Aristotle Poetics 6.18

ed. Henry James Pye

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as it were, the soul of tragedy. The manners hold the second place, which we may compare to the coloring of a picture; the finest colors laid on promiscuously will not please so much as a figure only in chalk.

Poetics. Aristotle. ed. Henry James Pye. London. 1792.

Current edition Experimental

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.

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.) — 6.18 focus
As a farther proof, adventurers in Tragic writing are sooner able to arrive at excellence in the language, and the manners, than in the construction of a plot; as appears from almost all our earlier Poets.
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.) — 6.18 focus
and as it were the soul of tragedy; but the manners are next in rank8. 1 [Just as in painting, if any one were to spread the most beautiful pigments on promiscuously, he would not please the view so much as by outlining an image with white colour only.
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
La poëtique d'Aristote (André Dacier, 1692) (OCR draft) Experimental (André Dacier's French translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1692.) — 6.18 focus
Enfin une marque tres certaine de la verité de ce que je viens d'établir, c'eſt que ceux qui entreprenent de faire une Tragedie, trouvent bien plus de facilité à réuſſir dans le ſtyle & dans les mœurs, qu'à bien bâtir le ſujet, & c'eſt une experience que preſque tous les anciens Poëtes ont faite.
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

18. mvp-aristotle-comment-259

συνίστασθαι is apparently a middle in 24, 1460 a 34 also (v. ad loc.).

18. mvp-aristotle-comment-260

οἷον καὶ introduces not an instance but a parallel from a different class of things just like ὥσπερ καὶ, from which it is often hardly distinguishable in sense (comp. Top. 6. 9, 148 a 4 ; Eth. N. 9. 1, 1164 a 15 ; Rhet. 3. 11, 1412 a 11 ; 3. 12, 1413 b 25 ) . In De mem. 1, 450 b 20 and in Plato Phaedr. 255 C
οἷον
 is so completely equivalent to ὥσπερ as to have a οὕτως as its antecedent. In Poet. 25, 1460 b 33
οἷον ... ταύτῃ
 is practically the same thing as ὥσπερ ... οὕτως.
1450a38

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

44. mvp-aristotle-comment-184

6.18 44. Ceux qui entreprenent de faire une Tragedie, trouvent bien plus de facilité à réuſſir dans le ſtyle & dans les mœurs, qu'à bien bâtir le ſujet.] 1

45. mvp-aristotle-comment-185

6.18 45. Et c'eſt une experience que preſque tous les anciens Poëtes ont faite.] 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

54. mvp-aristotle-comment-54

NOTE 54. P. 77.

6.18 ADVENTURERS IN TRAGIC WRITING ARE SOONER ABLE, &C.
Aristotle argues here upon a principle rather rhetorical and popular, than philosophical—that, which infers superior worth from superior difficulty and rarity: —
το χαλεπώτερον και σπανιώτερον, μείζον
, (sc.
αγαθον
,) as he lays it down in his Rhetoric, lib. i. cap. vii. p. 529. Lord Bacon, in his Essay On Gardens, uses the same argument, and almost in Aristotle's words, with respect to the superiority of gardening to architecture:
"A man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately SOONER than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection."
The truth, however, of the fact here asserted by Aristotle, appears, not only from the earlier dramatic Poets of every nation, but from the defects of plots in general, whether Dramatic or Epic; and from the rarity of those dramatic fables, for which the Poet has trusted entirely to his own invention, without recourse to history, or novels, or the productions of other dramatists. 1 —
"En general, il y a plus de pieces bien dialoguées, que de pieces bien conduites. Le Génie qui dispose les incidens, paroit plus rare que celui qui trouve les vrais discours. Combien de belles scènes dans Moliere!—On compte ses dénouemens heureux. On seroit tenté de croire qu'une drame devroit être l'ouvrage de deux hommes de génie, l'un qui arrangeât, et l'autre qui fit parler."
— Diderot, de la Poes. Dram. p. 288.

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

14. mvp-aristotle-comment-48

Ritter, cap. 6 § 14

ἔτι σημεῖον κτλ. accedit quartum σημεῖον ad obtinendam sententiam §. 9. pronuntiatam. - οἷον καὶ οἱ πρῶτοι ποιηταὶ σχεδὸν ἅπαντες : non solum tragoediarum scriptores qui certare primum incipiunt in operis summa solent deficere, sed ceteri quoque poetae fere omnes, cum carmina pangere primum adgrediuntur.