Part 12

In some respects the reverse of this view is the neo-classic doctrine of poetic justice, which is still held by some critics. According to poetic justice it is not the hero whom we are to admire, but the moral law which destroys him. Thus Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn writes: “Traditionally the serious drama deals with the transgressions of an immutable moral law by a self-originating will.... In each instance the destruction of the protagonist reconciles the spectator to a universe in which guilt is punished and justice is upheld.” That some such view governed the intentions of religious dramatists like Æschylus or Racine we must admit; but for the modern sceptic at least their plays are inspiriting in proportion as the struggle exalts the endurance, if not the goodness of the hero. That such was even the intention of other dramatists, Shakespeare in particular, is more than doubtful.

Other critics like Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch foretell the extinction of tragedy because it is dependent on an anthropocentric view of the universe. It is the “tragic fallacy,” says Mr. Krutch, to fancy that one’s “passions are important throughout all time and all space.” Though we may agree that they are not, to conclude from that rather obvious fact that tragedy is dead seems not wholly logical. Whatever the nature of the world, human greatness remains important for human beings; and Mr. Krutch would seem to give away his case by so plainly admiring greatness in the very tragedies whose passing he deplores.

The ethical victory of the tragic hero is not a vindication of a moral order in the universe; neither is it a victory for an elaborated system such as religion fosters. Macbeth is wicked but admirable. Something primitive and universal in mankind responds to courage, fidelity, endurance, even for evil ends. Such admiration rises spontaneously from our strongest impulses, those toward survival and success. In the theatre to behold a man steadfast in his will even to death is to feel our own natures enhanced and to discover in ourselves unrealised powers. Such heroic manifestation of will is essential to tragedy of the great tradition, and is found in Sophocles, in Shakespeare, in Corneille alike.

Several influences have combined in destroying heroic tragedy. It was the tradition of the Renaissance to make the hero a prince, the mere semblance of nobility securing a deferential response from the audience. Modern democracy has changed all that. Industrialism, furthermore, has fostered the feeling that success is synonymous with getting rich. And science has not only helped destroy popular traditions that might have nourished a modern spirit of admiration, but has fostered a wintry air of scepticism, making man appear not an imperfect angel but a super-educated monkey. Psychology in particular has been industriously cutting at the root of heroism, the belief in free will, by exhibiting the mechanical causes for conduct.

The writer of tragedy who succumbs to these influences finds himself thus in a dilemma. Unable to believe in greatness, he cannot inspire others. If he would gain elevation, he must falsify his beliefs; if he would express his candid view of life, he must forego the tragic lift. Heroic tragedy was the outcome of a view perhaps pessimistic about things in general, but always optimistic about the human quality of individuals. The modern view is pessimistic about everything. As Hardy expressed it, the prospect most harmonious with the temper of the thinking modern would be a gaunt waste in Thule. As a result the dilemma of the naturalist poet is this: He cannot be both honest and sublime.

This statement will be more convincing when illustrated with examples drawn from various manifestations of the tragic spirit--in narrative poetry and the novel as well as in the drama.

I have emphasised the effect of science; and at first thought it might seem that the great romantics of a century ago, who preceded the scientific disillusionment, still kept the heroic tradition alive. It is true that they inherited the tradition, but in their hands it became not heroism but heroics. The romantic tendency was to seek thrills rather than truth, and to draw less from human nature than from a literary fashion.

Hernani and Ruy Blas, for example, are highly effective constructions of clap-trap, to which Hugo’s beautiful and rhetorical verse gives a semblance of significance. But they can be taken seriously only by abandoning the intelligence. To-day they seem no more tragic than Dumas père or the mélodrames of the Boulevards from which Hugo learned his technic. As melodrama they are, to be sure, still entertaining.

Such romantic literature of escape did not of course decrease in popularity with the development of science, but it distinctly lost literary prestige. After the fifties and sixties the romantic who would be taken seriously had to cope with scepticism and disillusionment. Thus Rostand, writing Cyrano de Bergerac, was careful to preserve the smile of sophistication; he delicately played with pathos, and even flirted with comedy. We can take the extravagances of the drama half in the spirit of play and enjoy them as a fairy tale. Its heroism is the heroism of fancy, not of life. It is in a similar spirit that we enjoy the thrillers and detective tales of to-day. We seek them for recreation only; and it is difficult to imagine that such romance can ever again be thought of as seriously tragic.

