Page 25 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

Comus dissimulates hesitation by denigrating her argument as “mere moral babble” (806-7). Whereas Lady Chastity makes him vacillate, Comus cannot make her hesitate. She knows herself as virtue; he knows himself as excess. Not as sin. To him, sin belongs to daylight’s reason, a denial of being.33 Reason, aiming at wisdom, Plato posits, avoids the irrational and absurd. Hence, Lady Virtue is against the tragic while Comus proposes the tragic. She refuses to imitate an action;34 he beckons it. Tragedy arises from excess,35 and temperance seems incompatible with tragic heroism. Yet, tragic heroes would not exist without constant dialogue between Apollonian and Dionysian temperance and excess.
For Comus, as for Nietzsche, the avoidance of the tragic emblemizes the inhuman. Wintry chastity, abstinence 3⁄4 cruel and unnatural 3⁄4 succumbs to negation: denial of self, of the natural flow of things, of human frailty. Denial of the natural cycles of life: “refreshment after toil, easy after pain” (687). For Nietzsche, mysticism or metaphysical comfort,36 the art of
33Comus relates rigor and reason, advice and scruples to the realm of day and light: Apollo. In this sense, for Comus daylight or reason is capable of creating sin (126). This is one of his key arguments against Chastity, that is, whatever is unnatural is sinful, hence, chastity and abstinence are cruel.
34 For Aristotle, tragedy is the imitation of a serious action that arouses pity and fear and induces the audience to purge their emotions. Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Malcolm Heath. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
35 There are always exceptions. One might be The Book of Job.
36 Nietzsche sees metaphysical comfort as a consolation, a remedy and panacea against the terror of existence. Ibid. Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy and Other
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