A Comparison of Aristotelian and Nietzschean Tragic Theory { 2004 }
A symbol, in representing any given thing or idea, stands in front of what it symbolizes, obscuring meaning while at the same time creating a clear connection between itself and the thing it is symbolizing. That the seemingly straightforward concept of symbolism should hold within it this paradox is curious, and one might question, which is most valuable, or most correct, the symbol or the thing symbolized? Perhaps the symbol could be considered superficial or unnecessary; perhaps the thing symbolized stands in need of being obscured, or perhaps the world stands in need of being shielded from the plainness of things. On the other hand, symbols might be a necessary part of human existence. Perhaps the layers of signification in the world are inevitable concoctions of the human mind, the created result of its influence on the natural world.
There is a type of symbolism in all art. Proverbially, art imitates and represents life, but is also distinctly separate from the reality of experience in every way. A tragedy portrayed upon a stage bears obvious and intended resemblance to tragedy in human life, but is in not perceived in the same way. However, because the one represents the other, their relationship is fundamentally a symbolic one. When Aristotle speaks of pity and fear as tragic emotions, saying, “…our pity is awakened by undeserved misfortune, and our fear by that of someone just like ourselves—pity for the undeserving sufferer and fear for the man like ourselves…” (48), he interprets that man, the character upon the stage, as a symbol imparting meaning through the action he presents. Likewise, when Nietzsche takes up the two concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, seeing in the former a world of appearance and structure and in the other a much less superficial, far more ‘primal’ substance, he uses the concept of symbolism to explain the complex relationship between them.
How symbolism is used in Nietzsche’s and Aristotle’s separate theories of tragedy becomes an interesting comparison, especially considering how greatly the two perspectives on tragic drama differ. Draper introduces Tragedy: Developments in Criticism with comments concerning both Aristotle and Nietzsche, saying, “Aristotle stands at the head of those who focus on tragic form” (13) and that contrarily, Nietzsche “is concerned with origin rather than form …” (33). In Nietzsche’s case the philosophical concerns connected to his view of Greek tragedy are much more evident than in Aristotle’s work; but despite the differences between them, approaching Nietzschean and Aristotelian theories of tragedy through the backdrop of tragic philosophy creates common ground upon which to compare the two. Considering the powerful influence which tragedy in dramatic form seems to exercise in human culture, the inference that within the delicate relationship between artistic representation and the reality of experience there might be found an important meaning is an ambitious but reasonable one. As a result of the clear connections which exist between tragedy as an art form and the real tragedies of human existence, the two separate discourses of tragic theory and philosophy find a place in which to mingle; moreover, the tragic effect this connection seems to cause in the audience, as well as its possible significance, raise further questions about the value of tragic drama as a part of human society and culture.
It is difficult to analyze the position Nietzsche’s tragic theory occupies in relation to the rest of his philosophy, even if one limits one’s consideration of that philosophy to his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche’s perspective on tragic drama is presented as a part of a larger statement involving several different areas of thought. In his introduction to The Birth of Tragedy, Michael Tanner comments that the book is a meeting place for the ‘three enthusiasms’ of Nietzsche, including Greek literature, the Schopenhauerean philosophy, and Wagner (x). Tanner also states that “…for all its brevity, [The Birth of Tragedy] is a work which is attempting to do many things more or less simultaneously” (viii). Nietzsche’s motives, therefore, as he attempts to explain tragedy, its origins and its possible meanings, might be brought into question because of his potentially conflicting interests; nevertheless, what Nietzsche discusses within his first book ought to be considered a valid perspective. In Tanner’s view, the book “…leads us to ponder on the nature of the relationship between our experience of suffering in life and in art in a uniquely intense way…” (xxii).
If the various tragedies experienced in life and those experienced in art could be dichotomized and matched up to Nietzsche’s own intriguing distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, understanding his explanation of tragedy would become fairly simple. In some ways the clear-cut duality of Apollonian artifice and Dionysian truth on the other may seem to fit Nietzsche’s theory; Spinks summarizes, “…Nietzsche can characterize Greek tragedy as ‘the Dionysiac chorus, constantly discharging itself into an Apolline world of images’ and drama as the ‘Apolline symbol of Dionysiac knowledge’” (27). However, Nietzsche seems to apply the duality of Apollonian and Dionysian forces to more than one aspect of Greek tragedy, and in doing so complicates his argument.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche observes, “So tremendous is the power of the Apolline epic that it enchants the most terrible events before us with delight in illusion and in redemption through illusion” (61). Tragic drama begins to be seen here as a symbol—an Apolline representation of something so real, so universal, and so inescapable that it becomes the foundation of what Nietzsche called a “tragic need for art” (76). This is a need for the realities of pain and horror in the world to be mediated in art, to be interpreted and therein granted a purpose, even if that purpose is only to form the material for artistic expression and to be represented. “Between the universality of its music and the Dionysiac receptivity of the listener,” Nietzsche writes, “tragedy interposes a sublime symbol, myth…. Above all, the tragic spectator is overcome by a sure presentiment of a supreme delight attained along a road of destruction and denial, so that he feels that the very depth of things is speaking perceptibly to him” (100). The significance of tragic drama seems to reside in the way it symbolizes the fundamental paradox of existence, sparing mankind the need to explain this paradox in words.
