Can There Be Tragedy In a World That Is At Bottom Chaotic?

आज जुलै १० २०२१, जी ए कुलकर्णी यांची जयंती 

John Gray:
"...Even if the ancient Greek tragedians did not believe in the gods, they assumed a kind of order in the world; it was against this order that tragic heroes rebelled. But can there be tragedy in a world that is at bottom chaotic? This was the question posed by George Steiner in his seminal book The Death of Tragedy, first published in 1961..."

David Simon: 
“...to create doomed and fated protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality. The idea that… we’re still fated by indifferent gods, feels to us antiquated and superstitious… But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts… In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalised, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak....”

Artist: B E Kaplan, The New Yorker, 2018