The Poetics by Aristotle (android based ebook reader txt) 📖
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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.
2II. 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.
3III. 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.
4It 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.
5As 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
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