The Poetics by Aristotle (android based ebook reader txt) 📖
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Tragedy. It belongs rather to Comedy, where the bitterest enemies in
the piece (e.g. Orestes and Aegisthus) walk off good friends at the
end, with no slaying of any one by any one.
14The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may
also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which
is the better way and shows the better poet. The Plot in fact should
be so framed that, even without seeing the things take place, he who
simply hears the account of them shall be filled with horror and pity
at the incidents; which is just the effect that the mere recital of
the story in Oedipus would have on one. To produce this same effect
by means of the Spectacle is less artistic, and requires extraneous
aid. Those, however, who make use of the Spectacle to put before us
that which is merely monstrous and not productive of fear, are wholly
out of touch with Tragedy; not every kind of pleasure should be
required of a tragedy, but only its own proper pleasure.
The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear, and the poet has to
produce it by a work of imitation; it is clear, therefore, that the
causes should be included in the incidents of his story. Let us see,
then, what kinds of incident strike one as horrible, or rather as
piteous. In a deed of this description the parties must necessarily be
either friends, or enemies, or indifferent to one another. Now when
enemy does it on enemy, there is nothing to move us to pity either in
his doing or in his meditating the deed, except so far as the actual
pain of the sufferer is concerned; and the same is true when the
parties are indifferent to one another. Whenever the tragic deed,
however, is done within the family—when murder or the like is done or
meditated by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son,
or son on mother—these are the situations the poet should seek after.
The traditional stories, accordingly, must be kept as they are, e.g.
the murder of Clytaemnestra by Orestes and of Eriphyle by Alcmeon. At
the same time even with these there is something left to the poet
himself; it is for him to devise the right way of treating them. Let
us explain more clearly what we mean by ‘the right way’. The deed of
horror may be done by the doer knowingly and consciously, as in the
old poets, and in Medea’s murder of her children in Euripides. Or he
may do it, but in ignorance of his relationship, and discover that
afterwards, as does the Oedipus in Sophocles. Here the deed is
outside the play; but it may be within it, like the act of the Alcmeon
in Astydamas, or that of the Telegonus in Ulysses Wounded. A third
possibility is for one meditating some deadly injury to another, in
ignorance of his relationship, to make the discovery in time to draw
back. These exhaust the possibilities, since the deed must necessarily
be either done or not done, and either knowingly or unknowingly.
The worst situation is when the personage is with full knowledge on
the point of doing the deed, and leaves it undone. It is odious and
also (through the absence of suffering) untragic; hence it is that no
one is made to act thus except in some few instances, e.g. Haemon and
Creon in Antigone. Next after this comes the actual perpetration of
the deed meditated. A better situation than that, however, is for the
deed to be done in ignorance, and the relationship discovered
afterwards, since there is nothing odious in it, and the Discovery
will serve to astound us. But the best of all is the last; what we
have in Cresphontes, for example, where Merope, on the point of
slaying her son, recognizes him in time; in Iphigenia, where sister
and brother are in a like position; and in Helle, where the son
recognizes his mother, when on the point of giving her up to her
enemy.
This will explain why our tragedies are restricted (as we said just
now) to such a small number of families. It was accident rather than
art that led the poets in quest of subjects to embody this kind of
incident in their Plots. They are still obliged, accordingly, to have
recourse to the families in which such horrors have occurred.
On the construction of the Plot, and the kind of Plot required for
Tragedy, enough has now been said.
15In the Characters there are four points to aim at. First and foremost,
that they shall be good. There will be an element of character in the
play, if (as has been observed) what a personage says or does reveals
a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if the
purpose so revealed is good. Such goodness is possible i.e.ery type
of personage, even in a woman or a slave, though the one is perhaps an
inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being. The second point is
to make them appropriate. The Character before us may be, say, manly;
but it is not appropriate in a female Character to be manly, or
clever. The third is to make them like the reality, which is not the
same as their being good and appropriate, in our sense of the term.
