BOOKENDS

THIS "adventurous essay" by a young instructor at Williams College bears the subtitle: "Being a challenge to those who deny the possibility of a tragic spirit in the modern world," and is direct primarily at Joseph Wood Krutch and the New Humanists. It is divided into an historical survey of Greek, medieval and Elizabethan tragedy, Which is too cursory and frequently inaccurate, and an essay on modern tragic dramatists like Ibsen and O'Neill, which is very vigorous, very affirmative, and very badly written.

The prosecution of Mr. Harris' thesis leads him to distinguish values in the literature of the past which he labels "sociological," and which to in finally determine the fate of a work of art, since they both create its first popularity and assure its fall from popularity when in the course of time civilization makes its sociological values obsolete. Mr. Harris claims that these values have not been adequately reckoned with by earlier literary theorists; which cannot be wholly true, since "sociological," as the author uses the term, includes "religious," and certainly the religious aspects of Greek drama have been sufficiently discussed. Taking several characteristic Greek dramas, Mr. Harris points out how incredible, and even unintelligible, the source of the dramatic action frequently is, and how genuine appreciation of the dramas is thereby limited to scholars, and to readers of exceptional sensibility. The final argument advanced is that the sociological values of our own times are quite adequate to serve as the material for tragic drama, and in fact have done so in the theatres of Ibsen and O'Neill.

Obviously this thesis has some merit, though it does not carry quite the impact of originality which its champion claims for it. Anyone's appreciation of classic or even modern literature is conditioned by his sympathy for its social origins; but Mr. Harris forgets, or underestimates, the fact that sympathy is a product of the imagination more than of factual knowledge. Apart from this, "Case for Tragedy" is marred by a false emphasis on values extraneous to art as art, and by positive mistakes in literary judgement which are the disastrous. The temptation for a modern writer to call Date a tragic poet is considerable, but the total effect of the Divine Comedy is not tragic, and when Mr. Harris says it is he only demonstrates that unique emphasis on sociological values is fatal to appreciation of values considerably more important in literature. In general the author's excursions into practical criticism are not happy, as when he attributes to Shakespeare a view of the tragic hero which is characteristically Marlowe's.

But the most important criticism of Mr. Harris's argument can be made where they are most vital: in the field of modern literature. His assertion that the chief values of modern civilization, science, democracy, and so on, are adequate for tragedy of serious proportion goes shipwreck not only because those values are inferior in kind to the social values of the Greeks, of Dante, and of the Renaissance, but also because they are questioned by us at an unparalleled degree, especially by contemporary writers. Ibsen did not, as Mr. Harris think, write "Ghosts," or "Hedda Gabler," on the basis of the social values of his day, he wrote them in order to attack and denounce those values. And what social values does the author of "Strange interlude," and "Morning Becomes Electra" believe in?

It is curious that "The Case for Tragedy" does not once mention either of the modern playwrights who might he considered tragic dramatists of serious stature: Tchekor and Synge. It is curious and unfortunate, for Tchekor at least would have given some support to Mr. Harris' thesis. But the work of both of them might have suggested that the possibility of tragic drama today is a problem for the isolated dramatist to solve in creation, not for the literary critic with a special theory to plead.