IRONY AND THEATER UE aay 10 BECKETT HOS eee Namegic Play explores the deep Lava significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age after tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heitiet Miiller, and Botho Stmuss, Menke shows how tragedy reemerges in modernity as “tragedy of plat In Hamlet; Endgame, Philoktet, aid Ithiika, Mchice integtate’ philosophical theory with Critical readings 10. investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence: |OO ee D Praise for Tragic Play: Irony and Theater from Sophocles to Beckett gic Play is philosophical while also being, informed by classical scholarship and aesthetic and dramaturgical theory, It is ambitious and BYOeocS ORCS SE OCSLEID MARTIN DONOUGHO, University of South Carolina “Christoph Menke’s theoretical framework is extremely dense and far-reaching, with a powerfully and consistently built argument that Pet OCU nn CeO Sean ore ea eRe IE Oe OURO ICURINy “Christoph Menke develops tragedy as a modern mode of understand in new and interesting ways. His ideas should generate quite a bit ot debate not only in philosophy bur also in literary studies and social cu Ce aa Frep Rusa, University of Notre Dame -1455b-5 ISBN 978-0 I 780231 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 145565) NEW YORK www.cup.columbia.edu [iColumbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts LYDIA GOEHR AND GREGG M. HOROWITZ, EDITORS ADVISORY BOARDTragic Play3. Author and Character: Ocdipus’s Existence 37 Contents8. Tras PART III The Tragedy of Play 129 edy and Skey ticism: On Hamlet BI viix Prefatory Note toa “modern” hope, it is held that, through the awakening to maturity of self- conscious, rational subjectivity, our practice will be so altered as to cease al- lowing us to fall prey to tragic irony. Yet the force of tragic irony prevailsPrefutory Note xi The book was literally written in reverse. The readings of Beckett’s End- game, Miiller’s Philoktet, and Strauss’s Ithaka as forms of specifically modern tragedy were written first under the rubric of the “tragedy of play.” From this,THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT EURIPIDES: “...and he became the most unfortunate of mortals afterward.” AESCHYLUS: No, he did not become so, for he never ceased being so.Ie was I myself? : ing, did not remain childless.* This transgression, for which Oedipus cannot be held responsible, but to which he owes his life, destines this same life for misfortune: “When dawns the Fate-appointed day, / The agéd curse is hard to6 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT pus appears to him “unfortunate” from the beginning, because Aeschylus be- lieves he is able to answer the question concerning whether someone is fortu- nate or unfortunate by reference to what happens to h : how others treat himIe was I myself?” r Oedipus, then he was once, in the beginning, as Euripides says—and in spite of what, according to Aeschylus’s account, had already happened to him up to that point in his life—genuinely fortunate. “Their earlier happiness was truly8 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT incestuous marriage, is its direct consequence, its—paradoxical—“reward”). It thus cannot have been the bare fact of Oedipus’s deed and culpability that propels his destiny down the opposite course. Sophocles’ chorus sharpens this“Fe was I myself? 9 rather the significance that this past acquires for Oedipus. Hence it is for Oedipus a fact that determines who he is, what (following Reinhardt) there- fore constitutes his “being” as an agent. Oedipus’s knowledge of the facts is10 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT deeds, “in lovely Thebes, suffering woes, he rules over the Cadmeans by the dire designs of the gods." And in Euripides’ Phoenician Women Ocdipus lives, to be sure, “locked away” in his house, yet not as a result of a sentenceIe was I myself” 1 is excessive and reflective. This argues in favor of seeing in it an expression not of stupidity or strangeness, but rather of necessity.THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT In the figure of tragic irony the tragedy of Oedipus formulates a different and new experience of fate: not every fate is self-made, but this one is. The contention to be developed in what follows is that it is through the verdict or“Ie was I myself” 8 to self-condemnation. This is the interpretive claim regarding Oedipus Tyran- nus that shall be claborated in three steps in what follows. The first (chapter 2) treats the story that the tragedy narrates (and the semantics that it puts to useFrom Judging to Being Judged 5 This is the point of view from which Oedipus's story is to be retold in this chapter. That Oedipus comes to know of his earlier acts is not the whole story. Oedipus’s story consists rather in a succession of verdicts, for each of whichTHE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT applied; I have sent Creon, son of Menoeceus, my wife’s brother, to the Pythian halls of Phoebus, so that he may learn by what deed or word I may protect this city. (65-72)From Judging to Being Judged " to Oedipus’s interpretation, the oracle is directed against the peculiar passivity with which the Thebans had reacted—or precisely not reacted—to the killing of their king, Laius. Creon explains this passivity of judgment “After Laius’ death18 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT Creon gives assurance that he will repeat the words, “I will tell you what I heard from the god,” but it is at once conspicuous that he does not do so verbatim. This is at odds with the decisive role that the wording of an oracleFrom Judging to Being Judged 19 This transformation begins as soon as the very first question, the double question that Oedipus directs regarding the divine commandment “to drive cout from the land a pollution, one that has been nourished in this country”:20 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT answer complies with the judicial construction of the “case” that Oedipus has already given with his twofold question. Creon provides information that he fits into this structure. Only in this way does he also know that a murderFrom Judging to Being Judged a respect to the perpetrator. Of course, one can complain about an event, but one can only initiate court proceedings in response to a deed that someone has committed. With the installation of the victim as plaintiff, the perpetrator2 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT to which an answerable perpetrator harms or injures a victim through his or her act. The juridical subjectivization concerns even the judgment, which is itself understood legally as the process—as a process of the application of aFrom Judging to Being Judged 23 Court judgment breaks, as has been seen, with the anonymous practice of ritual because it conceptualizes that which is to be purified as the deed of an answer- able perpetrator in relation to a victimized party. Thereby is laid down whatPa THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT wants to understand Oedipus’s tragedy. Yet the tragedy cannot be elucidated at all by denying Oedipus the knowledge of an alternative manner of judging. The opposite is the case: when he comes to judge himself, Oedipus does norFrom Judging to Being Judged 25 to exile.!