Produced by Eric Eldred
ON THE ART OF POETRY
By Aristotle
Translated By Ingram Bywater
With A Preface By Gilbert Murray
Oxford At The Clarendon Press
First Published 1920
Reprinted 1925, 1928, 1932, 1938, 1945, 1947
1951, 1954, 1959. 1962 Printed In Great Britain
PREFACE
In the tenth book of the _Republic_, when Plato has completed his final
burning denunciation of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of things
which themselves are shadows, the ally of all that is low and weak in
the soul against that which is high and strong, who makes us feed the
things we ought to starve and serve the things we ought to rule, he
ends with a touch of compunction: 'We will give her champions, not poets
themselves but poet-lovers, an opportunity to make her defence in plain
prose and show that she is not only sweet--as we well know--but also
helpful to society and the life of man, and we will listen in a kindly
spirit. For we shall be gainers, I take it, if this can be proved.'
Aristotle certainly knew the passage, and it looks as if his treatise on
poetry was an answer to Plato's challenge.
Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading.
They nearly all need study and comment, and at times help from a good
teacher, before they yield up their secret. And the _Poetics_ cannot be
accounted an exception. For one thing the treatise is fragmentary. It
originally consisted of two books, one dealing with Tragedy and Epic,
the other with Comedy and other subjects. We possess only the first. For
another, even the book we have seems to be unrevised and unfinished. The
style, though luminous, vivid, and in its broader division systematic,
is not that of a book intended for publication. Like most of Aristotle's
extant writing, it suggests the MS. of an experienced lecturer, full of
jottings and adscripts, with occasional phrases written carefully
out, but never revised as a whole for the general reader. Even to
accomplished scholars the meaning is often obscure, as may be seen by a
comparison of the three editions recently published in England, all the
work of savants of the first eminence, (1) or, still more strikingly, by
a study of the long series of misunderstandings and overstatements
and corrections which form the history of the _Poetics_ since the
Renaissance.
(1) Prof. Butcher, 1895 and 1898; Prof. Bywater, 1909; and Prof.
Margoliouth, 1911.
But it is of another cause of misunderstanding that I wish principally
to speak in this preface. The great edition from which the present
translation is taken was the fruit of prolonged study by one of the
greatest Aristotelians of the nineteenth century, and is itself a
classic among works of scholarship. In the hands of a student who knows
even a little Greek, the translation, backed by the commentary, may lead
deep into the mind of Aristotle. But when the translation is used, as it
doubtless will be, by readers who are quite without the clue provided
by a knowledge of the general habits of the Greek language, there must
arise a number of new difficulties or misconceptions.
To understand a great foreign book by means of a translation is possible
enough where the two languages concerned operate with a common stock
of ideas, and belong to the same period of civilization. But between
ancient Greece and modern England there yawn immense gulfs of human
history; the establishment and the partial failure of a common European
religion, the barbarian invasions, the feudal system, the regrouping
of modern Europe, the age of mechanical invention, and the industrial
revolution. In an average page of French or German philosophy nearly all
the nouns can be translated directly into exact equivalents in English;
but in Greek that is not so. Scarcely one in ten of the nouns on the
first few pages of the _Poetics_ has an exact English equivalent. Every
proposition has to be reduced to its lowest terms of thought and then
re-built. This is a difficulty which no translation can quite deal with;
it must be left to a teacher who knows Greek. And there is a kindred
difficulty which flows from it. Where words can be translated into
equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed;
but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can
reproduce the style of Aristotle. I have sometimes played with the idea
that a ruthlessly literal translation, helped out by bold punctuation,
might be the best. For instance, premising that the words _poesis_,
_poetes_ mean originally 'making' and 'maker', one might translate the
first paragraph of the _Poetics_ thus:--
MAKING: kinds of making: function of each, and how the Myths ought to be
put together if the Making is to go right.
Number of parts: nature of parts: rest of same inquiry.
Begin in order of nature from first principles.
Epos-making, tragedy-making (also comedy), dithyramb-making (and most
fluting and harping), taken as a whole, are really not Makings but
Imitations. They differ in three points; they imitate (a) different
objects, (b) by different means, (c) differently (i.e. different
manner).
