Every now and then a Greek friend in Athens would respond to my question, “How are yu doing?” with the answer,,“Eimai mia chara!” She didn’t say ” I’m good,” “I’m feeling happy,” or “I’m joyous.” She’d say, “I am a joy.”
Why settle for happiness when you could be a joy?
Very Greek, But joy talk is rare in pre-Christian Greek literature, as if happiness were within reach, but joy too much to hope for. Or is it just too intense for people who often distrusted emotions?
There is, however, one surprise when one looks at the word chara in Greek literature. “First m Sappho…, then in Trag., and (less freq.) in Com. and prose,” the big lexicon says. Joy in tragedy? Yes! Some of the most intense and convincing representations of it come where you least expect it - in life as in tragic dram, but not just in any tragedy. We see it, and feel it, most compellingly when an imminent catastrophe is avoided - when a feared tragic outcome is averted, as in the recognition scene in Euripides’ Io, or, . maybe in the Alcestis,, depending on how one reacts to her silence in the last scene.. And, of course, there’s the disappearance of Oedipus into a mysterious grove in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.
Is joy only palpable when suffering has had its fill?
Behind these questions is another one about tragedy in drama and in life. Can we think of it not as a representation of misery but as a guidepost, vademecum on a path to joy?
Why settle for happiness when you could be a joy?
Very Greek, But joy talk is rare in pre-Christian Greek literature, as if happiness were within reach, but joy too much to hope for. Or is it just too intense for people who often distrusted emotions?
There is, however, one surprise when one looks at the word chara in Greek literature. “First m Sappho…, then in Trag., and (less freq.) in Com. and prose,” the big lexicon says. Joy in tragedy? Yes! Some of the most intense and convincing representations of it come where you least expect it - in life as in tragic dram, but not just in any tragedy. We see it, and feel it, most compellingly when an imminent catastrophe is avoided - when a feared tragic outcome is averted, as in the recognition scene in Euripides’ Io, or, . maybe in the Alcestis,, depending on how one reacts to her silence in the last scene.. And, of course, there’s the disappearance of Oedipus into a mysterious grove in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.
Is joy only palpable when suffering has had its fill?
Behind these questions is another one about tragedy in drama and in life. Can we think of it not as a representation of misery but as a guidepost, vademecum on a path to joy?