Part 12

One would like to think that the oncoming generation, with unparalleled advantages in museums and in collegiate instruction in art, endowed with a great open-mindedness, audacity, and hopefulness--one would like to think, I say, that this young generation will provide the needed humanistic support for art. But association with youth, delightful as it is, gives me no very clear hope in any humanistic direction. The most typical and engaging youths and maidens of to-day illustrate merely the lovelier and more attractive traits of the barbarian. They have an unlimited confidence, very beautiful in its way, with the smallest background of lived or imagined experience. They think life is so simple that they may ignore all the traditional solutions for its manifold problems, trusting to their own instinct of the moment to meet emergencies that have engaged the best wits of generations of sages and saints. We have, characteristically tinged with humanitarianism, the mentality of the noble bandit sheik or the generous sea rover, who knows what he wants and asks nothing from tradition or authority. To make humanists of this generation of self-elected spiritual adventurers implies preliminary contrition and moral rebuilding. There was a better chance really of making humanists out of my own somewhat over-sophisticated and _fainéant_ generation. At least we started from the sound postulate that life was complex, and the problem of living a problem of delicate adjustment in which one needed whatever help he might draw from any time or source. So I am really glad that I shall probably not see the young generation when it passes the forties. Bruised in its self-confidence, perplexed and baffled by a life envisaged too simply, it is all too likely to manifest a general revulsion to indiscriminately chosen formalisms--social, political, and religious--with the result that the middle-aged dull dog of to-day will be as nothing in view of his successor of twenty years hence. On the better side, a general return to formalism may be the opportunity for an intelligently aggressive humanism. It will be an advantage to find, what we to-day sadly lack, a basis of agreement on any traditional plane, however narrow. Thus the new generation may after all serve the ends of a future humanism, if only by living into entire discredit their barbarous programme of individualism.

In fine, the problem of a humanistic art is no discrete problem, but rather that of humanism generally. It has been my task merely to define the issue in a single aspect, and not at all to find a solution that could be adopted to-morrow. The deep gap that isolates the serious artist from a public content with the puerilities of the radio and the “talkie,” will scarcely be bridged to-morrow or the day after. Many critics, indeed, hail the latter-day individualist as the finally liberated artist, and bid us joyously expect even more individualism than that which has already been so generously vouchsafed us. This may be a true prognosis. No one can safely deny the possibility that art may be permanently “on its own.” If so, art will of course become merely an eccentric activity, an indulgence and luxury of coteries, hence of no more concern really to the humanist than the trade, say, of the perfume maker. On the other hand, no one can safely deny the possibility that art may once again be profoundly integrated with society. Every contributor to this volume is perforce thinking toward that reintegration, even if the theme be not in his mind nor the words on his pen. To my younger colleagues, then, in whom the hope of a new humanism lies, I leave the problem and the solution, with that chastened confidence which befits a humanist grown old in the most unpopular of faiths.

_The Dilemma of Modern Tragedy_

ALAN REYNOLDS THOMPSON

I

Most modern tragedy is depressing; classic tragedy is elevating. That the best tragic art of the past, in spite of the calamities it presents, elevates the spirit is obvious; but the cause of the “lift” it produces is obscure. If the cause were technical and formal beauty, _Ghosts_ ought to be more inspiriting than _Macbeth_. If it were wholly the melody of verse--which most modern drama has foregone--no great classic tragedy could endure translation. But Greek tragedies can still powerfully exalt an audience, though presented in the English renderings of Campbell and Potter!

The problem seems particularly to have appealed to the German metaphysical mind. Hegel thought tragedy a transcendental reconciliation of opposites. Schopenhauer found in it resignation to loss of individuality and return to the universal Will. Nietzsche turned the latter’s pessimism into the semblance of optimism by defining the spirit of Dionysus as an intoxicated joy in annihilation and union with nature.

But one hardly need resort to metaphysics, since the experience seems sufficiently explained by psychology. It is in my opinion chiefly the result of admiration. Every tragedy grows from a struggle of the individual against circumstance; but this emotional elevation we are discussing, as distinguished from more melodramatic thrills, seems to arise not from the mere struggle but from an impressive exhibition of will. The spectator is inspirited because in tragedy he sees an exhibition of convincing heroism. The tragic hero achieves a spiritual victory in spite of a physical defeat. “To affect the soul, and excite the passions, and above all to move admiration,” says Dryden, “is the delight of serious plays.”[37]

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._[38]

II

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.[39]

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.[40]

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.

He thus flies from normal humanity into cruelty and perversion. But the end of these is death. And in poem after poem is expressed the longing for the peace and endurance of granite,--of the grave. The violent destruction of the individual is the logical outcome of his creed, and the denial of human values leads to the annihilation of humanity.

This tendency, the extreme development of which we find in Jeffers, we find in less degree in our leading American dramatist. But in Eugene O’Neill it is obscured by other qualities; and generalisations are rendered difficult because he is groping and experimental, not only in technic but in philosophy. Because of this difficulty as well as for his intrinsic importance, O’Neill requires special consideration.

IV

A writer’s ’prentice work is likely to be revealing, and O’Neill’s is no exception. The one-act play _Thirst_, for example, reveals an imaginative absorption in the violences and brutalities of life. Most of the one-acts in the volume with _The Moon of the Caribbees_ have more normal and convincing characterisation, but about half are built upon abnormal situations involving incipient insanities or morbid passions.