Goethe & Newspapers

Earlier in Dichtung und Wahrheit Goethe warns of the danger of withdrawing from political life. Goethe’s own life and his own characters show that Goethe wrestled with the question of how to balance the responsibilities of an active life and the need to withdraw into solitude.

Yet, in the fourth part of Dichtung und Wahrheit (published after his death), Goethe recommends reading newspapers as a way for ordinary citizens to become involved in politics, even if they do not hold office. He suggests that newspapers serve two important functions. First, they allow citizens to view current events as one would watch a play at the theater; they can enter into the partisan spirit of events, but “in an innocent way.” For Goethe, newspapers can play a role similar to that of catharsis in Aristotle’s Poetics. Second, reading newspapers helps citizens learn how to make moral judgments, so that they will praise what is good and condemn what is bad.

But, do newspapers really encourage prudence and catharsis? Perhaps they did in Goethe’s day. Reading newspapers was once a much more genteel and leisurely activity than it is now. In the mid-nineteenth century Schopenhauer every day (after playing the flute and walking his poodle) would leave his apartment to stroll to a nearby café to peruse the foreign dailies in order to collect more evidence for his pessimistic worldview. Schopenhauer taking a break while reading the paper projects an image of thought and not mere gossip-mongering.

Today, though, it is much harder to agree with Goethe’s positive assessment of newspapers. In the internet age, it is difficult to appreciate just how influential newspapers became in the decades after his death in 1832. But, back in the day when newspapers competed for readers in every major city in America and Europe, a breaking news story was like a video going viral today; newspapers were the catalyst for mass enthusiasms. Becoming too involved with newspapers, then, would seem to represent exactly the danger that Goethe was warning against earlier in Dichtung und Wahrheit. The partisan spirit would not be innocent, but would lead to rash reactions, and there would be little catharsis but much anxiety from attending to current events. Indeed, newspapers then and today often contain shoddy fact-checking, shallow analysis, and pure sensationalism, which, instead of cleansing the reader’s emotions, make the reader keep returning for updates. Newspapers can inflame the partisan spirit, as Goethe said, but they hardly produce catharsis or prudence. This partisan spirit becomes a passion as base as any other.

To avoid arousing the partisan spirit and to develop an aesthetic experience of politics, the simple solution is to stop reading newspapers so much and to start reading good histories. If writing history is an art, much of the art consists of telling a story about a specific crisis. In English, the word "crisis" can be used to indicate any important moment, usually involving stress for the actors involved. This definition, though, does not fully describe what a crisis is. The original Greek meaning of the word--"judgment"--gives a better idea of how reading history can lead to catharsis. A crisis is an important moment because it gives us the necessary opportunity to pass judgment on the character of a person; how the person deals with this moment in his life reveals more about his character than other moments because life is lived more intensely at certain moments than at others. Witnessing the intensity of a crisis through the eyes of a sympathetic historian can produce catharsis in the reader, who participates in the character's actions. History draws the reader deeper into the action, while news stories are content to leave the reader at a superficial level. And it is the depths of history which can teach us about politics better than any newspaper story.

Music & Catharsis

A few days ago, I wrote a post on sports and catharsis. My main idea was that sports, so often snubbed by the more artistic-minded and "intellectuals," can actually bring spectators an experience of catharsis, just as a powerful tragedy can. Sports, in particular, help us to explore the meaning of victory and defeat.

Today, I would like to provide an example of catharsis through music, specifically J.S. Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 582), and explore history and redemption.

How does this piece work? Bach begins with a simple sounding passacaglia (a dance usually in 3/4 time) in the key of C Minor, played once through. Then, Bach elaborates on this theme with many beautiful variations, but after the first couple variations he starts introducing complications into the harmonies--the piece seems to speed up, and some dissonance appears to compete with the harmony. The two forces--harmony and dissonance--are at war with each other. At times it seems unclear which one will prevail.



At the very end of the passacaglia, the dissonance builds up until the tension feels nearly unbearable. But then, the piece resolves, and harmony is restored. However, the harmony does not last very long. Bach immediately moves into a fugue, taking the theme from the passacaglia as the basis for the fugue (albeit slightly modified). And the tension continues to build up, until it is even more difficult to endure than at the end of the passacaglia. Yet, the original order is still there, and shines through even when the piece seems most complicated and dissonant. Finally, the tensions do resolve, just as they did at the end of the passacaglia, except this time it happens in the most spectacular fashion. I do not know how else to describe it but to tell you the image that immediately came to mind the first time I heard it: fireworks exploding. The drama is finally over, and the harmony, we know, will endure. This is catharsis.



Yet, there is one oddity about catharsis in this piece. If at some point in the piece you are unsure whether harmony or dissonance will win out, just listen a little more closely, and you can pick up on a certain, nearly hidden pattern, an underlying harmony. What is this harmony? It is the same basic melody you heard at the very beginning of the piece. Sometimes the organist is playing the complete melody, and at other times he is only hinting at it with the pedals, but that melody is always there in one form or another. This melody functions as the permanent, though nearly invisible, presence of a higher power. The composer, the creator, always knows what that order is, and no matter what kind of chaos seems to be present in his art, in his creation, he will never allow that deeper harmony and order to be completely submerged.