Choosing to speak of tragedy in its original Greek context, Nietzsche evaluates the origin and purpose tragic drama held in the culture of that time. As Spinks summarizes,
“The Greeks… developed a tragic art because they had the strength to envisage life as a continuous cycle of Creation and destruction…. The importance of tragic art for Nietzsche is that it enabled the Greeks to express the chaos and force of a thoroughly pre-cultural and inhuman form of life. Tragedy expressed some of the most profound and vital aspects of what it means to be human…” (14)
This view of tragedy connects it directly with general philosophy. ‘What it means to be human’ is one of the most fundamental questions in the world of rational thought. That the creative arts, and in particular tragic drama, should stand as important elements in the overall structure and meaning of human culture and existence is hardly surprising; however, the way in which Nietzsche suggests tragedy is somehow completely divorced from all concepts of morality brings his philosophy to another level. Spinks writes further,
“Tragic art, for Nietzsche, does not provide a moral interpretation of life; nor does it offer a teleological vision of a purpose of goal existence. Instead, the value of tragedy is that it momentarily aligns us with the most profound material force—the endless becoming of life itself—beyond any thought of metaphysical consolation nor the hope of redemption.” (61)
Why is this alignment so valuable? Despite the fact that the tragic perspective Nietzsche explains is one in which, as Julian Young comments, “Individuals do not merely suffer; they suffer senselessly, ‘absurdly’, for there is no goal in which their suffering might find justification as its necessary means” (40), there also seems to be an important emotional experience connected to tragic drama, one which somehow accomplishes an important sort of transfiguration for the audience. Young’s remarks on this subject paraphrase Nietzsche’s ideas about the Greek chorus and explain the process in these words: “Nietzsche suggests that the singing of the chorus…‘nullifies’ the principium individuationis, draws the hitherto soberly Apollonian spectator into the Dionysian world. From this perspective he experiences with joy the annihilation of the tragic hero” (57). Here, the paradox of tragic ‘joy’ is explained by appealing to a sense of unity, which seems to exist both between the separate members of the chorus and also between the members of the audience, wherein each self is momentarily dissolved into a larger and somehow more peaceful whole. Young goes on to say, “Our tragic joy consists in an at least momentary escape from the terror of individual human existence…” (45).
Not only is tragedy important to Nietzsche because of the way in which this escape is accomplished, but also because “Tragedy,” Spinks paraphrases, “in Nietzschean terms, forms the basis for a non-moral vision of life” (16). This questioning of ethical values contributes to one of the most influential parts of Nietzsche’s discussion. Spinks reflects upon the implications of connecting tragedy to an amoral view of the world, saying, “Indeed, the later experience of Greek tragedy puts into question what we think of as ‘moral’ and ‘civilized’ values and forces us to consider the types of value we must create in order to develop a powerful, dynamic, and expansive way of life” (14). Here Nietzschean philosophy uses tragedy to develop theories about life and culture in general. In part, tragedy becomes a symbol for him, one which mirrors life but also reaches out to it, influencing it. As Tanner states, “Tragedy induces a state of intoxication in which we are not passive spectators of the ‘witches’ Sabbath of existence’, but participators, even if to some extent shielded ones” (xxiv). The symbol of tragic drama, in this way, paradoxically grants experience while shielding one from its consequences.
Tragic drama might be considered coincidental, or at least tangential, to Nietzsche’s philosophy, in that it is used to support a broader set of theories about human existence; but Aristotle, in the Poetics, focuses so clearly on tragedy as drama that the same coincidental relationship can by no means be said to exist between the basis of Aristotle’s argument and any more general philosophy connected to it. Unlike Nietzsche, Aristotle most concerned with the specifics of what how tragedy ought to be put together in order to produce what he sees as the proper ‘tragic effect.’ Defining tragedy in terms of its imitative and representational aspects, Aristotle breaks down the genre of tragedy and considers it from a technical view. From that perspective, much can be inferred and extrapolated from Aristotle’s work is especially useful in comparing his perspective to Nietzsche’s, for, though different in many ways, both views touch on similar attributes of tragedy.
