Notes

CHAPTER 1 CLASSICAL TRAGEDY AND THE OLD TEST AMENT

1. Lesky scoffs at the 'long story of the misinterpretation' of catharsis. 2. See C. Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (English tr. 1984) pp 179ff.,

227f.

CHAPTER 2 THE PATRIARCHAL TRAGEDY

1. See C. Westermann, Genesis 12-36 (English tr. 1985). ad lac; R.-P. Schmitz, Aqedat Jishaq (1979).

2. Thomas Mann's Joseph und seine Bruder has elicited massive commentaries and views. See Kate Hamburger, Thomas Manns biblisches Werk (1981); Manfred Dierks, Studien zu Mythos und Psychologic bei Thomas Mann, vo!. 2 (1972); Mann's Tagebucher, ed. Peter de Mendelssohn (1979-82) and Letters of Thomas Mann, tr. Clara Winston (1970).

CHAPTER 3 TRAGIC ANTI-HEROES

1. See Robert G. Boling, Judges (1975) p. 252, for an excellent summary of the problems created by contrasting strands of narrative.

2. Rembrandt's epic cycle of Samson in Dresden, Berlin, and Frankfurt portrays tragic pathos in defeat.

3. E. Wiesel, Five Biblical Portraits (1981), stresses the tragic tension in the Biblical narrative. See also his Celebration biblique (1975), for a post-Auschwitz exposition of the mysterious 'heroes' of Genesis.

CHAPTER 4 TRAGIC HEROES

1. For a discerning view, neither liberal nor fundamentalist, see Martin Buber, Moses (1987).

2. See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (English tr. 1986) pp.1232ff. for a Marxist appreciation of the religious man.

3. See Israel's Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter R. Ackroyd, ed. R. Coggins, A. Phillips and M. Knibb (1982), for a revaluation of prophecy in the light of modern research.

CHAPTER 5 JOB

1. For a survey see my Ethel M. Wood Trust Lecture, Gambling with Job

146

Notes 147

(1980); John C. L. Gibson, Job (1985); G. Gutierrez, On Job (1987); R. Girard, Job (1987).

2. R. Lowth published De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum in 1753 and is acknowledged to have been among the first critics to combine scientific studies with an aesthetic appreciation of Biblical poetry. The English translation by Gregory appeared in 1835.

3. See my essay 'Job and Sophocles' in Images of Belief in Literature (1984). 4. Tears are shed both for the past and as a prelude to fame and better

things.

CHAPTER 6 JESUS THE CHRIST AND TRAGEDY

1. Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22. This experience is considered providential in Acts 3:18; 17:3; 26:23 and to be shared in the apostolic community: 1 Corinthians 12:26; 2 Corinthians 1:6; Galatians 3:4; Philippians 1:29; 1 Thessalonians 2:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; 2 Timothy 1:12 and throughout 1 Peter. In Hebrews 2:18 the participation in suffering is the root of sympathy with the helpless, and significantly in Hebrews 5:8f. the means of ultimate perfection.

2. The extreme complexity behind the Passion narrative is summarised and assessed in Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (1970), with a massive bibliography in the text. Since then a flood of monographs has continued to flow without solving the problem of 'guilt'. Nowhere is the Death of Jesus simply classed as 'tragic'.

3. The long and complex history of the interpretation of the person of Judas begins with Muslim polemical literature, where Judas is not a traitor but lied to the Jews in order to defend Christ (who was not crucified). A writer in the fourteenth century even claims that Judas was crucified for Christ. F. G. Klopstock (1724--1803) presents in his Messias Judas as a disappointed patriot. N. Kazantzankis's The Last Temptation (English tr. 1971) became a famous piece of fiction and The Man Born to be King (1943) by Dorothy L. Sayers achieved popularity on the radio.

4. For a detailed analysis see Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel (English tr. 1961) Part 1v: 'Religious Institutions'.

5. For the wide variety of early practice see E. C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (1960); also G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (1962), and the article 'Baptism' in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia (1967).

CHAPTER 7 THE LOSS OF TRAGEDY

1. Among numerous texts outside the New Testament, see Psalms 16, 73; Daniel 12; 2 Maccabees 7:11; 12:43; Wisdom 3.

2. V. Poschl, The Art of Virgil (1970) p. 53. 3. See Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (1967) p. 305: 'Augustine's

148 Notes

extreme sensitivity to the tastes of a specific audience also determined the strategy of his attack on the pagan cults.'

4 Posch!, The Art of Virgil, p. 93.

CHAPTER 8 THE REBIRTH OF TRAGEDY

1. On Shakespeare and Christianity there are as many books as there are views. However, of his knowledge and use of the Bible there can be no doubt. SeeR. Noble, Shakespeare's Bible Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer (1970); S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives (1970), pp. 122ff.; A Shakespeare Encyclopaedia (1966).

