The Poetics, Aristotle [ebook reader for surface pro TXT] 📗

modes of

imitation. But at the same time they differ from one another in three

ways, either by a difference of kind in their means, or by differences

in the objects, or in the manner of their imitations.

 

I. Just as form and colour are used as means by some, who (whether by

art or constant practice) imitate and portray many things by their

aid, and the voice is used by others; so also in the above-mentioned

group of arts, the means with them as a whole are rhythm, language,

and harmony—used, however, either singly or in certain combinations.

A combination of rhythm and harmony alone is the means in

flute-playing and lyre-playing, and any other arts there may be of the

same description, e.g. imitative piping. Rhythm alone, without

harmony, is the means in the dancer’s imitations; for even he, by the

rhythms of his attitudes, may represent men’s characters, as well as

what they do and suffer. There is further an art which imitates by

language alone, without harmony, in prose or in verse, and if in

verse, either in some one or in a plurality of metres. This form of

imitation is to this day without a name. We have no common name for a

mime of Sophron or Xenarchus and a Socratic Conversation; and we

should still be without one even if the imitation in the two instances

were in trimeters or elegiacs or some other kind of verse—though it

is the way with people to tack on ‘poet’ to the name of a metre, and

talk of elegiac-poets and epic-poets, thinking that they call them

poets not by reason of the imitative nature of their work, but

indiscriminately by reason of the metre they write in. Even if a

theory of medicine or physical philosophy be put forth in a metrical

form, it is usual to describe the writer in this way; Homer and

Empedocles, however, have really nothing in common apart from their

metre; so that, if the one is to be called a poet, the other should be

termed a physicist rather than a poet. We should be in the same

position also, if the imitation in these instances were in all the

metres, like the Centaur (a rhapsody in a medley of all metres) of

Chaeremon; and Chaeremon one has to recognize as a poet. So much,

then, as to these arts. There are, lastly, certain other arts, which

combine all the means enumerated, rhythm, melody, and verse, e.g.

Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, Tragedy and Comedy; with this

difference, however, that the three kinds of means are in some of them

all employed together, and in others brought in separately, one after

the other. These elements of difference in the above arts I term the

means of their imitation.

2

II. The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who

are necessarily either good men or bad—the diversities of human

character being nearly always derivative from this primary

distinction, since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing

the whole of mankind. It follows, therefore, that the agents

represented must be either above our own level of goodness, or beneath

it, or just such as we are in the same way as, with the painters, the

personages of Polygnotus are better than we are, those of Pauson

worse, and those of Dionysius just like ourselves. It is clear that

each of the above-mentioned arts will admit of these differences, and

that it will become a separate art by representing objects with this

point of difference. Even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing

such diversities are possible; and they are also possible in the

nameless art that uses language, prose or verse without harmony, as

its means; Homer’s personages, for instance, are better than we are;

Cleophon’s are on our own level; and those of Hegemon of Thasos, the

first writer of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Diliad,

are beneath it. The same is true of the Dithyramb and the Nome: the

personages may be presented in them with the difference exemplified in

the … of … and Argas, and in the Cyclopses of Timotheus and

Philoxenus. This difference it is that distinguishes Tragedy and

Comedy also; the one would make its personages worse, and the other

better, than the men of the present day.

3

III. A third difference in these arts is in the manner in which each

kind of object is represented. Given both the same means and the same

kind of object for imitation, one may either (1) speak at one moment

in narrative and at another in an assumed character, as Homer does; or

(2) one may remain the same throughout, without any such change; or

(3) the imitators may represent the whole story dramatically, as

though they were actually doing the things described.

 

As we said at the beginning, therefore, the differences in the

imitation of these arts come under three heads, their means, their

objects, and their manner.

