Just as in the ordinary creature the activity of life is all-embracing, so, in the tragic hero, is the process of dying.

--WALTER BENJAMIN, 'Trauerspiel and Tragedy'

Pagan man realises that he is better than his gods, but this realisation strikes him dumb, and it remains unarticulated ... There is here no question whatever of a restitution of the "moral order of the universe", but it is the attempt of moral man, still dumb, still inarticulate - as such he bears the name of hero - to raise himself up amid the agitation of that painful world. The paradox of the birth of the genius in moral speechlessness, moral infantility, constitutes the sublime element in tragedy.

--WALTER BENJAMIN, 'Trauerspiel and Tragedy'