The romantic writer, however, can scarcely be expected to be content with the rôle of popular entertainer. Though for the past fifty years on the defensive, he has persisted in attempting the exaltation of tragic art. Maeterlinck, for example, sought to reconcile pessimism with romance by developing a fatalistic “static drama” and throwing over it a Pre-Raphaelite mist of romantic symbolism. With him a symbol became less a visible sign of another object than a stimulant to emotional intoxication; and if we look at the early plays with clear heads we see that they are rooted in a determinism fatal to the heroic tradition. Later Maeterlinck grew more optimistic, but in Monna Vanna, which was inspired by Browning, we get exaltation of passion rather than will.

Whereas Maeterlinck tried to preserve romantic values, if not heroism, by reconciling them with science, the great Russians, Tolstoi and Dostoevski, evaded scientific pessimism by escape into a romanticised Christianity. The result was no less fatal to heroism. As they saw it, the Christian paradox was that the worst persons achieve the greatest regeneration; and they presented it with extreme violence. Thus in Tolstoi’s The Power of Darkness the leading character is not only a drunkard, a lecher, and a murderer of his own child, but he is hopelessly craven, stupid, and weak. Yet he wins salvation by public confession. Such a conversion seems more emotional than religious, since it is the result of no discipline of the will. But apart from such questions it would appear obvious that such a play as this is poles apart from heroic tragedy. It is Tolstoi’s sentimentalised conception of Christian poetic justice which is exalted.

The exaltation which the romanticist failed to achieve, the scientific naturalist did not even attempt. Ibsen, apart from his great intrinsic importance, is interesting because he shows the transition from the one mode to the other. His early plays were modelled after Scribe and Schiller; and use of the sagas links him with the heroic tradition. Though sceptically, he exalted the will and prophesied the superman. But his mature work shows the effect of science: men are portrayed more as victims than shapers of events, and responsibility is shifted from the individual to society. His transition from romanticism to scientific naturalism was made easy by the fact that romanticism had already identified man with nature. Disillusion concerning the latter brought about degradation of the former.

Though the increasing use of symbolism gives Ibsen’s later work a romantic tone, the plays are built on studies of mental abnormalities which seem almost intended to demonstrate the non-existence of heroism. The fall of the master builder is indeed a symbol of the falsity of what Shaw calls “ideals.” But Ibsen’s anti-heroic tendency is seen perhaps most forcefully in the famous tragedy of his middle period.

In Ghosts the formal resemblances to Greek tragedy and the element of human error obscure the essential differences. The animus vitalising the action is the attack upon a false code of morals--or “ideals”--of which the heroine is the victim. And, as is proper in a naturalist tragedy, the Spirocheta pallida is made the deus ex machina. The emotional effect, furthermore, is not elevation but horror. We can admire the author for honesty and daring, but not the characters. The best of them, Mrs. Alving, is admirable only in intention, and false to her convictions, as the author makes a point of showing. She is at the curtain so far from a “spiritual victory” that there remains for her a dilemma which is probably the cruelest in dramatic literature: killing her own son or letting him live an idiot.

The contrast between this play and, let us say, Hamlet is plain when we compare Oswald’s cry, “The sun--the sun,” and the final speech of Fortinbras:

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov’d most royally; and for his passage, The soldiers’ music and the rites of war Speak loudly for him.

The former is the bitter irony of disillusion, the very mockery of the romantic cliché, “Then came the dawn.” The latter ends the play with eloquent praise.

III

The elevation which Ibsen gains in Ghosts through beauty of structure and atmospheric effect does not carry over to the theme; here the author frankly chooses honesty and foregoes sublimity. Few or no writers since have been at once as great and as honest. If we observe the literature of the last quarter century to see how it has met the dilemma, we shall find perhaps an explanation of current anarchy and experimentation. Some take refuge in subtle evasions, disguised by the cleverness of novel technic or material. But those who do not evade the issue follow two roads: the road of laughter, which goes by way of irony and satire; and the road of tears, by way of pathos or cruelty.

The former path, since it leads away from the tragic emotions, need not detain us long. With effort the romantic can school himself into a detachment of head from heart in which he can smile at the contrast between his dreams and the reality. His laughter may be bitter, but it is laughter. Pirandello, aware of the flux and illusoriness of life, deliberately contrasts it with the permanence and significance of fiction; and extracts mirth from the grotesquerie and cleverness of his paradoxes, in spite of the disillusionment underlying them. Anatole France armoured his sensibility with detached artistry and the esprit gaulois. Aldous Huxley, too much the moralist to be wholly detached, solaces himself with savage satire. The whole work of Cabell is a series of repetitions of one bitter “jest” involving the night before and the morning after. Such writers, emotionally romantic but intellectually sceptical, choose to laugh at their predicament rather than weep.

