Hamburg Dramaturgy

Essay 95

kgarrett

June 12, 2020

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 29 March 1768[95.1]

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 “The story of his Electra is well known.[95.2] The poet had to paint, in the character of this princess, a virtuous, but fierce, resentful woman; stung by a sense of personal ill treatment; and instigated to the revenge of a father’s death, by still stronger motives.[95.3] A disposition of this warm temperament, it might be concluded by the philosopher in his closet, would be prompt to shew itself. Electra would, on any proper occasion, be ready to avow her resentment, as well as to forward the execution of her purpose. But to what lengths would this resentment go? i.e. what degree of fierceness might Electra express, without affording occasion to a person widely skilled in mankind, and the operation of the passions, to say, ‘this is improbable?’ Here abstract theories will be of little service. Even a moderate acquaintance with real life will be unable to direct us. Many individuals may have fallen under observation, that will justify the poet in carrying the expression of such a resentment to any extreme. History would, perhaps, furnish examples, in which a virtuous resentment hath been carried even farther than is here represented by the poet. What way then of determining the precise bounds and limits of it? Only by observing in numerous instances, i.e. from a large extensive knowledge of practical life, how far it usually, in such characters, and under such circumstances, prevails. Hence a difference of representation will arise in proportion to the extent of that knowledge. Let us now see, how the character before us, hath, in fact, been managed by Euripides.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 In that fine scene, which passes between Electra and Orestes, whom as yet she suspects not to be her brother, the conversation very naturally turns upon Electra’s distresses, and the author of them, Clytemnestra, as well as on her hopes of deliverance from them by the means of Orestes.[95.4] The dialogue upon this proceeds:

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Or. What then of Orestes, were he to return to this Argos?

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 El. Ah! wherefore that question, when there is no prospect of his return at all?

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Or. But supposing he should return, how would he go about to revenge the death of his father?

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 El. In the same way, in which that father suffered from the daring attempts of his enemies.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Or. And could you then dare to undertake with him the murder of your mother?

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 El. Yes, with that very steel, with which she murdered my father.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Or. And am I at liberty to relate this to your brother, as your fixed resolution?

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 El. I desire only to live, till I have murdered my mother.

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 The Greek is still stronger:

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Θανοιμι, μητρος άιμ᾽ἐπισφαζασ᾽ἐμης.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 May I die, as soon as I have murdered my mother!

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Now that this last sentence is absolutely unnatural, will not be pretended. There have been doubtless many examples, under the like circumstances, of an expression of revenge carried thus far. Yet, I think, we can hardly help being a little shocked at the fierceness of this expression. At least Sophocles has not thought fit to carry it to that extreme. In him, Electra contents herself with saying to Orestes, on a similar occasion: ‘The conduct of this affair now rests upon you. Only let me observe this to you, that, had I been left alone, I would not have failed in one of these two purposes, either to deliver myself gloriously, or to perish gloriously.’

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Whether this representation of Sophocles be not more agreeable to truth, as collected from wide observation, i.e. from human nature at large, than that of Euripides, the capable reader will judge. If it be, the reason I suppose to have been, that Sophocles painted his characters, such, as, from attending to numerous instances of the same kind, he would conclude they ought to be; Euripides, such, as a narrower sphere of observation had persuaded him they were.[95.5]

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 Excellent! Regardless of my purpose in citing these long passages from Hurd, they contain so many fine observations that the reader will not demand an apology for their insertion. I only worry that because of it, he may have lost sight of my purpose itself. It was this: to show that Hurd, like Diderot, assigns particular characters to tragedy and universal ones only to comedy, and nevertheless he did not want to contradict Aristotle, who required universality of all poetic characters and consequently also of the tragic ones.[95.6] Hurd explains himself thusly: the tragic character would indeed have to be particular, or less general than the comic character; that is, it would have to make the kind to which it belongs less obvious. Nevertheless, that small part of the character that is worth showing must be drawn according to the universality that Aristotle requires.[*]

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 And now we might pose the question of whether Diderot also wanted to be understood in the same way. – Why not, if it were important to him never to find himself in contradiction with Aristotle? It is of concern to me that two intelligent minds do not say yes and no about the same matter, so I might be allowed to foist this interpretation on him, to lend him this way out.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 But rather let me speak briefly of this way out itself! – It seems to me it both is, and is not, a way out. For the word general is taken to have two very different meanings. The one which Hurd and Diderot deny to the tragic character is not the same as the one affirmed for it by Hurd. Certainly the way out is based on this; but how, if the one absolutely excludes the other?

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 In the first meaning, a general character is one in which what has been observed in several or all individuals is pulled together; it is called, in a word, a composite character, more the personified idea of a character than a characterized person. In the second meaning, however, a general character is one in which a certain average or a certain mean proportion has been taken from what has been observed in several or all individuals; it is called, in a word, a commoncharacter, of course not insofar as the character itself is common but only insofar as it is common to a certain degree and measure.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Hurd is completely correct in explaining Aristotle’s καθολον as generality in the second sense.[95.7] But then when Aristotle demands this generality both of the comic character as well as the tragic, how is it possible that the same character can at the same time also have generality in the first sense? How is it possible for it to be simultaneously composite and common? And even granted such a character were not a composite nearly to the degree of the characters in the Jonson play that Hurd criticizes, granted that it would still bring to mind an individual and that there were examples of its expression just as strongly and consistently in other human beings: would it nevertheless not still be far more uncommon than Aristotle’s generality permits?[95.8]

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 That is the difficulty! – I remind my readers here that these pages are intended to contain anything but a dramatic system. I am under no obligation to resolve all the difficulties I pose. My thoughts might seem to become more and more disconnected, they may even seem to contradict: they need only be thoughts that provide my readers material to think for themselves. Here I want nothing more than to disseminate Fermenta cognitionis.[95.9]

¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0  

¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 [*] In calling the tragic character particular, I suppose it only less representative of the kind than the comic; not that the draught of so much character as it is concerned to represent should not be general. [Hurd, “Dissertation on the Provinces of Drama” 184 – Ed.]