【亚里士多德】诗学

THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE A TRANSLATION BY S. H. BUTCHER A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE trans. S. H. Butcher is a publication of the Pennsylvania State Univer- sity. This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State University nor Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, nor anyone associated with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way. THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE trans. S. H. Butcher, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Cover Design: Jim Manis Copyright © 2000 The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university. 3 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE A TRANSLATION BY S. H. BUTCHER [Transcriber’s Annotations and Conventions: the translator left intact some Greek words to illustrate a specific point of the original discourse. In this transcription, in order to retain the accuracy of this text, those words are rendered by spelling out each Greek letter individually, such as {alpha beta gamma delta …}. The reader can distinguish these words by the en- closing braces {}. Where multiple words occur together, they are separated by the “/” symbol for clarity. Readers who do not speak or read the Greek language will usually neither gain nor lose understanding by skipping over these passages. Those who understand Greek, however, may gain a deeper insight to the original meaning and distinctions expressed by Aristotle.] Analysis of Contents I ‘Imitation’ the common principle of the Arts of Poetry. II The Objects of Imitation. III The Manner of Imitation. IV The Origin and Development of Poetry. V Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy. VI Definition of Tragedy. VII The Plot must be a Whole. VIII The Plot must be a Unity. IX (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity. X (Plot continued.) Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots. XI (Plot continued.) Reversal of the Situation, Recognition, and Tragic or disastrous Incident defined and explained. XII The ‘quantitative parts’ of Tragedy defined. XIII (Plot continued.) What constitutes Tragic Action. XIV (Plot continued.) The tragic emotions of pity and fear should spring out of the Plot itself. XV The element of Character in Tragedy. 4 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE XVI (Plot continued.) Recognition: its various kinds, with examples. XVII Practical rules for the Tragic Poet. XVIII Further rules for the Tragic Poet. XIX Thought, or the Intellectual element, and Diction in Tragedy. XX Diction, or Language in general. XXI Poetic Diction. XXII (Poetic Diction continued.) How Poetry combines el- evation of language with perspicuity. XXIII Epic Poetry. XXIV (Epic Poetry continued.) Further points of agreement with Tragedy. XXV Critical Objections brought against Poetry, and the principles on which they are to be answered. XXVI A general estimate of the comparative worth of Epic Poetry and Tragedy. ARISTOTLE’S POETICS I I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each; to inquire into the struc- ture of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first. Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic: poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imi- tation. They differ, however, from one: another in three re- spects,—the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct. For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through the medium of colour and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by 5 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE rhythm, language, or ‘harmony,’ either singly or combined. Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, ‘harmony’ and rhythm alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd’s pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone is used without ‘harmony’; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement. There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse—which, verse, again, may either combine different metres or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre. People do, indeed, add the word ‘maker’ or ‘poet’ to the name of the metre, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imita- tion that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name. Even when a treatise on medi- cine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all metres, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of metres of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet. So much then for these distinctions. There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above mentioned, namely, rhythm, tune, and metre. Such are Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Com- edy; but between them the difference is, that in the first two cases these means are all employed in combination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now another. Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium of imitation. II Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and bad- 6 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE ness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life. Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned will exhibit these differences, and become a dis- tinct kind in imitating objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in dancing,: flute-playing, and lyre-playing. So again in language, whether prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the au- thor of the Deiliad, worse than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and Nomes; here too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and Philoxenus differed in rep- resenting their Cyclopes. The same distinction marks off Trag- edy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. III There is still a third difference—the manner in which each of these objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration— in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us. These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three dif- ferences which distinguish artistic imitation,—the medium, the objects, and the manner. So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer—for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes—for both imitate persons acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of ‘drama’ is given to such poems, as representing action. For the same reason the Dorians claim the invention both of Trag- edy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward by the Megarians,—not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Sicily, for the poet Epicharmus, who is much 7 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE earlier than Chionides and Magnes, belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language. The out- lying villages, they say, are by them called {kappa omega mu alpha iota}, by the Athenians {delta eta mu iota}: and they assume that Comedians were so named not from {kappa omega mu ‘alpha zeta epsilon iota nu}, ‘to revel,’ but because they wandered from village to village (kappa alpha tau alpha / kappa omega mu alpha sigma), being excluded contemptu- ously from the city. They add also that the Dorian word for ‘doing’ is {delta rho alpha nu}, and the Athenian, {pi rho al- pha tau tau epsilon iota nu}. This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of imitation. IV Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one differ- ence between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of expe- rience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidel- ity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in gen- eral; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, ‘Ah, that is he.’ For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the colouring, or some such other cause. Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for ‘harmony’ and rhythm, metres being mani- festly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry. Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated 8 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE noble actions, and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first compos- ing satires, as the former did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. A poem of the satirical kind cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be cited,—his own Margites, for example, and other similar compositions. The appropriate metre was also here introduced; hence the measure is still called the iambic or lampooning measure, being that in which people lam- pooned one another. Thus the older poets were distinguished as writers of heroic or of lampooning verse. As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among po- ets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid down the main lines of Com- edy, by dramatising the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to Comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to Tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became writers of Com- edy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians, since the drama was a larger and higher form of art. Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience,—this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy—as also Comedy —was at first mere improvi- sation. The one originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed. Hav- ing passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there it stopped. Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added scene-painting. Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the Satyric order, and had greater affinities with dancing. Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discov- 9 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE ered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all mea- sures, the most colloquial: we see it in the fact that conversa- tional speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation. The additions to the num- ber of ‘episodes’ or acts, and the other accessories of which tradition; tells, must be taken as already described; for to dis- cuss them in detail would, doubtless, be a large undertaking. V Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type, not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It con- sists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or de- structive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain. The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors,—these and other similar details remain un- known. As for the plot, it came originally from Sicily; but of Athenian writers Crates was the first who, abandoning the ‘iam- bic’ or lampooning form, generalised his themes and plots. Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imita- tion in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revo- lution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the Epic action has no limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at first the same freedom was ad- mitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry. Of their constituent parts some are common to both, some peculiar to Tragedy, whoever, therefore, knows what is good or bad Tragedy, knows also about Epic poetry. All the ele- ments of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the ele- ments of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem. 10 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE VI Of the poetry which imitates in hexameter verse, and of Comedy, we will speak hereafter. Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its formal definition, as resulting from what has been already said. Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embel- lished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of ac- tion, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. By ‘language embellished,’ I mean language into which rhythm, ‘harmony,’ and song en- ter. By ‘the several kinds in separate parts,’ I mean, that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song. Now as tragic imitation implies persons acting, it necessar- ily follows, in the first place, that Spectacular equipment will be a part of Tragedy. Next, Song and Diction, for these are the medium of imitation. By ‘Diction’ I mean the mere met- rical arrangement of the words: as for ‘Song,’ it is a term whose sense every one understands. Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain dis- tinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these—thought and character—are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action: for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, there- fore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality— namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the objects of imitation. And these complete the list. These elements have been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play contains Spectacular elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction, Song, and Thought. But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. 11 THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men’s quali- ties, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the re- verse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without char- acter. The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often true. It is the same in painting; and here lies the difference between Zeuxis and Polygnotus. Polygnotus delineates charac- ter well: the style of Zeuxis is devoid of ethical quality. Again, if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce thc essential tragic e