Mending the inner-shattered world: Euripidean tragedy and the possibility of ‘aesthetic reparation’

The unique and sublime pleasure we derive from a great work of art is called the ‘aesthetic emotion proper’. Considering the magnitude of pain and suffering enjoyed in Greek tragedy, a paradox arises regarding how depictions of dramatic pain translate into pleasurable aesthetic experience in a reader. Drawing from the insights and methodologies of poststructuralist, deconstructionist, Nietzschean and psychoanalytic criticism, this thesis postulates that this pleasure is obtained through identification with the work of art as a whole and with the internal shattered world of the artist’s psyche, as represented by their work. Ergo, all aesthetic pleasure involves an unconscious reliving (nacherleben) of the infantile experience of creativity, where creation demands the overcoming of guilt, facing the inner turmoil of the depressive position and rebuilding one’s internal world of objects and self, which have previously and frequently been destroyed during paranoid-schizoid states since infancy. Klein’s concept of the depressive position enables us to isolate in the psyche of the artist specific factors, which enable the artist to produce a satisfactory work of art, furthering our understanding of aesthetic value and aesthetic experience in the audience. According to Hanna Segal, only lost or dead objects can be rendered into a work of art, implying that creation is really only a recreation of a once loved and once whole, but now lost and ruined object and internal world, and self. The proceeding sceptical, psychoanalytic reading of three Euripides’ the Alcestis, the Heracleidae and the Hecuba, set against the backdrop of Nietzsche’s hermeneutic thought, offers new and original insights into how the forceful contents/processes of identification, ruin, devastation and chaos are contained by the formal qualities of the work. These poetic qualities of literature interact with the psyche of the reader, making whole again the fragmented reality of their inner shattered worlds. Although tragedy bears witness to utter ruin and destruction, it speaks to the author’s capacity to acknowledge his aggression and fragmentation—to restore the chaotic experience to us in a bearable form, begging the question: to what extent can we heal ourselves through reading tragedy? This thesis attempts to answer this question with the introduction of a new theory of ‘aesthetic reparation’ or ART (Aesthetic Reparation Theory).