Modern Tragedy By Raymond Williams

Tragedy and Tradition

‘Tragedy and Tradition’ is basically about tragedy and its historical perspective. He deems both tragedy and tradition inter-connected. He does not want to reject the present by the past or vice versa; but he thinks that concept of tradition is important to understand modern tragedy. In this essay, Raymond Williams discusses common as well as traditional meanings of tragedy. For him, tragedy is directly related to culture, society and also to the experiences in life. As he opines that we come to tragedy by many roads. “It is an immediate experience, a body of literature, conflict of theory, an academic problem” He feels that tragedy is not simply about death and sufferings, nor even any response to it; rather it is particular kind of event and a kind of response to the event that is purely tragic. However, there are certain events and responses in life that generally seem tragic, while others are not.

 According to Williams, Tragedy as a word has not changed but as dramatic form, it has gone under certain changes. He is of the view that these changes depend upon the changed perception of the people of the different ages.  According to him, “Tradition” does not mean to accept past entirely rather it is analyzing and evaluating the past in the present perspective. He says: “a tradition is not a past, but an interpretation of the past.” Moreover, tragic works should be examined critically as well as historically.

 To examine the tragic tradition means not necessarily to expound a single body of work and thinking, or to trace variations within an assumed totality. The present forces do not meet the conventional principles of tragedy and they have always been subject to change. It implies that the tradition of tragedy has been different in every age. As William observes: “tragedy comes to us as a word from long tradition of European tradition and it is easy to see this tradition as a continuity in one important way.” Tradition is a product of history, preserved through ages and is subject to the respective age’s socio-cultural consciousness. So tradition is the word used for continuity of something through a long past. In short, he describes historical development of the idea of Tragedy as follows:

Classical and Medieval Era:             

Tragedy originates from the religious festivals of Greek culture. Greek tragedies are unique and genuine. They did not depend on some specific doctrine; rather they are related to a network of beliefs that were common in that culture. In Greek tragedy, the forces weaving the fabric of tragedy are Fate, Necessity, Chance and gods. Greek felt that “Fate” and “Necessity” had become natural part of Greek tragedy as well as life in general. That’s why, the suffering of the main character symbolizes the sufferings of everyone.

To Williams, tragedy is neither simply death and suffering nor a response to it. It is a particular kind of event and response as well, which are purely tragic and embodied by long tradition. His basic intellection is: “the meaning of tragedy, the relationship of tradition to tragedy and the kinds of experience which we mistakenly call tragic” Deliberating the historical development of tragedy, Williams says that when the unique Greek culture changed, the chorus which was the critical component of dramatic form was discarded and the unique meaning of tragedy was lost. He says that things change and concepts change. On the basis of our concepts we tend to seek permanent meanings in art which is a serious mistake. He says: “It is not that we lack the evidence. But we fail to use it because it doesn’t fit our idea of tragedy”.

In Medieval era, tragedy underwent a vivid change. The governing forces in the Medieval tragedy are no more the supernatural forces of classical tragedy. They are replaced by the circumstantial forces. The protagonist is not in the grip of the supernatural forces but he is to be entangled in the social upheavals. Feudalism and the church are the two main forces in the Medieval culture. In Greeks tragedy, the tragic change is from ‘happiness to misery’ but in Medieval tragedy, it is from ‘prosperity to adversity’. It means Medieval tragedy emphasizes on the change of worldly or material change. The tragic hero remains unchanged both in classical and Medieval tragedies. The protagonist is to be, in all cases, a representative figure of the age. The tragedy was considered to be a story, an account but not an action.

Renaissance:

          In the Renaissance era, the feudal world of the Medieval is replaced by a new world of science, learning and materialism and individualism. The Renaissance period was also dominated by the idea of rank.

