Aristote Poetics 6.13

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La Tragedie n'agit donc point pour imiter les mœurs, mais elle ajoûte les mœurs à cauſe des actions, de ſorte que les actions & la fable ſont la fin de la Tragedie, or en toutes choſes, la fin eſt ce qu'il y a de plus important.

Poetics. Aristote. Paris. 1692.

Current edition Experimental

La poëtique d'Aristote (André Dacier, 1692) (OCR draft) (fra) (André Dacier's French translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1692.)

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (4)
Περὶ ποιητικῆς (OCR draft) (Aristotle, Poetics. Immanuel Bekker, editor, Aristotelis Opera, volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1837.) — 6 focus
Περὶ ποιητικῆς (OCR draft) Perseus (Aristotle, De arte poetica liber. Rudolf Kassel, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Reference edition for passage alignment.) — 6 focus
Poetics, Greek text (Ingram Bywater, 1909) (OCR draft) Experimental (Ingram Bywater's Greek text of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1909.) — 6 focus
Poetics, Greek text (Franz Ritter, 1839) (OCR draft) Experimental (Franz Ritter's 1839 Greek edition, corrected against OCR of the represented copy and aligned to the conventional Perseus chapter-and-subchapter sequence.) — 6 focus
Translations (13)
Poetics (W. H. Fyfe) (OCR draft) Perseus (William Hamilton Fyfe's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, Loeb Classical Library, 1939 printing.) — 6 focus
Arabic Poetics (Badawī edition, 1953) (OCR draft) (The ancient Arabic translation of Aristotle's Poetics in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī's 1953 edition.) — 6 focus
Poetics (S. H. Butcher, 1911) (OCR draft) Experimental (S. H. Butcher's English translation from Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, fourth edition, 1911.) — 6 focus
Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (Ingram Bywater, 1909) (OCR draft) Experimental (Ingram Bywater's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1909.) — 6 focus
Poetics (Thomas Twining, 1789) (OCR draft) Experimental (Thomas Twining's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1789 and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 6.13 focus
Tragedy, therefore, does not imitate action, for the sake of imitating manners, but in the imitation of action, that of manners is of course involved. So that the action and the fable are the end of Tragedy; and in every thing the end is of principal importance.
The Poetic of Aristotle (Henry James Pye, revised 1792) (OCR draft) Experimental (Henry James Pye's revised 1792 English translation, corrected against the 1788 first edition, aligned to the Kassel reference edition, and supplied with a selective apparatus of substantive 1788 readings.) — 6.13 focus
Actions, therefore, are not represented for the purpose of imitating manners, though manners are necessarily interwoven with the action; therefore action and fable are the end of tragedy and the end is the object to be principally considered in every thing.
The Poetic of Aristotle (Theodore Alois Buckley) (OCR draft) Experimental (Theodore Alois Buckley's English translation, first published in 1850 and represented from the Henry G. Bohn 1857 printing; corrected against a second OCR and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 6.13 focus
but it embraces manners on account of actions; so that the action and the fable are the end of tragedy. 1 But the end is the greatest of all things.
Poetica Latine conversa (Franciscus Ritter, 1839) (OCR draft) Experimental (Franz Ritter's Latin translation, corrected against OCR of the represented copy and aligned to the conventional Perseus chapter-and-subchapter sequence.) — 6 focus
Poetica d'Aristotile (Bernardo Segni, 1549) (OCR draft) Experimental (Bernardo Segni's 1549 Florentine Italian translation, aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 6 focus
De poetica (Antonio Riccobono, 1587) (OCR draft) Experimental (Antonio Riccobono's Latin translation, first published in 1587; text represented from Immanuel Bekker's 1831 edition.) — 6 focus
De arte poetica liber (William of Moerbeke, ca. 1277) (OCR draft) Experimental (William of Moerbeke's medieval Latin translation, represented by the 1953 Aristoteles Latinus edition.) — 6 focus
Arabic Poetics (Abū Bishr Mattā; Tkatsch edition) (OCR draft) Experimental (The Arabic translation attributed to Abū Bishr Mattā, edited by Jaroslaus Tkatsch in 1928 and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 6 focus
Arabic Poetics (Abū Bishr Mattā; Tkatsch edition, unaligned) (OCR draft) Experimental (Tkatsch's edition of the medieval Arabic translation in its original, unaligned segmentation.) — 6 focus

Commentary

Commentary on the Poetics (Ingram Bywater, 1909) (OCR draft) (Ingram Bywater's English commentary on Aristotle's Poetics.) focus

11. mvp-aristotle-comment-228

οὐκ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν =
οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν ποιητῶν
. The ὡς εἰπεῖν which follows should perhaps be transposed and inserted after πᾶν in the next line. Of the many emendations that have been propounded the simplest certainly is that of Bursian, οὐκ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν 〈ἀλλὰ πάντες〉, on which that formerly suggested by myself, ὀλίγου αὐτῶν 〈ἅπαντες〉 ( J. of Phil. 14 p. 44 ), was based. οὐκ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν, however, has on it a certain stamp of genuineness. The sense seems to be this: The six parts are in the nature of things possible elements in every tragedy, so to say; and due use has been made of them by not a few of the poets. The statement may be compared with those in a 25 , 36, and 18, 1456 a 3 , where the existence is recognized of plays weak or deficient in some of the parts. For the sense of ἔχει in this passage (='admits of', 'has in it the possibility of') comp. 2, 1448 a 7 ; and for the distinction between it and κέχρηνται, Eth. N. 7. 4, 1146 b 32
ὁ ἔχων μὲν οὐ χρώμενος δὲ τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ
. — 1147 a 1
ἔχοντα μὲν ἀμφοτέρας [scil. τὰς προτάσεις] οὐδὲν κωλύει πράττειν παρὰ τὴν ἐπιστήμην, χρώμενον μέντοι τῇ καθόλου ἀλλὰ μὴ τῇ κατὰ μέρος
 (comp. Bon. Ind. 854 b 37 ).

