Aristotle
- The Poetics
Views on Tragedy
Poetry is an imitative art. It can imitate two
kinds of action: the noble actions of good men or the mean actions of bad men.
From the former was born the epic and from the latter the satire. ‘The graver spirits
imitated noble actions and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort
imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires as the former
did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men’. From these in turn arose tragedy
and comedy, the graver sort practicing the former and satirists the latter. For
tragedy bears the same relation to the epic as comedy to the satire. It follows
therefore that the epic and tragedy are superior to the satire and comedy which
concern themselves with the mean actions of low men. Between themselves tragedy
according to Aristotle is superior to the epic, having all the epic elements in
a shorter compass, with moreover music and spectacular effects which the epic
does not have and being more compact in design.
According
to Aristotle, ‘Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and
of a certain magnitude. By serious action Aristotle means a tale of suffering
exciting pity and fear. Action comprises all human activities including deeds,
thoughts and feelings. It should be complete or self-contained, with a
beginning, a middle and an end. A beginning is that before which the audience
or the reader does not need to be told anything to understand the story. If
something more is required to understand the story than the beginning gives,
the beginning is unsatisfactory. From it follows events that would not follow
otherwise and that constitute the middle. In their turn they lead to those
other events that cannot but issue from them and that lead to none others after
them. They form the end. If in any play the beginning can be put in the middle
or at the end, or the middle at the beginning or the end, or the end at the
beginning or in the middle, the action or plot is not complete or one whole (i.e.,
well-knit) but haphazard or loose. Completeness implies organic unity or a
natural sequence of events that cannot be disturbed.
Tragedy
as an Imitation
In
The Rhetoric, Aristotle observes that if a sentence has meter, it will be
poetry, but this is said in a popular way. The general question, whether meter
is necessary for poetical expression, has been raised by many modern critics
and poets and has sometimes been answered in the negative as by Sidney, Shelley
and Wordsworth. Imitative art in its highest form, namely poetry, is an
expression of the universal element in human life. ‘Imitation’, is a creative
act. The essence of the poetry is ‘imitation’; the melody and the verse are the
‘seasoning’ of the language. Without them a tragedy may fulfill its function,
but would lack its perfect charm and fail in producing its full effect of
pleasurable emotion.
Katharsis
or Purgation
The
tragic katharsis involves not only the idea of an emotional relief, but the
idea of the purifying of the emotions. Tragedy acts on the feelings, not on the
will. It does not make men better, though it removes certain hindrances to
virtue. The refining of passion under temporary and artificial excitement is
still far distant from moral improvement. The tragic katharsis requires that
suffering shall be exhibited in one of its comprehensive aspects, that the
deeds and fortunes of the actors shall attach themselves to large issues and
the spectator himself be lifted above the special case and brought face to face
with universal law and the divine plan of the world.
A well-constructed
plot should be single rather than double. The change of fortune should be not
from bad to good, but reversely from good to bad. It should come about as the
result not of vice but of some great error or frailty in a character. The
unhappy ending is the only right ending, for it is the most tragic in its
effect. Actions capable of tragic effect must happen between persons who are
either friends or enemies or indifferent to one another. If an enemy kills an
enemy, there is nothing to excite pity either in the act or the
intention-except so far as the suffering in itself is pitiful. But when the
tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to one another- if
for example, a brother kills or intends to kill a brother, a son his father, a
mother her son, a son his mother or any other deed of the kind is done-these
are the situations to be looked for by the poet.
Six
Parts of Tragedy
Aristotle
finds six constituent parts in tragedy: Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle
and Song. The plot is the imitation of the action and the arrangement of the
incidents is the chief part of tragedy. For tragedy is an imitation, not of
men, but of action and of life and life consists in action. Character
determines men’s qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or
the reverse. The incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy and the end is
the chief thing of all. To the question whether plot makes a tragedy or
character, Aristotle replies that without action there cannot be a tragedy,
there may be without character.