 The tragic hero eminent in Renaissance tragedy is fallen to supernatural riddles and subjected to his own faults and desires as well. Tragedy was considered to be a story of a noble man who falls in adversity from prosperity. But later, Renaissance tragedy ceases to be metaphysical in nature and becomes critical in development. The character of Elizabethan tragedy is determined by a very complicated relationship between elements of an inherited order and elements of a new humanism.

 Williams holds that Shakespeare was not the real inheritor of the Greeks; rather he was a major instance of a new kind of tragedy. Secular drama was a major step in the historical development in the idea of tragedy. In fact, Elizabethan tragedy anticipates the trends of Humanism and Romanticism. Raymond William says: “In one sense, all drama after Renaissance is secular”.

Neo-Classical:

During Renaissance, there is a precise emphasis on the fall of famous men, as ‘Rank’ was still important because the fate of ruling class was the fate of the city. But with the dissolution of feudal world, the practice of tragedy assumed new directions and modifications.

During the Neoclassical period, emphasis on dignity and nobility of the hero continued. But the moving force of the tragedy was now a matter of behavior rather than a metaphysical condition. The term “dignity” was given special importance. A dignified man was considered to be a man of style, hence, language used was also beautified with different features of embellishments. However, almost at the end of this era, changes took place in the concept of dignity. Thus “behavior” became more important as it was thought that an ordinary man could also behave in a dignified manner. The real spirit of tragedy was moral than metaphysical. The tragic error (hamartia) was moral, a weakness in an otherwise good man who could still be pitied. The elements of pity and fear were replaced with admiration and commiseration. The spectator’s response to sufferings became an activity in itself rather than a mere response to a particular action.

Lessing and Tradition:

According to Raymond Williams, Lessing a German critic and dramatist also contributed in the idea of tragedy by writing “theoretical rejection Neo-classicism”, a defense of Shakespeare” and an advocacy and writing of bourgeois tragedy. He considered neo-classicism as false classicism, because they were wrongly trying to be as exact and precise as the classical writers were. They were quite different from them in contents of tragedy and the only closeness with them was of style. He is of the view that Shakespeare was the only real inheritor of Greek tragedy.

Secular Tragedy:

It is believed that all the dramas after “Renaissance” were secular, whereas the Greek drama was religious. Elizabethan drama was secular in practice but retained a Christian consciousness. Neo-Classical Age is an age of peace, prosperity and secularism. Neo-classical is the first stage of substantial secularization. It insisted on relating suffering to moral error. With the gradual secularization of tragedy, morality became less important and more attention was paid to the critical side of the tragedy. The increasing emphasis on rational morality effected the tragic action. Tragedy, in this view, shows suffering as a consequence of moral error and happiness as a consequence of virtue; meeting the demands of poetic justice. The weakness lies in morality as it is static and moral emphasis is merely dogmatic.

Hegel and Hegelion:

Further he discusses Hegel who didn’t reject the moral scheme of poetic justice but he said that emphasis on morality would make a work social drama not tragedy. Tragedy, he said, was a specific kind of spiritual action. What is important for Hegel is not the suffering ‘mere suffering’ but its causes. Mere pity and fear are not tragic. It does not consider the external contingency beyond the control of the individual i.e. illness, loss of property, death etc. To Hegel, conscious individuality, individual freedom and self-determination are essential for genuine tragic action. Hegel asserts that tragedy recognizes suffering as: ‘suspended over active characters entirely as the consequence of their own act’. The modern tragedy is wholly personal and our interest is directed not to the abstract ethical questions but to the individual and his conditions.

Hence, Hegel feels that Greek tragedy has been seen as the embodiment of the conflict between primitive social forms and new social order, whereas with Karl Marx, Renaissance tragedy has been seen as the result of the conflict between dying feudalism and the new individualism. Individual suffers, not because he is in conflict with gods or fate, but with the process of the social transformation. Tragic hero, in Marxist Criticism becomes ‘world historical individual’, in conflict with ‘world-spirit’.

