From “Poetry and History”
This is brilliant: “…it is not the poet’s function to describe what has actually happened, but the kinds of thing that might happen, that is, that could happen because they are, in the circumstances, either probable or necessary.”
He continues, “The difference is that the one [history] tells of what has happened, the other of the kinds of things that might happen. For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars.”
So, I was right to ditch my History major in college early on for English Lit, even if I never finished after four years of mucking about…
Aristotle continues, “By ‘universals’ I mean the kinds of thing a certain type of person will probably or necessarily say or do in a given citation; and this is the aim of poetry, although it gives individual names to its characters.” Well, then, I never thought of poetry this way. I wrote something once about the aim of poetry, and now that has to be thrown out in favor of this!
He also brings up the distinction that comic poets make up names whereas tragedy isn’t afraid to use a couple real people’s names, in that case “the reason being that what is possible is credible.”
“What I have said makes it obvious that the poet must be a maker of plots rather than of versus, since he is a poet by virtue of his representation, and what he represents is actions.” Wow, this is a very different kind of poetry than I’m used to thinking about. “And even if he deals with things that have actually happened, that does not make him any the less a poet, for there is nothing to prevent some of the things that have happened from being the kind of thing that may happen according to probability, and thus he will be a poet in writing about them.”
Well, then, Taylor Swift definitely knows Aristotle, as she so claims in “So High School.” Maybe I was a poet all along, just a very indecisive one who keeps losing the plot.
He then says, “Of simple plots and actions those that are episodic are the worst.” Uh-oh. “By an episodic plot I mean one in which the sequence of the episodes is neither probable or necessary.” Well, I do try to keep things chronological and one does lead into another, so I didn’t totally drop the ball here. I do realize that the type of poetry Aristotle is talking about is not what we think of as “lit bro” poetry today; he’s talking about anything written in verse, which plays were at the time, as he immediately talks about after this. Most stories were written in verse as a matter of literary tradition. Maybe we should go back to that?
He continues, “Plays of this kind are composed by bad poets because they cannot help it, and by good poets because of the actors; writing for the dramatic competitions, they often strain a plot beyond the bounds of possibility, and are thus obliged to dislocate the continuity of events.” So, basically, Ancient Greece was much like Hollywood. Even the good writers have to injure their work to make people happy. And thus, I’m a pretty terrible poet myself, just as I suspected.
On tragedy: “However, tragedy is the representation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents that awaken fear and pity, and effects of this kind are heightened when things happen unexpectedly but because of each other, for then they will be more remarkable than if they seem merely mechanical or accident. Indeed, even chance occurrences seem most remarkable when they have the appearance of having been brought about by design… Thus plots of this type are necessarily better than others.”
Man, Aristotle, you are really kicking ass here, buddy. It really sucks we don’t have his second volume on Comedy. We may not have the drivel and downright garbage that passes for comedy today if we did.
A good thought here: “…there is a big difference between what happens as a result of something else and what merely happens after it.”
Aristotle mentions three elements of plot: Reversal, Recognition, and Suffering. I have plenty of the third in my own life story…
I don’t know what anapaests or trochees are, and I’m too weary this morning to look them up, so I must do so later.
I also agree with Aristotle that tragedy should end in misfortune. I’ve grown sick and tired of “happy endings” that are so absurdly forced and trite and cliche. If the hero dies in a story, it actually… works. Great tragedy must “awaken fear or pity” in its audience, according to Aristotle. We need more sad endings. We get a lot more out of it than the guy gets the girl, or somebody gets stupid rich, or everyone lives happily ever after with entirely absurd premises.
Oh here’s where we get these nonsense ‘tragedies’: “The next best type of structure, ranked first by some critics, is that which, like the Odyssey, has a double structure, and ends in opposite ways for the good and the bad characters. It is considered the best only because of the feeble judgment of the audience, for the poets pander to the taste of the spectators. But this is not the pleasure that is proper to tragedy. It belongs rather to comedy…”
So basically, what passes as drama today is at best, poor comedy. And it all started back then. People haven’t changed much at all. They all suck. This is why I stay home. Let other people muck about while I read Aristotle and spend all day crying bloody murder for the souls of the damned.
