Tuesday, September 26, 2006

The days grew hot, O Babylon!

People talk of the ‘tragedy’ in my (plays), and call it ‘sordid,’ ‘depressing,’ ‘pessimistic’—the words usually applied to anything of a tragic nature. But ‘tragedy’ I think has the meaning the Greeks gave it. To them, it brought exaltation, an urge towards life and ever more life. It roused them to deeper spiritual understandings and released them from the petty greeds of everyday existence. When they saw tragedy on the stage they felt their own hopeless hopes ennobled in art.”

They are hopeless hopes, “because any victory we may win is never the one we dreamed of winning. The point is that life in itself is nothing. It is the dream that keeps us fighting, willing—living! Achievement, in the narrow sense of possession, is a stale finale. The dreams that can be completely realized are not worth dreaming. The higher the dream, the more impossible it is to realize fully. But you would not say, since this is true, that we would dream only of the easily attained. A man wills his own defeat when he pursues the unattainable. But his struggle is his success! He is an example of the spiritual significance which life attains when it aims high enough, when the individual fights all the hostile forces within and without himself to achieve a future of nobler values.

Such a figure is necessarily tragic. But to me he is not depressing; he is exhilarating! He may be a failure in our materialistic sense. His treasures are in other kingdoms. Yet isn’t he the most inspiring of all successes?

This extract totally took my breath away.

posted@8:47 PM

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