Poetics - Aristotle (fun to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Aristotle
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Book online «Poetics - Aristotle (fun to read TXT) 📗». Author Aristotle
A TRANSLATION BY S. H. BUTCHER
[Transcriber’s Annotations and Conventions: the translator left intact
some Greek words to illustrate a specific point of the original
discourse. In this transcription, in order to retain the accuracy of this
text, those words are rendered by spelling out each Greek letter
individually, such as {alpha beta gamma delta …}. The reader can
distinguish these words by the enclosing braces {}. Where multiple words
occur together, they are separated by the “/” symbol for clarity. Readers
who do not speak or read the Greek language will usually neither gain nor
lose understanding by skipping over these passages. Those who understand
Greek, however, may gain a deeper insight to the original meaning and
distinctions expressed by Aristotle.]
Analysis of Contents
I ‘Imitation’ the common principle of the Arts of Poetry.
II The Objects of Imitation.
III The Manner of Imitation.
IV The Origin and Development of Poetry.
V Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of
Comedy.
VI Definition of Tragedy.
VII The Plot must be a Whole.
VIII The Plot must be a Unity.
IX (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity.
X (Plot continued.) Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots.
XI (Plot continued.) Reversal of the Situation, Recognition, and
Tragic or disastrous Incident defined and explained.
XII The ‘quantitative parts’ of Tragedy defined.
XIII (Plot continued.) What constitutes Tragic Action.
XIV (Plot continued.) The tragic emotions of pity and fear should
spring out of the Plot itself.
XV The element of Character in Tragedy.
XVI (Plot continued.) Recognition: its various kinds, with examples.
XVII Practical rules for the Tragic Poet.
XVIII Further rules for the Tragic Poet.
XIX Thought, or the Intellectual element, and Diction in Tragedy.
XX Diction, or Language in general.
XXI Poetic Diction.
XXII (Poetic Diction continued.) How Poetry combines elevation of
language with perspicuity.
XXIII Epic Poetry.
XXIV (Epic Poetry continued.) Further points of agreement with Tragedy.
XXV Critical Objections brought against Poetry, and the principles on
which they are to be answered.
XXVI A general estimate of the comparative worth of Epic Poetry and
Tragedy.
ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
II propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting
the essential quality of each; to inquire into the structure of the plot
as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of
which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within
the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with
the principles which come first.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic: poetry, and the
music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in
their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from
one: another in three respects,—the medium, the objects, the manner or
mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.
For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and
represent various objects through the medium of colour and form, or again
by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the
imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or ‘harmony,’ either singly or
combined.
Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, ‘harmony’ and rhythm
alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd’s
pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone is
used without ‘harmony’; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and
action, by rhythmical movement.
There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that
either in prose or verse—which, verse, again, may either combine
different metres or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been
without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes
of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and,
on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar
metre. People do, indeed, add the word ‘maker’ or ‘poet’ to the name of
the metre, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter)
poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse
that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name. Even when a treatise
on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet
is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have
nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the
one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle,
even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all metres, as
Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of metres of all
kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet. So much then
for these distinctions.
There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above mentioned,
namely, rhythm, tune, and metre. Such are Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry,
and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them the difference is, that in
the first two cases these means are all employed in combination, in the
latter, now one means is employed, now another.
Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium of
imitation.
IISince the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be
either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to
these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of
moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as
better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in
painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less
noble, Dionysius drew them true to life.
Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned
will exhibit these differences, and become a distinct kind in imitating
objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in
dancing,: flute-playing, and lyre-playing. So again in language, whether
prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, makes men
better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the
inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, worse
than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and Nomes; here
too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and Philoxenus differed
in representing their Cyclopes. The same distinction marks off Tragedy
from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as
better than in actual life.
IIIThere is still a third difference—the manner in which each of these
objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects
the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either
take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person,
unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving
before us.
These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which
distinguish artistic imitation,—the medium, the objects, and the manner.
So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind
as Homer—for both imitate higher types of character; from another point
of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes—for both imitate persons
acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of ‘drama’ is given to such
poems, as representing action. For the same reason the Dorians claim the
invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward
by the Megarians,—not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it
originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Sicily,
for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier than Chionides and Magnes,
belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of
the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language.
The outlying villages, they say, are by them called {kappa omega mu alpha
iota}, by the Athenians {delta eta mu iota}: and they assume that
Comedians were so named not from {kappa omega mu ‘alpha zeta epsilon iota
nu}, ‘to revel,’ but because they wandered from village to village (kappa
alpha tau alpha / kappa omega mu alpha sigma), being excluded
contemptuously from the city. They add also that the Dorian word for
‘doing’ is {delta rho alpha nu}, and the Athenian, {pi rho alpha tau tau
epsilon iota nu}.
This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of
imitation.
IVPoetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them
lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted
in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being
that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation
learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt
in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience.
Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate
when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most
ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to
learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men
in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus
the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it
they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, ‘Ah, that
is he.’ For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure
will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the
colouring, or some such other cause.
Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the
instinct for ‘harmony’ and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of
rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by
degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave
birth to Poetry.
Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual
character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions, and
the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of
meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former did hymns to
the gods and the praises of famous men. A poem of the satirical kind
cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many
such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be
cited,—his own Margites, for example, and other similar compositions.
The appropriate metre was also here introduced; hence the measure is
still called the iambic or lampooning measure, being that in which people
lampooned one another. Thus the older poets were distinguished as writers
of heroic or of lampooning verse.
As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone
combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid
down the main lines of Comedy, by dramatising the ludicrous instead of
writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to Comedy
that the Iliad and Odyssey do to Tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy
came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural
bent: the lampooners became writers of
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