The best art is honest, and honesty requires acknowledgment of the fact
that the universe is godless and morally empty, that life inevitably
frustrates man's desires, including his desire for eternity.
The great tragedies hit a sweet spot where technique and an
uncompromising commitment to truth can be combined to achieve the
sublime. At the end of Hamlet, for example, all the members of
Denmark's royal family have died violent deaths, and the state itself
has fallen to Fortinbras's invading army from Norway. The characters
that Shakespeare made you sympathize with and their entire country have
been destroyed. With the corpses of the royal family lying all around, a
messenger arrives to announce that the king's will has been done
because the government of England has beheaded Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. This is a sublimely ironic announcement because the king
of Denmark had actually dispatched the two of them to escort Hamlet to
England and give the king there an order that Hamlet, not Rosencrantz
and Gildenstern, be beheaded. Destruction can be so complete, ambition
thwarted so roundly, it can be sublime.
Secular, modern art can depict an intellectually honest form of
transcendence. The man whose reach exceeds his grasp can be heroic. A
man's life can be worthwhile even though his desires and ambitions will
inevitably meet with frustration. "A tragic situation exists precisely
when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is
nobler than the forces which destroy him."
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