Micah Tillman

The Wife and I just went to see Verdi’s La Traviata at the Kennedy Center in DC last night. It was a birthday present from our Aunt and Uncle in France and my parents here in the States.

It was fantastic. Especially because it was philosophically fascinating. Please exuse the length of what follows, but I’ve written up a little analysis:

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Monday I had just given a lecture to my two classes on Book I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In chapters 5 and 7, Aristotle claims there are three kinds of live. There’s the life of nutrition (plants), the life of the senses (animals), and the life of thought (humans). Each level includes the ones below it (animals engage in nutritive activities, and humans have both senses and the ability to eat, etc.).

Paralleling the hierarchy of types of life, there are three types of human life, Aristotle says. (Well, he doesn’t say that the types of human life parallel the types of life in general, but I think it’s obvious): There’s the self-focused life of pleasure. There’s the socially-focused life of honor. And there’s the universally-focused life of contemplation. You can either live life absorbed in yourself, absorbed in human community, or absorbed in the nature of things (in ultimate reality). And again, each level includes the ones below it (so the life of sociability includes pleasures, and the life of contemplation includes both sociability and pleasure).

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Anyhoo, so the struggle in Act I is between Alfredo and Violetta (and then between Violetta and herself, inspired by Alfredo) over whether to prefer the life of pleasure to the life of love (i.e., whether it is better to life at the first or second levels of human life). Violetta prefers the life of pleasure (the lowest form), and this makes sense since she’s recovering from a serious illness. She’s still working on the bottom level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

But Alfredo wins, drawing Violetta into the higher life in the interim between Acts I and II.

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Alfredo begins Act II by singing about love and then worrying about his honor (having discovered that Violetta is having to sell her possessions to support them both). Honor is one of themes of the opera, and, interestingly enough, is the name Aristotle uses for the second level of human living (the life of sociability or “politics” in the broadest of senses). So Act II is firmly set in the second level of life.

But then Giorgio shows up and ruins everything by showing Violetta the consequences of living at the second level of human life rather than at the first. Caring about what other people think might require you to sacrifice for them. Having left the life of self-interested pleasure, she both attains a new and higher kind of life, and opens herself to new kinds of pain.

The honor of the family is at stake (again, Aristotle called this level of living, where you care about what other people think, the level of “honor”) and she has the chance to do something good for the family by sacrificing her own happiness. That she is willing to do so shows how far she has risen since her sickness and the first Act.

In fact, it hints at the idea that there is some kind of standard beyond humans to which humans should “live up.” And Giorgio reinforces the entrance of such higher considerations by invoking God’s rewards/blessings.

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Alfredo finds a way in Act II, Scene 2 to turn his earlier noble desire for honor into a way to insult Violetta’s honor. Which is fascinating, and very sad. But he does it because the pain of their separation has knocked him back down a level. He’s now absorbed in his own pain, and is living at a lower level.

Violetta’s sickness returns in force between Acts II and III. Having given up her selfishness for a higher kind of life, and then having that life taken from her, she had returned to the Baron (back to living [outwardly] not for love, but for mere survival), and now is losing even that lower level of life (at least physically speaking). Giorgio essentially kills her by asking her to give up Alfredo, since in the process she gives up the second level of life (and in the process falls right through the first).

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But Violetta never stops living inwardly on the second level. Her character bifurcates, in that she is forced to live the life of selfishness (survival/pleasure) outwardly, but still loves Alfredo and the greater good inwardly. Maybe it’s that fragmentation that really weakens her.

Anyway, with Alfredo’s return seeking forgiveness (he has clearly “come out of himself” and is back to the second level of life) and Giorgio’s repentance, Violetta can live as a whole again, on the second level of life. The two men realize that love is more important than honor, and thus that there is a hierarchy even within the second level of life (implying that there is still a higher and lower at this level, and that there therefore might be a third level [as Aristotle insisted]).

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But all the sufferings of the second level of life and her outward/inward dividedness have forced her to turn to something above the second level. God is invoked over and over and over again in Act III. Violetta even gives half her money to the poor, sleeps peacefully after a visit from a priest, etc.

Therefore, Act III is Violetta’s entrance into the third level of life (the life of contemplation, of being involved with or absorbed in the nature of things, not just of human sociability). Having had her outward and inward life reconnected by the reunion with Alfredo/Giorgio, her inward life has the strength to reach life’s third level even as her body expires. Hence the, “I’m returning to life!” line right before she dies. In death she becomes permanently involved with/absorbed in ultimate reality, having attained the higher life of heaven (or the beatific vision, to put things in Scholastic terms).

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So even though the opera is a tragedy, it’s also a triumph. It is an upward progression through the levels of life.

Tags: Kennedy Center, La Traviata, Verdi