Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann

Abstract

Reviewed by: Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann David Krasner TRAGEDY AND DRAMATIC THEATRE. By Hans-Thies Lehmann. Translated by Erik Butler. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016; pp. 466. Few theories pose as great a challenge to define as those of tragedy. From ancient Greece through the Renaissance and into the modern age, the idea of what constitutes tragedy has been examined and reworked by philosophers and theorists, with shifting emphases. Hans-Thies Lehmann's dense, yet important book takes on the enormous task of defining tragedy historically and onstage, as he works to "identify the continuity of a tragic motif that admittedly does not proceed smoothly" (7; emphasis in original). Lehmann begins his examination with Aristotle amid the Attic "palaia diaphora" (24)—the ancient quarrel between philosophy and theatre. Next, he examines Hegel's influential, though static, theory of tragic conflict, declaring it concrete but bookish; whereas Nietzsche, Lehmann argues, situates tragedy theatrically—in gesture, music, and the theatrical event. Examining tragic concepts like rupture, suspense, overstepping, immoderation, excess, intrigue, violence, death, Lehmann asks: Is tragedy defined by character overreach (Aristotelian hubris), compassion (Lessing), or conflict (Hegel)? Is it a mode of aesthetic experience (genre) or is it tied to speech acts (Benjamin) or tethered to text (Szondi)? Is it quotidian (Maeterlinck) or quixotic (Heidegger)? Is it post-dramatic (Artaud, Brecht) or is it a theatrical experience defined viscerally, vicariously, and representationally through madness, horror, and shame? Can we define tragedy as an ethical experience (Kant and Hegel), or as an experience of pity and terror (Aristotle)? Is its focus on hyperbole and blood-soaked revenge (Seneca) or on transgression (Bataille)? Is it best explained using the concepts of imaginary versus symbolic (Racine through a Lacanian lens)? Is it modern, as in words defining "the theatrical images of what dramatis personae endure" (219), or postmodern, as in theatrical and gestural—that is, temporal and spatial, with minimal words. And if it is a theatrical experience located in the observer-audience, must it be collectively affirmed in order to verify its corporeal authenticity? [End Page 121] Ultimately, the issue that Lehmann raises is: What defines the tragic experience in the theatre, given theatre's ephemerality? Throughout his book Lehmann argues that tragedy is not literature, but theatre: "If we consider that tragic experience is a mode of representation … and view it as specific to the theatre …, then we may grasp the actuality of tragic experience in a way that goes beyond inherited notions of tragedy as a literary form," yielding "tragedy-as-concrete-theatrical practice" (120). One example (among many) is Antigone: the tension between civic authority (Creon) and defiance (Antigone) creates a theatricalized forum for meaningful observations of public and private life. As Hegel reminds us (and as A. C. Bradley reinforced), it is not that Antigone or Creon is unimpeachably perched on the moral high ground, but rather that her/his uncompromising position provides dramatic intensity, uncertainty, and tragic consequences. Tragedy receives its special force by presenting the contrast of two worldviews engaged in irreducible conflict in the immediacy of a theatrical event—forces oscillating before the eyes and ears of an audience. Likewise Othello, in which Lehmann argues that audiences observe in real-time characters locked in internal and external struggles that reflect on the tragic nature of truth, where "one party takes pride in fabricating falsehoods" while another "wants to have someone to trust" (235; emphasis in original). These theatrical oppositions of conflict and sanctimony (Antigone) or trust and deception (Othello) create a powerful tragic magnification of human volition. Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre is a tour de force of intellectual insight, copiously researched by an experienced scholar. In attempting to define the idea of tragedy, we risk running afoul of Wittgenstein's meme that if we cannot distinguish between things and how they function, then we cannot talk about them. But for Lehmann, the enticement of tragedy lies in what he calls "an understanding of our failure to understand"; in other words, if tragedy acts incorrigibly on our psyche and provides a fillip to our self-knowledge by allowing us to vicariously imagine the incomprehensible, then tragic experience "involves self-confrontation and self-foreignness," as...