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.
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.
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.
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
κῶμαι, whereas Athenians call them δήμοι—thus assuming
that comedians got the name not from their κωμάζειν 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 δρᾶν, whereas Athenians use πράττειν.
So much, then, as to the number and nature of the points
of difference in the imitation of these arts.
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 invec-
tive, 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.
And many
changes having been made, Tragedy stopped when it had
found its own nature.
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. A third actor and scenery
were due to Sophocles.
Further, there was the change in magnitude. From small plots
and ridiculous diction, because of its origin from satyr-drama,
it was only late that it became serious and attained dignity.
Its metre also changed from trochaic tetrameter 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.
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.
It would
probably be a long piece of work to go through the details.
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.
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 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 un-
derstood 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, enunci-
ating 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 drama-
tists 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 imita-
tion 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 con-
struction 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 main-
tain 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.
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 magni-
tude;
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, 1000 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.
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 with-
drawal 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.
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 his-
torian 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, how-
ever, 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 hap-
pened, 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 Antheus,
in which both incidents and names are of the poet's inven-
tion; 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 its 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.
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.
A Peripety is the change from one state of things within
the play to its opposite of the kind described, and that too
in the way we are saying, in the probable or necessary
sequence of events;
as it is for instance in Oedipus: here
the opposite state of things is produced by the Messenger,
who, coming to gladden Oedipus and to remove his fears
as to his mother, reveals the secret of his birth.
And in
Lynceus: just as he is being led off for execution, with
Danaus at his side to put him to death, the incidents pre-
ceding this bring it about that he is saved and Danaus put
to death.
A Discovery is, as the very word implies, a change
from ignorance to knowledge, and thus to either love or hate,
in the personages marked for good or evil fortune.
The
finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeties, like
that which goes with the Discovery in Oedipus.
There are
no doubt other forms of it; what we have said may happen
in a way in reference to inanimate things, even things of
a very casual kind; and it is also possible to discover
whether some one has done or not done something.
But
the form most directly connected with the Plot and the
action of the piece is the first-mentioned. This, with a
Peripety, will arouse either pity or fear—actions of that
nature being what Tragedy is assumed to represent;
and it
will also serve to bring about the happy or unhappy
ending.
The Discovery, then, being of persons, it may be that of one
party only to the other, the latter being already known;
or
both the parties may have to discover themselves. Iphigenia,
for instance, was discovered to Orestes by sending the
letter; and another Discovery was required to reveal him
to Iphigenia.
Two parts of the Plot, then, Peripety and Discovery, are
on matters of this sort.
A third part is Suffering;
which
we may define as an action of a destructive or painful
nature, such as murders on the stage, tortures, woundings,
and the like.
The parts of Tragedy to be treated as formative elements in
the whole were mentioned in a previous Chapter.
From the
point of view, however, of its quantity, i. e. the separate
sections into which it is divided, a tragedy has the following
parts: Prologue, Episode, Exode,
and a choral portion, dis-
tinguished into Parode and Stasimon;
these two are common
to all tragedies, whereas songs from the stage and Commoe
are only found in some.
The Prologue is all that precedes
the Parode of the chorus;
an Episode all that comes in
between two whole choral songs;
the Exode all that follows
after the last choral song.
In the choral portion the Parode
is the whole first statement of the chorus;
a Stasimon,
a song of the chorus without anapaests or trochees;
a
Commos, a lamentation sung by chorus and actor in concert.
The parts of Tragedy to be used as formative elements in
the whole we have already mentioned; the above are its
parts from the point of view of its quantity, or the separate
sections into which it is divided.
The next points after what we have said above will be
these: (1) What is the poet to aim at, and what is he to
avoid, in constructing his Plots? and (2) What are the
conditions on which the tragic effect depends?
We assume
that, for the finest form of Tragedy, the Plot must be not
simple but complex; and further, that it must imitate actions
arousing pity and fear, since that is the distinctive function
of this kind of imitation. It follows, therefore, that there
are three forms of Plot to be avoided.
(1) A good man
must not be seen passing from happiness to misery, or
(2) a bad man from misery to happiness.
The first
situation is not fear-inspiring or piteous, but simply odious
to us.
The second is the most untragic that can be; it
has no one of the requisites of Tragedy; it does not appeal
either to the human feeling in us, or to our pity, or to our
fears.