I finish today on “Fear and Pity” and leave “Characters of Tragedy” for tomorrow. Or perhaps later today. I especially love his opening point here: “Fear and Pity may be excited by means of spectacle; but they can also take their rise from the very structure of the incident, which is the preferable method and the mark of a better poet.” You know, good tragedy. Like Shakespeare.
I wonder just how many lost Greek plays there are, at least those that were good. “The Wounded Odysseus” by Sophocles sounds like it was a banger. Plenty of great stuff today, and enough for my tired, sad brain to soak up for one morning.
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Onto “The Characters of Tragedy” Aristotle mentions four things to “aim at” when it comes to creating characters. First, they should be good, as he says “there can be goodness in every class of person.” That is to say, even “villains” should have some good in them. (I do this with all my own villains, who do good things, and have good qualities, but with impure intentions and inevitably their character flaws make them appear cartoonishly evil.)
Second, “the portrayal should be appropriate.” I don’t like what he says about a woman not being able to be clever, but such were the times. Men said much worse things about women, of course. But I get miffed when Aristotle mentions he thinks women MAY be “inferior.” I don’t like to give anyone the benefit of the doubt for “the times,” but I’m going to let this remark go because the rest of what he says is so great.
Thirdly, “the characters should be lifelike.” I definitely agree on that point.
Fourthly, “they should be consistent.” Unlike Captain Janeway on Voyager. Talk about a missed opportunity to be perhaps the greatest captain in Trek history. They certainly had the woman to do it, but the writers couldn’t figure out how to write her quite right.
Aristotle also really hated ex machina. So don’t I. I never have ex machina shit in my stories.
This is fantastic advice: “The deus ex machina should be used only for matters outside the play proper, either for things that happened before it which a human being could not know, or for things that are yet to come and that require to be foretold prophetically – for we allow to the ods the power to see all things.” Fair enough. I know many college educated writers have read at least these selections of the Poetics, so I feel like the reason we see so much bad writing isn’t the writers so much as it is their corporate overlords forcing them to write for the lowest common denominator. Hey, Sagan wrote about that even!
I don’t really agree with this, but it’s interesting: “Since tragedy is a representation of people who are better than ourselves, we must emulate the good portrait painters. These, while reproducing the distinctive appearance of their subjects and making likenesses, paint them better-looking than they are. In the same way the poet, in portraying men who are hot-tempered, or lazy or who have other defects of character, must bring out these qualities in them, and at the same time show them as decent people.” The latter half of that I do find acceptable. And I do think that modern drama follows this example, for better or for worse.
Aristotle talks a bit about four types of recognition, and I’m finding it difficult to follow exactly what he’s talking about, but this part I get: “Of all the forms of recognition, the best is that which arises from the incidents themselves, when our amazement results from events that are probable… Recognitions of this kind are the only ones that dispense with such contrivances as tokens and necklaces. The next best are those that depend on reasoning.”
In “Some Rules for the Tragic Poet” Aristotle says, “In putting together his plots and working out the kind of speech to go with them, the poet should as far as possible keep the scene before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything very vividly, as though he were himself an eyewitness of the events, he will find what is appropriate, and will be least likely to overlook inconsistencies.”
I love this: “As far as possible, too, the dramatic poet should carry out the appropriate gestures as he composes his speeches, for of writers with equal abilities those who can actually make themselves feel the relevant emotions will be the most convincing – agitation or rage will be most vividly reproduced by one who is himself agitated or in a passion. Hence poetry is the product either of a man of great natural ability or of a madman; the one is highly responsive, the other besides himself.”
