The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (248 page)

Of the kinds of words we have enumerated it may be observed that compounds are most in place in the dithyramb,
(10)
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,
(15)
then, suffice as an account of Tragedy, the art imitating by means of action on the stage.

23
     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,
(20)
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.
(25)
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,
(30)
then, to repeat what we have said before,
⁵⁷
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,
(35)
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.
[1459b]
This last is what the authors of the
Cypria
⁵⁸
and
Little Iliad
have done.
(58)
And the result is
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
,
(5)
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.

24
     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,
(10)
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.
(15)
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
⁵⁹
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,
(20)
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.
(25)
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.
(30)
(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,
(35)
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.
[1460a]
Still more unnatural would it appear, if one were to write an epic in a medley of metres, as Chaeremon did.
⁶⁰
Hence it is that no one has ever written a long story in any but heroic verse; nature herself, as we have said,
⁶¹
teaches us to select the metre appropriate to such a story.

Homer,
(5)
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,
(10)
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.
(15)
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;
⁶²
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.
(20)
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 consequent, we are in our own minds led on to the erroneous inference of the truth of the antecedent.
(25)
Here is an instance, from the
Bath-story
in the
Odyssey.
⁶³

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing 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,
(30)
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
,
⁶⁴
or the man’s having come to Mysia from Tegea without uttering a word on the way, in
The Mysians.
⁶⁵
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.
(35)
Even in the
Odyssey
the improbabilities in the setting-ashore of Ulysses
⁶⁶
would be clearly intolerable in the hands of an inferior poet.
[1460b]
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.
(5)

25
     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,
(10)
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,
(15)
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),
(20)
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)
⁶⁷
they make the effect of either that very portion of the work or some other portion more astounding.
(25)
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,
(30)
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,
(35)
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.
[1461a]
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 description of the arms: ‘their spears stood upright, butt-end upon the ground’;
⁶⁸
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,
(5)
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
,
⁶⁹
where by
(10)
Homer may perhaps mean not mules but sentinels. And in saying of Dolon,
,
⁷⁰
his meaning may perhaps be, not that Dolon’s body was deformed, but that his face was ugly, as
is the Cretan word for handsome-faced. So, too,
⁷¹
may mean not ‘mix the wine stronger’,
(15)
as though for topers, but ‘mix it quicker’, (2) Other expressions in Homer may be explained as metaphorical; e. g. in
⁷²
as compared with what he tells us at the same time,
,
⁷³
the word
‘all’, is metaphorically put for ‘many’, since ‘all’ is a species of ‘many’. So also his