Nor on the other hand should (3) an extremely bad
man be seen falling from happiness into misery.
Such a
story may arouse the human feeling in us, but it will not
move us to either pity or fear; pity is occasioned by un-
deserved misfortune, and fear by that of one like ourselves;
so that there will be nothing either piteous or fear-inspiring
in the situation.
There remains, then, the intermediate
kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and
just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not
by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement,
of the number of those in the enjoyment of great reputation
and prosperity; e.g. Oedipus, Thyestes, and the men of note
of similar families.
The perfect Plot, accordingly, must
have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue;
the change in the hero's fortunes must be not from misery
to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery;
and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in
some great error on his part; the man himself being either
such as we have described, or better, not worse, than that.
Fact also confirms our theory. Though the poets began
by accepting any tragic story that came to hand, in these
days the finest tragedies are always on the story of some
few houses, on that of Alcmeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager,
Thyestes, Telephus, or any others that may have been in-
volved, as either agents or sufferers, in some deed of horror.
The theoretically best tragedy, then, has a Plot of this
description.
The critics, therefore, are wrong, who blame
Euripides for taking this line in his tragedies, and giving
many of them an unhappy ending. It is, as we have said,
the right line to take.
The best proof is this: on the
stage, and in the public performances, such plays, properly
worked out, are seen to be the most truly tragic; and
Euripides, even if his execution be faulty in every other
point, is seen to be nevertheless the most tragic certainly
of the dramatists.
After this comes the construction of
Plot which some rank first, one with a double story (like
the Odyssey) and an opposite issue for the good and the
bad personages.
It is ranked as first only through the
weakness of the audiences; the poets merely follow their
public, writing as its wishes dictate.
But the pleasure here
is not that of 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.
The 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 per-
petration 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.
In 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 in every
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 appro-
priate 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 in-
stance of baseness of character, not required for the story,
in the Menelaus in Orestes;
of the incongruous and un-
befitting 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 Dénouement also should arise out
of the plot itself, and 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.
Discovery 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 assu-
rance is less artistic, as indeed are all such as imply reflexion;
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.
At the time when he is constructing his Plots, and en-
gaged on the Diction in which they are worked out, the
poet should remember (1) to put the actual scenes as far
as possible before his eyes. 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 from the sanctuary; it
would have 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 a 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 in episodes 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; in epic
poetry they serve to lengthen out the poem.
The argu-
ment of the Odyssey is not a long one. A certain man has
been abroad many years; Poseidon is ever 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 his enemies;
and the end is his salvation and
their death.
This being all that is proper to the Odyssey,
everything else in it is episode.
(4) There is a further point
to be borne in mind. Every tragedy is in part Complication
and in part Dénouement; the incidents before the opening
scene, and often certain also of those within the play,
forming the Complication; and the rest the Dénouement.
By Complication I mean all from the beginning of the story
to the point just before the change in the hero's fortunes;
by Dénouement, all from the beginning of the change to
the end.
In the Lynceus of Theodectes, for instance, the
Complication includes, together with the presupposed inci-
dents, the seizure of the child and that in turn of the parents;
and the Dénouement all from the indictment for the murder
to the end.
(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,' ex-
emplified 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.
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 Dénouement.
Yet there
are many dramatists who, after a good Complication, fail in
the Dénouement.
But it is necessary for both points of
construction to be always duly mastered.
(6) One should also re-
member 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, how-
ever, 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 ruin even 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 wrong-
doer 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?
The 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-
in every 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 criti-
cized on that account. What fault can one see in Homer's
'Sing of the wrath, Goddess'?-which Protagoras has criti-
cized 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.
The 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.
The Letter is an indivisible sound of a par-
ticular 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, grave, or inter-
mediate accent. The details of these matters we must leave
to the metricians.
(2) A Syllable is a non-significant 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 non-significant 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.
combining two or more significant sounds into one; e. g.
(4) An Article is a non-significant 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 signi-
ficance by themselves in it. It is to be remembered that in
a compound we do not think of the parts as having a signifi-
cance also by themselves; in the name 'Theodorus,' for
instance, the
(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 of
the parts of which have a certain significance by themselves.
It may be observed that a Speech is not always made up of
Noun and Verb; it may be without a Verb, like the
definition of man; but it will always have some part with
a certain significance by itself. In the Speech 'Cleon
walks,' 'Cleon' is an instance of such a part.