“The Poetics,” in the words of Draper, “is concerned with how the ends appropriate to the different kinds of poetry (epic, tragic, comedy, etc.) are best achieved, the end of tragedy being to present an action which will arouse the emotions of pity and fear…” (13). Throughout Aristotle’s discussion, the action of the play is clearly most important. In his Poetics, he writes, “… tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of action and life…” (39). Jones, seeking to explain the significance of this statement, understands that “Aristotle has founded his book on the distinction between false imitation of human beings and true imitation of actions because he reckons it is his responsibility…to oppose the inward-turning of attention and interest” which comes from concentrating on the individual character as the source of dramatic action, rather than the reverse (63). As Aristotle puts it, “Tragedy is the representation of an action, and it is chiefly on account of the action that it is also a representation of persons” (40). It is somewhat difficult to make sense of a view where instead of characters standing in place of distinct individuals, they instead serve the plot.
However true this arrangement of character and plot might be, the representation of character also remains important to Aristotle because of the way in which character contributes to the arousal of ‘pity’ and ‘fear’, the emotions which together make up the significant relationship between the essence of tragic drama and an audience. Pity and fear both require objects—someone on whom to bestow pity and something of which to be afraid. Aristotle writes that “our pity is awakened by undeserved misfortune, and our fear by that of someone just like ourselves—pity for the undeserving sufferer and fear for the man like ourselves” (48). The symbolism underlying this system of emotional influence is interesting. A spectator of tragedy, investing his imagination and his emotions into the representation of events on stage, sees in the tragic figure an imitation of himself. Tragedy in this sense is a symbol of humanity, its experience and its perspectives.
One unmentioned but vital foundation in Aristotle’s remarks on tragedy is the mask and all the symbolisms connected to it. Jones hypothesizes that in Aristotle’s view, masks would have been “integral to the stage-presentation of human beings,” for reasons practical as well as philosophical (63). The importance of the mask in a symbolic dimension emphasizes the several ways in which tragedy connects with philosophies about the self and its representation. Jones writes, “…to say that the mask is a kind of face is to take it very seriously indeed; and it is also to utter the platitude that the people of Tragedy are the people of life, as art perceives and renders them” (63). His statement emphasizes the fact that tragedy is, like all art, symbolic, and in being so presumably carries some meaning.
Tanner states, “All art comes to us in some form or another, just as all experience is categorized ready for our consumption. That may mean that we never, so long as we survive our confrontation with truth, come into direct contact with it” (xx). Perhaps this is what the symbolism in tragic drama means—an insulation from a truth too terrible to be borne. And perhaps it must be that, while all art is in a sense symbolic, not all of its symbolism is necessarily as personal, nor so intense, as that found within tragic drama. George Steiner writes, “The forms of Greek tragedy codify the truth of experience and common understanding” (35).
This ‘codification’ is the artistic representation of tragedy in dramatic form. In Nietzschean terms, its presentation erodes the friction between individuals, uniting them in the concentrated suffering of one symbolic individual. Similarly, Aristotelian theory emphasizes the symbolism in tragic drama, albeit for a different purpose, one concerned with technique and effect rather than general meaning. Though different, the ways in which Nietzsche and Aristotle approach the genre of tragic theatre necessarily consider the fundamental facts wrapped up in its imitation, its representation, and its symbolism. Any effective tragic theory, whether it approaches tragedy through the cultural meaning or its specific dramaturgical components, must come to terms with the complex relationship which exists between tragic drama and the rest of the world as well as what such a relationship means.
WORKS CITED
Aristotle. Poetics, in Aristotle, Horace, Longinius: Classical Literary Criticism. ed and transl. by T. S. Dorsch. Harmondsworth: 1965
Draper, R. P., ed. Tragedy: Developments in Criticism. London: Macmillan 1980
Jones, John 1962. “Character and Action”, in R. P. Draper ed. Tragedy: Developments in Criticism. London: Macmillan, 57-65
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Shawn Whiteside translation. Michael Tanner, ed. England: Penguin Books 1993
Spinks, Lee. Friedrich Nietzsche. London: Routledge 2003
Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. London: Faber and Faber 1961.
Young, Julian. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000
