Tragedy and the Purification of Pity and Terror

Tragedy and the Purification of

Pity and Terror

(Professor, The Deccan College, Poona)

"Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude, in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in the several parts of the play, in the form of action, not of narrative, through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions." Aristotle, Poetics, Ch. VI.

The above quotation is the full text of the famous dictum of Aristotle about the "purification of pity and terror," which Tragedy is supposed by him to effect.

This phrase, as is well known, forms part of the Aristotelian definition of Tragedy; and, being part of the definition, must be taken as something, in Aristotle's opinion, essential to the tragic art. As such, it would seem to sum up what Tragedy, if properly handled, does for the spectator. The saving clause, "if properly handled," has to be inserted, since we read, in chapter XIII, of the Poetics that there are wrong ways of composing a Tragedy, which either fail to produce pity and terror at all, or do so only imperfectly. The well-written Tragedy, on the other hand, will arouse both these emotions in the right way and the right degree; and in doing so it will be fulfilling what is, in the terms of the definition, the specific task of Tragedy, as distinguished from other forms of art. Tragedy, in short, is that which arouses pity and terror.

But, its task is something more than this. Tragedy not only arouses these emotions, but arouses them in such a way that it also "purifies" them; and it is impossible, in reading Aristotle's treatise, to escape the conclusion that this purification is to be regarded as pleasurable–indeed, as the real secret of the "tragic pleasure." Tragedy, in other words, subjects the spectator to a psychological process, which is not only cleansing but pleasant, and is pleasant because it is cleansing. The "tragic pleasure" is something comparable to taking an emotional bath.

Much controversy, however, has arisen "over the precise meaning of the word Katharsis or "purification."

The only direct hint, as Butcher (in his authoritative edition of the Poetics) points out, is to be found in a passage in the Politics, in which Aristotle, after giving a certain interpretation to the word, remarks: "What we mean by Katharsis we will now state in general terms; hereafter we will explain it more clearly in our treatise on Poetry." This further explanation, however, was either never incorporated in the Poetics or has dropped from the text, the consequence being that the passage in the Politics remains our sole authority. Two things, however, are clear from the sentence, which has just been quoted: (1) One is that the theory of Katharsis was no casual side-thought of the writer, but one definitely enough conceived to be kept over for use as an important formula in a forthcoming work; (2) the other is that, whatever the more detailed explanation may have been, the theory which Aristotle thus planned to use in his Poetics must have been, in its general outline, the same as that already suggested in the earlier work.

Turning then to the Politics, we find that the conception of Katharsis, there suggested, was derived from the observed effects of the treatment of religious mania or over-excitement by means of "wild and restless music." Such music, played to the patient, was found to afford a relief: for the sufferer, after being subjected to the treatment, relapsed, according to Aristotle, into his normal condition, as though he had undergone" a medical or purgative treatment." In some way, therefore, the wild and restless music dispelled the religious mania: and the method, whatever it was, was taken by Aristotle as analogous to the purgation of pity and terror by Tragedy. Everything, therefore, turns on what precisely happened–or what was conceived by Aristotle as happening, during this interesting process of the cure of religious enthusiasm by means of music.

Jacob Bernays, whose theory is quoted with approval by Butcher, held that what happened was something corresponding to what modern psycho-analysis would call "precipitation," i.e., the release of suppressed emotions by bringing them to the surface and thus dissipating them. All of us have pity and terror within us, as products of our everyday life. Ordinarily they lie, as it were, half-conscious and submerged and, bring submerged, tend to become morbid elements within us, clogging, and so disturbing, our emotional life. Tragedy, by stirring them into increased activity and by giving them something definite to fasten themselves upon, affords them the satisfaction for which they crave and thus enables them to expend themselves. When they have thus been expended, or released, the emotional nature experiences a feeling of relief, and falls into its natural state. If this theory be true, then the function of Tragedy is simply to provide a release for two emotions which are ordinarily locked up inside us and incapable, of expression, and "purification" means "dissipation." Whether the whole of the two emotions is dissipated, or only the disturbing elements in them, is another matter, which Bernays does not make quite clear. But it is not particularly important. The main point is that the interpretation put upon Katharsis by Bernays is that of release through projection, i. e., through throwing outward.

Butcher accepts Bernays’ theory, so far as it goes, and admits the authority of the Politics as our guide in the matter. But he is of opinion that the more detailed exposition–which Aristotle in-tended in his Poetics and which has somehow dropped out–would have developed the artistic and poetical application of the idea, as distinguished from the purely pathological, and would have given us an aesthetic theory of the manner in which the pity and terror of our ordinary natures are purified by the pity and terror of Tragedy. The central idea of this more developed theory would, he thinks, have been that of "transmutation,"considered as the second of two stages, (1) that already indicated by Bernays, of arousing, and so stilling!" the tumult of the mind, (2) that of, at the same time, purifying, or ennobling, the emotions thus aroused. In his own words: "The function of Tragedy, on this view, is not merely to provide an outlet for pity and fear, but to provide for them a distinctly aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and clarify them by passing them through the medium of art."

This clarifying process he identifies with the expulsion of whatever is painful in pity and terror, as we ordinarily feel them; and the painful element, in both, he finds in their "reference to self," Tragedy expels this by presenting a pity and terror, which belong to the imaginative, instead of to the real world; and the pity and terror thus aroused become, to all intents, impersonal, Not only that, but they are universalised, until they become a general pity and fear, not for this or that particular man or woman, but for suffering humanity as a whole. The purification, then, consists in the transmuting effect of a larger pity and terror upon the smaller pityand terror of ordinary life: the transmutation consisting in the expulsion from these of their selfish elements.