A Speech is
said to be one in two ways, either as signifying one thing,
or as a union of several Speeches made into one by
conjunction. Thus the Iliad is one Speech by conjunction
of several; and the definition of man is one through its
signifying one thing.
Nouns are of two kinds, either (1) simple, i. e.
made up of non-significant parts, like the word
or (2) double; in the
latter case the word may be made up either of a significant
and a non-significant part (a distinction which disappears in
the compound), or of two significant parts.
It is possible also
to have triple, quadruple or higher compounds, like most of
our amplified names; e.g. 'Hermocaïcoxanthus' and the like.
Whatever its structure, a Noun must always be either
(1) the ordinary word for the thing, or (2) a strange word,
or (3) a metaphor, or (4) an ornamental word, or (5) a coined
word, or (6) a word lengthened out, or (7) curtailed, or (8)
altered in form.
By the ordinary word I mean that in
general use in a country;
and by a strange word, one in
use elsewhere. So that the same word may obviously be
at once strange and ordinary, though not in reference to the
same people;
Cyprus, and a strange word with us.
Metaphor consists
in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else;
the transference being either from genus to species, or from
species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds
of analogy.
That from genus to species is exemplified
in 'Here stands my ship'; for lying at anchor is the
'standing' of a particular kind of thing.
That from
species to genus in 'Truly ten thousand good deeds has
Ulysses wrought,' where 'ten thousand,' which is a par-
ticular large number, is put in place of the generic 'a large
number.'
That from species to species in 'Drawing the
life with the bronze,' and in 'Severing with the enduring
bronze'; where the poet uses 'draw' in the sense of 'sever'
and 'sever' in that of 'draw,' both words meaning to 'take
away' something.
That from analogy is possible whenever
there are four terms so related that the second (B) is to the
first (A), as the fourth (D) to the third (C); for one may
then metaphorically put B in lieu of D, and D in lieu of B.
Now and then, too, they qualify the metaphor by adding
on to it that to which the word it supplants is relative.
Thus a cup (B) is in relation to Dionysus (A) what a shield
(D) is to Ares (C). The cup accordingly will be metaphorically
described as the 'shield of Dionysus' (D + A), and the shield
as the 'cup of Ares' (B + C).
Or to take another instance:
As old age (D) is to life (C), so is evening (B) to day (A).
One will accordingly describe evening (B) as the 'old age
of the day' (D + A) - or by the Empedoclean equivalent;
and old age (D) as the 'evening' or 'sunset of life' (B + C).
It
may be that some of the terms thus related have no special
name of their own, but for all that they will be metaphorically
described in just the same way. Thus to cast forth seed-
corn is called 'sowing'; but to cast forth its flame, as said
of the sun, has no special name. This nameless act (B),
however, stands in just the same relation to its object,
sunlight (A), as sowing (D) to the seed-corn (C). Hence
the expression in the poet, 'sowing around a god-created
flame' (D + A).
There is also another form of qualified
metaphor. Having given the thing the alien name, one
may by a negative addition deny of it one of the attributes
naturally associated with its new name.
An instance of
this would be to call the shield not the 'cup of Ares,' as
in the former case, but a 'cup that holds no wine.'
A
coined word is a name which, being quite unknown among
a people, is given by the poet himself; e.g. (for there are some
words that seem to be of this origin)
A word is said to be lengthened out,
when it has a short vowel made long, or an extra syllable
inserted;
e.g.
is said to be curtailed, when it has lost a part; e.g.
and μία γίνεται ἀμφοτέρων ὄψ.
It is an altered word,
when part is left as it was and part is of the poet's making;
e. g. δεξιτερὸν κατὰ μαζόν.
The Nouns themselves (to whatever class they may belong)
are either masculines, feminines, or intermediates (neuter).
All ending in N, P, Σ, or in the two compounds of this last,
Ψ and Ξ, are masculines.
All ending in the invariably long
vowels, Η and Ω, and in Α among the vowels that may be
long, are feminines.
So that there is an equal number of
masculine and feminine terminations, as Ψ and Ξ are the
same as Σ, and need not be counted.
There is no Noun,
however, ending in a mute or in either of the two short
vowels, Ε and Ο.
