A DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY AND THE FAILURE OF THE GERMAN REVOLUTION

In the course of my fascinating but painful readings in the history of the German Revolution, which occurred just after World War One ended, I have been struck by intense feelings of what can only be called tragedy.

Now "tragedy" has become a rather simplified and even cheapened word.  In common parlance it means simply any very bad or sad event.  Aristotle, of course, was more detailed in his analysis of tragic theatre, speaking of catharsis.  Catharsis has to do with the purgation of feelings of pity and terror.

But my own experience of feelings of the tragic, based on my readings of the German revolution, are somewhat different.  (Keep in mind the failure of this revolution eventually opened the way to Hitler's rise in 1933, and left the Soviet Revolution alienated in a world the Leftists of the world had hoped would join the U.S.S.R. in a series of revolutions.  Soviet isolation was a very large factor in the eventual failure of the Soviet Revolution as it degenerated into Stalinism.)

Imagine, then, some very terrible thing happens (somebody's death, the undoing of someone's character, the failure of a revolution, whatever).  There are two possible scenarios here, and an up-side and a down-side to each of them.  First, imagine that the terrible event was inevitable somehow.  The up-side of this is that there is no need for remorse: the bad thing was going to happen, and no one could have prevented it.  The down-side is that that very same inevitability gives one a feeling of powerlessness, a feeling that should the same kind of event approach again, no one will be able to stop it despite whatever may have been learned from the first bad event.

Second, imagine that the bad event was not inevitable.  The up-side to this is that one can take responsibility, learn, and perhaps prevent such a thing from happening again.  There is also the dignity of causality involved here.  Very often people prefer to seen themselves as guilty rather than as powerless pawns.  The downside of the event not having been inevitable, of course, is the remorse.  One can be especially tormented by the bad thing if one is conscious one might have prevented it.

Now imagine this.  (Never mind that what I am about to say is self-contradictory.  What it describes is a feeling I have often had while reading about the German Revolution, and feelings are not always accurately described in logical terms.)  Imagine that one has a feeling of the worst of both worlds.  That is, imagine that one perceives all the creepy powerlessness that comes from an apparently unavoidable catastrophe, plus one also perceives a sense of guilt, shame, or remorse that accompanies a catastrophe one believes could have been prevented.  The blessed relief of being innocent due to the bad event being inevitable is absent.  The sense of dignity in personal power and freedom to choose in a catastrophe that was not inevitable is also absent.  The down-sides of the inevitable and non-inevitable events only are present.

In other words, one gets a sense of the tragic in feeling that the German Revolution was both inevitable and not inevitable.

Might it be possible, then, to turn tragedy on its head?  What about a terrible event that was inevitable and not inevitable, but in which the positive aspects only are present?  Could the crucifixion of Christ have been this event?