The road of tears concerns us directly. It usually follows the way of pathos. Though Aristotle made pity and fear correlative emotions, it is a fact that we feel the former more for the weak victim like Ophelia than for the hero, and that the more we admire, the less we need weep. Pathos must be subordinate in heroic tragedy if the play is to elevate our spirits. Obviously, however, the modern who sees nothing to admire is left with pathos as his chief effect.

Pathos and horror we find in Hardy, little mitigated by any admiration except for the author’s artistry. Rarely we find a heroism of sorts in characters like Michael Henchard; but it is significant that the author ended his novels with Jude. Galsworthy’s habitual irony always borders on pathos if not sentiment. French “naturalism” is harsher and at times, as in Madame Bovary, finds expression in bitter irony. But pathos is none the less its most powerful effect. The Old Wives’ Tale of Arnold Bennett is an English imitation; here we feel the pathos of mere mortality quite apart from anything the very ordinary characters do. In Theodore Dreiser, “naturalism,” though sadly in need of pruning, still bears its bitter fruit. It is characteristic of its spirit that Dreiser uses the word “tragedy” with reference to the fate of a Clyde Griffiths.

But since pathos skirts the gulf of sentimentality, the “hard-boiled” generation since the war have turned from it. Those of the younger group who cannot laugh have as a result begun to explore another emotion, which lies even deeper in our nature, and which is also compatible with disillusionment. The savage in all of us finds a fierce and hard delight in torture. Significantly the word “sadism” has become fashionable. We may name the emotion “cruelty,” though the word is perhaps inadequate.

In the drama an important forerunner of contemporary exploitations of cruelty and sex, as well as of expressionism, was Frank Wedekind. Cruelty is manifest in James Joyce. In D. H. Lawrence it accompanies a pathological exaltation of sexuality, and thus gives him greater hardness than his American parallel, Sherwood Anderson. A very interesting instance of it is the work of a contemporary American poet whose fame is still unequal to his remarkable achievements. I speak of Robinson Jeffers.

Jeffers’ long narrative poems spread a more than Thyestian banquet of horrors. With surprise we learn that in private life the author is so unwilling to inflict pain that “he never picks a flower wantonly.” But in his art he more than compensates for such sensibilities. Roan Stallion, for example, depicts the passion of a modern Pasiphaë. The unlucky husband is trampled by the stallion, and the woman shoots the animal. Tamar deals with incest between brother and sister, and ends with a fire which burns down the house and its more or less crazy inmates. The Tower Beyond Tragedy, though treating the Clytemnestra legend with great power, ends in the incest motive between Orestes and Electra.

The perversity of theme, however, is partly compensated by elevation of treatment, for Jeffers has a certain grandeur of style, drawing as he does upon Greek literature, the Bible, modern psychology, and physical science for thought, and the beauty of natural scenery for description. A passage which illustrates at once his power of style and his drift toward cruelty is found in preparation for the crucial scene of Roan Stallion.

Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split. Tragedy that breaks man’s face and a white fire flies out of it; vision that fools him Out of his limits, desire that fools him out of his limits, unnatural crime, inhuman science, Slit eyes in the mask; wild loves that leap over the walls of nature, the wild fence-vaulter science, Useless intelligence of far stars, dim knowledge of the spinning demons that make an atom, These break, these pierce, these deify, praising their God shrilly with fierce voices: not in a man’s shape He approves the praise, he that walks lightning-naked on the Pacific, that laces the suns with planets, The heart of the atom with electrons: what is humanity in this cosmos? For him, the last Least taint of a trace in the dregs of the solution; for itself, the mould to break away from, the coal To break into fire, the atom to be split.

In interpretation of his thought Mr. Louis Adamic quotes Mr. Jeffers as saying that civilisation tends inevitably toward downfall through sexual introversion. Although to attempt to “break out of humanity” after the fashion exalted in Roan Stallion is, to be sure, dangerous, “misinterpreted in the mind of a fool or a lunatic,” nevertheless the fault of the civilised person is that he “regards man exclusively,” “founding his values, desires, his picture of the universe, all on his own humanity.” Mr. Jeffers thus levels his attack directly at the foundation of humanism, and allies himself with the naturalists who seek salvation in the physical.