Schopenhaur and Nietzsche:

The views of these two German philosophers also contributed in the development of tragedy. Before, Schopenhauer, tragedy was associated with ethical crises, human growth and history. He secularized the whole idea of tragedy. He is of the view that ‘true sense of tragedy is the deeper insight into man’s original sin i.e. the crime of existence itself’. According to Nietzsche, tragedy dramatizes a tension, which it resolves in a higher unity. There the hero, who is the highest manifestation of will, is destroyed, but the eternal life of the hero will remain unaffected. According to him, the action of tragedy is not moral, nor purgative but aesthetic.

          In the end, it can be said that Raymond Williams’ concept of tragedy and tradition is not only profound but highly philosophical and thought provoking also. He has given forceful and historical perspective of tragedy and tradition. He has coded the views of English as well as German philosophers to make his arguments forceful. In short, all his discussion shows his power of critical talent and observations.

Tragedy and Contemporary Idea

In the essay ‘Tragedy and Contemporary Idea’, Raymond Williams discusses tragedy in relation to the contemporary ideas. He has discussed the four things: order and accident, the destruction of the hero, the irreparable action and its connections with death and the emphasis of evil. The tragic experience of every age is unique. Williams says that modern and its suffering are very complex and it would be a mistake to interpret the tragic experience of the modern man in the light of the traditional concepts. Tragic experience attracts the beliefs and tensions of a period.

It is neither possible nor desirable to have a single permanent theory of tragedy. Such an attempt would be based on the assumption that human nature is permanent and unchanging. Rejecting the universalistic character of tragedy, Williams says: “Tragedy is not a single or permanent fact, but a series of conventions and institutions….The varieties of tragic experience are to be interpreted by reference to the changing conventions and institutions”

 Raymond Williams has discussed following four main aspects of tragic theory:

Order and Accident:

Williams does not agree to this view that there is no significant meaning in ‘everyday tragedies’ because the event itself is not tragic; only becomes so with a through a shaped response. He cannot see how it is possible to distinguish between an event and response to an event, in any absolute way. In the case of ordinary death and suffering, when we see mourning and lament, when we see people breaking under their actual loss, we have entered tragedy. Other responses are also possible such as indifference, justification, and rejoicing. Depending upon varied responses, Hegel calls it “true sympathy and “mere sympathy”. But where we feel the suffering, we are within the dimensions of tragedy. But a burnt family or a mining disaster which leaves people without feeling are called Accidents. The events not seen as tragic are deep in the pattern of our own culture: war, famine, work, traffic, and politics. To feel no tragic meaning in them is a sort of our bankruptcy.

Raymond Williams opines that we can only distinguish between tragedy and accident, when we have conception of law and order. According to that law and order some events are tragic while others are mere accidents. Hence, some deaths do create tragic affects and others don’t. The death of a slave might be considered an accident, whereas that of a prince truly tragic as it might affect the whole country. However, the emerging bourgeois class rejected rank in tragedy. According to them individual was not a state, but the entity in himself.

Raymond Williams rejects the argument that event itself is not tragic but becomes so through a shaped response. It is not possible to distinguish between an event and response to an event. We may not have response but it doesn’t mean that the event is absent. Suffering is suffering whether we are moved by it or not. In this way, an accident is tragic even if we do not apply to it the concepts of ‘ethical claim’ or ‘human agency’. He also doesn’t seem to approve the distinction between accident and tragedy. Famine, war and traffic and political events are all tragic.

