This coming together in the service of society, this saving grace that succeeds, patches things up, and moves on, is profoundly comic. It is as profoundly comic as the destruction of everything that was dearest and most important, the shattering of the efforts, hopes and visions of the largest and most daring among us is profoundly tragic. In this play Shakespeare has stretched the tragedy to its darkest, most desperately frightening conclusion--the vision of the abyss where all value and order is lost. And at the same time he has stretched comedy to its furthest reach: what is necessary to recoup, to rejoin, to muddle through even in the face of such a loss.

This kind of marriage of tragedy and comedy, the tragicomic sensibility, is a key to the best drama of our times. Everything is alloyed, impure and complex. What is heartening and encouraging and sustaining, that which helps us build and grow, may also be deadly. And that which is most deeply chaotic and arbitrary, or determinedly evil and destructive, may also be the source from which order and goodness springs. Nature's ironies, when seen from the perspective of human history, seem abundant in this context. The huge mass extinctions of species 250 million and 65 million years ago are the distant preludes to our times. If the dramatic range and sensibilities of American dramatists during the last three decades shrunk dramatic means to encompass little more than the constricted genus of romantic realism, this is nothing compared to the annihilations of species, the wipeout of the world as it was known, the echoing remnants of which must somehow persist in the dark recesses of our most ancient genetic memories. Something that lived through those times and through the ice ages after them, became us.

"Genetic" is the word I want to use, because I think the nexus of tragicomic sensibilities is genetic. That is, I think it is so basic to our apperceptions of what drama is and how it works and what it is about, and so common to every culture in which drama appears, that I suspect it [page 93] has genetic components or roots. The process of metaphoring, of using dramatic action as the most active emblem of the process of knowing (of seeing what we understand get played out in the actions of persons), is most important here. It is that act of knowing, of physicalizing what we understand, of seeing it played, which gives us the impetus to understand mystery and to know more. It gives us the groundwork on which new knowledge is based. If we can meta-phor it, perhaps we can know it, "understand" it.

But how is it that the particular contours of the tragicomic deserve the epithet "genetic"?

In his Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking invokes something called the Anthropic Principle to explain parts of his theoretical conclusions--for instance, that we must exist in three space dimensions and one time dimension. The Anthropic principle, stated in brief, is that we "see the universe the way it is because if it were different, we would not be here to observe it",(1) or in its more useable, "weak" form, we should "not be surprised" if we observe that our "locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for...[our] existence."(2)

Now if the Anthropic Principle can help us understand why we see the physical universe as we do, it can also help us understand why the emotional and spiritual landscape we live in is the tragicomic one. In this way, we can understand tragicomedy as inevitable, or, as I have put it, "genetic"--that is, somehow deeply imbedded on our sensibilities and ways of seeing things. It is the "without which not"--that without which we could not be who we are. I submit our times ask us to see that it is worth while to give birth, as Beckett put it in Waiting for Godot, astride of a grave, to build in the face of entropic decay and destruction, to draw value from a teeming moral chaos or an utter absence of value, to feel pleasure and laugh in the face of pain. Tragicomedy is the fabric that shapes our sensibilities and tells us about reality. It is what helps us see, what helps us not "be surprised" when we observe that this principle sets the conditions by which we live.

[page 94] Tragicomedy is the central metaphoric structure of uncertainty. It takes advantage of the widest network of capacities to be more than one thing at once, to be profoundly so, and to remind us deeply, at nearly every turn, of the ironies it can encompass. Ironies are important to dramatic form because they are important to perception. We know, in the slapstick comedy, when we see the stuck-up snob approach the open manhole, that he is headed straight for it, and, because he has his nose in the air, he does not know that he is about to take a fall. This is simple stage irony--in the audience we know what the character does not. When he falls, the insult to his dignity will be funny. That irony structures our knowledge of what the situation is and means. We will relish the look of surprise on his face, the cry of pain and the crash we hear. Oddly enough, it will not hurt us. But if the snob were not so much a snob, if he or she were admirable, sympathetic, we would feel the sting. We would flinch, perhaps even call out as she approaches the hole without seeing it. Metaphorically, this is what tragicomic characters do. They teeter toward disaster, sometimes at full speed, with their warts and their awkwardnesses showing. Maybe, to extend this example, as she heads toward the manhole she has a child by one hand and a parent by the other. Perhaps they do not see the hole gaping in front of them because she is announcing some particularly good news about the family. In this way, typically, their social connections and convictions are also showing, so that when they fall, what is threatened with them is the manners, morals, customs and institutions of the society which they have tried to uphold.

