Poetics by Aristotle (reading rainbow books .TXT) 📕

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

I 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.

Since 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.

There 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.

Poetry 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