A Critique of Aristotle's Poetics: Part II
Now I would like to talk about Aristotle's idea of hamartia. Aristotles writes: "[The tragic hero] is one who neither is superior [to us] in virtue and justice, nor undergoes a change to misfortune because of vice and wickedness, but because of some [hamartia], and who is one of those people with great reputation and good fortune..." Aristotle is intelligently vague here with regards to the nature of hamartia. Hamartia, modernly translated as "error", has no specific moral meaning. Philoctetes' error of entering unknowningly the gods' santuary is equally an error as Macbeth's decision of murdering King Duncan. It is because of this error that the character's fortune changes.
There is, of course, some valuable insights in Aristotle's theory of hamartia. It recognizes human imperfection, as any human being can consciously or unconsciously fall into error. It recognizes the nature of the human condition, which constitutes that of suffering because of human being's own imperfection. Also, in many tragedies, characters do make grave mistakes that they regret, but very often these mistakes cannot be reversed.
But because of this theory of the tragic hamartia, literary critics were set off in search for an error in every single tragedy and evaluate the tragedy in accordance with the profoundity of the error. Hence we get the phenemenon of thumbs up for Oedipus Rex and thumbs down for Women of Trachis: Oedipus' error is subtle, and it comes back with its greatest impact, while Deianira's error (of giving the poisoned cloak to Heracles) is so simple that people are incline to see Deianira only as a stupid character.
If tragedy is ultimately about the human condition, and is about how it affects us emotionally, then something is very wrong when a theory of tragedy cannot account for a play, like Women of Trachis, that is full of suffering and is emotionally extremely powerful. It is not a great wonder that this should happen with Aristotle's theory because the idea of hamartia is not even close to be complete in explaining the human condition in dramatic terms. If all of life is a stage, then the human condition is far more than just one serious mistake. Within the span of a tragic life on stage, there are many factors that contribute to the committing of that error. The tragic dimension of the human condition is also more than realizing the error, but also picking up on the responsibility of that error, which, though a mistake, is nonetheless an act of free will. The error is just one aspect of the tragic. In fact, it is not even a necessary aspect of tragedy of one wishes to define "tragedy" in a more general way, as I have defined before: through the unfolding of drama the protagonist comes to recognize his/her own helplessness and imperfection as a human being. An error is just one means in which the goal of "tragic vision" or recognition is achieved; two other means (but not exhaustive) include hubris and psychomachia, which Aristotle does not talk about in the Poetics.
For the longest time, translators have translated hamartia as "flaw". Hence we get this really weird notion of the "tragic flaw". This notion especially had haunted scholars for centuries. Like the idea of the tragic error, scholars had been desperately trying to locate one specific flaw that the tragic hero possesses, leading to his downfall. This idea, it seems to me, is absolutely absurd. In a real life, why would one single flaw bring down a person? Human beings are so full of flaws that flaws almost always conspire together to bring them down. So what makes us think that in tragedies the human condition is such that only one flaw (e.g. Macbeth's ambition) bring down the hero? Take the case of Macbeth as an example: why would ambition be the flaw? what about indecisiveness? what about weakness of will? what about superstitution? what about no flaw at all? To pinpoint down a single flaw will never be a complete reading. It would be a flawed reading of the text.
As I think about the Poetics more, I am really skeptical as to just how good a literary critic Aristotle was back in his days: his theory, while they can account for the basic theatricality of the dramas of his time, in many cases fails to account the human (for a lack of a better term) aspect of drama. The works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (all available to him) are so rich in its tragic vision, yet Aristotle for some reason can only really do a good reading to a handful of the tragedies. What is baffling is that so many scholars accepted Aristotle's theory so unconditionally, that they look for the various flaws of the tragedies rather than the flaws of the theory.
There is, of course, some valuable insights in Aristotle's theory of hamartia. It recognizes human imperfection, as any human being can consciously or unconsciously fall into error. It recognizes the nature of the human condition, which constitutes that of suffering because of human being's own imperfection. Also, in many tragedies, characters do make grave mistakes that they regret, but very often these mistakes cannot be reversed.
But because of this theory of the tragic hamartia, literary critics were set off in search for an error in every single tragedy and evaluate the tragedy in accordance with the profoundity of the error. Hence we get the phenemenon of thumbs up for Oedipus Rex and thumbs down for Women of Trachis: Oedipus' error is subtle, and it comes back with its greatest impact, while Deianira's error (of giving the poisoned cloak to Heracles) is so simple that people are incline to see Deianira only as a stupid character.
If tragedy is ultimately about the human condition, and is about how it affects us emotionally, then something is very wrong when a theory of tragedy cannot account for a play, like Women of Trachis, that is full of suffering and is emotionally extremely powerful. It is not a great wonder that this should happen with Aristotle's theory because the idea of hamartia is not even close to be complete in explaining the human condition in dramatic terms. If all of life is a stage, then the human condition is far more than just one serious mistake. Within the span of a tragic life on stage, there are many factors that contribute to the committing of that error. The tragic dimension of the human condition is also more than realizing the error, but also picking up on the responsibility of that error, which, though a mistake, is nonetheless an act of free will. The error is just one aspect of the tragic. In fact, it is not even a necessary aspect of tragedy of one wishes to define "tragedy" in a more general way, as I have defined before: through the unfolding of drama the protagonist comes to recognize his/her own helplessness and imperfection as a human being. An error is just one means in which the goal of "tragic vision" or recognition is achieved; two other means (but not exhaustive) include hubris and psychomachia, which Aristotle does not talk about in the Poetics.
For the longest time, translators have translated hamartia as "flaw". Hence we get this really weird notion of the "tragic flaw". This notion especially had haunted scholars for centuries. Like the idea of the tragic error, scholars had been desperately trying to locate one specific flaw that the tragic hero possesses, leading to his downfall. This idea, it seems to me, is absolutely absurd. In a real life, why would one single flaw bring down a person? Human beings are so full of flaws that flaws almost always conspire together to bring them down. So what makes us think that in tragedies the human condition is such that only one flaw (e.g. Macbeth's ambition) bring down the hero? Take the case of Macbeth as an example: why would ambition be the flaw? what about indecisiveness? what about weakness of will? what about superstitution? what about no flaw at all? To pinpoint down a single flaw will never be a complete reading. It would be a flawed reading of the text.
As I think about the Poetics more, I am really skeptical as to just how good a literary critic Aristotle was back in his days: his theory, while they can account for the basic theatricality of the dramas of his time, in many cases fails to account the human (for a lack of a better term) aspect of drama. The works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (all available to him) are so rich in its tragic vision, yet Aristotle for some reason can only really do a good reading to a handful of the tragedies. What is baffling is that so many scholars accepted Aristotle's theory so unconditionally, that they look for the various flaws of the tragedies rather than the flaws of the theory.
posted by Tristan at 8:16 p.m.
1 Comments:
no time for you nowadays.
maybe for later readings, when I don't 'multitask' and actually pay attention with what you're trying to say.
Kenneth
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