CHAPTER VI LEADING THOUGHTS: EARLY PESSIMISMMORALITY AND DESTINY-INTERPRETATIONS OF LIFE-CENTRAL THOUGHTS As above remarked (in Chap. I.), completeness is an attribute of all tragedy; every great tragedy deals with some life-history regarded as a whole, and as typical of a whole, i.e. of human life. considered in some universal aspect; and tragic effects are produced not merely through feeling, but through feeling combined with reflection. From this it is obvious that a great tragic poem must be the outcome not merely of emotional sympathy but of intellectual energy. The poet must have thought deeply, and his work must be the sincere expression of his thought. This does not mean that he is to moralise, or that his heroes are to preach after the fashion of Godwin's Antonio.2 By expression is of course meant dramatic expression 1 Books to consult : Bunsen's God in History; Julia Wedgwood's Moral Ideal; Green's Prolegomena to Ethics; Günther's Tragische Kunst (German). 2 Lamb's Elia. or embodiment; and the less of self-consciousness there is in this the better for the work. Like the kindred arts of dancing, singing, and epic recitation, Greek tragedy adhered to certain conventional lines. But within the limits prescribed by tradition it enjoyed greater freedom than any. This was partly due to its Dionysiac origin, and partly to the fact that its main development coincided with the rise of national and political freedom at Athens. It was the awakening and deepening both of the collective and individual consciousness that gave to tragedy, as a function of Greek life, its peculiar distinction. For, after all, the fact that the art had a religious basis was common to it with every phase of existence, however mean or frivolous. Athletics, boat-races, cock- and quail-fights, the broaching of a wine-cask, the prosecution of a love-affair, all were associated with religion. It is not in this sense that one speaks of Aeschylus as a religious poet. The distinguishing characteristic of tragic poetry was that it reflected the deepest thoughts of an expansive and transitional time. In two previous chapters we have considered the subjects of tragedy, the legends which were its raw material, and surveyed the outward conditions under which the poet worked. We have now to turn from the husk to the kernel, from the framework to the animating principle, and to inquire into the spirit which informed it, the ideas which guided it. No simple result is to be looked for in this inquiry; because in an age in which many ideas were germinating each poet had his own ideal, his own way of regarding human life. Hence even the serious side of Greek drama is not uniform in tone. The aspect of nature and of destiny varies with the temper of the individual dramatist. Still less can the scope of tragic art be summed up in such a formula as that of— poor humanity's afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.1 In Chapter III. I tried to distinguish between the origin and growth of tragedy. I would now mark the difference between the data and the genius that handles them: between tragic commonplaces and tragic motives. A tragic poem may be compared to a piece of embroidery in which a pattern is wrought with many-coloured threads upon a sombre ground. The ground represents the data—the traditional deposit; the pattern is the poet's own thought. It has been truly said that "under the marble exterior of Greek literature was concealed a soul 1 Wordsworth. thrilling with spiritual emotion." 1 And it is not less true that beneath the Greek serenity and brightness there lay, thinly veiled, a profound sadness, which, as Hegel has said, "knows the hardness of fate, but is not by that knowledge driven out of freedom and measure." This consciousness of "" some undercurrent woe" will not appear unnatural if we consider the probable condition of "what is now called Hellas" (as Thucydides says) in times between the Trojan war and the legislation of Solon. That condition must have often resembled the state of Germany after the Thirty Years' War. Civilisation was just emerging from the mere struggle for existence. The inhabitant of the plain might at any time have his crops ravaged or his cattle driven off by predatory tribes from the hills. The beginnings of commerce were all but stifled by piracy. Now and again some strong personality would arise and protect the weak while plundering the plunderers, like Rob Roy or Robin Hood. And so dynasties arose which left their mark membered for good or evil. and were long reBut by-and-by the threatened by some oligarchs in their turn were combination of the common folk. Then it was their turn to cry that the good old times were over and gone that base men were supplanting 1 1 Jowett's Plato, Introduction to Phaedrus, s. f. the better sort, and life was no longer worth living. The misery and nothingness of human life had already been a frequent theme of reflection even in epic poetry— Of all that live and move upon the ground, "Man has no comfort in mourning, save to shear the locks, and to let fall the tear." Amidst the brightness and vividness of the Iliad this everrecurring strain, that the noble and the vile alike must die, affects us with strong and simple pathos. The burden of all the later books, "Achilles' doom is ripe when Hector falls," gives a wonderful sense of transiency to the whole long poem. The counterpart of this is the undying power of the Olympian gods. In Hesiod we find a detailed account of actual human misery, with a deeper feeling about wrong and injustice, than commonly occurs in Homer, accompanied with a kindred awe towards superhuman powers, which are more definitely but less grandly conceived. A similar strain is continued in Theognis, who cries, "Far best were never to be born, next best to die forthwith"; in Pindar, who exclaims that "Man is the dream of a ' shadow"; and it is echoed here and there in Plato. But it is in the Ionic literature of Asia Minor |