"Words Are
Everywhere: Comedy and Tragedy Are Two
of These"
Report of an
Aesthetic Realism class
by Lynette Abel
Eli Siegel
began the lecture of March 24, 1971 titled,
"Words Are Everywhere: Comedy and Tragedy Are
Two of These," by saying:
The
unconscious of man has always tried to put
together these everyday opposites: Why do I
feel so bad and why do I want to be so
cheerful? It hasn't been done but
I think there are events in the world that
show there's more interest in that.
To place this
subject culturally, Mr. Siegel gave examples of
how in the history of drama the relation of
comedy and tragedy has changed. "In Greek
drama," he said "the two were kept pretty much
apart." Later, Mr. Siegel pointed
out, French critics, "including Voltaire, were
appalled that in Shakespeare's Hamlet
the gravedigger towards the end of the play
could make jokes and sing. That was the
first saying in a tragedy" he continued, "that
deeply there is a oneness between the tragic and
the cheerful." And he explained:
This
matter of comedy and tragedy—they are two words as
important as any because they are about
every person's life. My purpose
is to show that poetry begins with words and
that words fully seen tell what comedy and
tragedy are about and how they are close.
As powerful, moving
evidence for this, Mr. Siegel read the first act
of the 1924 play Juno and the Paycock by
the Irish playwright, Sean O'Casey, which he
said "can be considered as well as any to show
how the unconscious of man wants to put his
laugh and his sob together as two opposites of
the world.” To show some of the
critical thought Sean O'Casey gave this subject,
Mr. Siegel read from the book Drama: The
Major Genres edited by Robert Hogan and
Sven Eric Molin. They quote O'Casey
saying:
As for
blending "Comedy with Tragedy," it's no new
practice.... And, indeed, Life is always
doing it, doing it, doing it.
Even where one lies dead, laughter is often
heard in the next room. There's
no tragedy that isn't tinged with humour, no
comedy that hasn't its share of
tragedy if one has eyes to see, ears
to hear. Sorrow and Joy are
sisters ....
"And these of course"
said Mr. Siegel, "are the opposites that affect
people most: joy and sorrow." And he asked
"What relation do they have?" Turning to
the play, he said "The way in Juno and the
Paycock the shoddy and the tawdry mingle
with the grand, and the laughable with the
unendurable is notable." In
this lecture he showed something completely new
about the relation between these opposites when
he explained "It is not just comic relief—
it is too inherent in the play."
Juno and the Paycock takes place in
1922, in the Boyle family living room in a
poor tenement house in Dublin, at the time of
the civil war in Ireland. I love how Mr.
Siegel described the characters, getting to
their essence in a few sentences showing
how the comic and tragic are in
them. For instance, about the
father, Captain Jack Boyle, the paycock
(meaning peacock), Mr. Siegel said:
He is
ridiculous and he is sad. He is
a person who quite sanely doesn't want to
work; he would rather make
speeches. He says he has a pain
in his legs which is possible.... There is
also something likably exuberant about
him. (His wife,] Juno is steady
and strong.... She is the one who bears
[things], though she does give it to her
husband.
Johnny, their son, who
is in the Irish Republican Army, was wounded
badly in the war, losing an arm and having a leg
crippled. He, we learn later, has helped
to end the life of another young man by telling
on him, betraying him. Johnny is described
by O'Casey as having "a tremulous look of
indefinite fear in his eyes.” Mr. Siegel
commented:
He is so
selfish and so incapacitated. This is
something people have endured….
The Boyles also have a
daughter, Mary, who O'Casey describes:
as a good
looking girl of 22. Two forces
are working in her mind—
one, through the circumstances of her life,
pulling her back; the other, through the
influence of books she has read, pushing her
forward
The factory she works at
is on strike. Her father, Jack
Boyle, has been out of work for a long
time. Mr. Siegel said
compassionately, “Casey says the thing that
history teaches—
and I agree with him—is that
people haven't been given a chance.”
Early in Act I, Mrs. Boyle, waiting to give
her husband breakfast, says impatiently to her
daughter Mary:
Isn't it
terrible to have to be waitin' this way!
You'd think he was bringin' twenty poun'd a
week into the house the way he's going on.
He wore out the Health Insurance long ago,
he's afther wearin' out the unemployment
dole, an', now, he's thrying' to wear out
me! An' constantly singin', no less, when he
ought always to be on his knees offerin' up
a Novena for a job!
Click
here for Part 2
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