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Exum quotes Arthur Miller on tragedy, and Miller I think gets things quite right:
"It matters not at all whether a hero falls from a great height or a small one, whether he is highly conscious or only dimly aware of what is happening, whether his pride brings the fall or an unseen pattern written behind the clouds; if the intensity, the human passion to surpass the given bounds, the fanatic insistence upon his self-conceived role Eif these are not present there can only be an outline of tragedy but no living thing. I believe, for myself, that the lasting appeal of tragedy is due to our need to face the fact of death in order to strengthen ourselves for life, and that over and above this function of the tragic viewpoint there are and will be a great number of formal variations which no single definition will ever embrace."
I like this a) because Miller doesn't tie tragedy to a single narrative shape, b) because he captures the essential nature of the tragic struggle ("to surpass his given bounds"), and c) because he recognizes that tragedy turns on the inevitability and the finality of death. Introduce resurrection from the dead, and tragedy in Miller's sense of the word is no longer possible.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, December 03, 2003 at 03:37 PM
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