Tragedy as “the metaphor of an intellectual intuition”

Thanks to his refined poetic sensibility, Friedrich Holderlin is able to intuit how the time-based art called tragedy becomes a living, breathing metaphor for fundamentally uncomfortable relationship with time and finitude. The Calculable Law of Tragedy, for Holderlin, is one of the few straightforward theories in his notes. Somewhere between 1789 and 1800, Holderlin jots down this now famous observation about tragedy, which he describes as: “The metaphor of an intellectual intuition”. The caesura offers a vision of what lies behind the “tearing alternation” depicted in tragedy, and so has a therapeutic aim, allowing for reflection amid chaos. Tragedy begins to resemble a trial for heresy, wherein the unfaithfulness of the hero is punished by the god, thereby ensuring that the heavenly ones do not die out. Since tragedy represents a catastrophic change in the world depicted, it must afford a standpoint outside of that world in order for the necessity of change to become clear.