Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

The Poetry of John Keats 117imaginative stretch that combines images outside their usual associationsextends itself to unify divergence within and among characters(5.54; 12.342). The characters of Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Cassio,and Roderigo, as well as “the images they stamp upon the mind arethe farthest asunder possible . . . : yet the compass of knowledge andinvention which the poet has shown in embodying these extremecreations . . . is only greater than the truth and felicity with whichhe has identified each character with itself, or blended their differentqualities together in the same story” (4.200–201). This “truth andfelicity” in character and action defines the tragic sublime’s comprehensionof the infinite through an awareness of the finite.This comprehension, although it excludes any Providential intentto favor good over evil, offers consolation. The ending of Lear, Hazlittexplains in the Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, relieves its painfulsadness not only “by the very interest we take in the misfortunes ofothers,” but also by “the reflections to which they give birth” (4.270).The first of these two phrases echoes Edmund Burke, as does Hazlitt’sfinal—and rather loosely appended—statement in this essay, wherehe argues that tragedy releases a comforting flood of benevolenceand simultaneously elevates the audience to a strengthened “desire ofgood” (4.271–72; see also 5.6–7). 23 But in the second phrase, “reflections”suggest a tragic “pleasure” that is both intellectually fuller andmore original. As it “rouses the whole man within us,” Hazlitt pointsout in “On Poetry in General,” tragedy tests the reality of evil in allits dimensions.We do not wish the thing to be so; but we wish it to appearsuch as it is. For knowledge is conscious power; and the mindis no longer, in this case, the dupe, though it may be the victimof vice or folly. (5.6–8; cf. 6.355)Tragedy brings the discriminating and organizing force of thoughtand feeling to bear on evil, and in the mind’s power to know evil—both its strength and its limits—the audience finds reassurance.In short, tragic passion overcomes “separateness”—in images,association, character, or action—to produce an intuition of absoluteoneness. Thus Hazlitt’s tragic sublime conforms to the structure ofthe Romantic sublime. Its content, although excluding any supernaturalinterest in the matter, affirms the truth of intense experience