Only three (
Ι, and five in Υ. The intermediates, or neuters, end in the
variable vowels or in N, P, Σ.
The perfection of Diction is for it to be at once clear
and not mean.
The clearest indeed is that made up of
the ordinary words for things, but it is mean, as is shown
by the poetry of Cleophon and Sthenelus.
On the other
hand the Diction becomes distinguished and non-prosaic
by the use of unfamiliar terms, i. e. strange words, metaphors,
lengthened forms, and everything that deviates from the
ordinary modes of speech.
But a whole statement in such
terms will be either a riddle or a barbarism, a riddle, if made
up of metaphors, a barbarism, if made up of strange words.
The very nature indeed of a riddle is this, to describe a
fact in an impossible combination of words (which cannot
be done with the real names for things, but can be with
their metaphorical substitutes); e.g. 'I saw a man glue brass
on another with fire,' and the like.
The corresponding
use of strange words results in a barbarism.
A certain
admixture, accordingly, of unfamiliar terms is necessary.
These, the strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental
equivalent, etc., will save the language from seeming mean
and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the
requisite clearness.
What helps most, however, to render
the Diction at once clear and non-prosaic is the use of the
lengthened, curtailed, and altered forms of words.
It is not right, then, to condemn these modes of speech,
and ridicule the poet for using them, as some have done;
e. g. the elder Euclid, who said it was easy to make poetry
if one were to be allowed to lengthen the words in the
statement itself as much as one likes—a procedure he
caricatured by reading Ἐπιχάρην εἶδον Μαραθῶνάδε βαδίζοντα
and οὐκ ἄν γ᾽ ἐράμενος τὸν ἐκείνου ἐλλέβορον
as verses.
A too
apparent use of these licences has certainly a ludicrous
effect,
but they are not alone in that; the rule of moderation
applies to all the constituents of the poetic vocabulary;
even with metaphors, strange words, and the rest, the effect
will be the same, if one uses them improperly and with a view
to provoking laughter.
The proper use of them is a very
different thing.
To realize the difference one should take
an epic verse and see how it reads when the normal words
are introduced. The same should be done too with the
strange word, the metaphor, and the rest; for one has
only to put the ordinary words in their place to see the
truth of what we are saying. The same iambic, for instance,
is found in Aeschylus and Euripides, and as it stands in
the former it is a poor line; whereas Euripides, by the
change of a single word, the substitution of a strange for
what is by usage the ordinary word, has made it seem a fine
one. Aeschylus having said in his Philoctetes:
φαγέδαινα ἥ μου σάρκας ἐσθίει ποδός,
Euripides has merely altered the
Or suppose νῦν δέ μ᾽ ἐὼν ὀλίγος τε καὶ οὐτιδανὸς καὶ ἀεικής
to be altered by the substitution of the ordinary words into
νῦν δέ μ᾽ ἐὼν μικρός τε καὶ ἀσθενικὸς καὶ ἀειδής.
Or the line δίφρον ἀεικέλιον καταθεὶς ὀλίγην τε τράπεζαν
into δίφρον μοχθηρὸν καταθεὶς μικράν τε τράπεζαν.
Or ἠιόνες βοόωσιν
into ἠιόνες κράζουσιν.
Add to this that
Ariphrades used to ridicule the tragedians for introducing ex-
pressions unknown in the language of common life, δωμάτων
(for
ἄποἀπὸ δωμάτων
), σέθεν
, ἐγὼ δέ νιν
, Ἀχιλλέως πέρι
(for περὶ
), and the like.
Ἀχιλλέως
The mere fact of their not being in
ordinary speech gives the Diction a non-prosaic character;
but Ariphrades was unaware of that.
It is a great thing,
indeed, to make a proper use of these poetical forms, as
also of compounds and strange words.
But the greatest
thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.
It is the one
thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also
a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive
perception of the similarity in dissimilars.
Of the kinds of words we have enumerated it may be
observed that compounds are most in place in the dithyramb,
strange words in heroic, and metaphors in iambic poetry.
Heroic poetry, indeed, may avail itself of them all. But in
iambic verse, which models itself as far as possible on the
spoken language, only those kinds of words are in place
which are allowable also in an oration, i. e. the ordinary
word, the metaphor, and the ornamental equivalent.
Let this, then, suffice as an account of Tragedy, the art
imitating by means of action on the stage.