In Angels in America, for instance, we watch Louis struggle to find out which ideas and principles he is going to uphold, and whether he is going to see himself as a leaf floating on the tides of history, or as an individual whose weaknesses lead him to agonizing choices. Either way he looks somewhat ridiculous, blind, foolish, pretentious and selfish, headed for a fall, but somehow also sweet, genuine, likeable, trying hard to understand and to live with his own flaws. In his struggle for value and principle we see those values and principles, and watch how elusive and difficult they are in the face of contemporary social complications. But we also see how important, how necessary they are, and how their ananke is somehow going to trap the characters in the end. This is the feel of tragicomedy. As Joe marches, however sighted or blind, into the exciting and affirming new world of his homosexuality, he has figuratively his wife (and the children they will never have) in one hand, and his mother in the other. Is he marching to glory or falling down a hole? In our quantumized world, it feels like he is doing both, at the same time.

[page 95] The play begins with a funny funeral, with a kind of celebration of a life that is both heartening to us and frustrating. On the one hand, we see that people can find new shores, new visions, new ways of being. One the other hand, we are told that there are none left like the dearly departed, and that we will never understand what it was like to accomplish what she did: "She carried the old world on her back across the ocean...and she put it down...in Flatbush...You can never make that crossing that she made, for such Great Voyages in this world do not anymore exist," says the old rabbi.(3) Thus the play begins with a strong echo of that bitter end of King Lear: "The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/ Shall never see so much, nor live so long." Entropy is also alive and well in Angels in America. As if to confirm this, Kushner begins Part II with the harangue of the ancient Bolshevik, Prelapsarianov (whose name means, "before the fall") telling us that we cannot act without a great theory, and we do not have one any more, or anyone capable of formulating one. He calls us "Pygmy children of a gigantic race",(4) and invites us to imagine what it was like to have a huge, powerful, beautiful vision of the world, in contrast to today's "market incentives" and "cheeseburgers." When we do find such a vision, even he, Prelapsarianov, will lug his ancient bones back to the barricades. Meanwhile, the world has clearly gone down hill.

In tragicomedy, there is a disproportion somewhere between what we think is at stake and what is actually threatened, or between the size or power of the hero and what he is faced with (Prior is a vivid example of this mismatch), or between the size of our response and the magnitude of the actual threat. We comprehend something of the world we are in, but, unlike the worlds of tragedy and comedy, we are uncertain about what things mean, about where they are going, or about what they may mean for us. We are also uncertain about what may be necessary to solve the problems. We strongly suspect that if old Prelapsarionov's great theoretician appeared, we would tell her or him to shut up, strong suspecting that person to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

In a world where meanings are patently equivocal, and endemically ironical, uncertainty is a part of the structure, and a part of the metaphor. Uncertainty is also a [page 96] fundamental property of contemporary physics, telling us that if we know the position of a particle, we cannot know its velocity, or vice versa. We are stuck with statistical mechanics, and with fields, and with understanding these structures without being disturbed by our uncertainty about some kinds of detail, like the position and velocity of particles. How can something be a wave and a particle at the same time? How can something be matter and energy at the same time? We can be frustrated, or we can seek to see it differently, to see the sense it makes rather than the sense it does not make. To put this point another way, if we want to understand at all, we need metaphors that use contradiction as a stimulus to find a new way to see.

The black hole is a crucial idea here, for it contains the fundamental contradictions of tragicomedy. It sucks everything in past an event horizon, and thus, while it is an extraordinarily important occurrence, one can (just considering this fact) get no information about it. Even the information itself is sucked in. But then it turns out that black holes do radiate. They give off energy inversely proportional to their size. As the size gets smaller, the radiation exceeds the mass equivalent of the matter that is being sucked in, and the Black Hole gets both smaller and hotter. In fact, it gets white hot and probably explodes! But whether it is small and releases all its energy, or it is large and continues to suck matter and energy in, we know less after encountering it, not more. Entropy tells us that that the energy that emerges from a black hole is not the same as it went in--and the information that got sucked in is irretrievably lost.(5)

Similarly, comedy has an event horizon. In its pure form comedy is concerned exclusively with domestic events. Rigidly excluded from influence are those matters that are most important to tragedy. The movement of comedy is (like the inside of a black hole) toward the center. Typically, two young people who wish to get together must overcome the obstacles society places in front of them. When the protagonists come together, they do so in a collision that sustains society through love, acceptance, and reproduction. However, inside a black hole, as things come together they get ripped apart. Neglecting the fact that we will never get news of the ripping, the idea, the mere anticipation, is very tragicomic. Getting close is deadly. The comic is transformed to the tragicomic--another transfiguration in the age of uncertainty.