11. mvp-aristotle-comment-229

1450a13 εἴδεσι : see on 4, 1449 a 7 .

11. mvp-aristotle-comment-230

ὄψεις : see on 6, 1449 b 33 .

11. mvp-aristotle-comment-231

πᾶν , i. e. every play; comp. 12, 1452 a 18
ἁπάντων
. — 18, 1456 a 31
ἐξ ἄλλου εἰς ἄλλο
.
1450a15

Remarques sur la poëtique d'Aristote (André Dacier, 1692) (OCR draft) (André Dacier's French commentary on Aristotle's Poetics.) focus

23. mvp-aristotle-comment-163

6.11 23. Il n'y a preſque point de Poëte, pour ainſi dire, qui n'employe ces ſix parties dans ſes pieces tragiques.] 1

24. mvp-aristotle-comment-164

6.11 24. Il eſt vray auſſi qu'elles ſe trouvent toutes, dans toutes ſortes de ſujets.] 2

Commentary on the Poetics (Thomas Twining, 1789) (OCR draft) (Thomas Twining's notes on Aristotle's Poetics, aligned to the Kassel reference edition.) focus

49. mvp-aristotle-comment-49

NOTE 49. P. 76.

6.11 THESE PARTS----HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED BY MOST POETS.
Locus, as the critics say, conclamatus. Time is too precious to be wasted in the support, or refutation, of random conjectures upon a passage of such desperate corruption. How can
οὐκ ὀλιγοι
, "not a few," be tortured into, "all," or, "almost all?" Yet so Dacier, Batteux, Goulston, &c. On the other hand, if fairly translated, "not a few Poets have made use of these parts," how strangely it will follow—"for EVERY Tragedy has them all!"—And how is the
ὡς εἰπειν
, to be applied? to
οὐκ ὀλιγοι
, or, to
ειδεσι
? In the midst of these difficulties, all I could do was to make my version consistent with itself; faithful to the original, I could not make it, without making it nonsensical. Those commentators, who apply the
ὡς εἰπειν
to the word
ειδεσι
, seem favoured by ch. xii. where, speaking of the same essential parts of Tragedy, Aristotle says—
οἷς μεν ΩΣ ΕΙΔΕΣΙ δει χρησθαι
.

Commentarius in Aristotelis Poeticam (Franciscus Ritter, 1839) (OCR draft) (Ritter's Latin commentary, extracted from the 1839 volume, divided by Ritter's chapters and sections, and linked to the corresponding Perseus reference subsections.) focus

8. mvp-aristotle-comment-43

Ritter, cap. 6 § 8

τούτοις μὲν οὖν - ὡσαύτως: vide possisne vel minimum ingenii Aristotelii vestigium in his agnoscere: ego non potui. cuivis tragoediae inesse sex illas partes dicit auctor personatus: verus autem (§. 11) pronuntiat non solum fieri posse tragoediam moribus carentem sed etiam a novis poetis fere ` ἀήθεις τραγῳδίας fieri. porro ne sibimet ipsa quidem haec consentiunt. nam si οὐκ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν νίχ aliter atque de poetis tragicis accipi potest, primo non paucos eorum illis partibus (iste εἶδεσι, non μορίοις, posuit) usos esse et statim omnes isdem usos esse audimus. vel sic οὐκ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν mire et obscure dictum est. tertium interpolationis signum est quod eadem sex nomina frigide et inepte, h. e. sine ullo consilio, recurrunt. accedunt tria indicia secundaria quibus idem probatur. corum primum est mira illa tragicorum poetarum vel generatim poetarum designatio, οὐκ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν. alterum est πᾶν nude positum, quod quo referatur non habet: interpolator πᾶν δρᾶμα dicere videtur voluisse. tertium est additum ὡς εἰπεῖν, quod homo iste dormitans sine ratione et consilio chartae illevit. quartum adeo accedit. codices enim a Bekkero et Burgesio et aliis collati aut ὄψεις aut ὄψις exhibent, ubi ὄψις a librariis leviter a vero detortum est. quod Victorius in uno vetustissimo exemplari ὄψιν invenit, id correctori vitium ὄψις emendare temere festinanti tribuendum est, eo magis quod Madius ὄψιν in margine trium librorum ab alia manu scriptum repperit. itaque ὄψεις haud dubie vera scriptura est. sed Aristoteles ubi ὄψιν pro parte tragoediae ponit, ibi constanter et recte singularem admisit, non pluralem. vid. c. 6, 4 et 7. c. 24, 1. interpolator igitur nomen ὄψιν a se modo lectum ne repetere quidem recte potuit. conf. Comment. ad c. 6, 19.