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

have been.

Just as two events may take place at the same time, e.g. the

sea-fight off Salamis and the battle with the Carthaginians in Sicily,

without converging to the same end, so too of two consecutive events

one may sometimes come after the other with no one end as their common

issue. Nevertheless most of our epic poets, one may say, ignore the

distinction.

 

Herein, then, to repeat what we have said before, we have a further

proof of Homer’s marvellous superiority to the rest. He did not

attempt to deal even with the Trojan war in its entirety, though it

was a whole with a definite beginning and end—through a feeling

apparently that it was too long a story to be taken in in one view, or

if not that, too complicated from the variety of incident in it. As it

is, he has singled out one section of the whole; many of the other

incidents, however, he brings in as episodes, using the Catalogue of

the Ships, for instance, and other episodes to relieve the uniformity

of his narrative. As for the other epic poets, they treat of one man,

or one period; or else of an action which, although one, has a

multiplicity of parts in it. This last is what the authors of the

Cypria and Little Iliad have done. And the result is that,

whereas the Iliad or Odyssey supplies materials for only one, or

at most two tragedies, the Cypria does that for several, and the

Little Iliad for more than eight: for an Adjudgment of Arms, a

Philoctetes, a Neoptolemus, a Eurypylus, a Ulysses as Beggar,

a Laconian Women, a Fall of Ilium, and a Departure of the Fleet;

as also a Sinon, and Women of Troy.

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II. Besides this, Epic poetry must divide into the same species as

Tragedy; it must be either simple or complex, a story of character or

one of suffering. Its parts, too, with the exception of Song and

Spectacle, must be the same, as it requires Peripeties, Discoveries,

and scenes of suffering just like Tragedy. Lastly, the Thought and

Diction in it must be good in their way. All these elements appear in

Homer first; and he has made due use of them. His two poems are each

examples of construction, the Iliad simple and a story of suffering,

the Odyssey complex (there is Discovery throughout it) and a story

of character. And they are more than this, since in Diction and

Thought too they surpass all other poems.

 

There is, however, a difference in the Epic as compared with Tragedy,

(1) in its length, and (2) in its metre. (1) As to its length, the

limit already suggested will suffice: it must be possible for the

beginning and end of the work to be taken in in one view—a condition

which will be fulfilled if the poem be shorter than the old epics, and

about as long as the series of tragedies offered for one hearing. For

the extension of its length epic poetry has a special advantage, of

which it makes large use. In a play one cannot represent an action

with a number of parts going on simultaneously; one is limited to the

part on the stage and connected with the actors. Whereas i.e.ic

poetry the narrative form makes it possible for one to describe a

number of simultaneous incidents; and these, if germane to the

subject, increase the body of the poem. This then is a gain to the

Epic, tending to give it grandeur, and also variety of interest and

room for episodes of diverse kinds. Uniformity of incident by the

satiety it soon creates is apt to ruin tragedies on the stage. (2) As

for its metre, the heroic has been assigned it from experience; were

any one to attempt a narrative poem in some one, or in several, of the

other metres, the incongruity of the thing would be apparent. The

heroic; in fact is the gravest and weightiest of metres—which is what

makes it more tolerant than the rest of strange words and metaphors,

that also being a point in which the narrative form of poetry goes

beyond all others. The iambic and trochaic, on the other hand, are

metres of movement, the one representing that of life and action, the

other that of the dance. Still more unnatural would it appear, it one

were to write an epic in a medley of metres, as Chaeremon did. Hence

it is that no one has ever written a long story in any but heroic

verse; nature herself, as we have said, teaches us to select the metre

appropriate to such a story.

 

Homer, admirable as he is i.e.ery other respect, i.e.pecially so in

this, that he alone among epic poets is not unaware of the part to be

played by the poet himself in the poem. The poet should say very

little in propria persona, as he is no imitator when doing that.

Whereas the other poets are perpetually coming forward in person, and

say but little, and that only here and there, as imitators, Homer

after a brief preface brings in forthwith a man, a woman, or some

other Character—no one of them characterless, but each with

distinctive characteristics.

 

The marvellous is certainly required in Tragedy. The Epic, however,

affords more opening for the improbable, the chief factor in the

marvellous, because in it the agents are not visibly before one. The

scene of the pursuit of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage—the

Greeks halting instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head

to stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked. The

marvellous, however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown by the fact

that we all tell a story with additions, in the belief that we are

doing our hearers a pleasure.

