p The place and importance of the tragic and the comic in aesthetics is determined by the fact that these categories serve to express aesthetic evaluation of essential phenomena of the real world, and also by the fact that these two categories together with the beautiful number among the fundamental concerns of art.

p The sphere of the tragic and the comic in the objective world is narrower than that of the beautiful. The tragic and the comic only exist in the life of society, they are not to be found in Nature. Just as the concepts of good and evil are not applicable to Nature, neither does it know tragic tears or the laughter of comedy. Phenomena of life are coloured in tragic or comic hues depending upon the social content implicit within them.

p This most important feature of the tragic and the comic leads certain writers to conclude that the tragic and the comic are not aesthetic but ethical categories. There is no doubt about the fact that inherent within the tragic and 199 the comic is such content as demands moral assessment. In tragic and comic artistic phenomena the unity of aesthetic and ethical factors comes into the open particularly forcefully. Yet tragic and comic events, characters and conflicts can be elucidated and embodied most fully and vividly of all in art: not in moral concepts, but in works of art, in the direct, concrete presentation of the life of individual characters and events will the essence of the tragic and comic be brought out with particular clarity.

p The tragic and the comic should not be equated with the genres of tragedy and comedy, which initially took shape above all in the field of drama and the theatre, although it is there that they best come into their own. The meaning of the tragic and the comic is broader than that: as pointed out earlier they constitute categories relevant to the aesthetic evaluation of tragic and comic phenomena of life, criteria and principles for the artistic embodiment of those phenomena. Tragic conflicts and comedy situation, tragic and comic characters are to be found in almost all art forms and genres.

p The novel as a genre differs essentially from the tragedy, yet in Hugo’s Quatre-vingt-treize and in Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don tragic conflicts, clashes and characters moulded by the great age of revolutionary change possess tremendous force. On the other hand Tvardovsky’s great creation Vassili Tyorkin sparkles with rich comedy although according to its genre it is a long poem, not a comedy. The most diverse genres in literature, the cinema, music and fine arts depict tragic and comic phenomena of life, using a broad range of tragic and comic artistic means.

p The tragic and the comic are at first glance sharply contrasted mutually exclusive categories. Any one, whether or not he has soecial knowledge of aesthetics, connects grief and suffering with the idea of the tragic, and merriment and laughter with the idea of the comic. In art the tragic is linked with man’s most noble sentiments and imbued with philosophical ideas, while the comic on 200 the other hand is concerned with the “everyday”, ordinary-life situations, with the “lighter” genres. Thus it might well seem that the tragic and the comic are out- andout opposites, completely incompatible the one with the other. Yet in life the tragic and the comic, grief and joy, laughter and suffering, the “noble” and the “base” are often found side by side, interwoven with each other. The tragic and the comic sometimes overlap so closely—both in life and art—that it can be difficult to say whether a tragic or comic note predominates in a particular situation or work. Thus, however sharply the tragic and the comic may seem to be contrasted, as aesthetic phenomena they are interconnected since both can convey universally significant social content.

p Life is a complex phenomenon, and the tragic in certain circumstances can turn out comic and vice versa. In real life the tragic and the comic rarely exist in pure form. More often than not they complement each other as it were and are represented as interconnected; a deeply tragic phenomenon includes a comic facet, and often a trace of the tragic is to be observed in the comic. The contrast between the two found in such cases sometimes intensifies and brings out still more clearly the various aspects of both tragedy and comedy. This interweaving of the tragic and the comic is to be found both in highly dramatic situations and in portrayals of ordinary everyday life. Pushkin wrote that high comedy is not only founded in laughter, but in the development of characters and it frequently comes close to tragedy. Laughter through tears is a phenomenon typical of many art forms and genres, but one that is particularly prominent in drama and the theatre, in epic literature and in certain cinematic genres.

p Shakespeare more often than not introduces jesters into his tragedies and incorporates artistic means peculiar to the comic in his very fashioning of the fabric of tragedy; Charlie Chaplin’s films are comedies, yet in his works the tragedy of the “little” man in capitalist society is conveyed with rare artistic conviction. Chaplin, the greatest 201 comedian in the modern cinema, regards laughter and tears as equally powerful forces in art.

p As the great Russian critic, Nikolai Dobrolyubov, wrote, the close relationship between the tragic and the comic in art results from the fact that they both serve to express, albeit each in its own way, different aspects of one and the same life process, and from the fact that despite their contrasting natures they do have common roots. " Tragedy and comedy have this much in common that the content of both is drawn from an abnormal state of affairs and that their aim is to point to a solution for that abnormal position. Tragedy is distinguished by the fact that it depicts situations shaped by outside circumstances, or what the writers of old would have called Fate, that which does not depend on man’s will. Comedy on the other hand invites us to laugh at man’s efforts to avoid difficulties, created and maintained by his own stupidity.”  [201•*  This means that the tragic and the comic in Dobrolyubov’s view—a view to which we may subscribe in principle—come into being because of the contradiction between the limitless range of man’s endeavours and the historical limitations of man’s opportunities. In the final analysis it is from this contradiction that tragic conflicts and comic situations are drawn.

p It can be seen that tragic and comic phenomena in unadulterated form are rarely encountered in real life. The situation is quite different when it comes to art. There is for instance no element of comedy in Euripides’ tragedies, Rembrandt’s canvas The Return of the Prodigal or Beethoven’s Heroic Symphony. Yet the more diverse reality, and social relations, the more active classes and social groups in the struggle for social progress, the more difficult it is to reflect reality in the pure, clearly defined genres of tragedy and comedy. This explains the tendency in modern art for more and more overlapping of the tragic and the comic. In portrayals of profoundly traeric phenomena artists are making ever wider use of 202 the expressive means and palette peculiar to comedy, while representations of the comic often reveal the mark of profound drama. The celebrated film, Ship of Fools, by Stanley Kramer reproduces events permeated with a deep sense of the dramatic. The film contains both tragic and comic elements and facets: in it we find laughter and tears.

p As with all aesthetic categories, it is important to distinguish between the objective and subjective facets of the tragic and the comic. In tlie real world both the tragic and the comic undeniably exist. The specific character of social conflicts underlies these phenomena. Yet one and the same phenomenon can be perceived by some as tragedy and others as comic. This is because phenomena of the life around us are perceived by men and women in accordance with definite ideals moulded by their social position, their world outlook and their psychological make-up, all of which are taking shape within a concrete historical context.

p Man’s aesthetic grasp of the world around him involves among other things the revelation through art of the nature of the tragic and the comic, of the essence of tragic conflicts and comic situations, tragic and comic characters.

Thus the common ground shared by the tragic and comic finds expression in the fact that each of these categories reveals certain common features and in the existence of possibilities for them to penetrate each other. Yet if we probe the matter more deeply then essential differences come to light. Categories of the tragic and the comic serve to bring out the nature of various phenomena both in life and in art, and they reflect dissimilar facets of the world’s aesthetic wealth. The tragic and the comic are distinct aesthetic categories and each of them should be approached independently of the other.