Classical Poetic
1. Aristotle
A survey of what Aristotle includes in his _Poetics_, what he excludes,
and what he ignores, will be a helpful initial step in an investigation of
what he meant by poetic. Five kinds of poetry are mentioned by name in the
_Poetics_: epic, dramatic, dithyrambic, nomic, and satiric; and lyric is
included by implication as a form of epic, where the poet narrates in his
own person.[10]
The choruses, also, are lyric. Otherwise Aristotle does not discuss lyric
poetry. Of the other five kinds, nomic, dithyrambic, and satiric poetry
are mentioned only as illustrative of something Aristotle wishes to say
about epic or drama. Aristotle's _Poetics_ discusses only epic and,
especially, drama. Thus of the twenty-six books into which the _Poetics_
is conventionally divided, five are devoted to the general theory of
poetry, three to diction, two to epic, and sixteen to drama. Although
Aristotle includes dithyrambic, nomic, satiric, and lyric poetry in his
discussion, he practically ignores them.
On the other hand he specifically excludes from poetry such scientific
works as those of Empedocles and historical writings as those of
Herodotus.[11] The rhetorical element in the speeches of the characters of
drama or epic, Aristotle calls Thought (διάνια). Although
Aristotle includes Thought as an element in drama, he does not discuss it
in the _Poetics_, but refers his reader to the _Rhetoric_. Metrics, which
occupies so large a place in modern treatises on the theory of poetry,
Aristotle likewise mentions several times, but does not discuss. A
metrical structure he accepts as the usual practice in poetical
composition, but he rejects verse as the distinguishing mark of poetic.
Thus he refuses to classify as poetry the scientific writings which
Empedocles had composed in meter as well as the histories of Herodotus,
even if he had written them in verse. On the other hand, the mimes of
Sophron and Xenarchus, although composed in prose, he considers within the
scope of poetic.[12]
If to Aristotle, then, verse is not the characteristic quality of poetic,
the next step in an investigation must be to discover the criterion by
which he classifies some literature as poetry and other as not poetry. The
characteristic quality, according to Aristotle, which is possessed by the
Socratic dialogs, by the Homeric epics, and by the dramas of Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides, and which classifies them together as poetic, is
not verse but _mimesis_, imitation.[13] Exactly what Aristotle meant by
imitation has furnished subsequent critics with an excuse for writing many
volumes. The usual meaning of the word to the Greek, as to the modern,
seems to be little more than an aping or mimicking. Aristotle himself uses
imitate in this sense when he speaks of the delight children take in
imitation.[14] But in establishing imitation as the criterion of poetic,
Aristotle seems to have injected something of a private, or at least a
special scientific meaning into the word. As the characteristic quality of
poetic, imitation to Aristotle evidently did not mean a literal copy.
Plato had attacked poetry as unreal, a thrice-removed imitation of the
only true reality. To defend poetic against the strictures of his master
Aristotle reads more into the word than that.
In discovering what Aristotle had in mind when he speaks of imitation, the
student must read from one treatise to another, for few writers of any
period are so addicted to the habit of cross-reference. In the
_Psychology_ Aristotle states that all stimuli received by the senses at
the moment of perception are impressed upon the mind as in wax. The images
held by the image-forming faculty are thus the after effect of sensation.
These images remain and may be recalled by the image-forming faculty. From
this store-house of images, or after effects of sensation, the reasoning
faculty derives the materials for thought as well as those for artistic
expression.[15] Imagination evidently has much to do with Aristotle's
conception of the nature of poetic. Imitation, then, to him, meant a
conscious selection and plastic mastery of the sense impressions stored as
images by the image-forming faculty of the author, whose writings are
addressed to the imagination of the reader or auditor. Furthermore,
Butcher's interpretation of "imitation of nature" seems both sound and
suggestive. According to him the imitation of nature is the imitation of
nature's ways. In this sense the act of the poet may well be called
creation.
As imitative arts Aristotle mentions poetry, dancing, music, and painting.
