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These emotions as aroused by tragedy are either not what we know as pity and fear in real life, or the manner of their undergoing brings in an entirely new element, on which Aristotle has not touched. In some way or other the pity and fear of tragedy are not like the pity and fear of real life, and in this distinction lies the whole mystery of the dramatic Katharsis.
Balaustion, stricken at heart, yet feels that this tragedy of Athens brings the tragic katharsis; the justice of the gods is visible in it; and above man's wickedness and folly she reaches to "yon blue liberality of heaven."
Professor Butcher, in his edition of the "Poetics," concludes, on the basis of a reference in the "Politics" implying that the Katharsis of enthusiasm is not identical with the Katharsis of pity and fear, that the word is to be taken less literally, as an expulsion of the morbid elements in the emotions, and these he takes to be the selfish elements which cling to them in real life.
Before we ask ourselves seriously how far this represents our experience of the drama, we must question its fidelity to the thought of Aristotle; and that question seems to have received a final answer in the exhaustive discussion of Bernays.<1> Without going into his arguments, suffice it to say that Aristotle, scientist and physician's son as he was, had in mind in using this striking metaphor of the Katharsis of the emotions, a perfectly definite procedure, familiar in the treatment, by exciting music, of persons overcome by the ecstasy or "enthusiasm" characteristic of certain religious rites.
Where now was that care-free outlook, that recklessness, that joy in life as a spectacle, which made up so much of the artist's attitude? When one had a wife and child one no longer enjoyed tragedies one lived, them; and one got from them, not katharsis, but exhaustion. One became timid and cautious and didactic, and other inartistic things.
The mysterious Katharsis, the emotion of tragedy, is, then, a special type of the unique aesthetic emotion. And it is the singular peculiar characteristic of the drama the face to face confrontation of forces which furnishes these conditions.
It is not an easy matter to experience the pure katharsis of tragedy, with a baby in the room who has to be nursed every hour or two, and who is liable to awaken at any moment and make some demand. He was such an intricate and complicated baby, with so many things to be understood belly-bands and diapers and irrational length of skirts.
That is, if this transformation of feeling does indeed take place, there is at least nothing in the nature of the situation, as yet explained, to account for it. But explanation there must be. To this, the lost passage on the Katharsis must have been devoted; this, every thorough-going study of the theory of the drama must make an indispensable preliminary.
As we might have foreseen, the peculiar Katharsis, or pleasurable disappearance or alleviation of emotion in tragedy, is based on just those elements in which the drama differs from other forms of art. Confrontation, and not action, as the dramatic principle, is the important deduction from our theory; is, indeed, but the objective aspect of it.
When the two antagonistic purposes are actually presented to the onlooker in the same moment of time, then alone can be felt the vividness of realization, the tension of conflict, the balance of emotion, the "alleviation" of the true Katharsis! But what is this?
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