On the use of chorus in tragedy

In �On the use of chorus�, he approaches the very specific role of the chorus (the voice of the outside world, the blind crowd, morality�) as an activator of the dramatic and an enhancer of the message that a poet wants to convey.

Friedrich Schiller:        On the use of chorus in tragedy

From the foreword of “The Bride from Messina”

A translation by J Marc Rakotolahy 

 

 

 

A poetical work must be able to stand by itself, and if the actions described in it do not speak for themselves, then, any words will not be of much help. One could, hence, also leave it to the chorus to speak for itself, if only it were, first, brought in an appropriate manner into account. However, the tragic poetical work only becomes fully itself through theatrical performance: hence, the poet gives only the words, music and dance must bring them to life. Hence, so long as these sensible, powerful accompaniments lack the chorus, so long as the chorus will appear in the unravelling of the drama as an external addition, as a foreign body and as a pause, it interrupts only the development of the action, interrupts the unravelling of the deceptive plot, and lowers the enthusiasm of the audience.

 

 

n order to establish the prominence of the chorus, one must, hence, from the reality of the stage, transfer oneself to a possible one; however, one must do that, every time when one demands something higher. What Art has still not, it should be acquiring; the fortuitous lack of means may not be allowed to limit the poet’s creative capacity of conceptualization. The poet sets as goal the reaching of the most dignified topic, he strives for the Ideal, since the practice of Art may accommodate to circumstances. What one usually hears being affirmed about Art; that the public degrades it; that the artist disregards the public, and at all times, wherever Art was declining, that the situation is incumbent to the artists; is not true. The public needs nothing else than sensitivity and the most dignified topic possesses precisely that. The public sits before the curtain with an undetermined demand, a versatile fortune. It has in itself a capacity to reach the highest; it rejoices about rationality and equity, intelligence and reason, and if the public begins to enjoy anything that is not excellent with these topics, then, it will surely cease to demand again in them, the perfection which was given to it once.

 

The poet, one hears objecting, works really well according to an ideal while the art critique judges really according to ideas, however, the required, defined and practiced Art relies on need. The producer will sponsor the project, the actor will show his performance and the audience will entertain itself and be emotionally moved. The audience only seeks enjoyment and it is unhappy, if one demands from it an effort where it only awaits game and recreation. However, as one treats theatre seriously, one will not, de facto, increase the enjoyment of the audience, but rather will refine it. It should remain a play, but a poetical one. Every Art is dedicated to joy and there is not any higher and not any more serious duty than to make people happy. The true Art is only the one which procures the highest enjoyment. The highest enjoyment, however, is the enjoyment of the mental freedom in the dynamic play of all its strengths. Every man, in truth, expects from the arts of the capacity of conceptualization, certain liberation from the limits of reality; he will amuse himself in their various possibilities and will, hence, give room to his fantasy. When facing true Art, he who expects least, will, hence, find himself forgetting his profession, his ordinary life, his individuality; he will feel how it is to be in an extraordinary situation, he will rejoice over the strange combinations that fortuity allows; he will, if he is of a serious nature, find on the stage, the moral government of the world which he lacks in real life.

 

 

However, he knows very well that he is only seeing an empty play, that he, in a specific sense, only rejoices over dreams and when he returns on the scene of the real world, hence, he is surrounded again with the completely pressing limitations of the world, he is its prey as before, because the world remained what it was and for him nothing really has changed. Through that interlude, hence, nothing else was gained than an accidental illusion of the instant which disappears when one awakes. And precisely for that reason, because there is nothing else apart from a temporary deception, then, also only an appearance of truth or its beloved likelihood, which one holds very much in place of truth, is necessary. True Art, however, has not really foreseen a temporary game, it is serious about the fact of setting man not really in an immediate dream of freedom, but rather to make him really and actually free, and this, through the fact that Art awakes, exercises and cultivates in him a force which will allow the man to displace the sensible world - which rather only encumbers us as a rough material, presses us as a blind power - into an objective distance, to transform it into an independent occupation of our spirit and to dominate the material through ideas. And precisely, because true Art wants something reasonable and objective, hence, it cannot really satisfy itself with the appearance of Truth, it erects its ideal monument on Truth itself, on the steady and deep foundations of Nature.

 

How, however, can Art be, at the same time, really ideal and hence, in the deepest sense be real? – How can and should it really abandon the domain of reality and hence, be agreeing, precisely for that reason, with Nature? This is, as some people understand, what makes the view of poetical and plastic works so awkward, because these two requirements, ordinarily, directly appear to cancel out one another. Hence, it usually happens that people seek to reach the one at the detriment of the other and precisely for that reason, both fails. The person to whom Nature, in truth, lends a definite sense and a sentimental interiority, but refused him the creative capacity of conceptualization, will be a true depicter of reality: he will catch the fortuitous appearances of Nature, but never its true spirit. He will only bring back to us the material aspect of the world; then, precisely for that reason, it is not our work, not the free creation of our imagining spirit and hence, also cannot have the beneficial effect of Art, which only exists in freedom. In truth, hence, the mood which such an artist and poet reflects back to us is unsatisfying, and we see ourselves through Art which itself should have liberated us, be painfully set back in the ordinary, narrow reality.

 

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