah looking back at him. Ahab sincerely cares for both Pip and Starbuck by this time. As the climactic confrontation approaches, he admonishes them to remain in the relative safety (so he thought) of the Pequod’s decks. When next he speaks with Starbuck, he has resolved that “Ahab is forever Ahab,” justifying his fortitude (somewhat disingenuously) as having been fated from time immemorial. This is a point with which he has struggled throughout the voyage. If God predestines all human choices, then is it God, Ahab, or what that compels him to pursue his hunt? From my perspective, I sense in Ahab a powerful and self-governing will, and admire him for this. I do so despite the fact that it is precisely that indomitable and authentic will that destroys him. This is what I believe Ahab was referring to when, in a flash of insight before he casts the final harpoon, he exclaims: “Oh, now I feel that my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief.” (477) Ahab cannot remain who he is and give up the chase. To be Ahab is to have such deep convictions and such an indomitable will. A lesser man would have given up and gone home long ago, as Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby did after losing his arm to the beast. Having no desire to tangle with Moby Dick again, Boomer left the whale alone when it was sighted weeks afterwards. His reasonable, but mundane, response to an amputation similar to Ahab’s throws the latter in even fuller relief. Ahab knows he is going to his death by the third day of the final chase, addressing Moby Dick as “thou all-destroying but unconquering whale” (477). He knowingly accepts his likely destruction because to stop at that point would mean to cease being Ahab. This brings us to the heart of my solution to the paradox of tragic pleasure. Tragic protagonists are engaged in defining actions, that is, actions which stem from the core of their being. Oedipus cannot give up the search for the murderer of King Laius and remain the dedicated ruler of Thebes (and solver of the riddle of the Sphinx) that he most essentially is. Antigone cannot violate her filial and religious obligations and respect herself. Hamlet must authentically confront his own despair at the death of his esteemed father and the quick marriage of his beloved mother. It causes him to fatally hesitate to kill Claudius in the chapel (a result, as he puts it, of “thinking too precisely on the event”), but we respect Hamlet all the more for his introspection.

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As Martin Luther King once said, to have something to live for, there must be something you are willing to die for. If none of our convictions can stand up in extremis, their worth is in question. Tragic heroes and heroines show themselves willing to suffer and die for what they believe in, or else their fate is not tragic. This has a lot to do with the dearth of modern tragedies, and the questions that are often raised about whether tragedy is even possible in this day and age. It becomes more and more difficult, as an age gets more cynical, to convincingly portray such heroism. Here is where the uniqueness of the tragic situation is also important. Ahab’s fierce will had served him well for forty years; it is only when he was pitted against such a preternatural opponent that it destroys him. One must have the sense that any normal whale would have fallen victim to Ahab’s passionate pursuit. It took a Moby Dick to destroy “his earthquake being.” In most other situations, his fortitude and intelligence would have triumphed. To clarify this point, let me conclude with a brief contrast between Captain Ahab and Melville’s most nihilistic creation, Bartleby the Scrivener. Bartleby enters the employ of the narrator as a transcriber of legal documents, and at first appeared to be a model employee. But soon he has moved into the law offices, replying “I would prefer not to” when asked to leave. Bartleby does less and less of what is expected of him, until finally he does nothing at all but stare out a window at a blank wall. His employer is forced to have him hauled away, and visits him guiltily in the poor house at the end of the story. Bartleby was on the verge of death by starvation by then. He finally preferred not to eat, or even to live. Melville’s exasperated narrator did all he could to head off the determined self-destruction of the title character. Bartleby would be destroyed by his campaign of complete self-abnegation in any situation in which he found himself. There is nothing about the configuration of circumstances in the story that specifically contributes to his demise. Indeed, he found a more sympathetic employer than he had any reason to expect. By contrast, Oedipus’s committed search for King Laius’s killer would not have been fatal in any but the ironic (and highly unlikely) circumstances in which he found himself. Similarly, Hamlet’s crisis of faith would not have been so disastrous if it hadn’t occurred in the exceptional situation that resulted from a surreptitious regicide. Antigone’s piety would have been nothing but admirable in a stable

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society; only in a Thebes wracked by civil war could her resolution be so destructive. To summarize, then, Ahab should be seen as the tragic hero of Moby Dick because he is an archetypal embodiment of human authenticity and resoluteness. Ahab could not remain who he was and not rebel against what, for him, was an imperfect God. Nothing could have been more crucial to his self-definition than his hunt for the White Whale. This simple sea captain attains unforgettable tragic stature for the indomitable pursuit of his quarry, which demonstrated an admirable resolve that would be likely in most other situations to have been rewarded with success. We esteem him for being true to himself, and for sustaining his authentic quest. Tragic heroes like Ahab are strangely consoling, because they attain the heights of noble human possibility. They stand as role models, willing to pay the ultimate price for their commitments. As such, they inspire us to live up to our own values, and help to instill the confidence that it is conceivable for us to do so.

THE TRAGEDY OF HAVING A LOVER: THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ODETTE AND ALBERTINE IN À LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU Rosa Slegers (Fordham University, New York) Introduction The topic of this paper is the tragic nature of Proustian love. In order to understand the tragedy at stake in À la Recherche du temps perdu, I will offer a reading of Proust’s text that engages the ethical theory of Gabriel Marcel. I hope to show that Proustian love, approached through the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, is a common yet significant instance of the tragic. The locus of tragedy on which I will focus is easily overlooked because it is, perhaps, too close; it is on an everyday, interpersonal level that this kind of tragedy manifests itself. How should we understand Proustian love? According to the narrator of À la Recherche, love is brought about by the imagination and is fueled by suffering. This kind of love is exemplified by the two loves in À la Recherche that will be central to my discussion: Swann’s love for Odette and the narrator’s love for Albertine. By integrating Proust’s account with Marcel’s ethics, most notably Marcel’s “phenomenology of having,” I will show that Proust’s work—negative and perhaps even neurotic though the narrator’s love may seem—brings to light common but often overlooked moral issues in interpersonal relationships. In what follows, I will first outline part of Marcel’s theory and then show how it can gain in depth and significance by applying it to À la Recherche. The integration of these two accounts will then allow me to elaborate on the claim that romantic love can be the locus of tragedy. The tragedy of having In what he calls his phenomenology of having, Gabriel Marcel discusses l’avoir-possession. Whatever exact form l’avoir-possession may take, there is always a relation between a thing (quid ) or something that can be reduced to a thing, and a subject (qui ), treated as “centre d’inhérence.” Marcel gives the example of having a dog to illustrate the characteristics

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of l’avoir-possession. The first characteristic is that I can only maintain that the dog belongs to me if it is indeed mine and no one else has a justifiable claim on it. Secondly, I must in some way or other take care of the dog, even if I am only the one paying others to feed it, provide it shelter, etc. Third, the dog must to a certain extent obey me, or at least recognize me. The fact that Marcel chose a dog as his main example comes as an advantage, since the narrator of À la Recherche regards Albertine not so much as a person but rather as a beautiful piece of flora or fauna. More precisely, the narrator loves Albertine most when he is at liberty to regard her as such. Whenever Albertine imposes her presence on him and shows herself to be “just a woman,” and not even a very attractive one at that, the narrator is annoyed or bored as a result. Returning to the example of the dog, the first point raised implies that my claim on the dog is exclusive of others who would want to make that same claim. My ownership of the dog therefore creates a tension with others who could, in principle, have what I have. The fact that someone else could in principle be the owner of what I now possess indicates that what I own must be to some degree independent of me. In other words, in the context of l’avoir-possession, the opposition between inside and outside (du dedans and du dehors) never completely disappears. At the same time, and just as importantly, it must be noted that what I have is not absolutely exterior to me either. I always try in some way to make that which I have into an addition to myself, to my person. To have always indicates not only to have for oneself, avoir à soi, but also to keep for oneself, garder pour soi. It is because others desire her that the narrator desires Albertine, and to reawaken his interest in her, his jealousy only needs to be roused again. Here one touches on what Marcel calls the tragedy of having. As soon as I have something, I in one way or another put myself over and against those who do not have it, whatever ‘it’ may be. Because others can take my possession away from me, I shield it, almost try to incorporate it so as to become one with what I have and do not want to lose. The more I care about what I have, the more distinct the opposition between ‘me’ (the owner) and the ‘others’ (those who want to be the owner) becomes. Since what I have is always to some extent independent of me, it can be taken away, leaving me behind disowned. The narrator experiences the full force of this tragedy of having. The more he tries to contain Albertine, the more he realizes that she will always escape him—the independence of the object owned can never

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be completely overcome. And even though she lives in his house and does as he pleases, he is painfully aware of her past, her quick glances at girls in the street, her appetites, her little adventures, all independent of him and outside of his control. These remarks show that there is no strict opposition between having and being. Though something I have may be to a certain degree independent of me, it is not, Marcel claims, simply exterior to me. Albertine has become a part of the narrator: the bond between the qui and the quid affects the qui in its very being, but the quid can never fully be absorbed because of the nature of l’avoir-possession which makes complete identification impossible. The more one is focused on one’s possessions, the more they feel like complementary parts to one’s body. When this link is threatened or broken, one gets the same rending feeling as when the integrity of one’s body is compromised. Of course one will continue to exist, and this is why the threat to one’s possessions is not the same as a threat to one’s body; however, one will be the more affected by a loss the more one was “having,” ayant. The tragedy of having turns out to consist in the desperate effort to become one with a thing which can never be identical to the being which owns it. It is impossible to become one with any object one possesses, and this impossibility becomes especially pertinent and especially frustrating when the “object” at stake is a person, who will always resist being owned as if he or she were a thing. The tragedy of having a lover, I will claim, consists exactly in the tendency of the lover to objectify and own the person loved and the concurrent realization that complete ownership will forever remain impossible. The tragedy of desire In the tragedy of having, a special role is played by desire. When we desire something, we are like owners who do not yet possess what we want to own. Le “désir” est un avoir dont l’élément psychique est déjà réalisé en moi mais auquel manque encore l’élément objectif. Désirer, c’est “avoir” en n’ayant pas, et cette disjonction explique le caractère lancinant du désir, l’espèce de souffrance.1 1 Roger Troisfontaines, De l’Existence à l’être: La Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel, 3 vols. (Louvain, 1953), vol. 1, p. 234.

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As can be inferred from the discussion of the characteristic aspects of l’avoir-possession, desire is always mixed up with a possible conflict between the desiring subject and the others who have their eye on the same object. One who desires can regard other people in only two ways: as obstacles to fulfilling one’s desire, or as means to getting what one wants.2 The narrator’s friends and acquaintances often move from the one category to the other, or lose his interest because they fit into neither group. The narrator is closest to Robert de Saint-Loup, for instance, when he can use him; whether it is to gather information about Mme de Guermantes or to help bring about Albertines return. Andrée, member of the group of girls to which Albertine belonged when the narrator first met her in Balbec, is supposed to supervise Albertine’s trips but later turns out to have had a romantic relationship with her as well. First a means to keeping Albertine ‘safe’, Andrée appears to have been the very kind of relation that the narrator had hoped to avoid. After Albertine’s death, however, Andrée becomes interesting again because she can tell the narrator about Albertine’s appetites and reveal to him secrets which Albertine herself would have never confessed to. The desire the narrator feels for Albertine when he first meets her is never satisfied, not even when he has succeeded in bringing Albertine to Paris with him. The reason this desire cannot be satisfied is because it aims at possession, ownership, something which is impossible where the object desired is a person. Even when the narrator “has” Albertine, i.e., has her locked up in his house, she still escapes him. The power ( puissance) implied in any relation of having is imperfect in its control because there is more to Albertine than her body. Her physical presence can be insured, but, as the narrator finds out, this physical presence only makes it more apparent that Albertine is not really with him. Conversely, an object is desired only if it is in part unfamiliar, if it leaves something to the imagination. Once he had grown used to Albertine, the narrator no longer desired her, except at those moments when he suspected a secret she was keeping from him; as soon as there was something to conquer, jealousy and, with it, desire sprung up again. The narrator is aware of this pattern, and says: J’avais eu beau, en cherchant à connaître Albertine, puis à la posséder tout entière, n’obéir qu’au besoin de réduire par l’expérience à des éléments

Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having, trans. James Collins (New York, 1965), pp. 162–164. 2

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mesquinement semblables à ceux de notre moi, le mystère de tout être, de tout pays que l’imagination nous a fait paraître différent, et de pousser chacune de nos joies profondes vers sa propre destruction.3

To know exhaustively means to possess, and to possess a person means to dispel all mystery, which in turn makes the formerly desired object wholly unappealing. Crystallization is most effective in absence of the beloved person; it almost appears as if the narrator can only love Albertine while she is not there. Once she is gone, he forgets his boredom and does everything in his power to get her back. All this despite the fact that he had made the following observation soon after Albertine originally moved in with him: Elle était entrée pour moi dans cette période lamentable où un être, disséminé dans l’espace et dans le temps, n’est plus pour nous une femme, mais une suite d’événements sur lesquels nous ne pouvons faire la lumière, une suite de problèmes insolubles.4

The narrator holds that this is the fate of every being whom one once loved. After the original appeal of mystery, the beloved becomes a mere collection of problems, ultimately insolvable because they extend in time and place in a way one will never be able to grasp. A closer look at the nature of love in À la Recherche will aid the understanding of a further aspect of the tragedy at stake here: love as the desire to possess the person loved. A concept introduced by Stendhal will bring out this aspect most forcefully. Stendhal’s crystallization In a passage from his book Love, Stendhal uses a metaphor to explain what he calls crystallization, an essential part of the process of falling in love: 3 Marcel Proust, À la Recherche du temps perdu, ed. Jean-Yves Tadié (Paris, 1987–9), La fugitive, p. 499. “In seeking to know Albertine, then to possess her entirely, I had merely obeyed the need to reduce by experiment to elements meanly akin to those of our own ego the mystery of every person, every place, which our imagination has made to seem different, and to impel each of our profound joys toward its own destruction.” Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, D.J. Enright (New York, 2003), The Fugitive, p. 509. Future references to Proust are to page numbers of the same French edition and English translation. 4 La prisonnière, p. 612. “She had entered, for me, upon that lamentable period in which a person, scattered in space and time, is no longer a woman but a series of events on which we can throw no light, a series of insoluble problems.” The Captive, p. 131.

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rosa slegers On se plaît à orner de mille perfections une femme de l’amour de laquelle on est sûr; on se détaille tout son bonheur avec une complaisance infinie. Cela se réduit à s’exagérer une propriété superbe, qui vient de nous tomber du ciel, que l’on ne connaît pas, et de la possession de laquelle on est assuré. Laissez travailler la tête d’un amant pendant vingt-quatre heures, et voici ce que vous trouverez: Aux mines de sel de Salzbourg, on jette, dans les profondeurs abandonnées de la mine, un rameau d’arbre effeuillé par l’hiver; deux ou trois mois après on le retire couvert de cristallisations brillantes: les plus petites branches [. . .] sont garnies d’une infinité de diamants, mobiles et éblouissants; on ne peut plus reconnaître le rameau primitif.5

What the lover sees is no longer the woman as she is perceived by a neutral observer, but a beautiful creature of his imagination. Where an outsider only sees the “leafless, wintry bough,” the lover sees a constellation of crystals which render the residual woman invisible. Perhaps the most obvious illustration in À la Recherche of the process of crystallization is that of Odette. Swann falls in love with Odette, a demi-monde, only when he establishes for himself her close resemblance to a figure in a painting by Botticelli. Where others see a woman with a lack of taste and a questionable reputation, Swann sees a work of art. Because she has become for him a precious and desirable creature, he seeks to secure her love for him, much to the surprise and even disbelief of his friends in high society. The more Odette tries to keep her dealings a secret from him, the more obsessively Swann tries to find out what she is hiding, convinced that his happiness will be secure only when Odette has been, quite literally, captured. The story of Swann’s love for Odette is described in Du côté de chez Swann, and is referred back to in La prisonnière and La fugitive, where the narrator himself is in love with a woman in much the same way. Swann’s love for Odette foreshadows the love of the narrator for Albertine. It is in the latter volumes that the nature of this kind of love—necessarily accompanied by jealousy and the desire to

5 Stendhal, De l’amour (Paris, 1957), p. 8. “If you are sure that a woman loves you, it is a pleasure to endow her with a thousand perfections and to count your blessings with infinite satisfaction. In the end you overrate wildly, and regard her as something fallen from Heaven, unknown as yet, but certain to be yours. Leave a lover with his thoughts for twenty-four hours, and this is what will happen: At the salt mines of Salzburg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later they haul it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The smallest twig [. . .] is studded with a galaxy of scintillating diamonds. The original branch is no longer recognizable.” Stendhal, Love, trans. Gilbert and Suzanne Sale (New York, 2004), p. 45.

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possess—is analyzed at length. La prisonnière and La fugitive are rich with painfully honest descriptions and analyses of possessive love, jealousy, cruelty, and indifference. It is in these volumes that easy, self-flattering assumptions about friendship, love, attraction, are challenged, and the nature of Proustian love appears as essentially tragic. A stone round which snow has gathered With Stendhal’s description of crystallization in mind, the following passage shows how, according to Proust’s narrator, we fall in love. A smile, a look, a shoulder suffices to make us fall in love; the rest of our love we make up when we are alone with our thoughts: On aime sur un sourire, sur un regard, sur une épaule. Cela suffit; alors, dans les longues heures d’espérance ou de tristesse, on fabrique une personne, on compose un caractère. Et quand plus tard on fréquente la personne aimée, on ne peut pas plus, devant quelques cruelles réalités qu’on soit placé, ôter ce caractère bon, cette nature de femme nous aimant, à l’être qui a tel regard, telle épaule, que nous ne pouvons quand elle vieillit, à une personne que nous connaissons depuis sa jeunesse, la lui ôter.6

Adding crystals to the wintry bough, we will see the product of our own imagination when we meet again with the object of our love. Crystallization prevents the lover from seeing the changes that have occurred in the beloved’s appearance, but the effects go much further than that. Before investigating further the negative consequences of crystallization, it serves to first study another passage from La fugitive. After Albertine has left the narrator and has escaped his house in which he was keeping her captive, the narrator wants to bring her back at all costs. To this end, he shows a picture of her to his friend Robert de Saint-Loup, who has promised to retrieve her. Saint-Loup, assuming that this girl, the cause of so much anxiety on the part of his friend, must be rare beauty, tries to hide his disappointment at seeing the

6 La fugitive, p. 531. “We fall in love for a smile, a look, a shoulder. That is enough; then, in the long hours of hope and sorrow, we fabricate a person, we compose a character. And when later on we see much of the beloved being, we can no more, whatever the cruel reality that confronts us, divest the woman with that look, that shoulder, of the sweet nature and loving character with which we have endowed her than we can, when she has grown old, eliminate her youthful face from a person whom we have known since her girlhood.” The Fugitive, p. 541.

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picture. The narrator realizes that in the eyes of Saint-Loup, Albertine is a common, somewhat homely girl, not at all worth the time and money the narrator is willing to spend on her return. The narrator notices his disappointment and observes: Le temps était loin où j’avais bien petitement commencé à Balbec par ajouter aux sensations visuelles quand je regardais Albertine, des sensations de saveur, d’odeur, de toucher. Depuis, des sensations plus profondes, plus douces, plus indéfinissables s’y étaient ajoutées, puis des sensations douloureuses. Bref Albertine n’était, comme une pierre autour de laquelle il a neigé, que le centre générateur d’une immense construction qui passait par le plan de mon coeur. Robert, pour qui était invisible toute cette stratification de sensations, ne saisissait qu’un résidu qu’elle m’empêchait au contraire d’apercevoir.7

Robert sees the residue, the “leafless wintry bough”; the narrator sees the structure of crystals this residue has generated. A few years have passed since the narrator first saw Albertine on the beach and started to identify her with the invigorating climate of Balbec, the beauty of the sea, and the essence of youth and vitality in general. The jealousy and pain she has caused him, and the satisfaction he at times found in thinking himself loved by her, have made her more precious to him. What has happened during the time of his relationship with her, the narrator claims, is what happens in all love affairs: “pendant ce temps, sous la chrysalide de douleurs et de tendresses qui rend invisibles à l’amant les pires métamorphoses de l’être aimé, le visage a eu le temps de vieillir et de changer.”8 Crystallization prevents the lover from seeing the changes that have occurred in the beloved’s appearance, but the effects go much further than that. As has become clear already, the lover develops and creates his love when he is alone, wondering if his affections will ever be returned. The egocentric nature of this love is still more defined in the following excerpt:

7 La fugitive, p. 438. “The time was long past when I had all too tentatively begun at Balbec by adding to my visual sensations when I gazed at Albertine sensations of taste, of smell, of touch. Since then, other more profound, more tender, more indefinable sensations had been added to them, and afterwards painful sensations. In short, Albertine was merely, like a stone round which snow has gathered, the generating centre of an immense structure which rose above the plane of my heart. Robert, to whom all this stratification of sensations was invisible, grasped only a residue which it prevented me, on the contrary, from perceiving.” The Fugitive, pp. 445–446. 8 La fugitive, p. 439. “[ D]uring this time, beneath the chrysalis of grief and tenderness which renders the worst metamorphoses of the beloved object invisible to the lover, her face has had time to grow old and to change.” The Fugitive, p. 446.

