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

here is not that of

Tragedy. It belongs rather to Comedy, where the bitterest enemies in

the piece (e.g. Orestes and Aegisthus) walk off good friends at the

end, with no slaying of any one by any one.

14

The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may

also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which

is the better way and shows the better poet. The Plot in fact should

be so framed that, even without seeing the things take place, he who

simply hears the account of them shall be filled with horror and pity

at the incidents; which is just the effect that the mere recital of

the story in Oedipus would have on one. To produce this same effect

by means of the Spectacle is less artistic, and requires extraneous

aid. Those, however, who make use of the Spectacle to put before us

that which is merely monstrous and not productive of fear, are wholly

out of touch with Tragedy; not every kind of pleasure should be

required of a tragedy, but only its own proper pleasure.

 

The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear, and the poet has to

produce it by a work of imitation; it is clear, therefore, that the

causes should be included in the incidents of his story. Let us see,

then, what kinds of incident strike one as horrible, or rather as

piteous. In a deed of this description the parties must necessarily be

either friends, or enemies, or indifferent to one another. Now when

enemy does it on enemy, there is nothing to move us to pity either in

his doing or in his meditating the deed, except so far as the actual

pain of the sufferer is concerned; and the same is true when the

parties are indifferent to one another. Whenever the tragic deed,

however, is done within the family—when murder or the like is done or

meditated by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son,

or son on mother—these are the situations the poet should seek after.

The traditional stories, accordingly, must be kept as they are, e.g.

the murder of Clytaemnestra by Orestes and of Eriphyle by Alcmeon. At

the same time even with these there is something left to the poet

himself; it is for him to devise the right way of treating them. Let

us explain more clearly what we mean by ‘the right way’. The deed of

horror may be done by the doer knowingly and consciously, as in the

old poets, and in Medea’s murder of her children in Euripides. Or he

may do it, but in ignorance of his relationship, and discover that

afterwards, as does the Oedipus in Sophocles. Here the deed is

outside the play; but it may be within it, like the act of the Alcmeon

in Astydamas, or that of the Telegonus in Ulysses Wounded. A third

possibility is for one meditating some deadly injury to another, in

ignorance of his relationship, to make the discovery in time to draw

back. These exhaust the possibilities, since the deed must necessarily

be either done or not done, and either knowingly or unknowingly.

 

The worst situation is when the personage is with full knowledge on

the point of doing the deed, and leaves it undone. It is odious and

also (through the absence of suffering) untragic; hence it is that no

one is made to act thus except in some few instances, e.g. Haemon and

Creon in Antigone. Next after this comes the actual perpetration of

the deed meditated. A better situation than that, however, is for the

deed to be done in ignorance, and the relationship discovered

afterwards, since there is nothing odious in it, and the Discovery

will serve to astound us. But the best of all is the last; what we

have in Cresphontes, for example, where Merope, on the point of

slaying her son, recognizes him in time; in Iphigenia, where sister

and brother are in a like position; and in Helle, where the son

recognizes his mother, when on the point of giving her up to her

enemy.

 

This will explain why our tragedies are restricted (as we said just

now) to such a small number of families. It was accident rather than

art that led the poets in quest of subjects to embody this kind of

incident in their Plots. They are still obliged, accordingly, to have

recourse to the families in which such horrors have occurred.

 

On the construction of the Plot, and the kind of Plot required for

Tragedy, enough has now been said.

15

In the Characters there are four points to aim at. First and foremost,

that they shall be good. There will be an element of character in the

play, if (as has been observed) what a personage says or does reveals

a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if the

purpose so revealed is good. Such goodness is possible i.e.ery type

of personage, even in a woman or a slave, though the one is perhaps an

inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being. The second point is

to make them appropriate. The Character before us may be, say, manly;

but it is not appropriate in a female Character to be manly, or

clever. The third is to make them like the reality, which is not the

same as their being good and appropriate, in our sense of the term.

