Peaeater

The abused word of the day is tragedy. This incredible word has a noble pedigree which lends to its every use an air of fatality* and greatness. It is unfortunately being eroded by the tendency to label mere accidents or disasters as tragedies. This is wrong. Let me tell you why.

If you can handle reading Chaucer, he has a fantastic definition:

Tragedy is to say a certain storie,
As olde bookes maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in great prosperitee
And is yfallen out of high degree
Into misery and endeth wretchedly.

He who is fallen out of high degree into misery and who ends wretchedly. Here are the keys to tragedy: a fall from a high position to a low, and death without having recovered from, and even resulting from, the misery of such a downfall. So a sad ending, certainly, but not merely sad or regrettable.

I had the luck to be taught Greek Tragedy by a man who had both a vast knowledge of his subject and a rubber-limbed knack for physical comedy. So he said, with much leaping about: "A car accident is not, you know, a tragedy. If I were to raise my arms to the sky [he did so] and declare to the universe that I can drive FASTER THAN THE VERY GODS!!!! Then, then if I had an accident, that would be a tragedy. Because obviously the gods would have struck me down for my hubris."

So you see there is this implied sense of being pushed down by a vast hand. Of course we may struggle with the notion of whether it was fair or justified, whether we are just the gods' tennis balls, etc., but the event, however wretched, has marked the victim as worthy of the gods' attentions. The universe didn't just roll over and crush that person in its sleep, it sought him out, and looked at him, and squashed him. That makes him pretty special. Even Great, in the human order of things.

We all want to embiggen our lives with the notion that Fate knows us and would recognize us in the street. We're all special, in some way or other. But we can't all be Great.

* The state of being fatal, as in "proceeding from destiny."