CATHARSIS "The immense controversy carried on in books, pamphlets and articles, mostly Getman, as to what is that Aristotle really meant by the famous words in the sixth chapter of the Poetics,about tragedy accomplishing the purification of our moods of pity and sympathetic fear is one of the disgraces of the human intelligence, a grostesque monument of sterility". John Morley, quoted in F'L' Lucas, Tragedy.
CATHARSIS IS A MEDICAL METAPHOR, IT MEANS:
l. Purgation in the older sense means removal of impure blood from the system by means of bloodletting
2.ltmeansalsoapartialrernovalofexcess"humours"based on the theory ofthe old school ofhippocrates that on a dye balance of these humours depended the health of the body and the mind alike.
3. In the modern sense purgation means complete evacuation of waste products, a clearing of the bowelsystem'
4. Purification in the religious sense'
5. In Creek medicine any organism could be purged of any undesirableproductbyadministration,injudiciousdoses, ofsomethingsimilar."similiasimilibuscurantur"or"like cures like" as in HomeoPathY'
6. Itroculation as a method of preventing illnesses'
7. Excess of anything is unwholesome' The excess has to be tevelled down. Catharsis is a means for it' In this sense Catharsi is a dilution of the tragic feelings' I g. catharsis is rnltaphor in the religious sense also. In that sense it means purifiction. Emotions aroused by the spectacle of evil in ife, moral evil, evil og destruction, wastp and misfortune are deprived of their evil effect and even made beneficial. Themagnitude of evil witnesses prompts us to give up our own, evil tendincies. g. In the purificatory role catharsis creates a situation in which ' the spectators and readers forget themselves and become other centered in relation to the tragic characters'
10'Psychologicallyitprovidesasafetyvalvefordisturbing feeling accumulated in the mind'
11. Catharsis means correctio.n of our crude feelings, refinem6nt of passions and sublimation of our psyche' Tragedy effects purgation of prty and fear by its administration of these very emotions, either because they are unwholesome or tend to be excess. This is confirmed by Aristotle's remark elsewhere. ..Exciting music calms those who are already excited". The process is accompanied by feelings of pleasure' Milton supports the ideas in his preface to Samson Agonistes' "To purge the mind of these and similar emotions, to temper and reducethemtojustmeasurewithakindofdelight,stirredupby reading or seeing those passions well imitated; for in physic' things of melancholic quality are used against melansholia". Pity and fear are the doses by which the tragedian homeopathically purges his audience into emotional health' Catharsisisthefunctionoftragedyresrrlting.fromthe essential nature of tragedy. This is his answer to Plaio's charge that poetry hhd a radically vicious efect.
The idea of catharsis was so familiar to hirn and his pupils that he never stopped t' explain it' Let us see how pU is aroused' A virtuous rnan brought fircm prosperity to adversity does not excite pity' tt merely shocks'A bad man hecorning prosperous is ,ot tragic, does not satisfy lhe morar sense, does not excite pity or I'ear. The lall ol'the villain, on [he other hand. merely satisfies our moral sense. Pity is aroused by seeing unmerited or undeserved misfbrtune; f'ear, seeing the misfbrtune of a man rike us. The tragic hero arouses our emotions by making us admire him when he endures mislbrtune witliout compraining. "The whole effect of tragedy tends to the de_ bility of its spirit, reason releases its hold on conduct, emotion takes charge." Aristotle agrees that it is characteristic of tragedy to arouse emotions which in themserves are dangerous and unwholesome. yet we know that tragedy produces rove and admiration which ue as important as pity and fbar in tragedy.
Aristotre answers plato by saying that tragedy not onry rouses these emotions but by the way it rouses them, effects a catharsis of them a purgation of them. At one level ofperception the medical anarogy fails. For, tragedy, in order to be curative, must f*st produce the disease ,o ,urr. irugedy produces emotions which in rear life wourd be unpleasant and perhaps dangerously disturbing. According to some scholars, "catharsis of such passions does not mean that they are purified and ennobled or that men are purged of their passions; it means that the passions themselves ur, ,.Ju..d to u healthy, balanced proportion. pythagoreans practised catharsis of the body by medicine, of the soul by music. The pity that tragedy produces is of3 kinds; useful pity, useless pity and rc11'-piry
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