Agnieszka Wojtylak
EURIPIDES: LEARNING BY SUFFERING
Summary
Euripides' tragedies are usually found wanting in that educative potential which distinguishes the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Yet an analysis of Euripides' concept of tragic guilt and the role of suffering in his major plays does not confirm that judgment. To examine the problem closely Euripides' plays were grouped in accordance with their main theme. The assumption has been that different themes enjoin different forms of tragedy, modified further by the action of the individual plays. In general, Euripides' plays deal with two major themes. One is womanhood and woman's place in the world and society; the other is war, an activity inseparable from manhood. This division overlaps with another one, which distinguishes plays about individual suffering and plays showing the suffering society.
Of the plays dealing with womanhood Electra seemed to be most appropriate for our analysis, chiefly on account of its masterly characterization. The character and personality of Electra are presented with great clarity: the unrequited love of her father and the desire to wreak revenge on her mother have the intensity of an obsession. The play is filled with Electra's anger, which can be seen as a manifestation of her tragic guilt (orgh). Iphigenia in Aulis has been chosen from the other group of plays. It recommends itself by the sharply - etched portrait of Agamemnon whose desperate ambition to win fame represents tragic guilt in the form of inordinate love of honours and power (filotimia).
It is in the final scenes of each play that we should look for an answer to the question how Euripides understood the role of suffering in his tragedies. It is highly significant that both Electra and Iphigenia undergo an inner transformation. After murdering her mother Electra's attitude changes completely: she regrets her crime and speaks of her mother with utmost tenderness. The way she speaks proves that Electra has parted from her anger and has forgiven Clytemnestra. Guilt and the deed prompted by it opens up the perspective of forgiveness (suggnwmh) which brings about an alleviation of orgh. The heroine of the other play comes to terms with her lot after going through a phase of lamentation and natural fear. In the final scene Iphigenia is ready to die for Greece; she has understood her father, his reasons and his desire of fame. Her attitude, characterized by a patient understanding and inner acceptance of necessity, is sign of heroic forgiveness: she acquiesces in the demands of her father. Her progress seems to illustrate the maxim that suffering leads to forgiveness, i.e. a decision to put aside anger and the desire to seek revenge.
This analysis of Euripides' two tragedies offers the following conclusion. Euripides' original contribution to the development of the functions of tragedy was to reinterpret the formula paqei maqoV: rather than teaching a lesson suffering is a remedy against guilt, suggnwmh or forgiveness. It is a substitute form of learning by suffering, which belongs to interpersonal relations, and not, as the earlier tragedians would have it, to the relations between man and god. Its role is not didactic in any narrow sense, but it does act as a catalyst of an inner acceptance of suffering. The acceptance will, at the same time, bring relief by curing the protagonist's anger.