The common end of the drama and the epic, to exhibit, in significant
characters placed in significant situations, the extraordinary actions
brought about by both, will be most completely attained by the poet if he
first introduces the characters to us in a state of peace, in which merely
their general colour becomes visible, and allows a motive to enter which
produces an action, out of which a new and stronger motive arises, which
again calls forth a more significant action, which, in its turn, begets
new and even stronger motives, whereby, then, in the time suitable to the
form of the poem, the most passionate excitement takes the place of the
original peace, and in this now the important actions occur in which the
qualities of the characters which have hitherto slumbered are brought
clearly to light, together with the course of the world.
Great poets transform themselves into each of the persons to be
represented, and speak out of each of them like ventriloquists; now out of
the hero, and immediately afterwards out of the young and innocent maiden,
with equal truth and naturalness: so Shakspeare and Goethe. Poets of the
second rank transform the principal person to be represented into
themselves. This is what Byron does; and then the other persons often
remain lifeless, as is the case even with the principal persons in the
works of mediocre poets.
Our pleasure in tragedy belongs, not to the sense of the beautiful, but to
that of the sublime; nay, it is the highest grade of this feeling. For, as
at the sight of the sublime in nature we turn away from the interests of
the will, in order to be purely perceptive, so in the tragic catastrophe
we turn away even from the will to live. In tragedy the terrible side of
life is presented to us, the wail of humanity, the reign of chance and
error, the fall of the just, the triumph of the wicked; thus the aspect of
the world which directly strives against our will is brought before our
eyes. At this sight we feel ourselves challenged to turn away our will
from life, no longer to will it or love it. But just in this way we become
conscious that then there still remains something over to us, which we
absolutely cannot know positively, but only negatively, as that which does
not will life. As the chord of the seventh demands the fundamental chord;
as the colour red demands green, and even produces it in the eye; so every
tragedy demands an entirely different kind of existence, another world,
the knowledge of which can only be given us indirectly just as here by
such a demand. In the moment of the tragic catastrophe the conviction
becomes more distinct to us than ever that life is a bad dream from which
we have to awake. So far the effect of the tragedy is analogous to that of
the dynamical sublime, for like this it lifts us above the will and its
interests, and puts us in such a mood that we find pleasure in the sight
of what tends directly against it. What gives to all tragedy, in whatever