They differ, he says, in their medium, objects, and manner. Poetry,
dancing, and music he classifies together because they use the similar
media of rhythm, language, or harmony either singly or combined. Music,
for instance, uses both rhythm and harmony, dancing uses rhythm alone, and
poetry uses language alone. Aristotle by this does not, as might seem,
exclude rhythm and harmony from poetry. Indeed, he states explicitly that
most forms of poetry do use all of the media mentioned: rhythm, tune, and
meter. He is only insisting that imitation in unmetrical language is still
poetry; that meter is not the characteristic element of poetic.[16] It is
important to recognize that in classifying poetry with music and dancing,
Aristotle is insisting that the common element in these arts is movement.
Movement is characteristic of poetry, as color and form are characteristic
of painting and sculpture. Thus in discussing the plot of tragedy, which
he holds to be the highest and most characteristic form of poetry,
Aristotle urges the necessity of unity and magnitude, both of which he
defines in terms not of space relations, but of movement. For instance, to
possess unity a plot must have a beginning, a middle and an end.
A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal
necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An
end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other
thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it.
A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows
it.[17]
Furthermore, the magnitude which this dramatic movement should possess is
also discussed not in terms of bulk, but of length.
As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms, a certain
magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in
one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length
which can easily be embraced by the memory.[18]
It is noteworthy that to Aristotle the characteristic movement of poetic
depends on the dramatic unity and progression of a dramatic action, a
plot. In the _Rhetoric_ he shows that the arrangement of the movement of a
speech is governed by entirely different considerations. The unity of
rhetoric is not dramatic, but logical. The order of the parts of a speech
is determined not by a plot, but by the needs of presentation to an
audience. For instance, a statement of the case is given first, and then
the proof is marshalled.
The objects of poetic imitation, Aristotle says, are character, emotion,
and deed, i.e., men in action,[19] inanimate nature and the life of dumb
animals being subordinate to these. The manner of imitating, if poetic,
Aristotle says is either narrative or dramatic. Under the narrative manner
he includes lyric, where the speaker expresses himself in the first
person, and epic, where the speaker tells his story in the third person.
In the dramatic manner he says that the characters are made to live and
move before us.[20]
Answering Plato's charge that poetic is not real, Aristotle erects the
distinction between the real and the actual, claiming a reality for poetic
which is not the actuality of science or of practical affairs. It is thus
that he distinguishes the poet from the historian: although the historian
also uses images, he is restricted to relating what has happened--that is,
to fact; while the poet relates what should happen--what is possible
according to the law of probability or necessity. Instead of rehearsing
facts, the dramatist or the epic poet creates truth. We expect him to be
"true to life," and that is what is implied in Aristotle's "imitation of
nature."[21] This truth to life controls, according to Aristotle, both
the characterization and the action. In the first place
Poetry tends to express the universal--how a person of a certain type
will on occasion speak or act according to the law of probability or
necessity.[22]
Aristotle goes so far as to say that probability, not actuality, controls
the structure of a narrative or dramatic plot in that, "what follows
should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action,"[23]
even to the extent that the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to
improbable possibilities, for by a logical fallacy even an irrational
premise in an action may seem probable provided that the conclusion is
logical and made to seem real.[24] For instance, the irrational elements
in the Odyssey "are presented to the imagination with such vividness and
coherence that the impossible becomes plausible; the fiction looks like
truth."[25] Such a result occurs only when the characters and action are
made real. We believe that which we see, even though we know in our hearts
that it is not so.
How important Aristotle feels it to be that the spectator or reader should
see before him the characters and situations of an epic or drama is
evinced by his suggestion to the poet on the process of composing. The
author, he says, should visualize the situations he is presenting, working
out the appropriate gestures, for he who feels emotion is best at
transmitting it to an audience.[26] It is only when the poet thus
completely realizes his characters and situations that the audience can be
induced to feel sympathetically the pity and fear which produces the
_katharsis_, so important a result of successful tragedy. If human beings
did not possess that tendency to feel within themselves the emotions of
the people on the stage, they would be unable to experience vicariously
the fear animating the tragic hero. Thus tragedy, which is the type of all
poetic, depends vitally, according to Aristotle, on imaginative
realization.
2. "Longinus"
Aristotle's theory of poetry, which influenced so profoundly the criticism
of the renaissance, was not followed by other classical treatises of the
same scope. In fact, very little Greek or Roman literary criticism is
concerned with poetical theory as compared with the keen interest of many
critics in oratory. Perhaps the most significant and valuable critical
treatise after Aristotle is that golden pamphlet _On the Sublime_
erroneously ascribed to Longinus, which, anonymous and mutilated as it is,
still holds our attention by its sincerity, insight, and enthusiastic love
for great poetry.
