Poetics. Aristotle. ed. Henry James Pye. London. 1792.
The Poetic of Aristotle (Henry James Pye, revised 1792) (OCR draft) (English) (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.)
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
17.
mvp-aristotle-comment-257
ψυχαγωγεῖ
comp.
b 17
ψυχαγωγικόν. Said of a work of art the word means no more than to 'move' or 'rivet the attention', and is thus the equivalent of our word 'attract' or (as people now sometimes say) 'fascinate'.
This sense of
ψυχαγωγεῖν is as old as Xenophon:
Mem. 3. 10. 6
ὃ δὲ μάλιστα ψυχαγωγεῖ διὰ τῆς ὄψεως τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, τὸ ζωτικὸν φαίνεσθαι, πῶς τοῦτο ἐνεργάζῃ τοῖς ἀνδριασιν;. It is found more than once in Isocrates:
24 D
δέδεικται τοῖς ἐπιθυμοῦσι τοὺς ἀκροωμένους ψυχαγωγεῖν ὅτι τοῦ μὲν νουθετεῖν καὶ συμβουλεύειν ἀφεκτέον, τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα λεκτέον οἷς ὁρῶσι τοὺς ὄχλους μάλιστα χαίροντας. —
191 A
τοσαύτην ἔχει χάριν, ὥστ᾿ ἂν καὶ τῇ λέξει καὶ τοῖς ἐνθυμήμασιν ἔχῃ κακῶς, ὅμως αὐταῖς ταῖς εὐρυθμίαις καὶ ταῖς συμμετρίαις ψυχαγωγοῦσι τοὺς ἀκούοντας. Later writers also often use the word in the sense of to 'attract' or 'please'; comp. the Antiatticista in Bekker's Anecdota 116
ψυχαγωγεῖν: τὸ τέρπειν, and Vahlen, Symb. Phil. Bonn. p. 168.
17.
mvp-aristotle-comment-258
1450a34
αἵ τε περιπέτειαι καὶ ἀναγνωρίσεις
These are considered later on in
chap. 11
. It will be observed that Aristotle uses the two terms without explanation, as though they were already part of the established language of the theatre. The appositional clause comes in as an afterthought, at some distance from the words it illustrates (comp.
Kühner, Gr. Gr. 2. 1 p. 282
).
1450a37
43.
mvp-aristotle-comment-183
6.17
43.
C'eſt que les moyens les plus efficaces, dont la Tragedie ſe ſert pour toucher & pour plaire, ce ſont les peripeties & les reconnoiſſances.]
1
6.3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-16
6.17
THE FABLE THEN IS THE CHIEF PART, AND, AS IT WERE, THE SOUL OF TRAGEDY.
THIS observation of Aristotle is undoubtedly founded on nature, and is not only applicable to tragedy, but to every other kind of imitative composition, whether dramatic or narrative. Perhaps there is no circumstance in which the tragedies of the present day are so deficient, as in the want of interesting action. This is, in a great measure, owing to the strict adherence to the French rule, of not fuffering the supposed time of action to exceed the real time of reprefentation. Dramatic poetry is, by this regulation, almost confined to the boundary of painting, and can only represent a fsingle scene of any great event. And this is attended by another inconvenience; for the allotted space of five acts becomes as much too great for that single scene, as the confined period of three hours would be too small for the whole action; and hence the poet is obliged to spin out his tragedy by means of the dialogue, and falls under the same [M] inconvenience as would attend a proper and complete dramatic fable, without episodic parts, if swelled to the fize of the epopee. The great defect in that [N] truly fublime poem, the Paradife Loft, is a want of interest in the fable; every character, except two, being fuper- [M] Poetic, Chap. xxvI. [N] See Beattie on Poetry and Music, Part i. Chap. iv. natural;
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. natural; and we can never be greatly interested in the distress, or profperity, of a person, into whose situation it is impossible for us to [o] put ourselves. Addison, who was determined to find every possible excellence in the Paradife Loft, though he could not help [P] seeing this defect in the fable, nevertheless makes the following remark. After observing that the Iliad and Æneid, from [Q] their national subjects, must have been respectively very interesting to the Greeks and Romans, he proceeds, • Milton's poem is admirable in this respect, since it is impossible for any of its readers, whatever nation, country, or people he may belong to, not to be related to the persons who are the principal actors in it.' Spectator, No. 273. Now, befides the mistake Addison appears to have made as to the effect of national fable, which seems to be rather the foothing the vanity of the reader, than the encrease of his interest in the action, one should hardly have supposed, that Addison could have been ignorant of the obvious truth, that every affection is exactly weakened in proportion to its becoming general. There is no distinction so great in civil life as that between a man and any other animal, and yet I never knew a perfon proud of this last distinction, though there is no elevation of rank so inconfiderable, as not to have awakened pride in some bofoms. [ο] Θόβος δὲ περὶ τὸν ὅμοιον. Poet. Ch. xiii. [P] Spectator, No. 357. [Q] It seems a national hero, in Addison's opinion, was a fine qua non, in the epopee; for he says, in his critique on Chevy Chace, Virgil's hero was the founder of Rome,' (was he?) › Homer's a prince of Greece, and for this reason Valerius Flaccus, and Statius, who were * both Romans, might be justly derided for having chosen the expedition of the golden fleece, ← and the wars of Thebes, for the subjects of their epic writings. SPECT. No. 70. Y 2 The
The fame thing happens to the other paffions. We are strongly affected by a tale of private distress, even if not extending to danger or death; but we read, [R] without any emotion, of In one great day, on Hockstet's fatal plain, • French and Bavarians, twenty thousand flain, Push'd through the Danube to the shores of Styx; Squadrons eighteen, battalions twenty-fix. PRIOR. An error of the opposite side, but arifing from the fame cause, appears in the last book of the English Garden. By making an affecting tale the principal object, the subject of the poem is thrown entirely into the back ground. The mind is so much more influenced by the imitation of human actions and manners, than by any the most beautiful description of inanimate nature, that when they coincide, if the former is not very much kept down, it will entirely destroy all our interest in the latter. The story of Eurydice, in the fourth Georgic, is like the sketch of a mythological incident, such as Niobe, for inftance, introduced into a landscape. But the pathetic tale of Nerina, and especially in the peculiar form in which Mr. Mason has introduced it, takes up our whole attention, and the embellishment of the English Garden becomes the mere scenery of the action. Who will regard the ornament of a temple who is looking at the flaughter of the innocents, or examine the perspective of an apartment, which contains a Beaufort expiring in the agonies of guilt and despair ? [R] This is admirably well illustrated by a story told in one of the numbers of the Adventurer. See also the Encyclopedie, Art. Illusion. NOTE
13.
mvp-aristotle-comment-47
Ritter, cap. 6 § 13
tertium signum ad fabulae praestantiam et dignitatem declarandam ex partibus eius ducitur: nam cum eae valde graves sint, totum non minus grave esse sequitur. ceterum partes illae,
περιπέτεια et
ἀναγνώρισις, non in omnibus fabulis reperiuntur sed in unis implexis. haec igitur minus accurate scripta sunt.