Recognizing A Reflection

"[W]e enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose actual sight is painful to us" (Aristotle, Poetics). I don't quite feel this way when I see myself reflected in the morning mirror. Of course, Aristotle is speaking of even more grotesque sights, and of what makes tragedy "attractive" to us.

Tragedy is all about the reflection in the mirror. I've been reading Aristotle's Poetics, and pondering recognition and what it means and how it works. The moment of recognition by the blissful ignorant, is the moment when one sees evil and that they have oftentimes been complicit in its growth. Tragedy is like looking in a dark mirror held at a safe distance from the audience, yet close enough to feel pity for these Oedipus and Job types.

Tragedy is all about "reversals and recognition," and recognition is "change from ignorance to knowledge, leading to friendship or enmity" (Aristotle). And, according to Aristotle, one of the most pitiable types of tragedy is family member against family member, or recognition that a family member has brought evil upon the household. This truly is tragedy and the story of mankind and of apple orchards. One bad apple spoils the whole bunch, which doesn't necessarily have to be all bad, because they can all be pulverized and squeezed into a cider. But then, this leads to the proverbial separating the wheat from the chaff, which I think is a bit of a diversion here.

A poorly formed tragic character is one that commits an act with knowledge. This evokes no pity from the audience. "[T]he worst is for someone to be about to act knowingly..... this is both repugnant and untragic. Better is the act done in ignorance and followed by recognition" (Aristotle). This is why there are different penalties in courts of law for different murderers. If one premeditates a crime against another they are deemed "repugnant" because of their awareness and knowledge.

Now, Job is called a tragedy, but is it? It seems more like a comedy in its form. Perhaps, it is Tragi-Comedy. Job has a blessed life and has not done a thing to curse himself or his family, unless being faithful to the Great I Am is considered a negative. He is not ignorant, but fully aware and righteous. But Job is the tragic, fallen man that we love to accuse. Perhaps, the tragedy in Job is us, the observer. We are ignorant and unpitying, like his friends. Job, himself is the comedy, while we, looking on, are the tragedy. But are we even the tragedy if we don't have that moment of recognition? Hmm.

I could go on forever here. This recognition is why I love Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man. It is not the characters in the book that come to a moment of recognition, but the reader. I consider this an amazing feat to accomplish on the part of an author. It's one thing to show the recognition and reversal of a character in a story, but quite another to accomplish it in the reader. And so I'll be mulling this for awhile, because it's so grand, and important, and tragic.

"poetry is the work of a gifted person, or of a manic" (Aristotle, Poetics)

the image, Newborn Infant by Georges de La Tour, is one of my favorites because of the lighting and color.