Isak Pasi

In this article we will not talk about the different types of causes that can lead to a tragic outcome, we will not talk about the tragedy of man in his struggle with nature or in some private collisions (unrequited love, etc.). Here we are interested in the highest form of the tragic, which can be conditionally called historical-tragic. We use this term not in the sense of historical and factual reliability, but to indicate that form of the tragic (and in art) that springs from the real historical process as a product of this process. When we talk about the tragic here, we mean precisely this form of it.

In the history of aesthetics, there is no theorist who, to one degree or another, has not touched upon the problem of the beautiful. And not only touched upon it. If the theorists who developed aesthetics in the form of classical poetics (Aristotle, Horace, Boileau) have encountered the problem in passing and as if by the way (although they have nevertheless expressed sentences of astonishing depth), then the theorists of traditional philosophical aesthetics - the English of the 18th century and mainly the Germans of the 18th-19th centuries - have unequivocally placed the beautiful at the center of their scientific research. The scope of philosophical aesthetics includes a significantly larger number and significantly more diverse objects of study - this fact alone naturally leads to a search for points of contact, common moments, unifying principles and criteria with the help of which these diverse objects will be brought into unity, into a system. It is well known what role systematic research played in the classical Philosophy of the Germans - as if the German philosophical spirit was permeated by the need for systematicity. In the systems of Western European and mainly German aesthetics - from Baumgarten through Kant, Schelling and Hegel - the beautiful occupies a central place. And this fact is not the result of the adventures of speculative thinking, but the natural fruit of the search for unity in the overall aesthetic experience of man, expressed, on the one hand, in the aesthetic contemplation of nature, and on the other - in conscious and free artistic creation. Thus, Kant's "Analytics of the Beautiful" includes both moments, because according to Kant, the selfless delight in pure form necessary for everyone" is derived from both nature and art. Hence all the analogies that Kant makes between nature and art - sometimes art turns out to be a model of nature, sometimes the artistic instinct of genius makes him carry out the laws of nature, thus he turns out to be a part of nature itself.

Real facts and related considerations have given the problem of the beautiful a dominant significance, have brought it to the forefront of aesthetic categories and concepts. Theoretical analysis has long been faced with the fact that in characterizing such categories as the sublime, the tragic, and the comic, it becomes necessary to operate with the ideal, that is, with the comparison (brightly polarized or silent) of what is with what should be. The ideal as the norm of what is due determines to one degree or another the perception of the sublime, the tragic, and the comic. The sublime is usually understood as a variety of the beautiful in which power and grandeur are deeply emphasized, the tragic - as the downfall of the beautiful, and the comic most often as its antipode, as its negative realization. The ideal is, of course, a human ideal and in this sense subjective, but at its base always lies that real or possible existence that a person evaluates as beautiful. It can be found as a moment even in utopian ideals. And if the ideals and the beautiful that lie at its base are necessary, characterizing signs of the sublime, the tragic and the comic, then obviously they, as more general concepts, must be brought out at the beginning of the analysis, placed at the center of aesthetics. The opposite is not noticeable. Although in the analysis of the beautiful, both the sublime, the tragic and the comic can introduce certain nuances or even correctives, the problem of the beautiful does not need them in order to be theoretically achieved. This is seen not only logically, but also historically - in the history of aesthetics. Plato was not concerned with the sublime, and he was interested in the tragic and the comic with a view to their effect, but not in their essence. Hogarth and Burke had no special interest in the comic and tragic (Hogarth also in the sublime), yet they have left us some of the most interesting treatises on the beautiful; the same applies to Diderot. In the Critique of Judgment there is no analysis of the tragic, and only isolated observations about the comic; in his three-volume Aesthetics Hegel shows an obvious disregard for the sublime, etc.

With Don Quixote, Cervantes preserved for generations the chivalric spirit of Spain. In 1553, Charles V issued a law prohibiting the printing of chivalric novels in Spain's American possessions; two years later, the Cortes insisted on their prohibition in Spain itself. Cervantes did what neither the king nor the Cortes could do: Don Quixote destroyed chivalric novels. A Greek painter depicted in his painting Palamedes, killed by his friends for the treacherous betrayal of Odysseus. Alexander the Great trembled and turned pale whenever his gaze rested on this painting, because it reminded him that he himself had caused the death of his friend Cleitus. After the publication of Don Quixote, chivalric novels reflected themselves in him just as Alexander did in the painting of the Greek painter. But "Don Quixote" showed the strength of both the Spanish character and the chivalric spirit. Byron was wrong when he thought that "Don Quixote" destroyed the chivalric spirit of the Spaniards and that, as a result, Spain became a third-rate state.

It is not so strange that books outlive eras, that sometimes they enter the next era younger and fresher than they were at the time of their creation. It is stranger that books outlive their own authors, not by their longevity, but by their spirit and temperament, that they remain young and daring sometimes to remind us of the spiritual old age of their creators, of their hesitations and torments. Before his death, Voltaire sought the cooperation of the church, of that same church that he denounced in so many of his works. Gogol's "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Comrades" bears little resemblance to the first volume of "Dead Souls," and with "Confession" Tolstoy also denied "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." In the same way, old Boccaccio condemned "The Decameron" and even became a monk, but "The Decameron" did not suffer from this at all. Books are a magnificent weapon against both the whims and the fluctuations of old age. Good books are for the spiritually young.

Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1947, a Swiss publishing house published Thomas Mann's novel "Doctor Faustus." Now, the judgment of that unfortunate, sick Jew, the critic Samuel Lublinsky, was no longer necessary. About fifty years before that, it was he who had made a prediction about "Buddenbrooks," which time had fully confirmed: over the years, the importance of this book would grow and it would be read by many more generations. The author of "Doctor Faustus" was already a well-known writer, entered into the literary classics of the 20th century - he did not need the encouraging words once spoken to the young and unknown author of "Buddenbrooks." But precisely because of this, Thomas Mann's personal and literary responsibility became much greater - the entire literary world would gaze at the novel of the 72-year-old famous writer. Perhaps "Doctor Faustus" would remain his last novel, a summary of a long and rich civic and literary life. There were too many reasons for such attention from the literary world beyond the fame, beyond the literary reputation of the artist. "Doctor Faustus" was neither conceived nor realized as a single novel, as one of many novels. Even before the unequivocal confessions of the writer himself, the literary public sensed that this was a novel about the era in the form of a history of the artist's tormented and sinful life, that it contained many of the author's moods, that this was a frank authorial confession. Then came the confessions. "Doctor Faustus" is the writer's first major creative undertaking, which was clear to him in detail from the very beginning, whose spiritual and physical dimensions he saw in advance not in a "magic crystal", but clearly as in the palm of his hand. And perhaps not so much because the 68-year life and nearly 50-year writing experience bore their fruits - the complete coverage of the creative idea with the creative result - but rather because, as he himself admits, none of his fictional characters (perhaps with the exception of Hanno Buddenbrock) did Thomas Mann love so sincerely, so deeply and so sufferingly as he loved his Doctor Faustus, his Adrian Leverkuhn. He loved him as a person loves himself and those in whom he sees himself. As his fictional biographer Serenus Zeitblom, he surrounded him with his anxious love - from the years of haughty discipleship to the fulfillment of the devil's curse.