The fourth is to make them consistent and the same throughout; even if
inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as
presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently
inconsistent. We have an instance of baseness of character, not
required for the story, in the Menelaus in Orestes; of the
incongruous and unbefitting in the lamentation of Ulysses in Scylla,
and in the (clever) speech of Melanippe; and of inconsistency in
Iphigenia at Aulis, where Iphigenia the suppliant is utterly unlike
the later Iphigenia. The right thing, however, is in the Characters
just as in the incidents of the play to endeavour always after the
necessary or the probable; so that whenever such-and-such a personage
says or does such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or
necessary outcome of his character; and whenever this incident follows
on that, it shall be either the necessary or the probable consequence
of it. From this one sees (to digress for a moment) that the
Denouement also should arise out of the plot itself, arid not depend
on a stage-artifice, as in Medea, or in the story of the (arrested)
departure of the Greeks in the Iliad. The artifice must be reserved
for matters outside the play—for past events beyond human knowledge,
or events yet to come, which require to be foretold or announced;
since it is the privilege of the Gods to know everything. There should
be nothing improbable among the actual incidents. If it be
unavoidable, however, it should be outside the tragedy, like the
improbability in the Oedipus of Sophocles. But to return to the
Characters. As Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the
ordinary man, we in our way should follow the example of good
portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive features of a man,
and at the same time, without losing the likeness, make him handsomer
than he is. The poet in like manner, in portraying men quick or slow
to anger, or with similar infirmities of character, must know how to
represent them as such, and at the same time as good men, as Agathon
and Homer have represented Achilles.
All these rules one must keep in mind throughout, and further, those
also for such points of stage-effect as directly depend on the art of
the poet, since in these too one may often make mistakes. Enough,
however, has been said on the subject in one of our published
writings.
16Discovery in general has been explained already. As for the species of
Discovery, the first to be noted is (1) the least artistic form of it,
of which the poets make most use through mere lack of invention,
Discovery by signs or marks. Of these signs some are congenital, like
the ‘lance-head which the Earth-born have on them’, or ‘stars’, such
as Carcinus brings in in his Thyestes; others acquired after birth—
these latter being either marks on the body, e.g. scars, or external
tokens, like necklaces, or to take another sort of instance, the ark
in the Discovery in Tyro. Even these, however, admit of two uses, a
better and a worse; the scar of Ulysses is an instance; the Discovery
of him through it is made in one way by the nurse and in another by
the swineherds. A Discovery using signs as a means of assurance is
less artistic, as indeed are all such as imply reflection; whereas one
bringing them in all of a sudden, as in the Bath-story, is of a
better order. Next after these are (2) Discoveries made directly by
the poet; which are inartistic for that very reason; e.g. Orestes’
Discovery of himself in Iphigenia: whereas his sister reveals who
she is by the letter, Orestes is made to say himself what the poet
rather than the story demands. This, therefore, is not far removed
from the first-mentioned fault, since he might have presented certain
tokens as well. Another instance is the ‘shuttle’s voice’ in the
Tereus of Sophocles. (3) A third species is Discovery through
memory, from a man’s consciousness being awakened by something seen or
heard. Thus in The Cyprioe of Dicaeogenes, the sight of the picture
makes the man burst into tears; and in the Tale of Alcinous, hearing
the harper Ulysses is reminded of the past and weeps; the Discovery of
them being the result. (4) A fourth kind is Discovery through
reasoning; e.g. in The Choephoroe: ‘One like me is here; there is
no one like me but Orestes; he, therefore, must be here.’ Or that
which Polyidus the Sophist suggested for Iphigenia; since it was
natural for Orestes to reflect: ‘My sister was sacrificed, and I am to
be sacrificed like her.’ Or that in the Tydeus of Theodectes: ‘I
came to find a son, and am to die myself.’ Or that in The Phinidae:
on seeing the place the women inferred their fate, that they were to
die there, since they had also been exposed there. (5) There is, too,
a composite Discovery arising from bad reasoning on the side of the
other party. An instance of it is in Ulysses the False Messenger: he
said he should know the bow—which he had not seen; but to suppose
from that that he would know it again (as though he had once seen it)
was bad reasoning. (6) The best of all Discoveries, however, is that
arising from the incidents themselves, when the great surprise comes
about through a probable incident, like that in the Oedipus of
Sophocles; and also in Iphigenia; for it was not improbable that she
should wish to have a letter taken home. These last are the only
Discoveries independent of the artifice of signs and necklaces. Next
after them come Discoveries through reasoning.
17At the time when he is constructing his Plots, and engaged on the
Diction in which they are worked out, the poet should remember
(1) to put the actual scenes as far as possible before hi.e.es. In
this way, seeing everything with the vividness of an eye-witness as it
were, he will devise what is appropriate, and be least likely to
overlook incongruities. This is shown by what was censured in
Carcinus, the return of Amphiaraus
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