"Poetics" by Aristotle

This is the 1996 Penguin edition translated and introduced by Malcolm Heath. The erudition and common sense of Heath's translation contribute enormously to the understanding of a work which was probably not polished for publication, appearing more like lecture notes than a completed textbook, and is consequently sometimes obscure.

But it is enormously readable. Aristotle sets out his ideas of how to write a great poem, concentrating particularly on tragedy. It is supposed that his work on comedy has been lost.

Key concept within this work are those of:

• mimesis: which many translate as representation but Heath translates as imitation
• catharsis: Heath spends some time discussing the concept of catharsis (xxxviii - xl) “Aristotle does not think that emotions are bad things in themselves” but it is their appropriateness that may make them bad. “If I am paralyzed with fear at the sight of a mouse, my fear is inappropriate and excessive; that is a sign of cowardice. But if I sit nonchalantly in the path of an oncoming steam-roller, then my lack of fear is equally inappropriate and excessive; that is a sign of recklessness.” This implies that catharsis is not getting rid of emotion but ensuring the correct amount of emotion. “Why should this be pleasurable? ... When you are thirsty, satisfying your thirst is pleasurable; when someone has trodden on your toe, it is nice to feel the throbbing die away.” In the BBC Radio 4 'In Our Time' programme about the Poetics Angie Hobbs makes the point that catharsis can’t involve “the complete purgation of pity and fear” because “in the Ethics pity and fear are important human emotions, they perform crucial functions, we need them for survival and for social harmony with our neighbours.” so that  “The crucial thing is to feel them in the right way, at the right time, to the right extent, in relation to the right objects.”
• hamartia. “The Greek word hamartia covers making a mistake or getting something wrong in the most general sense.” but it clearly does not mean for Aristotle a moral flaw.

Fundamentally, Aristotle believes that poetry is an attempt to imitate or represent something about the world using language and rhythm. He recognises that a perfect imitation may not be ideal: he points out that “Good portrait-painters ... paint people as they are, but make them better looking" and Heath suggests that this is one way to bridge the gap between the tragedy being about particular people and the writer trying to say something universal. But this definition of poetry as an attempt to imitate means that tragedy is better than epic because tragedy uses drama rather than narration (although Aristotle acknowledges that part of Homer's greatness was that he used drama within epic) and as Heath suggests (xvii) "the likeness is greater if the words of those involved in the action are presented directly rather than being mediated by a narrator.” 

Aristotle gives a brief history of tragedy: 

• “The number of actors was increased from one to two by Aeschylus, who also reduced the choral parts and made the spoken word play the leading role; the third actor and scenepainting were introduced by Sophocles.” (3.3)
• “They used tetrameter at first because the composition was satyric in manner and more akin to dance. But when speech was introduced nature itself found the appropriate form of verse, iambic being the verse-form closest to speech.” (3.3)

For Aristotle the most important thing was the well-constructed plot. This was because: “There could not be a tragedy without action, but there could be one without character.”

Aristotle offers guidelines as to what a good plot looks like:

• It has a bounded time: "so far as possible to keep within a single day, or not to exceed it by much.” (3.5)
• It aims to effect "through pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions.” (4.1)
• “The most important devices by which tragedy sways emotion are parts of the plot, ie reversals and recognitions.”
• It is complete and has “a beginning, a middle and an end.” (5.1) thus there is closure
• The events in the plot should be causally connected. This is important in giving poetry its claim on universality: “Poetry is concerned with particular sequences of events; but the connection between those events means that they instantiate universal structures.” (xxvii). Aristotle “believes that there is an intimate connection between the cohesion of the plot and the emotional impact at which tragedy aims.” (xlix) Crucially, the connections should be 'necessary or probable': “Poets construct the plot on the basis of probabilities ... the reason for this is that what is possible is plausible.” (5.5) 
• There should be a reversal in which there is a change of fortune that causes astonishment; nevertheless it too should have a probable causal connection. "Even chance events are found most astonishing when they appear to have happened as if for a purpose.” (6.1) 
• The change of fortune must evoke fear and pity. This means that the ideal subject of the tragedy is "the sort of person who is not outstanding in moral excellence or justice; on the other hand, the change to bad fortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or depravity, but to an error of some kind.”(7.2) This is because “Decent men should not be seen undergoing a change from good fortune to bad fortune - this does not evoke fear or pity, but disgust. Nor should depraved people be seen undergoing a change from bad fortune to good fortune ... Nor again should a very wicked person fall from good fortune to bad fortune.” (7.2)
• “Resolutions of plots should also come about from the plot itself, and not by means of a theatrical device.” (8.1)
• In the BBC Radio 4 'In Our Time' programme about the Poetics, Stephen Halliwell states that “Aristotle doesn’t like reversal and recognition just for their shock value” but because “they show the limits of human agency”

