The Poetics by Aristotle (android based ebook reader txt) 📖
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passed unnoticed, if it had not been actually seen by the audience;
but on the stage his play failed, the incongruity of the incident
offending the spectators. (2) As far as may be, too, the poet should
even act his story with the very gestures of his personages. Given the
same natural qualifications, he who feels the emotions to be described
will be the most convincing; distress and anger, for instance, are
portrayed most truthfully by one who is feeling them at the moment.
Hence it is that poetry demands a man with special gift for it, or
else one with a touch of madness in him; the, former can easily assume
the required mood, and the latter may be actually beside himself with
emotion. (3) His story, again, whether already made or of his own
making, he should first simplify and reduce to a universal form,
before proceeding to lengthen it out by the insertion of episodes. The
following will show how the universal element in Iphigenia, for
instance, may be viewed: A certain maiden having been offered in
sacrifice, and spirited away from her sacrificers into another land,
where the custom was to sacrifice all strangers to the Goddess, she
was made there the priestess of this rite. Long after that the brother
of the priestess happened to come; the fact, however, of the oracle
having for a certain reason bidden him go thither, and his object in
going, are outside the Plot of the play. On his coming he was
arrested, and about to be sacrificed, when he revealed who he
was—either as Euripides puts it, or (as suggested by Polyidus) by the
not improbable exclamation, ‘So I too am doomed to be sacrificed, as
my sister was’; and the disclosure led to his salvation. This done,
the next thing, after the proper names have been fixed as a basis for
the story, is to work i.e.isodes or accessory incidents. One must
mind, however, that the episodes are appropriate, like the fit of
madness in Orestes, which led to his arrest, and the purifying, which
brought about his salvation. In plays, then, the episodes are short;
i.e.ic poetry they serve to lengthen out the poem. The argument of
the Odyssey is not a long one.
A certain man has been abroad many years; Poseidon i.e.er on the
watch for him, and he is all alone. Matters at home too have come to
this, that his substance is being wasted and his son’s death plotted
by suitors to his wife. Then he arrives there himself after his
grievous sufferings; reveals himself, and falls on hi.e.emies; and
the end is his salvation and their death. This being all that is
proper to the Odyssey, everything else in it i.e.isode.
18(4) There is a further point to be borne in mind. Every tragedy is in
part Complication and in part Denouement; the incidents before the
opening scene, and often certain also of those within the play,
forming the Complication; and the rest the Denouement. By Complication
I mean all from the beginning of the story to the point just before
the change in the hero’s fortunes; by Denouement, all from the
beginning of the change to the end. In the Lynceus of Theodectes,
for instance, the Complication includes, together with the presupposed
incidents, the seizure of the child and that in turn of the parents;
and the Denouement all from the indictment for the murder to the end.
Now it is right, when one speaks of a tragedy as the same or not the
same as another, to do so on the ground before all else of their Plot,
i.e. as having the same or not the same Complication and Denouement.
Yet there are many dramatists who, after a good Complication, fail in
the Denouement. But it is necessary for both points of construction to
be always duly mastered. (5) There are four distinct species of
Tragedy—that being the number of the constituents also that have been
mentioned: first, the complex Tragedy, which is all Peripety and
Discovery; second, the Tragedy of suffering, e.g. the Ajaxes and
Ixions; third, the Tragedy of character, e.g. The Phthiotides and
Peleus. The fourth constituent is that of ‘Spectacle’, exemplified
in The Phorcides, in Prometheus, and in all plays with the scene
laid in the nether world. The poet’s aim, then, should be to combine
every element of interest, if possible, or else the more important and
the major part of them. This is now especially necessary owing to the
unfair criticism to which the poet is subjected in these days. Just
because there have been poets before him strong in the several species
of tragedy, the critics now expect the one man to surpass that which
was the strong point of each one of his predecessors. (6) One should
also remember what has been said more than once, and not write a
tragedy on an epic body of incident (i.e. one with a plurality of
stories in it), by attempting to dramatize, for instance, the entire
story of the Iliad. In the epic owing to its scale every part is
treated at proper length; with a drama, however, on the same story the
result is very disappointing. This is shown by the fact that all who
have dramatized the fall of Ilium in its entirety, and not part by
part, like Euripides, or the whole of the Niobe story, instead of a
portion, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or have but ill success
on the stage; for that and that alone was enough to rui.e.en a play
by Agathon. Yet in their Peripeties, as also in their simple plots,
the poets I mean show wonderful skill in aiming at the kind of effect
they desire—a tragic situation that arouses the human feeling in one,
like the clever villain (e.g. Sisyphus) deceived, or the brave
wrongdoer worsted. This is probable, however, only in Agathon’s sense,
when he speaks of the probability of even improbabilities coming to
pass. (7) The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it
should be an integral part of the whole, and take a share in the
action—that which it has in Sophocles rather than in Euripides. With
the later poets, however, the songs in a play of theirs have no more
to do with the Plot of that than of any other tragedy. Hence it is
that they are now singing intercalary pieces, a practice first
introduced by Agathon. And yet what real difference is there between
singing such intercalary pieces, and attempting to fit in a speech, or
even a whole act, from one play into another?
