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University Daily Kansan
By W. P. Albrecht Professor of English
THE VISION OF TRAGEDY by Richard B. Sewall, Yale University Press. $4.
Principally this book is a definition of tragedy, illustrated by "The Book of Job," "Oedipus the King," "Doctor Faustus," "King Lear," "The Scarlet Letter," "Moby-Dick," "The Brothers Karmazov," and "Absalom, Absalom." It is also a brief history of tragedy, since short transitional chapters link the periods represented by the eight tragedies that Mr. Seallah has selected for analysis.
"Each age," says Mr. Sewall, "has different tensions and terrors, but they open on the same abyss." This is a depth of suffering, primal and dark beyond the consolations of philosophy or religion, which the tragic hero explores as he acts in defiance of his destiny. Although free to act, the tragic hero faces a disordered world, where moral choices are not clear cut. Very likely he will destroy himself—and perhaps others as well—but in the process he will learn a great deal about himself and mankind and the nature of good and evil.
Tragedy Follows Stability
Tragedy has often flourished, Mr. Sewall points out, at those "critical periods . . . after a long period of relative stability, when a dominant myth or religious orthodoxy or philosophic view has provided a coherent and sustaining way of life. Suddenly the original terror looms close and the old formulations cannot dispel it. The conflict between man and his destiny assumes once more the ultimate magnitude."
It was at such a time that an unknown poet rewrote "the orthodox and optimistic folktale" of Job, with emphasis not on Job's piety and ultimate rewards but, as in Oedipus, Faustus, and Lear, on suffering, defiance, and the attainment of new powers as a human being. "The Scarlet Letter," "Moby Dick," "The Brothers Karamazov," and "Absalom, Absalom!" all represent "tragedy in the modern world," but with a difference among them. Whereas Hester and Ahab still feel a "sense of justification," Mr. Sewall finds in the two novels by Dostoevski and Faulkner a more modern tragic problem: "not what values or loyalties to choose but the bankruptcy of all values and loyalties, and the consequent disintegration of the individual."
To develop his definition, Mr. Sewall analyzes these eight tragedies, but he insists—rightly of course—that tragic meaning cannot be abstracted into analysis or summary. Philosophers, moralists, and scientists generalize human experience; and the meaning of merely philosophic, moral, or scientific writing can be reduced to a series of propositions, with words as interchangeable counters. But the meaning of a piece of literature is the reader's total experience—sensory, emotional, and intellectual—and therefore impossible to summarize or paraphrase.
This is true of all literature, but it is especially true of tragedy, for tragic experience is so compounded of ambiguity and paradox that it withstands any ordered view. The meaning as Mr. Sewall tells us, is all that the tragic hero "says, does, and becomes" and all that lesser characters "say and do and do not become; all that is implicit in image and metaphor; all that is revealed through the rapid and relentless dialectic of the action."
Tragedy Holds Up
One might quarrel, perhaps, with one or two of Mr. Sewall's generalizations about the relation of tragedy to a particular time. In Chapter Eight, for instance, in explaining the dearth of tragic writing in the early nineteenth century, he seems to identify Romanticism too closely with political liberalism. But this is a minor objection.
The transitional chapters are written briefly and therefore on a level of generalization that precludes much detail. For its definition of tragic experience, and for its enrichment of that experience through the analysis of specific tragedies, this seems to me an excellent book.
"...In the lectures, I make an occasional remark about 'consumer research' in education, referring both to students' finding out which are the 'best' colleges and to the increasingly influential work of high-school guidance personnel. The more I have considered the matter, the more I have become convinced that the cause of improved education would be enormously aided if some impartial yet fearless agency could issue vivid and candid reports on colleges and schools of the sort Consumers Union publishes on commodities.
From the Bookshelf
The following excerpts are from the book "Constraint and Variety in American Education," by David Riesman.
"It is astonishing, when one thinks about it, that the FTC polices advertising for hard goods where often the worst that can happen is that one can be cheated of money, and that various consumer-research organizations provide reliable data on vacuum cleaners, driers, radios, and canned goods, while no similar agency polices school and college catalogues and brochures and does research on the qualitative aspects of education from the student's point of view. If one loses a few dollars through misleading advertising, one can make others, but if one loses four years through misleading schooling, one cannot make them up-on the contrary, in some cases, one may have formed false values, false estimates of one's self, of others, and of the universe."
The Humanities Forum reported in the Official Bulletin as being last night will be held at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Oread Room of the Kansas Union. John A. Meixner, instructor of English will speak.
Humanities Forum Scheduled Tonight
Annual Kansan Party Planned
Members and friends of the Daily Kansas will go wassailing tomorrow from 7 to 10:45 p.m., following an annual office party.
Carolers will meet at Flint Hall at 6:45 p.m. From there they will proceed to the homes of faculty members and their families.
The winner of the Miss Santa contest, who will be announced in the Daily Kansan tomorrow, will be honored at an office party sponsored by the Kansan Board tomorrow afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m.
Miss Santa will receive gifts from Kansan advertisers at the party. The contest is sponsored annually by the Kansan.
The five finalists in the contest are Bonnie Becker, Topeka senior, Kappa Kappa Gamma; Karen Jordan, Great Bend freshman, Watkins; Nancy Meyer, Leavenworth sophomore, Pi Beta Phi; Linda Young, Des Moines, Iowa, junior, Sigma Kappa, and Lynda Delfos, Overland Park sophomore, Gertrude Sellards Pearson upperclass.
Tuesday. Dec. 15, 1959
Burton W. Marvin, dean of the school of journalism; George Link Jr., assistant professor of journalism; James E. Dykes, associate professor of journalism; Frances Grinstead, associate professor of journalism; Melvin Mencher, assistant professor of journalism; Calder M. Pickett, associate professor of journalism, and C. Clarke Keys, instructor of journalism.
Faculty members who will be serenaded during the evening are:
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"IT WORKS LIKE TUIS"—Clown (Steve Callahan, Independence senior) explains the powerful magic and mystery of the Wish-For Potion and Wish-Away Lotion to his daughter, Delight, (Ardith Webber, Bartlesville, Okla. junior). The scene is from the Children's Theatre production, The Lost Birthday, by Bee Harvey. Performances will be at 4:30 p.m. today and will continue through Friday in the Experimental Theatre.
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