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Quand notre maîtresse est vivante, une grande partie des pensées qui forment ce que nous appelons notre amour nous viennent pendant les heures où elle n’est pas à côté de nous. Ainsi l’on prend l’habitude d’avoir pour objet de sa rêverie un être absent, et qui, même s’il ne le reste que quelques heures, pendant ces heures-là n’est qu’un souvenir. Alors la mort ne change-t-elle pas grand’chose.9

The process of crystallization takes effect when the object of our love is absent, and is most effective when the workings of our imagination are left undisturbed by the actual person they concern. It is the presence, not the absence of the person loved that disappoints: “à l’attente de l’être idéal que nous aimons, chaque rendez-vous nous apporte une personne de chair qui contient déjà si peu de notre rêve.”10 The ideal can be more easily maintained when it is not challenged by the person who inspired it, and this explains why love grows strongest in those situations where it gets the least encouragement: the narrator’s interest in, consecutively, Gilberte, Mme de Guermantes, and Albertine develops into an obsession because all he has to work with is a glace from afar, or a smile perhaps not even meant for him. When, in later parts of the novel, Gilberte and Mme de Guermantes both seek his company, the narrator has long lost interest; love is possible only for what is unfamiliar, and is at the same time the attempt to conquer what is unknown. What the lover wants more than anything is to possess the woman loved. The possession of the desired object, however, is disastrous to this same love; with the object secured, the mystery that initially inspired the love has vanished. The narrator’s desire to possess Albertine exemplifies the problem that comes with wanting to possess a human being as outlined in Marcel’s phénoménologie de l’avoir. Love as the desire to possess Albertine is most attractive when she is not present, and it therefore is no wonder that the narrator’s feeling towards her become obsessive 9 La fugitive, p. 523. “When one’s mistress is alive, a large proportion of the thoughts which form what one calls one’s love comes to one during the hours when she is not by one’s side. Thus one acquires the habit of having as the object of one’s musings an absent person, and one who, even if she remains absent for a few hours only, during those hours is no more than a memory. Hence death does not make any great difference.” The Fugitive, p. 534. 10 La fugitive, p. 453. “[ I ]n response to our expectation of the ideal person whom we love, each meeting provides us with a person in flesh and blood who yet contains so little trace of our dream.” The Fugitive, p. 462.

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when she has left the narrator’s house altogether. While she was staying with him, the knowledge that she was in her room on the other end of his own hall was enough for the narrator’s mind to be at ease. His calm was such that sometimes he did not even ask her to come to his room. Now that she is gone, however, she has become “celle que tout le monde suivait, l’oiseau merveilleux des premiers jours.”11 Albertine has become a creature of the imagination, and life with her has become “une vie imaginaire c’est-à-dire affranchie de toutes difficultés.”12 On the one hand, the narrator forgets the unpleasant aspects of Albertine and the boredom he often experienced in her presence; on the other hand, he crystallizes Albertine by adding to her image all the love that he had ever felt for other women. Even though the narrator had made up his mind to break with Albertine just before he learned of her escape, the fact that she has left him comes as a blow he feels he will not recover from unless she comes back. Love may be formed, initially, by desire; later on only sorrowful anxiety can sustain it. The narrator feels that part of Albertine’s life escapes him, but “l’amour, dans l’anxiété douloureuse comme dans le désir heureux, est l’exigence d’un tout. Il ne naît, il ne subsiste que si une partie reste à conquérir.”13 When the narrator receives word of Albertine’s death, her absence is made definitive. He learns of her accident not long after her escape from his house, and the news only adds to his jealousy, and, therefore, his love. Presence is a threat to crystallization, and the work of the imagination is most effective when it is undisturbed by the person one loves. Her death has made Albertine more absent than she has ever been, and her cumbersome presence in his house will never again dispel the narrator’s desire for her. A key element in the love of crystallization is the desire to possess. The creature of one’s imagination, connected to the person loved, is something one wishes to own, to have at one’s disposal so as to ensure that, first, others do not run off with it, and second, one can stop worrying about the mysterious aspects of the beloved. For the narrator, these two concerns are closely related, since the unknown 11 La fugitive, p. 473. “[ T ]he girl whom everyone pursued, the marvelous bird of the earliest days.” The Fugitive, p. 481. 12 La fugitive, p. 451. “[A]n imaginary life, that is to say a life freed from all difficulties.” The Fugitive, p. 461. 13 La fugitive, p. 614. “[ L]ove, in the pain of anxiety as in the bliss of desire, is a demand for a whole. It is born, and its survives, only if some part remains for it to conquer.” The Fugitive, p. 133.

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parts of Albertine’s life all have to do with people with whom she has had, or will perhaps have, relations. By locking her up, the narrator attempts to end Albertine’s free contact with the outside world so as to save himself from suffering. At one point, the narrator even wonders if not the main reason for his attraction to any woman is the fact that other men desire her. Just like the narrator does not care to actually see Albertine as long as he knows her to be in his house, he does not need her near him as long as he can prevent her from going to this place or to that. To know and understand something is part of what it means to own something, but the exhaustive knowledge in the case of a human being is impossible: Je comprenais l’impossibilité où se heurte l’amour. Nous nous imaginons qu’il a pour objet un être qui peut être couché devant nous, enfermé dans un corps. Hélas! Il est l’extension de cet être à tous les points de l’espace et du temps que cet être a occupés et occupera. Si nous ne possédons pas son contact avec tel lieu, avec telle heure, nous ne le possédons pas. Or nous ne pouvons toucher tous ces points.14

Even if we could touch on all the points in time and space where the beloved has been and will be, we still would not have the grasp on her that we desire, because those places and times would not be the same to us as they have been or will be to her. Hence the painful conclusion the narrator reaches: “L’amour, c’est l’espace et le temps rendus sensibles au coeur.”15 The narrator comes closest to what he holds to be the realization of love when Albertine is asleep beside him, but he comes to understand that this possession, all his as long as she is unconscious, flees him the moment she is awake. Once she is a thinking being again, Albertine no longer ends where her body ends, but extends over a network of different points of which we only know a few. To possess is to know all, and there is therefore no one more scrupulous in his hunt for truth than the jealous lover. The jealous lover wants to know, because to know, as will become clear below, is to own. Swann, for instance, finds an 14 La prisonnière, pp. 607–8. “I realized the impossibility which love comes up against. We imagine that it has as its object a being that can be laid down in front of us, enclosed within a body. Alas, it is the extension of that being to all the points in space and time that it has occupied and will occupy. If we do not possess its contact with this or that place, this or that hour, we do not possess that being. But we cannot touch all these points.” The Captive, p. 125. 15 La prisonnière, p. 887. “[ L]ove is space and time made perceptible to the heart.” The Captive, p. 519.

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intellectual purpose in his jealousy, as does the narrator. As Malcolm Bowie remarks: “Many of the narrator’s ambitions, in this section of the work, are strictly scientific ones: he wants to get behind appearances to the real structure of things.”16 Bowie describes the intellectual method used in La prisonnière as the production and testing of hypotheses. The narrator can only think in terms of either/or which results in the “twohypothesis problem”: “The two hypotheses, each of them complete but the pair of them incompatible, lock together to produce a new form of mental captivity.”17 Albertine is either lying or telling the truth, either desiring “another person all-consumingly or not at all.” He does not grant that “feelings may be muddled” but is caught by the powers of his own speculative mind. He has too strong a need “for simple and elegant solutions in the analysis of human conduct.”18 The narrator wants to secure Albertine, and he tries to accomplish this by proving one or the other hypothesis correct. The mental captivity in which this approach inevitably results is caused by the fact that Albertine escapes this sort of categorization, leaving the narrator insecure and jealous of all the things he does not know. Keeping her captive physically does not satisfy his thirst for knowledge: Je pouvais bien prendre Albertine sur mes genoux, tenir sa tête dans mes mains, je pouvais la caresser, passer longuement mes mains sur elle, mais, comme si j’eusse manié une pierre qui enferme la salure des océans immémoriaux ou le rayon d’une étoile, je sentais que je touchais seulement l’enveloppe close d’un être qui par l’intérieur accédait à l’infini.19

The narrator describes how he can touch Albertine, have her near him, but this superficial possession which he thought would satisfy him completely only serves to make him more aware of the unknown worlds within his beloved. The more she notices his jealousy, the less she tells him about her appetites, her past, and her adventures. The more the

16 Malcolm Bowie, “Proust, Jealousy, Knowledge,” in Freud, Proust, and Lacan: Theory as Fiction (Cambridge, 1987), p. 50. 17 Ibid., p. 53. 18 Ibid., p. 54. 19 La prisonnière, p. 888. “I could, if I chose, take Albertine on my knee, hold her head in my hands, I could caress her, run my hands slowly over her, but, just as if I had been handling a stone which encloses the salt of immemorial oceans or light of a star, I felt that I was touching no more than the sealed envelope of a person who inwardly reached to infinity.” The Captive, p. 520.

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narrator wants to know, the more Albertine escapes him: “plus le désir avance, plus la possession véritable s’éloigne.”20 I now want to focus on two insights presented here by the narrator. First, the more one wants to possess someone, the more one becomes aware that this is a desire impossible to fulfill. This does not, however, stop one from trying. Second, the more one is a master, the more one senses oneself to be a slave of one’s possession. When the narrator fears that Albertine, attending a matinee at the Trocadéro, may set up an appointment with the lesbian actress Léa, he sends Françoise to the theatre to fetch Albertine and bring her back home. Albertine sends word to the narrator as soon as Françoise has found her, to reassure him that she will do exactly as he pleases and that she looks forward to spending time with. “J’étais plus maître que je n’avais cru,” the narrator remarks, and he continues: “Plus maître, c’est-à-dire plus esclave.”21 The moment Albertine’s position has been verified, her activities checked and organized according to his wishes, the narrator again realizes that he is tired of her. Worse still, he knows it is because of Albertine that all sorts of pleasures in which he would otherwise indulge have become off limits; milk maids and seamstresses he sees on the streets cannot be brought home, nor does he have the time and energy left to pursue them since everything is wasted on his captive. Both Albertine and the narrator are prisoners; Albertine because whatever she does, she is either in the narrator’s house or on a supervised excursion, the narrator because habit has made it impossible to live without this possession which limits his freedom without bringing him any pleasure in return for this restriction. Though the narrator once wanted nothing more than to possess Albertine, she has lost her appeal now that he has succeeded. Another kind of having discussed by Gabriel Marcel will help clarify the problematic and, I have claimed, tragic nature of the narrator’s relation to Albertine.

20 La fugitive, p. 450. “[ T ]he further the desire advances, the further does real possession recede.” The Fugitive, p. 458. 21 La prisonnière, p. 663. “I was more of a master than I had supposed [. . .] more of a master, in other words more of a slave.” The Captive, p. 203.

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After outlining the first and main kind of having that he calls l’avoirpossession, Marcel turns to a second kind, l’avoir-implication. He explains that, because we feel the need to objectify, we represent things as having caractères and believe that a formula can express what a thing is. When one claims that a thing has a property, according to Marcel, one regards this property as inherent in the thing it characterizes. The notion of force found in l’avoir-possession is present in this kind of having as well: we regard the property we ascribe to the thing as specifying its use for us. What Marcel wants us to recognize is that a being in the full sense of the word, i.e., a human being, cannot be “characterized.” To characterize a person would mean to reduce him or her to a “bundle of functions,” no more than the contents of an elaborate database. Any characterization one believes defines a being is necessarily a phantom, an effigy made coherent by one’s wish to grasp and sum up this being.22 In Creative Fidelity, Marcel again touches on the tragedy of having and this time connects it to the notion of despair. He explains that the given is always presented to us as something which in principle can be catalogued. By cataloguing the given, we feel like we have control over it, which in turn gives us a certain satisfaction. Through the term is not used in Creative Fidelity, the satisfaction mentioned in this context is clearly the feeling that supervenes on l’avoir-implication. In sharp contrast with this satisfaction is the fact that, as Marcel claims, “whatever can be catalogued is an occasion for despair.”23 The tragedy of having described above is the result of behaving like a collector: “With or within myself I establish a sort of library or museum in which the interesting elements that I have been able to extract from my conversation with the other, are incorporated.”24 These remarks further elucidate Marcel’s claim above that any characterization of the other is necessarily an effigy. Also in Creative Fidelity, Marcel describes the contrast between the other who is an other to me and the other whom I have made into an effigy (or, in the context of this paper, the other whom I have crystallized) in the context of his discussion of présence. Someone who is not present to me, is to me not a tu but a lui. Presence, in this context, does not

22 23 24

Marcel, Being and Having, p. 169. Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York, 2002), p. 70. Ibid., p. 71.

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mean physical presence; I can be in the same room with someone who is to me a lui and therefore not present. Marcel explains: When I consider another individual as lui, I treat him as essentially absent; it is his absence which allows me to objectify him, to reason about him as though he were a nature or given essence.25

The parallel with the narrator’s relation to Albertine is clear: Albertine is to him a lui and so becomes an object that lends itself to crystallization. The fact that Albertine is regarded as a “nature or given essence” even when she is physically present is an illustration of what Marcel calls “a presence which is yet a mode of absence.” I can act towards somebody as though he or she were absent, not just in ignoring him or her, but in talking to this person without any of the openness essential to intersubjectivity. This lack of openness has a remarkable consequence: “the more my questioner is external to me, the more I am by the same token external to myself.”26 Marcel here offers as an example the situation in which someone is paying attention to him, is perhaps asking him questions about himself, but in a way that renders him a stranger to himself. He can hear himself talk because his words come back to him, appear to bounce off the person he is talking to; he or she may be hearing the words he is saying, but he is not heard. While he is talking to this person, he is not himself. This last remark is reminiscent of the narrator’s observation that when he is talking to Albertine, he feels like he is forced “to live at the surface of himself,” and that he cannot really think. He has to be too much on guard and needs to be an outside observer to judge Albertine’s reactions to what he says. Marcel likes the English words “self-conscious” to express this phenomenon of alienation that results from the lack of presence: in being a stranger to myself, I become aware of my objectified characteristics. The following excerpt sums up the contrast between the other who is to me a mere idea or effigy, and the other who is present to me: The other as other exists for me only insofar as I am open to him (insofar as he is a thou [tu]), but I am only open to him insofar as I cease to form a circle with myself within which I somehow place the other, or rather, the idea of the other; for in so doing, the other becomes the idea of the other, and the idea of the other is no longer the other as such, but the other qua related to me, as fragmented.27

25 26 27

Ibid., p. 72. Ibid., pp. 33–34. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, pp. 71–2.

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As Marcel explains, the category of the given needs to be transcended; or, in the terms introduced above, a person to whom I am open is no longer lui but tu. Here again, however, Marcel emphasizes that there is always the temptation to fall back into the category of the given, and to not maintain tu as tu. He goes on to explain that there is a sense in which the tu as tu cannot be maintained, and it is to illustrate this claim that Marcel actually refers to À la Recherche: “Albertine Disparue for example, should be read, in the light of these relations between the given and the problematic. For Proust, the thou is instantly converted into an it.”28 Note that Marcel claims that in À la Recherche, tu does not merely become lui, but a thing, “it.” This observation hints at the theoretical foundation offered by Marcel for the process of crystallization and its tragic consequences in the case of Proustian love. Conclusion The Proustian lover is attracted by the mystery of the beloved but also wishes to reduce this mystery to something he need not be uncertain about. Swann’s love for Odette, or the narrator’s love for Albertine, is aimed at reducing the person loved to a possession, something that admits of an objective, problematic approach. First, the mystery of the other is denied by covering it up with crystals; then, the crystallized and therefore desirable other is secured in an attempt to satisfy an objectifying need. The tragedy of having centers on the denial of mystery and culminates in the fact that the object of desire loses its (illusionary) desirable qualities once it has become a possession. Integrating Marcel’s ethics with Proust’s text brings to light an often overlooked and very personal locus of tragedy: romantic love. As Stendhal explains in De l’Amour, it is only through imagination that you can be sure that your beloved is perfect in any given way. The tragedy of having a lover consists not only in the fact that the lover seeks to possess something that cannot be owned, but also in the fact that the object of love is not regarded as a person but as something firmly located in the category of “having.” Love, supposedly a celebration of the full personhood of an other, reduces a person to a thing. To have

28

Ibid., p. 72.

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a Proustian lover and to be loved in a Proustian way is therefore an instance of the tragic. Or, as the narrator of À la Recherche puts it: “Nous croyons aimer une jeune fille, et nous n’aimons hélas! en elle que cette aurore dont leur visage reflète momentanément la rougeur.”29

29 La fugitive, p. 644. “We think that we are in love with a girl, whereas we love in her, alas! only that dawn the glow of which is momentarily reflected on her face.” The Fugitive, p. 659.

INCEST AND PLAGUE: TRAGIC WEAPONS TURNED AGAINST TRAGEDY IN ARTAUD’S THEATRE OF CRUELTY Laurens De Vos (Universiteit Gent) If one word can capture the quintessential drive that underlies tragedy, it must be ‘passion’, its semantic field ranging from suffering to desire. Passion is also what I understand to be a key term in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, which, as I will show, bears strong affinities with the tragic idea. In this essay, I will outline not only the more obvious parallels between Artaud’s project and the characteristics of tragedy, but also the dynamics of passion that are intrinsic to tragedy and the Theatre of Cruelty alike. It is Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic insights into the drive of passion that will help me clarify the link between both. Tragedy and the Theatre of Cruelty, I will argue, are two different symptoms of passion. Depending on how one deals with this force, one can end up either in the narrated representation of tragedy or in the ultimately cruel attempt to go beyond the shape of narration itself. Thus, a dynamics of passion, which is inherently inhuman, can be channelled in a comprehensible, human shape via tragedy, or—and on this Artaud insisted—intransigently head for its ultimate goal. As Lacan has demonstrated in his analysis of Antigone, this goal consists in the complete destruction of the subject. Finally, after having analyzed the common desire that springs from tragedy and Theatre of Cruelty, I will point out where both divert. Making use of Artaud’s own terminology which was later taken up by Derrida, I will track down the meaning of the subjectile so as to explain Artaud’s artistic vision. When one has a look at Artaud’s pivotal essays collected in Le Théâtre et son double, the tragic awareness inherent in his ideas cannot be passed unnoticed. Moreover, a glance at the texts he considers appropriate for the stage indicates that most of these are actually tragedies, such as John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, or The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton. In addition, in 1930 Artaud places his Théâtre Alfred Jarry in a tradition that is indebted to the

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Elizabethan theatre, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Feydeau.1 His play Les Cenci, which he wrote and staged in 1935, is adapted from Shelley’s eponymous five-act tragedy, which, although reduced to four acts and cut short in dialogue, follows its model fairly closely, rendering it “fatally textual and bound to the conventional theatre.”2 Also, Artaud showed a strong admiration for Seneca’s plays, which he even considered a “written example of what can be meant by cruelty in the theatre” (Artaud’s italics).3 To underline his approval of the Roman playwright, Artaud adapted Thyestes; unfortunately, the text of Atrée et Thyeste was lost. This predilection for mostly tragic plays is but one of the many paradoxes that characterize Artaud. The theatre visionary, who pompously declared that “all writing is garbage” apparently had no qualms about staging some plays that belong to the literary canon.4 His call to get rid of all masterpieces is juxtaposed to a list of plays nominated to be performed. Even though he dismissed the subservience of the theatre to the text, these paradoxes in his own work testify to the fact that Artaud did not altogether renounce texts and literature in his theatre. Instead of expelling them from the stage, he carefully selects those plays that comply with his ideas of a metaphysical theatre. This point is stated in plain terms in his notes on which direction his newlyfounded company Théâtre Alfred Jarry is to follow. At the same time, though, Artaud struggles with the problem of how his theatre ought to be made reconcilable with literature. Still, it is quite clear we will work with actual scripts. The plays we intend to perform are part of literature, of whatever type. Yet how can we manage to reconcile our desire for freedom and independence with the need to conform to a certain number of directions as laid down in the script?5

Rather than screening texts for their appealing plot lines, Artaud picks up on them because they breathe a certain air. The question remains, however, as to how to understand this specific atmosphere which Artaud likes his performances to breathe. First of all, as mentioned above, most of the literary texts he is concerned with are tragedies, all of them more or less soaked in blood and manslaughter. After all, Artaud contends in 1 2 3 4 5

Antonin Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 2 (London, 1999), p. 40. Stephen Barber, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London, 1993), p. 70. Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag (Berkeley, 1988), p. 307. Ibid., p. 85. Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 2, pp. 19–20.

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“Le Théâtre et la peste,” the theatre ought to rediscover “the darker moments in certain ancient tragedies.”6 For sure, these elements point at a congruency between Artaud’s project and the nature of tragedy, despite the fact that tragedy belongs to the realm of literature from which Artaud precisely distances himself. Analyzing the content of Artaud’s projects and tragedies, a number of ideas on which Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty relies bear distinct affinities with tragedy. Not only does the idea of implacable values, advanced by critics on tragedy such as Lionel Abel and George Steiner,7 come to mind with respect to the principles underlying the Theatre of Cruelty, the idea of catharsis is central in both aesthetic expressions. After the bloodshed and sacrifice the audience should experience a purification of body and mind. Theatre ought not to assault and harm spectators physically, but it should not leave them untouched either. Audiences coming to our theatre know they are present at a real operation involving not only the mind but also the very senses and flesh. From then on they will go to the theatre as they would to a surgeon or dentist, in the same frame of mind, knowing, of course, that they will not die, but that all the same this is a serious business, and that they will not come out unscathed.8

A laboratory opening up the repressed desires of man, the theatre will stage a crisis with a similarly grave impact as the plague, which Artaud considers necessary to obtain a real and revelatory catharsis affecting every nerve of the spectator. “Like the plague, theatre is a crisis resolved either by death or cure. The plague is a superior disease because it is an absolute crisis after which there is nothing left except death or drastic purification.”9 After the audience’s immersion in the dark caves of the unconscious, cruelty should amount to a theatrical catharsis in order for the spectators to eventually come out afresh. The use of cruelty instigates a process of destruction which shatters all masks and morals and yields to a revelation of the unconscious. Both Plunka and Bermel speak of the cleansing of evil and terror as the result of the manifestation of primal conflicts, hidden powers and inner drives.10

Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 19. Lionel Abel, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York, 1963) and George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London, 1963). 8 Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 17. 9 Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 20. 10 Gene A. Plunka, “Antonin Artaud: The Suffering Shaman of the Modern Theater,” 6 7

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Far more revealing and compelling is the observation that incestuous relationships recur as a striking feature in both tragedy and the Theatre of Cruelty. Why is it that incest so prominently recurs as a major motif in literature, and—to bring the matter down to our main concerns here—what is its function in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, as well as in tragedy? What does the occurrence of incestuous relationships in drama tell us about the effects a piece wants to obtain with the spectator or reader? For sure, something far more wide-reaching is at stake than the mere aim to upset or provoke the audience. After all, with Oedipus the King, Western drama, we could say, begins with the infringement of the incestuous taboo. In Héliogabale, ou L’Anarchiste couronné, Artaud stages an emperor whose biography is soaked in anarchy. Not only was he born in a “cradle of sperm” and did he have sex with all the empire’s adolescents, Heliogabalus also had an incestuous relationship with his mother. It is no coincidence that incest plays an important role in all of Artaud’s favourite plays, as well as in his extensive praise in an essay included in Le Théâtre et son double for Lucas van Leyden’s painting Lot and his Daughters, which portrays the old man lusting after his two daughters. In all pieces of art that he admires, the tragic and the incestuous saliently go hand in hand. Along with his adaptation of The Cenci and his own piece Le Jet de sang, Artaud’s selection of Ford, Middleton, and Seneca comprises plays in which incest and parricide are abundantly present. Since every society adheres to the obligation of exogamy, as Freud has pointed out in Totem und Tabu (1913), an assault is launched at the very fundamentals of civilization by breaking the taboo of intrafamilial relationships. Freud himself has made the link between the clan’s envy towards the father and the subsequent murder on the one hand and one of the earliest and most tragic heroes in Western literature on the other hand. [ T ]he two principal ordinances of totemism, the two taboo prohibitions which constitute its core—not to kill the totem and not to have sexual relations with a woman of the same totem—coincide in their content

in Gene A. Plunka, ed., Antonin Artaud and the Modern Theater (London, 1994), p. 22; Albert Bermel, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty (London, 2001), p. 14.