2. This so-called problem play is precisely that because it weighs the ambiguities of pity and terror as no other does. See Rosalind Miles, The Problem of 'Measure for Measure' (1976).

3. Bradley has an interesting footnote on p. 15 of Shakespearean Tragedy to the effect that Richard lacks the essential ingredient of' greatness'. This is a concept criticised by John Russell Brown in his Introduction to the 1985 edition of Bradley's work. It seems that heroism and greatness have become devalued now and are merely applicable to passing triumphs in politics and sports.

CHAPTER 9 THE CLAIMS OF THE IDEAL

1. For the vitality of the 'apophatic' tradition, which wholly distances God from man, see, for example, Rowan Williams, Arius, Heresy and Tradition (1987). In modern theology Karl Barth led the offensive against an Anknupfungspunkt, a point of connection or link between the self-revealing God and our natural apprehension of God through art and nature.

CHAPTER 10 WOMEN IN STRUGGLE FOR POWER

1. Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe (n.d) 1, 249ff. See also L. Marcuse, 'Die marxistische Auslesung derTragodgie' (1954) in V. Sander(ed.), Tragik und Tragodie (1971). Georg Lukacs is the most accessible Marxist interpreter writing about Tragedy.

CHAPTER 12 BEYOND THE CATASTROPHE

1. See A Shakespeare Encyclopaedia (1966) p. 432 for the quotation 'It is unselfish Christian love that redeems Lear and prepares him, not for a Stoic Nirvana, but for a Christian heaven', followed by opposing views.

2. Kafka is the master of 'normal' beginnings which fill the reader with the apprehension of terror. For example, the beginning of The Castle:

Notes 149

'It was late at night when K arrived. The village lay in deep snow'. The diction rather than the description has the force of a prelude to tragedy.

3. Following Karl Jaspers, who in an essay of 1947 reprinted in Sander (ed.), Tragik und Tragodie interprets the tragic as a transcendent reality free from religious faith or Christian commitment.

CHAPTER 13 THE UNBRIDGEABLE DIVIDE

1. See Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, the entry for 2 January 1824: Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, m, 14.

2. Don Carlos by Verdi was first performed in March 1867. Mery and du Lode provided a libretto which mutilated Verdi's original inspira­tion. It was successful, and a slimming-down process has continued to this day, though some passages that used to be cut have been restored.

CHAPTER 14 CASTERBRIDGE AND GENEVA

1. See Richard B. Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy (1959) pp. 176ff. 2. See Robert Gittings, The Older Hardy (1978) p. 80.

CHAPTER 15 THE PARADOX OF WAR

1. Edith Wharton's novel House of Mirth is sad but not tragic; the irony annuls the possibility of moral transcendence.

CHAPTER 16 THE TRANSCENDENCE OF WAR

1. The most accessible biography and evaluation of the man and his work is Michael Scammell's Solzhenitsyn (1985).

CHAPTER 17 CHRISTIAN TRAGEDY

1. See Lawrence Michel, 'The Possibility of a Christian Tragedy' in Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. L. Michel and R. B. Sewall, pp. 210-33.

2. See Harry Jarv, Die Kafka-Literatur (Malmo, 1961). On The Trial, see Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language (1952). E. Heller, The Basic Kafka (1983); Kafkakolloquium (1983).

3. The innumerable post-Auschwitz books and plays transcend the horrors they describe, forming perhaps a new type of catharsis. See for example Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz and the Reawakening (1986).

Further Reading

Heller, E., The Disinherited Mind (1975). Henn, T. R., The Harvest of Tragedy (1956). Kaufmann, W., Tragedy and Philosophy (1979). Krook, D., Elements of Tragedy (1969). Lenson, D., Achilles' Choice (1975). Lesky, A., Greek Tragedy (1967). Marcel G., Pour une Sagesse Tragique et son au-de/a (1968). Mason, H. A., The Tragic Plane (1985). Miller, H. J., The Spirit of Tragedy (1956). Sander, V. (ed.), Tragik und Tragodie (1971). Scott, N. (ed.), The Tragic Vision and the Christian Faith (1957). Sewall, R. B., The Vision of Tragedy (1959). Steiner, G., The Death of Tragedy (1961). Unamuno, M. de, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913).

