The Secret Cause: A Discussion of Tragedy by Normand Berlin (review)

Book Reviews 107 insights. Connections between Brecht and Hauptmann or between Kaiser and O'Neill are brought out clearly. Unexpected parallels between Beckett and MaeterJinck are revealed. The line of development from Jarry through the surrealists and Artaud to Ionesco becomes tangible. The argument for looking at The Importance of Being Earnest as a symbolist play challenges easy preconceptions. In fact, precisely the strengths of this study - its ambitious scope, the lucidity of the writing, the intellectual honesty leading Professor Styan to qualify his definitions continually - show up the questionable nature of this line in drama criticism. The inherent problems raised by the logical application of stylistic categories would seem to make the volumes misleading for the ordinary undergraduate reader at whom they are obviously aimed. (Here one must deplore the publisher's decision to issue the study in three volumes - together prohibitively expensive - since it is more than likely for the commentary on one aspect of, say, Death ofa Salesman to be read in isolation, without the corrective complementary section in another volume.) But for all those who teach or write about theatre, this study should be required reading. However unintentionally, its Haws provide a challenge to revise the accepted approach, which it undennines by such consistent following. The conventional frameworks are revealed as a "magic if," which must be replaced by the "critical but... ." CHRISTOPHER INNES, YORK UNIVERSITY NORMAND BERLIN. The Secret Cause: A Discussion ofTragedy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1981. pp. xi, 189. $17.50. In James Joyce's A Portrait ofthe Artist as a Young Man , Stephen Dedalus insists that Aristotle did not define what he meant by "pity" and "terror," then proceeds to do so himself. "Pity," says Stephen, "is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human suffering and unites it with the secret cause." In this book on tragedy, Nonnand Berlin proposes "the secret cause" as the essence of the tragic spirit, examining the mystery that infonns plays from Oedipus to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Berlin's opening theoretical chapter, "The Invisible Piper," insightfully argues the connection between tragedy and Einstein's deterministic vision oflife: "we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." Whereas "religion offers answers to the mystery" and "science strives to comprehend portions of the mystery, tragedy enhances the mystery by dramatizing the question." Unlike Joseph Wood Krutch and others, Berlin believes that the possibility for tragedy in the modem world exists so long as a play can convey this sense of mystery. Examining Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as the prototypical tragedy, Berlin offers a reading that collides with more contemporary interpretations of Oedipus as a proud, rash, god-defying man who fully deserves his fate. He suggests that the uninitiated student might assess the case of Oedipus more simply, and more accurately: "Oedipus 108 Book Reviews got screwed." Noting that Oedipus is a god-fearing man (it was, after all, because he believed the oracle that he tried to avoid it, and his quest for the cause ofthe scourge is in service to the gods), Berlin argues that the play's claim to tragedy rests less in the choices the tragic hero makes than in the haunting experience ofthe mysterious the play evokes. He then sets out in search of "the secret cause" in sixteen plays, including four classical (Antigone, Hippolytus. Phaedra, and PrometheusBound), two Shakespearean (Hamlet and King Lear), and nine modem (Antigone, Desire Under the Elms, Roseneran !z and Guildenslern are Dead, Wailing for Gadot, The Three Sisters, Riders to the Sea, The Visit, Death of a Salesman, and the film Easy Rider). What is especially appea1ing about this quest is Berlin's comparative methodology, which pairs, for example, Sophocles' Antigone with Anouilh's Antigone, The Three Sisters with Riders to the Sea, and Prometheus Bound with Easy Rider. Though up against the fomtidable task of arguing the subjective question of a play's affective quality, Berlin garners textual evidence that supports the...