Fabled by the Daughters of Memory - Part Four

‘Outragedy of poetscalds! Acomedy of letters! I have them all, tame, deep and harried, in my mine's I’.

- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’, 1939

A typical Joycean sentence, pregnant with meaning. What it suggests to me, with the allusion to Greek tragedy (or rather ou-tragedy, not tragedy) and Shakespearean comedy (a-comedy, not comedy.. 'A Comedy of Errors')) is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s, (1770 - 1831), contention that tragedy is the very pinnacle of works of Art, comedy is but its demise. A similar view is on occasion to be found in Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844 -1900), though he was not such a systematic philosopher and therefore rather inconsistent on this issue. The modern world of existential angst and absurdity has perhaps authentically put the dampers upon Art's tragic possibilities, or rather artistic communication has been nudged into other less sentimentally intense regions. Absurdity and tragedy .. can they be reconciled? Maybe absurdity is tragic. And yet Martin Heidegger, (1889 - 1976), claimed that the tragedy of the present age is to be found in the lack of the possibility of producing a work of tragedy as Art.

Is it even so? Oh Melpomene, the one that is melodious, the one that sings, at one time the muse of chorus, then becoming the muse of tragedy which is how we now love you .. Terras Melpomene reliquit? ... to paraphrase a line from William Shakespeare, (1564 - 1615), the original of which was: Terras Astraea reliquit: ... Astraea, the goddess of justice, has left the earth, (from the play 'Titus Andronicus', most certainly not a tragedy as it takes place in a world where everything is just so messed up, absurd in the very worst sense, much like our world today). We know full well that Astraea left some time ago, but has Melpomene abandoned us also?

Some notion of what is meant by the tragic is required here. Let us go back to the Greeks. Plato is well known for associating lowly unruly pleasures with those that are illusory, and given that Art is imitation, mimêsis, this leads further to his assault upon Art as that which promotes an unhealthy interest in illusions and hence incites desires that are irrational. Well, we can certainly agree, with Plato, that the imitation of virtuous thoughtful characters is not to be despised, (I offer a challenge though, can you name a movie with such as the protagonist?) and lament the fact that they are not to be found in Art. (Well, to be fair, speaking as a science fiction aficionado, I have seen many a science fiction film set in space with astronauts that have huge character flaws, so much so that in the real world NASA would never send them up there ... but then, a movie with characters especially selected to cope with life in space .. how interesting would that be? .. you would really want one of them to go nuts for the sake of the movie to become at least entertaining).

Tragedy for Plato is the creation of authors neither knowing the quiet philosophical sort nor benefitting from putting that sort upon the stage before spectators who have come to the theatre to see a tragic hero that is just intrinsically ardent, driven by impulses, behaving against the dictates of reason, directed by an illusion of what is virtuous, and whatever the source of his grievance he spares not his tears for a moment of privacy but waxes lachrymose to the dismay of the spectators’ rational faculty while yet their other impulses adore it. What harm is there in weeping along with the hero, enjoying an emotional release without the responsibility one feels in real-life situations? And so dramatic illusion induces bad habits of indulging the passions, and the soul that had spent its life learning self-control sets about unlearning it.

Well, there is some confusion here. Plato asserts that mimêsis is the presentation or representation of characters, although elsewhere he speaks of mimêsis of virtues, but fostering passions requires that objects of poetic representation be humans, and when that which we term literary works practice that which we term representation, Plato claims that they represent human beings. For him as for Aristotle drama presents prattontas,  people doing things ... well yes, but where Aristotle emphasizes the things done, for Plato it is the people, character is the essence of epic and drama. And with this emphasis upon character Plato is already predisposed not to find any philosophical worth in literature, for a character speaks from a particular point of view, and a literary work collects several personages together representing diverse idiosyncratic perspectives upon the world and the very idea of deriving a general statement from the work becomes thereby impossible. Mimêsis represents plurality or multiplicity, it is therefore forever indeterminate and undeterminable.

'Melpomene', attr. to Nicolas-Guy Brenet (1728 - 1792)

And then came Aristotle, ah yes, tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero, usually through some combination of hubris, excessive pride or self-confidence, fate, and the will of the gods. The tragic hero's powerful desire to attain some goal inevitably encounters limits, usually those of human frailty, flaws in reason, hubris, society, the gods, through oracles, prophets, fate, or nature. The tragic hero needs a flaw, hamartia, according to Aristotle, and to make some mistake. A tragic hero need not die at the end, but they have to undergo a change or a reversal in fortune, peripeteia. The tragic hero may achieve some anagnorisis, revelation, recognition, or discovery, about fate, destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle phrases this sort of recognition as 'a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate'.

