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

from the sanctuary; it would have

passed unnoticed, if it had not been actually seen by the audience;

but on the stage his play failed, the incongruity of the incident

offending the spectators. (2) As far as may be, too, the poet should

even act his story with the very gestures of his personages. Given the

same natural qualifications, he who feels the emotions to be described

will be the most convincing; distress and anger, for instance, are

portrayed most truthfully by one who is feeling them at the moment.

Hence it is that poetry demands a man with special gift for it, or

else one with a touch of madness in him; the, former can easily assume

the required mood, and the latter may be actually beside himself with

emotion. (3) His story, again, whether already made or of his own

making, he should first simplify and reduce to a universal form,

before proceeding to lengthen it out by the insertion of episodes. The

following will show how the universal element in Iphigenia, for

instance, may be viewed: A certain maiden having been offered in

sacrifice, and spirited away from her sacrificers into another land,

where the custom was to sacrifice all strangers to the Goddess, she

was made there the priestess of this rite. Long after that the brother

of the priestess happened to come; the fact, however, of the oracle

having for a certain reason bidden him go thither, and his object in

going, are outside the Plot of the play. On his coming he was

arrested, and about to be sacrificed, when he revealed who he

was—either as Euripides puts it, or (as suggested by Polyidus) by the

not improbable exclamation, ‘So I too am doomed to be sacrificed, as

my sister was’; and the disclosure led to his salvation. This done,

the next thing, after the proper names have been fixed as a basis for

the story, is to work i.e.isodes or accessory incidents. One must

mind, however, that the episodes are appropriate, like the fit of

madness in Orestes, which led to his arrest, and the purifying, which

brought about his salvation. In plays, then, the episodes are short;

i.e.ic poetry they serve to lengthen out the poem. The argument of

the Odyssey is not a long one.

 

A certain man has been abroad many years; Poseidon i.e.er on the

watch for him, and he is all alone. Matters at home too have come to

this, that his substance is being wasted and his son’s death plotted

by suitors to his wife. Then he arrives there himself after his

grievous sufferings; reveals himself, and falls on hi.e.emies; and

the end is his salvation and their death. This being all that is

proper to the Odyssey, everything else in it i.e.isode.

18

(4) There is a further point to be borne in mind. Every tragedy is in

part Complication and in part Denouement; the incidents before the

opening scene, and often certain also of those within the play,

forming the Complication; and the rest the Denouement. By Complication

I mean all from the beginning of the story to the point just before

the change in the hero’s fortunes; by Denouement, all from the

beginning of the change to the end. In the Lynceus of Theodectes,

for instance, the Complication includes, together with the presupposed

incidents, the seizure of the child and that in turn of the parents;

and the Denouement all from the indictment for the murder to the end.

Now it is right, when one speaks of a tragedy as the same or not the

same as another, to do so on the ground before all else of their Plot,

i.e. as having the same or not the same Complication and Denouement.

Yet there are many dramatists who, after a good Complication, fail in

the Denouement. But it is necessary for both points of construction to

be always duly mastered. (5) There are four distinct species of

Tragedy—that being the number of the constituents also that have been

mentioned: first, the complex Tragedy, which is all Peripety and

Discovery; second, the Tragedy of suffering, e.g. the Ajaxes and

Ixions; third, the Tragedy of character, e.g. The Phthiotides and

Peleus. The fourth constituent is that of ‘Spectacle’, exemplified

in The Phorcides, in Prometheus, and in all plays with the scene

laid in the nether world. The poet’s aim, then, should be to combine

every element of interest, if possible, or else the more important and

the major part of them. This is now especially necessary owing to the

unfair criticism to which the poet is subjected in these days. Just

because there have been poets before him strong in the several species

of tragedy, the critics now expect the one man to surpass that which

was the strong point of each one of his predecessors. (6) One should

also remember what has been said more than once, and not write a

tragedy on an epic body of incident (i.e. one with a plurality of

stories in it), by attempting to dramatize, for instance, the entire

story of the Iliad. In the epic owing to its scale every part is

treated at proper length; with a drama, however, on the same story the

result is very disappointing. This is shown by the fact that all who

have dramatized the fall of Ilium in its entirety, and not part by

part, like Euripides, or the whole of the Niobe story, instead of a

portion, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or have but ill success

on the stage; for that and that alone was enough to rui.e.en a play

by Agathon. Yet in their Peripeties, as also in their simple plots,

the poets I mean show wonderful skill in aiming at the kind of effect

they desire—a tragic situation that arouses the human feeling in one,

like the clever villain (e.g. Sisyphus) deceived, or the brave

wrongdoer worsted. This is probable, however, only in Agathon’s sense,

when he speaks of the probability of even improbabilities coming to

pass. (7) The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it

should be an integral part of the whole, and take a share in the

action—that which it has in Sophocles rather than in Euripides. With

the later poets, however, the songs in a play of theirs have no more

to do with the Plot of that than of any other tragedy. Hence it is

that they are now singing intercalary pieces, a practice first

introduced by Agathon. And yet what real difference is there between

singing such intercalary pieces, and attempting to fit in a speech, or

even a whole act, from one play into another?