Some artists imitate (i.e. depict) by shapes and colours. (Obs.
sometimes by art, sometimes by habit.) Some by voice. Similarly the
above arts all imitate by rhythm, language, and tune, and these either
(1) separate or (2) mixed.
Rhythm and tune alone, harping, fluting, and other arts with same
effect--e.g. panpipes.
Rhythm without tune: dancing. (Dancers imitate characters, emotions, and
experiences by means of rhythms expressed in form.)
Language alone (whether prose or verse, and one form of verse or many):
this art has no name up to the present (i.e. there is no name to cover
mimes and dialogues and any similar imitation made in iambics,
elegiacs, &c. Commonly people attach the 'making' to the metre and say
'elegiac-makers', 'hexameter-makers,' giving them a common class-name by
their metre, as if it was not their imitation that makes them 'makers').
Such an experiment would doubtless be a little absurd, but it would give
an English reader some help in understanding both Aristotle's style and
his meaning.
For example, their enlightenment in the literal phrase, 'how the
myths ought to be put together.' The higher Greek poetry did not make
up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the
myths. Again, the literal translation of _poetes_, poet, as 'maker',
helps to explain a term that otherwise seems a puzzle in the _Poetics_.
If we wonder why Aristotle, and Plato before him, should lay such stress
on the theory that art is imitation, it is a help to realize that common
language called it 'making', and it was clearly not 'making' in the
ordinary sense. The poet who was 'maker' of a Fall of Troy clearly did
not make the real Fall of Troy. He made an imitation Fall of Troy. An
artist who 'painted Pericles' really 'made an imitation Pericles by
means of shapes and colours'. Hence we get started upon a theory of art
which, whether finally satisfactory or not, is of immense importance,
and are saved from the error of complaining that Aristotle did not
understand the 'creative power' of art.
As a rule, no doubt, the difficulty, even though merely verbal, lies
beyond the reach of so simple a tool as literal translation. To say that
tragedy 'imitates good men' while comedy 'imitates bad men' strikes a
modern reader as almost meaningless. The truth is that neither 'good'
nor 'bad' is an exact equivalent of the Greek. It would be nearer
perhaps to say that, relatively speaking, you look up to the characters
of tragedy, and down upon those of comedy. High or low, serious or
trivial, many other pairs of words would have to be called in, in order
to cover the wide range of the common Greek words. And the point is
important, because we have to consider whether in Chapter VI Aristotle
really lays it down that tragedy, so far from being the story
of un-happiness that we think it, is properly an imitation of
_eudaimonia_--a word often translated 'happiness', but meaning something
more like 'high life' or 'blessedness'. (1)
(1) See Margoliouth, p. 121. By water, with most editors, emends the
text.
Another difficult word which constantly recurs in the _Poetics_ is
_prattein_ or _praxis_, generally translated 'to act' or 'action'. But
_prattein_, like our 'do', also has an intransitive meaning 'to fare'
either well or ill; and Professor Margoliouth has pointed out that it
seems more true to say that tragedy shows how men 'fare' than how they
'act'. It shows their experiences or fortunes rather than merely their
deeds. But one must not draw the line too bluntly. I should doubt
whether a classical Greek writer was ordinarily conscious of the
distinction between the two meanings. Certainly it is easier to regard
happiness as a way of faring than as a form of action. Yet Aristotle can
use the passive of _prattein_ for things 'done' or 'gone through' (e.g.
52a, 22, 29: 55a, 25).
The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern
attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. Greek was
very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar,
not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.
An instance is provided by Aristotle's famous saying that the typical
tragic hero is one who falls from high state or fame, not through vice
or depravity, but by some great _hamartia_. _Hamartia_ means originally
a 'bad shot' or 'error', but is currently used for 'offence' or 'sin'.
Aristotle clearly means that the typical hero is a great man with
'something wrong' in his life or character; but I think it is a mistake
of method to argue whether he means 'an intellectual error' or 'a moral
flaw'. The word is not so precise.