The Aristotelian definition of tragedy may be summarised thus:

'Tragedy, then, is a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification (catharsis, sometimes translated purgation) of such emotions'.

Aristotle asserts, contrary to Plato, that the artist does not merely imitate the changeable appearances of the world, but rather imitates or represents reality itself, and gives form and meaning to that reality. That is to say, the artist gives shape to the universal, not the accidental, and poetry is 'a more philosophical and serious business than history; for poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars'. 'An action with serious implications', and so what can serious mean? Well, it raises and purifies pity and fear; that is to say, serious in a moral, psychological, and social sense. And through imitation the artist does more than copy everything related to an action, but selects, or represents, only those aspects which give form to universal truths. And through catharsis tragedy first raises, it does not create, the emotions of pity and fear, then purifies or purges them. Aristotle asserts that the audience undergoes a cathartic experience. The play arouses emotions of pity and fear in the spectator and then purifies them, reduces them into a beneficial order and proportion, or purges them, expels them from his or her emotional system.

The tragic hero is 'a great man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake'. A great man: 'one of those who stand in great repute and prosperity, like Oedipus and Thyestes: conspicuous men from families of that kind'. The great man falls through, though not entirely because of, some weakness of character, some moral blindness, or error. . Reversal and recognition certainly seems important, but then, plot twists are the staple diet of Hollywood movies and they are hardly tragedies. And is not one man's pathos another man's belly laugh? Recognition scenes in tragedy are of some horrible event or secret, Oedipus discovered he slept with his mother. Of what does the pathos consist?

Colossal female statue, restored as the muse Melpomene by the addition of a modern mask. Marble, Roman artwork, ca. 50 BC. Might have been part of the Theatre of Pompey in Rome

Let us move forward a few centuries to an account of the tragic equally bizarre, David Hume, (1757 - 1838), in his essay ‘Of Tragedy’. Although before going there, back to James Joyce, here is a quote from 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' that I have frequently wrestled with. It begins with Stephen Dedalus stating:

- Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. I say...

Lynch halted and said bluntly:

- Stop! I won’t listen! I am sick. I was out last night on a yellow drunk with Horan and Goggins.

Stephen went on:

- Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.

- Repeat, said Lynch.

Stephen repeated the definitions slowly.

- A girl got into a hansom a few days ago, he went on, in London. She was on her way to meet her mother whom she had not seen for many years. At the corner of a street the shaft of a lorry shivered the window of the hansom in the shape of a star. A long fine needle of the shivered glass pierced her heart. She died on the instant. The reporter called it a tragic death. It is not. It is remote from terror and pity according to the terms of my definitions.

- The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I use the word arrest. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or rather the dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.

'Melpomene', Benedetto Civiletti, di fronte al Teatro Massimo

There seems to be something seriously amiss here, as if deciding what is tragic can be settled rather shockingly by semantics, for most certainly a young girl being killed in an accident is tragic, in my view. I am not sure if Joyce is mocking such semantic academic games here. I will get to my ultimate tragic heroine eventually, which no doubt neither Joyce nor Aristotle would regard as tragic.

David Hume considered a disagreeable emotion to be a positive element in a literary work, and a tragedy that is assuredly composed affords us pleasure when such pleasure is to all appearances dependent upon ‘sorrow, terror, anxiety’. He formulates an intricate proposition concerning the mental operations of imagination with regard to our negative passions, making reference in passing to catharsis through a reference to the audience's laments and blubbering that ‘give vent to their sorrow’ but primarily he seems to be holding discourse upon melodramas, and his actual theme is the experience of conflicting emotions directed at the same time towards a particular object. In virtue of the fact that the pleasure afforded by tragedy and melodrama depends upon and is proportionate with their capacity to arouse grief, fear, and other disagreeable passions, Hume thereby is utilising literature and theatre as an occasion to elaborate upon his theory of mixed emotions.

