Since such afflictions are not pleasing in real life away from the theatre, then
whence, Hume wonders,“this singular phenomenon.”^9
Hume argues that it will not do to say that a moving tragedy is nothing but
an“amusement”that removes us from the“painful situation”of being in a
“languid, listless, state of indolence,”for“it is certain that the same object of
distress, were it really set before us, would give us the most unfeigned
uneasiness, though it be then the most effectual cure to languor and indo-
lence.”^10 Why, then, does it please on the stage? And for what reasons do
human beings intentionally generate and enjoy such productions?
Nor will it do to say that we are pleased just because and insofar as the
tragedy is a fiction, for moving and pleasing tragedies can present events that
really happened. For example, Cicero’s“pathetic description of the butchery
made by Verres of the Sicilian captains...is a masterpiece”^11 of pleasing and
moving dramatic art, but not a fiction. Here Hume is surely right to empha-
size that the object of pleasure in otherwise distressing emotion is a made
thing, a play or painting or other work of art, not the events or objects
recounted or depicted in themselves. With too much sense of the factual
reality of the distressing or tragic, our pleasure tends to lapse, as we are
overwhelmed by the events themselves.^12 But at least with a certain distance
set up by time and art, we can take pleasure in the representation of actual
distressing events. It is not necessary that the objects and incidents described
be fictional. Hence it must somehow matter that it is a recounting or a
depiction in which we take pleasure. But how?
Hume proposes as a solution that
All the passions, [when] excited by eloquence, are agreeable in the highest
degree, as well as those which are moved by painting and the theatre...[The]
extraordinary effect [pleasure in otherwise distressing emotion] proceeds from
that very eloquence with which the melancholy scene is represented. The
genius required to paint objects in a lively manner, the art employed in
collecting all the pathetic circumstances, the judgment displayed in disposing
them; the exercise, I say, of those noble talents, together with the force of
expression, and beauty of oratorical numbers, diffuse the highest satisfaction
on the audience and excite the most delightful movements. By this means, the(^9) Ibid. (^10) Ibid., p. 22. (^11) Ibid., p. 224.
(^12) Alex Neill has cogently urged me to remember that not every tragic incident can be
pleasingly represented; some are too close to us for that.
Art and emotion 205