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with the two crimes of Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, as well as with the two primal wishes of children, the insufficient suppression or the re-awakening of which forms the nucleus of perhaps every psychoneurosis.11

Without any doubt Oedipus is the most well-known character to have subverted this order and infringed on the incest taboo, thereby unleashing a series of forces that launch a severe attack on the symbolic perimeter of society and its codes. Breaching the two primordial laws of totemism, he has become the prototypical tragic hero of civilization and has rendered his name to Freud’s principal psychoanalytic insight as he rebels against the law of culture governing the rules of marriage ties in favour of a return to the instincts of nature. His disobedience to the laws of kinship has turned Oedipus into the disrupter of the grammatical rules of society, as also Maud Ellmann clarifies: “Being brother to his children, child to his wife, lover to his mother, father to his siblings, Oedipus has sinned against the name.”12 As with Oedipus’s marriage with his mother, sexual relationships within the same family challenge the very totemic taboos that society and civilization are grounded on. This erasure of hierarchical stability can be traced in many literary texts, not in the least those that have an affinity with Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. I have pointed out the significance of the incest motif in Artaud’s work, and Héliogabale is no exception to the rule, with the emperor depicted as a debauched prince who has an incestuous relationship with his mother. Incest and parricide, moreover, inevitably lead to his death. Artaud himself, too, uses incest as a vehicle to subvert the familial hierarchies and the vortex of relations he felt deeply constrained by. “I, Antonin Artaud, am my son, my father, my mother, and myself; leveller of the idiotic periplus on which procreation is impaled, the periplus of papa-mama and child, soot of grandma’s ass, much more than of father-mother’s.”13 Yet if the theatre poet seems to have a predilection for protagonists giving in to incestuous relationships, in his well-known essay “Le Théâtre et la peste” he develops the metaphor of the theatre that rages like a disease. The plague fulfils a role not dissimilar to the function of incest 11 12 13

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, Standard Edition 13 (London, 1955), p. 132. Maud Ellmann, ed., Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism (London, 1994), p. 16. Artaud, Selected Writings, p. 540.

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as the revelation of a concealing symptom. The old order is wiped out after which everything can start afresh. Like the plague, theatre is a crisis resolved either by death or cure. The plague is a superior disease because it is an absolute crisis after which there is nothing left except death or drastic purification.14

First of all, the plague is a crisis that needs to be resolved by means of purification, or—in more theatrical terms—catharsis. The crisis persists either till the differential, symbolic world has been completely wiped out, or until a hero’s sacrifice restores the initial imbalance. Unlike incest and parricide, the plague lifts this crisis to a collective plane. The epidemic sweeps away all differences in society, just like incest abolishes an individual’s position in relation to others. The connection of incest and the plague is reflected in Artaud’s comments on Oedipus the King. The theatre visionary seems to be aware of the idea that the principle underlying both motifs is the same, and that the plague extrapolates the incestuous microcosm to a macro-structural crisis. In Oedipus the King there is the incest theme and the idea that nature does not give a rap for morality. And there are wayward powers at large we would do well to be aware of, call them fate or what you will. In addition, there is the presence of a plague epidemic which is the physical incarnation of these powers.15

The oedipal dilemma between compliance and rebellion, in which incest plays a seminal role, has certainly appealed to Artaud. Although Alain Virmaux is obviously right in interpreting incest as “a revolt against morality and the social world,” on a metaphysical plane it equally plays a similar role as the plague.16 In this respect, the implications of incest cannot be separated from the effects Artaud expects the plague to arouse. His objectives take these images as metaphors for a freedom-inspiring trajectory, unbound by socially motivated restrictions. As in tragedy, Artaud’s protagonists break with the laws belonging to the symbolic order. His Theatre of Cruelty, therefore, has nothing to do with naturalism or the Aristotelian appeal for mimesis. In some reflections on the use and function of cruelty in relation to Les Cenci, Artaud outlines an area that lies beyond human ethics: “My heroes [. . .] dwell in the realm of cruelty and must be judged outside of good and evil. They

14 15 16

Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 20. Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 56. Alain Virmaux, Antonin Artaud et le théâtre (Paris, 1970), p. 57.

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are incestuous and sacrilegious, they are adulterers, rebels, insurgents, and blasphemers.”17 Artaud, it seems, displays a predilection for tragic characters who move beyond the borders of the symbolic. Passion, Jacques Lacan’s term for Antigone’s destructive drive, applies to Giovanni and Annabella in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore too. They derive their rebellious heroism from their mutual passion, and the frequency with which Artaud makes use of this word with respect to these characters underscores its importance. Moreover, they rise to a “superhuman passion,”18 implying that—entirely similar to Antigone’s fate—passion exceeding all reason cannot have any other outcome than death. Just like the survivors of the plague, Annabella and Giovanni gradually become superhuman beings, and the radically inhuman consequences of this transgression are the necessary price to pay for this “total freedom in rebellion.”19 In order for man to dispense with the chains of the world and experience total freedom, he must break the law and the impediments to the real object of desire. The repression of the symbolic order, then, can only be ruled out by inhuman determination. Just like Ford’s tragic protagonists, who are bestowed with a sense for sacrifice and the virtues of a heroic nature, Artaud stages heroes who place themselves beyond the law, outside of the protective symbolic circle of social discourse. It is no coincidence that Artaud strongly emphasises the notion of passion with regard to Giovanni and Annabella in Ford’s play; in his seventh seminar on the ethical dimension of psychoanalysis in which he analyzes Antigone, Lacan uses the concept in the same semantic field, by which he specifically denotes a desire that surpasses the dynamics of the subject’s libidinal economy. Passion is no longer related to a particular object that has been singled out as the subject’s goal to satisfy a concrete need, but rather maintains itself independent of any useful object. In fact, passion is desire stripped of its immediate goal of functionality, up to the point where the intransigence of the dynamics of passion damages one’s physical integrity. People caught up in the spiral of passion are blind to the consequences or usefulness of their actions. In his pursuit of unknowable knowledge, Oedipus has attested to the self-sacrificing nature of passion.

17 Antonin Artaud, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 5 (Paris, 1970–), p. 309, trans. in Eric Sellin, The Dramatic Concepts of Antonin Artaud (Chicago, 1975), p. 129. 18 Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 18. 19 Ibid.

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Antigone too, Lacan writes, “is borne along by a passion.”20 She follows a “pure desire” that stands out as an “absolute choice” that cannot be explained on the basis of the logics of reason or reasonableness. Antigone’s pure desire is grounded in nothing, and withdraws from the economy of exchangeable signifiers. With her insistence on burying Polyneices, Antigone no longer subscribes her desire in the logics of what Lacan calls the “service du bien”; rather, she testifies to a hypersensibility of an implacable value that does not find a place within the order of the symbolic.21 She invokes unwritten laws that Lacan associates with the real and with the Greek notion of Atè. With some sense of exaggeration, Lacan emphasizes the frequency of this concept in the text, and points out the importance of Atè for a successful understanding of the play, as the word “designates the limit that human life can only briefly cross. [. . .] Beyond this Atè, one can only spend a brief period of time, and that’s where Antigone wants to go.”22 Falling back on an unwritten and unproclaimed legality beyond any law, Sophocles’s heroine finds herself in a dimension between the symbolic and the real death. “Do you plead innocent or guilty to these things,” Creon asks her, and though she does not defend herself, she can actually not be said to be guilty, for this opposition belongs to the ethical order measured by Creon’s symbolic laws. Antigone, on the contrary, has moved away from these norms, and does not betray her pure and intransigent desire. It is not her brother as a person whom she loves, but her brother as a pure Being. She has reached a point at which she becomes the representation of the lack and insufficiency of Creon’s law. In his attempt to prevent Polyneices from being buried, Creon tries to have him erased as a signifier too. Polyneices’s death does not assuage his desire; in order for the king to be satisfied, the traitor should be wiped out completely, abandoned from history as though he had never existed at all. Creon, in fact, wants to push his opponent back into the real, into a nothingness that has never been. Every trace of Polyneices has to be eradicated. Antigone, on the contrary, reveals the impossibility of such a ‘second death’ by which Creon wishes to have him disappear as a signifier. Creon cannot possibly claim power over someone’s Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar VII: 1959–1960), ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. D. Porter (New York, 1992), p. 254. 21 Paul Moyaert, Ethiek en sublimatie (Nijmegen, 1994), p. 27. 22 Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 263. 20

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second death, which Lacan describes as “death insofar as it is regarded as the point at which the very cycles of the transformations of nature are annihilated.”23 Not only is Creon eager to have Polyneices killed, he wants to banish him from this very transformative process itself. Antigone’s denial, Lacan suggests, to comply with Creon’s prohibition makes her defy the limits of Atè. Her resolute ‘no’ marks an illocutionary failure of the king’s imperative, and thus drives a wedge in between them. She in fact refuses to be contained by the language of the Other, for she knows that her fundamentally alienated discourse will never cross out Creon’s political thought. It is clear that she does not want to play his game, with rules laid down by the other. This way, she becomes autonomos as a being who, dwelling between life and death, has abandoned the symbolic and through her sublime splendour attests to the non-intelligibility of the unwritten laws. Because it involves an assault on her physical integrity, Antigone’s “trajectory of passion that winds its way toward self-destruction” can only be classified as inhuman.24 Once she has left behind the civilized world with its symbolic structuring, she enters a sphere that Lacan too calls inhuman. She is omos (ώμός), which he interprets as “inflexible,” and Lacan associates this intransigence with “uncivilized” and “raw.” Beyond Atè, arbitrariness and anarchy govern. It is little wonder, moreover, that Lacan prefers the connotation related to rawness, because “it refers to eaters of raw flesh.”25 Not only does this argument bring up the uncivilized world of primitives that Freud sketched out in Totem und Tabu, it also emphasizes the visceral nature of the realm of das Ding. For if Lacan situates the lack on the level of the body, the way to fill this rupture will necessarily move along corporeal parts. Desire, in essence, is intrinsically related to the body. The assault on the corporeality results from the approach too close to the real. The boldness of crossing the border of humanness, of Atè, is punished with a shattering to pieces of one’s physical subjectivity. The destructiveness of this transgression prompts Antoine Mooij to state that man’s ontology always presupposes his own de-ontology.26 Antigone has fallen prey to

Ibid., p. 248. Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York, 2000), p. 47. 25 Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 263. 26 Antoine Mooij, “Kant en Lacan,” in Nathalie Kok and Kees Nuijten, eds., In dialoog met Lacan (Amsterdam, 1996), p. 117. 23

24

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a jouissance of the body, an enjoyment that exceeds the limits of what the subject can ultimately bear. The excommunication from the symbolic order which Lacan calls the second death amounts to the complete dismemberment of an individual, a sacrificial rite which is a recurrent phenomenon in the holy nature of the Theatre of Cruelty. It is significant that many of Artaud’s protagonists meet a similar death that wipes them away from the symbolic world. Together with his mother, Héliogabale is cruelly murdered. Their bodies are then torn apart and after having been dragged through the streets of Rome, they are stripped of their skin in order to be pushed through the sewers’ opening. Héliogabale’s body is still too large, though, and his shoulders are cut off. Even then too broad, together with his mother, he is eventually thrown into the Tiber. In Le Moine, Ambrosio’s death, who has literally closed a pact with the devil, is no less horrendous than Héliogabale’s. As he is taken up into the air by the devil and dashed against the rocks, his body is torn to pieces. In a cartoon-like description, Ambrosio tumbles from the rocks and, not yet dead, eagles descend on his body and peck out his eyes. Héliogabale’s fate comes to mind when the monk’s body is washed away by the river, as is the king’s by the Tiber. Ambrosio is preceded in death by the abbess of the convent of St. Clare’s, who had imprisoned the pregnant Agnes in the convent’s vaults where her baby died of starvation and the humid, unhealthy atmosphere. After the mass of people has been informed of these monstrosities, it lynches the abbess, who is soon, just like the monk and Héliogabale, reduced to “an unrecognisable heap of flesh.”27 The function of the cruelty to which Artaud’s writings testify seems to be the abandonment from the world of signifiers. Hence, this kind of excommunication is shared by both the Artaudian protagonists and tragic heroes. However, to treat the Theatre of Cruelty and tragedy on equal terms would be more than one bridge too far. The numerous parallels and affinities that may be discerned at first sight blur the differences which are probably the more persistent, not in the least because we are dealing with a literary genre and a theatrical project.

27

Antonin Artaud, The Monk (Creation Books, 2002), p. 234.

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Slashing the subjectile In a few of his texts, Artaud mentions the subjectile to denote the paper or the canvas that serves as the material support for the writer or artist. The paper itself, then, just like the painter’s canvas, appears as an adversary, and to draw or to paint comes close to a battle or a conquest. It should suffer under the pen or paintbrush as a living being that is being cut, stitched in, carved up, and scraped in order to take hold of the pure expression of life. As Derrida remarks, Artaud seeks to find a means to incorporate the material used for a painting or drawing into the piece of art itself. The canvas or paper should not merely be the support of a representation but rather become an integral part of the body proper.28 According to Artaud, there must not be any distinction between the subjectile and the representation. On the contrary, both should merge in a presentation, as he makes clear in his astonishing, prize-winning essay on Van Gogh. Artaud describes the canvas almost like a hymen; Van Gogh’s paintings bear “the suffering of the prenatal.”29 Despite the fact that he had never been anything else than a painter, Artaud says, that he was never engaged in interdisciplinary art, Van Gogh is the only painter who actually had trespassed these borders, who exceeded the inert representations of nature in favour of the evocation of turning, swirling forces. With his wild, vivid strokes, he almost literally tears apart the canvas. The subjectile belongs undifferentiatedly to the body itself without being degraded to a prosthesis, as has so often been the case in Western art. Artaud’s drawings too bear witness to the closure of representation in favour of an uncontained, unframed and autonomous work, as he burned holes in them with cigarettes, carved them up, and scribbled notes in every possible corner. Artaud’s attitude towards his drawings is similar to what he had argued in his correspondence with Jacques Rivière, who had shown faith in his poems, if only they would attest to more craftsmanship. While Artaud defends the apparent awkwardness of his drawings as being not of “a man who doesn’t know how to draw, but of a man

Jacques Derrida, “To Unsense the Subjectile,” in Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud (London, 1998), pp. 59–157. 29 Artaud, Selected Writings, p. 499. 28

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who has abandoned the principle of drawing,”30 in the same way he had done so at the start of his career to claim vigorously for his poems the right to exist. To draw, to write or to paint are, therefore, cruel acts. Ink has become a metaphor for blood which is being shed while writing. As long as the subjectile remains dead matter, no more than an inert and exterior receptacle to the subject, it had better be immediately abandoned. If form does not follow function, Artaud soon loses interest and dismisses the work of art as worthless, though its content might, as in the case of Oedipus the King, live up to his expectations. Despite motifs like incest and the plague of which he strongly approves, if the subjectile of language resists conformation to these, the play is deemed inappropriate for performance. Artaud criticizes the narrative frame that turns these very forces into inert forms. In Oedipus the King there is the incest theme and the idea that nature does not give a rap for morality. And there are wayward powers at large we would do well to be aware of, call them fate or what you will. In addition, there is the presence of a plague epidemic which is the physical incarnation of these powers. But all this is clothed in language which has lost any contact with today’s crude, epileptic rhythm. Sophocles may speak nobly, but in a manner that no longer suits the times. His speeches are too refined for today, as if he were speaking beside the point.31

Artaud’s reaction to Sophocles’s tragedy is illuminating in that it openly scolds at the drama’s form and writing style. Taking into account the several similarities that I have outlined between tragedy and the Theatre of Cruelty, the main difference revolves around the notion of the subjectile. While the play’s narrative structure and well-established development of plot leading to a catharsis is ingrained in tragedy, Artaud’s project seeks to make these conventionalities themselves explode. In his opinion, theatre should get rid of narrative outlines and pre-arranged theatrical codes which too often serve as a lullaby for a passive and too relaxed an audience. If Oedipus is the tragic protagonist writing bad grammar, Artaud wants to bring this bad grammar onstage in bad grammar itself, or rather, without grammar, as he reflects on his life in the very last interview before his death: “I have been haunted for so

30 31

Artaud, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 20, p. 340. Artaud, Collected Works, vol. 4, pp. 56–57.

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long, haun-ted by a kind of writing which is not in the norm. I would like to write outside of grammar, find a means of expression beyond words.”32 Tragedy just represents which horrific inhumanities heroes experience when their hybris takes possession of them. However, this is all being recounted within the safe frame of symbolic representation. Without any risk the spectator can identify with the tragic hero as the veil to the evil beyond the linguistic world of signifiers is somewhat uplifted. The Theatre of Cruelty tries to go a step further in bouncing against the wall of representation and narration. The devastating effects of the move beyond are not merely represented but presented, which does not supply the spectator, for whom there is a lot more at stake, with a protective shield. He is forced not only to identify with the protagonist, but to accompany him to the undifferentiated regime devoid of referential anchors. As with his drawings, Artaud’s approach to theatre is inspired by his aversion to the exteriority of the supporting subjectile. Tragedy may build up a symbolic frame within which it expresses the fatality that awaits the tragic hero, leaving the membrane of the subjectile intact. The Theatre of Cruelty, however, permeates this membrane as well, a process that cannot be fulfilled without cruelty paving the way. In this way, Artaud’s artistic program can be regarded as a kind of theatre permeated by an intrinsically tragic awareness without the protection offered by tragedy. This protection, as psychoanalysis has taught us, is offered by means of language. Since language is the quintessential condition to become a subject, the very building stones of the subject equally make up his imprisonment. Therefore, unless Artaud aims at an absolute annihilation amounting to Nothing, his Theatre of Cruelty will always remain a promise, a desire never to be fulfilled. Since two thousands years, the invention of tragedy, on the other hand, has been a human way of coming—literally—to terms with the forces of desire without being crushed by it.

32

Quoted in Barber, Antonin Artaud, p. 161.

PART SIX

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE TRAGIC IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND: THE REBIRTH OF TRAGEDY OUT OF THE SPIRIT OF TECHNOLOGY Jos de Mul (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) Does the tragic conception of fate still hold any relevance for us? Can classical Greek tragedy still speak to us, when we turn to it in an attempt to understand the human condition in the light of the technological culture that has established itself worldwide? Or is it doomed to remain for (post)modern man an echo of a world that has become totally alien? In Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872) Nietzsche states that classical tragedy had already become completely unintelligible to Socrates and Plato.1 It is therefore not so strange that George Steiner nearly a hundred years later, and like Nietzsche with an undertone of regret, has proclaimed that the era of tragedy is definitely behind us.2 Oudemans en Lardinois too argue, in Tragic Ambiguity, that we have lost access to the tragic. It constitutes “a gap in our cosmology, which neither has the power to pass tragedy on nor to eliminate it.”3 These analyses of the exact reasons for the death of tragedy diverge in many respects; yet all agree in taking the view that the death of tragedy is marked by the transition from mythos to logos. Tragedy was killed by a fatal overdose of technical rationality and optimism. What I shall defend in the following is the opposite view. I will argue that tragedy still does have something to tell us, and now perhaps even more than during the many centuries that separate us from its historic heyday in the fifth century BC. In (post)modern society the tragic reveals itself again and pre-eminently within the domain in which we thought fate had been abolished. It is precisely in technology that we are witnessing the rebirth of the tragic. As our culture is considerably different from the Greek culture that gave us tragedy, inevitably this is a repetition with a difference—but nevertheless a repetition, and therefore the more fateful. 1 Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, in Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 88–89. This edition is henceforth cited as KSA. 2 George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London, 1961), p. 353. 3 Th.C.W. Oudemans and A.P.M.H. Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity: Anthropology, Philosophy and Sophocles’ Antigone (Leiden and New York, 1987), p. 236.