19The Plot and Characters having been discussed, it remains to consider
the Diction and Thought. As for the Thought, we may assume what is
said of it in our Art of Rhetoric, as it belongs more properly to that
department of inquiry. The Thought of the personages is shown in
everything to be effected by their language—i.e.ery effort to prove
or disprove, to arouse emotion (pity, fear, anger, and the like), or
to maximize or minimize things. It is clear, also, that their mental
procedure must be on the same lines in their actions likewise,
whenever they wish them to arouse pity or horror, or have a look of
importance or probability. The only difference is that with the act
the impression has to be made without explanation; whereas with the
spoken word it has to be produced by the speaker, and result from his
language. What, indeed, would be the good of the speaker, if things
appeared in the required light even apart from anything he says?
As regards the Diction, one subject for inquiry under this head is the
turns given to the language when spoken; e.g. the difference between
command and prayer, simple statement and threat, question and answer,
and so forth. The theory of such matters, however, belongs to
Elocution and the professors of that art. Whether the poet knows these
things or not, his art as a poet is never seriously criticized on that
account. What fault can one see in Homer’s ‘Sing of the wrath,
Goddess’?—which Protagoras has criticized as being a command where a
prayer was meant, since to bid one do or not do, he tells us, is a
command. Let us pass over this, then, as appertaining to another art,
and not to that of poetry.
20The Diction viewed as a whole is made up of the following parts: the
Letter (or ultimate element), the Syllable, the Conjunction, the
Article, the Noun, the Verb, the Case, and the Speech. (1) The Letter
is an indivisible sound of a particular kind, one that may become a
factor in an intelligible sound. Indivisible sounds are uttered by the
brutes also, but no one of these is a Letter in our sense of the term.
These elementary sounds are either vowels, semivowels, or mutes. A
vowel is a Letter having an audible sound without the addition of
another Letter. A semivowel, one having an audible sound by the
addition of another Letter; e.g. S and R. A mute, one having no sound
at all by itself, but becoming audible by an addition, that of one of
the Letters which have a sound of some sort of their own; e.g. D and
G. The Letters differ in various ways: as produced by different
conformations or in different regions of the mouth; as aspirated, not
aspirated, or sometimes one and sometimes the other; as long, short,
or of variable quantity; and further as having an acute.g.ave, or
intermediate accent.
The details of these matters we mubt leave to the metricians. (2) A
Syllable is a nonsignificant composite sound, made up of a mute and a
Letter having a sound (a vowel or semivowel); for GR, without an A, is
just as much a Syllable as GRA, with an A. The various forms of the
Syllable also belong to the theory of metre. (3) A Conjunction is (a)
a nonsignificant sound which, when one significant sound is formable
out of several, neither hinders nor aids the union, and which, if the
Speech thus formed stands by itself (apart from other Speeches) must
not be inserted at the beginning of it; e.g. men, de, toi,
de. Or (b) a nonsignificant sound capable of combining two or more
significant sounds into one; e.g. amphi, peri, etc. (4) An
Article is a nonsignificant sound marking the beginning, end, or
dividing-point of a Speech, its natural place being either at the
extremities or in the middle. (5) A Noun or name is a composite
significant sound not involving the idea of time, with parts which
have no significance by themselves in it. It is to be remembered that
in a compound we do not think of the parts as having a significance
also by themselves; in the name ‘Theodorus’, for instance, the doron
means nothing to us.
(6) A Verb is a composite significant sound involving the idea of
time, with parts which (just as in the Noun) have no significance by
themselves in it. Whereas the word ‘man’ or ‘white’ does not imply
when, ‘walks’ and ‘has walked’ involve in addition to the idea of
walking that of time present or time past.
(7) A Case of a Noun or Verb is when the word means ‘of or ‘to’ a
thing, and so forth, or for one or many (e.g. ‘man’ and ‘men’); or it
may consist merely in the mode of utterance, e.g. in question,
command, etc. ‘Walked?’ and ‘Walk!’ are Cases of the verb ‘to walk’ of
this last kind. (8) A Speech is a composite significant sound, some
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