          It is often believed that tragedy was possible in the age of faith and it was impossible now, because we have no faith. Williams, on the contrary, believes that the ages of comparatively stable belief do not produce tragedy of any intensity. Important tragedy seems to occur, neither in periods of real stability not in the periods of open and decisive conflicts. Its most common historical setting is the period preceding the complete breakdown of an important culture. Its condition is the tension between the old and the new order. In such situations, the process of dramatizing and resolving disorder and sufferings is intensified to the level which can be most readily recognized as tragedy. Order in tragedy is the result of the action. In tragedy, the creation of order is related to the fact of disorder, through which the action moves. It may be the pride of man set against the nature of things. In different cultures, disorder and order both vary, for there are parts of varying general interpretations of life. We should see this variation as an indication of the major cultural importance of tragedy as form of art.  “I do not see how it is finally possible to distinguish between an event and response to an event”….“behind the façade of the emphasis on order, the substance of tragedy withered”         

Destruction of the Hero:

The most common conception about tragedy is that it ends with the destruction/death of its hero. But in many of the tragedies story does not ends with the destruction of the hero; rather it follows on. It is not the job of the artist to provide answers and solutions; but simply describe experiences and raise questions. Modern tragedy is not what happens to the hero; but what happens through him. When we concentrate on hero, we are unconsciously confining out attention to the individual.

Tragic experience lies in the fact that life does not come back, that its meanings are reaffirmed and restored after so much sufferings, and the ultimate death gives real meanings and importance to life. The death of an individual brings along the whole community in the form of rituals and condolence as in ‘Adam Bede’; so tragedy is social and collective and not individual or personal.

The Irreparable Action:

Raymond Williams believes that death in tragedy enables the witness to see the real meaning of life. In fact, death is a universal character, which has a perpetual effect on human soul and makes them to relate their faiths and believes with it. Death is universal so a dead man quickly claims universality.

 In a tragedy, the tragic hero faces an absolute meaning of death and a sense of loneliness. Hence, death of a person is considered an “irreparable loss" and which causes lamentation to the audience and makes them realize a “universal principle” or a mere “personal tragedy”. However, Williams Raymond thinks that it is not a single death, or an individual loss, rather it brings a change in the lives of the people surrounding and relating him. Thus, the loneliness of the dead man, blindness of human destiny and the loss of the connection as a result of that death are “irreparable”.

When we confine ourselves to the hero, we are, unconsciously, narrowing the scope of tragedy. By attaching too much attention to the death, we minimize the real tragic sense of life. Man dies alone is an interpretation; not a fact; when he dies, he affects others. He alters the lives of other characters. To insist on a single meaning is not reasonable. The tragic action is about death but it need not end in death. Moreover, what about the other characters who are destroyed? Williams says: “We think of tragedy as what happens to the hero but ordinary tragic action is what happens through the hero”

Emphasis of Evil

According to Raymond Williams, “evil” goes side by side with “good”. However, it is often perceived that evil is more powerful and attractive and make the society to surrender before it. But he believes that it is temporary phase, because, ultimately it is good that is victorious. Hence, the tragedy demonstrates the struggle between good and evil going on in the world as well. Tragedy dramatizes evil in many particular forms: not only Christian evil but also cultural, political and ideological, making the audience to have a clear recognition of the fact that one can be good or evil in particular ways in particular situations of the play, thus achieving different responses as well. Good and evil are not absolute. We are good or bad in particular ways and in particular situations; defined by pressures we at one received and can alter and can create again. Hence, tragedy does not teach us about evil, rather it teaches us about so many aspects of life and their consequences. Williams rejects that man is naturally evil or good as he believes: “Man is naturally not anything and we are good or bad in particular ways in particular situations”

          In the end, we can say that Raymond Williams has very aptly analyzed the concept of tragedy with reference to contemporary ideas. From modern concept of tragedy, a minute observer and critic can get a lot of information. In short, it is a great work of criticism by Raymond Williams.

A Rejection of Tragedy (Brecht)

Williams’ essay ‘Rejection of Tragedy’ is a study of the rejection of tragedy in modern age with special reference to Bertolt Brechet who founded epic theater as compared to the emotional theory of Aristotle. He rejected the conventional idea of tragedy and made tragedy more experiential and rational.