With all this we may agree, so far as the actual facts of the tragic experience are concerned. But the point, with which we are particularly concerned, is whether this version of Katharsis was in Aristotle's mind, when he wrote the passage in the Politics, and so (presumably) in his mind when he took up the idea again in his Poetics.

It will be noticed that, in the theories of both Bernays and Butcher, the root idea of Katharsis is that of the expulsion of morbid or painful substances, corresponding to the ordinary medical idea of "purging." What, however, neither of these two critics would seem to have noticed is that this idea is not really the one which arises most naturally out of the facts on which Aristotle admittedly based his theory–i. e., the observed facts of the cure of religious mania by means of music. And the discrepancy becomes the more noticeable, if we consider the other passage quoted by Butcher in support of his theory–viz., the passage from Plato's Laws. For Plato, speaking of the very cure just mentioned, compares it with "the method of nurses who lull their babies to sleep, not by silence but by singing, not by holding them quiet but by rocking them in their arms." "In each case," continues Butcher, "an external agitation is employed to calm and counteract an internal." And this he suggests is a kind of "Homoeopathy," by which the trouble, or ailment, is expelled by something of the same kind as itself, i. e., agitation expelling agitation.

But surely this is to misinterpret the meaning of both the passages quoted. A true "homoeopathic" treatment of religious enthusiasm would be by a larger dose of religious enthusiasm; of the restlessness of babies, by making them yet more restless. What neither Bernays nor Butcher appears to see, is that it is in the difference between the two movements, and not in their similarity, that the curative power lies. And, if we think for a moment, we shall perceive that the difference lies in the fact that the second movement–i.e., that applied as a remedy to the original movement–is, in both cases, a rhythmical movement. The remedy thus consists in the super-imposing of rhythm upon a restless and disorderly movement, and the Katharsis effectpd by Tragedy will, in terms of this interpretation, consist in the imposition of a "rhythmical" pity and terror upon the unrhythmical pity and terror of ordinary life.

This, to my mind, is the true interpretation of the Aristotelian Katharsis. It has nothing to do with purging, in the sense of expulsion of foreign substances. It has to do with the reduction of our emotional movements, or agitation, to order, by compelling them to move in harmony with orderly emotions (of the same kind as themselves) which are imposed upon them by the art of the tragic dramatist. Tragedy, in short, by presenting a rhythmic pity and terror rhythmicises the pity and terror of our everyday emotional life. Not only is this a thoroughly Greek idea–for the Greek mind was permeated by the notions of order, harmony and rhythm–but it gives us an intelligible theory of the purpose of Tragedy, which we may work out somewhat as follows: - The theory is, for all practical purposes, the same as that elaborated by Butcher in the last half of his chapter, but the terms in which it is expressed are different and are, to my mind, truer and more Greek. What is rhythm? we may ask. The answer is that it is order imposed upon movement. Our theory will, therefore demand that the pity and terror of Tragedy shall be, in perceptible ways, linked on to a system of law or order, and shall move in accordance with this law; and that the tragic pity and terror shall differ, in this respect, from the pity and terror of ordinary life. Can we construct a theory of this kind? Surely. It is one that arises naturally out of the whole character of Greek Tragedy as we know it:-

1. The tragic poet reveals a world of infallible, omnipresent Law, controlling and adjusting human life.

2. The workings of this law are such as frequently to inspire pity and fear: pity for the sufferer under the Law, fear of the Law itself. But the person who realises and understands the Law, will at the same time recognise its justice. His pity will therefore be tempered by submission; this fear will be tempered by the re-assuring thought that only by sinning against the Law can he himself come under the operation of its penalties.

3. Pity and fear, so tempered, may rightly be said to be harmonised, or reduced to order, in relation to the Law. In other words the recognition of the Law has imposed a rhythm upon them, so that they no longer move in an irrational or lawless, fashion, but in an orderly manner, subdued and regularised by a truly philosophical conception of human life and fate.

This, then, is what the "tragic" pity and fear do for our ordinary undisciplined fearing and pitying. The ordinary man, in his normal state, has no philosophy of this kind. He pities intemperately; he fears needlessly. Another's misfortunes will often fill him with resentment and indignation; his fear for himself will often be irrational and chaotic, because he imagines vaguely that good and evil fortune, in life, are matters of chance or caprice–consequently, that he himself may at any moment be, without cause or justice, struck down. The majority of people do, in fact, go through life filled with those vague half-conscious kinds of fear and resentment, and the ordinary spectator at a tragedy will usually, therefore, be a person of this type.

Now, Tragedy "purifies" all this inner disturbance by rationalising it. By revealing the justice, as well as the universal character of the Moral Law, it induces these chaotic emotions to move, no longer at their own sweet will, but in a sober, reasoned and orderly manner. In other words, it rhythmicises them–not stopping their movement, but merely regularising it. Nay, it even increases the movement and thus gives the emotions full play; but, at the same time, it controls it and keeps it orderly. And thus it comes about that the pity, so rhythmicised, will be a pity which, while feeling deeply for the sufferings of the sinner, will yet recognise that the suffering is just, and has been brought by the sinner on himself; and the terror, so rhythmicised, will be a fear which, while recognising and trembling at the omnipotence of the great Law of Things, will realise that it is only to be feared by those who have transgressed against it.

The general effect of this transmutation will thus be that of Reconciliation; which means that the emotions of the spectator, which are ordinarily, in a vague kind of way, at war with the scheme of things, will be brought into submission to it, and will accept it as good. In a word, they will be purged of all rebelliousness, and this purgation will be the Katharsis, or purification, spoken of by Aristotle.