Tragic hero

“ Its hero philosophizes and moralizes upon every thing, and often indeed loses himself in reflection when he should be busy in action: and on this peculiarity of character, in fact, the interest of the story seems in great part to turn—the essence of the tragedy being not so much in the deeds of blood committed, as in the pain and conflicts of mind endured by one, called upon by circumstances to perform a part for which he is not fitted. Hence are excited our feelings of pity and sympathy, an essential element of just interest in the tragic. ”

“ The hero of the miracle seals his salvation by accepting the spiritual ideal of the community. These plays contribute in a positive manner to the maintenance of the social organism. The tragedies of life and literature, on the other hand, proceed from secular histories, histories of personages liable to disaster because of excessive peculiarity,—of person or xxii position. Whether the rank of the tragic hero be elevated or mean, he is unique: his desire is overweening, his frailty irremediable, or his passion unrestrained,—his peril unavoidable ”

“ Aristotle's conception of the ideal tragic hero is based on the assumption that the function of tragedy is to produce the katharsis, or purgation, of pity and fear,—"pity being felt for a person who, if not wholly innocent, meets with suffering -82-beyond his deserts; fear being awakened when the sufferer is a man of like nature with ourselves." ”

“ Second, it is part of the essence of tragedy that the conflict should be recognized as necessary and its issue as inevitable. In one form or another, whether as Greek or Christian or naturalistic, fatality has remained an abiding element in the idea of tragedy. The purpose or passion or sentiment which impels the hero to undertake and maintain the struggle must be a part of his nature so integral that nothing else is possible for him. "Ich kann nicht anders" is the cry of every tragic personality. ”

“ They naturally sought also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, to reach at once the extreme, whether in the stoicism of heroic fortitude, or in the monstrous fury of criminal desire. Of all their ancient greatness nothing remained to them but the contempt of pain and death whenever an extravagant enjoyment of life must finally be exchanged for them. This seal, therefore, of their former grandeur they accordingly impressed on their tragic heroes with a self-satisfied and ostentatious profusion. ”

“ The substance of tragic myth is first of all an epic event involving the glorification of the fighting hero: but whence originates the essentially enigmatical trait, that the suffering in the fate of the hero, the most painful victories, the most agonising contrasts of motives, in short, the exemplification of the wisdom of Silenus, or, æsthetically expressed, the Ugly and Discordant, is always represented anew in such countless forms with such predilection, and precisely in the most youthful and exuberant age of a people, unless there is really a higher delight experienced in all this? ”

“ We need not discuss any of the details of the exposition; the only point of present importance is that the fate which destroys a tragic hero is not a mere external force, it is in him as well as about him. ”

“ Characterization likewise depends mostly on the form of arguing abstractions, though certain types of importance later are already noticeable. The faithful friend and the aged counselor are ever at hand, and the part, if not the character, of the tragic hero is provided in Horestes and Virginius. The villain receives considerable attention. The English dramatists were puzzled to follow the classical tragedies in placing the source of evil in Fate or the decrees of the gods ”

“ To reject everything conciliatory in the tragic, to bereave the death of a hero of every trait of sublimity and poetical splendour, to let his own person, as it were, be degraded by the ignominy he is exposed to, is certainly alien to the spirit and methods of the early 19:th century romanticism. ”

“ The privilege of the hero—that is, of the martyr or of the interesting and appealing and comparatively floundering person—places him in quite a different category, belongs to him only as to the artist deluded, diverted, frustrated or vanquished ”

“ XIII. (Plot continued.) What constitutes Tragic Action. The change of fortune and the character of the hero as requisite to an ideal Tragedy. The unhappy ending more truly tragic than the 'poetic justice' which is in favour with a popular audience, and belongs rather to Comedy.
XIV. (Plot continued.) The tragic emotions of pity and fear should spring out of the Plot itself. To produce them by the Scenery or Stage Spectacle is entirely against the spirit of Tragedy. Examples of Tragic Incidents designed to heighten the emotional effect. ”

“ In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it a touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. ”

“ Tragedy, on this view, is the exhibition of that convulsive reaction; and the fact that the spectacle does not leave us rebellious or desperate is due to a more or less distinct perception that the tragic suffering and death arise from collision, not with a fate or blank power, but with a moral power, a power akin to all that we admire and revere in the characters themselves. ”

“ This exultation appears to be connected with our sense that the hero has never shown himself so great or noble as in the death which seals his failure. A rush of passionate admiration, and a glory in the greatness of the soul, mingle with our grief ”

“ For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. ”

“ LAEGH. Arise, Emania's slaughter-hound, arise, Exultant pride should be thy mood this day:-- Ferdiah of the hosts before thee lies-- Hard was the fight and dreadful was the fray. CUCHULLIN. Ah, what availeth me a hero's pride? Madness and grief are in my heart and brain, For the dear blood with which my hand is dyed-- For the dear body that I here have slain. LAEGH. It suits thee ill to shed these idle tears, Fitter by far for thee a fiercer mood-- At thee he flung the flying pointed spears, Malicious, wounding, dripping, dyed with blood. ”

