Tragedy and Triumph

Around 300BC, Aristotle defined the four major genres of literature as comedy, tragedy, epic poetry and lyric poetry.  Now we’ve added more, like the novel, but it’s fascinating to me that Aristotle chose those particular four.  

Of all the genres, it’s tragedy that resonates most with me and I’m sure this is true for many other people.  The fact that he included it at all shows that the concept of tragedy has been with us since our beginnings.  What defines tragedy?  It’s nothing but a seemingly inescapable sequence of events that we know will lead to an inevitably tragic conclusion.

I think the reason that we identify so strongly with tragedy is that we’re often immersed in it and surrounded by it in our everyday lives.  An article in the Guardian last week listed the top five regrets of the dying, according to palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware. The top regret is I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. How true I sense this is, and how tragic to get to the end of one’s life with this regret.  And yet, we live our lives often not being true to ourselves. Despite a sense of knowing from deep within, we seem powerless to break out and so we go with the flow. Every one of the other four regrets she lists are in a similar vein and the result of similar tragedies that play their parts in our lives.

It doesn’t stop there.  We live in a world that is reeling under the pressures of our excesses. We know this and know that we’re part of the problem and yet feel somehow helpless and hopeless in the face of the spectres unravelling before us. We have species teetering on the brink of extinction, rain forests disappearing, glaciers receding. We desecrate nature, inflict unspeakable cruelty on animals and allow our fellow human beings to be subjected to war, abuse, and poverty. And we do it all by choice.  We can’t blame the politicians or the corporations – if they are responsible it’s only because we allowed it to happen. By our silence, our passivity, our lack of courage.  Is this not tragedy on a grand scale?  Is there any doubt at all about the tragic conclusions that will follow unless we change our ways?

I take my hope from the belief I have in our innate humanity.  If we can identify our tragedies, we have it within us to bring about their undoing.  As we face the storm, I can’t help feeling that perhaps our greatest hour lies ahead.