POLTI INTRODUCTION
From Gordian Plot
INTRODUCTION
"Gozzi maintained that there can be but thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller took great pains to find more, but he was unable to find even so many as Gozzi."
Thirty-six situations only! There is, to me, something tantalizing about the assertion, unaccompanied as it is by any explanation either from Gozzi, or from Goethe or Schiller, and presenting a problem which it does not solve. For I remembered that he who declared by this limited number so strongly synthetic a law, had himself the most fantastic of imaginations. He was the author, this Gozzi, of "Turandot," and of the "Roi Cerf," two works almost without analogue, the one upon the situation of the "Enigma," the other upon phases of metempsychosis; he was the creator of a dramatic system, and the Arabesque spirit, through him transfused, has given us the work of Hoffmann, Jean-Paul Richter and Poe.
The Venetian's exuberance would have made me doubtful of him, since, having once launched at us this number 36, he kept silence. But Schiller, rigid and ardent Kantian, prince of modern aestheticians, master of true historic drama,-- had he not in turn, before accepting this rule, "taken great pains" to verify it (and the pains of a Schiller!) thereby giving it the additional authority of his powerful criticism and his rich memory? And Goethe, his opposite in all things save a strong taste for the abstract,-- Goethe, who throughout his life seems to have considered the subject, adds his testimony years after the death of Schiller, years after their fruitful conversations, at the very time when he was completing "Faust," that supreme combination of contrasting elements.
In France, Gerard de Nerval alone had grasped and presented briefly the ensemble of all dramatic production, in an article upon Soumet's "Jane Grey," in "L'Artiste,"—- written, unfortunately, with what dandyism of style! Having early desired to know the exact number of actions possible to the theater, he found, he tells us, twenty-four. His basis, however, is far from satisfactory. Falling back upon the outworn classification of the seven capital sins, he finds himself obliged at the outset to eliminate two of them, gluttony and sloth, and very nearly a third, lust (this would be Don Juan, perhaps). It is not apparent what manner of tragic energy has ever been furnished by avarice, and the divergence between pride (presumably the spirit of tyranny) and anger, does not promise well for the structure of drama, the manifestations of the latter being too easily confounded with those of envy. Furthermore, murder or homicide, which he indicates as a factor for obtaining several new situations, by uniting it in turn with each of the others, cannot be accepted as such, since it is but an accident common to all of them, possible in all, and one most frequently produced by all. And finally, the sole title mentioned by Nerval, "Rivalry of Queen and Subject," corresponds, it will be observed, only to a sub-class of one, not of his twenty-four, but of Gozzi's Thirty-six Situations.
Since Nerval, no one has treated, in Gozzi's genuinely technical manner, of the secrets of invention, unless it be relevant to mention in this connection Sarcey's celebrated theory of the "scene-a-faire," a theory in general but ill comprehended by an age which dreads didacticism,—- that is to say, dreads any serious reflection upon art; some intimate notes of Dumas fils which were published against his wishes, if my youthful memories are correct, in the "Temps" some years ago, and which set forth that double plot of Corneille and Racine, a heroine disputed by two heroes, and a hero disputed by two heroines; and, lastly, some works here and there by Valin, upon composition. And that is all, absolutely all.
Finally, in brief, I rediscovered the thirty-six situations, as Gozzi doubtless possessed them, and as the reader will find them in the following pages; for there were indeed, as he had indicated, thirty-six categories which I had to formulate in order to distribute fitly among them the innumerable dramas awaiting classification. There is, I hasten to say, nothing mystic or cabalistic about this particular number; it might perhaps be possible to choose one a trifle higher or lower, but this one I consider the most accurate.
Now, to this declared fact that there are no more than thirty-six dramatic [I have replaced the word "tragic", used in the quotation, with "dramatic". Those familiar with Goethe know that for him-- one of the "classic" Germans—- the two terms were synonymous in this passage.] situations, is attached a singular corollary, the discovery that there are in life but thirty-six emotions. A maximum of thirty-six emotions,—- and therein we have all the savor of existence; there we have the unceasing ebb and flow which fills human history like tides of the sea; which is, indeed, the very substance of history, since it is the substance of humanity itself, in the shades of African forests as Unter den Linden or beneath the electric lights of the Boulevards; as it was in the ages of man's hand-to-hand struggle with the wild beasts of wood and mountain, and as it will be, indubitably, in the most infinitely distant future, since it is with these thirty-six emotions—- no more—- that we color, nay, we comprehend, cosmic mechanism, and since it is from them that our theogonies and our metaphysics are, and ever will be, constructed; all our dear and fanciful "beyonds;"—- thirty-six situations, thirty-six emotions, and no more.