“ But must we, less indurated, and more inclined to tender feelings, require demi-gods and heroes to descend, like so many desperate gladiators, into the bloody arena of the tragic stage, in order to agitate our nerves by the spectacle of their sufferings? No: it is not the sight of suffering which constitutes the charm of a tragedy, or even of the games of the circus, or of the fight of wild beasts. In the latter we see a display of activity, strength, and courage ”

“ No, the tragic (in its first sense, in the sense derived from the dramatic form from which it is named) is in the collision itself; it is the profound and, to our vision, the irreconcilable antagonism of different elements in life. And in life we accept it because we must; we transcend it because, as moral beings, we may. The sublime in actual tragic experience is the reaction of the unconquerable Soul. ”

“ A stranger one—one Allen Gray,—
No braver hero ever died
Than he whose love she lost through pride.
Unselfish, earnest, daring, brave,
All but himself he tried to save;
Heedless of death and danger—why? ”

“ In the medieval drama, death [Pg 132] had been a translation to final reward or punishment,—the portals of heaven and hell were open on the stage. In the Renaissance conception of tragedy death was the point and pith of tragic fact. Faith, forgiveness, reliance on Providence, assurance of immortality are rarely alluded to. Chance, mysterious fate, the emissaries of the devil, the powers of evil in the mind of man are the forces to which tragedy must attend; and they lead to a death terrible and pitiful, to be met bravely and defiantly, it may be, but not peacefully and hopefully. ”

“ And then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy. As we are moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are we stirred by the efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this man. ”

“ The great, good, beautiful, divine hero is not only dead but has perhaps gone over into the nether-world to defy death and the power of evil in their stronghold and to conquer and bind them. There is, then, a phase of painful, anxious, silent suspense. ”

“ Everywhere, from the crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power, intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our worship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and destroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they came into being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of this mystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed, conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. ”

“ As the design of tragedy is to instruct by moving the passions, it must always have a hero, a personage apparently and incontestably superior to the rest, upon whom the attention may be fixed, and the anxiety suspended. ”

“ We are stirred by the painful emotions of our fellows as readily as by their pleasurable ones. The tragic plays a large part in many forms of literature and in sculpture, music, and painting. And tragedy, dedicated to painful actions, also interests, fascinates, absorbs us. ”

“ Considered so far, the want to which tragedy ministers is not the craving for excitement but the need for expression.
2. A direct result of tragic representation is the enlargement of sympathy. The poet sets before the spectators a life different from and yet akin to theirs, which, however strange to them, powerfully stirs their hearts. Consider the effect of this, not on an individual reader, but on a dense assemblage of spectators. Will not each of them experience a fulness and refinement of sympathy with every other, for which their ordinary work and striving gives little room? ”

“ His words seem to express that it is the function of the tragic drama to appeal to our deepest sympathies and strongest passions, to arouse them, but at the same time to pacify them, and, as it were, to draw off the dangerous stuff that lies upon our soul—to resolve the perturbation of the mind in some transcendental contemplation. ”

“ The ‘torrent of passion rolls along precipices;’ pleasure is said to gleam upon despair ‘like moss upon the desolate rock;’ the death of a hero is compared to the peak of a mountain setting in seas of glory, or some such dreadful simile, built up with ladders and scaffolding. Then the thunder and lightning are mingled with bursts of fury and 309revenge in inextricable confusion; there are such unmeaning phrases as contagious gentleness, and the heroes and the heroine, in their transports, as a common practice, set both worlds at defiance. ”

“ The harmony of the argument, the splendor of the verse, the grandeur of conception and expression may counterbalance the painfulness of the story. Yet more, tragedy may bring the inspiration of greatness and endurance, of purity and unselfishness of spirit. Its idealization of character, its revelation of beauty and power even in distress and downfall, may bring a reassurance that turns pity to exhilaration. In drama as in life there may come in moments of trial and ruin the visions of the eternities to console and exalt us. ”

“ And as figure after figure rose before his imagination, of simple men and weak women who had conquered temptation and shame, torture and death, to live for ever on the lips of men, and take their seats among the patricians of the heavenly court, with brows glittering through all eternities with the martyr's crown, his heart beat thick and fast, and he longed only for an opportunity to dare and die. ”

“ Although his whole heart yearn
In passionate tragedy:
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.
Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.
Brief life, and hapless? Nay:
Through death, life grew sublime.
Speak after sentence? Yea:
And to the end of time.
Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom:
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom.
Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world's employ:
His soul was of the saints ”

“ But the agony of the hero over the little corpse of the child murdered with her plaything in her hand—the anguish that utters itself as in peal upon peal of thunder, broken by sobs of storm—the full crash of the final imprecation, succeeded again by such unspeakably sweet and piteous appeal to the little dead lips and eyes that would have answered yesterday—and at last the one crowning stroke of crime which calls down an answering stroke of judgment from the very height of heaven, for the comfort and refreshment and revival of all hearts—these are things of which no praise can speak aright. ”

“ Here lies Shakespeare's main differentiation from preceding tragedy, though one distinctly presaged in "Julius Cæsar." At all events, we have a conception of tragedy carried out in his succeeding plays. The hero, noble and righteous, is brought into conflict with the results of evil and circumstance, and he is crippled by his own inability or weakness. Tragedy becomes inherent in character, in the incompleteness that marks the best and mightiest of mankind. ”