As for the poetry which merely narrates, or imitates by
means of versified language (without action), it is evident
that it has several points in common with Tragedy. I. The
construction of its stories should clearly be like that in
a drama; they should be based on a single action,
one that is a complete whole in itself, with a beginning,
middle, and end, so as to enable the work to produce its
own proper pleasure with all the organic unity of a living
creature.
Nor should one suppose that there is anything
like them in our usual histories.
A history has to deal not
with one action, but with one period and all that happened
in that to one or more persons, however disconnected the
several events may have been.
Just as two events may
take place at the same time, e.g. the sea-fight off Salamis
and the battle with the Carthaginians in Sicily, without
converging to the same end, so too of two consecutive
events one may sometimes come after the other with no
one end as their common issue.
Nevertheless most of our
epic poets, one may say, ignore the distinction.
Herein, then, to repeat what we have said before, we have
a further proof of Homer's marvellous superiority to the
rest. He did not attempt to deal even with the Trojan war
in its entirety, though it was a whole with a definite beginning
and end—through a feeling apparently that it was too long
a story to be taken in in one view, or if not that, too
complicated from the variety of incident in it. As it is,
he has singled out one section of the whole; many of the
other incidents, however, he brings in as episodes, using
the Catalogue of the Ships, for instance, and other episodes
to relieve the uniformity of his narrative.
As for the other
epic poets, they treat of one man, or one period; or else
of an action which, although one, has a multiplicity of
parts in it.
This last is what the authors of the
Cypria and Little Iliad have done. And the result is that,
whereas the Iliad or Odyssey supplies materials for only
one, or at most two tragedies, the Cypria does that for
several, and the Little Iliad for more than eight: for an
Adjudgment of Arms, a Philoctetes, a Neoptolemus, a
Eurypylus, a Ulysses as Beggar, a Laconian Women, a Fall
of Ilium, and a Departure of the Fleet; as also a Sinon, and
a Women of Troy.
II. Besides this, Epic poetry must divide into the same
species as Tragedy;
it must be either simple or complex,
a story of character or one of suffering.
Its parts, too,
with the exception of Song and Spectacle, must be the
same, as it requires Peripeties, Discoveries, and scenes of
suffering just like Tragedy.
Lastly, the Thought and Diction
in it must be good in their way.
All these elements appear
in Homer first; and he has made due use of them. His
two poems are each examples of construction, the Iliad
simple and a story of suffering, the Odyssey complex (there
is Discovery throughout it) and a story of character. And
they are more than this, since in Diction and Thought too
they surpass all other poems.
There is, however, a difference in the Epic as compared
with Tragedy, (1) in its length, and (2) in its metre.
(1) As
to its length, the limit already suggested will suffice: it must
be possible for the beginning and end of the work to be
taken in in one view—a condition which will be fulfilled
if the poem be shorter than the old epics, and about as
long as the series of tragedies offered for one hearing.
For the extension of its length epic poetry has a special
advantage, of which it makes large use. In a play one
cannot represent an action with a number of parts going
on simultaneously; one is limited to the part on the stage
and connected with the actors. Whereas in epic poetry
the narrative form makes it possible for one to describe
a number of simultaneous incidents; and these, if germane
to the subject, increase the body of the poem.
This then
is a gain to the Epic, tending to give it grandeur, and also
variety of interest and room for episodes of diverse kinds.
Uniformity of incident by the satiety it soon creates is apt
to ruin tragedies on the stage.
(2) As for its metre, the
heroic has been assigned it from experience;
were any one
to attempt a narrative poem in some one, or in several, of
the other metres, the incongruity of the thing would be
apparent.
The heroic in fact is the gravest and weightiest
of metres—which is what makes it more tolerant than the
rest of strange words and metaphors, that also being a point
in which the narrative form of poetry goes beyond all others.
The iambic and trochaic, on the other hand, are metres of
movement, the one representing that of life and action,
the other that of the dance.
Still more unnatural would it
appear, if one were to write an epic in a medley of metres,
as Chaeremon did.
Hence it is that no one has ever written
a long story in any but heroic verse; nature herself, as we
have said, teaches us to select the metre appropriate to such
a story.
Homer, admirable as he is in every other respect, is
especially so in this, that he alone among epic poets is not
unaware of the part to be played by the poet himself in
the poem.
