The Theory of Greek Tragedy 7 
fore long—the eventual relaxation and alleviation of these emo- 
tions by some adjustment or other, after their violent excitation 
by the representation of the action, appears to satisfy the Aristo- 
telian definition of tragedy, as & éAéov kai ddBov repatvovoa thy Tov 
Toovtwoy raQypatwv Kéifapow as accomplishing through pity and 
horror the purgation of these selfsame passions. But in any 
case—and this is the point after all—what is indisputable is the 
sharp distinction drawn by the Poetics between the myth and its 
handling, between the action as an imitation and an initiation— 
or in other words, between life and literature. And in the light 
of the distinction it can hardly be denied that Aristotle regarded 
as indispensable some such final accommodation as I have tried 
to indicate. Without some such reconciliation of experience with 
conscience, without some adjustment of the course of events to the 
principles of human nature he could not have conceived of a 
tragedy in the proper sense. 
It is through this solution, as I have called it in customary fash- 
ion, that tragedy acquires its significance, as it acquires its poign- 
ant sense of reality through its presentation of the tragic problem 
implicit in its imitation of an action. While it is by the latter 
avenue that life enters tragedy, ideas enter it through the former. 
In this manner verisimilitude on the one part and moral consist- 
ency on the other become necessary attributes of the tragic poem. 
But even in the first case, in the case of the fable itself, it is as 
much the dramatist’s vision, his Weltanschauung, which is in- 
volved as his observation. The success of his action, even as imi- 
tation, depends mainly upon his eye for the problem. What 
affects the audience is his fidelity, not so much to a certain order 
of phenomena, as to a certain order of emotions. In a word, the 
verisimilitude of his drama, and hence its reality, is measured, in 
the last resort, not by the exactitude with which he is seen to re- 
produce the spectators’ own sensations, but by the justice with 
which he is felt to have voiced the tragic qualm. 
i 
Of the technical elements of tragedy in general I have said 
nothing. I am concerned with what may be called its intellectual 
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