150

Index

Abraham, 8-12 Achilles, 1, 54, 110 Adam,4-7,48,74 Aeschylus, 3 Aristotle, 1 Augustine, St, 55-6,59,79,147-8

Balzac, Honore de, 84 Beckett, Samuel, 36, 141 Berg, Alban, 112 Bloch, Ernst, 29,146 Boethius, 57 Botticelli, 30 Bowra, Sir Maurice, xv Bradley, Andrew C., xv, 71, 80,92 Brecht, Bertolt, 90, 144 Buchner, Georg, 111-14

Cain, 5-7,64 Calvin, 11 Chadwick, Henry, 57 Cicero, 51 Claude!, Paul, 137-8 Conrad, Joseph, 93, 118-22 Cranmer,62

Dante, 70, 79,96 David,22-6,45,64 Dickens,84 Dionysus, 2, 61 Dostoyevsky, 92-3, 119 Dreiser, Theodore H. A., 125

Eliot, George, 84-5, 116 Eliot, Thomas S., 137-9 Eri.nius,51 Euripides, 9, 12,61

Faulkner, William C., 26, 125-·6 Faustus,62-3,70,81,104 Flaubert, Gustave, 83--4 Fontane, Theodor, 86

Frank, Anne, 89 Frazer,SirJames,10

Geiger, Abraham, 9 Gilgamesh, 7, 96 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 12,

70,76,81,103--6,109 Gosse, Sir Edmund W., 115 Goya, Francisco J., xiii Graham, lise, 103--4 Graves, Robert R., 124-5

Handel, George F., 23, 33 Hardy, Thomas, 85-6,115-18 Hector, 1,5 Hemingway, Ernest M., 124 Hillary, Richard, 125 Hitler, Adolf, xiii, 92, 135 Hoelderlin, Friedrich, 103,110--11 Homer, xiii, 11, 25,57 Hume, David, 102

Ibsen, Henrik, 82-3 Isaac, 8-12, 34 Jacob, 13--17 Jeremiah, 32 Jesus the Christ, 42-50,75,144-5,

147 Job,35-41,54,64,74,116 Joseph, 15-17 Judas,46,64, 147

Kafka,Franz,114,139-41,148-9 Kant, Immanuel, 102-4, 109-10 Kierkegaard, Soren A., 11, 114 Kleist, Heinrich von, 108-10 Kyd, Thomas, 62

Lenin, 113, 122 Lesky,Albin,1,3,146 Lowth, Robert, 36, 147 Luther, 11, 62

151

152

Mann, Thomas, xi, 12-16,29,146 Marlowe, Christopher, 62-4 Marx, Karl, 113-14,121,136 Mason, H. A., xiv Michelangelo, 30 Miller,Arthur,26,29, 126 Milton, John, 20, 73,90 Mitchell, Margaret, 126 Moses,27-31

Napoleon, 105, 130 Nero, 51 Nietzsche, Friedrich W., 61,114

Oedipus, 25, 28, 51, 57,117 O'Neill, Eugene G., 114, 127 Ovid,51-2 Owen, Wilfrid, xi-xii

Pascal, Blaise, 76 Paul, St., 43,49-51 Picasso, Pablo, xiii PiusXII,29 Plato, 51 Prometheus, 35, 38,57 Prophets, 31-4

Racine, 73-8 Remarque, Erich M., xi Rembrandt van Tijn, 12, 23, 146 Renn, Ludwig, 124

Saint-Saens, Camille, 20 Sarnson,18-20,64 Sassoon, Siegfried L., xii Saul,20-3 Schiller, Friedrich von, 95,103,

106-8 Schoeps, Hans J., 9 Schonberg, Arnold, 30 Seneca, 51

Index

Shakespeare, William, 63-79,80-2, 93-102,115,148, Hamlet, 82,96-7,99-102 Julius Caesar, 79 King Lear, 96-9,115 Love's Labour's Lost, 68-9 h1acbeth,80-2,93-5 h1easure for h1easure, 65-7,92 A h1idsummer Night's Dream, 68 King Richard 11,70-2,79 King Richard lll, 79 Othello, 90,115 Romeo and Juliet, 67-8 Troilus and Cressida, 64-5,70

Shaw, George B., 89,124 Sheriff, Robert C., 124 Shokolov, Mikhail, 131 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., xi, 89,

120,132-5 Sophocles, xiv, 14, 25,29-30,39-40,

52 Spender, Sir Stephen H., xv Stali1t, 111, 131 Steiner, George, 73,127-8,136-7 Stern, Mario R., 129

Tertullian, 55 Tolstoy, 86-8, 129-32

Unarnuno, Miguel, 114,127,136

Vaughan, Henry, 103 Verdi, Giuseppe, 91, 107,149 Vergil, xiii, 39,52-6,58, 70, 74, 79,

96,147-8

Wharton, Edith N., 126,149 Wiesel, Elie, 146 Wilder, Thornton N., 141-4

Zola, Emile, 123 Zuckrnayer, Carl, xi