As Hume formulates it, the problem is to account for the nature of the relationship between our approval, which is an agreeable feeling, and the presence of ‘sorrow, terror, anxiety’, and other naturally disagreeable emotions. The solution, Hume asserts, is that any emotion ‘which attends a passion, is easily converted into it, though in their natures they be originally different from, and even contrary to each other’. It was Hume's view that in matters to do with taste the unchallenged appearance of vice is looked upon as a flaw, and unpleasant emotion is a defect. However, with regard to tragedy he identifies a flaw in Nicholas Rowe’s, (1674 - 1718), ‘The Ambitious Stepmother’, and the defect of the play is not the endorsement of vice, rather, its flaw is the staging of action that is ‘too bloody and atrocious’. But now a question presents itself: why is shocking spectacle a flaw that leads to general disapproval? Is it merely a matter of the degree of shock? But then, why should that hinder an audience from transmuting such shock into a contrary and pleasurable experience, as Hume claims occurs with regard to terror and anxiety?

The hindrance does not appear to be moral in nature, of the kind Hume discussed in his essay on taste concerning a work failing to guide appropriate disapproval towards vicious manners, for there Hume suggests that the same content would not be a flaw with the making of proper modifications, but his essay on tragedy does not draw attention to any moral aspects of Rowe’s play. The discussion of tragedy thereby descends into a mere riddle concerning human psychology, that is to say, the fact that disagreeable elements can be either strengths or detrimental defects. And the pleasure afforded by tragedy has two constituents. Firstly, different aspects of the work have to engender the audience’s agreeable and disagreeable responses, the disagreeable aspects contributing to its general approval in virtue of the fact that those attributes are weighed against naturally agreeable attributes thus balancing themselves out. Secondly, a general psychological principle accounts for the possibility of competing emotions to produce a complex, pleasing sentiment, a principle that holds that when the same object produces different passions, even those 'of a contrary nature', then the subordinate passion can be transmuted into the predominant passion. Our natural delight in imitation provides a strong and predominant passion, and the naturally disagreeable feelings generated by the plot provide a subordinate and contrary feeling, the movement of which fortifies the predominant passion. And unless the negative feeling becomes predominant, the overall effect of a well composed tragedy will be an audience 'pleased in proportion as they are afflicted'.

Elizabeth Younge as Artemisia in ‘The Ambitious Stepmother’, painted by J. Roberts, engraved by John Thornthwaite, 1777

Where does that get us? Hume declines to present us with a definition of tragedy that we can work with, and furthermore, 'The Ambitious Step-Mother'? Sounds more like the title of a farce rather than a tragedy. Let us briefly run through the plot. Arsaces is an aged and dying Persian king, though the real power is in the hands of his second wife, Artemisa, whose first husband Arsaces arranged to have murdered in order to wed her, so infatuated is he with her beauty, which accounts for the control she now has over him. Artemisa is determined wants to secure the succession of the crown for her own son, Artaban, while Arsaces had sent his own eldest son Artaxerxes into exile but has now returned to claim the right of his succession. Artemisa elicits the support of scheming courtier Mirza who seeks revenge on account of Artaxerxes having rejected the offer of his daughter Cleone for marriage instead marrying Amestris, daughter of Memnon his counsellor. Mirza contrives a plot to estrange Artaxerxes from Memnon, Artemisa blocks the way of Artaxerxes to his dying father’s bedside, the plot becomes complicated because Cleone, albeit having been rejected by Artaxerxes, is passionately in love with him and pays no heed to her father’s wishes. Mirza also schemes to overpower his and the queen’s enemies. Artaxerxes, Memnon, and Amestris are all arrested by guards at the annual Festival of the Sun, and Mirza wishes for Artaxerxes and Memnon to be executed on the morrow, but Cleone having donned masculine dress offers the two prisoners the chance of escaping through Mirza’s palace. Meanwhile, Amestris, confined in Mirza’s palace, is sexually assaulted by Mirza, and during the struggle stabs him with his own poniard, whereupon he beckons the captain of the guard to drag Amestris near him and he stabs her. As she lies dying, Artaxerxes and Memnon enter to hear the woeful tale of her wrongs and her last appeal to her lover, and then she dies and Artaxerxes stabs himself.

This is therefore a tragedy, if tragedy it be, in which the innocent suffer along with the guilty, although is that not always the case? But for Hume as a piece of theatre it fails on account of its gory and shocking spectacle, which tips the balance in the wrong direction. And yet we may respond that many of us enjoy the spectacle of violence. Hume basically concedes as much: ‘The English theatre abounds too much with such shocking images’. One then may wonder how a play can be spoiled upon so much of the audience enjoying it, for there is no appeal other than to sentiment? It may be contended that shocking spectacle satisfies vulgar taste but not more refined taste, for many people take pleasure in aesthetically uninteresting works, le Théatre du Grand-Guignol for instance, or horror movies, whereas a refined taste is equally sensitive to all aspects of a work, including its formal composition.