Tragedy
is written not merely to imitate men but to imitate men in action. It is by
their deeds performed before our very eyes that we know them rather than by
what poet, as in the epic, tells of them. It is the deeds or incidents woven in
the plot that matter more than their character. Since, deeds issue from
character, character is next only in importance to plot. The plot, then, is the
soul of tragedy. Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in
painting. The most beautiful colors laid on confusedly will not give as much
pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus, Tragedy is the imitation of
an action and of the agents mainly with a view to the action. Third in order is
Thought, that is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given
circumstances. In the case of oratory this is the function of the political art
and of the art of rhetoric and so indeed the older poets make their characters
speak the language of civic life. Character is that which reveals moral
purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. Fourth among the
elements comes is Diction. Diction is the expression of the meaning in words
and its essence is the same both in verse and prose and includes the following
parts- letter, syllable, connecting word, noun, verb, inflexion, case,
sentence, and phrase. Of the remaining elements the Song holds the chief place
among the embellishments. The Spectacle has indeed an emotional attraction of
its own, but of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least
with the art of poetry.
The Dramatic Unities
Unity
of Action
The
only dramatic unity enjoined by Aristotle is Unity of Action. It should have
first unity of action or only those actions and not all in the life of the hero
which are intimately connected with one another and appear together as one
whole, ‘the structural union of the parts is being such that, if any one of them
is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjoined and disturbed’. There may
be many more actions in life of the hero - there are in every man’s life - but
unless they have something to do with the tragedy that befalls him, they are
not relevant to the plot and will all have to be kept out. ‘For a thing whose
presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the
whole’. It follows, therefore, that the events comprising the plot will concern
only one man and not more. For if they concern more than one man, there will be
no necessary connection between them, as the actions of one man cannot be put
down to another. Their introduction in the same story must therefore disturb
its unity. When all the actions of the same man cannot be included in the plot,
what sense can there be in including actions of the other man, between which
and the former ones there can be no inevitable link even if there were similarity?
For the same reason the episodic plots are the worst, i.e., those in which
episodes or events follow one another in mere chronological order without
probable or necessary sequence.
Unities
of Time and Place
Aristotle
once mentions the unity of time. Tragedy, he says, endeavors as far as
possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly
to exceed this limit, whereas the epic action has no limit of time. From this
the older critics were led to believe that for a good tragic plot it was
necessary to select an event or events that happened within twenty-four hours
or so in life, so that when represented in about one-fourth of that time on the
stage they may not appear unnatural, as they would if the plot-time were longer.
But Aristotle nowhere insists on this as a condition of good plot.
The
unity of place which was deduced as a corollary from the so-called unity of
time is not mentioned at all. So much was made of these two unities in the
centuries following the Renaissance that it is important to mention here that
they do not appear among the essentials of a good plot mentioned by Aristotle.
In a
play we not only expect a succession of scenes, but that each scene should
lead, by a logic more or less stringent, if not to the next, at any rate to
something that is to follow and that all should contribute their fraction of
impulse towards the inevitable catastrophe. That is to say, the structure
should be organic, with a necessary and harmonious connection and relations of
parts and not merely mechanical.
The
general law of unity laid down in The Poetics for an epic poem is almost the
same as for the drama, but the drama forms a more compact whole. Its events are
in more direct relation with the development of character; its incidents are
never incidents and nothing more. The sequence of the parts is more
inevitable-morally more inevitable-than in a story where the external facts and
events have an independent value of their own. And though the modern drama,
unlike the ancient, aspires to a certain epic fullness of treatment, it cannot violate
the determining conditions of dramatic form.
Artistic
Ornament and Form of Action
The
two characteristics- artistic ornament and form of action- are easily
explained. By the former are meant ‘rhyme, harmony and song,’ which are
employed not all together but as occasion demands. Rhythm and harmony thus may
be used to develop some parts and song some others. They are all designed to
enrich the language of the play to make it as effective in its purpose as
possible. The form of action which tragedy assumes, distinguishes it from
narrative verse, e.g., the epic. While in the latter the narrator of the story
is the poet, in tragedy, the tale is told with the help of living and moving
characters. The speeches and actions make the tale. In the narrative the poet
is free to speak in his own person or in the likeness of someone else, but in
tragedy the dramatist is nowhere seen, for all is done by his characters. It is
literature intended to be acted as well as read, whereas the narrative is
intended only to be read.
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