Similarly, when Aristotle says that a deed of strife or disaster is more
tragic when it occurs 'amid affections' or 'among people who love each
other', no doubt the phrase, as Aristotle's own examples show, would
primarily suggest to a Greek feuds between near relations. Yet some of
the meaning is lost if one translates simply 'within the family'.
There is another series of obscurities or confusions in the _Poetics_
which, unless I am mistaken, arises from the fact that Aristotle was
writing at a time when the great age of Greek tragedy was long past, and
was using language formed in previous generations. The words and phrases
remained in the tradition, but the forms of art and activity which they
denoted had sometimes changed in the interval. If we date the _Poetics_
about the year 330 B.C., as seems probable, that is more than two
hundred years after the first tragedy of Thespis was produced in Athens,
and more than seventy after the death of the last great masters of
the tragic stage. When we remember that a training in music and poetry
formed a prominent part of the education of every wellborn Athenian,
we cannot be surprised at finding in Aristotle, and to a less extent in
Plato, considerable traces of a tradition of technical language and even
of aesthetic theory.
It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived
so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a
history. But no writer, certainly no ancient writer, is always vigilant.
Sometimes Aristotle analyses his terms, but very often he takes them for
granted; and in the latter case, I think, he is sometimes deceived by
them. Thus there seem to be cases where he has been affected in his
conceptions of fifth-century tragedy by the practice of his own day,
when the only living form of drama was the New Comedy.
For example, as we have noticed above, true Tragedy had always taken its
material from the sacred myths, or heroic sagas, which to the classical
Greek constituted history. But the New Comedy was in the habit of
inventing its plots. Consequently Aristotle falls into using the word
_mythos_ practically in the sense of 'plot', and writing otherwise in a
way that is unsuited to the tragedy of the fifth century. He says that
tragedy adheres to 'the historical names' for an aesthetic reason,
because what has happened is obviously possible and therefore
convincing. The real reason was that the drama and the myth were simply
two different expressions of the same religious kernel (p. 44). Again,
he says of the Chorus (p. 65) that it should be an integral part of the
play, which is true; but he also says that it' should be regarded as one
of the actors', which shows to what an extent the Chorus in his day
was dead and its technique forgotten. He had lost the sense of what the
Chorus was in the hands of the great masters, say in the Bacchae or the
Eumenides. He mistakes, again, the use of that epiphany of a God which
is frequent at the end of the single plays of Euripides, and which seems
to have been equally so at the end of the trilogies of Aeschylus. Having
lost the living tradition, he sees neither the ritual origin nor the
dramatic value of these divine epiphanies. He thinks of the convenient
gods and abstractions who sometimes spoke the prologues of the New
Comedy, and imagines that the God appears in order to unravel the plot.
As a matter of fact, in one play which he often quotes, the _Iphigenia
Taurica_, the plot is actually distorted at the very end in order to
give an opportunity for the epiphany.(1)
(1) See my _Euripides and his Age_, pp. 221-45.
One can see the effect of the tradition also in his treatment of the
terms Anagnorisis and Peripeteia, which Professor Bywater translates
as 'Discovery and Peripety' and Professor Butcher as 'Recognition and
Reversal of Fortune'. Aristotle assumes that these two elements are
normally present in any tragedy, except those which he calls 'simple';
we may say, roughly, in any tragedy that really has a plot. This strikes
a modern reader as a very arbitrary assumption. Reversals of Fortune
of some sort are perhaps usual in any varied plot, but surely not
Recognitions? The clue to the puzzle lies, it can scarcely be doubted,
in the historical origin of tragedy. Tragedy, according to Greek
tradition, is originally the ritual play of Dionysus, performed at his
festival, and representing, as Herodotus tells us, the 'sufferings'
or 'passion' of that God. We are never directly told what these
'sufferings' were which were so represented; but Herodotus remarks that
he found in Egypt a ritual that was 'in almost all points the same'. (1)
This was the well-known ritual of Osiris, in which the god was torn
in pieces, lamented, searched for, discovered or recognized, and the
mourning by a sudden Reversal turned into joy. In any tragedy which
still retained the stamp of its Dionysiac origin, this Discovery and
Peripety might normally be expected to occur, and to occur together. I
have tried to show elsewhere how many of our extant tragedies do, as a
matter of fact, show the marks of this ritual.(2)
(1) Cf. Hdt. ii. 48; cf. 42,144. The name of Dionysus must not be openly
mentioned in connexion with mourning (ib. 61, 132, 86). This may help to
explain the transference of the tragic shows to other heroes.