Aesthetic satisfaction is quite often dependant upon what one is used to and upon associations and expectations developed by the life experiences of an intended audience, and if its expectations are encroached upon through excessive violence, and if there is no compensatory reward for it having been included, then the work has been inappropriately presented for the audience it is intended for. But works that merely gratify expectations will please critics with less discernment and so it is that shocking images that are standard fare in English theatre delight the audience, while the same gory spectacle and dismal stories, insufficiently softened by genius and eloquence, displease taste more refined. But this moves us from an understanding of the nature of tragedy into an area which No?l Carroll, (1947 - ), calls the paradox of the heart, why does an audience get pleasure from feeling fear, or disgust, or the like? What is it that rewards vulgar taste if a violent spectacle has with it little in the way of aesthetic value? Shakespearean tragedy, which can certainly be gory (see 'Titus Andronicus', mentioned above) at least has its exquisite language. Hume, ever dismissive of the vulgar, thought they did not even attend to eloquence or similar formal accomplishments. But all he has to explain the predominant pleasure afforded by such spectacle is its 'exactness of imitation'? But that would imply that any inferior work will do that matches their expectations with regard to imitation and that is clearly false.

 ‘A Young Woman Holding A Crown, Possibly The Muse Melpomene’, Giovanni Martinelli (1600 - 1659)

We need some definition of tragedy that we can work with. Hegel, for whom Sophocles’ 'Antigone' is 'the absolute example furnished by tragedy', outlines his understanding of Greek tragedy thus:

'The original essence of tragedy consists then in the fact that within such a conflict each of the opposed sides, if taken by itself, has justification; while each can establish the true and positive content of its own aim and character only by denying and infringing the equally justified power of the other. The consequence is that in its ethical life, and because of it, each is nevertheless involved in guilt'.

The story of Antigone runs as follows. Polynices, whose name rather ominously means manifold strife, was the brother of Antigone, and son of Oedipus who, having been discovered to have killed his father and married his mother, had been expelled from Thebes leaving behind Polynices and his other son Eteocles to rule. But because of a curse that had been put upon them by their father Oedipus, the two sons did not share the rule peacefully and died as a result, killing each other in battle for control over Thebes. Creon thereby became king, ordering Eteocles to be buried in honour, Polynices to lie where he was and left to rot on the pain of death by stoning for anyone attempting to bury him or to mourn him (because he was a traitor). Antigone defies the king's edict, attempts to bury her brother, and is caught.

Each individual is therefore motivated by one particular ethical interest among several while claiming to represent the only one that in the particular circumstances warrants any respect. Antigone has 'a worthy reason for action', and 'equally Creon’s commandment is justified, insofar as the brother Polynices came as the enemy of the fatherland and sought to destroy it'. This sets out the basic requirement for an Hegelian understanding of what is required by the very essence of 'original tragedy and is a normative theory at least in this respect. If it could be demonstrated definitively that the actions of either Creon or Antigone were lacking in genuine justification, the conclusion has to be that there is nothing genuinely tragic, at the very least in the Greek sense, about what they did. The essence of 'original' tragedy rests not merely in the violation of another’s rights, nor in the violation of those rights in the conviction that one is justified in doing so, but rather in a genuine contradiction whereby in doing wrong one is also justified. In addition, the problem is not that the hero initially does what is right, but afterward goes astray, rather, original tragedy is to be found only when one action is at the same time both right and wrong.

By Hegel's reading of the tale Antigone and Creon negate themselves in an even more profound sense in that both are each crushed and ruined by the very immanent power they refuse to recognize and honour. Antigone is walled up alive by the ruler of the state, Creon is devastated and ruined by his own family, since both his son, Haemon, and his wife, Eurydice, commit suicide in the wake of Antigone’s death. Consequently, Antigone and Creon 'are gripped and shattered by something intrinsic to their own actual being'. And 'the action of each hero is shown to be not only destructive of the other but ultimately self-destructive'. What is truly tragic is such catastrophically self-destructive action, and hence Antigone is 'the absolute example furnished by tragedy'.