° The offense that Oedipus here threatens with condemnation and punishment, unlike the killing of Laius, still unspecified in this regard, is now expressly an offense defined by the subjective perspective of the perpetrator on26 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT What Oedipus commands the perpetrator, his or her accessories, and witnesses who do not want to reveal what they know is their self-banishment from the community: they should not receive anyone and expel whoever is inFrom Judging to Being Judged 27 indeed replaces, its process. The curse is able to do this precisely because it re- lieves its addressee of the subject status still presupposed by the threat. For a threat is directed at someone who has desires and above all fears, and who.28 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT a means to accelerate it. Nonetheless, the curse cannot be limited to this status ofa bare means to an end. By pronouncing the curse, Oedipus attempts to exert a sacerdotal-magical power with immediate effect. But once pronounced, theFrom Judging to Being Judged 29 what, that the curse “commands,” without being able to adopt an indepen- dent position in relation to them. The author of the curse similarly loses con- trol over it the very moment in which he or she pronounces it. As Theseus willTHE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT fter Oedipus’s identity and crime have become public, there is no outbreak of collective violence in which he is chosen as the scapegoat indi- cated by the oracle and chased over the borders (as in René Girard’s interpreta-From Judging t0 Being Judged u the argument advanced here, were actually to conduct himself as an impartial judge with respect to his own case, interpreting the curse and oracle as general es of judgment, which he then, after clarification of the facts, applies to2 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT This accords with a second vantage point from which Ocdipus’s self- condemnation cannot be seen as juridical. If Oedipus adhered, as he professes, to one of the rules of judgment that he has established, then he would not haveFrom Judging to Being Judged 3 the application of the rule he himself has set up nor applies underhandedly another rule; on the contrary, his self-judgment does not at all proceed ju- ridically, as the ado tion of an evaluative osition on the facts via their sub-4 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT into consideration his intentions with respect to past actions and his reflec- tions with respect to the current judgment. In this twofold independence of judgment lies its very excess; in his self-condemnation Oedipus is himself theFrom Judging to Being Judged 35 recommends in Nomoi for insoluble murder cases." If one follows the reading according to which the arrangements suggested by Plato were not of his own invention but rather agreed with the prevailing system of criminal law,2” then36 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT the skepticism concerning the effectiveness of judicial curses and the con- sciousness of the tension in which law and curse stand grew steadily.” This skepticism is a presupposition for Sophocles” tragedy because it poses the ques-38 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT This misses the mark in two ways, by misconceiving the way of being of both dramatic characters and their actions. Psychological explanations lead into a person’s depths, and historical explanations lead out into their context.Author and Character Dramatic Existence What does it mean to be a dramatic character, a character in a dramatic 39 lay?40 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT belongs to the community of human beings. The sphinx had asked (although the tragedy does not cite it, itis a part of the myth) who or what it isAuthor and Character ae For the character in a text, it is the case that everything attributed to the char- acter is at the same time inscribed in that text. Whatever comes to the fore as the character’s qualities and the events in which he or she has a part is at once2 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT a wide range of possibilities, but under a law of necessity, albeit a necessity executed by themselves alone. Unlike figures in a text but like human Dasein, dramatic characters have traits only so far as they themselves realize them inAuthor and Character “3 Arritual or epic performance is a continuation. The dramatic performance, by contrast, is a recreation: the recreation of a drama that already exists as text. It too is a repetition, but vertically rather than temporally-horizontally (iniM4 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT references. Yet, unlike in nondramatic, narrative text, the name in drama is im- mediately an clement in a plot structure. Ocdipus’s name is given to him by someone, and now he cannot live at all other than with this name, indeed inAuthor and Character Q tragedy experiences subjectivity not as the faculty of freedom, but rather as the scene of power in the assertion of its independence.46 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT permitting Schlegel the step from philosophy to poetry, reads that a perfor- mance or portrayal is “transcendental” when it presents “that which produces along with the product.” The self-reflection of presentation occurs as the “co-Author and Character 7 ofa text—the text of the character’s own condemnation. What is at once ironic and tragic in Oedipus’s fate, nevertheless, consists in the fact that he himself is the author of the judgment that then determines who he is like as a character.48 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT According to Miiller, without irony nothing is tragic: “Seriousness bare of irony makes for querulousness; when accompanied, however, by irony or the ‘od of freedom it makes for the As Thirwall has setAuthor and Character instead sees to it that this double meaning enters the service of so-called tragic irony, Hee does this whenever he puts in the mouth of the speaker a double meaning unbeknown to bim and indeed generally unsuspected by theso THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT not only he himself, or he not solely as he himself, speaks—in which he uncon- sciously* speaks as his other, as his author and spectator. The classic example for Ocdipus’s tragic-ironic speech act is his curse.?? Its2 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT is—in as well as after his self-condemnation—a self no longer capable of self: determination, of action and living—he is one accursed. Both the semantics of the curse in which Sophocles’ tragedy formulates‘The Violence of Judgment 3 of tragedy, cannot wish to achieve a grounding of this experience. Or: the philosophical presentation does not “reconstruct” the tragic experience, but rather comprehends it. This does not imply that in the philosophical presenta-* THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT to be expiated must be understood as an act that is to be considered from the subjective perspective of perpetrator and victim. Third, a