(2) In Miss Harrison's _Themis_, pp. 341-63.
I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much-debated word
__katharsis__, 'purification' or 'purgation', may have come into
Aristotle's mouth from the same source. It has all the appearance of
being an old word which is accepted and re-interpreted by Aristotle
rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon
he wishes to describe. At any rate the Dionysus ritual itself was a
_katharmos_ or _katharsis_--a purification of the community from the
taints and poisons of the past year, the old contagion of sin and death.
And the words of Aristotle's definition of tragedy in Chapter VI
might have been used in the days of Thespis in a much cruder and
less metaphorical sense. According to primitive ideas, the mimic
representation on the stage of 'incidents arousing pity and fear' did
act as a _katharsis_ of such 'passions' or 'sufferings' in real life.
(For the word _pathemata_ means 'sufferings' as well as 'passions'.)
It is worth remembering that in the year 361 B.C., during Aristotle's
lifetime, Greek tragedies were introduced into Rome, not on artistic but
on superstitious grounds, as a _katharmos_ against a pestilence (Livy
vii. 2). One cannot but suspect that in his account of the purpose
of tragedy Aristotle may be using an old traditional formula, and
consciously or unconsciously investing it with a new meaning, much as he
has done with the word _mythos_.
Apart from these historical causes of misunderstanding, a good teacher
who uses this book with a class will hardly fail to point out numerous
points on which two equally good Greek scholars may well differ in
the mere interpretation of the words. What, for instance, are the 'two
natural causes' in Chapter IV which have given birth to Poetry? Are
they, as our translator takes them, (1) that man is imitative, and (2)
that people delight in imitations? Or are they (1) that man is imitative
and people delight in imitations, and (2) the instinct for rhythm, as
Professor Butcher prefers? Is it a 'creature' a thousand miles long, or
a 'picture' a thousand miles long which raises some trouble in Chapter
VII? The word _zoon_ means equally 'picture' and 'animal'. Did the older
poets make their characters speak like 'statesmen', _politikoi_, or
merely like ordinary citizens, _politai_, while the moderns made theirs
like 'professors of rhetoric'? (Chapter VI, p. 38; cf. Margoliouth's
note and glossary).
It may seem as if the large uncertainties which we have indicated
detract in a ruinous manner from the value of the _Poetics_ to us as
a work of criticism. Certainly if any young writer took this book as
a manual of rules by which to 'commence poet', he would find himself
embarrassed. But, if the book is properly read, not as a dogmatic
text-book but as a first attempt, made by a man of astounding genius, to
build up in the region of creative art a rational order like that
which he established in logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics,
psychology, and almost every department of knowledge that existed in his
day, then the uncertainties become rather a help than a discouragement.
They give us occasion to think and use our imagination. They make us, to
the best of our powers, try really to follow and criticize closely the
bold gropings of an extraordinary thinker; and it is in this process,
and not in any mere collection of dogmatic results, that we shall find
the true value and beauty of the _Poetics_.
The book is of permanent value as a mere intellectual achievement; as
a store of information about Greek literature; and as an original or
first-hand statement of what we may call the classical view of
artistic criticism. It does not regard poetry as a matter of unanalysed
inspiration; it makes no concession to personal whims or fashion or
_ennui_. It tries by rational methods to find out what is good in art
and what makes it good, accepting the belief that there is just as truly
a good way, and many bad ways, in poetry as in morals or in playing
billiards. This is no place to try to sum up its main conclusions.
But it is characteristic of the classical view that Aristotle lays his
greatest stress, first, on the need for Unity in the work of art, the
need that each part should subserve the whole, while irrelevancies,
however brilliant in themselves, should be cast away; and next, on the
demand that great art must have for its subject the great way of living.
