Marx's bibliography shows no concern with the treatises of Aristotle that cover the theory of definition, notwithstanding that the instance of katharsis which Marx is primarily concerned with is in the definition of tragedy. It is not too esoteric a methodological principle to recognize that to understand best the definition of tragedy, one must understand Aristotle's theory of definition. One guideline that Aristotle gives is that the elements of the definition are introduced and then all collected in the definiens. Yet catharsis, pity and fear are nowhere to be found in the preliminary introductions in Chapters 1-5, unlike the other elements, already suggesting they were wrongfully interpolated by a later editor, of which more shortly. This lack of interest in the strictures of definition has been a standard but unfortunate approach by those interested in literary theory and Aristotle for centuries. The commentators have often considered the artistic, ethical and psychological aspects of Aristotle's thought, which is commendable, but they completely ignore the aspects concerning definition. Anton Smerdel (and perhaps A. Gudeman) were the first to emphasize its importance but their wise suggestions seem to have died as shocking a death as Gudeman's own demise at the hand of the Nazis in Theresienstadt.
Marx cites the work of M.D. Petruševski (1954), myself (2003) and Claudio Veloso (2007), to mention only three of the scholars who believe that at least the word katharsis in the definition of tragedy was mistakenly interpolated. However, Marx in no way addresses the relevant arguments, which makes me wonder whether he thinks scholarship is a matter of mere reading, superficial recognitions and reconciliation of occasional inconsistencies rather than critically evaluating as deeply as possible. He continues to think of tragedy as a form of literature (p. 2), ignoring the evidence that tragedy is a fully performed dramatic art that also requires music and dance, following the definition in Dramatics 6 that Marx himself quotes. He had even emphasized (correctly) that catharsis was primarily relevant to music in Aristotle's Politics VIII and in previous Greek culture. Yet, he ignores for the most part his own findings in treating tragedy as (mere) literature, and I discuss at the end of this Comments the one point he disappointedly makes on this issue.
To continue the theme of music: Marx also distorts the meaning of hêdusma (“seasoning” or “enrichment”), which modifies speech (logõ) in the definition and which Aristotle immediately explains at 1450b16. Marx translates the explanation as song, verse and spectacle (“le chant, le vers, le spectacle”). However, Aristotle's phrase of explanation is “speech having rhuthmos kai harmonia kai melos” and none of these terms can mean spectacle, which is opsis later on in the chapter. This phrase has been the source of confusion for generations, because on the traditional translations it means either “rhythm, harmony and melody” or “rhythm, harmony, that is, song” or something similar. However, any and all of these translations are commonly acknowledged to generate foolish redundancies and some acclaimed commentators and translators have wanted to drop the final kai melos as a result. Rather, as is shown by my own work that is supported by other specialists, work that, again, Marx cites but does not contest, rhuthmos must be what Plato calls it at Laws II 665a: (the name of) ordered body movement that with harmonia (music or song) make up, Plato explicitly says there, the choral art (choreia). Choreia is without doubt dance and music, given previous passages in Laws II. It was the choral aspect of theatrical performance that all classicists know like the back of their hand. The primary meaning of melos in Greek is “limb,” and one legitimate meaning of melos is then “music-dance,” as a few musicologists have recognized. This is what the term means here. Thus, the heretofore puzzling phrase really means (language that has) “dance and music, that is “dance-music (or choral composition),” which not only solves the philological problems but reflects the great empiricist from Stagira in Northern Greece capturing exactly what happened in his culture.
Marx wisely recognizes that for Aristotle the emotions of pity and fear are exclusive and cannot be held at the same time (p. 3). Yet, he translates the infamous passage in the definition of tragedy “accomplishing through (the means of) pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions” (p. 2) and he translates katharsis in other places as “purification.” How, though, is pure pity good for Aristotle or reconcilable with a pure fear? If you have pure gold it is not mixed with anything else. If you have pure fear it seems impossible that pity is at play (especially pure pity). This is a problem that Lessing thought needed addressing in his famous treatment of the passage and yet no one, including Lessing himself or Marx, has ever tried to resolve it. (Others who translate katharsis as “purgation” do not have this problem but they have equally bad ones, like why emotions that Aristotle clearly considers good in some circumstances, as indubitably shown in his ethics, should be purged.) Perhaps this is one reason Marx does not translate katharsis in the definition. No one has figured out a legitimate meaning in 1000 years, but, course, Marx thinks he can do better, if only by implication.
The first thing he does is try to make Aristotle's phrase “the pleasure (hêdonê) through pity and fear” of Chapter 14 somewhat equivalent to “(accomplishing) through pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions.” The phrase in Chapter 14 enters when Aristotle is speaking of the goal of the dramatist, which should be catharsis were it truly in the definition. Marx explores various options, ignoring that even for many specialists who accept the legitimacy of catharsis in the definition, pleasure and catharsis are two different phenomena, even when catharsis leads to pleasure, as in Politics VIII. At the best, then, the “pleasure through pity and fear” is elliptical for “pleasure (via a catharsis of) pity and fear.” However, Marx's lack of attention to definitory theory causes disaster yet again for him: the goal of tragedy must therefore be pleasure and that term should have been in the definition. Indeed, the goal of pleasure or of pleasure's synonyms is stated many times in the Dramatics (and in the Politics). Veloso is one of those who have grasped this and argued rigorously for it (2018).