subject for judging must be installed who works as its author in two ways: by formulating the‘The Violence of Judgment ss to impose and to implement it, lies the basis of the validity of the “primary rules of obligation” in the law. It thereby becomes clear that the notion of a “secondary rule of recogni-56 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT the case and its evaluation through the application of rules and present all this as the acts of subjects answerable for them. The characteristic mode of expression of the nonofficial use is of quite a dif-‘The Violence of Judgment 7 furthermore, only the reverse side of the fact that a court judgment itself rests on a narrative practice of judgment to which that self-judgment belongs. A juridical rule that lays down in general how one ought to judge, follows8 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT takes into account not just subjective perspectives, but it is directed to the real- ity of actions (b); itis not the self-determined activity of a judging subject, but rather the expression of a habitual judgmental practice ().The Violence of Judgment 9 narrative practice of judgment that forms the basis of court judgments. In the narrative use of the normative order, facts and values, ascertainment and evalu- ation, description and appraisal are not at two distinct levels or steps, but in-60 THE EXCE! OF JUDGMENT narration of an act can consist of a sentence, such as the sentence: “I have mur- dered my father.” For when Ocdipus’s long narrative of what happened at the crossroads is abridged to this one sentence, it is clear to him as well who he is:‘The Violence of Judgment or to the establishing of the facts; in the significance of consequences for the evaluation of actions; in the grounding of the individual act of judgment in a social practice. The successful subjectivization of selfjudgment would thus62 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT of the judgment as violence. For this presupposition does not apply to his ac- tions: it is not the case that his intentions and their effects correspond to each other. In this respect his verdict is wrong—and nonetheless it is self-evidentThe Violence of Judgment 63 way it is dealt with; the great error already lies in our description of an action as a great error—that is, in our appraisal of it (for to describe something as an error means to appraise it). Yet that we do this is not something we are free64 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT The intentions that are the aim of the faulty action may consist in the attainment of certain results or the meeting of certain standards. In the first case it is a question of an error of technique, and in the second case a normative‘The Violence of Judgment 6 error, according to which something is an error because it infringes on the standards that define a mode of action, here possesses an absolute sense; it is an error pure and simple.66 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT doubt and hesitation overlook the situation in which the agent finds himself; they are recommendations made in the knowledge of the future, thus from the position of a retrospective observer, not the agent at the moment of acting.‘The Violence of Judgment o7 tion is unsuccessful here, that is, whose standards the action wants to meet, but does not. This happens, for instance, by defining the social role of the agent (“math student”; “football player”). With Oedipus’s great errors, in or-68 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT because—the logic of the mistake consists in the autonomy of the action in re- lation and in opposition to the agent, the action does not detach itself from the agent so as to become something that simply happens.* For without refer-The Violence of Judgment 69 the action. For the perpetrator of great errors, being an agent reduces itself to the bare positivity of a past action (not how or why, but thar the action was done). That the judgment of a mistake baselessly applies to the agent thus70 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT assumes. The judgment of a mistake presupposes a subject answerable for what he or she has done, for to judge that this action is wrong presupposes the fun- damental possibility of the agent’s having done it better.*® Simultaneously, the‘The Violence of Judgment 7 just such a way. With this promise or hope he or she thus-mitigates the nega- tive judgment. This prospect and way out is not available to anyone who has committed an THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT errors. It is here, in the loss of the capacity for action and hence of the status of subject, that this judgment manifests itself for the judged as violence. And this, is especially the case when the one judged is at the same time the one judging,The Violence of Judgment a zing violence of judgment to which it wanted to call an end and on which it founders. By means of the juridification of judgment Oedipus is taken captive by“Learning from Suffering” 1 and more elevated” than the writing of history) because it “relates more of the universal.”! The tragedy has philosophical significance on account rather of the aesthetically conveyed peculiarity of its experience. For this is an experi-76 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT anoyher—namely, moderate—form. As a result, the curse of excess is to come to anend, The practice of justice, of juridical procedure and decision, with whose“Learning from Suffering” 7 story that Aeschylus recounts of the genesis of the law shows what the cho- rus in Agamemnon meant when it spoke of the way of wisdom that we follow in learning through suffering: that a path leads through suffering, into suffer-8 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT belief in justice of the chorus in Agamemnon and the elements of excess, suffer- ing, and learning, Any reaction against this excess would itself be excessive. Cedipus's tragic experience is the experience of a suffering balanced againstLearning from Suffering” 79 Oedipus ascertains in his self-condemnation that he is the perpetrator of great errors and can do nothing to cast off this self-assessment, the judgments we make in everyday life are subject to procedures of mutation that, although80 THE EXCESS OF JUDGMENT the tragic. On the far or near side of the tragic we are only on the far or near side of action. When Oedipus learns what he has done, he condemns himself, first of all,“Learning from Suffering” ar he exercises with horrific results). Another aspect thus emerges to the descrip- tion Oedipus gave, according to the servant’s report, of the sight and recogni- tion that he is to exercise in the gloom of his blindness: it is, contrary to pre-84 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE all disclose itself to a spectator identifying with the role, For a fate is tragic not because of what happens, but rather because of why and especially bow it hap- pens. For this reason the tragic can be recognized only from a distance. In the‘Theoretical Interlude 8s fined aspect of tragedy. For the cathartic moment only occurs when the specta- tors turn away from the presented roles and events and direct their attention to themselves; it is their own condition that in their appraisal they find to be86, THEORETICAL INTERLUDE introduces a dispute into the theory of tragedy. This, nothing else, is tragedy: tragedy is the time and place of the antithetical simultaneity of metaphysical aversion for the tragic and aesthetic pleasure in the art of its presentation. More88 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE the suspension of practice—and thus simultaneously of the tragic, which exists only in this perspective, The experience and the suspension of practice are one in what makes them tragic.Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 89 also for us as their spectators. In short: Tiresias’s lament over the dreadfulness of knowledge is nothing other than the lament of the spectator of tragedy—of the spectator who has had a tragic experience: an experience of what is tragic in90 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE furure, at every new beginning of an action, likewise be unavailable. This is what distinguishes the tragic error from an everyday error, which we can learn to avoid in the future.Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 1 action, it does not point out a path along which Oedipus might escape his di- saster. This differentiates it from Iocaste’s and is that he desist from his search for knowleds the servant's entreaties to Oedi- ize; these entreaties are naive. In92 remain extrinsic to it, but rather comes to presentation within it.* In this reflexive sense, Novalis interprets the connection between the two Oedipus tragedies. Thus Oedipus at Colonus presents the spectatorial attitude presup- THEORETICAL INTERLUDEToward an Aesthetics of Tragedy % contemplation when it focuses on the beauty of what is produced; in any case a contemplation of tragedy no longer as a tragic, but rather as a beautiful equi- librium. Here the beauty that the tragedy acquires as representation itself94 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE of the beautiful with practical success, hence of the beautiful with the good, dissolves; the beautiful becomes a characteristic that remains appropriate only to the representation itself. The tragedy brings to consciousness the beauty ofToward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 95 ‘That the beauty of tragedy discloses itself to purely aesthetic contemplation alone signifies, however, that the suspension of the tragic nature of action in tragedy also takes place merely aesthetically.* Tragedy, as Hélderlin shows,96 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE and engenders the beautiful only in such a way that its antithesis remains pres- ent: tragedy engenders the beautiful in such a way that it also engenders the tragic. Indeed it does so as both the basis and antithesis of the beautiful—forToward an Aesthetics of Tragedy ” The abstraction from the dramatic in the classical model of tragedy can be understood first in the manner described earlier: as a refraining from the agent’s perspective and thus as aesthetic suspension of the world of practice;98 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE beauty of its materials and forms, then it has to be brought to a standstill as a beautiful object; tableau and text are the characteristics of such a presentation at a standstill. Its aesthetic contemplation, in dimming the presented differ-Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 99 To carry out an action is to realize the end to which the action has been de- fined as the means. In this orientation, in its ends consists the seriousness of the action. That it is “serious” for me signifies that I am pursuing an end and100 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE Putting an action on stage demands, furthermore, partly repeating it. If one repeats everything that he or she does who carries out the action, one has, in fact, regardless of whether one wanted to do so or not, carried out the action,Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 01 element with what property has a part in the action of staging; the speck of dust could be there by chance and represent nothing.* Or the actors’ bodies: because in the theater the action of staging only happens in the present, because102 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE ostensive function with respect to the presented action and its own, indepen- dent reality as an action. The act of theatrical staging only takes place so that another action is staged, but its itself also an action carried out in the present—Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 103 like doing and showing, but also as two distinct ways or modes of the same action. To carry out an action means to do it serioush . For “seriousness, taken in104 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE ‘The freedom for play is the freedom of the actor with regard to the execu- tion of the action he or she puts on stage. The actor of dramatic theater does not, however, act out only actions that (“real”) people outside the theater carry‘Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 105 of the dramatic, of the action and the characters." For the action of the actors, without which there is no staging of the text, can distance itself from the demands of the text and thereby attain power on its side not only over the106 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE does not appear as such.” The voice of the actor is “the mere instrument of an unchanging text and not the voice of someone in possession of knowledge,‘Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy 107 not describe its characters and their accomplishments; on the contrary, it pre- scribes the actions and speeches of its roles in such a way that they have to put them into effect. In distinction to the character of an epic text, the dramaticPromise and Impotence of Play 109 model this quarrel seems irresolvable because in the aesthetic what is disre- garded is precisely the focus of tragic experience: the practical perspective of the ay pent. This contrast is even more striking ip because the relation to what isHo THEORETICAL INTERLUDE tragedy commits suicide: through converging with the actors’ playful freedom of action, which is the precondition and embodiment of its theatrical present. For through the irony of theatrical play the action that tragedy presents is sup-Promise and Impotence of Play mm August Wilhelm Schlegel differentiates them by the attitudes of seriousness and humor (which he then furthermore assigns to the “cthical” and the “sen- suous” sides of human beings): “Just as seriousness, when intensified to the high-m2 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE all “tragic incidents . . . are unerringly destroyed.”