Poetics

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.

Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.

the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it.

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.

For the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations.

All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.

The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.” (VII)

The poet should even act his story with the very gestures of his personages. Given the same natural qualifications, he who feels the emotions to be described will be the most convincing; distress and anger, for instance, are portrayed most truthfully by one who is feeling them at the moment. Hence it is that poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him; the former can easily assume the required mood, and the latter may be actually beside himself with emotion.

Tragedy, however, is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear.

De lo que hemos dicho se desprende que la tarea del poeta es describir no lo que ha acontecido, sino lo que podría haber ocurrido, esto es, tanto lo que es posible como probable o necesario. La distinción entre el historiador y el poeta no consiste en que uno escriba en prosa y el otro en verso; se podrá trasladar al verso la obra de Herodoto, y ella seguiría siendo una clase de historia. La diferencia reside en que uno relata lo que ha sucedido, y el otro lo que podría haber acontecido. De aquí que la poesía sea más filosófica y de mayor dignidad que la historia.

Thus, since time immemorial, it has been customary to accept the criticism of art from a man who may or may not have been artist himself. Some believe that artist should create its art and leave it for critic to pass judgement over it. Whereas dramatists like Ben Jonson is of the view that to ‘judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best’. Only the best of poets have the right to pass judgments on the merit or defects of poetry, for they alone have experienced the creative process form beginning to end, and they alone can rightly understand it.

the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.

And by this very difference tragedy stands apart in relation to comedy, for the latter intends to imitate those who are worse, and the former better, than people are now.

the laughable is a species of what is disgraceful.

Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless.

The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. III

Comedy, as we said, is an imitation of people of a lower sort, though not in respect to every vice; rather, what is ridiculous is part of what is ugly.

Tragedy is an imitation not just of a complete action, but of events that evoke pity and fear.

A sign of this is what happens (10) in our actions, for we delight in contemplating the most accurately made images of the very things that are painful for us to see, such as the forms of the most contemptible insects and of dead bodies.

For this reason poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements. The universal truths concern what befits a person of a certain kind to say or do in accordance with probability and necessity—and that is the aim of poetry, even if it makes use of proper names.* A particular statement tells us what (for example) Alcibiades* did or what happened to him. In the case of comedy this is already manifest: the poets make up the story on the basis of probability and then attach names to the characters at random;

For the laughable is a sort of error and ugliness that is not painful and destructive, just as, evidently, a laughable mask is something ugly and distorted without pain.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.

A well constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.