Tragedy

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” – Shakespeare

I, personally, do not believe for there to be any other form of literature as wicked (and as brilliant) as
Tragedy merely for the emotions it manages to stir and the questions it raises in the minds of the
audience.

Aristotle had defined Tragedy as, “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having
magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately
in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear,
wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.” Where by a serious action having a certain
magnitude represents the sizable impacts of the actions of the ‘legendary heroes’ of royal families of the
Greek tragedies. In Greek tragedies, the difficulties of the characters are not minor either; these stories
are of murder, vengeance, betrayal and so on. Moving forward within the definition, by ‘language with
pleasurable accessories’, Aristotle indicates not only poetry but song as well. ‘In a dramatic, not in a
narrative form’ indicates the process of ‘showing’ rather than merely ‘telling’ and the definition ends
with the catharsis (the purgation) of pity, fear and various emotions.

Since there haven’t been found any rigid theories by Aristotle on how he clearly defined Catharsis as,
there’s been a lot of debates whether the goal of Catharsis is an emotional purgation or an intellectual
clarification. Is Catharsis supposed to invoke your emotions or trigger some deeply rational thoughts?

According to some scholars, Aristotle explains the three emotions as Pity (which makes us care for a
character), fear (which makes us fearful for the journey of this character) and the cathartic moment
which is the purification of emotions where the order is regained and an emotional closure is provided
to the audience. While the cathartic moment not only changes the hero’s life within the story, but
changes the readers and/or the viewers as well, It is also important to note that the emotional closure is
not exactly the end of the story but a mere part of the resolution at the end where the inner arc is
completed and the inner wounds are healed.

But what’s clear is that Tragedy brings a reminder and learning that the suffering is the direct
consequence of error, or perhaps that it may even be an inevitable result of us being mortals and under
the will of the divine.

According to Aristotle, Tragedy is composed of six parts: a plot (combinations of the actions or things
done in the story), temperaments (distinctive qualities of the characters), diction (metrical arrangement
of the words), thought, spectacle (opsis), and melody of which the most important is the combination of
the actions in the story. Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of
happiness and misery. Temperament gives us our personal qualities, but it is in our actions that bring
out the true essence of the tragedy. It is very common, and rather necessary, in tragedies for actions of
the characters to have much greater significance than the characters themselves. For example, it was
not Oedipus the character that defined the text as a tragedy, but it was the murder of his father and him
marrying his mother than really outlined the story.

Aristotle believed that a tragic plot needed to have three main elements: reversal (Peripetia),
recognition (Anagnorisis) and a scene of suffering like exile, suicide or psychological trauma. From these,
Aristotle said reversal mixed with recognition is ideal and automatically produces pity and fear.

Keeping the combinations of the actions aside, the characters in a tragedy do play a certain role as well.
“The ideal is to have a mostly noble and illustrious character whose misfortune is brought about by vice
or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” Per say, Aristotle believes that in order for a tragedy to really
work, it needs to focus on a mostly good character who, through the tragic action, is then brought low.
For example, a mostly bad character who stays bad would already be deserving of a bad fortune and
would have ‘had it coming’ hence, dissolving the idea of it being a tragedy. Similiary, a mostly good
character who stays good would fail to pave way for pity, fear and catharsis. The ‘frailty’ of the character
in the tragedy is a Hamartia which is an intrinsic fatal flaw which in turn leads to the tragic conflict.

Moreover, Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century highlighted the contrast between the two
main elements of tragedy: firstly, the Dionysian (the passion that overwhelms the character) and the
Apollonian (the purely pictorial imagery of the theatrical spectacle).[25]
Contrasted with that is nemesis, the divine punishment that determines the fall or death of the
character.
In ancient Greek culture, says Nietzsche, "there is a conflict between the plastic arts, namely the
Apollonian, and non-plastic art of music, the Dionysian." Nietzsche uses this duality for discussing the
artistic process which relate to either Apollo or Dionysus. Apollo and Dionysus symbols of this duality
which he further distinguishes with the terms of “dreams” and “drunkenness.” For Nietzsche, dreams
represent the realm of beautiful forms and symbols, an orderly place of light and reason. Drunkenness,
on the other hand, is that state of wild passions where the boundaries between "self" and "other"
dissolve.
Nietzsche however believed that both forces were present in Greek tragedy, and that a true tragedy
could only be produced by the tension between them. Thus Nietzsche argues that aesthetics is not
merely a "merry diversion." He sees the artistic enterprise as inextricably bound with the Apollonian
and Dionysian duality. While this clash may be destructive, it is also the source of creativity and
procreation, necessary for health and wellbeing.