It may be objected that something is amiss with Hegel’s interpretation of Sophocles' 'Antigone'. Hegel believes Creon to be in the right to issue his decree prohibiting the burial of Polynices and to demand that Antigone obey it: “In the Antigone . . . the king commands that the brother [of Antigone] should not have the honour of burial ...; Creon’s commandment is justified, insofar as the brother came as the enemy of the fatherland and sought to destroy it'. Creon’s commandment is justified, therefore, by the fact that it is issued out of 'care for the welfare of the whole city'. It is 'tragic firmness' that is a characteristic of all truly tragic characters, an inflexibility that drives tragic conflict on toward a tragic, catastrophic outcome. What happens in such an outcome is that individuals who disrupt the harmony of ethical life, or prevent its being realized, are destroyed or negated, they suffer this fate because their 'one-sided particularity' will not 'adapt itself to this harmony' or let go of itself and its intentions', 

Was Creon in the right to issue his decree prohibiting the burial of Polynices and to demand that Antigone obey it, given that it was issued out of 'care for the welfare of the whole city', (a tyrant's excuse). If we say he was wrong are we thereby guilty of the very one-sided particularity that generated the tragedy in the first place? But what of Creon’s own self-justification in the play where he states that the city or state is like a ship on which we all depend for our well-being, and we should not honour those who seek to destroy it in the way we honour those who are its defenders? August Wilhelm Schlegel, (1767 - 1845), had called Creon’s orders 'tyrannical'. Hegel insisted that 'Creon is not a tyrant, but rather the champion of something that is also an ethical power'. Creon 'maintains that the law of the state, the authority of the government, must be preserved and punishment meted out for its violation', and in so doing, Hegel maintains, 'Creon is not in the wrong'. And so who is right? Schlegel or Hegel? What if the laws are unjust laws to begin with?

Benjamin-Constant, 'Antigone au chevet de Polynice', 1868

Let us try then with the tale of Tristan and Isolde. A legendary story that has been the inspiration to many writers, including Joyce. The Tristan and Isolde motif recurs throughout the Wake, the landlord's daughter is after all called Issy. Tristan, a Cornish hero, one of the Knights of the Round Table, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, is sent to fetch Isolde back from Ireland to wed the king. However, they fall in love en route, perhaps under the influence of a love potion meant for Isolde and Mark, and Tristan fights off a series of attempts to take Isolde back. In some versions of the legend, King Mark finds them together and stabs Tristan, perhaps a reverse version of the son defeating the father motif. Another version has Tristan marring Isolde; he later becomes wounded and sends for her; when the messenger finds her, she betrays him by telling him that he cannot be cured; he dies. In Richard Wagner's, (1813 - 1883), opera the lovers die together.

‘Hear, O hear, Iseult la belle! Tristan, sad hero, hear! The Lambeg drum, the Lombog reed, the Lumbag fiferer, the Limibig brazenaze. 

Anno Domini nostri sancti Jesu Christi Nine hundred and ninetynine million pound sterling in the blueblack bowels of the bank of Ulster.

Braw bawbees and good gold pounds, galore, my girleen, a Sunday'll prank thee finely.

And no damn loutll come courting thee or by the mother of the Holy Ghost there'll be murder!’

- ‘Finnegans Wake’

So what is so tragic about the story? Hegel's understanding of tragedy focussed upon conflicting forces at play, but unlike classical tragedy with modern tragedy the forces are at play within the tragic hero, subjective and personal emotions are in a state of conflict, although of course a classical tragic hero can experience personal emotional turmoil and a modern tragic hero can be at odds with the duties and commitments due to society. But the root cause of the conflict and subsequent fall of the tragic hero differ between the two. Wagner’s 'Tristan und Isolde' is a modern tragedy in that Tristan longs for release from the passions that torment him, and a metaphor of Day and Night is employed to designate two distinct realms. The Day, a world of falsehood, unreality, hiddenness, in which the lovers are tied by the dictates of King Mark's court, they must needs suppress their mutual love, they must feign lack of interest in each other. The Night, a world of truth and reality in which the lovers can be together, their desires openly expressed and able to be fulfilled. But alas the Night is also the world of death, only here can Tristan and Isolde become as one, forever.