However important its contribution to classical theory of poetry, the
treatise is not specifically on poetic. In fact, it sets out as if to
treat rhetoric, and actually treats both; for it is mainly a treatise on
style, which as Aristotle says in the _Poetics_[27] is in essence the same
both in prose and verse. Nevertheless it does distinguish between rhetoric
and poetic and does contribute to the theory of poetry.[28]
"_Sublimitas_," misleadingly translated "sublimity," the author defines
as elevation and greatness of style. It springs from the faculty of
grasping great conceptions and from passion, both gifts of nature. It is
assisted by art through the appropriate use of figures, noble diction, and
dignified and spirited composition of the words into sentences. It is the
insistence on passion, emotion, which makes the treatise _On the Sublime_
stand out above other classical treatises on writing. Both poets and
orators attain the sublime, says the author, but passion is more
characteristic of the poets.[29]
Passion moves the poet to intensity, which is attained by selection of
those sensory images which are significant. Thus the treatise praises the
ode by Sappho which it quotes, because the poet has taken the emotions
incident to the frenzy of love from the attendant symptoms, from
actuality, and first selected and then closely combined those which were
conspicuous and intense.[30] This intensity which is characteristic of the
poet he contrasts with the amplification of the orators, which strengthens
the fabric of an argument by insistence and is especially "appropriate in
perorations and digressions, and in all passages written for the style and
for display, in writings of historical and scientific nature." Yet
Demosthenes when moved by passion attains the sublimity of intensity and
strikes like lightning.[31] Both in oratory and in poetry sublimity is
attained by image-making, as when "moved by enthusiasm and passion, you
seem to see the things of which you speak, and place them under the eyes
of your hearers."[32] It would be difficult to phrase better the
conditions of imaginative realization. But the author felt truly that
this realization was different in poetry from what it was in rhetoric. In
commenting on a quotation from the _Orestes_, of Euripides, he says:
There the poet saw the Furies with his own eyes, and what his
imagination presented he almost compelled his hearers to behold.
And after an imaginative passage from the lost _Phaethon_, of the same
author, he says:
Would you not say that the soul of the writer treads the car with the
driver, and shares the peril, and wears wings as the horses do?
From this the rhetorical imagination differs in that it is at its best
when it has fact for its object.[33] Longinus would seem to say that the
realization of poetic is untrammeled by fact, while the imagination of the
orator is bound by the actual; it is always practical.
Because the imaginative realization of poetry is characterized by passion,
intensity, and immediacy, the author of the treatise feels with Aristotle
that the dramatic is the most characteristically poetic. On this basis he
judges the _Odyssey_ to be less great than the _Iliad_. It is narrative
instead of dramatic; fable prevails over action; passion has degenerated
into character-drawing. This grouping of drama, action, and passion as the
qualities of great poetry is significant. Bald narrative can never realize
character or situation as can the dramatic form, either in narrative or
for the stage, when the whole action takes place before the mind's eye
instead of being told.
The treatise makes this point exceedingly clear by two quotations which
bear repeating.
"The author of the _Arimaspeia_ thinks these lines terrible:
"Here too, is mighty marvel for our thought:
'Mid seas men dwell, on water, far from land:
Wretches they are, for sorry toil is theirs;
Eyes on the stars, heart on the deep they fix;
Oft to the gods, I ween, their hands are raised;
Their inward parts in evil case upheaved.
"Anyone, I think, will see that there is more embroidery than terror in it
all. Now for Homer:
"As when a wave by the wild wind's blore
Down from the clouds upon a ship doth light,
And the whole hulk with scattering foam is white,
And through the sails all tattered and forlorn
Roars the fell blast: the seamen with affright
Shake, and from death a hand-breadth they are borne."[34]
The first quoted passage is indeed not only "embroidery," but mere talk
about shipwrecks, and the terrors of the deep. Homer realizes the
situation by sensory images; he makes the reader see the white foam, and
hear the wind howl through the torn sails, yes, and shake with the
frightened sailors.
