About the tragic art

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“About tragic art” is the title of a treatise on the philosophy of art by Friedrich Schiller published in 1792 in the journal “Neue Thalia” , in which he deals with the nature and aim of tragedy .

For Schiller, tragedy is the imitation of a moral act with the intention of evoking suffering, emotion and other affects through the representation of suffering . In the Scriptures, the author deals particularly with the origin and nature of compassion . Both his reading of Immanuel Kant's aesthetics and Gotthold E. Lessing's theory of drama flow into Schiller's reflections .

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Schiller notes that people are interested in anything that causes strong emotions. It is particularly unpleasant manifestations of "woe, of horror", from which people feel equally "pushed away and attracted again". Schiller proves this with the reference to the large number of spectators at public punishments of criminals. Neither revenge nor love of justice alone could explain this. It is a "curious desire" that drives people. In people of "upbringing and refined feelings" this raw pleasure is not available. Nevertheless, there is a general tendency to enjoy a disaster. Schiller cites as an example the pleasure in observing a person who is in a conflict between “opposing inclinations or duties” and whom his passion plunges into misery. This “source of misery [...] delights us when we contemplate it.” The moral nature of man apparently makes it possible to experience a form of well-being even in affect. Even if an affect in itself does not grant pleasure, it is a condition for “certain kinds of pleasure”. Anyone who is susceptible to this kind of pleasure, who therefore also feels a form of pleasure in the affect, is in a mental state in which he can maintain his freedom even with the most intense passions.

This sublime mental mood is the lot of strong and philosophical minds who have learned to subjugate selfish instincts through continued work on themselves. Even the most painful loss does not lead them beyond a melancholy with which a noticeable degree of pleasure can still consume.

According to Schiller, it is “moral nature” from which pleasure arises, “by which painful affects [...] delight and move us”. Man is not passively exposed to an affect triggering object, but is able to rise above affect and show morality in the sense of "obedience to general laws of reason".

With this Schiller arrives at an essential statement which prepares his following theoretical drama considerations, namely the answer to the question, why “pity attracts us most powerfully”. Schiller immediately postulates that only suffering people of good disposition can produce this "enjoyment" of compassion: "The suffering of a weak soul, the pain of a villain, of course, do not grant us this enjoyment;"

Schiller sees a reason in the fact that the observed suffering is an attack on the sensuality, which stimulates a force in the mind. This force is "none other than reason". This process, that the affect does not allow the individual to remain in suffering, is what Schiller calls the “drive to act”. The affect is the trigger for a reflection of the subject about himself, his feelings, his reason and his morals: "The affect of compassion gives us pleasure because it goes hand in hand with the liberation from all resistance and all dependence on egoistic impulses." This is the interface from which Schiller leads on to his understanding of art.

That art, however, which makes the pleasure of compassion its particular end, is called tragic art in the most general sense.

According to Schiller, art (and thus the poetic purpose of poetry as a form of art) has the task of producing affects or arousing emotions. This emotional excitement must be controlled sensitively and must neither be too violent nor too weak, otherwise pity will be missed. Because if “the displeasure about the cause of a misfortune becomes too strong, it weakens our compassion for the one who suffers it.” Nor should the suffering person be solely responsible for their misfortune.

So it always weakens our share when the unfortunate, whom we are to pity, has thrown himself into his own ruin on his own unforgivable guilt, or also does not know how to draw from it because of weakness of understanding and faint-heartedness, since he could nevertheless .

Furthermore, a character portrayed too extreme can overlay compassion if in a drama "the size of suffering depends on the size of malice". Schiller also self-critically counts Karl Moor, his own character from “ The Robbers ”, among those characters who, because of their extreme malice, disturb the feeling of pity. In any case, it is more favorable for arousing pity if the misfortune is not brought about by bad will, but by “the compulsion of circumstances”. Nevertheless, the impression should not be created that individuals are exposed to an overpowering fate. There must still be room for reason. This is where Schiller's criticism of "the choicest pieces of the Greek stage" to "because these pieces will last appeals to the need for all" and our "demanding reason always remains an unresolved knot." Against the fatalism of Greek tragedy to Turning around, Schiller tries to demonstrate "that man remains in possession of his freedom even in the most tragic circumstances." The Greek tragedy must therefore be outbid in an aemulatio in order to achieve the goal formulated by Schiller. In the following, Schiller formulates criteria that provoke compassion and emotion in poetry.

  1. In contrast to suffering, which you witness as a witness, there is always a distance in poetry from suffering and thus also from co-suffering. This can be compensated for by an "immediate and lively presence and sensualization".
  2. Similar to GE Lessing, there must be a similarity relationship between the viewer or reader and the tragic hero, because the "possibility of compassion is [...] based on the perception and assumption of a similarity between us and the suffering subject." Schiller postulates that irrespective of experience, cultural or historical background, timeless moral ideas and forms of thinking are inherent in every individual. This “subjective truth” as part of moral nature contains “universality” and “necessity”. Because one "[...] only needs to be a human being in order to be carried away to tears by the heroic sacrifice of a Leonidas." The aim is therefore not the historical imitation of an event, but the poetic imitation of one "Compassionate act".
  3. In order to induce arousal, the complete account of a tragic event is necessary. Without knowing all the details, the viewer cannot put himself in the position of a person's soul. Only "the similarity of the circumstances, which we must fully understand, can justify our judgment about the similarity of the sensations."
  4. In order to achieve effective emotional arousal, the intensity of the sensations must be measured and “skillfully interrupted periodically”. According to Schiller, only a “well-balanced gradation of the impressions can help to measure the perception in such a way that the viewer does not turn away from the view of suffering, becomes weary or a process of getting used to it. While the beginner “hurls the whole thunderbolt of terror and fear at once and fruitlessly into the mind”, “that [the trained artist] reaches the goal step by step with lots of small blows and through this penetrates the soul completely, that he she only stirred gradually and gradually. "
  5. The tragedy must show the suffering of mixed characters . Schiller takes up a term from Lessing: beings [...] who break free from all morality [...] are just as unsuitable for tragedy as “the pure intelligences” who “are freed from the compulsion of sensuality”. The characters have to show themselves mixed as sensual and rational beings because of “his [Schiller's] dualistic image of man” .
  6. A successful tragedy achieves its purpose of creating emotion, not only through the story to be told, but through the way in which the event is presented. The purpose and shape of the seal must be in balance. Schiller criticizes the contemporary dramas because they move “only because of the subject matter”.

Source texts

Wikisource: About the tragic art  - originated. 1791

literature

  • Hamburger, Kate. Pity. 2nd edition Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1996
  • Kindler's New Literature Lexicon. Ed. V. Walter Jens, Munich: Kindler 1996. p. 945
  • Turk, Horst. Tragedy Philosophies of Modern Times. Kant. Hegel. Nietzsche. Benjamin. In: The tragedy. A leading genre of European literature. Edited by Werner Frick in collaboration with Gesa von Essen a. Fabian Lampart. Göttingen: Wallstein 2003.