It is, then, comprehensible that in viewing upon the stage the ceaseless mingling of these thirty-six emotions, a race or nation arrives at the beginning of its definite self-consciousness; the Greeks, indeed, began their towns by laying the foundations of a theater. It is equally natural that only the greatest and most complete civilizations should have evolved their own particular conception of the drama, and that one of these new conceptions should be revealed by each new evolution of society, whence arises the dim but faithful expectation of our own age, waiting for the manifestation of its own dramatic ideals, before the cenotaphs of an art which has long been, apparently for commercial reasons, almost non-existent.
In fine, after having brought together all these dramatic "points of view," we shall see, as in a panorama, the great procession of our race, in characteristic motley costumes:—- Hindu kings in their chariots, Chinese gallants playing their mandores, nude heroes of Hellas, legendary knights, adventurers of sword and cape, golden-tressed princesses, nymphs sparkling with gems, shy maids with drooping eyelashes, famed courtesans, chaste Athenian virgins, priestly confessors, chattering gossips, gurus expounding religious ideas, satyrs leaping upon goats' feet, ugly slaves, peris, horned devils in disguise, lisping Tartaglias, garrulous Graciosos, Shakespearian clowns, Hugoesque buffoons, magistrates, immobile Buddhist ascetics, white-robed sacrificers, martyrs with shining aureoles, too-crafty Ulysses, frightful Rakchasas, messengers dispersing calamitous tidings to the winds of heaven, pure-hearted youths, blood-stained madmen,—- yes, here it assembles, our humanity, here it moves through its periods of greatest intensity—- but presenting always one of the facets of the prism possessed by Gozzi.
These thirty-six facets, which I have undertaken to recover, should obviously be simple and clear, and of no far-fetched character; of this we shall be convinced after seeing them repeated, with unfailing distinctness, in all epochs and in all genres. The reader will find, in my brief exposition, but twelve hundred examples cited, of which about a thousand are taken from the stage; but in this number I have included works the most dissimilar and the most celebrated, nearly all others being but mosaics of these. There will here be found the principal dramas of China, of India, of Judea, and, needless to say, of the Greek theater. However, instead of confining ourselves to the thirty-two classic tragedies we shall make use of those works of Hellenism which, unfortunately for the indolent public of today, still lie buried in Latin; works from whose great lines might be reconstructed hundreds of masterpieces, and all offering us, from the shades to which we have relegated them, the freshness of unfamiliar beauty. Leaving aside, for the present, any detailed consideration of the Persian and mediaeval Mysteries, which depend almost without exception upon two or three Situations, and which await a special study, we shall glance over,—- after the Jeux and Miracles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,—- the Spanish authors, the French classics, the Italians, the Germans of the Romantic revival, and our modern dramatic literature. And it seems to me we shall have finally proved this theory of the Thirty-six Situations, when we shall thus have brought it into contact with the dramatic production of the last thirty years.
Two hundred of the examples cited have been taken from other literary genres akin to the dramatic: romance, epic, history,—- and from reality. For this investigation can and should be pursued in human nature, by which I mean in politics, in courts of justice, in daily life. Amid these explorations the present study will soon seem but an introduction to a marvelous, an inexhaustible stream,—- the Stream of Existence, where meet momentarily, in their primordial unity, history, mystic poetry, moralist (and amoralist) writings, humor, psychology, law, epic, romance, fable, myth, proverb and prophecy.
It may here be allowable to ask, with our theory in mind, a number of questions which to us are of primary importance.
Which are the dramatic situations neglected by our own epoch, so faithful in repeating the few most familiar? Which, on the other hand, are most in use today? Which are the most neglected, and which the most used, in each epoch, genre, school, author? What are the reasons for these preferences? The same questions may be asked before the classes and sub-classes of the Situations.
Such an examination, which requires only patience, will show first the list of combinations (situations and their classes and sub-classes) at present ignored, and which remain to be exploited in contemporaneous art, second, how these may be adapted. On the way it may chance that we shall discern, hidden within this or that one of our thirty-six categories, a unique case,-- one without analogue among the other thirty-five, with no immediate relationship to any other, the product of a vigorous inspiration. But, in carefully determining the exact position of this case among the sub-classes of the Situation to which it belongs, we shall be able to form, in each of the thirty-five others, a sub-class corresponding to it; thus will be created thirty-five absolutely new plots. These will give, when developed according to the taste of this or that school or period, a series of thirty-five "original imitations," thirty-five new scenarios, of a more unforeseen character, certainly, than the majority of our dramas, which, whether inspired by books or realities, when viewed in the clear light of the ancient writings revealed to us only their reflections, so long as we had not, for our guidance, the precious thread which vanished with Gozzi.
Since we now hold this thread, let us unwind it.