I’m going to end up copying a lot of paragraphs from this part… “As for the stories, whether he is taking over something ready-made or inventing for himself, the poet should first plan the general outline, and then expand by working out appropriate episodes.” Sort of what I always try to do… then by the time I write a couple episodes, I’m onto the next outline… whoops.
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From “Further Rules for the Tragic Poet”
“Many poets are skillful in complicating their plots but clumsy in unravelling them; a constant mastery of both techniques is what is required.” No kidding. I have complicated plots within my own notes, never mind my often aborted attempts at proper storytelling.
“… the dramatic poet must be careful not to give his tragedy an epic structure, by which I mean one with a multiplicity of stories – as though one were to attempt a plot covering the whole story of the Iliad.” Well, epic is what I was shooting for from my junior high days up until very recently. I keep trying to stick to single POVs and one plot thread, but my brain always wants to branch off into so many other what-if scenarios that I get tangled up in so many threads I ultimately bring out emergency scissors and snip all the plots to pieces until all I’m left with are scattered broken shards of potential.
In “Thought and Diction” Aristotle has this to say about what he means by Thought: “Thought includes all the effects that have to be produced by language; among these are proof and refutation, the awakening of emotions such as pity, fear, anger, and the like, and also exaggeration and depreciation.”
In the next bit, he breaks down linguistic definitions. It’s fascinating but something that I don’t have the focus to really go into today. But I do find it fascinating how he says ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’ are composites of sounds either independent of time or entirely concerned with time. But he also mentioned their individual parts have no meaning in their own right. Is this something peculiar to Greek, or am I too weary and missing something?
In the “poetic diction” section, I really like how he defines ‘nouns’: “Every noun is either a word in current use or a loan-word, a metaphor or an ornamental word, a poetic coinage or a word that has been expanded or abbreviated or otherwise altered.” Hmm, never thought of nouns quite like that, although loan-words are a subject which I wish to study in depth soon in regards to my definition essay series. So you can imagine I find this part about definitions in the Poetics quite fascinating, even if I don’t currently have the mental bandwidth to comment further.
“Metaphor is the application to one thing of a name belonging to another thing; the transference may be from the genus to the species, from the species to the genus, or from one species to another, or it may be a matter of analogy.” I haven’t heard genus or species applied to metaphors before.
“I explain metaphor by analogy as what may happen when of four things the second stands in the same relationship to the first as the fourth to the third; for then one may speak of the fourth instead of the second, and the second instead of the fourth. And sometimes people will add to the metaphor a qualification appropriate to the term which has been replaced.” I think this is more how I think of metaphor, although this is a fairly elongated explanation.
Speaking of “poetic coinage” I wonder how many words I may need to make up in the course of my writing. I’ve never really invented words myself. Maybe I should?
When he discusses masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, I know he’s speaking obviously of Greek here. But I’ve always wondered how certain nouns become one of those three; English doesn’t really do this but so many other languages, especially Spanish, most certainly do. I just wonder how these things develop as they do.
Aristotle has many other thoughts on diction, but this in particular really struck me as important: “It is a fine thing to make proper use of all the devices I have mentioned, including compound words and unfamiliar loan words, but far the most important thing to master is the use of metaphor. This is the one thing that cannot be learnt from anyone else, and it is the mark of great natural ability, for the ability to use metaphor well implies a perception of resemblances.” Apparently I have quite the perception of resemblances. But is it truly an innate talent that cannot be learned? I disagree with this notion.
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Aristotle on “Epic Poetry” is where I’m at. And I love this passage: “As for the art of representation in the form of narrative verse, clearly its pilots should be dramatically constructed, like those of tragedies; they should centre upon a single action, whole and complete, and having a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that like a single complete organism the poem may produce its own special kind of pleasure.” That last bit there really thrills me. I can think of another single complete organism who produces a special kind of pleasure for me…
In the next bit about this topic, “…epic poetry must divide into the same types as tragedy, that is, the simple, the complex, that which turns on character and that which turns on suffering.” All my poems turn on suffering. I’m good at suffering. Highly skilled. I should list it on my resume. (Can you tell I’m in a bad mood today?)