 

So that as an imitator Sophocles will be on one side akin to Homer,

both portraying good men; and on another to Aristophanes, since both

present their personages as acting and doing. This in fact, according

to some, is the reason for plays being termed dramas, because in a

play the personages act the story. Hence too both Tragedy and Comedy

are claimed by the Dorians as their discoveries; Comedy by the

Megarians—by those in Greece as having arisen when Megara became a

democracy, and by the Sicilian Megarians on the ground that the poet

Epicharmus was of their country, and a good deal earlier than

Chionides and Magnes; even Tragedy also is claimed by certain of the

Peloponnesian Dorians. In support of this claim they point to the

words ‘comedy’ and ‘drama’. Their word for the outlying hamlets, they

say, is comae, whereas Athenians call them demes—thus assuming that

comedians got the name not from their comoe or revels, but from

their strolling from hamlet to hamlet, lack of appreciation keeping

them out of the city. Their word also for ‘to act’, they say, is

dran, whereas Athenians use prattein.

 

So much, then, as to the number and nature of the points of difference

in the imitation of these arts.

4

It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes,

each of them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man from

childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this,

that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at

first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works

of imitation. The truth of this second point is shown by experience:

though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to

view the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for

example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies. The explanation is

to be found in a further fact: to be learning something is the

greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the

rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason of

the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time

learning—gathering the meaning of things, e.g. that the man there is

so-and-so; for if one has not seen the thing before, one’s pleasure

will not be in the picture as an imitation of it, but will be due to

the execution or colouring or some similar cause. Imitation, then,

being natural to us—as also the sense of harmony and rhythm, the

metres being obviously species of rhythms—it was through their

original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for the most part

gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry out of their

improvisations.

 

Poetry, however, soon broke up into two kinds according to the

differences of character in the individual poets; for the graver among

them would represent noble actions, and those of noble personages; and

the meaner sort the actions of the ignoble. The latter class produced

invectives at first, just as others did hymns and panegyrics. We know

of no such poem by any of the pre-Homeric poets, though there were

probably many such writers among them; instances, however, may be

found from Homer downwards, e.g. his Margites, and the similar

poems of others. In this poetry of invective its natural fitness

brought an iambic metre into use; hence our present term ‘iambic’,

because it was the metre of their ‘iambs’ or invectives against one

another. The result was that the old poets became some of them writers

of heroic and others of iambic verse. Homer’s position, however, is

peculiar: just as he was in the serious style the poet of poets,

standing alone not only through the literary excellence, but also

through the dramatic character of his imitations, so too he was the

first to outline for us the general forms of Comedy by producing not a

dramatic invective, but a dramatic picture of the Ridiculous; his

Margites in fact stands in the same relation to our comedies as the

Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies. As soon, however, as Tragedy

and Comedy appeared in the field, those naturally drawn to the one

line of poetry became writers of comedies instead of iambs, and those

naturally drawn to the other, writers of tragedies instead of epics,

because these new modes of art were grander and of more esteem than

the old.

 

If it be asked whether Tragedy is now all that it need be in its

formative elements, to consider that, and decide it theoretically and

in relation to the theatres, is a matter for another inquiry.

 

It certainly began in improvisations—as did also Comedy; the one

originating with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of

the phallic songs, which still survive as institutions in many of our

cities. And its advance after that was little by little, through their

improving on whatever they had before them at each stage. It was in

fact only after a long series of changes that the movement of Tragedy

stopped on its attaining to its natural form. (1) The number of actors

was first increased to two by Aeschylus, who curtailed the business of

the Chorus, and made the dialogue, or spoken portion, take the leading

part in the play. (2) A third actor and scenery were due to Sophocles.

(3) Tragedy acquired also its magnitude. Discarding short stories and

a ludicrous diction, through its passing out of its satyric stage, it

assumed, though only at a late point in its progress, a tone of

dignity; and its metre changed then from trochaic to iambic. The

reason for their original use of the trochaic tetrameter was that

their poetry was satyric and more connected with dancing than it now

is. As soon, however, as a spoken part came in, nature herself found

the appropriate metre. The iambic, we know, is the most speakable of

metres, as is shown by the fact that we very often fall into it in

conversation, whereas we rarely talk hexameters, and only when we

depart from the speaking tone of voice. (4) Another change was a

plurality of episodes or acts. As for the remaining matters, the

superadded embellishments and the account of their introduction, these

must be taken as said, as it would probably be a long piece of work to

go through the details.

5

As for Comedy, it is (as has been observed) an imitation of men worse

than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of

fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which

is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake

or deformity not productive of pain