Tragic facts

Tragedy

Tragedy (Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia, "he-goat-song") is a form of drama based on human suffering. In his speculative work on the origins of Athenean tragedy, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche writes of this "two-fold mood":

the strange mixture and duality in the affects of the Dionysiac enthusiasts, that phenomenon whereby pain awakens pleasure while rejoicing wrings cries of agony from the breast. From highest joy there comes a cry of horror or a yearning lament at some irredeemable loss. In those Greek festivals there erupts what one might call a sentimental tendency in nature, as if it had cause to sigh over its dismemberment into individuals.

While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultu.......

Classicism

Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images."  Classicism, as Clark noted, implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining in The Nude (1956), or the Chinese classics.

Classicism is a force which is often pre

Comedy (drama)

Comedy is a word that Greeks and Romans confined to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense A. Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia. As time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter.

The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it has been carefully investigated by psychologists and agreed upon the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the feeling of superiority is an essential factor: thus Thomas Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden glory." Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as well as the development of the "play instinct" and its 
 emo

Crippled Cruise Ship Reaches Shore

SAN DIEGO — Three days after an engine fire shut down all electricity on a Carnival cruise ship, stranding nearly 4,500 passengers and crew members at sea, the vessel was pulled to shore here by several tugboats early Thursday morning.

The 1,000-foot ship — twice as large as the Titanic — was docked at about 9 a.m. Pacific time,, but it was expected to take several hours to remove all the passengers.

The ship sailed from Long Beach on Sunday for what was supposed to be a seven-day trip through the Mexican Riviera. It was 44 miles off shore, rou

Powerful explosion rocks Karachi, 19 martyred

KARACHI: A powerful blast occurred near Sindh Chief Minister House. At least 19 people including police personnel have been martyred while more than 130 others injured Thursday evening.

Emergency has been imposed in city’s hospitals.

Law enforcement agencies have cordoned off the area.

Several buildings in the area were damaged.

The blast took place in front of Sindh CM House, ins