In other words, Bach gave the plot away at the very beginning of the passacaglia! Can there be any more surprise, any more plot twists in this drama, anything more to contribute to the catharsis? What can be less dramatic than to give away the ending? Why would Bach do this?

First, I would point out that Bach is using the melody as a sort of foreshadowing technique. This is a perfectly valid dramatic technique, and even heightens the tension. Precisely how it achieves that effect can be seen in my next point.

Second, I would suggest that Bach's "giving away the ending" reflects the nature of history for a Christian. Creation started in harmony, but dissonance entered the world alongside sin. Nevertheless, the original order never entirely disappeared. With Christ's victory on the cross, we catch a glimpse of the restoration of eternal order, just as we have the resolution at the end of the passacaglia. However, the piece does not stop there. It continues with the fugue, just as history continues after Christ's resurrection. In the fugue, the dissonance of sin is even harder to bear after we have already been assured of the final victory. We know that Christ has conquered over sin, yet we still sin, and that makes sin even more oppressive. Indeed this existential truth, which the Christian must accept every day of his life, makes life all the more dramatic, and makes the final resolution all the more cathartic, than if we did not know the end--and if Bach had not given away the ending at the very beginning.

Maybe this historico-theological interpretation is a bit far-fetched, a little too allegorical, but at least I hope it will make you think about Bach's music.

(Postscript: Unfortunately, these YouTube videos are not really videos--there are no moving pictures--so, it is hard to get an idea of Dutch organist Ton Koopman's dazzling technique. To see Koopman--and especially his feet--in action, you should watch this video. For another rendition of this piece, here are links to videos of Karl Richter playing the passacaglia and the thema fugatum in the Abbey of Ottobeuren. Many people today regard Richter's playing as too Romantic and unfaithful to the way Bach actually played his music, whereas Koopman is one of the leading musicians in the last couple decades to advocate playing composers' music as they themselves would have played it. In any event, I take no position in this debate, and actually like both versions. Koopman, with his rather loud bass, gives a better idea of the underlying structure of the piece, and his finale is certainly more powerful. Richter, on the other hand, with the quieter bass and the slower pace, especially at the beginning of the passacaglia, brings out the lyrical quality of some of Bach's variations.

Sports and Catharsis

Is it possible to find catharsis through sport, as we do through art?

This question popped into my mind as I watched the Cubs-White Sox game on Saturday, and I felt compelled to consider some of the similarities between watching a sports game and going to the theater.

Both a good game and a good play (note even the similarity in language) draw the spectator into the action, making him forget about everything else around him. Both a game and a play are self-contained worlds, which allow us to reflect on our own lives. Interestingly enough, in ancient Greece both athletics and drama began as parts of religious festivals.

Moreover, as a life-long, long-suffering Cubs fan, I'm thoroughly convinced that baseball has taught me all I'll ever need to know about tragedy. What can you say about a team that has not won a championship in over 100 years, despite many excellent teams and many outstanding opportunities? The Cubs' woes easily compare with those of a Greek tragedy. Babe Ruth called his famous home run shot at Wrigley Field to defeat the Cubs in the 1932 World Series. Thebes suffered under the Sphinx, and Chicago has been cursed by the billy goat. (One important difference, though, is that while many Cubs fans unwind at the famous Billy Goat Tavern, Thebans probably didn't go out for drinks at the Taberna Sphinx.) Only just recently, it was revealed that the Cubs' most recent hero, Sammy Sosa, owed many of his home runs to performance-enhancing drugs. A great man's ambition becomes his tragic flaw. Clearly, the Cubs' history bears all the mark of a Greek tragedy.

If this all sounds a bit too fantastic, if you don't believe the Cubs deserve to be compared to Oedipus and Orestes, or Chicago to Thebes and Mycenae, you must still admit that the Cubs' misfortunes are at least worthy of an Old World folk tale. There's the black cat at Shea Stadium that caused the Cubs' promising 1969 season to fall apart in the last month. There's the story that it was Bill Buckner's old Cubs batting glove which caused him, even as a member of the Red Sox, to let a ground ball go through his legs in the World Series. There's no arguing--this is all empirically verifiable fact!

Well, to be a little more serious...My basic point is that I don't understand the snobbishness of people who look down on pro sports. After all, many of these self-appointed snobs, who think of theater, ballet, and classical music as the only serious arts, make the same objections to professional sports that many ancient philosophers (e.g., Plato in the Republic) made against theater-goers: rowdy, drunk, concerned only with images, etc. These accusations are not entirely unfounded, but they should not take away from the glory of sport.

Sport illuminates the experience of victory and defeat better than any play. The intense effort, the grand hopes, and the dejection of defeat--these are all things which we see most clearly in a closely-contested sporting match. That, I'm sure, is why St. Paul chose to compare life as a Christian to a race and a fight (2 Tim. 4:7).