On the Need for Tragedy, a Passage -- by Alex Ranieri

Why do we need tragedy? The need for comedy is more apparent—we all know it is healthy to laugh. The need for tragedy, by contrast, can feel illicit, even voyeuristic—is it no more, after all, than Schadenfreude? Yet often it is the tragic figure with whom we identify—he is the one we love, and even sometimes desire to emulate. Who has not felt the magnetic attraction of Hamlet, or of Lady Macbeth? Perhaps, then, it is not so much a pleasure in the suffering of others, but rather the awakening of a compassion as painful as it is intimate, which so enthralls us. “There, but for the grace of God…” In tragedy, perhaps the sentence ought to start, “There, but for the knowledge of myself…” This compassion shows us the aspects of our natures which must, for our own and others’ good, be kept hidden—yet if we forget them completely, they are apt to destroy us, as utterly as they ruin Lady Macbeth. So, we must drag up this portrait of our unpleasant aspect, must love it, even, and understand it, before we fold it carefully back up again, put it quietly under the mattress, and depart for the world.