This opera, however, is best understood as tragedy via the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, (1788 - 1860), Wagner's obvious source, given that Schopenhauer believed us to be driven by continual, unachievable desires, the gulf between our desires and the possibility of achieving leading us into misery. And, taking concepts originally posited by Immanuel Kant, (1724 - 1804), our representation of the world is phenomenon, the unknowable reality is noumenon. The conflicting forces at work to bring about the ultimate fate of Tristan are the world of Night (noumenon) and the world of Day (phenomenon), but these are two separate worlds and Tristan chooses the Night, for he was subject to a conflict between two forces both existing squarely in the Day, his obligations to the court of King Mark on the one hand, his desires on the other. But in the Night he is one with Isolde and so cannot be bound by the limitations and constraints that exist in the Day. His desires only exist in the Day, that is the world in which they are unfulfilled and so he rails against them and begs for release from them. But such release is only possible in the Night, his desires exist in the Day; (do you think this metaphor really works?).

Tristan is not a tragic hero in the classical sense, a victim of two conflicting forces both of which are right and yet resulting in crimes against the societal order the only possible resolution of which would be his death. He is a tragic hero in the modern romantic sense, the conflicting forces are internal to him, he is torn apart by his own desires and wishes, which if they are in conflict with his obligations towards the societal order that is incidental to the tragedy. The tragedy centres upon his own inability to reconcile forces of his own making, a kind of tragedy that for Hegel was less tragic than the classical kind, given that the latter dealt directly with the conflict of historical dialectic. For Schopenhauer romantic tragedy delivers more of an insight into the subjective, and hence into the suffering caused by an inability to reconcile passions with the will.

So what of Romeo and Juliet? The star-crossed lovers. The Shakespeare play about which Hegel had more to say than any other. In his discussion of the tragedies of Sophocles in the 'Aesthetics' he refers to 'simple pathos' as a quality of life the tragic characters exemplify:

'In their plastic self-sufficiency they may be compared to the figures of sculpture. After all, in spite of its determinateness, sculpture may express a many-sidedness of character. In contrast to the tempestuous passion which concentrates with all its force on one point alone, sculpture presents in its stillness and speechlessness the forceful neutrality which quietly locks up all powers within itself; yet this undisturbed unity nevertheless does not stop at abstract determinateness but in its beauty foreshadows the birthplace of everything as the immediate possibility of entering into the most diverse sorts of relation. We see in the genuine figures of sculpture a peaceful depth which has in itself the ability to actualize all powers out of itself'.

From tragedy of course we expect even more when it comes to the inner multiplicity of character. IShakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet', Romeo has love as his 'chief pathos'; yet we also see him in diverse relations to his parents, to friends, in squabbles over honour, his duel with Tybalt, his piety and trust in the Friar, his discourse with the apothecary from whom he buys the deadly poison, mostly he is dignified and noble, the exception being after he discovers he has been banished. Similarly with Juliet there is the relations to her father, her mother, her nurse, to Count Paris, and the Friar. But, as Hegel states: 'And yet she is just as deeply sunk in herself as in each of these situations, and her whole character is penetrated and borne by only one feeling, the passion of her love':

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite.

- Act II, scene ii 

At the beginning of the play Juliet is a quite childlike simple girl of fourteen or fifteen years old, with 'no inner consciousness of herself and the world, no movement, no emotion, no wishes; on the contrary, in all naivete she has peeped into her surroundings in the world, as into a magic-lantern show, without learning anything from them or coming to any reflection on them'. Nonetheless, 'for a heart so shut in upon itself a time must come when it is touched at one specific point of its inner life, when it throws its undivided force into one feeling determining its life, clings to it with undispersed strength, and is fortunate, or else, lacking support, perishes'. And then suddenly:

'... we see the development of the whole strength of this heart, of intrigue, circumspection, power to sacrifice everything and to submit to the harshest treatment; so that now the whole thing looks like the first blossoming of the whole rose at once in all its petals and folds, like an infinite outpouring of the inmost genuine basis of the soul in which previously there was no inner differentiation, formation, and development, but which now comes on the scene as an immediate product of an awakened single interest, unbeknown to itself, in its beautiful fullness and force, out of a hitherto self-enclosed spirit. It is a torch lit by a spark, a bud, only now just touched by love, which stands there unexpectedly in full bloom, but the quicker it unfolds, the quicker too does it droop, its petals gone'. 

So intensely moving to behold, but what about a tragic outcome brought about by an unhappy chance of fate, a messenger failing to deliver a message to Romeo informing him of the good Friar's scheme to enable him and Juliet to elope together? What reconciles us to the deaths of such an inward character like Juliet is a recognition that it is her own inner nobility, her beauty of character, that has led to her downfall. Juliet is too beautifully loving for this world, and according to Hegel any sense of reconciliation we feel in such a cases as hers is at best 'a painful reconciliation, an unhappy bliss in misfortune'.