3. Plutarch
But judgments like those of the appreciative and discerning author of the
treatise _On the Sublime_ are rare. Plutarch in his essay _On the Reading
of Poets_, is much more representative of late Greek criticism. This essay
is not a treatise on the theory of poetry, but a thoughtful discussion of
the place of poetry in the education of young men. Consequently the
greater part of the essay is devoted to the moral purpose of poetry, and
as such will be treated in the second section of this study. Two points,
however, are of importance to treat here: his theory of poetical
imitation, and his comparison of poetry with painting.
The "imitation" of Plutarch was far narrower than that of Aristotle. To
Plutarch, imitation meant a naturalistic copy of things as they are.
"While poetry is based on imitations ... it does not resign the likeness
of the truth, since the charm of imitation is probability."[35] As a
result of his naturalism, Plutarch admitted as appropriate poetical
material immorality and obscenity as well as virtue, because these things
are in life. If the copy is good, the poem is artistic and praiseworthy,
just as a painting of a venomous spider, if a faithful representation of
its loathsome subject, is praised for its art.
Perhaps it was Plutarch's naturalistic theory of imitation in poetry which
led him to compare poetry with painting. This he does in what he says was
a common phrase that "poetry is vocal painting, and painting, silent
poetry."[36] The false analogy, "_ut pictura poesis_," establishing, as it
does, a sanction in criticism for the static in drama, flourished until
Lessing exposed it in his _Laocoon_. Aristotle at the beginning had made
clear that the essential element in drama is movement, a movement which
could have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
4. Horace
The remains of Roman literary criticism are not so philosophical as are
the Greek. The treatise of Horace is not in Aristotle's sense a _poetic_;
it is an _ars poetica_. _Ars_, to the Roman, meant a body of rules which a
practitioner would find useful as a guide in composing. As a practitioner
himself, Horace is more interested in the craft of poetry than in its
philosophy or theory. He writes as a poet to young men who desire to
become poets. The essence of poetry he ignores or takes for granted. He
says, in effect, "Here are some practical suggestions which I have found
of assistance."
In structure, also, the _ars poetica_ is not a critical analysis, but a
text-book. The first ninety-eight lines cover the fundamental
considerations which the poet must have in mind before he starts to
compose. He should choose a subject he can handle; he should plan it so
that it be unified and coherent, and have each element in the right place;
he should choose words in good use, and write in an appropriate meter.
The subject of the second section is the Roman theatre. From line 99 to
line 288, Horace devotes his attention to the rules governing the writing
of tragedy. This is significant, again, of the classical opinion that the
most important poetical form is drama. Whatever differences there are
between the views of Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace, they all agree in
that. In his treatment of characters and plot, however, Horace places his
emphasis on character, while Aristotle had emphasized plot. Of plot Horace
says little, only suggesting that the poet should not begin _ab ovo_ but
plunge at once into the midst of the action. Concerning character he says
much. The language should be appropriate to the emotions supposed to be
animating the character who is speaking. No person in the play should be
made to do or say anything out of character. By the laws of decorum, for
instance, old men should be querulous and young boys given to sudden
anger. The chorus, also, must be an actor and carry along the action of
the play instead of interrupting the play to sing. Horace further warns
his pupils to restrict the number of acts to the conventional five, and
the number of characters to the conventional three. As an episode
presented on the stage is more vivid than if it were narrated as having
taken place off stage, horrors and murders should be kept off lest they
offend.
The third section of the book is mainly concerned with revision. This is
good pedagogy, for advice as to how to improve sentences or verses is
appropriate only after the sentences have been planned and written.
Besides urging the young poet to revise and correct his manuscript
carefully, to put it aside nine years, and to seek the criticism of a
sincere friend, Horace considers the value of the finished product. A poem
will please more people if it combines the pleasant with the profitable.
If a poem is not really good, it is bad. If the young poet finds that his
work is not of high excellence, he would do better not to publish it. A
poem is like a picture, Horace says, in that some poems appear to better
advantage close up, and others at a distance. It is noteworthy that in his
"_ut pictura poesis_" Horace is not pressing the analogy between the arts
as did subsequent critics who quoted his phrase incompletely.
Of the four classical discussions of the theory of poetry which are here
treated, that of Horace was best known throughout the middle ages and the
early renaissance. Just what the influence of the _Ars poetica_ was and
why it was so great a favorite will be discussed in subsequent chapters.