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My argument consists of four parts. First, I will illuminate Steiner’s thesis about the death of tragedy in Christian and modern culture. I will subsequently discuss Aeschylus’s tragic conception of technology by focusing on his Prometheus Bound. Thirdly, I will argue, criticizing Die Geburt der Tragödie, why the rebirth of tragedy has not taken place in art, as Nietzsche’s Romantic preoccupation with art led him to hope. The rebirth of tragedy, I will argue in the final part of this contribution—making a connection with the largely lost sequel Prometheus Unbound—rather takes place in the realm of technology. In (post)modern culture, technology has become the true locus of tragedy. The Christian and modern suppression of tragedy When George Steiner argues that the age of tragedy lies behind us, he not only means the vanishing of the dramatic art form that found its classical expression in the fifth century BC in the work of such poets as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and which was once again restored to great heights in the sixteenth and seventeenth century by Shakespeare and Racine. He also refers to the disappearance of the tragic sense of life expressed in these tragedies. The tragic art form conveys that suffering is indissolubly bound up with human life and so inevitable. Any realistic notion of tragic must start from the fact of the catastrophe. The tragic personage is broken by forces which can neither be fully understood nor overcome by rational prudence. This again is crucial. Where the causes of disaster are temporal, where the conflict can be resolved through technical or social means, we may have serious drama, but not tragedy.4

According to Steiner, this tragic world view has lapsed into a coma with the arrival of Christianity. The Christian tradition is based on the belief that man will in the end be relieved of his suffering. The Bible still has its tragic moments—think of Job, whose faith is severely tested by Satan, or of Jesus on the Cross, who fears his Father has abandoned him—but since compensation and justice are meted out in the end, the tragic is no longer heard. In Steiner’s view, tragedy as an art form then disappears as well. It briefly awakens from its coma in the early

4

Steiner, The Death of Tragedy, p. 8.

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modern period, when Christianity loses its unquestioned authority without a ‘reasonable alternative’ having arrived on the scene. This crisis turns out to be a fertile breeding ground for a renewed sense of the tragic which, compared to the tragic era of the Greeks, is more interiorized due to the intervening Christian era. But when the new, modern faith in scientific explicability and technical manipulability of the world fills the emptiness created by the death of the Christian God, the definitive death of tragedy becomes inevitable. Where modernity’s rational optimism continues the Christian ‘faith in a happy ending’ (and in this respect belongs to the genre of comedy rather than tragedy), it is not so much a radical break with Christianity as a continuation of it by other, secular means. In modern culture both the dominant techno-scientific world view (in the diverging forms of positivism and scientism) and the ruling political ideologies (Marxism, fascism, liberalism) promise humanity future happiness. Steiner’s thesis about the end of tragedy has found broad support, but it is contestable for several reasons. Steiner’s critics—we find a nice collection of them in the 2004 special issue on tragedy of New Literary History —accuse him of regarding traditional Greek tragedy as an invariable given. In reality this classical model is merely one of the historical manifestations of a genre that has continually reinvented itself over the course of history. The argument against Steiner is partly politically inspired. He is said to have wrongly identified the tragic, on the basis of an elitist, conservative-liberal world view, with the individual struggle of highly placed white male heroes in a world still inhabited by gods. In his own contribution to the special issue Steiner still likes to point out that tragedy in his view is all about the “aristocracy of suffering” which is locked in a heroic battle with “the supernatural.”5 Evidently, this is historically incorrect, since in many classical tragedies women, strangers, and above all the community play crucial parts. Moreover, in the later stages of Greek tragedy, with Sophocles and certainly Euripides, attention increasingly shifts from divine intervention to the still tragic, but increasingly anthropocentric conflict between people, between mutually exclusive desires within a person, or between a person and his circumstances.6 Furthermore the modern age has witnessed a fundamental democratization and secularization of the tragic. In a society

5 6

George Steiner, “ ‘Tragedy’ Reconsidered,” New Literary History, 35 (2004), p. 9. H.J. Heering, Tragiek: Van Aeschylus tot Sartre (Den Haag, 1961).

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full of risks the tragic becomes an everyday event. At the beginning of Modern Tragedy, Raymond Williams indicates that all people in the course of their lives are inevitably confronted with tragic occurrences.7 In Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic Terry Eagleton points to the increased freedom of ever larger groups of people to explain the democratization of the tragic. This growth in freedom does not automatically lead to greater happiness, but it does make tragedies more likely to occur, since they manifest themselves precisely where fate collides head-on with human freedom.8 As Felski puts it in her introduction to the New Literary History special issue, what has happened is not at all the death of the tragic, but rather the opposite: a universalization of the tragic.9 The contributions, many of which deal with the influence of the tragic in popular (youth) culture, emphasize furthermore that tragedy in the course of its effective history has found ever new forms of expression. Although this thesis of universalization has its merits, it does seem to take too lightly Steiner’s argument why the modern world view has no room for tragedy. Even if Eagleton is right and the breeding ground for the occurrence of tragic events has become wider in modern culture, and if we acknowledge that the likelihood that tragedies will happen has risen explosively in risk society, that still does not mean that these are also experienced as such. The fact that modern culture⎯like any culture in any age⎯is witness to tragic events does not necessarily imply that a tragic sense of life is developing, let alone that this is expressed by a priviliged art form. As long as human suffering is viewed from a modern, technical perspective, its tragic character—the confluence of freedom and fate—will not be perceived as it is, but rather give rise to further attempts to technological and political control. The tragedy of modern culture may well be rooted in the fact that it fails to see the tragic nature of its own fantasies of manipulability. Miscalculation, blindness to the tragic reality in which they become entangled, and hybris are characteristic of the protagonists of tragedies. Ages too can be called tragic in this sense: not because the actions that define them are inspired by an understanding or a sense of the tragedy of life, but on the contrary because this understanding is lacking. In Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy (Stanford, 1966), pp. 190–204, 12–15. Terry Eagleton, Sweet violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Malden, MA, 2003), pp. 203–40. 9 Rita Felski, “Introduction” (to the special issue Rethinking Tragedy), aanhalingsteken verwijderen New Literary History, 35 (2004), p. ix. 7 8

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that sense the American invasion of Iraq, which was aimed at bringing instant democracy to the country in a huge display of technological superiority, is a typical example of modern tragedy. Although many European observers of this tragedy saw the disaster coming from the very start, the protagonists themselves—as is common in tragedies—only reached this understanding after the catastrophe had become a fact. In that sense modern, technological culture is tragic, but not characterized by a sense of the tragic. We could define postmodernity as a rebirth of the tragic sense in modern culture. I intentionally use the term rebirth because it calls to mind the view of technology that we find in classical tragedy. Prometheus bound Although the theme of technology is addressed in several Greek tragedies, nowhere does this happen as extensively and poignantly as in Prometheus Bound, which is traditionally ascribed to Aeschylus. In Prometheus Bound the ambivalent character of Prometheus’s gift to mankind, technè, is placed in the foreground. This tragedy ties in with the well-known creation story of Greek mythology. According to myth, the Titan Prometheus (‘he who knows or sees ahead’) fashioned man out of clay in the gods’ image. His not very smart brother Epimetheus (‘he who looks backwards’), who appropriated for himself the task of endowing all mortal beings with fitting powers for survival, went about so enthusiastically that when he finally reached man, there were no powers left. Since Prometheus had helped Zeus to dethrone his father Chronos and thus become head of the gods, he hoped that Zeus would assist him in liberating man from his state of helplessness. When Zeus refused, Prometheus decided to rob the god Hephaestus of his fire and the goddess Athena of her technical knowledge and give these to man. Zeus, not only incensed by Prometheus’s disobedience but also fearing that these powers might make man too mighty, takes fire away from man, but Prometheus cunningly succeeds in stealing it back from Zeus and gives it to man for good. Zeus out of revenge lets Hephaestus tie Prometheus for all eternity to a rock at the end of the earth, where an eagle will again and again tear the immortal Titan’s body to pieces and feast on his liver, which, however, grew back during the night. Aeschylus’s tragedy begins when Hephaestus is chaining Prometheus to the rock with the help of Cratus (force) and Bia (violence). Prometheus Bound has little dramatic action but consists mainly of the conversations

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between the suffering Prometheus and the characters who visit him: the god Oceanus, his daughters the Oceanides, and the mortal Io, who has been turned into a cow by Zeus’s jealous wife Hera. The visitors lament Prometheus’s fate and advise him to express his regrets to Zeus and acknowledge his rule in order to escape his punishment. But not Prometheus. He snaps at the Oceanides: “Worship, adore, and fawn upon whoever is your lord. But for Zeus I care less than nothing. Let him do his will, let him hold his power for his little day—since he will not bear sway over the gods for long.”10 Aeschylus’s fellow citizens, who only shortly before had released themselves from tyranny and were now defending a budding democracy, will have read Prometheus’s scathing criticism of the despotic Zeus as a political message that could not be misunderstood. But at least as important in Prometheus Bound are Aeschylus’s reflections on the ‘use and abuse of technology for life’. At the center of the tragedy is Prometheus’s defense of his theft of the “technical arts” (technai ) from his fellow gods. Prometheus points out to the Oceanides that he has thereby enabled man to flee the miserable life he led before (lines 442–505). Then follows a long list of the many technical means Prometheus has given to man, not just the tools that enable man to build houses and ships and make ploughs and weapons, but also the knowledge of numbers, which allows man to explain and predict the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the skill of writing—“creative mother of the Muses’ arts”—which makes it possible for man to remember everything. Or as Prometheus himself summarizes it: “Hear the sum of the whole matter in the compass of one brief word—every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus” (504–505). Prometheus’s apology bespeaks the great admiration Aeschylus has for man’s technological achievements, which enable him to control both inanimate and living nature and to take his destiny into his own hands. Science and the arts raise man above his animal state and lend him a divine splendour. Seen in the context of Prometheus’s unfortunate fate, however, his eulogy of technology is not without tragic irony. Prometheus may be powerful owing to his technical arts and ability to look ahead, but this does not prevent his being chained to the rock by means of these very

10 Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, ed. Herbert Weir Smyth (Cambridge, 1926), lines 937–9. Future references to the play are to line numbers of this edition.

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same arts. The leader of the Oceanides’ choir, despite her pity for the tormented Prometheus, cannot refrain from interrupting his eulogy with a comment that is not wholly free of irony or even cynicism: You have suffered sorrow and humiliation. You have lost your wits and have gone astray; and, like an unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease. (472–475)

If we perceive the anthropomorphic Greek pantheon as a projection of the tragedians’ philosophy of man, then Prometheus seems to symbolize the fortunes of ingenious man himself. Seen in that light, his fate is intended to show that man with the help of technology not only frees himself of his natural deficiences, but that he does so at the cost of a new, eternal servitude. Man is not just the master of technology but its slave as well. And he cannot free himself from this slavery by means of his technical ingenuity. As Prometheus’s fate shows this slavery can turn out catastrophically. The tragedy in other words seems to warn us that if we play with fire we are in danger of getting burned, or worse. The tragedy thus warns us—to use an expression that is often heard is discussions about risk-laden technologies such as genetic manipulation—not to ‘play God’. Still more tragic irony is hidden in Prometheus Bound. As Prometheus’s name already suggests, technical mastery requires looking ahead. Technical intervention requires the ability to predict in advance the effects of one’s actions. In giving technical insight to humankind, Prometheus offers this power as well. But since man is and will remain a finite, and therefore mortal being, this is a rather ambivalent ‘gift’.11 The technical arts teach him to foresee the time and circumstances of his own death. That this is not an altogether delightful prospect, is brought out by the discussions about whether it is so appealing to have a ‘genetic passport’ that would enable us to predict when and of what we will die. Luckily Prometheus has a solution for this too: “I caused mortals to cease foreseeing their doom [. . .] I caused blind hopes to dwell within their breasts” (248–250). After this intervention by Prometheus mortal man still realizes that he is going to die, but not when or by which cause. Such a blind hope can justly be called a mixed blessing, or, as Jean-Pierre Vernant has it 11

Jos de Mul, The Tragedy of Finitude: Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life (New Haven, 2004).

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in his analysis of Prometheus, a “blessed illusion.”12 On the one hand this illusion liberates man from the knowledge of the circumstances of his inevitable death. But still it remains fate, since the imposed limitation to our anticipatory powers means that man must also lack the power to fully grasp the consequences of his actions. Aeschylus’s mythological explanation for this human limitation remains a painfully effective way to characterize the human condition. If man were an animal or a god, he would know no hope. In the first case his situation would be literally hope-less, as he would be ignorant and totally in the hands of nature’s blind necessities. If man were an immortal, all-knowing god, he would be hope-free, since he would have no need for it. Mortal man is positioned between the animals and the gods and therefore dependent on blind hope. But those who intervene technically in nature without the ability to foresee the consequences are in permanent danger. The picture painted of technology in Prometheus Bound is altogether highly ambivalent. Technology raises man above his animal life and lends him a divine aspect, but at the same time as a mortal he lacks the insight that would be needed to fully control technology and runs the risk of becoming subservient to it. Prometheus Bound is also, as are nearly all classical tragedies, ambivalent in the sense that the writer does not make an unambiguous choice either for or against technology. Such a choice, given technology’s tragic ambivalence, is impossible. We are after all technical creatures, or—as Helmuth Plessner calls it—“artificial by nature.”13 As technical beings we have no option but to be technical, whether we like it or not. And we must not forget that in doing so we can not only take to the skies but also fall into bottomless depths, as Icarus experienced. This ambiguity causes the tragic attitude to life to lie beyond the conflict between optimism and pessimism. There is no denying that the tragic view of political and technical action has an uncanny character. It is an ominous attitude toward fate. Maybe that is why in the subsequent course of European history it has summoned so many opposing forces. On the one hand the call of Prometheus’s interlocutors to abandon hybris and reacknowledge the rule of the gods was answered. This is the road that will lead Europe Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York, 1990). 13 Helmut Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie (Frankfurt, 1975), p. 385. 12

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via Jerusalem to Christianity. On the other hand many have nourished the blind hope that man would eventually gain control over technology. This road leads from Plato’s Athens through Bacon’s New Atlantis, to modern technology. With Jerusalem’s and Athens’s rule the tragic tradition appears to have been marginalized. And that brings us back again to Steiner. However, it is precisely modern technology that contains all the elements needed to revitalize the sense of the tragic. In the twentieth century, we have experienced a harsh confrontation with the tragic dimension of modern technology. That has certainly not taken away our ‘blind hope’ for technical controllability and manipulability of our lives. That hope dies hard. But since a number of decades, the sense of the tragic inherent in modern technology has also grown. What we are witnessing is the rebirth of tragedy out of the spirit of modern technology. The rebirth of tragedy out of the spirit of technology The idiom of a rebirth of tragedy immediately brings to mind Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, the revolutionary interpretation of tragedy with which Nietzsche in 1872 tumbled into the history of philosophy. This reference is no coincidence. The thesis I defend rests on Nietzsche’s interpretation, but at the same time turns him upside down—as Marx once did to Hegel. In order to explain this I must first touch on some of the core ideas of Die Geburt der Tragödie. A crucial point of departure is that in Nietzsche’s view tragedy stems from Dionysiac rites, which are characterized by narcotic ecstasy and an “überschwänglichen geschlechtlichen Zuchtlosigkeit” (“an excess of sexual indiscipline”).14 Dionysiac possession is understood by Nietzsche as a surrender to the Wille zum Leben. In accordance with Schopenhauer Nietzsche conceives of this will as a dark, irrational, all-devouring natural force.15 Confronting it is only bearable during intoxication, which is accompanied by a radical loss of the self.

Nietzsche, Geburt § 2; KSA, vol. 1, p. 32; Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. R. Geuss and R. Speirs, trans. R. Speirs (Cambridge, 1999), p. 20. 15 Jos de Mul, Romantic Desire in (Post)Modern Art and Philosophy (Albany, NY, 1999), p. 124. 14

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It’s not hard to imagine that the Dionysiac intoxication is extremely dangerous, capable as it is of destroying mankind and human culture. When a people takes as its point of departure the absolute validity of the political instincts, Nietzsche observes, the consequences are terrible.16 He refers to the Roman imperium, but it is likely that he also had to think of the extremely bloody battles fought during the Franco-German War (1870–1871), which he had witnessed as a medical orderly—be it at a safe distance. We may rather be reminded of both World Wars and the many other military and political horrors that have caused millions of victims in the previous century. The miracle of Greek tragedy, according to Nietzsche, consists in the Dionysiac rapture blending with the Apolline dream world. Apollo in Greek mythology is among other things the god of the visual arts, poetry, and truth. In classical tragedy, the ritual exaltation is transformed by Apollo into an artistic form. In this union of Dionysus and Apollo, nausea is sublimated and thereby transformed into a radical affirmation of existence: Hier, in dieser höchsten Gefahr des Willens, naht sich, als rettende, heilkundige Zauberin, die Kunst; sie allein vermag jene Ekelgedanken über das Entsetzliche oder Absurde des Daseins in Vorstellungen umzubiegen, mit denen sich leben lässt: diese sind das Erhabene als die künstlerische Bändigung des Entsetzlichen und das Komische als die künstlerische Entladung vom Ekel des Absurden. Der Satyrchor des Dithyrambus ist die rettende That der griechischen Kunst; an der Mittelwelt dieser dionysischen Begleiter erschöpften sich jene vorhin beschriebenen Anwandlungen.17

And not only of Greek art! According to Nietzsche Greek tragedy embodies an attitude to life that was fundamental to Presocratic Greek culture as a whole. For Nietzsche, not the dramatist or the actors are central to the tragedy, but rather the union of the natural artistic drives that he entitled Dionysus and Apollo. Man is no more than an instrument of

16 KSA, vol. 1, p. 133. “No longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art.” Birth, p. 35. 17 Geburt § 7; KSA, vol. 1, p. 57. “Here, at this moment of supreme danger for the will, art approaches as a saving sorceress with the power to heal. Art alone can redirect those repulsive thoughts about the terrible or absurd nature of existence into representations with which man can live; these representations are the sublime, whereby the terrible is tamed by artistic means, and the comical, whereby disgust at absurdity is discharged by artistic means. The dithyramb’s chorus of satyrs is the saving act of Greek art; the attacks of revulsions described above spent themselves in contemplation of the intermediate world of these Dionysiac companions.” Birth, p. 40.

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the unification of these “künstlerische Mächte.” He is thereby degraded to a mere part of the tragedy: “Der Mensch ist nicht mehr Künstler, er ist Kunstwerk geworden.”18 According to the famous dictum of Die Geburt, “nur als aesthetisches Phänomen ist das Dasein und die Welt ewig gerechtfertigt.”19 The union of Apollo and Dionysius embodied in Greek tragedy was in Nietzsche’s view a high point in Europe’s history that was as happy as it was brief. According to Nietzsche the development of the rationalistic philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle causes the unique merger of the Dionysiac and Apolline to break up and the Apolline pole to become dominant. The cutting off of the Dionysiac element results in the tragic sense of life losing its expression in the Apolline world of images. According to Nietzsche theoretical man now enters the stage in the shape of Socrates. In his rational thinking the artistic, Apolline ‘ordering of the chaos’ undergoes a transformation and degenerates to a purely conceptual dialectic. This is particularly evident in the Platonic dialogues. In The Republic, Plato’s utopian vision of an ideal society, there is no place for tragedy, since this chains observers to the world of the senses and clouds their rationality and thereby diverts their attention away from the philosophical contemplation of the eternal Ideas. In the theoretical optimism of Plato’s dialectical philosophy, tragic wisdom has to vanish. Nietzsche did not regard the Socratic revolution as merely negative. If we were to imagine that the Dionysiac life forces invested in the will to know were to be used for purely selfish goals, humanity would soon extinguish itself in a series of destructive wars, migrations, and finally mass suicides.20 On the other hand, the Socratic turn is a highly

18 KSA, vol. 1, p. 31. “No longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art.” Birth, p. 35. 19 Geburt § 5; KSA, vol. 1, p. 47. “[O]nly as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.” Birth, p. 33. 20 “[S]o wäre wahrscheinlich in allgemeinen Vernichtungskämpfen und fortdauernden Völkerwanderungen die instinctive Lust zum Leben so abgeschwächt, dass, bei der Gewohnheit des Selbstmordes, der Einzelne vielleicht den letzten Rest von Pflichtgefühl empfinden müsste, wenn er, wie der Bewohner der Fidschi-Inseln, als Sohn seine Eltern, als Freund seinen Freund erdrosselt: ein praktischer Pessimismus, der selbst eine grausenhafte Ethik des Völkermordes aus Mitleid erzeugen [. . .].” Geburt § 15; KSA, vol. 1, p. 100. “[ T ]hen man’s instinctive lust for life would probably have been so weakened amidst general wars of extinction and unceasing migrations that, with suicide having become habitual, the individual would be bound to feel the last remnant of a sense of duty when, like some inhabitant of the Fijian islands, he throttles

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risky salvation of life. A culture in which the vital Dionysiac instincts are no longer the driving forces must sooner or later go to ruins. It will inevitably end in some form of asceticism and resignation. In his later work he will designate this enmity towards life, which starts with Socrates and Plato, as nihilism. This term does not so much refer to a philosophical school among many others, but rather to the latent mood of the whole of European history up to his day. Although Nietzsche laments the death of tragedy, the book ends with the hope that the German culture of his time will usher in a rebirth of tragic culture. He will keep hoping for a rebirth of tragic culture throughout his life.21 Nobody will be able to deny that that prediction, at least in so far as these wars are concerned, has been painfully accurate. And much is also to be said for the rebirth of tragedy—albeit that the tragic age would take on quite a different aspect from what Nietzsche was hoping for. His Romantic nature hoped that the rebirth of tragedy would occur in art. Because tragic culture was once born out of music, Nietzsche assumes that the rebirth too will take place “out of the spirit of music.” He already has a candidate in view: the ‘total work of art’ (Gesamtkunstwerk) of Richard Wagner. At the time of Die Geburt der Tragödie, Nietzsche considered Wagnerian opera to possess the same potential for producing culture as did Greek tragedy. Although his love for Wagner, who with Parsifal was heading in a dubious, sentimental and Christian direction, cooled down soon enough, until the end of his life Nietzsche kept hoping for a salvation through art. As late as 1888, some months before his Umnachtung, he wrote in his notebook that our religion, morality and philosophy are symptoms of decadence and art the only countermovement.22 his parents as their son, and his friend as a friend—a practical pessimism which could generate a horrific ethic of genocide out of pity [. . .].” Birth, p. 74. 21 In his autobiography Ecce Homo (1889), we read: “Ich verspreche ein tragisches Zeitalter: die höchste Kunst im Jasagen zum Leben, die Tragödie, wird wiedergeboren werden, wenn die Menschheit das Bewusstsein der härtesten, aber nothwendigsten Kriege hinter sich hat, ohne daran zu leiden . . .” Ecce Homo, “Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe,” “Die Geburt der Tragödie” § 4; KSA, vol. 6, p. 313. “I promise a tragic age: tragedy, the highest art of saying yes to life, will be reborn when humanity has moved beyond consciousness of the harshest though most necessary wars without suffering from it . . .” The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge, 2005), p. 110. 22 “Die Gegenbewegung: die Kunst [. . .] Die Kunst und nichts wie die Kunst. Sie ist die große Ermöglicherin des Lebens, die große Verführerin zum Leben, das große Stimulans zum Leben . . .” KSA, vol. 13, pp. 356, 521. “The contrary movement: art [. . .] Art and nothing other than art. It forms the possibility of life, it is the great tempter of life, the great stimulus of life” (my translation).