The poet should say very little in propria persona,
as he is no imitator when doing that. Whereas the other
poets are perpetually coming forward in person, and say but
little, and that only here and there, as imitators, Homer after
a brief preface brings in forthwith a man, a woman, or some
other Character—no one of them characterless, but each
with distinctive characteristics.
The marvellous is certainly required in Tragedy. The
Epic, however, affords more opening for the improbable,
the chief factor in the marvellous, because in it the agents
are not visibly before one.
The scene of the pursuit of
Hector would be ridiculous on the stage—the Greeks halting
instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head to
stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked.
The marvellous, however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown
by the fact that we all tell a story with additions, in the
belief that we are doing our hearers a pleasure.
Homer more than any other has taught the rest of us the
art of framing lies in the right way. I mean the use of
paralogism. Whenever, if A is or happens, a consequent, B,
is or happens, men's notion is that, if the B is, the A also is
—but that is a false conclusion. Accordingly, if A is untrue,
but there is something else, B, that on the assumption of its
truth follows as its consequent, the right thing then is to add
on the B. Just because we know the truth of the conse-
quent, we are in our own minds led on to the erroneous
inference of the truth of the antecedent. Here is an instance,
from the Bath-story in the Odyssey.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an uncon-
vincing possibility.
The story should never be made up of
improbable incidents; there should be nothing of the sort
in it. If, however, such incidents are unavoidable, they
should be outside the piece, like the hero's ignorance in
Oedipus of the circumstances of Laius' death; not within it,
like the report of the Pythian games in Electra, or the man's
having come to Mysia from Tegea without uttering a word
on the way, in The Mysians.
So that it is ridiculous to say
that one's Plot would have been spoilt without them, since
it is fundamentally wrong to make up such Plots. If the
poet has taken such a Plot, however, and one sees that he
might have put it in a more probable form, he is guilty of
absurdity as well as a fault of art.
Even in the Odyssey
the improbabilities in the setting-ashore of Ulysses would be
clearly intolerable in the hands of an inferior poet. As it
is, the poet conceals them, his other excellences veiling
their absurdity.
Elaborate Diction, however, is required
only in places where there is no action, and no Character
or Thought to be revealed. Where there is Character or
Thought, on the other hand, an over-ornate Diction tends to
obscure them.
As regards Problems and their Solutions, one may see
the number and nature of the assumptions on which they
proceed by viewing the matter in the following way.
(1) The
poet being an imitator just like the painter or other maker
of likenesses, he must necessarily in all instances represent
things in one or other of three aspects, either as they were
or are, or as they are said or thought to be or to have
been, or as they ought to be.
(2) All this he does in
language, with an admixture, it may be, of strange words
and metaphors, as also of the various modified forms of
words,
since the use of these is conceded in poetry.
(3) It is to be remembered, too, that there is not the same kind
of correctness in poetry as in politics, or indeed any other
art.
There is, however, within the limits of poetry itself
a possibility of two kinds of error, the one directly, the
other only accidentally connected with the art.
If the poet meant to describe the thing correctly, and failed through
lack of power of expression, his art itself is at fault. But
if it was through his having meant to describe it in some
incorrect way (e.g. to make the horse in movement have
both right legs thrown forward) that the technical error
(one in a matter of, say, medicine or some other special
science), or impossibilities of whatever kind they may be,
have got into his description, his error in that case is not
in the essentials of the poetic art.
These, therefore, must
be the premisses of the Solutions in answer to the criticisms
involved in the Problems.
I. As to the criticisms relating to the poet's art itself.
Any impossibilities there may be in his descriptions of things
are faults.
But from another point of view they are justifiable,
if they serve the end of poetry itself—if (to assume what we
have said of that end) they make the effect of some portion
of the work more astounding. The Pursuit of Hector is
an instance in point.
If, however, the poetic end might
have been as well or better attained without sacrifice of
technical correctness in such matters, the impossibility is
not to be justified, since the description should be, if it can,
entirely free from error.
One may ask, too, whether the
error is in a matter directly or only accidentally connected
with the poetic art; since it is a lesser error in an artist
not to know, for instance, that the hind has no horns, than
to produce an unrecognizable picture of one.
II. If the poet's description be criticized as not true to
fact, one may urge perhaps that the object ought to be as
described—an answer like that of Sophocles, who said that
he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they
were.
