Note 406 — Chapter IX · SOUL-IMAGE AND LIFE-FEELING

As the student of cultural history to-day is not necessarily familiar with technical Greek, it may be helpful to reproduce from Cornish’s edition of Smith’s “Greek and Roman Antiquities,” s.v. “Tragoedia,” the following paragraph, as clear as it is succinct:

“Tragedy is described by Aristotle (Poet., VI, 2) as effecting by means of pity and terror that purgation [of the soul] (κάθαρσις) which belongs to [is proper for] such feelings.”... Tragedy excites pity and terror by presenting to the mind things which are truly pitiable and terrible. When pity and terror are moved, as tragedy moves them, by a worthy cause, then the mind experiences that sense of relief which comes from finding an outlet for a natural energy. And thus the impressions made by Tragedy leave behind them in the spectator a temperate and harmonious state of the soul. Similarly Aristotle speaks of the enthusiastic worshippers of Dionysus as obtaining a κάθαρσις, a healthful relief, by the “lyric utterance of their sacred frenzy.”—Tr.