[In Le Dieu Caché, an interesting theory on Racine] has been put forward by a Marxist critic which has general implications going well beyond the one particular case. M. Lucien Goldmann derived Racine's 'tragic vision' directly from his Jansenism, and related this religious creed in turn to the discontent of a particular social class. This was the noblesse de robe, the higher ranks of the legal profession which (he argued) saw its powers and prerogatives curtailed by the development of a centralised bureaucracy directly responsible to the Crown. Whence came, not open opposition, but a half-conscious 'attitude of reserve towards the life of society and the State'.

In his analysis of the tragic, M. Goldmann sets up three concepts or terms: God, the World, Man. When the middle term is out of harmony with the other two or, to put the proposition in another way, when God, though not absent from the World, is 'silent' in it, the man who is conscious of this possesses a tragic awareness. He rejects the World because it does not satisfy him—as occurs, according to M. Goldmann, in Jansenist theology and in Racine's tragedies when their basic significance is correctly analysed. In their implicit condemnation of the World—equated with the dominant values of contemporary society—these tragedies are, in fact, ideologically subversive.

On biographical and historical grounds, the case of Racine, stated very baldly here, is far from made out in M. Goldmann's book. It is equally possible to interpret Racine's dramatic career as the reaction against his Jansenist teachers…. But it would be as impractical in a few pages to attempt to refute M. Goldmann's thesis on the grounds of social history as it would be to summarise all the detailed and interesting arguments marshalled in its support, and it is perhaps unnecessary. The significant general point which emerges is that the 'tragic vision' is the mark of a man at odds with his material environment, and it would seem to follow that the same condition must apply to other great tragic dramatists besides Racine…. (pp. 66-7)

The theory is attractive and not necessarily self-dismissive. Historically, it might perhaps be possible to find at least indications of a link between some frustrated minority and every writer possessed of an authentic 'tragic vision'. Shakespeare can be attached to the recusants, the undercover Papists in a Protestant State. Something similar might be found for Euripides and even Sophocles. But the evidence, as with Racine, is far from being established, and the difficulties of proof are formidable. Proof, moreover, or at least a reasonable presumption, would have to be found not only for a few great writers, but universally. For this sociological explanation of the tragic is bound up with a definition of the tragic which does not allow of other explanations. The two are interdependent—more than that, they are the same thing. Reduced to essentials, they can be stated in this way: 'Dissatisfaction with environment produces the tragic vision. The tragic vision is dissatisfaction with environment.' One may go on, of course, to the consequences of this dissatisfaction, to the vain attempt to reconcile ultimate good with environment (reconcile 'God' with the 'World'), or to impose it upon it, and so on. But this, which is recognisably the so-called tragic conflict, is only possible if the tragic vision exists first. The latter is a type of awareness which precedes, and exists independently of, the acts it stimulates and the solutions it seeks. It must also be said that in the consciousness of most of its possessors it ranges far beyond the social environment and takes in the whole 'universe'. But it does not seem to be a misrepresentation of M. Goldmann or of the Marxist position in general to say that in his analysis the ultimate origin of dissatisfaction is a social one.

It will hardly have escaped notice that M. Goldmann's 'tragic vision' is the same thing as Unamuno's 'tragic sense of life' and that the conditions to which it is attributed are also basically similar. The superficial difference is that Unamuno's contentions led us towards a theory of the dying society which we found hard to substantiate in any field and which, if extended to the great periods of tragic drama, simply does not hold water. The greater merit of M. Goldmann's version is that it transfers the tragic sense from societies as a whole … to sections or classes within societies. These may be sick or maladjusted though the majority body is healthy. But although, as we have said, this version is harder to disprove, it does not alter the identity of the two conceptions of the tragic nor of the diagnostic, which is simply applied by M. Goldmann on an intranational scale. The similarities between M. Goldmann's views and those expressed or implied by Unamuno are so striking that they deserve further comment, though there are no traces of a direct influence.

Like the liberal Spanish individualist, the objective Marxist investigator finds the tragic vision to be incompatible with both rationalism and empiricism. He finds it to be, in the widest sense, 'religious'. His description of the position of a so-called 'tragic' thinker of the mid-seventeenth century—Pascal—strongly recalls the self-described position of the Spaniard at the beginning of the twentieth. (pp. 68-9)

In a later chapter M. Goldmann expands his statement that reason is 'not the whole of man' and cannot suffice him. His conclusions would serve as a model explanation of Unamuno's passionately 'felt' desire for personal immortality, associating it with a longing for oneness or totality in the state of conflict which divides him…. (p. 70)

[Goldmann makes] an interesting and extreme statement of a position similar to Unamuno's and [expresses it] in religious terms. The point which M. Goldmann makes … is that the 'tragically conscious' man, while rejecting the world as it is, does not abandon it entirely to seek refuge with a God who exists only outside it. That is the course taken by the mystic, and does not qualify as 'tragic'. The 'tragic man' seeks completeness. He must have the World and God, the body and the soul, in order to satisfy his craving for unity.