“Experience has shown that the heroic hexameter is the right metre for epic.” Why did no one teach this in school about poetry? Why is our education system so garbage? It’s right here in the poetics! All kidding aside, the form really only works in Greek and Latin and not in English.
“… nature herself teaches us to choose the right metre for our purposes.” Are you sure, Aristotle? Nature has been rather silent with me lately…
“The marvelous is a source of pleasure,as is shown by the fact that in passing on a piece of news everyone will add something extra so as to give pleasure.” Essentially, it’s telephone before the technology existed. I just really like this line.
“Above all, Homer has taught other poets how to tell untruths as they ought to be told, that is, by false inference. If one thing exists or happens because another thing exists or happens, people think that, if the consequent exists or happens, the antecedent also exists; but this is not the case. Thus if a proposition were untrue, but there was something else which must be true or must happen if the proposition were true, the poet should supply the latter; for because we know that this is true. Our soul falsely infers the truth of the original proposition.” And apparently this is how people get the wool pulled over their eyes with brilliant rhetoric… it even used to fool me, apparently!
“Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.” Now that’s a statement right there. I think essentially he’s talking about suspension of disbelief; if it’s impossible but sounds plausible, we’re more ready to accept it as an audience. Fiction is chock full of these that the more you apply logic to them, the whole goddamn story falls apart.
“The poet should take care to elaborate the diction in ‘neutral’ sections, that is, in passages where neither character nor thought is in question’ on the other hand, diction that is too brilliant may obscure the presentation of character and thought.” Passages like this, especially those that close out chapters, tend to be my favorites to copy down because they offer plenty of food for thought. The more I read the Poetics, the more I realize this book should be a required course in literature degrees. Just this book itself presents enough material for a semester-long study. Instead we often get deluged with like a dozen books that we spend so much money purchasing, only to read a smattering of selections. Of course, I’ll end up skimming them all just to get a sense of what they’re all about, only to discover, none of the books really have anything to do with each other. I feel like curriculum should be a lot more focused on the key texts that are chock full of good shit, like the Poetics, not be a fucking chocolate sampler! You’re often going to end up more disappointed than not.
I love this: “Like the painter or any other image-maker, the poet represents things; necessarily, therefore, he must always represent things in one of three ways: either as they were or are, or as they are said to be or seem to be, or as they ought to be.” Many times, I like to write about things as they ought to be, but of course, in reality, there is no ‘ought to be’ that exists outside of our imaginations, only things as they are, whether or not we interpret their true form properly. But our errors make things a lot more interesting.
“We must remember, too, that there are not the same standards of correctness in poetry as in politics or any other art.” Interesting that Aristotle calls politics an art. “In poetry, there are two kinds of fault, the one kind essential, the other incidental. If the poet has undertaken to represent [something, and has gone astray through] lack of skill, that is an essential fault. But if his error lies in what he sets out to do, if for instance he represents a horse with both its offside legs thrown forward, then that is an error in some special branch of knowledge (for example, medicine or some other technical subject), but no essential fault is involved.” I like to think my own faults as a poet are the latter, but no, most are likely the former.
“Taking first problems relating to the essentials of the poetic art: if the poet has depicted something impossible, he is at fault indeed, but he is justified in doing it as long as the art attains its end, as I have described it, that is, as long as it makes this or some other part of the poem more striking.” Essentially, taking poetic license. This is just a much prettier way of putting it.
Aristotle and I are kinda vibing right now.
