Optimistic Tragedy (Russian: Оптимистическая трагедия) is a play written by Vsevolod Vishnevskiy in the Soviet Union in 1933 with a dedication to the 15th anniversary of the Red Army.
The play is set in St. Petersburg, and Kronstadt, Russia, after the Russian Revolution and during the Russian Civil War. Some scenes are set on a ship of the Red Navy on the Baltic Sea near Saint Petersburg. The play has three acts.
Famous quotes containing the words optimistic and/or tragedy:
“A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“I do not mean to imply that the good old days were perfect. But the institutions and structure—the web—of society needed reform, not demolition. To have cut the institutional and community strands without replacing them with new ones proved to be a form of abuse to one generation and to the next. For so many Americans, the tragedy was not in dreaming that life could be better; the tragedy was that the dreaming ended.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)