This book contains some great insights, either from Aristotle (Chapter numbers in Arabic numerals) or from Heath (page numbers in Roman numerals)

• “In general, an ability to do something well does not depend on, nor does understanding necessarily imply an ability to do it well.” (x)
• “Good portrait-painters ... paint people as they are, but make them better looking"
• “An imitation need not be a straightforward copy ... nor need an imitation be a likeness of an object which actually exists ... indeed, the events in a poem do not even have to conform to the basic structure of reality.” 
• "Understanding is extremely pleasant, not just for philosophers but for others too in the same way, despite their limited capacity for it.” (3.1)
• "As Aristotle observes, in an athletic competition the prize is not awarded to the athlete in the best condition, but to the one who actually comes first.”
• “Spectacle is attractive, but it is very inartistic and is least germane to the art of poetry. For the effect of tragedy is not dependent on performance and actors; also, the art of the property-manager has more relevance to the production of visual effects than does that of the poets.” (4.4)
• “One of the most fundamental principles of ancient Greek ethics ... was ‘help your friends, harm your enemies’.” (xxxiii)
• “The essence of a riddle is that it states facts by means of a combination of impossibilities; this ... is possible using metaphor.” (9.4)
• “The end of imitation is attained in shorter length; what is more concentrated is more pleasant than what is watered down by being extended in time.” (12.2)

Suprisingly easy to read; a classic work. April 2019

In the BBC Radio 4 'In Our Time' programme about the Poetics they also make the point that Aristotle only mentions the first of the three unities of plot, of time and of space and that the other two comes from an influential commentary on the Poetics by Ludovico Castelvetro published in Italian in the 1500s. 

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Legends of Alexander the Great " translated and edited by Richard Stoneman

This compilation of legends about Alexander the Great is set in India. He and his army encounter terrible monsters including hippopotami, gold-digging ants, scorpions, dragons, and the terrible Odontotyrannus; they hear of dog-headed men and men whose head is beneath their shoulders. Alexander meets the Brahmans, naked philosophers who have no possessions and who lecture him on his greed and his ambition. There are extracts from better known works which refer to Alexander, such as the Confessio Amantis by John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer who plays a bit part in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, a play co-written by Shakespeare based on a work by Gower, and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

Good fun. It was particularly interesting to note how these different works quoted (with citation) one another.

Some great lines:

• “A chapati is best eaten from the edges inwards rather than from the centre outwards.” (p xvii)
• “Once you have started inventing strange hybrids it is not hard to go on.” (p xix)
• from Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle
• “A soldier named Zefirus discovered some water in a hollow rock; he filled his own helmet with it and brought it to me [Alexander], being more zealous for my life than for his own. Then I called together the whole army and in the sight of them all I poured away the water. I thought that if the army saw me drinking it would only make them feel even more thirsty.” (p 6)
• from On the Wonders of the East [Pharasmanes to Hadrian]
• “There are found ants the size of dogs, with feet like locusts. They are red and black and they dig for gold.” (p 21)
• from Palladius On the Life of the Brahmans
• “How many kings of foolishness do you think rule over fools? Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, tongue, stomach, genitals, the entire flesh of your body. There are many of them within, like implacable mistresses and insatiable tyrants, making endless demands; desires, avarice, love of pleasure, murder, assassination, meanness, dispute: to all of these and more men or enslaved, for these they kill and are killed.” (p 40)
• “Your mind is your tongue and your brains are in your lips.” (p 40)
• “You surround yourselves with many possessions and take pride in them, blind to the fact that none of them can help you to the truth: gold does not sustain the soul, nor fatten the body; quite the contrary, it darkens the soul and emaciates the body.” (p 41) 
• “Every human desire ceases when it is satisfied, because this is inherent in nature. But the desire for wealth knows no satiety, because it is against nature. That is why you adorn yourselves with it and glory in it, regarding yourselves as superior to other men. And that is why you take as your own what belongs to everyone” (p 41) 
• “The groans of the wronged will be the punishment of the wrongdoers.” (p 43)
• “Desire is the mother of penury ... It is miserable because it never finds what it seeks, is never content with what it has, but is tortured with lust for what it does not have.” (p 45) 
• “I do not eat fish like a lion, the flesh of other animals does not rot within me, I do not become a grave of dead animals.” (pp 45 - 46)
• “He who wishes to please everybody must be the slave of everybody.” (p 51)
• from The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus
• “If one man would carrying a lit torch and other men were to come and light other torches from the first: it would not lose its own light.” (p 57)
• “We are not dwellers in this world here as if we expected to be here forever; rather we are sojourners, here for a temporary visit.” (p 64)
• “The only glory to be found in blindness and poverty is that blindness does not see what it lacks and poverty has no way of getting it.” (p 66)

October 2017; 104 pages