19

The Plot and Characters having been discussed, it remains to consider

the Diction and Thought. As for the Thought, we may assume what is

said of it in our Art of Rhetoric, as it belongs more properly to that

department of inquiry. The Thought of the personages is shown in

everything to be effected by their language—i.e.ery effort to prove

or disprove, to arouse emotion (pity, fear, anger, and the like), or

to maximize or minimize things. It is clear, also, that their mental

procedure must be on the same lines in their actions likewise,

whenever they wish them to arouse pity or horror, or have a look of

importance or probability. The only difference is that with the act

the impression has to be made without explanation; whereas with the

spoken word it has to be produced by the speaker, and result from his

language. What, indeed, would be the good of the speaker, if things

appeared in the required light even apart from anything he says?

 

As regards the Diction, one subject for inquiry under this head is the

turns given to the language when spoken; e.g. the difference between

command and prayer, simple statement and threat, question and answer,

and so forth. The theory of such matters, however, belongs to

Elocution and the professors of that art. Whether the poet knows these

things or not, his art as a poet is never seriously criticized on that

account. What fault can one see in Homer’s ‘Sing of the wrath,

Goddess’?—which Protagoras has criticized as being a command where a

prayer was meant, since to bid one do or not do, he tells us, is a

command. Let us pass over this, then, as appertaining to another art,

and not to that of poetry.

20

The Diction viewed as a whole is made up of the following parts: the

Letter (or ultimate element), the Syllable, the Conjunction, the

Article, the Noun, the Verb, the Case, and the Speech. (1) The Letter

is an indivisible sound of a particular kind, one that may become a

factor in an intelligible sound. Indivisible sounds are uttered by the

brutes also, but no one of these is a Letter in our sense of the term.

These elementary sounds are either vowels, semivowels, or mutes. A

vowel is a Letter having an audible sound without the addition of

another Letter. A semivowel, one having an audible sound by the

addition of another Letter; e.g. S and R. A mute, one having no sound

at all by itself, but becoming audible by an addition, that of one of

the Letters which have a sound of some sort of their own; e.g. D and

G. The Letters differ in various ways: as produced by different

conformations or in different regions of the mouth; as aspirated, not

aspirated, or sometimes one and sometimes the other; as long, short,

or of variable quantity; and further as having an acute.g.ave, or

intermediate accent.

 

The details of these matters we mubt leave to the metricians. (2) A

Syllable is a nonsignificant composite sound, made up of a mute and a

Letter having a sound (a vowel or semivowel); for GR, without an A, is

just as much a Syllable as GRA, with an A. The various forms of the

Syllable also belong to the theory of metre. (3) A Conjunction is (a)

a nonsignificant sound which, when one significant sound is formable

out of several, neither hinders nor aids the union, and which, if the

Speech thus formed stands by itself (apart from other Speeches) must

not be inserted at the beginning of it; e.g. men, de, toi,

de. Or (b) a nonsignificant sound capable of combining two or more

significant sounds into one; e.g. amphi, peri, etc. (4) An

Article is a nonsignificant sound marking the beginning, end, or

dividing-point of a Speech, its natural place being either at the

extremities or in the middle. (5) A Noun or name is a composite

significant sound not involving the idea of time, with parts which

have no significance by themselves in it. It is to be remembered that

in a compound we do not think of the parts as having a significance

also by themselves; in the name ‘Theodorus’, for instance, the doron

means nothing to us.

 

(6) A Verb is a composite significant sound involving the idea of

time, with parts which (just as in the Noun) have no significance by

themselves in it. Whereas the word ‘man’ or ‘white’ does not imply

when, ‘walks’ and ‘has walked’ involve in addition to the idea of

walking that of time present or time past.

 

(7) A Case of a Noun or Verb is when the word means ‘of or ‘to’ a

thing, and so forth, or for one or many (e.g. ‘man’ and ‘men’); or it

may consist merely in the mode of utterance, e.g. in question,

command, etc. ‘Walked?’ and ‘Walk!’ are Cases of the verb ‘to walk’ of

this last kind. (8) A Speech is a composite significant sound, some