!? From the perspective of comedy, tragedy appears as a permanent contradiction: on the one side, trag- edy is equally a “show,” and on the other side (as the example of ShakespearePromise and Impotence of Play 13 This is at the same time the process of the self-dissolution of tragedy in comedy: “The short tragedy always gave way again and returned into the eternal com- edy of existence; and ‘the waves of uncountable laughter’—to cite Aeschylus—m4 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE ‘There is no freedom of play that is not “again and again” interrupted and postponed through relapses into seriousness. This alters Nietzsche’s entire in- terpretation of the aesthetic process of tragedy. This process can be understoodPromise and Impotence of Play us having itself become a purpose pursued in seriousness. The attitude of parody finds itself in opposition to other attitudes, becoming a party in a struggle “over moral valuations”—and hence an object of tragedy. Consequently, it is16 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE of an obliviousness to the actions and existence of real people. The “reflective arts” of Romantic comedy do not make it as far as practice. While Benjamin shares with Nietzsche the latter’s critique of Romanticism,Promise and Impotence of Play 47 to which itis a nonidentical, “playful” repetition of the action put on stage. That practice cannot be reached in this way is not astonishing; for in the playful act of acting out the freedom of the actor is realized in relation to the seriousness8 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE doing which Sophocles’ tragedy at least was barred, indeed, whose possibility it had even disputed—“to the greatest of all arts,” “the art of living.” For the dialectical theory of the Lebrstiick no less than for the RomanticPromise and Impotence of Play 19 the past for future action. In this regard, the decisive passage comes when Brecht has the victim declare his agreement with the measures taken:120 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE somehow acquired, perhaps wholly in the theater, the “art of living” of an ex- perimentally disrupted relationship to himself and his situation, but rather because what he has to do is staring him right in the face. The young comradePromise and Impotence of Play ma conscious strategies of alternative courses of action. To guarantee this, the conception of the Lebrstiick underhandedly makes of the theatrical freedom for which the actor is indebted to his or her body the freedom of thinking andm2 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE to thwart his desires and actions. What he does not want on any account is to arrange his desires and actions in such a way that this can no longer happen. Notwithstanding everything whereby they are opposed, the tragic hero andPromise and Impotence of Play 3 tion of performing in the theater can be called “free” in a twofold sense: it is free from the serious-minded orientation by the purpose of an action and thus free for the humorous-parodic repetition of its form; this is the freedom of play4 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE the young comrade’s “Yes,” a “yes” to another, better mode of action; this freedom is, like Tiresias’s “No” to Oedipus, a “no” to action itself.*?Promise and Impotence of Play ny This first answer is contradicted by a second. It answers the question of how a theater is to be constituted after the failure of the aesthetic promise of an- other practice with the thesis that it must be a theater not only after the failure126 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE theater can—indeed, must—itself be the medium of its self-comprehension. Theater does not stand in need of philosophy (or of theory or criticism) in or- der to learn what it is and can do. For theatrical play can contain within itselfPromise and Impotence of Play 27 mirroring of play in what is played, which makes a tragedy of play a meta- tragedy, also breaks up the structure of dramatic self-reflection that was al-132 THE TRAGEDY OF PLay The tragic nature of the fate that tragedy presents on stage consists in the incommensurability—indeed, the incompatibility—between skill, action, and success. And the effect that the of the nature of this fate hasTragedy and Skepticism 33 knowledge of the right course of action cannot be reliably brought to bear. But practical skepticism is not—necessarily—grounded in epistemic doubt, because ractical about how to act, is irreducible to empirical134 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY from it. Certain knowledge leads to correct action; knowledge is the basis of an action’s success. Yet we do not and cannot possess this knowledge. For this reason, we cannot act—for this reason, our actions and consequently our livesTragedy and Skepticism 25 to him, of all people, to set right a time that is out of joint. Hamlet reacts to this inhibition with respect to action, which at first he finds inexplicable and for which he repeatedly condemns himself (“Why, what an ass am I!,” 2.2.580)136 THE TRAGEDY OF PLay The first conclusion Hamlet draws from the ghost’s speech is to be watchful for hypocrisy; for if the ghost is right, Hamlet’s uncle and mother are crimi- nals concealing their true intentions and thoughts behind gestures of respect-Tragedy and Skepticism Br seen a play that reenacts his murder of Hamlet's father or else a play that antici- pates his own murder at Hamlet's hands? As we do not know this and conse- quently do not know what the significance of Claudius’s behavior is, even less138 THE TRAGEDY OF PLay resolved—or could be resolved—only if the trust in sincerity, without which we are unable to verify the presence of sincerity, were of a different form or order from the knowledge that we want to attain by this process of verification.Tragedy and Skepticism 139 spectator holds Hamlet’s interest—in it the King, for the sake of an experi- ment, is put in the position of a theater spectator in order to be observed, in turn, by Hamlet, spectator and director in one—Hamlet’s attentions and re-40 Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY (2.2.547-$59)Tragedy and Skepticism 141 but a “dream of passion” links him, the Norwegians and Poles fight for what is literally—a little patch of ground / That hath in it no profit but the name” (4.4.18-19). In Hamlet, “examples” (4.4.46) of action always furnish a reason142 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY thing to us—the player weeps “for nothing.” Herein lies the ambiguity of the player as an example of the capacity for action: because this example describes the player’s weeping as an action, it exhibits as something which theTragedy and Skepticom play” (1.2.83-84). And Ophelia, who lets herself be used as a spy by her father and her King, is described by Hamlet as follows: “I have heard of your paint- in gs too, well enou th. God hath. riven uu one face, and you make 143 yourselves4 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY Here the question of course arises whether someone who shoots arrows over houses (or runs through curtains with his sword), without having made sure who stands on the other side, bears no responsibility for the consequences of‘Tragedy and Skepticism 145 themselves and what they are in the whole of the plot. In drama, we always ex- perience individual actions in a twofold way: in the significance that they have there and then for the agents and in their contribution to the action-totality.146 THE TRAGEDY OF PLay subsistence we have to be able to trust in order to act. If the interpretation of all action as