ABSTRACT
We have reached a point where the pain of discontinuity will be covered by the perfect assurance with which James manages his closing pages. The ficelle ties it all together in a package of her own, for the sense of her final sigh indeed contains `all comically, all tragically'. The high consciousness of James's art was to bring these opposites into perfect balance in the most natural and unportentous way, treating them perhaps with the spirit of elegant fatalism. Yes, it could not have been otherwise, no matter howmany and how alluring the exit lines. But do we end with the dismissive effect of a wry and tidy formula, or does James imply that in some ways these opposites can be managed in ways that perhaps Strether has failed: that comedy and tragedy may have their reciprocity, their equilibrium, but one which does not imply an equivalence? The comic mode of The Ambassadorsmaymatch the finality of tragic effect but have a quite different place in our perception of the whole. The Muses, as we know too well, are quite different, and the image of Garrick torn between them precisely presents the claims of opposites which are irreconcilable.
