Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/105

 CONFLICT WITH A GOD (A Mortal; an Immortal) Most anciently treated of all Situations is this struggle. Into its Babel of dramatic construction all or nearly all of the others may easily enter. For this is the strife supreme; it is also the supreme folly and the supreme imprudence. It offers the most unprecedented aims of ambitions, audacious enterprises, titanesque conspiracies, Ixionian abductions; the most fascinating of enigmas; the Ideal here undergoes a rare assault of passions; prodigious rivalries develop. As for the surrounding witnesses, does not their sympathy often go to him whom they should hate? — learning of his crime, it is not sometimes their duty to punish him themselves, to sacrifice him to their faith, or to sacrifice themselves for him? Between the dearest of kindred, hatreds will break forth. Then comes the storm of disaster, the vanquished one hound to misfortune, crushed before those whom he loves, — unless, acme of horror — he has, in a transport of blind delirium, dishonored or massacred them unknowingly. Suppliants, seeking the lost loved one, advance sad theories and endeavor to disarm rancor, — but the divine vengeance has been unchained! 103