our love of misery in plays | st. augustine & p.t.anderson

I love discovering pieces of writing that articulate so clearly my exact questions and ponderings. This is a piece from St. Augustine about how we love to witness grief and misery in the theatre. I've often wondered why my favorite stories and performances are those that reveal tremendous suffering. I think it has something to do with empathy and mercy and the acknowledgement that this stuff happens. Paul Thomas Anderson, one of my favorite filmmakers puts it quite clearly in his film Magnolia:

"This happens. This is something that happens." -* Stanley Spector*

Confessions of St. Augustine. Book III, Part II

"Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness? for a man is the more affected with these actions, the less free he is from such affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own person, it uses to be styled misery: when he compassionates others, then it is mercy. But what sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenical passions? for the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve: and he applauds the actor of these fictions the more, the more he grieves. And if the calamities of those persons (whether of old times, or mere fiction) be so acted, that the spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away disgusted and criticising; but if he be moved to passion, he stays intent, and weeps for joy."

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