A Dramatic History of Misanthropes
1983; Western Michigan University; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cdr.1983.0011
ISSN1936-1637
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Antiquity Studies
Resumo1 COMPARATIVE drama Volume 17 Summer 1983 Number 2 A Dramatic History of Misanthropes David Konstan The misanthrope is not merely different from other men; he judges them, and does so on what he takes to be their own terms. He perceives himself as the representative of a social ideal which others have betrayed, and condemns his fellows for their perversity and hypocrisy. And yet society abides, and it is the misanthrope who cannot fit. He is rigid and surly, a natural target for comic deflation. Were he asocial, like the cyclops or the anchorite, the codes of communal life would not be an issue for him. But he is antisocial, and bears within him the image of the thing he opposes. This tension demands dialogue, as Cicero perhaps divined when he said of Timon, the renowned misan thrope of Athens, that even he “could not endure to be excluded from one associate, at least, before whom he might discharge the whole rancour and virulence of his heart’T The misanthrope comes on as a satirist, and is kin to the stem Umbricius in Juvenal, who delivers his tirade against the corruption of Rome as he lingers by its gates, before abandoning the city forever. Juvenal had vision when he named his spokesman after shadows (umbra), for the railer shapes his critique of society according to its own occluded ideals. DAVID KONSTAN is Jane A. Seney Professor of Greek at Wesleyan University. His previous publications on classical literature and philosophy include a recent book, Roman Comedy (Cornell Univ. Press, 1983). 97 98 Comparative Drama The misanthrope, then, is an ambiguous figure. His com plaint is in principle with the failures of society, not its exis tence as such. But by his isolation he relinquishes the authority of those social ideals which are the grounds of his reproach against others. The virtues which he demands lose their mean ing in a society of one. For the rigor of his ideals, there is something heroic about him, but he is also the victim of his humor. He can rail but he refuses to engage—it is this which distinguishes him from the prophet. The misanthrope is a con tradiction, society’s own self-denial. He is, so to speak, the thing in the moment of its otherness. In this misanthrope, society presents both itself and its own negation. It is precisely this social character of the misanthrope, how ever, which should warn us against taking him as an abstract type. His withdrawal is not simply a function of individual personality, but a relation to the norms and conduct of the world. The misanthrope’s is a determinate otherness, which is to say: not all misanthropes are alike. They have a history, which is a reflex of the history of social forms themselves. This history is the subject of the present investigation. I shall address this subject through a study of three dramas, each by a master: the Dyscolus or “Grouch” by Menander, which bore also the alternative title of “The Misanthrope”; Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens; and Le Misanthrope of Molière. In each case, I shall examine how the double nature of the misanthrope is exhibited—his virtue and his social deficiency— and show how this functions in the plot and structure of the drama. Beyond this, I shall look to the values which inform both character and action, and to the paradoxes or problems made manifest in the social ideal itself. At this level, which we may call the meanings of the works, we shall be able to compare the different realizations of the misanthrope in classical Athens, Elizabethan London, and France under the reign of Louis XIV. The historian Christian Meier has written, in connection with the evolution of the idea of politics, that “The specificity of a foreign culture cannot be grasped without setting it off against others, or at all events, one’s own.”2 One needs, however, a point of comparison, and for the study of literature, a concept is less good than a character. To this end the misanthrope will oblige us. Methodologically, then, it is clear that our project is not a simple table...
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