Marx then tries to address how pity and fear could be held even if they are “exclusive” (but, again, he does it without considering the issue of purity, which he should consider if katharsis is purification). He makes dozens of points, citing some of the texts, and it is not surprising that a few insights are valid, especially if they really apply to one (and only one) of the sub-types of tragedy in Chapter 18 that Marx in no way acknowledges: tragedy of suffering, tragedy of character, complex tragedy or simple (or spectacular) tragedy (the text is corrupted for the fourth option). However, it is utterly baffling how his points could apply, for instance, to the kinds of tragedy that end happily, namely the best ones of Chapter 14 like Cresphontes or the ones that Aristotle says three times throughout the treatise go from misfortune to fortune. (I use “tragedy” in a technical sense here for tragōidia, when a better translation is “serious drama,” for reasons given elsewhere on the relevant page of this website:
Return to ADMCupdates.) If Marx's solution cannot even handle the best kinds of tragedy, it is sorely lacking.
Likewise with Marx's next section on Aristotle's physiological treatments of catharsis: Marx tries to explain how pity gives “heat” and fear “cold” and how they balance each other out, which is the catharsis, and which ostensibly reconciles how two emotions that are “exclusive” can be in the definition. That is, leaving aside how and why a physiological treatment would be a psychological treatment that could apply to music, the primary locus of catharsis for Aristotle, as discussed above, for Marx catharsis gives a state of equilibrium for the Stagirite. Then Marx adds, “This is the proper pleasure of tragedy according to Aristotle” (p. 5). Yet Marx never explains subsequently why “a state of equilibrium” or “pleasure,” the goal for which catharsis exists, is not in the definition. To reiterate, this is completely contrary to Aristotle's theory of definition (Posterior Analytics II 13.96b36-97b24; Physics II 9.200a14 and 200b6-8; Parts of Animals I 1-2; Metaphysics VII 12.1037b29-1038a36 and especially V 8.1017b17-2; cf. my Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition pp. 138-61 and Chapter 6).
Marx then describes similarities with his take on the Northern Greek and some modern views, all of which may be fine, but all of which skirts the more crucial issues in an exegesis of Aristotle's theory. How does Marx's model apply to the many other types of tragedy for Aristotle, e.g., not only those ending happily but those that Aristotle explicitly says in Chapter 13 have no pity and fear, namely, a plot showing virtuous characters (epieikeis) going from fortune to misfortune? (The Antigone of Sophocles or The Trojan Women of Euripides would presumably be such a play.) That is, how can Aristotle have a definition that cannot even handle some of the most famous tragedies of his day, as S.H. Butcher recognized over 100 years ago (without Butcher resolving the paradox)? To return to a point made at the start of this Comments: Why does catharsis (and pity and fear) appear out of the blue in the definition, when all of the other conditions are introduced in the first five chapters, following Aristotle's relevant theory of definition? Also, all of the elements except catharsis, pity and fear get explained further in Chapters 6 & 7, which is completely baffling, were they truly authentic in the definition and had Aristotle really considered them as important as the other elements.
All of these problems, and many more, can be easily resolved on the hypothesis that a later editor wrongly interpolated katharsis, pity and fear in the definition because the editor did not realize the Northern Greek was only dealing with a specific sub-type of tragedy (that has pity and fear) in Chapter 13 (with the latter half of Chapter 14 dealing with tragedy in general). Marx himself recognizes the ancient history emphasized by Strabo that recounts how Aristotle's library was severely damaged while being transported great distances and hid in a trench, and how it was badly reconstructed for commerical purposes, all of which explains the probable source of the wrongful interpolation (cf. Appendix 2 of my A Primer on Aristotle's DRAMATICS, 2019). The failure of any scholar before me for generations to reconcile satisfactorily Chapters 13 and 14 on the best type of tragedy is powerful evidence that these two texts were not written as a single organic whole by the Northern Greek, but Marx deals with none of this.
In his final paragraph, Marx claims that the pure literature of today could have the same effect as Aristotelian tragedy, which, Marx conveniently ignores, has six necessary conditions according to the explanation of the definition in Chapter 6, including music. The reader will easily recall that, as noted above, Marx himself emphasized music as the subject of catharsis in the Politics. All of Marx's claims ignore Dramatics 25, where Aristotle says that different arts have different principles. Why would the catharsis of music, then, apply to pure language or to plot? Perhaps it could, but we need a good argument and the only one that Marx gives continues a tradition that mangles the end of Dramatics 6. There, a close reading of the Greek shows that Aristotle gives reasons for why, in the ranking of the six necessary elements, spectacle is last. This does not mean, however, that spectacle is unnecessary, which would contradict the whole chapter until that point. It only means that it is the least necessary, with plot (which could be done by mere acting, pantomime or dance) being the first and most important, character second, reasoning third, language/speech (lexis) fourth, and the “the composition of music-dance” (melopoiia) fifth. Only plot is the absolutely necessary requirement, because the Stagirite says that even character is not needed. This follows from the nature of tragedy as developed in Chapters 1-5 and as it existed in Aristotle's time. It started with a dance-like form and only later does, e.g., language become sophisticated and take some precedence (which is very different from saying that tragedy ends up being only speech).
