La tragédie grecque et la douleur humaine

Abstract

After comparing two of the most famous definitions of Greek tragedy, viz., the one by Aristotle and the one by Wilamowitz, the author concludes that Weil was right in saying that pathos, the essential motif of this genre, was lacking in both. He tries to explain what suffering meant to fifth-century Greece and how deeply it permeated Greek Tragedy. He says that suffering may have an external cause (and that results in a ‘pragmatic’ tragedy, e.g. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris), or an internal one (which results in psychological tragedy, like Euripides’ Heracles, Medea and Orestes) or a supernatural cause (which results in religious tragedy, like Euripides’ Bacchae). All the three kinds of tragedy may be mixed, as it happens with Sophocles’ Ajax. Tragedy gives universal significance to the suffering of an individual, and that creates a myth, which tragic poets may develop. But suffering in Greek Tragedy does not induce moral despair; it rather leads to reflexion and makes man conscious of his humble position in the world ; and thus purifies and clarifies the mind.