RITUAL AND THE DRAMA
747
The chief weakness of Mr. Fergusson's work, in my opinion, is his
use of the categories Realism-Idealism, which cut across the properly his–
torical categories (Racine and Wagner have opposite "ideas of a theater"
but both are classed as Idealist, while Sophocles and Shakespeare-as
well as Dante, who is used as a constant point of reference-are called
Realist). Sometimes, Mr. Fergusson speaks of the "univocal sense of
form" in the Idealist theaters and contrasts this with the "analogical
sense of form" among the Realists; here the distinction merely means
that the Idealists isolate one or another aspect of the "tragic rhythm"
and make this the principle of their dramaturgy, rather than, as the
Realists do, employing a succession of moral modes analogically related
to each other. Sometimes, however, Mr. Fergusson speaks of Idealist
dramaturgy as, in T. S. Eliot's phrase, " a form or rhythm
imposed
upon
the world of action"; while "the Realists of all kinds do not so much
impose as discern a form of action." The distinction here is transferred
from aesthetic to ontological grounds, with the Realists (Mr. Fergusson
uses the term in the sense given it in medieval philosophy) imitating a
reality felt as objectively existent, not a subjective creation of the indi–
vidual playwright. But
if
this is the point of the distinction, then Mr.
Fergusson runs into trouble in applying it so broadly.
Racine's theater of Reason, Mr. Fergusson himself writes, "was a
public institution with stage, actors, audience and general support and
comprehension"; nor would Mr. Fergusson deny, apparently, that the
moral values of Racine's theater were felt ·as objectively real by Racine
and his audience. Racine can thus hardly be called Idealist in the second
and more important meaning that Mr. Fergusson gives this term. Again,
Mr. Fergusson agrees with Denis de Rougemont that the Tristan und
Isolde myth "does reawaken to life . . . ancient sources buried
in
our
culture, just as it taps obscure sources in the individual psyche." To this
extent, then, we may surely say that Wagner "discerned" a form of action
in the myth and did not simply impose one. And while Mr. Fergusson
identifies the Realist theaters with those cultures that had a "naturally
formed and centrally placed mirror of man and society," and speaks
of the modern theater as irremediably Idealist ;-we also find him saying
that Chekhov and Ibsen "rediscover some of the ancient sense of drama
as the
imitation
of action" and "cannot be grasped at all on ... Idealist
principles." The more one tries to pin this distinction down, the more
elusive it becomes. Fortunately, it has only an auxiliary status in the book.
A final word should be said on some of the historical assumptions
that dominate Mr. Fergusson's critical thinking. Like T. S. Eliot and the
New Critics, whose influence he acknowledges, Mr. Fergusson is haunted