 

Homer more than any other has taught the rest of us the art of framing

lies in the right way. I mean the use of paralogism. Whenever, if A is

or happens, a consequent, B, is or happens, men’s notion is that, if

the B is, the A also is—but that is a false conclusion. Accordingly,

if A is untrue, but there is something else, B, that on the assumption

of its truth follows as its consequent, the right thing then is to add

on the B. Just because we know the truth of the consequent, we are in

our own minds led on to the erroneous inference of the truth of the

antecedent. Here is an instance, from the Bath-story in the Odyssey.

 

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing

possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable

incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it. If, however,

such incidents are unavoidable, they should be outside the piece, like

the hero’s ignorance in Oedipus of the circumstances of Lams’ death;

not within it, like the report of the Pythian games in Electra, or

the man’s having come to Mysia from Tegea without uttering a word on

the way, in The Mysians. So that it is ridiculous to say that one’s

Plot would have been spoilt without them, since it is fundamentally

wrong to make up such Plots. If the poet has taken such a Plot,

however, and one sees that he might have put it in a more probable

form, he is guilty of absurdity as well as a fault of art. Even in the

Odyssey the improbabilities in the setting-ashore of Ulysses would

be clearly intolerable in the hands of an inferior poet. As it is, the

poet conceals them, his other excellences veiling their absurdity.

Elaborate Diction, however, is required only in places where there is

no action, and no Character or Thought to be revealed. Where there is

Character or Thought, on the other hand, an over-ornate Diction tends

to obscure them.

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As regards Problems and their Solutions, one may see the number and

nature of the assumptions on which they proceed by viewing the matter

in the following way. (1) The poet being an imitator just like the

painter or other maker of likenesses, he must necessarily in all

instances represent things in one or other of three aspects, either as

they were or are, or as they are said or thought to be or to have

been, or as they ought to be. (2) All this he does in language, with

an admixture, it may be, of strange words and metaphors, as also of

the various modified forms of words, since the use of these is

conceded in poetry. (3) It is to be remembered, too, that there is not

the same kind of correctness in poetry as in politics, or indeed any

other art. There is, however, within the limits of poetry itself a

possibility of two kinds of error, the one directly, the other only

accidentally connected with the art. If the poet meant to describe the

thing correctly, and failed through lack of power of expression, his

art itself is at fault. But if it was through his having meant to

describe it in some incorrect way (e.g. to make the horse in movement

have both right legs thrown forward) that the technical error (one in

a matter of, say, medicine or some other special science), or

impossibilities of whatever kind they may be, have got into his

description, hi.e.ror in that case is not in the essentials of the

poetic art. These, therefore, must be the premisses of the Solutions

in answer to the criticisms involved in the Problems.

 

I. As to the criticisms relating to the poet’s art itself. Any

impossibilities there may be in his descriptions of things are faults.

But from another point of view they are justifiable, if they serve the

end of poetry itself—if (to assume what we have said of that end)

they make the effect of some portion of the work more astounding. The

Pursuit of Hector is an instance in point. If, however, the poetic end

might have been as well or better attained without sacrifice of

technical correctness in such matters, the impossibility is not to be

justified, since the description should be, if it can, entirely free

from error. One may ask, too, whether the error is in a matter

directly or only accidentally connected with the poetic art; since it

is a lesser error in an artist not to know, for instance, that the

hind has no horns, than to produce an unrecognizable picture of one.

 

II. If the poet’s description be criticized as not true to fact, one

may urge perhaps that the object ought to be as described—an answer

like that of Sophocles, who said that he drew men as they ought to be,

and Euripides as they were. If the description, however, be neither

true nor of the thing as it ought to be, the answer must be then, that

it is in accordance with opinion. The tales about Gods, for instance,

may be as wrong as Xenophanes thinks, neither true nor the better

thing to say; but they are certainly in accordance with opinion. Of

other statements in poetry one may perhaps say, not that they are

better than the truth, but that the fact was so at the time; e.g. the

description of the arms: ‘their spears stood upright, butt-end upon

the ground’; for that was the usual way of fixing them then, as it is

still with the Illyrians. As for the question whether something said

or done in a poem is morally right or not, in dealing with that one

should consider not only the intrinsic quality of the actual word or

deed, but also the