And what of Ariadne? Cretan princess that King Minos of Crete put in charge of the labyrinth where sacrifices were made as part of reparations either to Poseidon or Athena, there are differing versions of the myth. She who helped Theseus conquer the Minotaur and save the victims from sacrifice, providing him with the thread by which he found his way out of the labyrinth, with whom she eloped only to be abandoned by him while she slept on the island of Naxos, whereupon she was discovered by Dionysus who wedded her. Nietzsche was quite taken by the character, he often spoke of Ariadne, the faithful companion of Theseus, once writing rather inappropriately to Cosima Wagner, (1837 - 1930), the composer's wife: 'I love you Ariadne' and signing it 'Dionysus'. The labyrinth can be quite a potent metaphor, we can venture into the labyrinth of our own soul on our own but we require the help of another to get us out again. However self-sufficient Nietzsche may have thought he was he needed his Ariadne, with her love and the thread of her wisdom to keep him stable in the real world as opposed to a delusionary one.

I finish with Ariadne because for me Ariadne abandoned is the ultimate expression of a tragic reality. Why was she abandoned? She will never know. Kant in the preface to his 'Critique of Pure Reason' quotes from Ovid’s, (43 BC - 18 AD), 'Metamorphoses' as he presents Metaphysics (out of favour then as she was to become in our own time) as a fallen queen: 'Now, however, the changed fashion of the time brings her only scorn; a matron outcast and forsaken, she mourns like Hecuba: But late on the pinnacle of fame, strong in my many sons, no exile, penniless'. Hecuba was the wife of King Priam during the Trojan War, all her sons butchered, herself sold into slavery. Hamlet, having watched with awe the skill of an actor performing the role of Hecuba with convincing agony and despair as she witnesses Priam's death, asks: 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?' (Act II, Scene ii). Because she is an outcast, her hopes and dreams all destroyed. And for what reason? So should we also weep for Ariadne, abandoned by her lover; for the follies and cruelties of war are understood, but tragedy ultimately has its roots in cognitive ignorance as an inevitable part of the human condition. A great deal of what is important to our lives lies beyond our knowledge and understanding. We are confronted by limits from all sides, our wishes to do good with no guarantee of a joyful result, lack of clarity even concerning our own intentions, our rational faculties failing to deliver up to us a world both meaningful and certain.

So what of Lady Philosophy herself then as tragic heroine? Kant observed that philosophy amounts to providing answers to three questions. What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? Tragedy delivers unto us rather unfavourable findings with regard to all three questions. Can Ariadne know who loves her? Can she guide events towards a happy sequel without being clear about what that even is? What can she hope for? Tragedy acknowledges our epistemic limits and the possibility of finite lives having no greater meaning or purpose beyond death. Such an understanding of tragedy is now beyond mere semantics. Indeed humanity itself is in the absence of an explanation of its origins abandoned. From whence did it come? What is its ultimate destiny? In modern existential parlance, life is absurd. The world slips between our fingers while we endeavour to grasp hold of some order or meaning from it. Human rationality is perpetually operating out of its depth. From whence have I myself come? To where am I going?

Martin Heidegger was very much mistaken in his claim that the tragedy of the present age is to be found in the lack of the possibility of producing a work of tragedy as Art. Absurdity and tragedy can not only be reconciled they belong together, the absurd is tragic, the tragic is absurd. Ariadne abandoned expresses this acutely, her life is an insurmountable contradiction, she is at odds with itself, adrift in a world rendered meaningless, while Lady Philosophy herself is always aiming at some kind of overcoming of contradiction as a necessity to discover truth, ultimately a fruitless endeavour. For Kant reason (which if it is not too fanciful I will personify through Ariadne) has a peculiar fate that leaves it unable to reconcile itself with itself, it has demands upon itself that are simultaneously impossible and inescapable. And yet, Hegel does at one point claim that 'the wounds of Spirit heal and leave no scars behind'. Is it even so? Melpomene is after all a daughter of Memory. She doesn't forget.

'Ariadne', c.1905, Herbert James Draper 

 ‘Ariadne's Lament’

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Who will warm me, who loves me still?

Give warm hands!

Give the heart's brazier!

Prone, shuddering

Like one half dead, whose feet are warmed;

Shaken, alas! by unknown fevers,

Trembling at pointed arrows of glacial frost,

Hunted by you, Thought!

Nameless! Cloaked! Horrid!

