No one wants Antigone to give in to Creon and avert the calamity that comes down on her and upon so many others, nor do we side with Tiresias, Jocasta and the old shepherd, wanting Oedipus to stop his investigation even as we see, and reluctantly admire, the infernal machine that is being so superbly assembled against him. Tragedy is something one would never wish on one’s friends, but which one demands for one’s most admired dramatic characters. Engstrand and Regina, and are transfigured but devastated in consequence. In Ghosts, tragedy is the privilege of only Oswald and Helene Alving, spiritual aristocrats who refuse the wary ethical myopia of Manders. Getting us to take in the tragic perspective might be one way of snatching a shred of utility from the devastation of tragedy, but it is a fairly tough-minded concession. Yet the devastating action also is a tragically transfiguring one, as archetypes from Greek drama. Helene Alving is ineluctably journeying towards the distraught and horrified tragic figure of the final curtain in a play as dialectically relentless as Oedipus Tyrannos. In the beginning of Ghosts, the confident joyful self-justifying Mrs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |