Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Wesen der Tragödie; Bewegung der Seele im Prozess der Entscheidung

Kurzinhalt: The truth of the tragedy is action itself, that is, action on the new, differentiated level of a movement in the soul that culminates in the decision (prohairesis) ...

Textausschnitt: 321a The tragedy continues the search for truth; and Aristotle has seen rightly that there is something "general" about this truth. The action of tragedy, its drama, is neither information about particular events, nor amusing fiction. The material used for the action is drawn from the stock of myths, but the tragedy neither narrates it in the manner of the Homeric epic, with the yet unreflected intention of telling a "true" story, nor does it recast the material into speculative form in the manner of Hesiod, with the intention of opposing the new truth to the old falsehood. The tragedy from Aeschylus to Euripides is quite deliberately a play. Neither the poet nor his audience is in doubt that the action is invented, that it uses the mythical materials quite freely, rearranges them to meet exigencies of literary form, and adds numerous imaginative details. There is not even that element of reality that was attached to the older cult dances and choric lyrics, of reenacting a paradigmatic mythical event. For chorus and audience have separated; the chorus has become part of the play, acting on the stage, and the audience does not participate in the action. Only when all erroneous associations are eliminated do we arrive at the true core of the problem: The truth of the tragedy is action itself, that is, action on the new, differentiated level of a movement in the soul that culminates in the decision (prohairesis) of a mature, responsible man. The newly discovered humanity of the soul expands into the realm of action. Tragedy as a form is the study of the human soul in the process of making decisions, while the single tragedies construct conditions and experimental situations, in which a fully developed, self-conscious soul is forced into action. (Fs) (notabene)