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.
everything else in it is episode.
Poetics. Aristotle. Ingram Bywater (Translator), ed. Gilbert Murray. Oxford. 1909.