From the Editor

Americans have a tough time with tragedy.  They tend to sentimentalize feeling without feeling what the feeling means.  The ponderous horrors of the 20th century have been mainly offshore, in other places more experienced with the facts of death ... perhaps.  AIDS in South Africa, atrocities in the Balkans, in the Sudan, in Nigeria, Iraq, and that's not counting both World Wars, or the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, the home of Homer and the Amazons, and the debacles in Spain, Cambodia, in Jerusalem and the Gaza strip.  Adds up over time.  I could guess the sheer weight of this history would make one rather numb, calculating, but surely not inured to what Wilfrid Owen called "the tenderness of patient minds."  When one stops feeling, there is that other faculty to rely on, and when one stops thinking, the opposite may be true.  An oversimplification, for sure, but a human quality that goes to the very art of literature, which is most adept at communicating emotional, psychological truth rather than ideological truth.  But then, the assumption must be that there is a truth to begin with.  Instead of "truth," which tends to buzz too much, one could use "discourse," but then that would be useless.  That's like saying "I'm sorry" at a funeral.  It doesn't mean much.

To accept the possibility of communicating an idea that forces one to feel, or a feeling that forces one to think, is too easy and simplistic.  Moreover, feeling in the service of argument can be found inside the handbag of tyrants, but feeling in the service of literature wins literary awards.  "For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye ..."  To manipulate the emotions in order to convince has long been the lookout of most rhetoricians, whereas the manipulations of logic, mind trickery, seems to carry with it, the honor of a good fight. "Why the two orders, Colonel?"

What Professor Siegel observed about postmodernism's quarrel with tragedy having to do with "a deficiency in tragedy," which is explained as an "overblown self-importance that can easily manipulate an audience or reader," reveals a rhetorician's view of literature.  This anxiety is the push and pull of 20th century literature and anticipates the attendant development of critical theory, although it easily can be argued that this same anxiety existed in the times of Aristotle and Plato.  No doubt, since Shaw, the literature of the 20th century has taken on the political social burden of freeing the individual from all sorts of predicaments, from some kind of slavery to some other kind of slavery.  And that burden has been argumentative.  We have come a long way from Thomas Hardy's, "... a novel is an impression, not an argument," to Alice Walker's, "If art doesn't make us better, than what on earth is it for?"

I don't know why that is, and it's not necessarily a bad thing in the development of literature, but what is troubling is the American willingness to immerse oneself in the world of make-believe and escape, while at the same time insisting that something useful be gained and that whatever one reads or sees must be based on a true story.  This results in a reality disconnect and the dilemma of the literal read, which creates an audience ripe for tyranny.  No wonder the rhetoricians are suspicious of the literary form.  Nevertheless, the ritualistic function of literature and, in particular, drama has been diminished by these tendencies.  As a consequence, the ceremony of tragedy has been drowned, the best plays make us doubt ourselves, and the worst are full passionate cynicism.  Lost is the feeling of tribal witness, or whatever can be gained by holding hands in a circle.