simply done in play is correct, then the external context, the con- text of response in which all action is situated, dissolves. For we then no longer‘Tragedy and Skepticism 147 fate, and his fate alone answers his gaze—his gaze is his fate. This gaze is the gaze of the spectator. Everything else about him can be traced back to the fact that Hamlet is a spectator both of himself and others. That which, according148 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAy they compose the one form of spectatorship. So far as its origin is concerned, this form of spectatorship is theatrical; the (twofold) logic of ironic subversion and inversion shape its object; its mode of operation is accordingly that of re-‘Tragedy and Skepticism 49 then to be able to act, we have to endeavor to secure certain knowledge. But it is precisely in this situation that we can no longer secure certain knowledge. This insight into the basis of skepticism simultaneously implies a problemati-150 does not describe this attitude of spectatorship in its specific theatrical consti- tution, Cavell speaks of theatricality in an exclusively negative way and relates it to the loss or dissolution of presentness. But Cavell understands this loss or THE TRAGEDY OF PLAYTragedy and Skepticism 1st reflective spectatorship, which constitutes his fate according to Benjamin, is not an arbitrarily adopted attitude (nor is it transposed from modern episte- mology), since the basis for it is nothing other than the basis of the play in which152 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY consciousness”! for him and he interprets this reality according to the model of theater. It is this process of interpreting on the model of theater that first gives rise to Hamlet’s doubly ironic experience of action, just as itis consequentlyTragedy and Skepticism 183 This knowledge, the knowledge whose possibility stands in question here, is not empirical or theoretical knowledge that, in its unattainability, leads to epistemic skepticism. Instead, it is prudence— practical knowledge: knowledgeThree Sketches 15s the raw material of drama, In this respect, the games on stage repeat the games of society. The social situations comy posin; ig the material of E jame are structured by156 THE TRAGEDY OF PLay The delay and postponement of that whose time notwithstanding has come is the basic law of their game. That this delay, contrary to Hamm's state- ment, is not freely chosen, but is instead a fate imposed on them follows‘Three Sketches 157 That, following this model, the meta-perspective of a superior, rational being might admit sight of a meaning hidden from the characters themselves—this is anexy pectation that Ei jame juite blatantly does not fulfill; it is as absurd to us138 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY In its simplest form this is done by ironic repetition. If Hamm indulges in reminiscences of his mother, Pegg: “She was bonny once, like a flower of the field” (112), Clov does not answer directly, but uses the same words to render‘Three Sketches 159 This agonal relationship of mutually exclusive language practices acquires its whole significance solely from the assignment of these practices to the two central characters in Endgame. All examples of replies disruptive of communi-160 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY little poetry,” demonstrates the gradual composition of such a “nicely put” passage:Three Sketches 161 HAMM: I love the old questions. [With fervour] Ah the old questions, the old answers, there’s nothing like them! [Pause.] It was I was a father to you.162 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY another” creeps forth on his belly (121) and about whom he can—and must— continue to tell stories. When Hamm wants to draw a line and add up the to- tal, his memory brings into play new entries that compel him to go on. This isThree Sketches 163 said something. For this reason he cannot leave him. Clov the clown will for all time remain Clov the slave.!? An emancipation of the slave will never come about at the master’s hand, because Clov remains inseparably bound through164 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY dies, or it’s me, I don’t understand that either.” Even his liberation from the “cell” is still something that happens to the slave. In the next sentence Clov again lays claim to this event as his own deed—“I open the door of the cell andThree Sketches 165 certainly understood: he recites the parable of his liberation “despairingly,” with a “fixed gaze, tonelessly.” Not even when Clov seems to rid himself of the servility of his way of166 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY positions, in different ways, that in their feud with each other they engage in the conflict that they themselves both already are. They accordingly repro- duce that with which they are in conflict: not only does the master reproduce‘Three Sketches 167 matic event an object of aloof contemplation. It thereby ossifies to a tableau, the structure of its symmetries, analogies, and repetitions (which in his choreo- graphic stagings of the play Beckett worked out so uncompromisingly) is ar-168 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY Each of the three attends uncompromisingly to his own interests: Odysseus the Greek cause, their success in the struggle against Troy; Neoptolemus the cause of his “virtue,” which he understands traditionally (what is at stake for him is‘Three Sketches 169 Inscribed and lost: what the actor creates through his performance, he can also withdraw. The “place of the theater” is the “time stretching between subject matter and performance”: the interrogation of the tragic subject matter by170 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY Philoktce: where the letter reads the play, it breaks the pattern of interpretation it sets for itself. But not from the outside, but rather through internal consis- tency: the play Philokret, by hearing out the modern model of tragedy andThree Sketches im men of action, destiny loses its face and becomes the mask of manipulation.”*3! Odysseus, the “actor,” the “maker” of his fate is “the liquidator of tragedy”; his politics replaces the “hero (all of a piece)” with the “disassemblable puppet,” theim THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY PHILOCTETES: Tell me, how long Was I my own enemy in my war, Attacking myself with more terrible weaponsThree Sketches 173 In Philoktet this conflict arises over the value of the city, over the space and form of political-social coexistence. What value it has or does not have for Philoctetes results from the perspective of his ego, of the incurably aporetic174 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY means’ postponement of the goal is apolitical action: without (ethical) goals or without (pragmatic) means. To hold out in this tension is what politics demands from those whom it takes into its “service.” Yet the individual confronts poli-Three Sketches 175 The conflicts in Philoktet and Mauser show why this is the case: because re- flectiveness emerges practically, in action and in life, in two forms that are so fundamentally different from each other as to be blind to