Pity; Patronising Compassion
What does pity mean?
This is a difficult question to answer without reaching for a dictionary, isn’t it?
Today, pity is as controversial as it is complex – many resent being pitied as much as they enjoy the power of pitying someone else, but the definition has dramatically changed throughout history.
A focal point to understanding this kind of sorrow is through the Ancient Roman ideal of pietas, the etymological ancestor of the word: pietas was a fundamental tenet of the Empire's doctrine.
For the Romans, it represented unflinching loyalty and obedience to all social structures: the state, the family/patriarch, and religion - in a word, duty.
We can see this usage in the epithet “pius Aeneas” in Virgil's 'Aenead', who, as a mythical founder of the city, is emblematic of its dutiful devotion to a goal.
Obviously, this is quite distinct from a compassionate pity, or a condescending and sanctimonious one - but what about the religious aspect?
A religiosity later bourgeons in pietas, from consistent sacrifices to something synonymous to piety; a word encapsulating a dutiful faith to (most likely) a Judeo-Christian God.
The origin of this aspect is found in a virtue performed not only as an act of worship, but a mutual covenant of respect: it manifests in religious texts as “Chesed” in Hebrew, as a deep and merciful compassion; often translated as loving-kindness, such as Isaiah 54:10 NIV:
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing loving-kindness for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed,”.
The Greeks translated this devotion as eleos, very similar to pity, but having a different nuance as a deeply holy expression of the Greek agape (unconditional selfless love) for those considered more needful.
Here it all seems to come together: the dutiful proverbial family of Rome meets the metaphorical family of God, in which pity becomes an emulation of Him and His divine will, evidently an absolutist view of pity.
Many believe this is where the sanctimonious connotation arises, as a 'holier-than-thou' sense of superficial pity, without a true sympathetic component.
Closer to modern usage, this crosses with the literary history of pity, described along with terror in Aristotle's 'Poetics' as being evoked by tragedy.
For many, this can be viewed as a heightened depiction of empathy (the interpersonal counterpart to the shock of terror), by which one purges oneself throughout a tragedy in catharsis; essential to many experiences of art across mediums.
As an example, one pities characters for having predetermined expositions, arcs, and denouements; pities paintings for only experiencing a single moment; pities photographs for only seeing a particular direction and angle - each form has its limits.
Therefore, one might say pity is crucial in understanding art as finite and limited by the artist in focusing the subject matter in a particular direction, its greatest feat and foible.
Consequently, one could view all artistic experiences as exercises in pity and empathy, similar to Wilfred Owen's “the poetry is in the pity”, in order to hone one's compassionate skills and interconnection with other artists and their experiences.
To draw back, it is important to remember the natural counterbalance to this highly optimistic view of pity is the prerequisite of suffering; William Blake expostulates in The Human Abstract:
“Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.”
In other words, it is a sin to construct a poverty worth pitying, and there would be no pity in a utopia.
If pity is a necessary evil given other sorrows already prevalent, is it worth practising?
It is this question of power imbalance - in a performative, shallow, and condemnatory pity, or in unnecessary palliating, that results in such a distaste for it in the contemporary.
What might have been the basis of relationships in artistic worlds, such as Desdemona's “wondrous pity” for Othello's hardships in the eponymous play, might now often be considered a toxic “broken wing syndrome”, or engendering ill-will between parties.
So, now armed with either the paternalism or else the propriety of pity, you can distinguish for yourself the contempt from the compassion, and define for yourself: what is pity.
Simon Cockling
Picture is “Pity” by William Blake, the Met Museum
Isaiah 54:10 NIV
https://archive.org/details/theological-wordbook-of-the-old-testament/page/305/mode/1up