[page 97] Outside the black hole, matter or energy subtly drawn to it is in trouble. If it does not turn course in time, it will be sucked in. Such is the movement of tragedy. A choice is made, a course is set on the basis of a vision of right action, of what corresponds to the truth about the universe and the circumstances of mankind in it. If this course is true, all goes well. If it is even subtly bent in a wrong direction, it moves inexorably toward chaos, destruction and death, often accelerating at horrible speed, and spreading damage far beyond what happens to the perpetrator (the hero) him or herself. But the black hole shows us there is a transfiguration here, too. This is best seen by looking again at King Lear.

In King Lear, the king's foolishness sucks him into the abyss of his vision--a universe with no human connection or sympathy. At the same time, the whole nation is drawn into schism and war. As with the black hole, there are radiations that are the saving graces. Lear's vision itself escapes at the event horizon to survive beyond his disaster, while he and Cordelia are swept into the abyss. And Albany and Edgar, who are still anchored in an ancient vision of value that for Lear himself, in the eye of the storm, in the vortex of the black hole, has been lost--Albany and Edgar reassemble the means to survive and rebuild. But the entropy that is the loss of Lear and his vision makes this a maimed rite. Things will never again be what they were, as large and great as they were.

Looked at comically, this sounds like the perennial grousing of the older generation, mourning that fact that things ain't what they used to be. But when we look back carefully, the "good old days" do not seem to be so good. The old folks seem to be seeing entropy where there is only change, difference. These perceptions are the regenerative ironies of tragicomedy at work, seeing growth and improvement in spite of entropy, but maintaining a sense of humor about decay.

The acknowledgement of the horror of entropy, together with a certain buoyancy, a readiness to cherish life as it is and to acknowledge how we have reconciled ourselves, grown, learned, improved--this seems to be what Kushner strives for, somewhat unsuccessfully, at the end of his two-part play. The best example of the buoyant tragicomedy of entropy is Beckett's, and the clearest and most beautiful example is Waiting for Godot. Briefly, we see in Godot [page 98] the world wound down to something close to its last gasp (it gets closer, of course, in the later plays). There are only five, possibly six people in this world, one of whom never comes. There is one tree, with a single leaf. Life is reduced to the simplest possible orbit of repeating action--waiting for something (we're not sure what) to happen. The uncertainty principle has swollen to encompass everything, and significance is nil. We must play games to create meaning, to invent significance, while we wait for the next random event. Any signs of life are accompanied by decay, as we see with the second appearance of Pozzo and Lucky, and with the disappearance of the leaf from the tree. The ravages of entropy are everywhere. But even this black hole radiates. Didi and Gogo do invent a life together, each day, habitual but original, funny and endearing. They survive the beatings, giving birth astride of a grave, making do for the next day. Even suicide, though highly desirable under these agonizing conditions, is unacceptable, everything considered, and life, such as it is, goes on.

So here in Godot is the pull of the metaphor, tragicomic to its core, and necessarily dramatic. That is, Didi's and Gogo's whole world is nothing but what they do, the actions they perform. These events move from conflict to crisis to outcome, again and again, repeating, altered only by the effects of entropy. And they demand, by the richness of their irony, by the particular nature of their emptiness, vision and meaning. By confronting us with the actual, physical action, the drama demands we meta-phor, carry beyond, and in the genetic legacy of tragicomedy, see while entropy blinds us, and make meaning across our lives even to the farthest reaches of the universe.

Endnotes

1. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, Auckland, 1988) 183.
2. Hawking, A Brief History of Time 124.
3. Tony Kushner, Angels in America (New York, 1993, Part I) 10.
4. Tony Kushner, Angels in America (New York, 1994, Part II) 14.
5. Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, "The Nature of Space and Time," Scientific American 275:1 (July 1996) 62.

Bibliography

Hawking, Stephen, and Roger Penrose. "The Nature of Space and Time," Scientific American 275:1 (July 1996), 60-65.

Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time. Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, Auckland, 1988.

Kushner, Tony. Angels in America. New York, 1993 (Part I), 1994 (Part II).

Shakespeare, William. King Lear (c. 1605). Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1958.