each other. This176 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY formula is that theater is in the position to present tragic conflicts only so Jong as it accepts that there are in its day people, positions, and values that are “taboo” for it—that cannot become objects and content to be acted out on‘Three Sketches "7 mask of the clown or player: “The clown unmasks himself: his head is a death’s head.” He then speaks the final sentence of the prologue: “You'll find nothing to laugh about in what we'll now do with one another.” The tragic event—in178 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY without prospect of a dissolution or reconciliation of the tension: gladiators in action and clowns in playing out this action. “Tragedy” and “farce,” the two poles around which Heiner Miiller’s dramatic thinking circles—each “lies inThree Sketches 179 epic poetry. Strauss’s theatrical translation of Homer repeats that other work of translation from which, at the start of the history of our theater, drama in Athens came into being. That Strauss also announces Ithaka as an adaptation180 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY to be. Ifa tragedy ritually makes transgression and purification (through sacri- fice) present, then Ithaka is rather an evasion of tragedy—but an evasion of tragedy that cannot satisfy even the apologists of a post-tragic modernity,Three Sketches 181 they attain such a gravity because they are bound up in the suitors’ conduct with an infraction of the divine order. In Strauss, by contrast, it is neither the order of the house nor the order of the gods that the suitors violate. And the182 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY Like Penelope waiting to be saved, Strauss’s healing Odysseus is also a fairytale character. That is, Strauss is able to portray him, to describe the hero with curative powers, only if and so long as he narrates a fairytale, puts on a‘Three Sketches 183, the political form of conflict resolution involves an institutionalized cultic memory of the goddesses of vengeance, hence the memory not only of the in- ferior party in the feud, but also of the fact itself of a past of feuding. By con-184, THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY frequent her house, camp in the courtyard and nest in her palace. The suitors are soldiers, men of science and commerce, philosophers, states- men and sportsmen . . . but the return of Odysseus wipes out all theThree Sketches 185 ders it possible as drama: namely, theater. Yet this, if anything, defines the moment of comedy. It is not for but also for Odysseus that the Three Fragmen-186 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY “square made of canvas walls” from which the Three Fragmentary Women re- port, again reciting the epic narration (83f); the scene ends with the curtain falling and withdrawing the event from our eyes (84). No one has done any-Three Sketches 187 strength, is the signature of its heroes. It is especially true of them what Karl Reinhardt says of heroes in general:* that a hero is a hero precisely because he is able to take up his crisis into himself and endure it.188 THE TRAGEDY OF PLAY the play of comedy, which seizes upon everything that finds its way to the stage. Odysseus will never return home to Penelope and set her free . . . un- less the Three Fragmentary Women were to come in pieces to their assistance,190 1. “Te was I myself: The Shape of Destiny 1. Aristophanes, The Frags 831. Regarding the implications of this debate for a theory of tragedy, see Ernst-Richard Schwinge, Griechische Tragiidie und zeitgendssische Rezep- tion: Aristophanes und Gorgias: Zur Frage einer angemessenen Tragidiendeutung, 4~23.1. It was I myself”: The Shape of Destiny 19 9. By Tiresias (320-321), Iocaste (848 and 1060-1061), and the Shepherd (1165). 10. Schiller to Goethe, October 2, 1797. 11, Reinhardt, Sophokles, 108 and, later, of.192 1. “It was I myself”: The Shape of Destiny 18. Cf. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 280; Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 107-108 (without explicit reference to Oedipus Tyrannus); Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy,” 77. = See ine. Tra aicctiae Vata2. From Judging to Being Judged: The Story of Oedipus 193 the highest of all, since they came more frequently in contact with the sick. Nor was any other human art or science of any help at all. Equally useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of oracles, and so forth; indeed, in the end people were so194 2, From Judging to Being Judged: The Story of Oedipus 10. Walter Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, 139. On the oracle’s reference in Oedipus Tyrannus to this practice, see Flaig, Odipus, 127; on the logic of the scapegoat, Robert Parker is more thorough in Miasma: Pollution and Puri- Farly (irre2. From Judging to Being Judged: The Story of Oedipus 19s 3off.), of all the distinctions that Oedipus adduces on the perpetrator’s side, only that between intentional and unintentional was relevant for legal hearings of homicide cases in Athens. Gagarin does not, however, mean to suggest that the other cited dis-196 2. From Judging to Being Judged: The Story of Oedipus There certainly existed an obligation on the community to drive out the murderer (an obligation that, according to Carawan’s reading, is reinforced by Ocdipus’s curse), but this is easier to understand if it is seen simply to express that he, the murderer, és al-2. From Judging to Being Judged: The Story of Oedipus 197 81-82). This does not apply in Oedipus’s case: lie himself has exercised against himself the violence that he suffers. Girard earlier fails also to recognize the way in which Oc- dipus differs from both Creon and Tiresias. Girard is right to point out that in view of198 2. From Judging to Being Judged: The Story of Oedipus misconstrued: “As for the oracle that was given, Croesus does not rightly find fault. For the prophecy given by Loxias ran: if Croesus made war upon Persia, he would destroy a mighty empire. Now, in the face of that, if he was going to be well advised, he should3. Author and Role: Oedipus's Existence 199 Instinct-actions.—And an historical explanation, say, that I or my ancestors previously believed that beating the ground does help is shadow-boxing, for itis a superfluous as- sumption that explains nothing. The similarity of the action to an act of punishment is > Fi200 3. Author and Role: Oedipus's Existence 13, Jennifer Wise, Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece, 1. For the following discussion, see her chap. r, passim. 14. Segal, “Greek Myth,” 65, Segal pursues this reference in “Greek Tragedy: Writ-3. Author and Role: Oedipus’s Existence 201 he must hasten the march of events, and compress within a narrow compass what is commonly found diffused over a large space, so that a faithful image of human exis- tence may be concentrated in his mimic sphere. From this sphere however he himself4. The Violence of Judgment: Oedipus’ Experience 4. The Violence of Judgment: Oedipus’s Experience 1. Both traits can be found in an exemplary fashion in Hegel’s “teleological” inter-+4. The Violence of Judgment: Ocdipus’s Experience 203 response to objects that merit such a response” (McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” 144). 