Comedy and Tragedy

[mono]

Someone sent me the proceeding poems, and I found them reminiscent of Greco-Roman and Shakespearean classics of comedy and tragedy. Apparently, however, the poet, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson wrote the following for a benefit for Belgian women and children. Regardless, I find them inspiring.

Comedy

I am the Comic Muse,
Soft as the summer rain,
Come the children I bear
Out of the breath of my brain;
Love,--and Laughter that lifts,
Joy with the lilt of a song,
Beauty that's born of praise,
And Faith that has righted wrong.
I am the heart of a child,
I am the trust of a maid,
Spirit and passion of man,
Love that is unbetrayed;
I am the Muse that smiles,
Lo ! and gladness is rife,
Comedy, I am called,
I am the mirror of Life.

Tragedy

I am the Tragic Muse;
Born of the web of my brain,
Lo ! my children shall pass,
Poverty, Pathos, and Pain;
Labor,--and Love forsworn,
Each in their turn I name.
Jealousy, evil born
Sorrow, and Sin and Shame.
I am the World's despair,
I am the heart's despite,
Woven of me is fear,
Shadow of mine is night;
I am the Muse that weeps,
Out of my grief is Strife,
Tragedy, I am called,
I am the mirror of Life!

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (1861-1933)

[Helga]

both are very interesting, the first one makes me smile and I feel like I understand the feelings she talks about. the second one,wow, I love it, to make one person hold the tragedy of the world. Very inspiring.

[amuse]

the first one feels like lightly tripping feet, like dancing in the rain and knowing that life is showers of joy and everything will always be all right in the end. the second feels like morose truth and gut-wrenching reality. so wonderful that the same person could right them...i wonder how far apart, timewise, she did so. how wonderful that she could see and write two such disparate views so well, i bet she was marvelous to know. how beautiful...

[Sitaram]

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-lo....cgi?id=dv1-58

The term “Comedy” designates certain traits of man's
relationship with his fellows. More or less as fate is
to the tragic hero, so society is to the comic hero. The
idea of the comic, then, refers to some aspect of man's
conflict with his group (political, familial, etc.) and its
conventions, mores, ideals. But the same man is also
part of that society; hence, in struggling with it he
is apt to trip himself. Comedy, thus, is an ironic strug-
gle with society.


Comedy involves the failure to live up to an ac-
cepted standard, a failure which usually elicits a smil-
ing or laughing reaction. This article will not be con-
cerned with theories of laughter but only with the form
and content of the kind of action which awakens the
sense of the comic.



Comedy, then, is a forgetting of the tragic
and bloody renewal in a careless, happy release. Yet
a note of anxiety often still runs beneath its ridiculous
and jovial surface.


Doubtless no human value is absolute, and no human
act or role is as significant as it may at the time be
thought to be. The insight of comedy is directed upon
the meaningless aspect of human values and upon the
absurdity inherent in all human acts, roles, and projects.
Yet it is sometimes not without the suggestion of a
vision beyond such foolishness.



The recorded lineage of comic action goes back to
the Margites (ca. ninth century B.C.).


The relation of comedy to tragedy has, since the
Greeks, appeared to be complex. In a famous passage
of the Symposium (223D) Socrates argued that the art
(τεχνη) of composing comedy is the same sort of thing
as the art of composing tragedy.


Beneath the conformist, as Nietzsche insisted, there
lives the satyr. Comedy tears off the foolish mask of
conformity and indulges for a brief but relieving inter-
val the equally foolish satyr. This catharsis yields an
insight into the less respectable but ever present ani-
mal-like basis of the human being. Thus it purges folly
by means of folly and brings man and his milieu into
an easier and perhaps more fruitful harmony. Comedy
deprecates the traditional mores, and by means of this
permissive irreverence it preserves them. Comedy, like
tragedy, is a self-corrective action. Hence John
Meredith could speak of comedy as the “ultimate
civilizer.”



In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, two bums, reminiscent
of Rouault's sad clowns, stand aside from the endless
sadomasochistic spectacle of the passing world. They
wait, for whom or what they know not. Call it Godot.
They savor the passage of time, waiting absurdly for
the unintelligible object of their faith. Time passes.
They consider suicide. A tree buds. Is it the tree of
life? Is it Godot himself? Who can say? At least they
reach a vague recognition of their indeterminate plight.

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy...ection13.rhtml

Plato's Symposium Dialogue concludes the following morning with two significant moments. One is the conversation between Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes, which Aristodemus overhears. In it, Socrates is trying to suggest that comedy and tragedy can and should be reconciled. This is a suitable way to end a dialogue that is not only Plato's greatest masterpiece from a dramatic standpoint, but also one which juxtaposes the comic elements of Aristophanes' and Alcibiades' speeches with the more serious (or tragic) elements of Agathon's and Diotima's speeches. Perhaps Plato is suggesting that philosophy is the ideal synthesis, where comedy and tragedy are brought together in a unified whole.

The other point of significance is Socrates' behavior the next day. Neither drunk nor hung-over, Socrates goes about his business as always. His attraction to wisdom is so strong that nothing can tire him out or distract him from his pursuit.