The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  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 Ulysses66 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 74 is metaphorical, (20) the best known standing ‘alone’. (3) A change, as Hippias of Thasos suggested, in the mode of reading a word will solve the difficulty in 75 and in .76 (4) Other difficulties may be solved by another punctuation; e. g. in Empedocles, . Or (5) by the assumption of an equivocal term, (25) as in ,77 where is equivocal. Or (6) 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 ,78 a ‘greave of new-wrought tin’. A worker in iron we call a ‘brazier’; and it is on the same principle that Ganymede is described as the ‘wine-server’ of Zeus,79 though the Gods do not drink wine. This latter, however, may be an instance of metaphor. (30) 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 80 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, (35) 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.’ [1461b] 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. (5) 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. (10) 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 improbable; for there is a probability of things happening also against probability. (
15) (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 relation, 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, (20) when they are not necessary and no use is made of them, like the improbability in the appearance of Aegeus in Medea81 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, (25) which are twelve in number.

  26 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, (30) 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’, (35) because he thought he so overacted his parts; and a similar view was taken of Pindarus also. [1462a] 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, (5) 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. (10) (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. (15) (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; which is a great advantage, since 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. [1462b] (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, (5) 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, (10) 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. (15)

  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.

  * * *

  1 1448a 17; 1448b 37.

  2 For hexameter poetry cf. chap. 23 f.; comedy was treated of in the lost Second Book.

  3 1449b 34.

  4 O. T. 911–1085.

  5 By Theodectes.

  6 Iph. Taur. 727 ff.

  7 Ch. 6.

  8 Med. 1236.

  9 Perhaps by Sophocles.

  10 l. 1231.

  11 By Euripides.

  12 Authorship unknown.

  13 1453a 19.

  14 1450b 8.

  15 A dithyramb by Timotheus.

  16 (Euripides).

  17 ll. 1211 ff., 1368 ff.

  18 l. 1317.

  19 ii. 155.

  20 In the lost dialogue On Poets.

  21 1452a 29.

  22 Authorship unknown.

  23 By Euripides.

  24 Od. xix. 386–475.

  25 Od. xxi. 205–25.

  26 Od. xix. 392.

  27 Iph. Taur. 727 ff.

  28 Ib., 800 ff.

  29 Od. viii. 521 ff. (Cf. viii, 83 ff.).

  30 ll. 168–234.

  31 Authorship unknown.

  32 Iph. Taur. 582.

  33 Iph. Taur. 281 ff.

  34 Ib., 1163 ff.

  35 This does not agree with anything actually said before.

  36 By Sophocles.

  37 Probably Sophocles’ Peleus is incorrect.

  38 By Aeschylus.

  39 Probably a satyric drama by Aeschylus.

  40 A loose reference to 1449b 12, 1455b 15.

  41 Cf. especially. Rhet. 1356a 1.

  42 Od. i. 185, xxiv, 308.

  43 Il. ii. 272.

  44 Empedocles.

  45 Timotheus.

  46 Alexis.

  47 Pl., Laws 770 A.

  48 Authorship unknown.

  49 Il. i. 11.

  50 Empedocles.

  51 Il. v. 393.

  52 Cleobulina.

  53 Od. ix. 515.

  54 Od. xx. 259.

  55 Il. xvii. 265.

  56 Soph., O. C., 986.

  57 1451a 23 ff.

  58 Authorship unknown.

  59 1451a 3.

  60 Centaur, cf. 1447b 21.

  61 1449a 24.

  62 Il. xxii. 205.

  63 xix. 164–260.

  64 Soph. El. 660 ff.

  65 Probably by Aeschylus.

  66 xiii. 116 ff.

  67 1452a 4, 1454a 4, 1455a 17, 1460a 11.

  68 Il. x. 152.

  69 Il. i. 50.

  70 Il. x. 316.

  71 Il. ix. 202.

  72 Cf. Il. x. 1, ii. 1.

  73 Il. x. 11–13.

  74 Il. xviii. 489 = Od. v. 275.

  75 Cf. Soph. El. 166b 1; Il. ii. 15.

  76 Il. xxiii. 327.

  77 Il. x. 251.

  78 Il. xxi. 592.

  79 Il. xx. 234.

  80 Il. xx. 267.

  81 1. 663.

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