This is a great point that goes far beyond poetry: “In deciding whether something that has been said or done is morally good or bad, not only should we pay regard to the goodness or badness of the saying or deed itself, but we should also take into account the persons by whom and to whom it was said or done, the occasion, the means, and the reason – whether, for example, to bring about a greater good, or to avert a greater evil.” That is to say, context. Context is for queens. Too often, the things we are told to be “truth” are taken from sources that make those words ill-suited for the context into which they’re placed. Masking context is the way to fool people en masse, so discovering the power of context and how it can be used to one’s advantage is what makes a genius I think.
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Here’s something I identify with most strongly: “We should think how best we shall avoid the fault described by Glaucon when he says that some people make unreasonable presuppositions, and go on to draw conclusions from their own adverse comments on the poet; if his words conflict with the conclusions they have thus reached, they censure him as though he had actually said what they ascribe to him.” You know, like those critics who totally misunderstand something and go on to create their own narrative about what was actually said… also Glaucon is only known from being mentioned here and in Plato’s Ion (a work of Plato’s I actually enjoy!)
“Generally speaking, then, the ‘impossible’ has to be justified on grounds either of poetic effect, or of an attempt to improve on reality, or of accepted tradition. As far as poetic effect is concerned, a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility. Even though it is impossible that there should be such people as Zeuxis used to paint, yet it is better so; for the artist should surpass the model.” A quick Google search says that Zeuxis actually painted very lifelike figures; it was even said he once painted grapes so realistic birds tried to peck at them. So, just as the footnote about Zeuxis suggests, the text is indeed unclear what Aristotle means here. But the big phrase to me here is the last bit: “for the artist should surpass the model.” That is a very interesting idea.
“Accepted tradition may justify the use of the irrational, as may the plea that there are times when it is not irrational, for it is probably enough that things should happen contrary to probability.” This is the playground for the ‘art’ of politics. I should come back to this in depth later.
“However, irrationality and depravity are rightly censured when there is no need for them and they are not properly used…” Aristotle, I’m with you my guy, but I’m so glad you’re not around to see the 21st century… plenty of irrationality and depravity abound, and it’s rational thought and true beauty being censured… lovely times!
And the closing of this penultimate section: “There are, then, five grounds on which a passage may be censured: that it is impossible, irrational, immortal, inconsistent, or technically at fault. And the answers are to be studied in the light of the twelve criteria that I have already enumerated.” According to the footnotes, scholars aren’t sure where the number twelve comes from here. But otherwise what he says here is great.
The final short section here is on Epic and Tragedy Compared.
“… epic is said to appeal to decent audiences who have no need of gestures, while tragedy appeals to inferior ones; so if it is vulgar it is obviously worse.” I would say that tragedy does appeal to ‘inferior’ audiences, but being more vulgar I wouldn’t say makes something objectively worse. There is plenty of room for debate on this topic.
Aristotle actually does give three ways that tragedy can indeed be superior to epic. Firstly, tragedy “achieves its effect even without movement,” in that reading it has the same effect as hearing it be read or played out on stage. Secondly, “tragedy has everything that epic has, and it can even use the epic metre…” Thirdly, “this form of imitation achieves its ends in shorter compass, and what is more compact gives more pleasure than what is extended over a long period.” Unfortunately, it seems that many streaming series don’t realize this… stretching out a plot across ten hour long episodes with lots of digressions in between, makes it quite unpleasurable.
And in fact, Aristotle then turns this whole argument on its head: “If, therefore, tragedy is superior to epic in all these respects, and also in fulfilling its artistic function – not just any kind of pleasure, but the kinds I have described – then obviously, in achieving its ends better than epic, it must be the better form of art.”
Tragedy it is. Aristotle then signs off, saying he’s said all that he has to say and we are now left to wonder why Poetics, at least selections such as these from it, isn’t required reading in high school. I think we’d all be better for it. And what he says here makes modern poetry look like shit. Not to say short-form poetry is bad; it can actually be very good. But we’ve lost something in modern entertainment, and I think a lack of ancient, but still very relevant foresight from Aristotle is a big part of why that is. Except the shit about women being inferior, but that’s neither here nor there…
