Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Russian-minded was he at the end of the War that he urged Japan's General Staff (of which he later became chief) to attempt to take all Siberia and add it to the Divine Emperor's realm-a tragic, costly and futile four-year expedition...
THIS "adventurous essay" by a young instructor at Williams College bears the subtitle: "Being a challenge to those who deny the possibility of a tragic spirit in the modern world," and is direct primarily at Joseph Wood Krutch and the New Humanists. It is divided into an historical survey of Greek, medieval and Elizabethan tragedy, Which is too cursory and frequently inaccurate, and an essay on modern tragic dramatists like Ibsen and O'Neill, which is very vigorous, very affirmative, and very badly written...
...unintelligible, the source of the dramatic action frequently is, and how genuine appreciation of the dramas is thereby limited to scholars, and to readers of exceptional sensibility. The final argument advanced is that the sociological values of our own times are quite adequate to serve as the material for tragic drama, and in fact have done so in the theatres of Ibsen and O'Neill...
...product of the imagination more than of factual knowledge. Apart from this, "Case for Tragedy" is marred by a false emphasis on values extraneous to art as art, and by positive mistakes in literary judgement which are the disastrous. The temptation for a modern writer to call Date a tragic poet is considerable, but the total effect of the Divine Comedy is not tragic, and when Mr. Harris says it is he only demonstrates that unique emphasis on sociological values is fatal to appreciation of values considerably more important in literature. In general the author's excursions into practical criticism...
...curious that "The Case for Tragedy" does not once mention either of the modern playwrights who might he considered tragic dramatists of serious stature: Tchekor and Synge. It is curious and unfortunate, for Tchekor at least would have given some support to Mr. Harris' thesis. But the work of both of them might have suggested that the possibility of tragic drama today is a problem for the isolated dramatist to solve in creation, not for the literary critic with a special theory to plead...