The very first, and strong, impression one receives from Hume on “tragedy” is that it is, as drama and poetry, a fake, a mere imitation of life, and therefore weak. “That in poetry it never has the same feeling with that which arises in the mind, when we reason, though even upon the lowest species of probability. The mind can easily distinguish betwixt the one and the other; and whatever emotion the poetical enthusiasm may give to the spirits, it is still the mere phantom of belief or persuasion . . . it feels less firm and solid . . . the ideas it presents are different to the feeling from those which arise from the memory and the judgment. There is something weak and imperfect amidst all that seeming vehemence of thought and sentiment which attends the fictions of poetry.” (Hume: TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE, Bk. 1 Pt. 3 Sec. 10 Para. 11/13 p. 631)
But there is the principle expressed, “The spectator must sympathize with all these changes, and receive the fictitious joy as well as every other passion. Unless therefore it be asserted, that every distinct passion is communicated by a distinct original quality, and is not derived from the general principle of sympathy above explained, it must be allowed that all of them arise from that principle. To except any one in particular must appear highly unreasonable. As they are all first present in the mind of one person, and afterwards appear in the mind of another; and as the manner of their appearance, first as an idea, then as an impression, is in every case the same, the transition must arise from the same principle.” (Tr. Bk. 2 Pt. 2 Sec. 7 Para. 4/6 p. 370). The issue is whether “it be asserted, that every distinct passion is communicated by a distinct original quality” whereas, “In sympathy there is an evident conversion of an idea into an impression. This conversion arises from the relations of objects to ourself. Ourself is always intimately present to us . . . Sympathy is exactly correspondent to the operations of our understanding; and even contains something more surprising and extraordinary.” (Tr. P. 320) It is the object that is at issue, whether it is a direct impression or a detached imitation. This principle of sympathy establishes A) the “conversion of an idea into an impression . . . arises from the relations of objects to ourself . . . (which) is always intimately present to us,” and B) “Sympathy is exactly correspondent to the operations of our understanding.” That it also “contains something more surprising and extraordinary” is actually not surprising, considering both emotion and imagination are the ground of the human mind in Hume, and therefore what we do in our lives is to attempt to rationally sort out and understand the ultimately irrational situation we come out of, you might say ‘awake from,’ and, turning about on ourselves, become self-conscious as “ourself.” Hume repeatedly says our character comes to us already formed, and it is only upon realizing this objectively that we may or may not choose to try to adjust it to our circumstances or our desires and ideals.
Therefore an “always already” set irrational passion determines what we objectively (or not) find ourselves to be. Reason, then, is a tool to be used to fix the disaster after the fact. Or actually, to keep the disaster from fulfillment and completion and even, if possible, turn it into a virtue. Hume says of military heroes, “As long as these [disasters] are present to us, we are more inclined to hate than admire the ambition of heroes. But when we fix our view on the person himself, who is the author of all this mischief, there is something so dazzling in his character, the mere contemplation of it so elevates the mind, that we cannot refuse it our admiration. The pain which we receive from its tendency to the prejudice of society, is overpowered by a stronger and more immediate sympathy.” (Tr. Bk. 3 Pt. 3 Sec. 2 Para. 16/17 p. 601) We cannot but admire this strength of character even though this character is built upon deliberate disaster. We cannot help what we love. We can only ‘help’ what we do about it. We can judge it an unwise love, but it would be most unwise to judge it not as love. The last sentence is also the basic premise Edmund Burke builds his concept of the “sublime” upon.
The difference between a “distinct passion” as “communicated by a distinct original quality” becomes very obscure here in its distinction from the admiration of the hero stories of bravery. “Accordingly, we may observe that an excessive courage and magnanimity, especially when it displays itself under the frowns of fortune, contributes in a great measure to the character of a hero, and will render a person the admiration of posterity, at the same time that it ruins his affairs, and leads him into dangers and difficulties with which otherwise he would never have been acquainted.” (Tr. Bk. 3 Pt. 3 Sec. 2 Para. 15/17 p. 600) The hero plays out, in his freely chosen danger, the story of his ideal. It is tragic drama that is also tragic life itself.
In his very strange and even extremely post-modernistic essay “Of Tragedy,” Hume begins again by belittling tragedy. “It is certain, that, on the theatre, the representation has almost the effect of reality; yet it has not altogether that effect . . . There still lurks at the bottom a certain idea of falsehood in the whole of what we see. This idea, though weak and disguised, suffices to diminish the pain we suffer from . . . In the same instant we comfort ourselves, by reflecting, that it is nothing but a fiction . . .” (p. 218-9) But there is a problem here. If this mere “representation” is a representation of a truth known to the mind, even though unwillingly and usually evaded, then it is no longer “imitation” but the thing itself. When Gloucester in KING LEAR says, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, They kill us for their sport,” (4.1.38-39) it says something absolutely true about human contingency and the necessary situation of the divine point of view no one really wants to take to heart thoroughly. “For the divine, as the proverb says, all rules fail,” Plato’s REPUBLIC, VI, 492e, trans. Paul Shorey. The relationship between an unknowable and undefinable God and man can never be “imagined” as one of love, friendship, and equality, even by an atheist. There is too much obscure power on one side even if that side is perfectly mute. Gloucester says, on seeing Lear come on stage, “O, let me kiss that hand!’ This is a perfectly theatrical and trite phrase. But Lear brings it plainly down to reality with, “Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality.” (4.6.28-29).
As Edmund Burke says in his A PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRYinto the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful where he grounds the sublime in great but obscure terror and the beautiful in small but clear pleasure, even smell can intimate the sublime. Burke, like Hume, also contrasts object with imitation when he says “these affections of the smell . . . when they are in their full force, and lean directly on the sensory, are simply painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when . . . moderated as in a description . . . they become sources of the sublime as genuine as any other, and upon the same principle of a moderated pain,” Part II, section XXI. One can see here the same compromise between source “of the sublime as genuine as any other” versus “the principle of moderated pain.” There is a “sea-change” here. “Moderated” exactly how? It is supposedly from the actual terrifying and repulsive object to a “description” of it in mere words: A step-down from reality. But Ariel now enters, followed by Ferdinand, before Miranda and Prospero.
Ariel – Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have and kiss’d
The wild waves whist:
Foot it fleetly here and there,
And sweet sprites bear
The burthen. Hark, hark.
[burthen dispersedly] Bow-wow.
Ariel - The watch dogs bark:
[burthen dispersedly] Bow-wow.
Ariel - Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry
[burthen dispersedly] Cock a diddle dow.
Ferdinand: where should this music be? i’th’ air or th’earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o’th’island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my father’s wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But ’tis gone.
No, it begins again.
Ariel – Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
[burthen] Ding-dong.
Ariel - Hark! Now I hear them, - Ding-dong bell.
Here we have a fantasy within a fantasy. Ferdinand’s father is not dead. Yet we are still given an ambiguous truth that still logically applies. Changes are “described” that “when they are in their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful.” But why are they painful? Burke writes as if it were a general truth, that everyone viewing in actuality a dead body is ‘pained’ and repulsed, and which is only bearable if it is turned into “a description or narrative.” But this is not at all true. The view can be taken. It is still painful and repulsive. It fascinates also.
But I’ve heard something relevant to this, and I believe it. Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he saw some corpses lying at the executioner’s feet. He had an appetite to look at them but at the same time he was disgusted and turned away. For a time he struggled with himself and covered his face, but, finally, overpowered by the appetite, he pushed his eyes wide open and rushed toward the corpses saying, “Look for yourselves, you evil wretches, take your fill of the beautiful sight!” (REPUBLIC, IV, 439e-440a)
Now, there is a difference. Leontius is distanced from the corpses in several ways, by simple space, by stone boundaries, and by being above what is below. It is not said at all if he knows who the “corpses’ are, however there are a number of them. It has been suggested by some scholar that they are the “Thirty Tyrants” and their followers that have been overthrown in 403 BCE, just in time to save Socrates’ life because he refused to carry out an arrest for execution by Critias, their leader and his former student like Alcibiades. A number of Plato’s relatives, though, were among the “thirty tyrants” and must have died with Critias. If this is accurate, then it is a matter of “description’ coming very, very close to the sense impressions of life. This “description” of Leontius is a “description” of Leontius’ actual “sense impression” of the object itself. Though it is related, the whole point of the passage is the “conversion of an idea into an impression . . . (that) arises from the relations of objects to ourself . . . (which) is always intimately present to us.” If this is true, then, the corpses are both enemies to democracy, whose death is desired, and intimate relatives whose coarse death is painful to view. “As they are all first present in the mind of one person, and afterwards appear in the mind of another; and as the manner of their appearance, first as an idea, then as an impression, is in every case the same, the transition must arise from the same principle.”
Lear unrelentingly speaks the plain and obvious truth of time and death as “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life And thou no breath at all? O thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never.” (5.3. 305-307). Then, combine this with its equal but opposite ‘imitation,’ “When we are born we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools. This is a good block: It were a delicate stratagem to shoe A troop of horse with felt. I’ll put it to proof And when I have stolen upon these son-in-laws, Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!” (4.6.178-183) Do not these quotations say what we are and there is no “imitation” or “pretend” to it? Shakespeare, by calling the place Lear is, a “stage” also speaks plain reality. It is as if two “imitations” make a “reality.”
But I said Hume’s essay was strange, and it truly is. For most of the immediate examples he gives are of the most immediate objects of sorrow. The first is Cicero’s description of the actual murders of Gaius Verres in Cicero’s accusation to the court. Then is his account of Othello’s jealousy and yet follows immediately with “Difficulties encrease passions of every kind; and by rouzing our attention, and exciting our active powers, they produce an emotion, which nourishes the prevailing affection. Parents commonly love that child most, whose sickly infirm frame of body has occasioned them the greatest pains, trouble, and anxiety in rearing him. The agreeable sentiment of affection here acquires force from sentiments of uneasiness. Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence. Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence.” (ESSAYS, Pt. 1 E. 22 Para. 15/28 mp. 221-222 gp. 263) Shakespeare merely describes the reality of the human situation which Hume admits, but merely with attached pretended names.
