Poetics. Aristotle. Thomas Twining (Translator). London, UK. 1789.
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Poetics (Thomas Twining, 1789) (OCR draft) (English) (Thomas Twining's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1789 and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.)
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
4.
mvp-aristotle-comment-969
1460b13
δίδομεν γὰρ ταῦτα:
a recognition of what were afterwards known as poetic licences.
Aristotle has already shown their use and legitimacy in poetry (
22,I458*34
)
1460b13_2
4.
mvp-aristotle-comment-970
πρὸς δὲ τούτοις κτέ.
The kind of criticism
Aristotle has in mind is one sufficiently familiar to us moderns; we know that a picture, for instance, is often censured for errors of anatomy, and a novel for errors of history or archaeology. In
Aristotle's view technical accuracy in such points, though desirable (
b27), is neither the one thing nor the first thing needful in a poem. Poetry, as a distinct art, has an end, a procedure, and a correctness of its own; and it is thus quite possible for a description in a poem to be poetically right, even though it may be wrong in some technical detail.
4.
mvp-aristotle-comment-971
1460b14
τῆς πολιτικῆς.
Πολιτική, as the art which deals with human life and conduct, might easily seem to stand in a very intimate relation to poetry, which has to depict human life and conduct (
comp.
6, 1450 8 16
μίμησις πράξεως καὶ βίου); and as a matter of history the connexion between the two arts was posited in the common notion of the older poets being authorities on all questions of
πολιτική, and the great teachers of moral and political wisdom (
comp.
Plato
Rep. 598 D, 606 E
; also
Dümmler,
Kl. Schriften I p. 30
). It is not without reason, therefore., that
Aristotle takes
πολιτική as his instance here, and emphasizes the distinction between the 'political' and the 'poetical' standard of right.. It may perhaps be thought that in affirming this distinction
Aristotle anticipates the idea of 'Art for Art', and regards poetry as raised above the limitations imposed on all ordinary human activities by social or moral law. Such a notion would ill accord with what we read elsewhere in the
Poetics. In
Aristotle's view [ 326 COMMENTARY 1460 14 a deviation in poetry from the ethically right is, just like one from probability or truth, an exceptional procedure, and to be condoned only when it is seen to be necessary for the ultimate poetical effect. The tragic hero, if one is to feel pity for him in his misfortunes, should be a good man either better than, or at least as good as, the average of mankind. The secondary personages too should be each good in their way, unless the plot happens to require a character of a lower type; in which case his baseness should be no more than is wanted for the evolution of the story. Even Comedy, as
Aristotle conceives it, has its ethical limitations: the comic personage, though by hypothesis worse than the average man, is worse only up to a certain point; his faults of character or conduct being such as may be laughed at, i.e. they do not excite anger or abhorrence in the normally minded spectator in the theatre. The tacit assumption throughout the
Poetics is that the theatrical public is on the whole normal in its moral instincts and sympathies, and that the poet should never lose sight of the fact. Readers of the
Nicomachean Ethics will remember that in the Aristotelian hierarchy of arts all the other arts are regarded as subordinate to
πολιτική, the supreme art, which deals with the whole social and moral order of the State, and that there is no hint of the so-called 'aesthetic' arts being outside its purview and control.
5.
mvp-aristotle-comment-600
25.4
5. D'ailleurs, il faut bien ſe ſouvenir qu'on ne doit pas juger de l'excellence de la Poësie, comme de celle de la Politique, ny mème comme de celle de tous les autres Arts.]
1
230.
mvp-aristotle-comment-230
NOTE 230.
25.4
P. 123. WHAT IS RIGHT IN THE POETIC ART, IS A DISTINCT CONSIDERATION FROM WHAT IS RIGHT IN THE POLITICAL, OR ANY OTHER ART.
This is one of those passages, which the commentators appear to me to have darkened by illustration. See, particularly, Dacier's note. His account of the difference between Poetry and all other arts, seems evidently false. What Aristotle says of Poetry—that it has two kinds of faults, essential, and incidental—is, at least, true of all other imitative arts. It is even true, as Beni has shewn, of Rhetoric and Logic.
1
Aristotle only says, (to give the passage literally,)
"the rightness of the poetic, and the rightness of the political art, are not the same, nor of any other art and the poetic art." The plain meaning of which appears to me to be that which I have given—that the
ὀρθότης, or rectitude, of Poetry itself, is not to be confounded with that of Politics, nor of any other art that may be the incidental subject of the Poetry, which, in itself, may be good, and even excellent, though it may deliver things false or inaccurate in Politics, Natural History, Navigation, Geography, &c. This sense of the passage seems clear of all the difficulties with which the common explanation is embarrassed, and leads naturally to the following division of the faults of Poetry, into essential and incidental. Castelvetro is the only one, of the commentators I have consulted, who appears to agree with me, if I understand him rightly, in this explanation of the passage.
