FR2203: Text and context

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Racine: lecture six

In this lecture, I shall comment on the symbolic character of the tragic medium --- considered as an element of the relationship between the tragic content and its audience.

Here are some comments by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on the symbolic character of tragedy drawn from his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872):

The symbolic image of myth saves us from looking directly at the highest idea of the world --- and just as thoughts and words save us from the unchecked outpourings of the unconscious Will (p. 101)

The tragic myth can only be understood as the transformation of the Dionysiac wisdom into images by means of Apolline artistry; it leads the world of appearance to its limits where it negates itself and seeks to flee back into the womb of the one, true reality (pp. 104--05)

Thinking about the symbolic character of the tragic medium can be a way of thinking about its impact. Consider the restoration of Joas to the throne:

Joas is a problematic figure: in various ways, he points beyond himself to providential forces, which, however, he represents only imperfectly, given what the text tells us of his later history, and given also, as we shall see, the precise circumstances of his recovery of the throne. The impact of the play is ambiguous: its ending is at once spectacular and equivocal.

This scene is a pivotal element of the tragedy in several ways. For Athalie, it is the moment of reversal (what Aristotle refers to as a peripeteia) which is a distinctive part of the tragic process: Athalie comes to the temple and this is the source of her undoing. Her meeting with Joas in act II anticipates the recognition scene in act V. This outcome is significant in complex ways:

• death and deliverance coincide
• the positions of strength and of vulnerability are dramatically reversed
• grandeur becomes a sign of weakness --- a characteristic tragic reversal
• the outcome of the tragic process is an apparent restoration of order
• a story of human conflict assumes historical significance --- and a significance apparently beyond the historical
• in the face of extreme danger, providence yields an unexpected outcome
• the achievement of a 'just' outcome is the result of a complex human process in which forces the human apparently play a role

In Nietzsche's term, the action takes on a mythic significance: the patterns which we see are the image of a process in which opaque and powerful forces are in play.

Next week

I shall pursue this line of thinking further next week by talking about the significance of the recognition scene with which the play closes. I shall also end by stating some conclusions about this text in relation to the others which you are studying.

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