These judgements have often been misunderstood, but the truth in them is
profound and goes near to the heart of things.
Characteristic, too, is the observation that different kinds of art grow
and develop, but not indefinitely; they develop until they 'attain their
natural form'; also the rule that each form of art should produce 'not
every sort of pleasure but its proper pleasure'; and the sober language
in which Aristotle, instead of speaking about the sequence of events
in a tragedy being 'inevitable', as we bombastic moderns do, merely
recommends that they should be 'either necessary or probable' and
'appear to happen because of one another'.
Conceptions and attitudes of mind such as these constitute what we may
call the classical faith in matters of art and poetry; a faith which is
never perhaps fully accepted in any age, yet, unlike others, is never
forgotten but lives by being constantly criticized, re-asserted, and
rebelled against. For the fashions of the ages vary in this direction
and that, but they vary for the most part from a central road which was
struck out by the imagination of Greece.
G. M
ARISTOTLE ON THE ART OF POETRY
1
Our subject being Poetry, I propose to speak not only of the art in
general but also of its species and their respective capacities; of the
structure of plot required for a good poem; of the number and nature of
the constituent parts of a poem; and likewise of any other matters in
the same line of inquiry. Let us follow the natural order and begin with
the primary facts.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry, and most
flute-playing and lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, 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 or harm to others; the mask, for
instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted without
causing pain.
Though the successive changes in Tragedy and their authors are not
unknown, we cannot say the same of Comedy; its early stages passed
unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up in a serious way. It was
only at a late point in its progress that a chorus of comedians was
officially granted by the archon; they used to be mere volunteers. It
had also already certain definite forms at the time when the record of
those termed comic poets begins. Who it was who supplied it with masks,
or prologues, or a plurality of actors and the like, has remained
unknown. The invented Fable, or Plot, however, originated in Sicily,
with Epicharmus and Phormis; of Athenian poets Crates was the first
to drop the Comedy of invective and frame stories of a general and
non-personal nature, in other words, Fables or Plots.
Epic poetry, then, has been seen to agree with Tragedy to this extent,
that of being an imitation of serious subjects in a grand kind of verse.
It differs from it, however, (1) in that it is in one kind of verse and
in narrative form; and (2) in its length--which is due to its action
having no fixed limit of time, whereas Tragedy endeavours to keep as far
as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or something near that.
This, I say, is another point of difference between them, though at
first the practice in this respect was just the same in tragedies as
in epic poems. They differ also (3) in their constituents, some being
common to both and others peculiar to Tragedy--hence a judge of good and
bad in Tragedy is a judge of that in epic poetry also. All the parts of
an epic are included in Tragedy; but those of Tragedy are not all of
them to be found in the Epic.
6
Reserving hexameter poetry and Comedy for consideration hereafter, let
us proceed now to the discussion of Tragedy; before doing so, however,
we must gather up the definition resulting from what has been said. A
tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also,
as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable
accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work;
in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and
fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. Here by
'language with pleasurable accessories' I mean that with rhythm and
harmony or song superadded; and by 'the kinds separately' I mean that
some portions are worked out with verse only, and others in turn with
song.
I. As they act the stories, it follows that in the first place the
Spectacle (or stage-appearance of the actors) must be some part of the
whole; and in the second Melody and Diction, these two being the
means of their imitation. Here by 'Diction' I mean merely this, the
composition of the verses; and by 'Melody', what is too completely
understood to require explanation. But further: the subject represented
also is an action; and the action involves agents, who must necessarily
have their distinctive qualities both of character and thought, since it
is from these that we ascribe certain qualities to their actions. There
are in the natural order of things, therefore, two causes, Character and
Thought, of their actions, and consequently of their success or failure
in their lives. Now the action (that which was done) is represented in
the play by the Fable or Plot. The Fable, in our present sense of the
term, is simply this, the combination of the incidents, or things done
in the story; whereas Character is what makes us ascribe certain moral
qualities to the agents; and Thought is shown in all they say when
proving a particular point or, it may be, enunciating a general truth.
