When an aeroplane explodes in mid-air killing all the passengers or a train crashes and many people die, one reads in the papers and is told in TV news that a ‘terrible tragedy’ has taken place. When a young girl is kidnapped, one can see headlines like ‘Tragic mum pleads for the release of her child’. Used like that, the word ‘tragic’ means ‘very, very sad’. This is wrong, but cannot be helped: everyone does it.

Tragedy is in fact a form of serious drama, in which the main character chooses to disobey some very high power, such as social order, the law, or even God because he trusts his own feelings and ideas more than he trusts society, law or God (gods). His motives may be good, but he (or she!) nearly always dies or, at best experiences a catastrophic reversal of fortune as a result of his action. Aristotle says that the tragic hero should have a flaw or make a terrible mistake (hamartia). In spite of, or because of his reversal of fortune, the tragic hero may experience a revelation about his own true nature, the true nature of others or the true nature of things in general. Aristotle terms this revelation anagnorisis, meaning ‘recognition’, ‘knowing throughout’ or ‘discovery’. It is a change from ignorance to awareness, the rending of the veil.

Tragedy developed in ancient Greece, allegedly from dithyrambs – chants and dances in praise of god Bacchus, also known to us as the Roman god Dionysus. Bacchus/Dionysus was, among other things, the bringer of abandon, of an immediacy of experience which dissolved the rigid structures we all rely on for safety and guidance. His followers would sometimes cross all the boundaries of social and even moral acceptability and tear each other to pieces. On such occasions people would dress as Satyrs, half-goats, half-men who followed Bacchus everywhere. The Greek words tragos – goat – and aidein – to sing – were combined in the word tragoidia – goat-song – from which we finally got the word ‘tragedy’.

In today’s Western cultural climate, moral problems in narratives (and in real life) are increasingly replaced by ‘issues’, and revelations about the true nature of things – to be avoided at all cost – are replaced by explanations and ‘facts’. Unsurprisingly, tragedy as an art form has become unpopular and is teetering on the brink of extinction, saved only by a few notable examples like Star Wars and The Godfather Trilogy.