The function of the tragic in art is what it does to, and for, the audience | The Indian Express

The function of the tragic in art is what it does to, and for, the audience | The Indian Express

Written by Vijay Tankha |Updated: October 21, 2019 10:01:25 am

The function of the tragic in art is what it does to, and for, the audience

Greek tragedy was a spectacle, performed seasonally in great festivals dedicated to gods, in huge amphitheatres (“spectators-all- around”) before thousands of people.

The remote past really provided a template for articulating present concerns, albeit obliquely.

Greek tragedy was a spectacle, performed seasonally in great festivals dedicated to gods, in huge amphitheatres (“spectators-all- around”) before thousands of people. Much of the performance, accompanied by music and dance, was sung, making it more like opera than proscenium theatre today. The action was all in the words. It was truly the media of the millennium, whose life was both precious and brief, and whose death was not, as Nietzsche thought, caused by Socrates, coinciding rather with the demise of the democratic state it spoke to.