There are six parts consequently of every tragedy, as a whole, that
is, of such or such quality, viz. a Fable or Plot, Characters, Diction,
Thought, Spectacle and Melody; two of them arising from the means, one
from the manner, and three from the objects of the dramatic imitation;
and there is nothing else besides these six. Of these, its formative
elements, then, not a few of the dramatists have made due use, as every
play, one may say, admits of Spectacle, Character, Fable, Diction,
Melody, and Thought.
II. The most important of the six is the combination of the incidents of
the story.
Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and
life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the
form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of
activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is in
our actions--what we do--that we are happy or the reverse. In a play
accordingly they do not act in order to portray the Characters; they
include the Characters for the sake of the action. So that it is the
action in it, i.e. its Fable or Plot, that is the end and purpose of
the tragedy; and the end is everywhere the chief thing. Besides this,
a tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without
Character. The tragedies of most of the moderns are characterless--a
defect common among poets of all kinds, and with its counterpart in
painting in Zeuxis as compared with Polygnotus; for whereas the latter
is strong in character, the work of Zeuxis is devoid of it. And again:
one may string together a series of characteristic speeches of the
utmost finish as regards Diction and Thought, and yet fail to produce
the true tragic effect; but one will have much better success with
a tragedy which, however inferior in these respects, has a Plot, a
combination of incidents, in it. And again: the most powerful elements
of attraction in Tragedy, the Peripeties and Discoveries, are parts of
the Plot. A further proof is in the fact that beginners succeed earlier
with the Diction and Characters than with the construction of a
story; and the same may be said of nearly all the early dramatists. We
maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so
to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come
second--compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful
colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a
simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. We maintain that Tragedy is
primarily an imitation of action, and that it is mainly for the sake of
the action that it imitates the personal agents. Third comes the element
of Thought, i.e. the power of saying whatever can be said, or what is
appropriate to the occasion. This is what, in the speeches in Tragedy,
falls under the arts of Politics and Rhetoric; for the older poets
make their personages discourse like statesmen, and the moderns like
rhetoricians. One must not confuse it with Character. Character in a
play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the agents, i.e. the
sort of thing they seek or avoid, where that is not obvious--hence there
is no room for Character in a speech on a purely indifferent subject.
Thought, on the other hand, is shown in all they say when proving
or disproving some particular point, or enunciating some universal
proposition. Fourth among the literary elements is the Diction of the
personages, i.e. as before explained, the expression of their thoughts
in words, which is practically the same thing with verse as with prose.
As for the two remaining parts, the Melody is the greatest of the
pleasurable accessories of Tragedy. The Spectacle, though an attraction,
is the least artistic of all the parts, and has least to do with the
art of poetry. The tragic effect is quite possible without a public
performance and actors; and besides, the getting-up of the Spectacle is
more a matter for the costumier than the poet.
7
Having thus distinguished the parts, let us now consider the proper
construction of the Fable or Plot, as that is at once the first and the
most important thing in Tragedy. We have laid it down that a tragedy is
an imitation of an action that is complete in itself, as a whole of some
magnitude; for a whole may be of no magnitude to speak of. Now a whole
is that which has beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which
is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally
something else after it; an end is that which is naturally after
something itself, either as its necessary or usual consequent, and with
nothing else after it; and a middle, that which is by nature after one
thing and has also another after it. A well-constructed Plot, therefore,
cannot either begin or end at any point one likes; beginning and end in
it must be of the forms just described. Again: to be beautiful, a living
creature, and every whole made up of parts, must not only present a
certain order in its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain
definite magnitude. Beauty is a matter of size and order, and therefore
impossible either (1) in a very minute creature, since our perception
becomes indistinct as it approaches instantaneity; or (2) in a creature
of vast size--one, say, 1,000 miles long--as in that case, instead of
the object being seen all at once, the unity and wholeness of it is lost
to the beholder.
