on modern tragedy

I might almost say that there is no modern tragedy. Take Ibsen: his modern tragedies (even including Ghosts) are really melancholy comedies; the tragedy of their heroes lies in the fact that they are pathetic creatures who inevitably put themselves in the wrong, and so are essentially ridiculous. Your classical hero broke himself against the divine order of things, which is tragic; your modern hero breaks himself against the human order of things, which is slightly comic, but mainly sad. Shakespeare's heroes always die; that saves them from unwilling absurdity. Modern heroes usually live on, which is both laughable and pathetic. If Othello had not stabbed himself, but had been found guilty of manslaughter with extenuating circumstances and spent his old age as a retired general on half-pay, he would have been a modern hero; that is to say, a melancholy semi-hero. That is why anyone who wants to write a real tragedy must end his play with a wholesale massacre. It is not that death is in itself tragic and sublime, but that after that your hero can do nothing to disfigure his heroism. 

Karel Capek - Intimate Things

A tragic hero should be myopic. In fact he should not even be cognizant of the blurry distances. He should continue climbing and never know or worry about the peak height.

A tragic hero should be spirited and goal-oriented. His joys should be woven out of mountain peaks, not out of mountain pathways. Climbers who climb for the sake of climbing are just challenging themselves. Those who climb for the peak are challenging the Gods.

Most important of all, a tragic hero is someone who is unaware of the tragic aspects of his situation.. An eerie silence should not lead to self-contemplation of the kind that can lead to the realization of the "big picture".

Melancholy is not tragedy. It generates way too much ash for that purpose! A tragic hero should burn without realizing the heat. In particular, the heat should not leave any physical trails.