You hunter behind clouds!

Struck down by your lightning,

Your scornful eye, glaring at me out of the dark!

Thus I lie,

Writhing, twisted, tormented

By all the eternal afflictions,

Struck

By you, cruellest hunter,

You unknown—god ...

Strike deeper!

Strike one more time!

Stab, break this heart!

Why all this affliction

With blunt-toothed arrows?

How can you gaze evermore,

Unweary of human agony,

With the spiteful lightning eyes of gods?

You do not wish to kill,

Only to torment, torment?

Why torment—me,

You spiteful unknown god?

Aha!

You creep closer

Around midnight? ...

What do you want?

Speak!

You push me, press upon me,

John Atkinson Grimshaw, 'Ariadne at Naxos', 1877

Ah, already much too close!

You hear me breathing,

You eavesdrop on my heart,

Most jealous one! —

What are you jealous of anyway?

Away! Away!

What's the ladder for?

Do you want inside,

Would you get into my heart,

And enter

My most secret thoughts?

Shameless one! Unknown! Thief!

What do you wish to steal for yourself?

What do you wish to hear for yourself?

What will you gain by torture,

You torturer!

You—executioner-god!

Or am I, like a dog,

To wallow before you?

Devoted, eager due to my

Love for you—fawning over you?

In vain!

It stabs again!

Cruellest sting!

I am not your dog, only your prey,

Cruellest hunter!

Your proudest prisoner,

You robber behind clouds ...

Speak finally!

You, cloaked by lightning! Unknown! Speak!

What do you want, highwayman, from—me?...

What?

A ransom?

What do you want for ransom?

Demand much—so advises my pride!

And talk little—my pride advises as well!

Aha!

Me?—you want me?

Me—all of me? ...

Aha!

And tormenting me, fool that you are,

You wrack my pride?

Give me love—who warms me still?

Who loves me still?

Give warm hands,

Give the heart's brazier,

Give me, the loneliest one,

Ice, alas! whom ice sevenfold

Has taught to yearn for enemies,

Even for my enemies

Give, yes, surrender to me,

Cruellest enemy —

Yourself! ...

Gone!

He has fled,

My only companion,

My splendid enemy,

My unknown,

My executioner-god! ...

No!

Come back!

With all your afflictions!

All my tears gush forth

To you they stream

And the last flames of my heart

Glow for you.

Oh, come back,

My unknown god! my pain!

My ultimate happiness! ....

[A lightening bolt. Dionysus becomes visible in emerald beauty].

Dionysus:

Be clever, Ariadne! ...

You have little ears; you have my ears:

Put a clever word in them! —

Must one not first hate oneself, in order to love oneself? ...

I am your labyrinth ...

Coming up next:

Erato, muse of love poetry.

Notes to ‘Finnegans Wake’:

First quotation:

1. ou (Greek) = not; and outrage; plus tragedy.

2. Postcards; and scald = ancient Scandinavian poet.

3. a- (Greek), not, un-; and Academy of Letters (Joyce declined W. B Yeats' invitation to join Irish Academy of Letters); and William Shakespeare, ’The Comedy of Errors’, that revolves around two sets of identical twins.

Second quotation:

1. Lambeg = the name of a village near Belfast, N. Ireland, used attributively of the large drums traditionally beaten there on 12 July.

2. reed = a reed made into a rustic musical pipe; also applied to the hollow stems of other plants used for the same purpose.

3. fifer = one who plays the fife.

4. Brasenose College, Oxford; and brass instrument.

5. anno Domini nostri sancti Jesu Christi (Latin) = in the year of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. 

6. blueblack = black or dark with a tinge of blue; and Ulster Bank, College Green Branch, near Trinity College.

7. braw = splendid, showy.

8. bawbee = a Scotch coin of base silver equivalent originally to three, and afterwards to six, pennies of Scotch money, about a halfpenny of English coin; hence, in modern use, a halfpenny.

9. galore = in abundance or plenty.

10. girleen (Anglo-Irish) = young girl.

11. prank = to dress, or deck in a gay, bright, or showy manner; to decorate, adorn.

12. lout = an awkward ill-mannered fellow; a bumpkin, clown.

13. court = to pay amorous attention to, seek to gain the affections of, make love to, with a view to marriage.

Jean Delville, 'Oorlog' ('Le Christ en deuil'), 1933 

'And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'

- 'Matthew 27:46

(Question: Jesus feeling abandoned. A tragic hero?)