The fourth is to make them consistent and the same throughout; even if

inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as

presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently

inconsistent. We have an instance of baseness of character, not

required for the story, in the Menelaus in Orestes; of the

incongruous and unbefitting in the lamentation of Ulysses in Scylla,

and in the (clever) speech of Melanippe; and of inconsistency in

Iphigenia at Aulis, where Iphigenia the suppliant is utterly unlike

the later Iphigenia. The right thing, however, is in the Characters

just as in the incidents of the play to endeavour always after the

necessary or the probable; so that whenever such-and-such a personage

says or does such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or

necessary outcome of his character; and whenever this incident follows

on that, it shall be either the necessary or the probable consequence

of it. From this one sees (to digress for a moment) that the

Denouement also should arise out of the plot itself, arid not depend

on a stage-artifice, as in Medea, or in the story of the (arrested)

departure of the Greeks in the Iliad. The artifice must be reserved

for matters outside the play—for past events beyond human knowledge,

or events yet to come, which require to be foretold or announced;

since it is the privilege of the Gods to know everything. There should

be nothing improbable among the actual incidents. If it be

unavoidable, however, it should be outside the tragedy, like the

improbability in the Oedipus of Sophocles. But to return to the

Characters. As Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the

ordinary man, we in our way should follow the example of good

portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive features of a man,

and at the same time, without losing the likeness, make him handsomer

than he is. The poet in like manner, in portraying men quick or slow

to anger, or with similar infirmities of character, must know how to

represent them as such, and at the same time as good men, as Agathon

and Homer have represented Achilles.

 

All these rules one must keep in mind throughout, and further, those

also for such points of stage-effect as directly depend on the art of

the poet, since in these too one may often make mistakes. Enough,

however, has been said on the subject in one of our published

writings.

16

Discovery in general has been explained already. As for the species of

Discovery, the first to be noted is (1) the least artistic form of it,

of which the poets make most use through mere lack of invention,

Discovery by signs or marks. Of these signs some are congenital, like

the ‘lance-head which the Earth-born have on them’, or ‘stars’, such

as Carcinus brings in in his Thyestes; others acquired after birth—

these latter being either marks on the body, e.g. scars, or external

tokens, like necklaces, or to take another sort of instance, the ark

in the Discovery in Tyro. Even these, however, admit of two uses, a

better and a worse; the scar of Ulysses is an instance; the Discovery

of him through it is made in one way by the nurse and in another by

the swineherds. A Discovery using signs as a means of assurance is

less artistic, as indeed are all such as imply reflection; whereas one

bringing them in all of a sudden, as in the Bath-story, is of a

better order. Next after these are (2) Discoveries made directly by

the poet; which are inartistic for that very reason; e.g. Orestes’

Discovery of himself in Iphigenia: whereas his sister reveals who

she is by the letter, Orestes is made to say himself what the poet

rather than the story demands. This, therefore, is not far removed

from the first-mentioned fault, since he might have presented certain

tokens as well. Another instance is the ‘shuttle’s voice’ in the

Tereus of Sophocles. (3) A third species is Discovery through

memory, from a man’s consciousness being awakened by something seen or

heard. Thus in The Cyprioe of Dicaeogenes, the sight of the picture

makes the man burst into tears; and in the Tale of Alcinous, hearing

the harper Ulysses is reminded of the past and weeps; the Discovery of

them being the result. (4) A fourth kind is Discovery through

reasoning; e.g. in The Choephoroe: ‘One like me is here; there is

no one like me but Orestes; he, therefore, must be here.’ Or that

which Polyidus the Sophist suggested for Iphigenia; since it was

natural for Orestes to reflect: ‘My sister was sacrificed, and I am to

be sacrificed like her.’ Or that in the Tydeus of Theodectes: ‘I

came to find a son, and am to die myself.’ Or that in The Phinidae:

on seeing the place the women inferred their fate, that they were to

die there, since they had also been exposed there. (5) There is, too,

a composite Discovery arising from bad reasoning on the side of the

other party. An instance of it is in Ulysses the False Messenger: he

said he should know the bow—which he had not seen; but to suppose

from that that he would know it again (as though he had once seen it)

was bad reasoning. (6) The best of all Discoveries, however, is that

arising from the incidents themselves, when the great surprise comes

about through a probable incident, like that in the Oedipus of

Sophocles; and also in Iphigenia; for it was not improbable that she

should wish to have a letter taken home. These last are the only

Discoveries independent of the artifice of signs and necklaces. Next

after them come Discoveries through reasoning.

17

At the time when he is constructing his Plots, and engaged on the

Diction in which they are worked out, the poet should remember

(1) to put the actual scenes as far as possible before hi.e.es. In

this way, seeing everything with the vividness of an eye-witness as it

were, he will devise what is appropriate, and be least likely to

overlook incongruities. This is shown by what was censured in

Carcinus, the return of Amphiaraus