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Now, more than a century after Nietzsche’s death, we may ask ourselves whether he had not fallen victim to a Romantic-all-too-Romantic illusion. Is this Romantic hope not also a shadow of the dead god, a Christian gospel in a secular guise?23 It can moreover be observed that modern, ‘autonomous’ art, which began to develop in Nietzsche’s time, has over the course of the twentieth century, and certainly after the Second World War, largely been taken over by the free market and by state subsidies—developments which have not exactly contributed to the arts’ revolutionary potential for cultural transformation. The desperate attempts by the ‘classical avant-gardes’, such as futurism, surrealism and constructivism notwithstanding, the visual arts have long since ceased to be a culturally productive force. They have been driven back to the museum, or given a place on the wall over the new couch. And music, literature, the theatrical arts and film, in their attempts to avoid becoming socially marginalized, have readily surrendered to the caprices of the market and multimedial entertainment. If European culture is witnessing a rebirth of tragic culture and, connected with that, of a tragic consciousness, then we should not look for it primarily in art. If we are looking for a domain where the tragic emerges as a real, everyday experience, we should rather direct our view to (post)modern technology. Not only because technology—witness terms like ‘machine culture’, ‘technocracy’, ‘technological culture’ and ‘information society’ that have been coined to denote contemporary society—is the most dominant phenomenon today, but even more because this is pre-eminently the domain where the indomitable Dionysiac forces forge a synthesis with our Apolline drives. In (post)modern culture technology is the true locus of tragedy. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, technology is conspicuously absent. If it is discussed at all—which is mainly in his ‘positivistic’ period—this is largely done in a critical way.24 In Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, for example, he takes the machine as “das Muster der Partei-Organisation und der Kriegsführung [. . .] (S)ie macht aus Vielen eine Maschine, und aus jedem Einzelnen ein Werkzeug zu einem Zwecke.”25 An aphorism 23 Jos de Mul, “Résonances de la mort de Dieu, après les fins de l’art,” Figures de l’art: Revue d’études esthétiques, 10 (2005): 265–277. 24 Robert E. McGinn, “Nietzsche on Technology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 41 (1980): 679–691. 25 Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II, “Der Wanderer und sein Schatten” § 218; KSA, vol. 2, p. 653. “[ I ]t provides the model for the party apparatus and the conduct of warfare. [. . .] [ I ]t makes of many one machine and of every individual an instrument

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linked to this and entitled “Reaction to Machine Culture” makes it clear that for Nietzsche it was unthinkable that technology could do what art in his view was capable of: Die Machine, selber ein Erzeugniss der höchsten Denkkraft, setzt bei den Personen, welche sie bedienen, fast nur die niederen gedankenlosen Kräfte in Bewegung. Sie entfesselt dabei eine Unmasse Kraft überhaupt, die sonst schlafen läge, das ist wahr; aber sie giebt nicht den Antrieb zum Höhersteigen, zum Bessermachen, zum Künstlerwerden.26

In the last part of my essay I will try to elucidate why technology does give this stimulant. In order to do so, we have to return to Prometheus one more time. Prometheus unbound Prometheus Bound, like all classical tragedies, is part of a trilogy. In fact, it is the first part. From the second part, Prometheus Unbound, only a number of fragments, some forty verses in all, are preserved. And of the third part, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, not much more is known than the probable theme: the cult of Prometheus in Attica. However, since the first part of the trilogy contains a number of anticipations of what follows (which befits a tragedy about one who ‘looks ahead’), we can form an impression of the main subjects of the last two parts. In the second part of my contribution, the Titan Prometheus was described being chained to a rock “for all eternity” by Zeus as a punishment for stealing fire and technology from the gods and giving them to mankind. In Prometheus Bound, however, the protagonist foresees that one day “Zeus be hurled from his sovereignty” (756). The foresighted Prometheus knows that fate has decreed that the sea nymph Thetis will one day bear a son who will become mightier than his father. And he also knows that Zeus has taken a fancy to her. Furthermore, Prometheus, who has apparently ‘colonized’ a large part of the future, knows that his visitor Io will once give birth to a son who will free him from his captivity. to one end.” Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, 1996), p. 366. 26 Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II, “Der Wanderer und sein Schatten” § 220; KSA, vol. 2, p. 653. “The machine, itself a product of the highest intellectual energies, sets in motion in those who serve it almost nothing but the lower, non-intellectual energies. It thereby releases a vast quantity of energy in general that would otherwise lie dormant, it is true; but it provides no instigation to enhancement, to improvement, to becoming an artist.” Human, All Too Human, pp. 366–367.

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In Prometheus Unbound, Zeus, who is no longer a ruthless tyrant but has become a wise and mild god, makes peace with the other Titans. Only Prometheus refuses to submit to Zeus’s authority, as long as he does not set him free. After Heracles, a descendant of Io and Zeus, has shot down the eagle does Zeus agree to unbind Prometheus. Prometheus in his turn reveals his secret about Thetis. In Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, Prometheus receives his own cult. All’s well that ends well. Although Prometheus Bound is a rather static play, its reception history is impressive.27 Among Prometheus’s early admirers is Plato. Not only does Prometheus emerge in several dialogues, but in his Academy Plato had even dedicated an altar to the Titan. Considering Plato’s interest in the technical control of human fate, his interest in Prometheus is not so strange. Prometheus maintained this significance for Neo-Platonism. In the Christian Middle Ages, however, Prometheus—despite his resemblance to Jesus: both save man by taking his suffering upon themselves—was mainly viewed as the negative counter image of the Christian creator. He symbolized human hybris. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Prometheus began to play an important role in literature, the arts, and music. For the Enlightenment thinkers and the Romantics alike he becomes the pre-eminent symbol of the Modern Age. It is in this period that Prometheus becomes ‘unbound’, for it is only since the early modern period that science and technology have made a giant leap forward. Scientific progress does not only entail the natural sciences, culminating in Newton’s mechanics, and related technologies (such as the steam engine), but also cultural technologies, such as printing, which, though already invented in the middle of the fifteenth century, was to transform Europe’s social and cultural landscape only in the following centuries. That it took so long for Prometheus to become unbound may have something to do with the exponential nature of technological development. In exponential developments, the short-term effect is small but the long-term increase is spectacular. People—and apparently even forward-looking Titans, witness the fact that Prometheus is reported

27 “Yet Prometheus Bound, despite the compact action and characterization, may well have become the most acclaimed tragedy of Antiquity: twenty-five centuries have stood in admiration for the Sufferer and Benefactor of mankind, symbol of progress and culture, fighter for human emancipation, the proud, self-confident Titan, who perishes in an overwhelming, apocalyptic spectacle.” Emiel de Waele, “Inleiding,” in Aeschylus, Tragediën (Kapellen 1987), pp. 151–154 (my translation).

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to have said in Prometheus the Fire-Bringer that he has been chained to his rock for 30,000 years—tend to overestimate the short-term effects of exponential developments while greatly underestimating those in the longer term. If we add to this that, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, there was also a crucial qualitative development in the history of technology—with the steam engine mechanical instruments were supplemented and soon supplanted by machine technology —then we begin to get an impression of the effects of Prometheus’s unbinding. Within a few decades, Europe was transformed fundamentally and on an unprecedented scale. The steam engine was more than an apparatus that allowed the hitherto largely agrarian and feudal society to perform certain tasks more efficiently than before. Machine technology played a crucial role in creating a capital- and energy-based market economy, together with new social classes and conflicts of interest. Not only work conditions were changed by the Industrial Revolution, also the rise of large industrial centers drastically altered the housing and living conditions of the European population. Politics and government too underwent fundamental changes in this period. Partly owing to bourgeois liberalism and worker-based socialism European society became more democratic and egalitarian in a relatively short time. Prometheus Unbound also affected the world view. Influenced by the rise of the modern physical sciences and industrialization there occurred a “mechanization of the world picture” that was difficult to square with the Christian world view that had already lost much of its relevance as a result of the Enlightenment.28 The transformation may be called ‘awesome’ in both senses of the word. On the one hand, it filled people with huge admiration. Francis Bacon’s call in The New Atlantis to “put nature on the rack” in order to make her serve mankind did not fall on deaf ears. The “wonderful works” that would become possible—from the treatment of previously incurable diseases and the improvement of crops to producing new materials and substances—very quickly left their visionary state to become reality. On the other hand these developments also encountered strong resistance and fear from the very beginning. They spelled the ruin of the old aristocratic culture and alienated man from traditional social networks and ideals. Conservative aristocrats argued

28 E.J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton (Princeton, 1986).

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for a return to the traditional political order. Luddites followed Ned Ludd in smashing up machinery. Marxists and anarchists criticized the growing divide between rich and poor, and pointed to the alienating influence of the capitalist method of production. It was clear that the new god Prometheus was Janus-faced. For modern man technology is both fascinans and tremendum. Prometheus embodies both the promise to liberate man from suffering and the spectre of a force that will intensify human suffering to unprecedented heights. That Janus-face is also poignantly expressed by the image that the arts have painted of Prometheus. For the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus embodied the ultimate hope for a better world. In Prometheus Unbound (1818–19), which was inspired by the lost second part of Aeschylus’s trilogy, Shelley presents Prometheus as the symbol of a wisdom that helps man to overcome his suffering and make the earth into “one brotherhood.”29 Although Shelley sees this blessed brotherhood as an alluring ideal rather than a state that could become reality, his view of nature and technology is nevertheless remarkably optimistic. Man has a natural goodness and performs evil actions only out of ignorance. If man with Prometheus’s help were able to overcome his ignorance he would spontaneously strife for the good and salvation would be his part. This optimism is more related to Socratic man, rather than the tragic world view of the great tragedians! His wife Mary Shelley, however, was of the opposite opinion. In 1818, the year Percy completed the first part of Prometheus Unbound, Mary published her novel Frankenstein, written three years earlier. Its subtitle was A Modern Prometheus. The protagonist of Mary’s Gothic novel is Victor Frankenstein, who discovers a way to bring dead material to life. From a number of body parts of corpses he creates a companion. When the creature opens its eyes, it does not seem evil, but it looks so monstrous that Frankenstein rushes out of his laboratory. In the course of the story the monster kills several relatives and friends of Victor, and finally even becomes responsible for his death, before he is overtaken by remorse and kills himself. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is sometimes called the first science fiction novel. It is one of the first in a long tradition of mostly dystopian imaginings of the unbridled growth of technology. Their central theme,

29 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound: The Text and the Drafts; toward a Modern Definitive Edition (New Haven, 1968).

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that technology allows man the use of forces he can hardly contain, is already fully developed in Frankenstein. As the technologization of European culture progresses, its dark sides become increasingly manifest. Particularly when man himself becomes more and more “the main raw material” of technological control.30 This is especially the case with biotechnology and information technology, which are inaugurating an Informational Revolution the impact of which may well turn out to be larger than that of the Industrial Revolution. In these sciences the body and mind of man become the ultimate object of technology. Although uneasiness about technology is growing, developments continue unabated. That may partly be attributed to the fact that there are also many people who have not abandoned their faith in technology and are actively working to develop it further. Nor do technology’s critics always translate their doubts and criticism into action. Technological culture, after all, has proved very beneficial to Western culture, bringing with it a level of prosperity that even Bacon could never have imagined. The average European and North-American lives on a level of wealth and social security which in the feudal age was beyond the reach of even the mightiest rulers. It is not easy to say goodbye to all this. Moreover, technological development seems more and more to have become an autonomous, self-driven system, an extremely effective and efficient interplay of science, technology, and the capitalist economy.31 Other economies are wiped out (the Soviet-Union) or forced to imitate the capitalist system (China). The science/technology/capitalism system seems to become wholly independent of human control. It connects micro-rationality with macro-irrationality. “The aimlessness, the irrationality of the system as a whole is concealed by the extreme rationality of the component systems.”32 It is not surprising that the twentieth century saw the rise of a technological determinism in which the autonomy of technology is a crucial concept. According to this view, which Jacques Ellul has discussed at length, technology develops independently of man in accordance with the principle of the technological imperative: what is technically possible will sooner or later be put into practice.33 That autonomy should

30 31 32 33

Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 vols. (Pfullingen, 1961), vol. 1, p. 84. Etienne Vermeersch, De ogen van de panda: Een milieufilosofisch essay (Brugge, 1988). Ibid., p. 29. Jacques Ellul, Le Bluff technologique (Paris, 1990).

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not be taken too literally at first. Until now technologies have always been designed, created and used by people. Yet the unpredictable and uncontrollable side-effects of our intentional actions give technology a fate-like character. As Bruno Latour has showed, technology constantly generates new ends until it becomes itself the final end. And the rise of artificial intelligence and artificial life makes a technology that develops autonomously increasingly less metaphorical. At the moment, however, we are still at the steering-wheel ourselves. But that does not mean that the future course of technology is really in our hands. The unmanageability of our technological mega-systems demonstrates that there are clear limits to human freedom and selfdetermination. Our situation as tragic technicians is comparable to that of the tragic artist described by Nietzsche in Die Geburt der Tragödie. As we are artificial by nature, we are carried along by technical powers that break loose from nature itself. In this orgiastic union of man and machine, human beings are—to transfer Nietzsche’s analysis of the tragic artist to the domain of technology—no longer the technicians, but have become the instruments of these ‘techno-Dionysiac’ powers. It would be a tragic illusion—due to miscalculation, blindness, or hybris—to think that we could fully direct, let alone stop the progress of technology. But this does not imply that we are not forced to makes choices, or that we should not take responsibility for the future development of technology. We find ourselves on a vast and stormy ocean of unbound technologies. We must make the best of it, whether we like it or not. As a consequence of the ever increasing growth of the world’s population, the impact of our way of life on the global ecosystem, and the unintended stimulation of new biological and virtual viruses we are simply forced to ‘play God’—however inadequately we are equipped for that. In this age of technology we can no longer expect—as Nietzsche still did under the spell of Romanticism—art to save us. However, this does not mean that art has no more role to play. Just as Prometheus Bound did for the Greeks, art in the Age of Unbinding Technologies ought to articulate our technological condition beyond the illusionary opposition of optimism and pessimism. Art cannot save us, but it can help us to feel somewhat less unheimlich in the technological world we are are part of. Art can make us familiar with our ‘Promethean prostheses’. And perhaps it could make us somewhat less blind to our technological hopes and desires. Though this will not prevent our technologies from crashing, and human beings from suffering. For that reason art should

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cherish the most precious gift Prometheus gave to man: the ability to pity those who suffer. My stance would be that art should learn us how best to play with fire. Or as Ronald Dworkin has fittingly expressed it: Playing God is indeed playing with fire. But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discoveries. We play with fire and take the consequences, because the alternative is cowardice in the face of the unknown.34

34 Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA, 2000), p. 446.

LAUGHING MATTERS: THE UNSTOPPABLE RISE OF THE COMIC PERSPECTIVE Johan Taels (Universiteit Antwerpen) Charon’s gaze In Greek mythology, Charon was the boatman who ferried the dead across the river Styx to the Underworld. In Charon, a dialogue by the Greek sophist and satirist Lucian of Samosata (120–180 AD), the ferryman is given a day off by the gods. He decides to go to the upper world, “to see what life is like; what men do with it, and what are these blessings of which they all lament the loss when they come down to us.”1 Charon gets into a conversation with Hermes, who, at his insistence, takes him on a short tour and leads him to a high mountain top so that he would have a general view of the world. However, Charon’s inquisitiveness is not satisfied. He tells Hermes that the cities and hills do not interest him much: “it is men that I am after.”2 And, to explain his special interest, he tells an anecdote that always makes him laugh: a man invites a friend for supper on the following day. “I’ll be there,” says the friend. However, no sooner has he spoken these words than a loose roof tile drops onto his head, killing him instantly. “Ha, ha, thought I, that promise will never be kept,” Charon adds phlegmatically, “So I think I shall go down again; I want to see and hear.”3 Lucian was a satirist who unmercifully mocked the Greek gods, politicians, writers, and philosophers. The aforementioned anecdote shows that he, like all Greeks, was acutely aware that the comic is not a clearly defined and independent genre, but that it always presupposes the tragic. In other words, the notions ‘comic’ and ‘tragic’ do not refer to specific kinds of events, situations or behaviors. Whether or not an audience responds to an anecdote with laughter or crying depends not so much on the content of the anecdote as on how the storyteller and

The Works of Lucian of Samosata I: Charon, trans. H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler (Oxford, 1905), p. 167. 2 Ibid., p. 171. 3 Ibid., p. 172. 1

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the audience relate to it. If they are considering the behaviors or events from a panoramic perspective—like Hermes and Charon from their mountain top—then their relationship is one of comic distance, and hence the audience shall be inclined to laugh with the story about the man and the falling roof tile. If, on the other hand, they interiorize the situation, and empathize with the passions and the suffering of those involved, then they will no doubt be struck by the cruelty of fate. Like the other gods, Charon is most familiar with the comic perspective. He is intrigued precisely by the ambiguity of man’s existence, in which the comic is inevitably mixed with the tragic. Elsewhere in this book, in his contribution “Prometheus Unbound,” Jos De Mul considers the relevance of Greek tragedy to our times. He refers to Friedrich Nietzsche and George Steiner’s notion that classical tragedy, and the tragic perception of life that it entails, have become incomprehensible and meaningless to us. De Mul does not agree. On the contrary, he believes that one can rightly speak of a “rebirth of the tragic in (post)modern technology.” In the present essay, I shall defend a different, seemingly diametrically opposed thesis: although man, by his constitution, is a tragicomic being and can consequently never entirely shake off the tragic dimension of his existence, in our (post)modern society the comic perspective has largely superseded the tragic. Or, to put it in more plastic terms: the contemporary Western citizen prefers to consider events from the panoptical perspective of his Olympus, irrespective of whether it manifests itself as encyclopaedic knowledge, or as unfathomable fancy, or as a television or computer screen on which perspectives and vistas can be summoned and dismissed at will. This vantage point, and the quick changes of perspective that it entails, automatically creates comic distance between himself and the events and characters that rouse his interest. Moreover, any ‘comic’ insights or experiences gained in this manner can be readily exchanged with others, including across cultural boundaries. Tragic experiences and meanings, on the other hand, threaten to isolate him more than ever before, as there are increasingly fewer communal beliefs and rituals by which to share them with others. My contribution consists of four points. First, I consider how, in the course of the eighteenth century, a change of aesthetic perspective occurred in relation to the appreciation of tragedy and comedy. Then I discuss the modern theory of the comic as an incongruence or contradiction, as developed by G.W.F. Hegel and Søren Kierkegaard among others. Subsequently, I demonstrate how the comic perspec-

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tive has come to occupy a dominant position in (post)modern society. Finally, I discuss the role that humor might fulfill in that society as a ‘balance between the comic and the tragic’. The reversal of the Aristotelian order in modern aesthetics In ancient Greece, tragedy was regarded to be aesthetically superior to comedy. Aristotle, in his Poetics, expressed this hierarchy as follows. Tragedy is concerned with the elevated passion of ‘noble agents’, or to be more precise, with the demise of a noble and truthful character by the inevitability of fate. Comedy cannot lay claim to such greatness: it presents no ideal, does not look at the higher, but “is a mimesis of men who are inferior.”4 This Aristotelian order was accepted in aesthetics up into the eighteenth century. It was entirely valid during the seventeenth-century heyday of French (Corneille and Racine) and English tragedy (Shakespeare), and persisted up to the classical period of German Romanticism (1775–1830). However, in the latter period, the relationship was entirely reversed. Jean Paul and, even more so, Hegel and his followers regarded comedy as the highest aesthetic genre.5 The Danish dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860), Director of the Royal Theatre of Copenhagen and a great admirer of Hegel, summarized this reversal as follows: “The comic is the basic principle for the entire new theatrical drama,” to the extent that the modern tragedy is “merely a flower in the large tree of comedy.”6 This radical reversal is, of course, not coincidental. It has a very obvious cultural historical background, namely, the connection that exists between an ever greater reflexivity and the sense of the comical, as Hegel points out explicitly.7 The aesthetic, he argues, can only exist by virtue of a certain naïvety towards the prevailing symbolic order. The sense of the comical indicates that a kind of reflexivity arises, an Aristotle’s Poetics, trans. S. Halliwell (London, 1986), ch. 5, 1149a. Cf. C.F. Flögel, Geschichte der komischen Literatur (1784–1787); Jean Paul, Vorschule der Ästhetik (1804); A. Ruge, Neue Vorschule der Ästhetik (1836); Fr. T. Vischer, Über das Komische und Erhabene (1838). 6 J.L. Heiberg, Prosaiske Skrifter (Copenhagen, 1861), pp. 250–251, cited in T.A. Olesen, “Das komische Pathos: Eine Einführung in Kierkegaards Theorie der Komik,” Kierkegaardiana 20 (1999), p. 131. 7 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. P. Garniron and W. Jaeschke (Hamburg), p. 148 ff. See also W. Desmond, Beyond Hegel and Dialectic: Speculation, Cult, and Comedy (Albany, 1992), p. 317ff. 4 5