Just in the same way, then, as a beautiful whole made up of parts, or a
beautiful living creature, must be of some size, a size to be taken in
by the eye, so a story or Plot must be of some length, but of a length
to be taken in by the memory. As for the limit of its length, so far as
that is relative to public performances and spectators, it does not fall
within the theory of poetry. If they had to perform a hundred tragedies,
they would be timed by water-clocks, as they are said to have been at
one period. The limit, however, set by the actual nature of the thing is
this: the longer the story, consistently with its being comprehensible
as a whole, the finer it is by reason of its magnitude. As a rough
general formula, 'a length which allows of the hero passing by a series
of probable or necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or from
happiness to misfortune', may suffice as a limit for the magnitude of
the story.
8
The Unity of a Plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one
man as its subject. An infinity of things befall that one man, some of
which it is impossible to reduce to unity; and in like manner there are
many actions of one man which cannot be made to form one action.
One sees, therefore, the mistake of all the poets who have written a
_Heracleid_, a _Theseid_, or similar poems; they suppose that, because
Heracles was one man, the story also of Heracles must be one story.
Homer, however, evidently understood this point quite well, whether
by art or instinct, just in the same way as he excels the rest in every
other respect. In writing an _Odyssey_, he did not make the poem cover
all that ever befell his hero--it befell him, for instance, to get
wounded on Parnassus and also to feign madness at the time of the call
to arms, but the two incidents had no probable or necessary connexion
with one another--instead of doing that, he took an action with a Unity
of the kind we are describing as the subject of the _Odyssey_, as also
of the _Iliad_. The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts
one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an
imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole,
with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or
withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For
that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is
no real part of the whole.
9
From what we have said it will be seen that the poet's function is to
describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that
might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary. The
distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose
and the other verse--you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and
it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that
the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing
that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver
import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather
of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. By a universal
statement I mean one as to what such or such a kind of man will probably
or necessarily say or do--which is the aim of poetry, though it affixes
proper names to the characters; by a singular statement, one as to what,
say, Alcibiades did or had done to him. In Comedy this has become clear
by this time; it is only when their plot is already made up of probable
incidents that they give it a basis of proper names, choosing for the
purpose any names that may occur to them, instead of writing like the
old iambic poets about particular persons. In Tragedy, however, they
still adhere to the historic names; and for this reason: what convinces
is the possible; now whereas we are not yet sure as to the possibility
of that which has not happened, that which has happened is manifestly
possible, else it would not have come to pass. Nevertheless even in
Tragedy there are some plays with but one or two known names in them,
the rest being inventions; and there are some without a single known
name, e.g. Agathon's Anthens, in which both incidents and names are of
the poet's invention; and it is no less delightful on that account. So
that one must not aim at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories
on which tragedies are based. It would be absurd, in fact, to do so,
as even the known stories are only known to a few, though they are a
delight none the less to all.
It is evident from the above that, the poet must be more the poet of his
stories or Plots than of his verses, inasmuch as he is a poet by
virtue of the imitative element in his work, and it is actions that he
imitates. And if he should come to take a subject from actual history,
he is none the less a poet for that; since some historic occurrences may
very well be in the probable and possible order of things; and it is in
that aspect of them that he is their poet.
Of simple Plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a Plot
episodic when there is neither probability nor necessity in the sequence
of episodes. Actions of this sort bad poets construct through their
own fault, and good ones on account of the players. His work being for
public performance, a good poet often stretches out a Plot beyond its
capabilities, and is thus obliged to twist the sequence of incident.
Tragedy, however, is an imitation not only of a complete action, but
also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very
greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same
time in consequence of one another; there is more of the marvellous in
them then than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance. Even
matters of chance seem most marvellous if there is an appearance of
design as it were in them; as for instance the statue of Mitys at
Argos killed the author of Mitys' death by falling down on him when a
looker-on at a public spectacle; for incidents like that we think to be
not without a meaning. A Plot, therefore, of this sort is necessarily
finer than others.
10
Plots are either simple or complex, since the actions they represent are
naturally of this twofold description. The action, proceeding in the way
defined, as one continuous whole, I call simple, when the change in the
hero's fortunes takes place without Peripety or Discovery; and complex,
when it involves one or the other, or both. These should each of
them arise out of the structure of the Plot itself, so as to be the
consequence, necessary or probable, of the antecedents. There is a great
difference between a thing happening _propter hoc_ and _post hoc_.
11