If the description, however, be neither true nor of the
thing as it ought to be, the answer must be then, that it is
in accordance with opinion.
The tales about Gods, for
instance, may be as wrong
as Xenophanes thinks, neither
true nor the better thing to say; but they are certainly in
accordance with opinion.
Of other statements in poetry
one may perhaps say, not that they are better than the
truth, but that the fact was so at the time; e.g. the descrip-
tion of the arms: ‘their spears stood upright, butt-end upon
the ground’; for that was the usual way of fixing them then,
as it is still with the Illyrians.
As for the question whether
something said or done in a poem is morally right or not,
in dealing with that one should consider not only the intrinsic
quality of the actual word or deed, but also the person who
says or does it, the person to whom he says or does it,
the time, the means, and the motive of the agent—whether
he does it to attain a greater good, or to avoid a greater
evil.
III. Other criticisms one must meet by considering the
language of the poet: (1) by the assumption of a strange
word in a passage like οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον
, where by οὐρῆας
Homer may perhaps mean not mules but sentinels. And
in saying of Dolon, ὅς ῥ᾽ ἦ τοι εἶδος μὲν ἔην κακός
, his meaning
may perhaps be, not that Dolon's body was deformed, but
that his face was ugly, as εὐειδής
is the Cretan word for
handsome-faced. So, too, ζωρότερον δὲ κέραιε
may mean not
‘mix the wine stronger,’ as though for topers, but ‘mix it
quicker.’
(2) Other expressions in Homer may be explained
as metaphorical; e.g. in ἄλλοι μέν ῥα θεοί τε καὶ ἀνέρες εἶδον
, as compared with what he tells us at the
παννύχιοι
same time, ἦ τοι ὅτ᾽ ἐς πεδίον τὸ Τρωικὸν ἀθρήσειεν, αὐλῶν
, the word
συρίγγων τε ὁμαδόνἅπαντες
, ‘all,’ is metaphorically
put for ‘many,’ since ‘all’ is a species of ‘many.’ So also
his οἴη δ᾽ ἄμμορος
is metaphorical, the best known standing
‘alone.’
(3) A change, as Hippias suggested, in the mode
of reading a word will solve the difficulty in δίδομεν δέ οἱ
,
and τὸ μὲν οὗ καταπύθεται ὄμβρῳ
.
(4) Other difficulties may
be solved by another punctuation; e.g. in Empedocles, αἶψα
.
δὲ θνήτ᾽ ἐφύοντο, τὰ πρὶν μάθον ἀθάνατα ζωρά τε πρὶν κέκρητο
(5) Or by the assumption of an equivocal term, as in παρῴ-
, where
χηκεν δὲ πλέω νύξπλέω
is equivocal.
(6) Or by an
appeal to the custom of language. Wine-and-water we
call ‘wine’; and it is on the same principle that Homer
speaks of a κνημὶς νεοτεύκτου κασσιτέροιο
, a ‘greave of new-
wrought tin.’ A worker in iron we call a ‘brazier’;
and it is on the same principle that Ganymede is de-
scribed as the ‘wine-server’ of Zeus, though the Gods do
not drink wine. This latter, however, may be an instance of
metaphor.
But whenever also a word seems to imply some
contradiction, it is necessary to reflect how many ways there
may be of understanding it in the passage in question; e.g.
in Homer's τῇ ῥ᾽ ἔσχετο χάλκεον ἔγχος
one should consider
the possible senses of ‘was stopped there’—
whether by
taking it in this sense
or in that one will best avoid the fault
of which Glaucon speaks:
‘They start with some improbable
presumption; and having so decreed it themselves, proceed
to draw inferences, and censure the poet as though he
had actually said whatever they happen to believe, if his
statement conflicts with their own notion of things.’
This
is how Homer's silence about Icarius has been treated.
Starting with the notion of his having been a Lacedaemonian,
the critics think it strange for Telemachus not to have met
him when he went to Lacedaemon. Whereas the fact may
have been as the Cephallenians say, that the wife of Ulysses
was of a Cephallenian family, and that her father's name
was Icadius, not Icarius. So that it is probably a mistake
of the critics that has given rise to the Problem.
Speaking generally, one has to justify (1) the Impossible
by reference to the requirements of poetry, or to the better,
or to opinion.