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innerness and self-consciousness in which this truthfulness of the selfevident symbolic order is called into question. It is this that constitutes the destructive force of reflexivity, as finds expression in Socrates among others. Thought results in the loss of the unreflective tradition and shows that what one has recognized hitherto actually leads to nothing. Hegel therefore regards the comic as an expression of loss, in which man, paradoxically, nonetheless feels at home: a feeling at home in not being at home; a mockery of all forms of being. What Hegel writes about comedy is also relevant to the interpretation of the history of tragedy. Kierkegaard, for example, emphasises that modern tragedy is much more reflexive than its ancient counterpart.8 In ancient tragedy, the dramatic events that befell the tragic hero were set in a predetermined natural and cosmic order. The demise and ‘tragic guilt’ of the hero consisted precisely in the fact that he was fated not to be incorporated into that order. His guilt was therefore passive rather than active; it was a matter of undergoing rather than of conscious action. By comparison, modern tragedy is significantly more reflexive. Increasingly, the elements of fateful predetermination of life and events are replaced with the traits of the characters, the situations in which they find themselves, and the manner in which they respond. Guilt has become more conscious, and is seen to be occasioned by personal ethical responsibility rather than by destiny or fate. In fact, the modern tragic hero could be said to be on the verge of tragedy. He is not so much driven by passions and ideals as he chooses them consciously. He does not become guilty despite himself, but because of himself. Modern comedy, as it emerged from the end of the eighteenth century, was a further step towards reflexivity: the predetermined natural and cosmic order were regarded as bothersome and dubious, and the passions and ideals of the tragic hero were seen to be subjective and narrow-minded. That is not to say that the purpose of modern comedy was anarchic or nihilistic. On the contrary, it was seen as an intense form of contemplation that could help the audience free itself from the shackles of its passions and emotions. Its purpose was the Stoic ideal of a subject that rested in itself, liberated from all direct passional ties. Friedrich Schiller expressed this ideal as follows: Søren Kierkegaard, “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama: A Venture in Fragmentary Endeavor,” in Kierkegaard (pseud. Victor Eremita), Either/Or, ed. and trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ, 1987), pp. 137–164. 8

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Wenn also die Tragödie von einem wichtigern Punkte ausgeht, so muss man auf der andern Seite gestehen, dass die Komödie einem wichtigern Ziel entgegengeht, und sie würde, wenn sie es erreichte, alle Tragödie überflüssig und unmöglich machen. Ihr Ziel ist einerlei mit dem höchsten, wonach der Mensch zu ringen hat, frei von Leidenschaft zu sein, immer klar, immer ruhig um sich und in sich zu schauen, überall mehr Zufall als Schicksal zu finden und mehr über Ungereimtheit zu lachen als über Bosheit zu zürnen oder zu weinen.9

In sum, the keywords in tragedy are passion, destiny, innocence, and guilt. In modern comedy, they are reflection, chance, the other side of good and evil. The outspokenly reflexive nature of modern comedy had far-reaching consequences. First, modern comedy came to be regarded by many, primarily Hegel-inspired, philosophers and theologians as the highest speculative genre. Among them was the aforementioned Heiberg, who had a predilection for the comedies of the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. Heiberg felt that Scribe’s comedies demonstrated that he was a sagacious speculative philosopher, whose work ties in with the cosmogonic tradition, as it reflects “the highest perception and the most profound conception of nature, the state, religion and philosophy; in sum, all interests in life in his era.”10 His friend and theologian Hans Lassen Martensen, who had introduced Hegelian studies at the University of Copenhagen, argued on the same grounds that the comic is an essentially speculative-theologian concept, which “shall retain its validity in Heaven.”11 A second, even more profound consequence of the reflexive nature of modern comedy was that prevailing morals, or Sittlichkeit, were 9 Schiller, Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795), in Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 12 (Stuttgart, 1838), p. 209. “Accordingly, if tragedy sets out from a more exalted place, it must be allowed, on the other hand, that comedy aims at a more important end; and if this end could be actually attained it would make all tragedy not only unnecessary, but impossible. The aim that comedy has in view is the same as that of the highest destiny of man, and this consists in liberating himself from the influence of violent passions, and taking a calm and lucid survey of all that surrounds him, and also of his own being, and of seeing everywhere occurrence rather than fate or hazard, and ultimately rather smiling at the absurdities than shedding tears or feeling anger at sight of the wickedness of man.” Schiller, “On Simple and Sentimental Poetry,” The Aesthetical and Philosophical Essays, ed. T. Riikonen and D. Widger (Project Gutenberg e-text, 2006), . 10 J.L. Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuvaerende Tid (Copenhagen, 1833), pp. 39–42; cited in T.A. Olesen, p. 132. 11 H.L. Martensen, Faedrelandet (10 January 1841), Sp. 3212; cited in T.A. Olesen, p. 132.

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quickly excluded from comedy and, by extension, from the comic. In the traditional, premodern and early modern perception, comic expressions were generally limited on the basis of the so-called Superiority Theory. This theory assumes that if we are amused by something, we feel morally superior to it. The moral purpose of the traditional comedy therefore consisted in representing irresponsible characters in such a way that their behavior would meet with condemnatory and corrective laughter. However, the greater reflexivity and the associated scepticism that developed in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries increasingly undermined the legitimacy of this moralizing laughter, so that morality was eventually excluded from the realm of comedy and the comic. Far from curtailing the comic sphere, this banishment actually resulted in its expansion. “Wo steht es denn geschrieben,” asks Lessing, “dass wir in der Komödie nur über moralische Fehler [. . .] lachen sollen? Jede Ungereimtheit, jeder Kontrast von Mangel und Realität ist lächerlich.”12 With this, Lessing became one of the earliest exponents of the Incongruity Theory, according to which the comic arises from contradiction. This theory would be formulated in its most effective form by Hegel and Kierkegaard. Philosophy of humor In his Kritik der Urteilskraft, Kant proposes a theory of jokes which can be taken for a general theory of the comic: “Das Lachen,” he argues, “ist ein Affekt aus der plötzlichen Verwandlung einer gespannten Erwartung in nichts.”13 On this point, Hegel agrees with Kant: he asserts that laughter is always indicative of a discrepancy between an assumption and reality.14 However, Hegel emphasizes that this discrepancy not only reveals something about a person or a situation, but that it is also

12 G.E. Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1768), in Gesammelte Werke, vol. B.2 (München, 1959), p. 450. “Where is it written that in comedy we should only laugh at moral errors [. . .]? Every incongruity, every contrast between imperfection and reality is funny” (my translation). 13 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Hamburg, 2001), I, 1, §54. “Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.” Kant, Kritik of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (Cambridge, 1892), § 54. 14 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik III, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), p. 527ff. See also W. Desmond, Beyond Hegel and Dialectic, pp. 301–342.

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grounded in reality itself. In other words, he feels the comic always has an ontological dimension: it tells us something about the being of its object and, in a sense, about being itself. This obviously follows from his conception of dialectics, according to which the truth is never fixed, but is rather articulated and realized in contradictory ways. All of reality, both nature and the history of mankind, is in fact no more than the gradual manifestation of the truth in changing and contradictory forms. The comic is precisely an awareness of this contradiction. It is a way of not so much eliminating as affirming both of its poles at once; a way of dealing with and living amidst this complex tension. Hence, according to Hegel, the comic is ubiquitous, yet it is not the highest viewpoint one can take of reality. Ultimately, the purpose of thought must be to incorporate the comic contradiction, to reconcile it with a dialectic, harmonious whole. Kierkegaard, too, broadens the sphere of the comic far beyond the borders of aesthetics, and he, too, employs the notion in the context of a dialectics, more specifically his existential dialectics. As in all other areas of his philosophy, he shows himself to be both a polemic and an original thinker. On the one hand, he draws inspiration from a source to which he resisted most stubbornly, namely Hegel’s speculative dialectics, while on the other, he breaks essential new ground in ways that would make him a precursor of many subsequent philosophical developments. However, in order that we could properly value his philosophy of the comic, we must first briefly consider his notion of existence. Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy is founded on entirely different principles than the generally better known twentieth-century French existentialism. To Sartre, for example, man exists only to the extent that he attains self-realization. In other words, man is his existential project. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, believes that human existence is characterized by fixed parameters. In each of his philosophical works, we encounter the notion that the human self is, in essence, a synthesis of contradictory structures, such as the finite and the infinite, singularity and generality, reality and ideality. So these parameters refer to a general human predisposition or ideality, to a kind of deep grammar of human existence. In this context, Kierkegaard sometimes speaks of “the original text of the individual, human existence-relationship,” a framework of existence that is pre-given in an objective way. The recognition of the objective content of this framework is no way contradictory with his much-debated conviction that “truth is

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subjectivity,”15 for Kierkegaard is convinced that the framework can only make sense and assume significance, that it can only become flesh and bone, to the extent that the individual becomes passionally-ethically aware of it; to the extent that he consciously appropriates the ‘original text’ in his own concrete existence. In other words, according to Kierkegaard, to exist is both a gift and a task, and this gift and task of existence is at once reflective and passional. Through reflection, i.e., by means of intellect and reason, he who exists must recognize the content and the coherence of his existential structures. However, the actual existential meaning of these structures appears first and foremost in his passional—aesthetic, ethical, or religious—involvement and appropriation of them. Kierkegaard’s conception of the comic and the tragic is linked directly to this existential starting-point. Both notions, he feels, refer precisely to the fact that man is a paradoxical being, a being of contradictions. In his principal philosophical work, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he expresses this as follows: The comic is present in every stage of life (except that the position is different), because where there is life there is contradiction, and wherever there is contradiction, the comic is present. The tragic and the comic are the same inasmuch as both are contradiction, but the tragic is suffering contradiction, and the comic is painless contradiction.16

At first glance, this description corresponds closely to that of Aristotle, who, in his Poetics, defines the ludicrous “as a mistake (hamarteima) or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others.”17 Strikingly, however, Kierkegaard does not translate the Greek word hamarteima, which Aristoteles also uses in his description of tragedy, in the usual way, as ‘mistake’, but rather as ‘contradiction’. Here, he diverges crucially from Aristotle, whose ‘naïve’ conception he criticizes in two ways. First and foremost, with this alternative translation, he follows Lessing in that he rejects the direct moral impact of the comic and attributes a much broader meaning to the concept. The comic as such, he stresses, constitutes neither an ethic, nor an aesthetic or religious life sphere, but is rather a position that may occur in any of the life spheres. Second, he criticizes the Aristotelian definition because it “lacks

15 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript I, ed. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, 1992), p. 189ff. 16 Ibid., pp. 513–514. 17 Aristotle’s Poetics, Ch. 5, 1149a.

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reflection [. . .] inasmuch as it perceives the ludicrous as a something instead of perceiving that the comic is a relation, the misrelation of contradiction, but painless.”18 The comic, as a ‘painless contradiction’, is not a something; it is not a state of affairs in reality. It is rather an existential misrelation, and hence it inevitably consists in two aspects, one reflexive, the other passional.19 Let us briefly elaborate on the significance of these two aspects. The dominance of the reflexive aspect in the comic explains why the latter is ubiquitous in the modern era: [ T ]he universalizing and advance of culture and polish and the refinement of life contribute to developing the sense of the comic so that a preponderant predilection for the comic is characteristic of our time.20

To Kierkegaard, this reflexive aspect not only entails that man is aware of a ‘painless contradiction’, but also that this contradiction is ‘objective’, that is discernible in the situation to the detached view. Such an objective contradiction may have to do with the pattern of expectation in the viewer or the audience (the drunk man keeps his balance, or the sober one falls), or with a difference in language-game (answers to a rhetorical question), or with the accidentally erroneous use of a word (the pastor in the pulpit: ‘the word became pork’ [Fleisch]), or with the contrast between similarity/dissimilarity (a caricature is not humorous if the likeness with the person portrayed is either too great or too small), or with a mental leap. In sum, to the detached view, the comic contradiction is ubiquitous, “there is enough of the comic everywhere and at any time if only one has an eye for it.”21 If, however, the laughter that is provoked by the comic contradiction lacks objective ground, then it originated in an urge for self-confirmation, or in jealousy, bitterness, fatalism, wrath, etc. The reflection of the person who laughs is not ‘selfless’; it has no aesthetic-comic ground, yet it itself is captive to a relative, endless interest. This kind of laughter, feels Kierkegaard, is unjustified.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 514. Kierkegaard, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, speaks of ‘the dialectical’ and ‘pathos’. 20 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 513. That is not to say though that Kierkegaard does not recognize the validity of the non-reflexive, directly comical, as in farce. However, this comic genre does not refer to an existential relationship, and consequently only has a place in aesthetics. 21 Ibid., p. 518. 18 19

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The comic is induced, not just by contradiction, but by a ‘painless’ contradiction. This adjective indicates the passional aspect of the comic and at once reveals a contrast with the tragic. Both the comic and the tragic contradiction may, potentially at least, cause sorrow. The crucial difference is however that, in the case of a tragic existential relationship, the subject’s reflection serves their passion, so that the sorrow is intensified, while in the case of a comic existential relationship, the passion of the subject is eroded, so that the sorrow disappears. In Kierkegaard’s terms: The comic interpretation produces the contradiction or allows it to become apparent by having in mente [in mind] the way out; therefore the contradiction is painless. The tragic interpretation sees the contradiction and despairs over the way out.22

The painlessness of the comic is not of a physical, but of an existential nature. It consists in the fact that the observer finds the way out on the basis of ‘the idea’, and knows how the afflicted person is able to get out of the existential crisis. In other words, if, in a specific existential situation, a contradiction occurs that causes sorrow, and if the observer knows on the basis of his insight into the ‘original text of human existence-relationship’ how this pain can be lifted, the contradiction becomes comical. And this also holds if the person who is caught in the existential situation appears not to know the way out, and therefore suffers needlessly and imaginarily. Kierkegaard refers to the example of a wealthy, seemingly busy person who complains about a lack of time. Such an individual, he feels, is not entitled to compassion, but is merely laughable. After all, he has at his disposal every possible condition for a happy and carefree life, but seems oblivious to the obvious, and indeed the only, way to achieve this, namely to stop being busy.23 But Kierkegaard goes beyond this analysis of the reflexive and the pathetic aspect of the comic. After all, if one wishes to understand the comic, one also needs to know “where one is not to laugh,”24 for the comic may, as we have previously pointed out, be unjustified. Whenever there is a contradiction and one does not know the way out, does not know the contradiction to be cancelled and set right in a higher stage, the contradiction is not painless, and where the legitimacy is a

22 23 24

Ibid., p. 516. Ibid., p. 520. Ibid., p. 518.

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chimerical something higher (from the frying pan into the fire), this is even more comic because the contradiction is greater.25

A first manifestation of the comic that is not justified consists in the fact that the observer does not know an (ideal) way out of the painful existential contradiction and yet laughs. Kierkegaard refers to the example of someone who is questioning the meaning of his existence. According to Kierkegaard, it would be unethical of such a doubter to laugh at his doubt, “because despair knows no way out, does not know the contradiction cancelled, and therefore ought to interpret the contradiction as tragic—which is precisely the way to its healing.”26 A tragic relationship vis-à-vis the own situation may heal in the sense that the unhappy one may be confronted with the deeper ‘grammar’, the ‘original text’, of his existence, and consequently recognizes this painful situation as part of his life mission. In such a situation, a comic relationship would only signify an escape. Hence, the fact that there is laughter does not necessarily signify that the situation provoking the laughter is comic. In general, asserts Kierkegaard, the following rule applies: “The lower can never make the higher comic, that is, cannot legitimately interpret the higher as comic and does not have the power to make it comic.”27 The latter also holds in aesthetics, for that matter. In Either/Or, for example, Kierkegaard remarks that Molière’s Don Juan is just an ordinary hoodlum and womanizer, and in no way incorporates the ‘poetic ideality’ of seduction. As a result, the comic contradictions that may occur in a real Don Juan are not apparent, so that the comedy, despite all the laughter it draws, is hardly comic.28 Such instances of unjustified comic art are obviously not restricted to drama. In everyday life, they appear primarily in the second, more specific form of unjustified comic art. The second form consists in the fact that the contemplator eliminates the painful existential contradiction in a ‘chimerical’ abstraction.29 With this, Kierkegaard means speculative thought, and that of Hegel and the Hegelians in particular: “In our day, Hegelian philosophy has wanted to give predominance to the comic, which might seem especially odd on the part of Hegelian philosophy, which of all philosophies was least 25 26 27 28 29

Ibid., p. 520. Ibid., p. 520. Ibid., pp. 519–520. Kierkegaard, Either/Or I, p. 110ff. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 519.

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able to stand a blow from that corner.”30 Kierkegaard criticizes the Hegelian thinkers for the fact that, by means of the speculative notion of the comic, they eliminate and banish the existential contradiction. For this reason, they seem to succeed effortlessly in achieving Schiller’s ideal: the complete liberation from all ties of passion and of all of the present existential relationships. For what is expressed in their perception of the comic is, in the words of Martensen: “the infinite freedom that is above all finite relationships.”31 What the speculative thinkers do not take into account is the fact that they themselves live and breathe in existence, i.e., in the medium of contradiction, and that it is therefore impossible to ignore all existential contradictions. If someone, for example, wanted to make everything comic without any basis, one would see at once that this comic effect is irrelevant, because it lacks a basis in any sphere, and the inventor himself would be made comic from the viewpoint of the ethical sphere, because he himself as an existing person must have his basis in existence in one way or another.32

Speculative philosophy does not relate to existence as the higher to the lower, but merely as the abstract to the concrete. Existential contradictions can therefore never be eliminated purely on the basis of a mental effort. If this does happen, then the comic is used as a speculative tool that compromises and makes disappear the sense and meaning of all existential relationships. Here it becomes clear that such a speculative notion of the comic is not just a matter for philosophers and theologians, but that it has permeated entirely into the zeitgeist. “The reason the comic has become tempting in our day is that the comic itself almost seems to desire the appearance of illicitness in order to have the fascination of the forbidden, and in turn, as the forbidden, intimate that laughter can consume everything.”33 Contemporaries are unable to resist the speculative seduction to use the comic as a force that dissolves and consumes everything, and which no existential relationship, no emotion or passion, thought or ideal, can withstand. Existentially speaking, however, the comic is present everywhere, though it can never be the highest. After all, it implies that there is always an ideal way out of the existential contradiction. Or, in other Ibid. pp. 512–513, referring to G.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik III. H.L. Martensen, “J.L. Heibergs Fata Morgana,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur (Copenhagen, 1938), p. 379; cited in T.A. Olesen, p. 135. 32 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 517–518. 33 Ibid., p. 519. 30 31

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words, it does not suffice to assert, as the speculative thinker does, that comic reflection will liberate the subject from its immediate passional ties. One must also assume an existential life sphere, in which the direction of the liberation is indicated. The art of the comic is, after all, not speculative but existential. It is an art of living that Kierkegaard calls ‘humor’.34 Humor presupposes that the subject is equally as bifrontic as any existential relationship. It is the art of being able, in divergent existential situations, to discover and preserve unity between the comic and the tragic. Reflexive modernization “There is enough of the comic everywhere and at any time if only one has an eye for it.”35 Kierkegaard’s assertion would seem to hold particularly in our own era: has there ever been a society with a better eye for the comic than our own? A society where stand-up comedians, humorists and cartoonists enjoy the kind of prestige that, just a few decades ago, was reserved for serious, preferably melancholic writers and dramatists? Or where the panoptical comic view has penetrated into every corner of our homes through the rapid succession of perspectives, and the sheer endless reduplication of sound and audio excerpts in the mass media? Or where citizens are assumed to be able to adopt a metaperspective on their own convictions and modes of life, while at once understanding these convictions and modes to be contingent and changeable? In sum, a society that is characterized to such an extent by an ever-greater reflexivity, that its citizens would all appear to be living on Mount Olympus together? The ubiquity of the panoptical comic view is, of course, not coincidental; it is related to the modernization process which is typically characterized by reflexivity. With the aid of the newly emerged (natural) sciences and a renewed and sharper (Cartesian) self-awareness, the modern subject detaches itself from the premodern conception of the world. It no longer regards itself to be incorporated self-evidently into the predestined natural and cosmic order, and instead wishes, through its newly acquired knowledge and its labor, to control this order and to shape society on the basis of its own rules and insights. In order 34 35

Ibid., p. 505ff. Ibid., p. 518.