16. “It cannot be said that so-called value-judgments express an ‘ought-connection,’ a204 4 The Violence of Judgment: Ocdipus’s Experience his father and commit incest with his mother, to leave Corinth, where he assumes his father and mother to be, is the wrong decision, for it leads him precisely in the direc- tion of Thebes, where his father and mother actually are and where he will carry out5. “Learning from Suffering: Tragedy and Life 205 trait, See Cavell (critical) discussion of Austin’s discussion of Hippolytus’s sentence “My tongue swore to, but my heart did not” in Stanley Cavell, A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises, 100f. Austin “takes it, as said, as an example (‘gratifying to206 5. “Learning from Suffering”: Tragedy and Life 6. Georg Lukécs, “The Metaphysics of Tragedy: Paul Ernst,” 152-153. Lukécs here links this difference between tragedy and life to a judgment on life: to the judgment that it is impure, incomplete—and lifeless. In The Theory of the Novel (35-36) he main-6, Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy: From the Beautifl to Play 207 of Tragedy, 47). On the relationship between the two Oedipus tragedies and especially “the affinity between Tiresias in Oedipus Tyrannus und Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonos,” see Bernd Scidensticker, “Bezichungen zwischen den beiden Oidipusdramen des208 6. Toward an Aesthetics of Tragedy: From the Beautiful to Play 11. On the form of existence of dramatic roles as determined under the dictatorship of the text or author, see above, part I, chap. 3. 12. Schlegel, Vorlesungen iiber dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 1:7. Promise and Impotence of Play 209 27. Plato, Jon s30¥, trans. B. Jowett. Actors borrowed the appellation bypokritat from the interpreters of the oracles, “expounders (Aypokrita’) of mystic speech and visions” (Plato, Timaeus 72°, trans. R. D. Archer-Hind).210 7. Promise and Impotence of Play mind a kind of justification for it seems also to lie in the nature of comic enthusiasm ‘The damage to the illusion is not clumsiness, but instead thought-through mischit vousness, overflowing fullness of life, and it is often without any ill effect, for it is un-7. Promise and Impotence of Play 24. See above, pp. 95-96. 2s. Benjamin, “Was ist das epische Theater?” (1), 529. Benjamin here pursues his carly critique of Romanticism (and its concept of reflection); see The Concept of Criti- an22 7, Promise and Impotence of Play practice (see Phenomenology of Spirit, 452-453). The matrix of the dialectical version of the modern conception of tragedy is Hegelian. On Hegel’s conception of the self. dissolution of tragedy in theatrical play, see Rodolphe Gasché, “Self-Dissolving Seri-8. Tragedy and Skepticism: On Hamlet 213 post-dramatic theater (Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 44); since this would mean a theater completely without drama. For it is still a theater, and theater is the performance of actions. It thereby acquires a dramatic moment. On this topic, see214 8. Tragedy and Skepticism: On Hamlet 7. “More relative” means here, according to Jenkins commentary (273), “more di- rectly relating to (connected with) the circumstances; perhaps also [ ... ] relatable (able to be told) to the public.”9. Three Sketches: Beckett, Mille, Strauss as pher is he who grasps the meaning of the festival in theory” (Joachim Ritter, “Die Lehre von Ursprung und Sinn der Theorie bei Aristoteles,” 16). In keeping with this model, Gadamer also describes spectatorship in the theater as a“being-there” (Dabei-216 9. Three Sketches: Beckett, Miller, Strauss According to Michael Haerdter’s account of Beckett’s production of the play at the Schiller Theater in 1967, Beckett insisted to his actors at the end of rehearsals that the play is like a burnt-out fireplace from which every now and again a flame springs up, H 4 ae >9. Three Sketches: Beckett, Miller, Strauss a stress on there being various styles in which these narratives could be recited; see Haerdter, “Proben-Notate,” 93. us. Nietzsche, Gay Science, 145.218 9. Three Sketches: Beckett, Miiller, Strauss 28, Ibid., 104. 29. Ibid., 105. 30. Ibid. 104 and 107.9. Three Sketches: Beckett, Miller, Strauss 219 49. See Christian Meier, “Aischylos’ Eumeniden und das Aufkommen des Poli- tischen”s id., Die politische Kunst der griechischen Tragiidie, u17ff. Likewise Hegel's inter- pretation of the conclusion of the Oresteia, “The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Law,”222 Bibliography Beckett, Samuel. Bram van Velde. New York: Grove Press, 1960. —. Endgame. In The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber, 1986. —. Fin de partie, Paris: Minuit, 1957.Bibliography 233 —. “Knowing and Acknowledging.” In Must We Mean What We Say?, 238-266. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. —. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiagraphical Exercises. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-224 Bibliography Fried, Michael. Adsorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Friedrich, Wolf Hartmut. “Ein Odipus mit gutem Gewissen. Uber Corneilles Edie.”Bibliography Haverkamp, Anselm. Hamlet: Hypothek der Macht. Berlin: Kadmos, 2001. 225 ‘Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Aesthetics. Trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. FI ‘att226 Bibliagraphy Kertész, Imre. Fatelessness, Trans. Tim Wilkinson. New York: Vintage, 2004. Knox, Bernard. Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time. and ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.Bibliography 27 Menke, Bettine. Prosopopoiia: Stimme und Text bei Brentano, Hoffmann, Kleist und Kafka. Munich: Fink, 2000. Menke, Christoph. “Distanz und Experiment: Zu zwei Aspekten asthetischer Freiheit228 Bibliography —. “Material [zu Philoktet].” In Mauser, 71-73. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1978. —. Mauser. In Mauser, 55-69. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1978. —. Philoktet. In Mauser, 7-42. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1978.Bibliography 229 —. Sophokles. 4th ed. Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1976. Ritter, Joachim. “Die Lehre von Ursprung und Sinn der Theorie bei Aristoteles.” In Metaplysik und Politik, 9-33. Frankfurt: Suhtkamp, 1977.230 Bibliography Seel, Martin. Asthetik des Erscheinens. Munich: Hanser, 2000. Segal, Charles. “Greek Tragedy: Writing, Truth, and the Representation of the Self.” In Interpreting Greck Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text, 75-109. Ithaca: Cornell UniversityBibliography 231 —. Ithaka: Schauspiel nach den Heimkehr-Gesingen der Odyssee. Munich: Hanser, 1996. Svenbro, Jesper. “The ‘Interior’ Voice: On the Invention of Silent Reading.” In Nothinga Biblogrmphy Wittgenstein, Ludwig. “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” In Philosophical Occasions: 1912-1951, ed. James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann, 119-155. Indianapolis: Hack- ett, 1993. Zeitlin, Froma I. “Thebes: Theater of Self and Societ in Athenian Drama.” In Nothing