He made people think above the situation presented in the tragedy and not within. Aristotelian drama enforced thinking from within and Brechet’s theater from without. He used distancing affects to turn people like spectators who sit in the chair, smoke and observe. He showed what the audience wanted to see. Williams has discussed six plays: The Three Penny Opera, Saint Joan of the Stockyard, Die Massnahme, The Good Woman of Sezuen, Mother Courage and Her Children and the Life of Galileo. In the last play mentioned, the hero is offered two choices one between accepting the terms or the other being destroyed. Nevertheless, the hero recants. Tragedy, says Williams, in some of its older senses is certainly rejected by this ‘complex seeing’. The major achievement of Brechet is recovery of history as a dimension of tragedy. In tragedy we must see continuity and desire for change. Catastrophe should not halt the action or push the contradictions of life into background. Suffering should be avoided because suffering breaks us, Brechet thinks that our will to struggle should not die under the weight of sufferings. Brechet’s own words are the precise expression of this new sense of tragedy: “The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary”

Brechet believes that response to suffering is crucial and weight of suffering is borne by all of us. Even the spectator becomes a participant. As a participant he can condemn or comprehend the sufferings. And for this purpose, he needs some active principle which he finds in the system. But system makes its principles for its defense not for its rejection. Our disgust is directed against morality; not upon the system. Under these circumstances morality serves the cause of the cruel system and religion and spiritualism lose their effectiveness. Morality, religion and spiritualism are used by the exploiting class as a shield against public resentment. Brechet rejected and exposed the validity of the so-called refined sentiments of goodness, love and sacrifice. There are, to him, fake sentiments, romanticized on purpose. Love, he thinks, separates us from humanity. The emphasis on love can look like growth but it is often a simple withdrawal from the human action. Love is defined and capitalized in separation from humanity. Williams declares: “An evil system is protected by a false morality”

Brecht's narrative style, which he called ‘Epic Theater’, was directed against the illusion created by traditional theater of witnessing a slice of life. Instead, Brecht encouraged spectators to watch events on stage dispassionately and to reach their own conclusions. To prevent spectators from becoming emotionally involved with a play and identifying with its characters, Brecht used a variety of techniques. Notable among them was the alienation or estrangement effect, which was achieved through such devices as choosing (for German audiences) unfamiliar settings, interrupting the action with songs, and announcing the contents of each scene through posters.

Brecht first attracted attention in the Berlin as the author of provocative plays that challenged the tenets of traditional theater. In ‘St. Joan’ a modern-day Joan of Arc advocates the use of force in the fight against exploitation of workers. In his play, ‘Mother Courage and her Children’ Brechet invites us to see what happens to a good person a bad society. Through Sheen Lee, he seeks to show how goodness is exploited by gods and men and how good person is alienated. The antiwar play ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ shows an indomitable mother figure who misguidedly seeks to profit from war but loses her children instead. Brechet’s play ‘Good Woman of Sezuin’ presents a kindhearted prostitute. She is good but she is alienated. Brecht called this a parable play, the kindhearted prostitute is forced to disguise herself as her ruthless male cousin and exploit others in order to survive. According to Brechet the most alienated are the best. He collects life from all corners of the world when he says: “Today when human character must be understood as the totality of all social conditions, the epic theater is the only one that can comprehend all the processes which could serve for a fully representative picture of the world”

