On Agony and Apocalypse: A theological critique of “Absolute tragedy”

Abstract

The essay gestures to a theological critique of “absolute tragedy”. It begins by articulating the oft-repeated claim that a definition of “tragedy” or “the tragic” has proved difficult and suggests that its relative scope and open texture are bound up with its reception history. This sets the context for my exposition of the idea of “absolute tragedy” as found in George Steiner, which I consider to be determined by an overly restrictive concept of tragedy, both in terms of its metaphysical and social imaginary. I then move on to Hans Urs von Balthasar, who does not succumb to the conceit of absolute tragedy, but who also exhibits something of a restrictive social dimension in his portrayal of the tragic. I then engage in a brief exposition of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck as a riposte to Steiner, but also as a transition point towards the idea of apocalypse, where I frame the tragic as a habitation of the middle, between agony and apocalypse. To this end, I propose briefly three framing narratives or myths as a way of conceiving this middle, namely the agony of Christ in Gethsemane, the Pauline pericope on suffering creation in the Epistle to the Romans, and the myth of Holy Saturday.