The allusion, here, to the severe objections of PLATO, who would allow of Poetry no farther than as it could be made to coincide with the views of his own strict and moral legislation, has been sufficiently pointed out.
2
The reader may see, particularly, a fine passage to this purpose in the seventh book of his Laws, [
p. 817, ed. Serr.
], where, addressing the Tragic Poets, he refuses to admit them into his republic, till the magistrates have satisfied themselves, by inspection of their poems, that they contain nothing but what is in perfect unison with the laws and moral discipline of the state.
—Μὴ δὴ δόξητε ἡμᾶς ῥᾳδίως γε οὕτως ὑμᾶς ποτε παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐάσειν, σκηνάς τε πήξαντας κατ’ ἀγορὰν, καὶ καλλιφώνους ὑποκριτὰς εἰσαγομένους, μεῖζον φθεγγομένους ἡμῶν, ἐπιτρέψειν ὑμῖν δημηγορεῖν πρὸς παῖδάς τε καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ τὸν πάντα ὄχλον, τῶν αὐτῶν λέγοντας ἐπιτηδευμάτων πέρι μὴ τὰ αὐτὰ ἅπερ ἡμεῖς, ἀλλ’, ὡς τὸ πολὺ, καὶ ἐναντία τὰ πλεῖστα. Σχεδὸν γάρ τοι κἂν μαινοἰμεθα τελέως ἡμεῖς τε καὶ ἅπασα ἡ πόλις, ἥτις ἐν ὑμῖν ἐπιτρέποι δρᾶν τὰ νῦν λεγόμενα, πρὶν κρῖναι τὰς ἀρχὰς, εἴτε ῥητὰ καὶ ἐπιτήδεια πεποιήκατε λέγειν εις τὸ μέσον, εἴτε μή. Νῦν οὖν, παῖδες μαλακῶν μουσῶν ἔκγονοι, ἐπιδείξαντες τοῖς ἄρχουσι πρῶτον τὰς ὑμετέρας παρὰ τὰς ἡμετέρας ᾠδὰς, ἂν μὲν τὰ αὐτὰ γε, ἢ καὶ βελτίω, τὰ παρ’ ὑμῶν φαίνηται λεγόμενα, δώσομεν ὑμῖν χορόν· εἰ δὲ μὴ, ὦ φίλοι, οὐκ ἂν ποτε δυναίμεθα. —
De Leg. VII. p. 817.
To this way of talking it was a plain and direct answer, to say—
Οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ ὀρθότης ἐστὶ τῆς ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΗΣ καὶ τῆς ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ.
In what is added—
οὐδὲ ἄλλης τέχνης καὶ ποιητικῆς—Aristotle may, I think, be supposed to glance more particularly at that part of the tenth book of Plato's Republic, where he exposes the idle notion, current among the rhapsodists, that Homer was a perfect master of all arts and sciences. And with respect to the absurdity of this notion, Aristotle undoubtedly agreed with him. But there was danger, lest the credit of Homer should suffer from the manner in which Plato combated this idea. For those extravagant admirers of Homer not only asserted the fact, that he had an accurate knowledge of every art and science on which he touched, but they went farther, and maintained, that such accuracy was essential to a good Poet:
Ἀνάγκη γὰρ, they urged,
τὸν ἀγαθὸν ποιητὴν, εἰ μέλλει περὶ ὧν ἂν ποιῇ, καλῶς ποιήσειν, εἰδότα ἄρα ποιεῖν, ἢ μὴ οἷόντε εἶναι ποιεῖν.
Now Plato, whose object here is to vindicate his rigid exclusion of all mimetic poetry, and that of Homer in particular, from his republic, confutes the fact, without confuting the general position. While he shews the pretensions of the Homerists to be false, he seems, at least, to allow, that they ought to be true. For he flings in no savings; he no where says, what Aristotle has here said for him—that the want of this supposed accurate knowledge of arts and sciences no way affects the character of Homer as a Poet. By denying that he had that knowledge, and, at the same time, not denying, or not expressly denying, that he ought to have it, he leaves the reader to understand, that he meant to detract, on this account, from his merit as an imitator. And this, indeed, is perfectly consonant to the whole design of this part of his work, which was, to discredit poetic imitation in general, by shewing the distance of its representations from truth.
3
2.
mvp-aristotle-comment-185
Ritter, cap. 25 § 2
ταῦτα δ' ἐξαγγέλλεται λέξει ἢ καὶ γλώτταις καὶ μεταφοραῖς: sic scribit quasi
γλῶτται et
μεταφοραί ad
λέξιν non pertineant: quippe suo more
λέξιν intelligit
κυρίαν λέξιν quae caret insolitis et translatis vocibus. mirum est et puerile quod addit, esse multas orationis affectiones, et magis mirum illud
δίδομεν γὰρ ταῦτα τοῖς ποιηταῖς. cur haec ille poetis concedit? scilicet benignus est et humanus.