He rejected the idea that suffering can ennoble us. Bad societies, he thinks, needs heroes and it is bad life that needs sacrifices. He considers it a sin against life to allow oneself to be destroyed by cruelty. His mature dramas show that it is not possible to label people good or bad. Goodness and badness are the two alternate labels in the same individual. We have a split consciousness and live under this tension. Williams calls it ‘Complex Seeing’ which was rejected by the traditional conception of tragedy. ‘Mother Courage and her Children’ is a dramatization of conflicting instincts in a person who is not consciousness of these conflicts. But the case in ‘The Life of Galileo’ is different. Galileo is fully conscious and is free in making a choice. Galileo deals with the responsibility of the intellectual to defend his or her beliefs in the face of opposition from established authorities, in Galileo’s case the Roman Catholic Church. We can admire or despite Galileo but Brechet is not asking us to do this. He is only telling us what happens to consciousness when it caught in a deadlock between individual and social morality. We are so used to tragedy and martyrdom under such circumstances that we are unable to see this experience in a radically different way – complex seeing and accept the complexity of the situation as a fact of life. Facts that are concealed and brought to light as in, ‘The Life of Galileo’ Barberini says: “It is my own mask that permits me certain freedoms today. Dressed like this. I might be heard to murmur. If God did not exist, we should have to invent him”

Williams in this case presents the example of Mother Courage and comments that the historyand people come alive on the stage, leaping past the isolated and virtually static action that we have got used to in most modern theatre. The drama, in his opinion, simultaneously occurs and is seen. It is not ‘take the case of this woman’ but ‘see and consider what happens to these people’. The point is not what we feel about her hard lively opportunism; it is what we see, in the action, of its results. By enacting a genuine consequence, in Williams’ view, Brecht raises his central question to a new level, both dramatically and intellectually. The question is then no longer ‘are they good people?’ Nor is it, really, ‘what should they have done?” It is, brilliantly, both ‘what are they doing?’ and ‘what is this doing to them?’ In Williams’ opinion, to detach the work from its human purpose is, Brecht sees, to betray others and so betray life. It is not, in the end, what we think of Galileo as a man, but what we think of this result.

Order, Accident and Experience

Obviously the possibility of communication to ourselves, we, who are not immediately involved, depends on the capacity to connect the event with some more general body of facts. This criterion, which is now quite conventional, is indeed very welcome, for it poses the issue in its most urgent form. 

It is evidently possible for some people to hear of a mining disaster, a burned-out family, a broken career or a smash on the road without feeling these events as tragic in the full sense. But the starkness of such a position (which I believe to be sincerely held) is of course at once qualified by the description of such events as accidents which, however painful or regrettable, do not connect with any general meanings. The real key, to the modern separation of tragedy from ‘mere suffering’, is the separation of ethical control and, more critically, human agency, from our understanding of social and political life. The events which are not seen as tragic are deep in the pattern of our own culture: war, famine, work, traffic, politics. To see no ethical content or human agency in such events, or to say that we cannot connect them with general meanings, and especially with permanent and universal meanings, is to admit a strange and particular bankruptcy, which no rhetoric of tragedy can finally hide.

But to see new relations and new laws is also to change the nature of experience, and the whole complex of attitudes and relationships dependent on it. Its most common historical setting is the period preceding the substantial breakdown and transformation of an important culture. Its condition is the real tension between old and new: between received beliefs, embodied in institutions and responses, and newly and vividly experienced contradictions and possibilities. If the received beliefs have widely or wholly collapsed, this tension is obviously absent; to that extent their real presence is necessary. But beliefs can be both active and deeply questioned, not so much by other beliefs as by insistent immediate experience. In such situations, the common process of dramatising and resolving disorder and suffering is intensified to the level which can be most readily recognized as tragedy.

The most common interpretation of tragedy is that it is an action in which the hero is destroyed. This fact is seen as irreparable. At a simple level this is so obviously true that the formula usually gets little further examination. But it is of course still an interpretation, and a partial one. We move away from actual tragedies, and not towards them, when we abstract and generalise the very specific forces that are so variously dramatised. We move away, even more decisively, from a common tragic action, when we interpret tragedy as only the dramatisation and recognition of evil. Indeed, its business is trying to arouse human pity, there are a few things that’ll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they’ve been used several times, they no longer work. Human beings have the horrid capacity of being able to make themselves heartless at will. So it happens, for instance, that a man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time that he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll be only a three penny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll hand him over cold-bloodedly to the police. It’s the same with these spiritual weapons.