The Vision of Tragedy

Bibliographic Data

ID23185684
AuthorsClayton Garrison, Richard B Sewall
Year1959
Volume11
Issue4
Pages314
Publication date1959-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Theatre Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1989 • E-ISSN: 2325-5382
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3204760
OpenAlexW1498971882
LanguageEN
Citations received6

When at end of The Symposium Socrates insists to his two friends Aristophanes and Agathon that the genius of comedy is same as genius of tragedy, and that writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also, friends, says Plato, were compelled to assent, being sleepy, and not quite understanding his meaning. It had been a long night, with much wine, and friends might well have agreed to almost anything. But whether they would have agreed cold sober, and just what Socrates' arguments were, are other questions. One would like to know precisely what he said. Or perhaps affair was a bit of paradox spun out for his own amusement. For it seems clear ?at least it is thesis of this paper? that genius of tragedy is not same as genius of comedy, and that a primary intel lectual requirement is to learn how they differ and why. As for Socrates' notion that every writer ought to be able to do both, there can be no objection. Some few have done both. What he had in mind, perhaps, was undeniable truth that highest comedy gains its power from its sense of tragic possibility, and profoundest tragedy presents a full if fleeting vision of an ordered universe, behind temporary disorder, to which comedy is witness. Without a sense of tragic, comedy loses heart; it becomes brittle; it has animation but no life. Without a recog nition of truth of comedy, tragedy becomes bleak and intolerable.

Aesthetics · Art · Comedy · Comics · Epistemology · Genius · Literature · Meaning (existential) · SOCRATES · Tragedy (event) · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy

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