Actually, Marx is sloppier than the tradition, which itself more faithfully took the Greek typically to say that the effect (or power)—the dunamis—of tragedy could be done without spectacle. Marx distorts the claim to read “the effect of catharsis can result from a simple reading of the text, without spectacle.” The word katharsis does not exist at that point, and it is unwarranted to replace dunamis with catharsis, given Marx's own argument that the equilibrium or pleasure is the more ultimate effect. Besides, Aristotle had just said in Chapter 6, after the definition, that the goal is plot (1450a22-5), which contradicts the goal being catharsis. He adds that the greatest emotional allurement (psuchagõgei) pertains to the reversals and recognitions of the plot (1450a34) and, with the analogy of a black and white outline versus a random assortment of (beautiful) colors, he emphasizes that the plot gives the most delight (euphraneien) (1450b1-2). There is more, but let this suffice. Clearly, the effect or dunamis of tragedy is cashed out always with respect to its “soul,” plot, and with synonyms of pleasure, not catharsis, all of which is consistent with the rest of the treatise, where, as Marx has acknowledged, catharsis is nowhere to be found. As Aristotle says in Chapter 23 while defining epic, its goal is a (proper) pleasure, as in tragedy.
Given the flow of the remarks above, I skipped that Marx acknowledges that the explanation of catharsis as promised in a treatise on “poetry” was probably in the lost roll on comedy, and Marx understands that Aristotle at the beginning of Dramatics 6 promises to treat only of epic, tragedy and comedy. (“Poetry” is a very odd translation of poiēsis given that there is not one poem in the treatise historically called the Poetics or On the Art of Poetry, and I have demonstrated that the better title is On the Art of Dramatic “Musical” Composition or Dramatics for short, following Diotima's explanation of poiēsis and cognates in Plato's Symposium 205c and considering what is actually analyzed in the Northern Greek's treatise.) Yet Marx, like the renowned W.D. Ross and others who held the same position, does not consider the ramifications. Aristotle ends the roll on tragedy and epic by saying he is finished with them. Even though it is possible that incidental or peripheral applications of catharsis could be applied back to tragedy in a section of comedy, it would be unbelievable that Aristotle then shows, in a section on comedy, how important or crucial catharsis is for the whole of tragedy.
To recapitulate, Marx falls into the same trap that countless previous literary theorists who did not take a fully philosophical approach fell into. He ignores the strictures of definition; he assumes that words like rhuthmos and melos are univocal for Aristotle, rather than figuring out their sense based on the particular arguments at hand; he treats dunamis like catharsis and vice-versa; he leaves aside, or downplays, all the places where pleasure and its variations are the goal of tragedy (or, worse, tries to make pleasure and catharsis identical); he does not touch the contradiction between the best types of tragedy in Chapters 13 and 14, nor does he reconcile the various types of tragedy in Chapter 13 that have no pity and fear with the definition that requires pity and fear (while acknowledging the history of Aristotle's library being badly damaged and too hastily repaired); he skirts the obvious problem of what pure pity could entail when suggesting that pity is purified; he switches the meaning of catharsis in Chapter 6 from purification to a “state of equilibrium”; and he does not even seem to notice the serious problem with catharsis and comedy.
To conclude: Marx's article is “More of the Same.” Given all of the problems above, and despite his occasionally interesting observations, it is hard to believe that his article will not suffer the same fate as hundreds if not thousands of similar, previous articles that simply failed to get Aristotle's theory right. As Marx emphasized, every culture gives its own take on catharsis yet they do not convey what the Northern Greek actually conveyed for his own readership (p. 1). Sadly, the same result holds for Marx's own attempt, and I cannot imagine that it will even be remembered 10 years from now, much less 100. Who recalls the attempts from the 16th through 18th centuries or even the one from Jacob Bernays, the uncle of Freud's wife, who gave the most famous treatment of catharsis in the 19th century, claiming it means “purgation” and arguing that an editor went through and purposely cut out all the explanations of catharsis as promised by the Politics VIII? Stunningly, scholars still occasionally cite Bernays but they then misstate his bizarre claim, saying that Bernays writes that the statements on catharsis merely were lost. Any specialist who believes what Bernays actually said is infinitely more absurd than the recent scholars who have argued that the catharsis clause was wrongly interpolated, based on the inconsistencies with Aristotle's theory of definition, with the rest of the Dramatics and the Politics, and with the attested damage to the Stagirite's library. Besides, it will not help to pursue the “lost” option. Petruševski already showed in 1954 that this makes no sense either, given the rest of the text internal to the Dramatics. Oblivion awaits, therefore, for one side of the debate but the evidence increasingly shows it will be the side of Marx and all of his predecessors who considered catharsis to have been authentically written by the Northern Greek but who have failed for over 400 years to translate, and explain, catharsis in the definition while staying consistent with the rest of Aristotle's undisputed theory.