Hume goes on to say, weaving a web once again that says all things to all people as he so delights in doing, “The force of imagination, the energy of expression, the power of numbers, the charms of imitation; all these are naturally, of themselves, delightful to the mind: And when the object presented lays also hold of some affection, the pleasure still rises upon us, by the conversion of this subordinate movement into that which is predominant. The passion, though, perhaps, naturally, and when excited by the simple appearance of a real object, it may be painful; yet is so smoothed, and softened, and mollified, when raised by the finer arts, that it affords the highest entertainment. To confirm this reasoning, we may observe, that if the movements of the imagination be not predominant above those of the passion, a contrary effect follows; and the former, being now subordinate, is converted into the latter, and still farther encreases the pain and affliction of the sufferer.” (pg. 222-223) The reality of the fundamental human situation ‘subverts’ the movement of ‘imitation’ and ends up serving us ‘reality’ instead.
Hume says of Lord Clarendon’s unwillingness to describe King Charles’ execution, “Lord CLARENDON, when he approaches towards the catastrophe of the royal party, supposes, that his narration must then become infinitely disagreeable; and he hurries over the king's death, without giving us one circumstance of it. He considers it as too horrid a scene to be contemplated with any satisfaction, or even without the utmost pain and aversion. He himself, as well as the readers of that age, were too deeply concerned in the events, and felt a pain from subjects, which an historian and a reader of another age would regard as the most pathetic and most interesting, and, by consequence, the most agreeable.’ (p. 223-224) It is put in bathetic opposition to a ridiculous scene upon the stage that portrays far too much to convince. The reason is, “An action, represented in tragedy, may be too bloody and atrocious.” The distance of “an historian and a reader of another age” may regard the description of the execution as “most pathetic and most interesting, and, by consequence, the most agreeable,” but the same king is still really just as dead. There are no gradations of death, and if we need to be reminded of the real fascination of horror, we must remember Plato’s REPUBLIC . The real difference is how close the words relate each person to the truth of the matter. With Lord Clarendon, Charles’ death is a personal matter “intimately” so. With Hume, it is distanced. But in Hume’s lifetime he was criticized severely for “shedding a tear” for Charles. The matter “if the movements of the imagination be not predominant above those of the passion, a contrary effect follows; and the former, being now subordinate, is converted into the latter, and still farther encreases the pain and affliction of the sufferer.” We are back at the ambiguous situation of Plato and Leontius.
Hume, towards the end of the essay, is still concerned, though, with giving “a thorough satisfaction to the audience . . . In order to dismiss the audience with entire satisfaction and contentment, the virtue must convert itself into a noble courageous despair, or the vice receive its proper punishment.” This seems to agree with the thoroughly superficial beginning of the essay, except that by now things have changed the context thoroughly, and words creep in that seem disturbingly out of place like “dismiss” and “virtue must convert itself.” Into what? “Despair.” It is, for sure, a “noble courageous despair,” but words have, in this thoroughly philosophical essay talking of terms predominance and subordination and conversion, taken on very precise objectiveness that is not at all in the slightest clear, as we would expect from a representative of the “Aufklärung.” “That vice receive its proper punishment” rings strangely cold and out of place after the “noble courageous despair.” One thinks of the rapacious hero not only destroying others but himself as well, yet still forces us to admire him. Does the hero’s vice “receive its proper punishment”? Are we happy and satisfied at that? Or, instead, do we sorrow?
Following a discussion of the painter’s unhappiness (failure) “in this light,” and the reversion to “fictions, though passionate and agreeable, are scarcely natural or probable,” Hume continues in the penultimate paragraph, “The same inversion of that principle, which is here insisted on, displays itself in common life, as in the effects of oratory and poetry. Raise so the subordinate passion that it becomes the predominant, it swallows up that affection which it before nourished and encreased. Too much jealousy extinguishes love; Too much difficulty renders us indifferent: Too much sickness and infirmity disgusts a selfish and unkind parent.”
Whoa, here! Strange things are occurring rapidly in the movement of the eye reading (or writing) these phrases. First, Hume is displaying that vice he shows such contempt for in the Scholastic schoolmen throwing their meaningless, abstract terms about that do not refer to any real sense impression or object actually experienced! AND THEN! Hume introduces abruptly with great coldness just that real experience. “Too much jealousy extinguishes love; Too much difficulty renders us indifferent: Too much sickness and infirmity disgusts a selfish and unkind parent.” These are very, very hard and cruel words, very unpleasant and grating on the senses. “Too much difficulty renders us indifferent.” What is this “difficulty”? It is a mother leaving her dead baby at the side of the road and going on as she must.
The ultimate paragraph: “What so disagreeable as the dismal, gloomy, disastrous stories, with which melancholy people entertain their companions? The uneasy passion being raised there alone, unaccompanied with any spirit, genius, or eloquence, conveys a pure uneasiness, and is attended with nothing that can soften it into pleasure or satisfaction.” This is the end and very last words of the essay. Is this not worlds, whole universes away from its beginning? Especially from a man who prided himself on being personally happy and very able to entertain his companions? It is cold, harsh, and bleak. “Never, never, never, never, never.”
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