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to achieve this ideal, the modern citizen must, for that matter, not only possess a capacity for reflexive distance, but also a considerable capacity for ‘plasticity’. After all, it does not suffice to distance oneself conceptually or ‘reflexively’ from what is assumed to be one’s ‘natural’ environment. One must also be able to actually detach oneself from it, and to show oneself to be nimble and agile in space and time, if only to be able to adapt to the constantly changing demands of the modern labor and production process.36 The reflexivity and plasticity of modern society does not mean that it will not accept boundaries. Quite the contrary, in fact: the modern socialization system which prevailed deep into the era of the industrial revolution is characterized precisely by strict boundaries and unassailable authorities. Only, these are no longer determined naturally but societally.37 That is not to say, though, that they are less forceful. It is only on the basis of his position within this strictly delineated and hierarchically ordered societal framework that the modern citizen assumes an identity. The emancipation of contemporary society—irrespective of whether we call it post-industrial, late-modern or post-modern—from the preconceptions of disciplined modernity requires an even more extreme form of reflexivity and plasticity. Quite interesting in this respect is the perspective of sociologist Ulrich Beck, who, precisely because of its outspokenly reflexive nature, calls our era one of ‘reflexive modernization’ and describes our society as a ‘risk society’ (Risikogesellschaft).38 In recent decades, argues Beck, our society has emancipated itself from the preconceptions and the patterns of work and life that characterized industrial society. However, this emancipation has far-reaching consequences. It entails, among other things, that the citizen is unable to fall back on the old, supposedly unassailable certainties. In trying to come to grips with his existential fears and uncertainties, he is, for example, no longer able to call on the social and moral classifications, institutions and authorities which used to be self-evident to his parents and ances36 Z. Bauman, “De risico’s van de ‘Risikogesellschaft’,” in R. Munters, ed., Zygmunt Bauman: Leven met veranderlijkheid, verscheidenheid en onzekerheid (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 48–72. 37 L. Van Poecke, “Media Culture and Identity Construction: The Shift from Modernity to Postmodernity,” in B. Pattyn, ed., Media Ethics: Opening Social Dialogue, (Leuven, 2000), pp. 127–177. 38 U. Beck, Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main, 1986); Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, 1992).

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tors. Beck connects this consequence with an ‘individualization thesis’, which he himself assesses positively. Today’s citizen, as an individual, is compelled to assume full responsibility for the conditions of his own life. He must, as it were, act as the risk manager of his own existence. He must try to anticipate on, prevent and mitigate all risks that are inherent in modernity, and that are simply a consequence of scientific, technical and economic progress. Obviously such a risk management exercise requires constant lucidity. Time and again, citizens must try, through information, schooling and training, to master the knowledge and skills of the experts in the most divergent fields, including the environment, nutrition, health, traffic, education, etc., in order to make well-considered decisions and develop appropriate ways of life. Time and again, he must rely on his capacity for reflexivity and plasticity to arrive at a ‘biographical solution’ of systemic contradictions.39 At first glance, Beck’s risk society would seem to enhance the tragic rather than the comic perspective. Clearly, though, that is not the case. In fact, the opposite is true: more than ever before, the comic is the biotope of ‘reflexive modernization’. As we have previously mentioned, any tragic perspective refers in one way or another to destiny or fate. This means that the tragic person, who is caught in an inextricable web of guilt and innocence (‘by’ and ‘in spite of ’ himself ), clashes in such a way with the predetermined boundaries—be they natural or societal—that this confrontation spells his demise. However, the citizen of the risk society who falls victim to excessive radiation, or who ingests a fatal dose of toxic food, will hardly interpret this as ‘fate’. He will rather see it as the outcome of either a miscalculation or ignorance, so that ultimately guilt must be attributable—possibly to himself. Or he may interpret events as the consequence of an absurd, merely statistically interpretable, coincidence. In neither case does the relationship with the event become tragic: in the first instance, it is too ethical to be tragic, while in the second it is too arbitrary. In other words, the citizen in the era of ‘reflexive modernization’ is too reflexive to interpret his own life as tragic. In contrast to the tragic hero, who succumbs passionally to the supposedly inevitable circumstances of his life, he does not see his life as fixed, but rather as the subject and source of constantly new choices. In order to avoid the risks that threaten him in his physical and mental health, he strives for

39

U. Beck, Risikogesellschaft, p. 219; Risk Society, p. 137.

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the greatest possible insight into alternative modes of life, in order to redirect and adjust acquired habits and practices accordingly. However, self-management presupposes that he assumes a panoptical perspective vis-à-vis his own circumstances of life, so that, in the words of Beck, he “is elevated to the apparent throne of a world-shaper.”40 But such a panoptical view excludes the possibility of a tragic perception of existence. Each passional attachment and existential rooting is called into question. With this, the ‘reflexive citizen’ does approximate to Schiller’s contemplative ideal of full detachment through the comic, an ideal which, in Schiller’s previously cited terms, consists in “frei von Leidenschaft zu sein, immer klar, immer ruhig um sich und in sich zu schauen, überall mehr Zufall als Schicksal zu finden und mehr über Ungereimtheit zu lachen als über Bosheit zu zürnen oder zu weinen.” It goes without saying that, in today’s reflexive modernity, the panoptical perspective is also the favoured perspective in the media, more specifically the news media. This is already apparent from the concept of the news, whereby the world is perceived as a surveyable collection of occurrences, from which the media offers us a daily selection, accompanied by comments and anecdotes.41 Journalists like to use the ‘mirror’ or ‘window’ metaphor: the news is a reflection of reality, a window on the world. However, such metaphors are extremely misleading, for they suggest that the persons and events reported on in the news are so close to us that they self-evidently become a part of our own lives. Nothing is further from the truth, though, because even though news programmes offer us a glimpse of reality, it is inevitably an extremely abstract glimpse. What makes the event concrete to the viewer, listener, or reader is not so much the repetition of spectacular news stories, but rather a sense of empathy with the perception of the individuals concerned, in their mutual relationships, in the timeline of events, and in the proper geographical and cultural context. However, such a degree of empathy requires a considerable personal commitment on the part of both the reporter and the media consumer. And it is entirely clear that certainly the media consumer often lacks the necessary time, resources, and willingness to afford this. Consequently, the media consumers, in their perceived intellectual superiority, settle for the panoptical perspective. Events and media figures come and 40 41

Ibid. M. Elchardus, De dramademocratie (Tielt, 2002), p. 15.

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go, and so too do war and peace, poverty and wealth, life and death, passion and demise; a flow of vanities at which one ought sooner to smile than to cry. So while the citizen in reflexive modernity is more aware than ever of the vulnerability of his existence, it is the panoptical comic perspective which prevails in his media-based perception of reality. However, that is not to say that he has repressed his sense of the tragic entirely, or that he has done with the ‘great passions’. Quite the opposite: his interest in the tragic perspective is noticeably big. Yet, it is not situated first and foremost in the realm of reality, but rather in that of literature, more specifically the genre of fantasy. The work of J.K. Rowling, J.R. Tolkien, L. Carroll and C.S. Lewis is devoured by children and adults alike. The Internet offers an endless array of websites devoted to such authors and the fantasy worlds which they have called to life. The central themes in this often epic literature are those of human existence: life and death, expectations and horrors of the world, and the struggle between good and evil. The main narrative elements are the quest, the return, the escape, the odyssey (or the long and dangerous journey home from the scene of calamity and disaster), the completion of a mission to settle a score, undo a crime or conquer a love. And on this basis we draw a remarkable conclusion: while, in his representations of reality, the ‘postmodern citizen’ prefers the speculative and passionless comic perspective, when it comes to fantasy, he has a preference for fiction through which he can identify with the vicissitudes of the impassioned hero. Humor Do reflexive modernity and the risk society have banished the citizens, fearing their tragic fate, to Mount Olympus for good? Does eternal laughter rule there? Will they, like Charon, ever be inclined to abandon their panoptical perspective? Obviously such questions are rhetorical and exaggerated. The above analysis of reflexive modernity concerns general historical and socio-cultural trends, while nothing fundamentally has changed in relation to the existential condition of man as a tragicomic being. No culture, however developed and reflexive, should be assumed capable of eliminating the tragic dimension of existence entirely. In Kierkegaard’s terms: the art of the comic and the tragic is not of a speculative (and by extension

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cultural, sociological), but rather of an existential nature; it is an art of living. More specifically, we are concerned here with the art of humor, which consists in finding and maintaining a balance between the comic and the tragic in the variability of concrete situations in life. It is with a brief characterization of this art of living that I wish to conclude this contribution, for I believe that it is adapted in a remarkable way to such a hyper-reflexive society as our own.42 Humor inevitably presupposes a sense of contradiction and incongruence, and existential discrepancies in particular. The purpose of humor is precisely to allow one to read one’s own life and to interpret it in the light of the ambiguity, equivocality and inconsistency that is an inextricable part of it. It speaks for itself that such a hermeneutic reading is never strictly individual, and inevitably also contains a social dimension: humor reveals not only the individual’s world, but also our shared world, all the preconceptions and biases that we have in common. The hermeneutic purpose of humor is, first and foremost, epistemic. The humorist, like the scientist in his laboratory, wishes to reveal the world as it is, sharply and accurately. However, the humorist has more tools at his disposal than the scientist. He can make use of an array of instruments that are inherent in comic ingenuity, such as the plasticity and flexibility of the comic imagination, which finds expression in sudden changes of perspective, diametric reversal, and unexpected twists. A good example is in the Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Fathers), a collection of sayings and stories by the desert fathers dating from the third or fourth century. Two elders had lived together for many years without ever quarrelling. One day, the one said to the other: “Come on, let’s have at least one quarrel like other people do.” The other man said: “But I don’t know how to start a quarrel.” Then the first man said: “I will take this brick and place it between us, and then I’ll say: it is mine. And you’ll say: No it is mine. And that’s how it starts.” So they place the brick between them and the one says: “It is mine.” And the other replied: “No, it is mine.” And then the first spoke again: “Well, if it is yours, then take it and go your way.” And so they were not able to have a quarrel.43 J. Taels, “Het vermoeden: Over hermeneutiek en humor,” in Denken als aandenken (Brussel, 2006), pp. 27–43. 43 C. Wagenaar, Woestijnvaders: Een speurtocht door de vaderspreuken (Nijmegen, 1981), p. 118. 42

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However, this epistemic aspect of humor is just one of its hermeneutic functions. The most characteristic feature of humor is that the sobering and objectifying humorous perspective does not lead to despair or fatalism, but that it has a therapeutic and liberating effect. Simon Critchley gives the following example: György Lukàcs, the famous Hungarian philosopher, was not a great admirer of the work of Franz Kafka, which he felt was a flight from reality and an example of decadent aesthetic modernism. In 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, Lukàcs was the Hungarian Minister of Culture. He was arrested in the middle of the night, alongside other members of the government, and thrown into the back of a lorry. “The lorry then disappeared off into the obscurity of the countryside for an appointment with an unknown but probably unsavoury fate. So the story goes, Lukàcs turned to one of the other ministers and said in German: ‘Tja, Kafka war doch ein Realist’.”44 Clearly, Lukàcs’s statement is not merely epistemic. His acute awareness of the severity of the situation is connected with a moral strength, which enables him to take on the situation. The hermeneutic purpose of humor always requires a double movement. Humor creates distance and is reflective, but it is at once forward-looking, focused on concrete practice. In a single movement, the humorist detaches himself from a number of preconceptions or supposedly self-evident representations and confronts this insight with concrete practice, which he does not leave behind, but rather takes on with renewed vigour. There is another characteristic feature of humor as an art of living that is immediately connected with the foregoing. In humor, one never laughs only at the other, but also at oneself. He who laughs is at once the object of laughter. Hence, humor requires a considerable degree of self-distance and self-knowledge. This self-knowledge is however of a different nature than the kind encountered in Kant’s ethics of duty. Kant typically stresses intellectual detachment and ascesis. It is an ethics in which man uses all of his powers to escape from the diktat of natural motives, and to become detached from all that is particular and exceptional about the own point of view. In negative terms, the ethical assignment consists in not to coincide with what I am as an immediate, natural being. Expressed positively, it implies a striving to attain the greatest possible mastery of oneself. Ideally, this sort of ethics leads to a complete self-reduplication: as a moral-rational being, the subject is

44

S. Critchley, On Humour (London, 2002).

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in complete control of his immediate impulses and needs, so that his choices and motives are entirely transparent to himself. The self-knowledge that is characteristic of humor is of an entirely different nature. Obviously, the humorist strives to order his emotional and passional life as well as possible, and in this sense he seeks to gain mastery of it. However, the humorist does not imagine that he is able to eliminate for good or gain mastery of the ambiguity that is typical of our existence. In this sense, the self-knowledge involved in humor is much more concrete than that of Kant’s duty ethics. In this context, R.C. Roberts speaks of the relationship between humor and humility; not a sombre or dejected humility, but a “blithe humility [. . .] a kind of self-transparency, or openness to ‘seeing’ painful truths about oneself.”45 And it is precisely this recognition that opens up a space where a new state of integrity becomes possible. In other words, humor makes it possible to deal with moral failure without succumbing to it, and in a way that is unthinkable in the context of an ethics of duty. Through its hermeneutic character and its specific form of self-distance and self-understanding, humor is particularly well-suited to the flexible and reflexive lifestyle of the postmodern citizen. Whether this at once implies that this existential art is practised or developed intensively is a different matter. What we do however know is that humor is one of the few arts of living which, in a hyper-reflexive society as ours, can offer resistance against the ubiquitous lure of Mount Olympus.

45 R.C. Roberts, “Humor and the Virtues,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 31 (1988), p. 142.

WHAT SHOULD BE SAID OF TRAGEDY TODAY? Dennis J. Schmidt (Pennsylvania State University) What conclusions can we draw? To invite the gods ruins our relationship with them but sets history in motion. A life in which the gods are not invited isn’t worth living. It will be quieter, but there won’t be any stories. And you could suppose that these dangerous invitations were in fact contrived by the gods themselves, because the gods get bored with men who have no stories. Roberto Calasso1

What conclusions can we draw indeed? Since Plato, philosophers have struggled with the claims of tragedy. From the outset, a sort of competition defined the relationship between philosophy and tragedy, and the effort by philosophers to take up the claims of tragedy has long been characterized more as critique than interpretation. Above all, the question of the right life—of the good life and the character of human life—has determined the stakes of this struggle between philosophy and tragedy. Since Aristotle, we have sought to gather the challenges of these claims into an idea, to account for it in a theory. But the stuff of tragedy, as philosophers repeatedly need to learn (even if only to forget once again), is complex. One might even say that it is complexity and enigma that one faces in tragedy. It will never be a simple matter or simply a matter of an idea. Yet if we want to speak to the question, a legitimate, even pressing question, of what conclusions we can draw from tragedy for philosophy, for theory, then we need to begin be speaking of its roots, of that which gives rise to the possibility, even the necessity, of tragedy. These roots of tragedy belong to each of us from birth. Each of us is assigned a riddle. It belongs to the pure realm of the idiom and is not translatable. I cannot answer the final questions that you must put to yourself. And yet we are not on this account isolated

1 Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, trans. T. Parks (New York, 1993), p. 387.

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from one another, we do not forfeit our chance to trade stories simply by virtue of this being in the singular. Quite the contrary. Paradoxically, human solidarity seems to find one of its deepest and sturdiest roots precisely in this singular experience. Solitude and solidarity are not mutually exclusive even if they move us in opposing directions. Torn by these twin impulses—on the one hand a fidelity to singularity, on the other to a solidarity—we find ourselves committed not simply to the idiom of a singular life, but equally, even by virtue of this singularity, to the ideality of a genuine solidarity with what exceeds that life. We live then as this unsettled idiom of the ideal. And so paradox compounds riddle. We confront a puzzle that will not remain stable, no rules are given in advance but what rules we learn get answered as an element of the riddle itself. This is just the beginning. Oedipus was said to have stood before the Sphinx, riddle confronting riddle, and there he gave the answer to one riddle, in one word, “man,” and with this answer he simultaneously saved the city and set himself on the path to his own destruction. The crossroads at which he confronted his father, Laius, only to kill him, was not the only, nor even the decisive crossroads at which he stood. The second crossroads came in the form of the riddle put to him. It was a riddle that he answered in general and in the abstract, but the other riddle, the riddle of his own identity, would be the one he would fail to understand until it was too late to bear its truth. Hölderlin charts the trajectory of this “deranged seeking for a consciousness” that defines Oedipus as precisely this failure to grasp the idiom of his own being which strangely we can see from the outset. Antigone, Oedipus’s daughter/sister, was wed so completely to the ideal of the idiom that she herself dies on behalf of a corpse, which is the emblem of the human idiom in its purest form. Appropriately, she will be the one who gently leads Oedipus to the place of his own death. Seemingly sure of herself, of who she is and of what she must do to honor that truth of herself, Antigone becomes the greater riddle for us. Inscrutable in so many ways, even to her sister, her reasons—her readiness to die to honor a corpse but to concede that she would not do this for any other love in her life not even for her own children or husband if she had those—are opaque to us. She remains a mystery to us, but becomes very much an ideal by virtue of her steadfast commitment to her own nature. We find ourselves always between the abstract and the particular, the universal and the unique, the idiom and the ideal, solitude and

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solidarity, and somewhere in this conflicted identity the riddle that is posed unfolds as a life. It is a life that oscillates between being seen and understood and remaining very much in the dark, and it floats on a sea of reasons which do not always flow in the same direction and take us to places we might never have anticipated. Greek tragedy presents human life from out of this conflicted site, and one reason it speaks to us so powerfully of the experience of this site is that it finds a way to speak of it as the story of a destiny; in other words, it is an acknowledgment of the force with which these polarities pull and define us. Understood in this way, destiny is not the other to human freedom, it is not a denial of that freedom, but, as Schelling argued, it is rather price and even the supreme tribute of such freedom. The Greeks had no word for freedom as we have come to conceptualize it in philosophy, but that is because it was such a clear, yet unspeakable, given in the very idea of destiny. And yet, even—or better: precisely—in its sense of the force of destiny, Greek tragedy stands as a reminder of the role of chance in life. We realize that destiny is a reply to chance, to the simple fact that one day we find ourselves inserted at a crossroad where we might find either a god or monster—or, as Oedipus found without ever knowing, even both in the same figure—who will alter the path of our choices and even retrodictively rewrite the story we have imagined for ourselves. That is why Aristotle could say that no one could be called happy while still alive. In the end though we “journey everywhere” we “arrive at nothing.” Death—pure incomprehensibility, the ultimate compression of solitude and yet the only incontrovertible universal—is the sole fact, the only stability, in the turbulence of human life. The Iliad is about this fact perhaps even more than it is about a war between cities. There are seemingly endless numbers of individual deaths tallied in the Iliad, and most are noted by a proper name and are described in some detail (with no two descriptions alike). Throughout the Iliad time is taken out of the story that is told and the tale of the war is repeated interrupted so the character of a death could be told. The finality of death does not however signal the finality of the story to be told. Strangest of all in this mix of turmoil and suffering that is told is the simple appearance and fact of language, of the telling itself. Everything finds its own nature in the nature and possibilities of the word, and so it is in the telling itself that what little intelligibility we can eke out of this riddle gets created.

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Philosophy and art are the two chief forms dedicated to this struggle for some measure of intelligibility with regard to the riddle that we are. But they carry out this project in rather different—and asymmetrical—senses of the possibilities of language. Philosophy defines itself as a commitment to the idiom of the ideal; art, above all poetry but in all of its various forms, is a commitment to the ideal of the idiom. In this they resemble Oedipus and Antigone, and as it will turn out their relationship will be just as complicated and incestuous—at least from the side of philosophy and its traditions. What is striking above all is that ancient Greece excelled at both of these forms. For a brief moment in the record of human history we find a culture and a language—a people—that gave rise to both forms. Of course, this took place at a moment prior to the division of forms of knowing and reflection into disciplines and canons, and so the difference between them was one that needed to be established. That was a task that Greek philosophers took upon themselves, and for them it was a task of gravest significance. On the other hand, though Oedipus, Antigone, and Prometheus will each eventually come to be identified as both a tragic figure and some species of an emblem of the capacity for philosophy, it nonetheless must be said that we find no tragedy which takes up either philosophy or the relation between tragedy and philosophy such as we find already in the works of Plato and Aristotle who demonstrate a genuine interest in the relation between tragedy and philosophy. It was left to comedy to deal with the place of philosophy from the perspective of literary art. Aristophanes, not Homer, will be the one from whom we hear something of the nature of philosophy from outside of its own assumptions and laws. Consequently, one finds in Greece tragedy, this form of art in which it is said that human life is liquid contradiction confronting the weight of destiny, while at the same time one finds this drive to philosophy which searches for a way to stabilize this liquidity of human life thereby assimilating and taming the elemental claims of tragic art. The cohabitation of these two disparate forms is a contradiction that defines the highest productions of Greek culture. That subsequent cultures remain bent upon resolving this contradiction is one of the ways that set them apart from the sensibility animating Greek culture. But in Greece philosophers and poets understood themselves as taking up the same issues—of language, death, and affective life—and asking about place of these issues in the formation of the community. It was also clear that these issues were of paramount importance for

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the development of the new form of political life that was still in the process of evolving, namely, democracy. What is most important to note though is that neither philosophy nor tragedy understood itself to be addressing these questions of political life within the framework of a conception of good and evil. Though these notions will have nascent forms in Plato and Aristotle, and though those forms will in large measure be formulated in their respective confrontations with tragedy, neither Plato nor Aristotle would understand tragedy as a morality play. That only fully emerges with the consolidation of the perspective of metaphysics and the insertion of Christianity and its concerns into that perspective. Two points need to be noted and secured regarding the relation of philosophy and tragedy in ancient Greece. First, in Greece, tragedy is not understood as a presentation of the conflict between good and evil, or right and wrong; rather, it is one of the manners in which the horror that human beings can create for themselves is displayed and so asked about. Second, though we find Plato and Aristotle writing about tragedy, we find no theory of the tragic in ancient Greece. This simply means that what is to be found in tragedy, though posing a problem for the newly formed perspective of philosophy, is not yet taken up into the idea of the tragic. We still tend to fall into the trap of conflating tragedy and the tragic. But both of these decisive features of the relation of philosophy and tragedy that we find definitive in ancient Greece will be fundamentally transformed almost immediately upon the end of the classical period. Coinciding with the end of the creative age of Greek drama we find a basic alteration in the way in which philosophers take up the question of tragedy. The birth of Euripides might well signal the beginning of the end of tragedy as a living art form in Greek culture, but the death of Aristotle (323 BC) unquestionably marks death of what is found in this art form as a matter for serious philosophical questioning. After Aristotle, the development of philosophy leads increasingly to the view that the truth of language is found in its conceptual possibilities, not its capacity to present what we suffer. The result is a commitment in philosophizing to the ideality which is proper to the concept. As a consequence of this commitment, philosophizing after Aristotle tends to adopt the view that the work of art is simply a matter of “aesthetics.” Now tragedy becomes the representation of an idea—the idea of the tragic—and now, perhaps most importantly, even if it is not always announced as such, tragedy is regarded as a morality play, as the struggle of right and wrong which is presented in the puerile form

