Tragedy

Use in the book

The Oedipus at Colonus remark locates poetic movement in the soul, even when the central figure does not change place. Physical traffic onstage is not the only measure of action. The Greek/modern comparison explicitly assigns singing to the former and speaking to the latter, though its novel/poem analogy should not be artificially reordered. The purified-passions fragment defines purification as removal from reality: terror and pity become shadows, bodiless and almost spiritual. This is Joubert’s formulation and should not silently be equated with a settled external theory of catharsis.

Places to read

1. II, p. 585, entry 10, ¶1Inward movement, rather than travel, defines the admired tragic action.
2. II, p. 526, entry 2, ¶1Greek and modern tragedies are distinguished by singing and speaking.
3. II, p. 868, entry 8, ¶1Tragic passions are purified of reality and made almost spiritual.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the incomplete “action... in the soul” quotation, singular he and the separate impersonal going and coming. “Almost” limits spiritual; consistance becomes substance without importing a named aesthetic system. Beaunier’s separate notice at II.585 describes extracts from an article by Ch. D[elalot]; the notebook’s critical wording should be read with that source layer in view.

Use in the book

Diogenes reports that Empedocles wrote tragedies, then immediately records a challenge: Heraclides the son of Sarapion assigns them to another man. Hieronymus claims to have encountered forty-three, while Neanthes says they were youthful works and that he had seen seven. The reports disagree about quantity, authorship, and the scope of what a witness knew. The difference between forty-three and seven is not automatically an outright contradiction, since seeing seven does not necessarily deny a larger collection; but neither report secures the corpus. Elsewhere Diodorus of Ephesus describes Empedocles as cultivating tragic pomp and solemn dress in imitation of Anaximander. That characterization concerns performance of identity, not evidence that tragedies were performed or authored by him. Taken together, the notices show how theatrical vocabulary could attach both to a disputed literary production and to a philosopher’s appearance.

Places to read

1. A 1 §§ 56–58 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 58, reporting Heraclides the son of Sarapion, Hieronymus, and Neanthes. Preserves disputed dramatic authorship and different reported counts.
2. A 1 §§ 69–70 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 70, reporting Diodorus of Ephesus. Uses “tragic” to characterize public bearing.

Translation in this edition

The Life’s catalogue is not a secure bibliography of extant tragedies. The text’s sequence of indirect attributions also makes it unsafe to assign every claim without qualification to Aristotle.