For the purposes of poetry a convincing
impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility;
and if men such as Zeuxis depicted be impossible, the
answer is that it is better they should be like that, as the
artist ought to improve on his model.
(2) The Improbable
one has to justify either by showing it to be in accordance
with opinion, or by urging that at times it is not im-
probable; for there is a probability of things happening
also against probability.
(3) The contradictions found in
the poet's language one should first test as one does
an opponent's confutation in a dialectical argument, so as
to see whether he means the same thing, in the same rela-
tion, and in the same sense, before admitting that he has
contradicted either something he has said himself or what
a man of sound sense assumes as true.
But there is no
possible apology for improbability of Plot or depravity of
character, when they are not necessary and no use is made
of them, like the improbability in the appearance of Aegeus
in Medea and the baseness of Menelaus in Orestes.
The objections, then, of critics start with faults of five
kinds: the allegation is always that something is either (1)
impossible, (2) improbable, (3) corrupting, (4) contradictory,
or (5) against technical correctness. The answers to these
objections must be sought under one or other of the above-
mentioned heads, which are twelve in number.
The question may be raised whether the epic or the tragic
is the higher form of imitation.
It may be argued that, if
the less vulgar is the higher, and the less vulgar is always
that which addresses the better public, an art addressing
any and every one is of a very vulgar order.
It is a belief
that their public cannot see the meaning, unless they add
something themselves, that causes the perpetual movements
of the performers—bad flute-players, for instance, rolling
about, if quoit-throwing is to be represented, and pulling at
the conductor, if Scylla is the subject of the piece.
Tragedy,
then, is said to be an art of this order—to be in fact just
what the later actors were in the eyes of their predecessors;
for Mynniscus used to call Callippides ‘the ape,’ because
he thought he so overacted his parts; and a similar view
was taken of Pindarus also. All Tragedy, however, is said
to stand to the Epic as the newer to the older school of
actors.
The one, accordingly, is said to address a cultivated
audience, which does not need the accompaniment of gesture;
the other, an uncultivated one. If, therefore, Tragedy is
a vulgar art, it must clearly be lower than the Epic.
The answer to this is twofold. In the first place, one
may urge (1) that the censure does not touch the art of the
dramatic poet, but only that of his interpreter; for it is
quite possible to overdo the gesturing even in an epic
recital, as did Sosistratus, and in a singing contest, as did
Mnasitheus of Opus.
(2) That one should not condemn
all movement, unless one means to condemn even the dance,
but only that of ignoble people—which is the point of
the criticism passed on Callippides and in the present day
on others, that their women are not like gentlewomen.
(3)
That Tragedy may produce its effect even without movement
or action in just the same way as Epic poetry; for from
the mere reading of a play its quality may be seen. So
that, if it be superior in all other respects, this element of
inferiority is no necessary part of it.
In the second place, one must remember (1) that Tragedy
has everything that the Epic has
(even the epic metre being
admissible), together with a not inconsiderable addition in
the shape of the Music (a very real factor in the pleasure
of the drama) and the Spectacle.
(2) That its reality of
presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the
play as acted.
(3) That the tragic imitation requires less
space for the attainment of its end; (the more concentrated
effect is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture
of time to dilute it—consider the Oedipus of Sophocles, for
instance, and the effect of expanding it into the number of
lines of the Iliad);
(4) That there is less unity in the
imitation of the epic poets, as is proved by the fact that
any one work of theirs supplies matter for several tragedies;
the result being that, if they take what is really a single
story, it seems curt when briefly told, and thin and waterish
when on the scale of length usual with their verse. In saying
that there is less unity in an epic, I mean an epic made
up of a plurality of actions,
in the same way as the Iliad
and Odyssey have many such parts, each one of them in
itself of some magnitude; yet the structure of the two
Homeric poems is as perfect as can be, and the action in
them is as nearly as possible one action.
If, then, Tragedy is superior in these respects, and also
besides these, in its poetic effect (since the two forms of
poetry should give us, not any or every pleasure, but the
very special kind we have mentioned), it is clear that, as
attaining the poetic effect better than the Epic, it will be
the higher form of art.
So much for Tragedy and Epic poetry—for these two
arts in general and their species; the number and nature of
their constituent parts; the causes of success and failure in
them; the Objections of the critics, and the Solutions in
answer to them.