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of art. That is, insofar as tragedy is taken up as a serious question at all. Indeed what is most commonly the case is a fundamental neglect of the question posed by tragedy. After Plato and Aristotle we find no protracted effort to develop a theory of tragedy, or any significant engagement with tragic literature, of the same order of magnitude and seriousness that we find in Plato and Aristotle. One might object that there are treatments of tragedy prior to Schelling that merit attention as something more than passing considerations. Here one might mention works by Lessing (1756) and Schiller (1792), but besides the obvious fact that they are largely contemporaneous with Schelling, it also needs to be pointed out that until Hegel, there is no extended effort to systematically take up the question of tragedy as an essentially philosophical question. This almost total absence of any philosophical concern with the question of tragedy is striking. One reason for this stunning fact is circumstantial: the texts of Greek tragedies were simply not widely available. The burning of the library at Alexandria (47 BC) saw the destruction of more literature than we know (this is one reason we only possess seven of Sophocles’s one hundred and twenty-three tragedies). Indeed it was not until the mid-fifteenth century that Western countries would come into any significant possession of texts from the Greek world that were able to be copied and read (until then only excerpts where available and then in the original form of Greek in which all the words were written in capital letters without word division, without accents and breathing marks, and with the change of speaker only designated by a dash; in other words, what was present had an almost unintelligible form for latter day readers). In short, until the Renaissance, Greek tragedy essentially disappeared from the horizon of known literature. But that still does not explain the absence of the question of tragedy generally. So, for instance, we tend to be taken aback when we realize that Descartes (1596–1650) lived almost contemporaneous with Shakespeare (1564–1615). What is surprising is that we do not expect that he would take up the question of the accomplishment of this literature (about which he surely heard, even though he could not read English), even though as a young man Descartes was quite interested in theatre and even wrote dramatic ‘ballets’. Nothing in the conception of philosophy, namely as metaphysics, which guides Descartes and his age would leave room for the very idea of asking about tragedy as a philosophical matter. That is why Alexander Pope’s magnificent translation of Homer seemed to leave no mark upon English language philosophizing whatsoever (while

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Hölderlin’s translations of Sophocles, just short of a century later would have a profound impact upon German philosophy even up until the present). The understanding of the nature of philosophy one finds in Descartes does not make such a theme as tragedy would represent necessary. Such would remain the case at least until Schelling opens the door for what will prove to be an escalation of the importance of the question posed by tragedy even beyond its importance in Plato and Aristotle. When it returned it did so specifically indexed to the Greek world, its people and its language. And when it reappears it would be found as a question dominating German philosophy (indeed, it would find nowhere near as much interest as a topic in any other language of philosophizing). With regard to the interest in the ancient world it must first be said that this does not mean that the question put by Greek tragedy is simply a matter of an antiquarian interest. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is no accident that the recovery of the question of Greek tragedy appears immediately on the heels of the French Revolution and that it was championed first by those who were inspired by the French Revolution (and to a lesser extent the American Revolution, which did not go unnoticed, but which was too remote to register with the same force as what was happening in France). It is also no accident that this recovery of the question follows in the wake of Kant and comes from those who took Kant’s critique of metaphysics deeply to heart. The turn to the topic of tragedy, now in order to develop a theory of the tragic, has above all these dual motivations: the effort to think through the end of philosophy as metaphysics which Kant first made a necessary concern, and the effort to think the radical transformation—both in history and the idea of freedom—that is announced by the French Revolution. What Kant describes as “the peculiar fate of reason” will come to be seen as having a hidden resonance with the fate of human history: both reason and history will lend themselves to being illustrated and thought according to the model of Greek tragedy. Tragedy reappears as a theme for philosophic reflection at precisely this moment of crisis, a moment that understands itself as marking an epochal end and a new, still uncharted, beginning. A new constellation of possibilities for philosophizing will begin to emerge from this point and the idea of the tragic will be very much at the center of the formation of those possibilities. In fact, the more seriously philosophers took the idea of the tragic as a challenge, the

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more the attempt was made to assimilate its insights systematically into philosophizing, the more the character of philosophy was changed. One sees this most dramatically, or at least most self-consciously, announced in the case of Nietzsche who raises powerfully, and in a manner we can no longer avoid, the question of the performance of thinking. But however much the question of tragedy will evolve from the moment of its initial appearance in the work of Schelling, Hegel, and Hölderlin it will not lose the two affiliations which define that first appearance: it will always be connected with the overcoming of metaphysics and of Christianity, and it will always be linked with the idea of a historical crisis, ultimately with the possibility of a cultural revolution. Both of these links will only deepen over the course of the development of this theme, and they will come to play a decisive role in one of the most distressing philosophical developments of our century, namely, Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism. More must be said about this, but before that can be done two more points must be established. First, why is there this curious cultural beeline between post-Kantian German philosophy and ancient Athenian tragedy? Second, why is it necessary that tragedy be removed from the sphere of metaphysics of morals while it is simultaneously wedded to the realm of history? It should always remain clear that ‘the Greeks’ who are the object of such intense fascination and admiration for German philosophers are not the Greeks of philosophy or the moral dramatists of literature who have become canonized as at the foundation of Western culture. Hölderlin was the first to note it, but certainly not the last: “the Greeks” here possess a remarkably “oriental vitality.” In fact one might say that the turn to the Greeks does not seek to idealize the roots of Western culture so much as it seeks to demonstrate that the roots of Western culture are, in the end, nothing ‘Western’. The image of the Greek world that is carved out in German philosophy is not a youthful form of the Enlightenment. Rather it is a world of essential strangeness, of a great sense of the power of life, nature, and destiny, and an overpowering awareness of what exceeds what human beings can control. In sum, the image of the Greek world here is defined by virtue of its non-metaphysical view of human life. The Greek world as it comes to be discovered in this project of German philosophy, a world which is acutely attuned to the darker possibilities of life, does not stand as a confirmation of the most cherished project of the Enlightenment and of Christian-metaphysical values; rather, it arrives as the greatest chal-

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lenge to those. To regard the recovery of Greek thought, so essential to one facet of German philosophy, as the attempt to recover a static and pristine ‘origin’ for philosophy is to mistake this relationship completely. Hölderlin would be the one who first and most decisively debunks such a possible view when he announces with great clarity and self-awareness that the turn to the Greeks is an engagement with the foreign. Moreover, this element of the foreign, of the strange in every sense of the word, is simultaneously profoundly intimate: it is not the wholly other (if such can ever be said to be a possibility at all) this strange experience of Greek thought, long thought to be at the roots of Western culture, shows that it never was what it was once thought to be. In this experience, this encounter with the Greek world, we turn out to be strangers to ourselves. But one can rightly ask: if it is the case that Western cultural forms and the frameworks of thinking are now coming to show themselves as exhausted, as no longer viable for the future, then why not simply look to other cultures? Why not turn to Asia, to Africa, or wherever else one will? Why persist in looking to Greece? Is there something singular about Greece? Is it so unique that we will need to index ourselves to it eternally? These are serious questions that should not be evaded. And yet they are questions which, for the present at least, we might not be in a position to answer properly. But some remarks can, must even, be made at this stage. Of course, it should be obvious that even if there is something truly singular to be found in the productions of Greek culture, that does not mean that other cultures are not equally the home of singularities of equal or greater significance. It is not a singular singularity; rather, there are a variety of fronts on which the critique of the present age needs to be carried out. A host of unthought and unassimilated elements of history. But what is—though perhaps only for the present age—singular about Greece is the effective history of its legacy. The role that this moment and language that is forged in Greek tragedy has played in the formation of Western culture is undeniable, and to expose the hidden and displaced dimensions of this moment and language is one of the ways in which Western culture begins to overcome itself from within. Nietzsche is the first to develop what must be called a sensitivity to this historical displacement of tragedy. He charts it as the conjunction of three epochal forces: the suicide of tragedy, the rise of the ideal of the theoretical life, and the triumph of the moral will and the image of the world as divided into values. The first two forces he traces back to

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the Greek world itself, showing that it is not an unambiguous resource for a thinking that would overcome metaphysics, which is the most general name of these forces of displacement. Three general qualifications must be reinforced here regarding this project of the return to Greek thought: first, this return is not without ambiguities, in other words Greece is not simply an “ideal”; second, (a point that follows directly from the first) that what is being recovered here has perhaps has never been grasped, it is not a reality that is being redeemed but a possibility; and third, the qualification that the recovery of Greece is significant if only for the present age is necessary since this is a claim regarding a place which Greek thought occupies by virtue of history and that means it is a place supported perhaps only for the moment. History, ever the region of surprise and reversal, will open new possibilities. What remains true and without qualification is simply this: that Greece marks the last moment in which what has come to be the Western world has a contact with forms of thinking which are not defined by metaphysics or by the polarities of good and evil, and it is this above all else which lends to Greek tragedy a claim to distinction. For this reason, the return to Greece marks the effort of Western philosophizing to open itself to what metaphysics has subsequently closed off. It is then the overture to a new relation to culture. That might not have been the avowed intention of some of the initial drives to turn to the Greek world, and it is a confusion about this matter that permits a strange form of nationalism to enter the picture in this matter. This haunting presence of the national is a factor in the renewal of the question of tragedy one finds in Germany that is lacking in the Greek world—at least on these issues. Fichte for instance claims that the turn to Greece is one of the ways in which Germany can secure its place in the modern world as the inheritor of the place that Greece occupied in the ancient world, and when he says this he is simply giving voice to the general tendency of the age. But then, as a reminder that this turn to Greece is a complicated matter and that this tendency is not without counterclaims, we must remember that Fichte’s claim is made at almost the exact same time that Hölderlin is reminding his readers that the turn to Greece sets us into the ordeal of the foreign and the struggle to understand the other which hides in what seems intimate. But however the Greek and the German worlds are regarded, the heliotropism of German philosophy which finds itself persistently pulled in the direction of some image of ‘the Greeks’ will never be able to be an issue that frees itself fundamentally from the

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question of nationality. It will also never be able to be decided why this is the case. In part this strange and distressing shadow of the theme of the nation has to do with the circumstances of German culture and the struggles of German philosophers in the wake of the French Revolution to theorize the significance of that historical crisis (it is odd, but the chief impact of the French Revolution upon philosophy was found in Germany, where it was taken up as a systematic matter for the most general concerns of reflection, and not in France itself ). In part it is simply a question that fogs the issue of how tragedy is to be thought from the perspective opened up by philosophy. However, once this question of the role of culture and of nationality begins to be posed, it needs to be posed extending beyond the question of Germany or Greece. It should, in a different manner, open up other questions; for me, for instance, it should pose the question of the stakes of these issues for an American who writes in English. Why is it that this tendency of German philosophy to pose its deepest questions in terms of a presumed kinship with ancient Greece is significant for those of us who write in and out of a different cultural context? What is asked about in such questions goes far beyond what I can detail here, but such in general are the new form of questions which now open up in light of what is revealed in the tradition of German thought since Hegel. Somewhat unexpectedly, questions about the claims of nationality and the relation of the notion of the national to history begin to press forward. In the end, coming to terms with the case of Heidegger will require that these, among other questions, be addressed because it is, in part at least, precisely because Heidegger will misunderstand the role of this notion of nationality that he will make the errors that he does. Neither the question put to us by Greek tragedy, nor by the case of Heidegger which is so thoroughly entangled in the question of Greek tragedy, can be answered, nor even properly opened up solely by reference to this question of the national. Rather, one finds in the claims of tragedy something greater, something that might well draw the idea of the national in its wake, but only as a secondary matter. What is essential in Greek tragedy—and this means what it poses as a question to philosophizing today—is that it awakens in us a renewed sense that we do indeed live in a world that is larger than we can either control or define and that we are held in the grip of that which we cannot comprehend. Understood in its most basic dimensions, it is a powerful testimony on behalf of human finitude. But it is a testimony that by

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virtue of its form, of the manner in which it is exhibited and enacted, does not permit itself to be taken up by the language of the concept. It does not, in other words, let itself be assimilated into the systematic concerns of philosophizing and so it stands as a persistent summons to reflection. I do not believe that Heidegger will represent the final figure in this history of efforts of philosophers to address the idea put to us by the tragic as exhibiting something unique for thinking. Quite the contrary, I believe that we are only now beginning to understand the force of what is put to us by this idea and the conflicted depths of the experience from which it emerges. The farther we move away from the assumptions governing metaphysics—ultimately the assumption of an infinite and omnipresent mind which suffers no death—and from the polarities of good and evil, the closer we come to the point from which we can begin to understand the real insights of Greek tragedy. But even more: now it is perhaps all the more necessary for philosophy to take up this idea of the tragic since in the figure of Heidegger we now have a philosopher who has shown himself—by virtue of his commitment to philosophical reflection—to be as blind as Oedipus. Heidegger’s own efforts to link the history of philosophy to the figure of Oedipus do not exclude his own case; quite the contrary, it is most likely that at just this point, when he links tragedy and history, Heidegger begins to think of himself as just such a figure of tragedy. His error needs to be understood as intelligible only in the light of what tragedy itself reveals about the nature of the present age. Heidegger knew better than most just how profoundly the world had altered from the time of the culture that produced such works of tragedy. Colonus, birthplace of Sophocles that he would chose as the site of Oedipus’s miraculous death, is now a bus stop surrounded by an industrial slum. One question which we cannot escape refers specifically to the force of this alteration: are we in a position to grasp the deepest insights into human nature unfolded by Greek tragedy, or have the alterations of time rendered such insights—which are so powerfully present at the inaugural stages of our culture—only opaque to us? One of the most interesting, and paradoxical elements of this situation is that it is precisely this force of history, this motor of alteration that Heidegger, like Hegel, will try to understand according to the model opened by the idea of the tragic. The dynamic that has pushed the world of Greece into an ever more remote experience is best understood by taking reference to tragedy, which remains one of the greatest productions of that world. It often seems that the image

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of tragedy appropriate to our age is Oedipus at Colonus, which is the tragedy that depicts the figure of Oedipus after the catastrophe of selfknowledge has destroyed him, but before that destruction has given way to a different future. Adorno lends credence to such a view with his celebrated remark that philosophy remains alive because it has missed the moment of its truth. Of course, we still try to tell the story of human life in terms of the tragic form: one would be foolish to suggest that the form itself ended with the end of ancient Greek culture. Shakespeare, Goethe, Brecht, Ibsen, O’Neill, Molière, Anouilh, to name only a few, certainly have advanced the form, as have film makers who are finding new possibilities in the realm of the stories that we tell in order to understand ourselves—film might well open possibilities regarding that special form we still call tragic art. And it should go without saying after Nietzsche that opera remains always a form in which the questions of tragedy and the force of destiny will be explored. But it does not in the least diminish the insights or achievements of modern and contemporary forms of such art works to suggest that there remains something hauntingly singular about the achievement of ancient Greek tragedy, and it is a lovely twist of fate that this singularity itself has everything to do with the character of being in the singular. Whatever else it addresses, Greek tragedy poses questions about the nature of the riddle that each of us is assigned by beginning with the simple fact of the singularity of our experience of that riddle. All else devolves from this fact of our strangeness that is presented in Greek tragedy independently of structures and assumptions—of subjectivity, the good, of metaphysics generally—which history has shown to have been exhausted. Three large questions tend to be at issue in asking what should be said of tragedy today. First, how are we to understand the project of interpreting history as the movement of a tragic destiny; more specifically, does the idea of the tragic help us to understand the present crisis of history? Second, how is the experience of tragedy to be spoken and written; more specifically, how is the knowledge found in tragedy to be taken up in the language of the concept, the language of philosophy? Third, is it possible for tragedy still, against all sense, to be beautiful? A few comments on each of these questions might point the way to what more might be said of tragedy today. The first question asks about the tendency to interpret the movement of history as the unfolding of a tragic destiny. It is clearly a tendency that one sees in Hegel, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger as equally

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powerfully present, but nonetheless as leading to rather disparate conclusions. The common denominator of this turn to some image of tragedy as an interpretive model for thinking history is the view that the present historical moment needs to be thought as a crisis of time and one that is not able to be reasonably comprehended unless it is regarded as somehow destined. Heidegger presents the case for this view with the greatest force. But this turn to a tragic model of history needs to be understood not as proposing that the destiny at work in history is a form of necessity that binds human freedom from something external to human being. Rather, the destiny guiding history owes itself precisely to the site of human freedom itself. Of course, it is paramount that human freedom should not be understood as rooted in the doings of an agent, that is, that it be taken as the work of a subject over and against a world. Rather, freedom is rooted in the mystery of appearance at all, for us in the simple fact of birth itself. It is this fact of freedom, this sudden appearance into the world of life that binds itself to history in a singular manner. History is thus what we call upon ourselves and its possibility emerges out of the tragic law of human appearance in the world. To think of history in this manner, as exposed in the view of human life that one finds in Greek tragedy, does seem to me to be an approach to the riddles of history that is genuinely insightful into its peculiar strangeness. Above all it is one way in which we begin to see how it is that human beings are capable of inflicting upon themselves such sufferings. Schelling, who thought the essence of human freedom to the abyssal point at which evil and good are indistinguishable, comes close to understanding both freedom and history in precisely this manner. Such a view of history does not set its workings into a moral framework. It cannot do that. Here we begin to understand as well that, while human inventiveness is capable of recoiling upon itself and bringing catastrophe in its wake, while evil is a real possibility for us, there is no safeguard, no guarantee against evil and disaster, to which we might appeal or turn. Here we see how it could be that notions of the good, even well intended ones, provide no hedge against the risks that Aristotle long ago sought to name hamartia. Indeed if we regard history from this point of view opened up in its kinship with tragedy, then we are not surprised that the good has often been enlisted as a weapon in the service of evil—the distinction between good and evil can no longer be maintained. We are in some genuine respect defenseless against ourselves. But not entirely—the task of tragedy in Greece was, so far as possible, to let us see without having first to go blind.

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The second question follows closely upon this last point. The question is whether or not the insights of tragedy permit themselves to be put into the language of philosophy, the language of the concept. The history of the efforts of philosophers to take these insights into human life and history to heart is, in part, the record of the effort to do precisely this. The great struggle on the part of philosophy since Hegel has been to assimilate without destroying the insights of tragic art. But, since Nietzsche made us acutely aware that the form of presentation belongs to the nature of the tragic itself, the untranslatability of what is disclosed in tragedy seems to make this struggle an impossible one. The problem is simple: no matter how it is flexed, no matter agile it is made to be, conceptual language entails a commitment to synthesis and to the linearity of reasons. It has, one might say, an allergy to contradiction and the intrinsic impulse to sublate conflict. But the insight of the tragic work is precisely the insight into a double bind, a doubled truth, that is changed if it is conceptualized. It would be an oversimplification to suggest that philosophy is utterly incapable of addressing the insights of tragedy. The past two hundred years have proven very much otherwise. But, as this address is continued, it is important that it never be forgotten that the matter of language, that by which we bear witness to our presence, is at stake in this issue. And it should not be forgotten that the wealth of possibilities of language, metaphor and its stereoscopic possibilities perhaps most of all, is not exhausted in the language of the concept. Here then the third question becomes apparent. It asked what it means that tragedy, which exhibits great pain and suffering, death and grief, on stage, is nonetheless something that we call beautiful? Of course, it is this above all that holds the deepest riddle of the tragedy for us. But in this riddle is the secret that lets tragedy, which is about suffering, be something that, in the end, speaks of affirmation. The beauty of the tragic work in which conflict is displayed is, as Hegel, Schelling, and Hölderlin well knew, the true correlate of speculative unity; it is the glimmer of an affirmation that resides in the midst of what most terrifies us. Simply put, beauty is the reminder that the possibilities of human life can delight rather than frighten us. Kant will put the point with exquisite clarity when he says that beautiful things indicate that we belong in the world. Finally it is important for philosophers to ask what we should make of Hegel’s promise that “the wounds of spirit heal and leave no scars behind”—that the traumas and sufferings that are always possible

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can be erased without remainder. I suspect that from the perspective opened up by philosophy—from the idiom of the ideal—the decision about this promise is that it is indeed reasonable. Philosophy, by virtue of the commitments of its own perspective will always bear the signature of hope no matter how deeply etched its qualifications about this matter are. The fragility and reversibility of the realization of hope is, however, the commitment of the ideal of the idiom and its riddling character, and this is what governs the tragic work of art. In tragedy we find the memento of the very real capacity of human life to call catastrophe down upon itself suddenly, whether by accident, design or simple blindness. We learn from it that, knowingly or not, we can bring disaster into the world, even monstrous evil. We learn too that there is no defense, no good, which might ward this fate off. To philosophize is to index one’s thought to some hope of healing, no matter how many caveats one places upon its possible realization. Hegel’s claim provides a very real insight into the character and commitments of philosophizing. The struggle of philosophers who address the great insight of tragedy is, in the end, to convert it into this hope and its language. But, in the end, the insight of tragedy lodges itself in something other than hope. Tragedy presents an image of life that loves and affirms what is most difficult and strange in human being; the beauty of the work of art preserves this for one who understands it. And it does this even while reminding us forcefully of the limits of what we can understand and know, indeed it is precisely at these limits that we first begin to grasp the need for an affirmation, even a love, of that which we cannot understand and which exceeds us. But, in the end, the truth of tragedy is that even the moments of happiness can suddenly be pierced by the sadness of time. The roots of tragedy that are found in the riddle each of us is—for ourselves and for others equally—can never be erased or lifted. What we have then are the stories we can tell and that, in their own way, retrieve those shattered moments in the name of another time. If only for a while.