We need hardly say that we dissent totally from M. Goldmann's interpretation of Pascal…. We believe that his thesis is anachronistic if applied to Christian thought in the seventeenth century. It rests on conceptions and attitudes which did not emerge until the late eighteenth century…. Hence its relevance to the position of Unamuno, a tardy (by general European standards) renewer of Romantic ideology, but its inaptness to throw light on earlier tragedy and conceptions of the tragic.

Must we then discard altogether these concepts of the tragic sense and the tragic vision as erroneous? Or can we adopt them as valid from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but not much earlier—in that case being eventually forced to abandon a uniform conception of the tragic? It would be premature to attempt a definite judgment before considering some examples of the tragic concept in practice, i.e. in the works of some of the great tragic dramatists. But two points can at least be made.

One is that the external symptom of the 'tragic sense' (Unamuno), a melancholy disposition characterised by a brooding on 'death and immortality', is not in itself tragic, though it is quite likely to enter into tragedy and, as it were, set the tone of it. But it can find even more adequate expression in such forms as the funeral lament, the elegy, or the woeful narrative tale, all of which correspond to classic states of human emotion which are sorrowful rather than tragic. Usually it will have a religious context, since death and transcendence have immemorially been the province of religion, and if only the symptom were in question one could call this simply 'the religious sense'—which, so far, would satisfy both Unamuno and M. Goldmann. (pp. 70-1)

[Secondly, both] authors conceive [the symptom] as not only religious, but as essentially tragic. Here we hesitate to follow them, for it may prove to be only incidentally so. On the grounds of social history alone, it seems improbable that it can be more than that.

Even if M. Goldmann's theory of the dissenting minority is not accepted in toto, there remains a further question to be considered. Is the 'tragic vision' perhaps necessarily a 'subversive' vision, possessed by the individual independently of any connection which can be established between him and a discontented social group? Does he question the accepted ideology as a condition of his 'tragic' insight? (pp. 71-2)

It is clear that the most direct intentional challenges to existing society or sections of it are made through satire and comedy (Rabelais, Molière, Swift, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, Shaw). If one is simply looking for subversive voices, this is the richest field to explore. Tragedy, on this count, can claim no special relationship with the subversive view. It might, however, be said that the comic genres stop short at the more superficial aspects of society, while only tragedy is equipped to challenge the values behind it—in short, its gods. It is doubtful if such a challenge can be made without both a spirit and an appearance of 'high seriousness', the element with which tragedy is normally associated and which it reinforces by throwing in the highest stakes, human happiness and human lives. But if this is admitted, it merely makes the tragic more deeply subversive than other modes, not uniquely so. The conclusion does not contribute much to a demarcation of the tragic field.

So far as writers are concerned, any one with sufficient stature to be found important will also be original. Originality lies in a modification of accepted values, whether intentional or not, fundamental or partial. This will of course embrace the great tragic dramatists and 'tragic' thinkers, but also many others. Every good writer and thinker is comparable to the primitive artist setting out to carve a replica of the tribal god. What he produces is not an exact copy but a new face, with features which may contain anything from a just perceptible innovation to a revolutionary reinterpretation. If this process is held to carry intimations of a 'tragic vision', in however varying degrees, one might as well conclude that all art is tragic and throw one's hand in.

As for the great periods of dramatic tragedy, it seems quite uncertain how they can be related to certain stages of social ideology. They do not correspond to the theory of the dying society and hardly to that of the sick minority. Their greatest dramatists … were conformists in intention—that is, they thought of themselves as solidary with the aspirations of the majority. If they modified the image, it was in virtue of their artistic insight and almost accidentally. And one can hardly neglect the evidence that their work was acceptable to society.

Hypothesis for hypothesis, we would put forward a different one. It is that a confident society can afford to tolerate subversion when presented to it in established art-forms. It comes expressed in a familiar language by one of its members speaking, as it were, from inside. Tragedy then serves, to borrow Aristotle's invaluable theory of catharsis, as a purge for its fears of real subversion—which must always be present. It expends its tragic heroes as insurance premiums, and goes home relieved and fortified by the spectacle of dreadful happenings which it feels secure enough to contemplate. Why otherwise should Aristotle, and Racine after him, speak of the pleasure peculiar to tragedy? It would be an odd word if the tragedy of their periods spoke intimately to audiences of the frustratred misery inseparable from their condition. It is much easier to assume that a healthy society uses the tragic, in drama and on occasion in other literature, as an outlet for its misgivings and anxieties. On the other hand, a precarious society will not dare to ask questions for fear of the possible answers…. (pp. 72-3)

Great tragedy is always bold in its conceptions and the speculations which it opens up. Declining cultures are afraid of being hurt and are inclined to take refuge in petty repetitions and unadventurous didacticism. (p. 74)